“What in God’s name were you thinking?”
That’s how I knew my mother was upset. Anytime she threw God around meant a particularly bad transgression occurred. My one call from jail went to my sister, Mia, who came at a moment’s notice, with a sense of pride that she was no longer the only Gardner girl to have spent a night behind bars.
After the police learned about my recent dilemma they had taken leniency on me. There was no bail or court dates to follow, considering I was already on death row. My sentence was a good hard night on a good hard bench, surrounded by even harder women—women who I left adoring. In fact, it was the best thing they could’ve done for me.
I was still yet to tell Mia or my mother about the cancer. As far as they knew, I went into an episode of psychotic road rage, the way most adults in their thirties tend to do, when middle-age starts creeps along.
“Well…?” my mother reinforced her question.
“Well, I just felt like it,” I said, unenthused to explain it any further.
“You just felt like it? Who are you? Where’s my daughter?”
“Mom, chill out,” Mia intervened. “It’s not that big of a deal. Besides, there’s no charges, she didn’t even get a ticket.”
“That’s not the point! Fundamentals are the point! Your sister here is a very reputable woman in this county. If something like this got out in the papers, there’d be no stopping the fallout.”
“Mom,” I said as calmly as I could. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
An epiphany struck like in one of those cartoons, where the lightbulb ignites over the drawing’s head. Jo hadn’t left my mind since I left the cell. Her words played verbal ping-pong through my skull, echoing her last question. “How about you?”
Sure, I questioned some of her authenticity. She might’ve just said what she thought I needed to hear. But nonetheless it resonated. It was something in her eyes… that spark of life.
“How about you?”
There I was, listening to the disappointment in my mother’s voice, scolding me as if I were sixteen. It was the first time I’d ever been in trouble with her, with anybody. And I realized that Jo was right.
“How about you?”
Yeah, how about me? What have I ever done worth doing?
“I’ve been doing it all wrong,” I said to my mother.
“Olivia, this is what you’ve done wrong. You drove recklessly, and tried to run away from the police!” Mother shouted.
“No, Mom, that’s the only thing I’ve done right.”
Mia looked at me, her eyes widened, and then she broke out in a gut-wrenching laugh. I joined her right away, and left our mother with that appalled expression; her eyes slanted in worry.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew I had to tell her, but I also knew if I did, it would mean the bitter end for the newly fun Olivia. The one who only a day after finding out she was dying, laughed about it. My mother would demand me to go on chemo, the same way she did with my father.
“If you don’t try, it means you don’t want to live, which means you’d rather leave me behind,” she had said to him while weighing their options. She made it about her, with a pure, sadistic guilt-trip.
She couldn’t know, at least not yet. But Mia? She deserved to, because she would understand.
I left my mother’s that night with a smile for the future. The revived revelation of Jo’s words clung like barnacles in my mind. The beautiful part about it was that the relentless planning I’ve done my whole life was inconsequential. Before wouldn’t work now, there was no time for it. The only time I had was to make up for the time I had lost.
Trippy, right?
After our mother went to bed that night, I sat down with Mia at the kitchen table, and unloaded my burden on her. It was her who pushed the decision further. Even as a mother, young frame of mind spray-painted Outlaw on her inner skull.
We grew up in separate childhoods, with an age gap of eight years pulling us away. With all the friends she had, she still came to me for advice. Once the adolescence was through, and she became a woman, our bond grew as well. It was as if we both obtained a sister we thought we never had. While she was constructing experiences with semesters over seas, she’d call me every other day, talking about the wonders of where she was for an hour at a time. I’d listen, give advice when I could, if I could. But her life was lived on an acute angle, while mine was refined obtusely. Yet still, with all of our differences we became best friends.
“It isn’t fair!” she yelled at a whisper behind her bubbling nose and cheeks wet with tears. I admired her will to hold it back and not wake our mother. She understood the ramifications. “How are you so calm about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kinda numb to it I guess, maybe a little tranquil. After the doctor told me yesterday, nothing made sense… everything I ever thought I did right, seemed to be wrong. When I was speeding through town, it felt like the time on the clock turned to more of a countdown, and I was racing it.”
“What can I do?” she asked.
“What you could do is not tell mom.”
“Liv, I wanna do everything I can for you, you know that. But you know that’s not fair, especially for her, especially after dad.”
“No, it’s not fair. But I don’t wanna spend the last year of my life arguing with her. I love her, but you know how she can be. I’m not going on treatment, Mia. I need you to understand that more than anybody else, because God knows that she won’t. She’ll push me until the day I die.”
Mia sat quietly for a remarkable amount of time. She was the kind of girl who voiced every thought… relentlessly, giving ear beatings from her whip-like tongue. This was something real she had to ponder.
“Just tell me one thing,” she said after a few minutes of thinking and crying. “What are you gonna do?”
God bless my magnanimous Mia.
There was going to be no planning, only movement. Planning involved thinking about the future based on theories of the past. Now there was only now, and that was the only place I desired to be.
So I sat there sipping my tea, and gave the only answer that would end this scene well.
“I’m gonna do it all.”
Cue the triumphant music…