The Art of Saying Goodbye

Author:Ellyn Bache
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Contemporary Women, Cancer, Middle-Aged Women, Family Life, Fiction, Terminally Ill, Female Friendship, Patients, General, Domestic Fiction
ISBN: 9780062033680
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

November 12

Spare me, Iona thinks as Lori jabbers to her on the phone. Spare me from Braxton Hicks. Two months ago Iona had never heard of Braxton Hicks. But now. Oh, now. The English doctor who described “practice” labor contractions back in the 1870s might be living in the house with her. She’s heard about him daily, and at the moment, nonstop.

Her stepdaughter-in-law does not spare her a single detail. Lori has been having Braxton Hicks contractions on and off—“but mostly on, Iona”—for the past week. Her belly contracts, relaxes; it doesn’t seem to want to stop, though sometimes if she sits quite still, it will. Before long she’ll be having the real thing.

“But it doesn’t hurt? How can you have contractions that don’t hurt?”

“Well, I certainly feel it, but I wouldn’t call it painful. It’s hard to describe.”

Exactly. Iona makes what she hopes is a reassuring sound, but she can’t imagine it at all. Doesn’t Lori have some young friend to discuss this with? Some peer who’s recently given birth and knows all about it? Apparently not. “When I go into the hospital,” she tells Iona, “I hope you’ll come, too.”

“To the waiting room?”

“Into the labor room. You can stay for the whole birth.”

Perish the thought. Iona has no wish to observe some slimy, not-even-kin child slither into the world, her head misshapen from the birth canal, face streaked with blood. She once watched a delivery on television. It was awful.

“I’m flattered, Lori,” she says, “but it wouldn’t be right. This is something you and Jeff should share, just the two of you.” She gives herself an A for tact.

“It’s different than it used to be, Iona. Whole families stay. It’s not unusual.”

I am not family, she refrains from saying. Her morning has already been sufficiently trying.

An hour ago, at Lowe’s, where she was picking up hi-hat lighting frames for Jeff because he’s supervising three different jobs and she felt sorry for him, a grizzled salesman paled—literally paled—when she asked where the lighting section was. With stiff politeness, he directed her to the proper aisle, his eyes fixed the whole time on the space above her right ear. Iona is accustomed to men not wanting to make eye contact with older women for fear the women might be coming on to them, but this guy was no young hunk to begin with, and so rude as to be insulting. She steamed her way to the checkout counter, where she received the same space-above-the-ear treatment from the female cashier. Only when she was ready to zip her sweatshirt to leave did she realize she’d unzipped it when she came in and also undid the top of her shirt, revealing her freckled chest and the upper portion of a favorite, tattered old bra.

She’s not going to set foot in Lowe’s for the next twenty years or until death, whichever comes first. She’s not going to run any more errands for Jeff, period. If she doesn’t put an end to this, he’ll turn her into a regular gofer.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.