Читать книгу Undressing The Moon - T. Greenwood - Страница 19

I am grown now. I have to remind myself sometimes that all of this is inevitable, that if it hadn’t been cancer, it would have been something else. Everyone has to leave sometime, everyone dies. But at thirty, this feels like an injustice. I read the obituaries every day, looking for others like me. But almost everyone who dies here is already old. Their numbers glare at me, mocking, from the smudged pages: 93, 76, 81.

This morning Becca brings bagels and the Sunday Burlington Free Press, dividing it according to our now familiar routine. While she reads the “Living” section, I scour the lists of the newly deceased.

“I’m buying you a juicer,” she says, her finger pointing to a glossy Kmart insert. “You like carrot juice?”

“Yuck.”

“Tomato juice?” Her finger presses into the advertisement.

I shake my head, returning to the former Navy officer, 75. The grandmother of twenty-seven, 98. The retired surgeon, 81.

“You can use fruit, too. Oranges, kiwi even.” She sounds exasperated.

I look up from the obituaries. She is tapping the ad now, insistent.

“We’ll go next weekend,” I say.

“The sale ends today,” she says. “Then it goes right back to the normal price.”

“Fine,” I say. “This afternoon.”

Satisfied, she smiles and folds the advertisement carefully. “I bet you can even use pineapples. Mangoes.”

Never mind I know she hasn’t once seen a mango at the Shop-N-Save. I nod and smile anyway.

My instinct in the beginning was to fight. I laced up my gloves, stood in the ring, and imagined cancer cloaked in a tacky satin robe in the other corner. For three years, my hands have been curled into fists. But I’m tired now. I am tired and bloodied and my blows are soft. It’s because of Becca, my relentless coach, that I continue. I dream the white towel floating down into the center of the ring, but she clings to it. She is holding on to it with every bit of her strength, and her fists are stronger than mine.

But it is autumn here now, and I know I am no different than the precarious leaves, holding on to the branches of the trees outside my window. I dream myself red and gold and purple. I dream the flight from branch to sky to ground. But every time I begin to fall, Becca is there, demanding to know exactly what I think I am doing.

She believes the underdog can win the fight, that winning is as simple as persistence and faith. In my corner, she rinses my bloodied face with cool water and urges me back into the cold ring. She knows how tired I am, knows that without rest there is no way I will be able to win. She thinks that I am only taking a break, only gathering strength.