“I know,” I said.
“He said he would call his sisters, so you can expect they’ll call you, I imagine.”
“I barely remember them.”
“Look,” she said as we continued to the hospital, “maybe you should give some serious consideration to accepting Aunt Lucy and Uncle Orman’s invitation.”
I started to shake my head.
“I can’t be here for you every day, M. In fact, I’m trying to put something off, but it’s proving very difficult, if not impossible. I’ll probably have to leave tomorrow for five days or so.”
“That trip to St. Thomas on a private jet?”
“Yes.”
“So go. I can get to the hospital myself,” I said sullenly.
“I know you can get to the hospital, and I’m not apologizing. I have a life I’ve chosen—or, maybe more accurately, a life that was chosen for me—and I just can’t put it on hold like some people can with their lives,” she snapped back.
I didn’t want to get into all that. Right now, all I could think about was Mama. “Do what you want to do, Roxy,” I said. “You always did.”
She didn’t reply. She turned away and looked out the window. We rode in silence the rest of the way.
“Maybe you should go in to see her by yourself this time,” she said when the driver opened the door for me.
“Fine,” I said, and got out.
“You haven’t spent time alone with her, and you should,” she shouted after me.
I didn’t look back. I forbade a single tear to leave my eyes and pressed my lips together. I paused when I entered the hospital and worked on getting myself calm. The last thing I wanted to do was show Mama I was upset about anything.
Surprisingly, Mama was in good spirits. Perhaps Dr. Hoffman hadn’t yet told her the latest news about her condition. Once she saw that Roxy wasn’t with me, she asked me question after question about her, but I didn’t have any of the answers she wanted. I didn’t know very much more now about the life she had led than I had known before she showed up at the hospital. I did tell Mama how much Roxy regretted what had happened and how much she really loved her. That pleased her. Then she, too, started on Aunt Lucy and Uncle Orman’s offer.
“They have no one at their home but themselves. You’ll have everything you could want there, Emmie, and you wanted to leave the school.”
“Yes, the school, but not you, Mama.”
She smiled, but it was the smile of someone who knew that the wish I had was soon going to be impossible. Maybe the doctor had been there after all. Mama was too good at hiding things.
“At least think about it, ma chère. Will you?”
“Okay, Mama, I’ll think about it.”
“Good, good. Now, tell me about school, about the house, any calls, bills, and what you’re planning to have for dinner,” she recited, and closed her eyes to listen. I stayed until the nurse pointed out that Mama was fast asleep.
I went home to make myself some dinner. Finding things to do was the best way to keep myself from thinking. I was grateful for all of the homework I had to catch up on and the new assignments, too. Every once in a while, I would pause and listen to the stillness in our house, still not accepting that everything had changed and would change even more. I had to go down to the living room and sit reading the way I would when Papa was alive. He would be settled in his chair, and I would be right across from him on the sofa with my legs pulled up and folded under me. He called me a contortionist.
I smiled, remembering. The chair was creased and worn where Papa’s large body had fit comfortably. I ran the palm of my hand over the arm of it as if I were stroking his arm. One time, he had fallen asleep in it. When I got up to go to my room, I paused and kissed him on the cheek. His eyes opened. He realized what I had done, and he smiled and said, “Trying to turn a frog into a prince?”
“You’re no frog, Papa,” I had whispered. I whispered it again as if he were there and it was all happening.
I still could hear his laugh as I ascended the stairs and then heard him telling Mama why he was laughing. It was as if their contentment and happiness could carry me up like some magic carpet and gently put me to sleep, wrapping the sense of security around me like an invisible blanket. Would I ever sleep like that again?
Roxy called me just before I went to bed to tell me that she was indeed leaving. She would try to call from St. Thomas. She asked how Mama was, whether I could tell if the doctor had spoken to her yet. I told her I wasn’t sure.
“She asked a lot of questions about you,” I said. “Questions I couldn’t answer.”
“You don’t want the answers, and neither does she,” she told me. “Take care,” she added, and hung up.