Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis Page B

them. Regulate their blood pressure.
    Purple energizes. It’s a good color for a gym, or a dance club. Orange is the color favored by the criminally insane.
    My mother is in a pale green room changing into her hospital gown. And the doctor is in his pale green gown. His body fading into the pale green walls creates this bizarre effect of a disembodied head chatting me up. It’s so distracting, it’s impossible for me to listen carefully to what he’s saying.
    Yet he has the nicest voice in the whole world. Peoplemust fall in love with him all the time. Not hero worship, either. He deals with cancer every day, and he knows that the people who are diagnosed do not. He’s not tired of questions. He’s not tired of explaining.
    The Passionate & the Youthful is really making a mistake by not toning down Dr. Cleft Palate and modeling that character after Dr. Kealy instead. He’s the kind of guy who would easily inspire fan clubs and major merchandising agreements.
    More than anything, though, I finally feel that my mother is in good caring hands. A part of me realizes I need this fantasy. I need to believe that someone is stronger than the cancer and knows how to get rid of it.
    â€œI’m sorry, I wasn’t listening,” I say.
    â€œTo which part,” Dr. Kealy says.
    â€œAll of it, or, none of it,” I say. “I was just thinking you’ve really been so nice, and that’s made all the difference to me and to my mom. Really. Thank you.”
    â€œYou’re welcome,” Dr. Kealy says. “Your mother is feisty. That’s good. It will serve her well. I’m very optimistic. But this is serious surgery. We shouldn’t be in there too long, maybe an hour or less. You can go sit with her until we’re ready.”
    â€œOkay,” I say.
    It’s so well organized. They do this every day, I tell myself. If you’re going to get cancer, this is where you want to be.
    I walk in the room. She’s lying in the bed.
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    â€œHEY, DR. KEALY SAYS it won’t take too long, and you can probably go home tonight,” I say.
    This will be the last conversation I have with my mother before she goes in for the lumpectomy. It is the closest I may ever come to knowing her. This strikes me as the conversation is happening. I know this is a window—a space in time that won’t be duplicated. Perhaps she’s been more vulnerable or frightened in her life, but in this room, in this gown, with this IV in her arm—she can’t conceal it or walk away from it. Jokes don’t work.
    A clear plastic tube hangs down from her wrist. It runs up to a bag of liquid. There is blood on her hand from where they missed a vein—or two. There is a streak of brightly colored blood on the sheet, too. I roll it under, in hopes that she doesn’t see it.
    She reaches out for my hand.
    â€œWhen you were born, you were a fussy one,” Mom says. “Oh, you screamed and cried until your father held you.”
    I smiled at the recollection, which is not actually a recollection at all but a created memory. A story I’d been told so often when I was very young that I remember it as if it happened a week ago.
    â€œSome babies are just that way; they have a preference. Your father always said it was because he talked to you so much when you were in the womb. He read to you.Performed for you, really. I mean, when he told a story he was dramatic, animated. I was busy sewing. Getting things ready. I didn’t talk to you until you were born. And by then it was too late; you already preferred him. You were his little girl.”
    In twenty-five years, the topic of my father never came up. Until now, we’ve observed a code of silence. We weren’t just avoiding talking about him, it was deeper than that: he didn’t exist. He was as absent from thought and conversation as he was from our lives. But now there is a certain longing in her