Title: Untitled (suggestions welcomed)
Warnings: one swear word, cancer
Summary: Karen's mom is diagnosed with breast cancer.
Length: 1,700 words
Notes: Third person point of view, present tense. Genre is... I'm going to go with "family".
Karen is still a little drunk from the party she left an hour ago when the phone rings. It takes her a while to locate it and manage to read the caller ID. Chrissy. Why would her sister be calling at (she glances at the clock above her stove) 4:00 AM? She fumbles with her phone before picking it up and flipping it open.
“Hello?”
She hears unsteady breathing that must be Chrissy. Then – “Mom found a lump a while ago. She didn’t want to worry you in case it was nothing. But it isn’t. She – she has breast cancer.”
After the phone call Karen sits and thinks for a while. She thinks about a few hours ago, when she was out partying and her mom was learning that she had breast cancer. She remembers Grandma’s battle with breast cancer, how painful and futile it all was. She thinks about how breast cancer can be hereditary.
Is that all that awaits her in the future? Cancer? And what about Chrissy?
They might both have a death sentence.
Karen needs to visit her mom. She needs to be there, whatever happens.
She goes online and buys a plane ticket to Houston
“My mom has breast cancer.”
The words shock her, bringing reality to the situation. Her friends look at her with wide eyes. She sees their compassion and it’s almost her undoing.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, so I can be with her. They – the cancer isn’t terminal. With chemo she should be okay. I should be back in a week.” It’s all she can afford to take off from work.
“God, Karen, I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?” Mark asks.
Karen shrugs. Trisha puts her arm around Karen’s shoulder and it turns into a group hug and Karen just breathes.
On the plane ride, Karen tries to read. She bought all of this stuff on breast cancer and cancer in general and how to deal with it and what to expect and all that. The oncologist will probably tell her all this later but she feels better having read it already.
But as the hours slip by and she keeps reading she feels her mother’s identity slipping away, replaced by textbook phrases and key words and medical jargon. She can almost feel it in her head, the way strong mother is turning into cancer patient.
She stops reading after that.
Chrissy meets her at the baggage claim. Her mascara is smudged and her eyes are red. She clings tightly to Karen when they hug and Karen, for once, clings back. For a moment she feels the distance between them close. How ironic that it is cancer, past, present, and future, that unites them.
Eventually they pull apart but Karen still feels warm and she sees the answering warmth in Chrissy’s eyes.
“I’ll get your stuff,” Chrissy says. “Mom’s at an appointment right now, but she’ll be back in about an hour.”
Karen nods and wonders if she can handle this.
The car ride home is silent. Karen has questions but she isn’t sure how to ask them. Does Mom look different? she wants to ask. But of course she will. Karen remembers Grandma in her last days, how pale and thin and waif-like she looked.
Karen does not want to see her mother like that. She wants to remember her mother as the strong woman who created her own Jazzercise class. Who could eat more hot dogs than anyone Karen knows.
Her mother is strong. Karen knows this. But seeing her battle cancer will make it hard to remember that.
The house is empty when Chrissy and Karen enter. Karen takes a cursory look around. This is not her childhood home. When Karen and Chrissy moved out and Dad died, Mom moved into a smaller, more manageable house – this house. A few years ago, when Mom married Steve, she thought about moving but decided to stay.
“This is my home now,” she’d said.
Karen has visited enough to get a feel for the house. It is small but cozy. It has a quiet strength to it, just like Mom. She hopes Mom can live it in for many more years.
Steve and Mom come back in about an hour, Steve rolling Mom in on a wheelchair. She has her eyes closed and looks small and frail. But when she sees Karen and beckons her over, she gives her a hug that belies her fragile appearance. Karen clings to her for a bit, telling herself that she’s trying to transmit her strength to her mom but really knowing that she’s taking comfort in her mother’s embrace. She’s never been good at giving comfort.
After hugging Mom, she turns to Steve to hug him, trying to hide the tears in her eyes.
“I’m glad you came to visit,” her mother says later. She’s sitting up on her bed, carefully eating some oatmeal. Karen is perched on a chair by the bed.
