I'll Fly Away by Wally Lamb

Author:Wally Lamb
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

My mother and I have the same hands. I stretch mine across the visiting room table and we touch fingertips. “My nails are all broken,” I say.

“My nails are growing because I can’t do anything,” my mother says with a sigh.

When I put on my slippers that night, I notice my mother and I have the same feet, too. It is the act of slipping my foot inside the soft blue shoe that reminds me of her. My mother is so little now. We used to be the same size, a smidgen taller than five feet. She used to weigh five or ten pounds more than my 115. I am always telling people we are built exactly alike from the neck down. “I look like my father and my father’s mother,” I say, “but I’m built like my mother.” This isn’t a bad thing. My mother is thinner than I am now. Her hair is colored a reddish blonde. My hair is brown, gray, and coppery red—a combination of natural color and hair dye long faded. My mother’s hair is short. Mine is too long. My mother is still able to go to the hairdresser every Friday. I cut my bangs with my nail clippers and have not had my hair colored since December.

I’m on the telephone in the hall when she tells me. I’m seated on the floor with my finger in my ear so I can hear. The girls are loud-talking as they walk back and forth. Most don’t even notice I’m here. “I was hoping you would call back yesterday,” my mother says. I had called in the evening but no one picked up the phone. I don’t get upset anymore when I hear the voice say, “Your call has not been accepted.” I just wait to call her the next day.

“I wanted to know if you were feeling better,” I tell her.

She gets that funny sound in her voice. “I have something to tell you,” she says. “I have lung cancer.”

I don’t say anything at first. I try taking a breath. “I don’t understand what you mean,” I say. And I truly don’t understand. Just this afternoon, my friend Amy came to see me. In another life, Amy’s mother and my mother were best friends—before my father left my mother and took their friends with him. Amy and I have played together since we were babies. When she asked me this afternoon how my mother is, I said she couldn’t seem to shake her pneumonia. “I’m not worried though,” I told Amy. “My grandmother lived to be almost ninety-five and my mother’s grandmother lived to be ninety. My mother will be just fine.”

“What don’t you understand?” my mother asks. She has tears in her voice, but I don’t cry. I can’t.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I repeat.

“I didn’t want to tell you like this,” my mother says.

I take deep breaths. I remember to ask some medical-type questions. I am reaching inside of me for something from God—a word, a phrase.

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