My Foreign Cities by Elizabeth Scarboro

Author:Elizabeth Scarboro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright

SAM DROVE US over to Amani’s apartment, where I was urged to take the first shower. I stood under the water, trying to pretend I’d just woken from a night’s sleep. I wondered whether Stephen was getting any rest right now, if the sedation felt like sleep. I imagined him emerging from the anesthetic, moving through that murky between-worlds state, shifting into silliness. Once after an operation the doctor had asked him if he needed anything else, and he’d asked for pork chops and a foot rub.

Sam lay sprawled on Amani’s bed, his giant feet hanging off the edge. I sat next to him, listening to his faint snoring, to Amani rummaging in the kitchen, the rushing water of Anna’s shower. Finally I forced myself to get out Stephen’s phone. I’d called his family in the dark of early morning. His mom had answered half-asleep. “Oh, Lizzie,” she’d said, in a soft whine I’d never heard. I imagined her wandering in a daze in her white bathrobe, too distracted to make coffee, much less look into plane flights. It wasn’t fair that Stephen’s father wasn’t here to do this with her. When I called Stephen’s sister, the first thing she said was, “Poor Mom.” She was awake and clearheaded, the boys wrestling in the background before breakfast. Clay had simply said, “You’re kidding.” Then he made me repeat, “Stephen’s having the transplant,” four times, until he could be sure it had sunk in.

My mom was teaching; I’d need to wait for her break. I tried my dad at work.

“Elizabeth?” he said, unsuspecting.

“Dad?” I heard the speakerphone click off, just him and me now.

“You want us to come out there?” he asked, when I’d explained.

I thought of the plane fares, of work missed, of the way we were killing time around here. “I’m okay,” I said. “There’s nothing really to do.”

My dad laughed. “Of course there’s nothing to do. We’ll come if you want us.”

His voice was breaking me. I pushed back tears. “You think Stephen will be okay?” I asked, like a child.

“I think this was the right thing to do.”

“You’re not answering the question.”

He sighed. “I know, kiddo.”

The calls felt like premature birth announcements; all these voices filled with hope and confusion. My brother was the only person who received the news like he expected it, like there was no doubt it would all work out. Eve was mad I hadn’t woken her up in the middle of the night. “Hang on,” she said. “I’m coming over.”

We were strengthening our forces. Eve came, and our friend Forest, who’d just moved out to San Francisco. By the time we went out to breakfast, seven of us sat bleary-eyed in a café on Valencia. We looked just like everyone else here, slackers in our twenties, hungover with time on our hands. I thought of all the people I knew whose fathers or mothers or siblings had died; how you could meet them and never know, how they looked like everyone else, young and wondering what to do with themselves.

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