“Of course I came,” Karen says earnestly. “I wish you would’ve told me earlier, so I could’ve been with you when you got the diagnosis.”
Her mother fiddles with her spoon a bit. “I’m sorry,” she says eventually. “It’s just, sometimes I forget you’re not a kid anymore.”
“It’s okay.”
“Besides,” her mom says with a smile, “This cancer’s got nothin’ on me. I’ll be right as rain soon. You’ll see.”
Her mom is tough. Karen’s always known that. Her first husband – Karen’s dad – died from cancer (that seems ironic and sadistic, now) when Karen was seven. Mom took care of her and Chrissy all by herself. And she was a damn good mom. That is why Karen was so afraid before. She couldn’t see how the Strong Mom she knows would go with the Cancer Patient Mom her mom is now.
What she hadn’t realized was that Strong Mom is still very much in Cancer Patient Mom.
It makes her wonder if Strong Karen can be in Everyday Karen, too.
“The cancer is treatable,” Steve says.
Karen just nods. They are sitting in chairs by her mother’s bed. (She is trying not to call it a deathbed but it feels like one.) Her mom is sleeping. Her energy is not what it used to be.
“They caught it early,” Steve says.
Karen just nods again.
They sit in silence for a while. Steve brushes a lock of her mom’s hair behind her ear. All Karen can think about is that soon Mom won’t even have any hair.
“It’s going to be all right,” Steve says.
Karen tries to believe him.
Karen soon falls into the routine of it. They take Mom to different appointments, sit with her while she’s undergoing chemo, talk to her about random things or watch the TV if she’s too tired. It’s hard to deal with, watching her mom lose her strength and her hair (but not her life). Of course it’s hard. But it’s not as bad as Karen had feared. Her mom is still her mom, not exclusively a cancer patient. Her life is still her life.
She should have known that not even breast cancer could get her mom down for very long.
Karen calls Trisha the fourth night she’s in Houston
“Steve wants me and Chrissy to get tested for breast cancer,” Karen says without bothering with a greeting. “They can look for this gene that would mean we’d have a much higher risk of getting it. Since Grandma had it and now Mom does, they want us to do the test. Just so we know.”
“Are you going to do it?” Trisha asks.
“I don’t know,” Karen says, barely above a whisper.
Karen doesn’t really want to know if she’s at high risk for breast cancer. Part of her figures that she already is. But most of her just doesn’t want to know. She just doesn’t want cancer to be her life. Surely her mom will understand – she’s done everything she can to live, not just live with cancer.
But on the other hand, she wouldn’t want Karen to suffer through what she has if Karen could try to prevent it. But how much can you prevent cancer, anyway? Not much. Eating all the vitamins in the world wouldn’t keep it away.
“Do you want me to get tested to see if I’m at high risk?”
“Oh, honey, I don’t know. That’s your choice.”
Karen glances at her mom. She’s wearing a pink scarf, covering up what’s left of her hair. Her hand shakes as she reaches for the remote. She’s spent all morning throwing up her breakfast. But when Steve asked her if she needed help, she just said, “Cancer and I are just learning how to get along.”
“I don’t think I’m going to do it,” Karen says.
Mom nods and looks at her and Karen knows that she understands.
It is her last day in Houston
She and Chrissy aren’t going to get the test. Steve doesn’t understand, but he accepts their decision. Karen feels like instead of giving up something, some knowledge about her life, she is gaining something. Surety that her life is her own, maybe. Peace.
Karen hugs everyone when she leaves. Her mom feels small but familiar in her arms. Steve is a strong, solid constant, and Chrissy is a part of her. She smiles at each of them.
“I’ll visit again as soon as I can,” she promises. “I’ll miss you all.”
They say their goodbyes and Karen takes a cab to the airport. She sends a text to Mark and Trisha in the car. I’m coming home. Then she sets her eyes to the Texas
Her mom survived cancer. Karen survived dealing with it. She feels like she can do anything now.
