“WHA’?” Her father blinked, then understood. She saw the realization creep over him, and his gaze traveled from her to the exit door and back again. “You were sneakin’ away from us?” he asked, his voice incredulous, his tone a fresh wound.
“I had to. I have to.”
“I’m surprised at you, Mare.” His brown eyes went round. “I can’t believe you would do that.”
“I’m sorry, Pop.” Sorrysorrysorry. “But I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do.” His forehead wrinkled with the only disapproval she had ever seen on his face. “Lemme ask you somethin.’ Were you doin’ somethin’ wrong?”
“No. I’m doing something I have to do.”
“Then why you hidin’ it?”
Mary didn’t have an immediate answer.
“You don’t sneak. You never sneak.” Her father pointed a thick finger at her, and his eyes flashed. “You have to do somethin’ tomorrow? Then, when the time comes, you stand up straight and you talk to us.”
“But, Pop, Mom’ll never go for it.”
“You show your mother the respect she deserves. You talk to her. Tomorrow. But tonight, you come home and sleep.” He sighed, his heavy shoulders letting down. “You’re sick and you shouldn’t be runnin’ around, Mare. I signed the paper for you, they gave me the pills for your head. You gotta rest. Tonight you stay home.”
Mary felt a tsunami of guilt wash over her. She would rather be locked in a trunk than this. And what were the odds she’d get out of her parents’ house tomorrow morning? She’d have to defy not only her father, but also her mother, who still looked so thin. Mary seized the moment. “Pop, what’s the matter with Mom?”
“That’s not for now. That’s for later. For her and you.” His face softened, falling into familiar sad lines. “Come on, Mare. You don’t want it to be this way. You were such a good girl, never snuck around. I heard the stories about the other girls at school, but not my Mary. Never you.” He offered his arm again. “Come on, let’s go home.”
How much longer will I have that arm to hold on to? And what about Mom? Mary took his arm, appreciating its gift anew. “You win, Pop.”
“Of course.” Her father smiled. “Judy in the getaway car?”
“She’s my wheelman.”
They both laughed, and shuffled out together.
It wasn’t until later, when she was putting fresh sheets on her childhood bed, that Mary got her mother alone. At least, alone except for the press outside, crowding tiny Mercer Street with their videocameras, klieglights, and microphones, waiting for Mary to come out. Earlier, Mrs. DiTonio had shooed them from the block with her trusty BackSaver snow shovel, but they’d come back in force, knowing Mary would have to come out sometime. But not tonight. Tonight was for family.
She and her mother were in the stop-time bedroom Mary had shared with her sister. Two single beds sat against the side wall, and between the front windows, a small white-painted bookshelf crammed with the artifacts of an American girlhood; stuffed Easter bunnies with legs that had inexplicably hardened like concrete; a chubby Latin-English dictionary, soft, blue hatch-marked copies of Nancy Drew, and random Archie comics; brown teddy bears with dilated pupils, eyelashes that stuck together and black noses that never wore off, and a mass grave of half-nude Barbies stacked on a shelf, so that only their stiff plastic feet showed. There was only a single desk that nobody used anyway, now cleaner than it ever had been, and above it hung a cork bulletin board cluttered with wrinkled track ribbons, photo-booth strips of girlfriends with matching braces, sewn felt letters in school colors for honors in English and religion, pointless sayings cut out of advertisements (“Slicker All Over. Yardley of London.”), and a curling Time magazine cover of the Prince of Wales by Peter Max.
Between the beds stood a single wooden night table, and on it rested a plastic Flintstones lamp that nobody had the heart to discard, even when it went well beyond outgrown into campy and back again. Its yellowed paper shade had pictures of Pebbles and Bam-Bam, and its base was outdated enough to permit only a forty-watt bulb, which barely illuminated the room but emitted a soft, friendly, old-feeling glow. It bathed Vita DiNunzio’s newly pale face with warmth, magically filling the hollows that had appeared in her cheeks.
“You got?” her mother asked, in her shorthand. She had both hands on her side of the sheet, wanting to know if Mary was ready with her side, and she didn’t need to say more. Mary had made so many beds with her that she could do both sides of most of their conversations. But not the one they were about to have.
“I got it, Ma,” Mary said, and they flipped the white flat sheet into the air, releasing a stored-up scent of mothballs, hard soap, and city air. The sheet would have been line-dried outside, on a clothesline less imaginative than Amadeo’s, but equally useful. The sheet caught the air, making a momentary cloud between them, before it billowed soft to the bed. “So, Ma, tell me what’s the matter with you.”
“Nothing.” Nut-ting-eh, it came out.
“Something’s wrong, Ma. You’re thin, I can see that. Tell me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Ma, you’re making my head hurt more.” Mary sat on the bed, refusing to make her hospital corner. “Tell me. I’m ready. I can handle it, whatever it is. We can handle it together.” Her words rang with an authority unusual for Mary, and she realized she couldn’t even have faked that tone before.
Her mother remained silent as she folded her corner, her lips forming a tight line. She smoothed out the sheet with the flat of each hand in brisk, practiced strokes, and in no time, her side of the bed was completely made and Mary’s was a complete mess. Her mother pretended that she didn’t notice as she picked up the white thermal blanket, bleached to the soft hue of city snow, and held it bunched in her hands, ready to put on the bed. Her mother tilted her head in appeal. “Maria.”
“I’m not moving until you tell me.”
“Per favore.”
“No.” Mary folded her arms. It was stubborn meets stubborn, in a face-off over the hospital corners. Her mother couldn’t stand an unmade bed. It was like a ringing telephone for some people, or a form of torture by electrocution for others. After a minute, her mother gave a small, final sigh and eased onto the bed, hugging the blanket to her chest. Mary swallowed hard. She was getting ready to say something.
“I’m a little sick.” Leetle seek.
Mary felt her heart stop. “How sick? What do you have?”
“Little sick, inna, inna -” Her mother frowned in a squeamish way and made a swirling gesture near her pelvis. “Ovaie, itsa sick. Little bit, sick.”
No. This isn’t happening. What? Mary struggled to translate from the hand motion, “Like your ovaries? What does ‘sick’ mean?”
“Little bit sick.”
It had to be. What else could it be? She didn’t want to say the word. “Ma, did he say it was cancer, in your ovaries? That you have ovarian cancer?”
“Sì, sì, è cancro” – her mother made the swirling gesture again, yes, it’s cancer, and Mary felt as if somebody had thrown a switch on all the circuits in her brain.
Her mother said quickly, “No worry, Maria, dottore, he say I ’ave operation.” Operaysh.
“Operation? What kind of operation?”
“Isterectomia,” her mother answered in Italian, a word Mary had never heard, but she could guess.
“A hysterectomy?”
“Sì.” Her mother flushed, mortified.
She needed a hysterectomy. Maybe they had caught it early. Maybe she’d be okay. Mary was terrified and relieved, simultaneously. She tried to collect herself. “Ma? You scared? It’s a normal thing, a common thing, to be scared.”
“No scared. I pray, I no scared. God, he take care of me.” Her eyes remained unflinching, richly brown and clear, gazing back at her daughter, as always, with honesty, love, and something new. Bravery. Vita DiNunzio had never ridden a bucking bronco, climbed anything taller than a footstool, or kicked her way out of a Lexus. But she was braver than all of them, and Mary felt a sudden shame that she had never realized it before. She got up on weak knees, went around to the neat side of the bed, and put her arms around her mother, who felt so terribly frail in her arms.