Why Not Say What Happened? by Ivana Lowell

Author:Ivana Lowell [Lowell, Ivana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59443-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

I was sitting idly at my desk in the Miramax office when my mother called me from her house in Sag Harbor. Her voice sounded faint and weird. “Darling, I am afraid it’s back.” It was about eleven in the morning and at first I was annoyed, thinking she must be drunk already. “What, Mum? What’s back?” I asked impatiently. “My thing. You know. My illness. I thinks it’s come back.” Suddenly I felt sick. It had been two years since she had had the operation and we had all managed to sort of put it in the back of our minds. We never dared talk about “it,” as if acknowledging its existence would somehow give “it” new life.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, Mum. It’s winter and freezing. You have probably got some kind of fluey cold.”

“No. I am afraid not. My doctor out here wants me to see a specialist in New York. He’s already sent him the results of some tests he’s done on me.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing. The doctors always do this just to cover themselves so you won’t sue them.” I didn’t know what I was talking about, just babbling; because she sounded so frightened I knew I had to act strong. “Just come in for your appointment and afterward I will take you out for a really good lunch. We can try the new Côte Basque.”

My mother had kept her Manhattan apartment but she used it less and less, preferring to hide out in Sag Harbor. She found coming into New York stressful even for fun things, and this trip did not seem like it was going to be fun.

Evgenia was living in Los Angeles so I telephoned Sheridan and told him to meet us at the hospital on the appointed day. He met us at New York Hospital in the waiting area for all the gastrointestinal and pancreatic-type specialists.

Sheridan had been living in the city attending classes at Columbia University. He had become an ardent socialist and was quiet and intense. He looked just like his father, with Robert’s square jaw, and he even wore the same kind of eyeglasses. Today he was wearing his usual Marxist student uniform of black beret and leather coat, and he carried some manifesto on socialist reform. It felt comforting to have him there.

We were kept waiting a long time, and all three of us were nervous. You could tell because our jokes were even sillier than usual: praising the “beautiful décor” of the hospital, making fun of the other gloomy patients who were waiting, and giggling every time the foreign voice made yet another completely incomprehensible announcement over the hospital loudspeaker system.

Mum looked scared, almost childlike. The black velvet leggings she had taken to wearing since her bladder operation appeared even baggier than usual, and her hair seemed thinner and whiter.

I remembered the countless times I had sat with her while she held my hand in rooms just like these, waiting to hear bad news about my burns.

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