Seventeen

SEVENTEEN

SINCE MY FIRST NIGHT at Meier, I've been dreaming about my mother.

I was fourteen when she died of ovarian cancer. Brigid was sixteen. But my sister, as brave as she was being in her own cancer fight, never could handle it with Mom, from the day we'd all gotten Mom's diagnosis, which was essentially a death sentence. So Brigid would look for any possible reason to be out of the house, look for any excuse to avoid being alone with Mom. She even went out for soccer her junior year of high school.

Dad took on part-time construction jobs in addition to bartending, because insurance was covering only a fraction of Mom's hospital costs before she finally made the decision that she was going to die at home. She never came out and said it, but I knew it was because of the expense.

Because she was Mom.

So while Dad was working two jobs and with Brigid rarely around, I became Mom's nurse and caregiver. And best friend. Mostly I was there to talk to her, and listen, and keep her company before she'd drift off again.

"I don't want you to be sad when I'm gone," Mary Smith would tell me, repeatedly. "I've been blessed with two wonderful daughters and a husband who loves me. My regrets are small ones."

I knew her regrets were bigger than that, that she'd always dreamed about being a writer, across all her years as a school librarian. But with being a mother and wife and holding down a job, there was never enough time for her to write.

To the end, she would hold my hand and smile and tell me that if there were one truth she wanted to pass on, it was how precious life is, even as her own was draining out of her.

Then she'd be talking again about her hummingbirds. I sometimes thought she loved the ones that used to come to the feeder Dad built for her when we were still living in Patchogue almost as much as she loved him, and Brigid. And me.

She even nicknamed me Hummingbird, my mother did, because she said I was in constant motion. I had a tiny hummingbird tattooed behind my left hip bone, but she didn't live long enough to see it. Dr. Ben didn't even notice it right away when we started sleeping together.

He finally ran a finger over it one night and asked what it was.

"It's me," I said, and told him the story.

"I'm the hummingbird," I said.

Mom's feeder moved with us when we moved back to the city, a couple of years before she died. An old friend of my father's had given him a better bartending job. On our tiny balcony overlooking 11th Street, there was even a place for Mom to hang the feeder. The hummingbirds never found it, and though she ended up taking it down, she could never bring herself to throw it away, just packed it in a box with the rest of her belongings, like she was packing for a long trip.

In my dreams, I never picture Mom as sick. She's in her bed. The drapes are open so she could feel the sun on her face. Most of the time—not all the time, but most—I dream of her as a young woman, the great beauty she'd been when my father first fell in love with her.

I mention all of this to Dr. Ludwig one day. He's already asked me if during my stay here I'd like to meet regularly with a therapist. I tell him that I'm strictly here for body and fender work which, of course, goes right past him.

"What do you think my dreams mean?"

"Maybe it's as simple as you wanting her to be strong for you now," he says. "And, even more, to be present."

I rarely wake up sad or anxious after the dreams. Sometimes I realize I'm smiling when I open my eyes, as if my mom were the one sitting next to my bed now.

I'm out for my afternoon walk on one of the trails that goes up into the hills and eventually winds its way back down, mountains and blue sky everywhere, when maybe fifty yards ahead of me I spot a woman I've seen around the clinic.

I'm walking much faster than she is and cover the ground between us quickly because I do walk fast, turning even my afternoon walk at a cancer clinic into a competition.

When I'm alongside her I ask, "Would you like some company?"

She's wearing a rainbow-colored bandana to cover what can only be a chemo-bald head and protect it from the high afternoon sun.

She smiles as if her day suddenly got a lot better and answers in a British accent. "Well, wouldn't that be brilliant?"

Her name is Fiona Mills. She lives in London, informs me that her husband is a news "presenter" for ITV. They have two teenage daughters, around the same age Brigid and I were when Mary Smith was losing her own battle with cancer.

She asks me about myself. I tell her I'm a lawyer from New York.

"Married?"

"Twice. Divorced twice."

"Did you love them?"

I smile back at her. "I thought I did."

