The Trouble Is

Chapter 50: Peanut Butter and Cancer

It's been a couple of weeks since the funeral. I've been given Mom's old flip phone to replace the iPhone I threw across the room. It's strangely fine, in a retro kind of way, and East prefers to talk, not text. And with Katie gone, there's really no one else I would text with at length. Mom and Skip tend to ask questions that only require one-word answers.

I fill the days with summer reading for English and taking Doug and Chris to the park. We feed the ducks and look through those binoculars that require a quarter for three minutes of viewing. Some days we race the park's boats. I'm making peanut butter sandwiches for today's trip when Mom comes in and starts boiling water for tea.

She is careful in her preparations, using a real china cup with little birds painted on it. There's a matching saucer and a spoon she got when visiting Buckingham Palace once long before I was born. The spoon has a little crown on it with a shiny blue stone inside. Today she makes something that smells fresh and fruity, like oranges or plums or maybe both together.

"Sit with me a minute, Anna," she says.

I move my sandwich-making setup over to the table and continue cutting hearts and stars out of the sandwiches with cookie cutters. Mom eats some of the leftover edges. I stop what I'm doing and look at her. I really, really look at her. And that's when it all comes together. She looks different. She looks like Mom, not the fading chemo Mom filled with nausea and tears. This is the Mom who can eat peanut butter scraps and suddenly has a solid head of fuzz growing out in all directions.

"What is going on, Mom?" I ask. "You have hair!"

"I know," she says with a smile. I feel a sudden warmth at that smile. It's just so genuine.

"It's official now," she says. "I'm in remission. That's something worth celebrating, isn't it? And even more than that, the doctors don't think it's going to come back."

I knew that the chemo was like an extra layer of security the doctors wanted after they removed a small tumor that had formed in her stomach. The cancer had spread like gossip from that first tiny spot of skin. After her first few weeks, it seemed like it was never going to end. I was afraid to even think about it ending in case it didn't go as planned.

"I don't even know what to say, Mom," I tell her honestly. "It's the best news ever."

I get up and go wrap my arms around her. I breathe in the smell of her, all Herbal Essence and clean laundry. Somewhere along the way, my worry for her was set aside during my grief for Katie. I feel it all pour back into me now as I hold her. She must have felt me tense up, because before I know it, she turns in her chair and pulls me to her lap as easily as if she had never stopped doing it.

"Take a breath, Anna," she says. "And let it go. Just let it all go. All the fear, all the worry, all the stress. Just release it."

We stay like that for a while, and then I go back to cutting little sandwich shapes. Mom slices an apple and puts it, along with some grapes, in little plastic baggies. We work together without speaking while we finish the lunches. Mom draws hearts and funny little monkeys on the paper bags for Doug and Chris.

"What now?" I ask.

"What do you mean?" she replies as she pops a grape in her mouth. "Like, what am I doing today? Or what's next in our lives?"

"All of the above," I say. "This is a great thing, to be in remission. But I can't help but feel a little weird. It's like one day we're this one kind of family, and then we're another. Now what are we? I know that it probably makes no sense at all."

"Today," she says with a smile, "I'm going to the park with you—if that's OK, of course. And we are the same kind of family we've always been. Not everything needs a label, Anne."