She laughs. Laughter, like just about everything, sounds better with a British accent.

"Without prying," she asks, "is there a man in your life now?"

"Yes."

"Do you love him ?"

"More than my husbands."

She laughs again. "Have you opened your heart to him completely?"

It is a serious question, one that demands a serious answer.

"Not as much as I should. There's still a lot he doesn't know about me."

"Don't wait too long to tell him."

We walk and talk. I tell her that I've been dreaming about my mother almost every night. All of it. She tells me that when she got sick, she used to have the same kinds of dreams about her father, who died of pancreatic cancer when she was ten.

"I used to sit with him and hold his hand and not want to let go," Fiona says.

"I used to sit with my mom and listen to her talk about her life," I say. " Her dreams. Until the day when she closed her eyes and never opened them again."

Fiona Mills talks about her children then, how the younger daughter is the strong one. I tell her I played the same role in my family. I tell her we can turn around whenever she feels herself start to tire. She says she's fine, that this is her favorite time of day and she'd rather lengthen it than shorten it.

I tell her I feel the exact same way.

"I get up here and pretend that I've left cancer down the hill," she says.

I tell her I feel the same way about that, too.

"Maybe," I tell her, "we should consider making a run for it."

"I'm afraid it's a smidge late for that."

Even with her head covered, and as thin as she is, she is quite lovely. Her eyes are this lovely combination of green and hazel, as if they can't decide.

"Sadly," she continues, "this is the end for me here. My last visit to Meier. They've done as much as they can do. At this point they can't make up their minds whether it's weeks I've left, or months. However much time it is, it will bloody well be spent with my family." She drinks in mountain air. "Life really is so damned precious. I realized that before I got sick, if not as well as I should have."

I tell her that my mother used to tell me the same thing, when there wasn't a place like Meier for her to buy more time.

Fiona tells me she has ovarian cancer. I tell her that's what my mother had. She asks about my prognosis. I share the news from Dr. Ludwig and the rest of the boys and girls in the band.

"So you've more time than I."

"Just how much more is to be determined."

I've downshifted to match her pace. Even with that, she is beginning to slow. When I ask her again if she's ready to turn around, she says, "A bit longer, if it's just the same with you."

I tell her I've got no place to be except back down the hill, where the cancer is waiting for both of us.

When we do finally begin to make our way down the trail, she asks, "Are you spending your own time wisely, Jane, if that's not too impertinent or personal of me to ask?"

"I'm working as hard as I ever have." No point in wearing her out with the details about the trials and extraordinary tribulations of Rob Jacobson. "When I get back home, I'll begin prep work for a new murder trial."

"When will it begin?"

"Going off the usual timetable, sometime next year."

She stops. So do I. In this light, her eyes seem more hazel now. Almost opaque. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to.

"I'm going to ask the judge to move it up," I say. "Usually, lawyers want as much time as possible to prepare. I want less."

Fiona nods, as if I've answered her unspoken question. "Your work, does it make you happy?"

"It's the one thing that makes me feel as if I'm going to live forever."

"Even more than the man in your life?"

"Something else that's to be determined," I say, and she smiles again.

On our way back, the sun finally begins to set, dropping toward the mountains.

"I read somewhere that if there were only a handful of sunsets in our lives, how valuable would they be?" she says now. "Well, I try to approach every hour of every day like that." Fiona drinks in more air. "Make me one more promise that you will do the same."

"I promise."

When we've made our way back to the front door of the clinic, she says, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For making this last hour even more valuable than I'd already planned for it to be."

I ask her if I'll see her again before she leaves.

"I think not. This shall be our one and only good-bye. I've only got so many of those left in me. Good-byes, I mean." She smiles one last time. "I'm afraid I can only allow one to a customer."

Her room is on the fourth floor. I watch Fiona walk down the long hallway leading to the elevator, moving more slowly than ever.

It's as if she feels me watching her. She stops and turns and gives me a small wave.

"Don't forget your promises."

The elevator doors open and close and then she's gone.

"Good-bye," I say.