Very realistic and touching account! I like the drabble format as an interesting change-up. With the inevitable uncertainty inherent in a cancer diagnosis, my only suggestion would be to consider an ending that is open and uncertain but still hopeful. It's the last paragraph I would cut and add in those 17 words earlier in the drabble. I think your last sentence should be this one: "Then she sets her eyes to the Texas horizon."
ReplyDeleteFor the title: "The Cancer Test"
Really liked this format. The short concise sections were perfect for a time when someone would be in shock, overwhelmed, and actually thinking fragmented thoughts. The progression was very good and I actually liked the ending the way it was since Karen started by worrying that her strong mother would be beaten down by this by learns that there are different types of strength, including her own strength in having dealt with this traumatic event. Nicely done!
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent and a mature story. I really like the drabble format, and think it makes your writing concise and solid. I like the alternating dialogue, no-dialogue, and will say again (after Scar Story) that you do all-(or-mostly-)dialogue scenes very well. You manage to portray such serious topics as cancer so well and maturely, and have such believable , real characters, I don’t know how you could know so much!
ReplyDeletecomments:
This is going to be kind of weird, because I’m going to comment on the lest line first, then on the rest. I don’t like having the meanie at the end because it’s an amazing story and I hate to end on bad note.
Then she sets her eyes to the Texas horizon. – like this ending. I think you can cut the last descriptive line, and fit the 17 words somewhere else. It really just summarises what the reader’s figured out. It’s nice, but I like short stories that end on an action.
Okay, meanpart over. it’s just a suggestion.
Here’s more of what you did super-well:
Karen is still a little drunk from the party she left an hour ago when the phone rings. – I like this opening. It goes right into the drama, and summarises very quickly.
She – she has breast cancer. – wow, strong opening. It’s only 95 words in and already we see this huge and unexpected trouble.
She remembers Grandma’s battle with breast cancer, how painful and futile it all was. She thinks about how breast cancer can be hereditary. – I guess doing 100-word pieces makes you be quick, but you pack so much feeling in so little!
“My mom has breast cancer.” – it’s great how we can see how much more real it is when Karen has to say it.
it turns into a group hug and Karen just breathes. – great, concise way to convey a lot of emotion without intellectualisation.
Intellectualisation = expository mode of story telling consisting when a narrator describes things like feeling in board, abstract terms, e.g. And Karen felt the pain and the fear and the grief well up inside her, and the uncertainty of heartache and anguish and sorry, and the anxiety and the premonition of a most bitter anguish she dared not comprehend. Yeah, that’s a little extreme. But you get the point.
she feels her mother’s identity slipping away, replaced by textbook phrases and key words and medical jargon. – great moment
for once, clings back. – nice hint at a difficult relationship between them.
Does Mom look different? she wants to ask. But of course she will. – you really play the anticipation throughout the story, making the reader really sympathise.
her mother the strong woman who … – I love the specifics about the mom, it makes her so real.
It has a quiet strength to it, just like Mom. – great use of scene description to give character info too.
After hugging Mom, she turns to Steve to hug him, trying to hide the tears in her eyes. – another great show of her character and the strain cancer places onto it.
“I’ll be right as rain soon. You’ll see.” – increases the suspense, and very revealing of Mom
Her mom is tough. … she was a damn good mom. – I like the way narrator tone falls to Karen’s thinking here.
“The cancer is treatable,” … Karen tries to believe him. – these 100 words are great, and I really get a sense through almost all dialogue of what they are feeling, and how their relationship is. We don’t really get much of Steve before this. Good dramatic miniscene.
“Steve wants me and Chrissy to get tested for breast cancer,” Karen says without bothering with a greeting. – this conflict arrived unexpectedly, but you manage it so well.
She just doesn’t want cancer to be her life. – really summarises her problems with it.
“I don’t think I’m going to do it,” Karen says.
Mom nods and looks at her and Karen knows that she understands. – such a brief exchange, but you really give that sense of understanding, backed up by our knowledge of both characters.
Surety that her life is her own, maybe. Peace. – wonderful line!
@Jean
ReplyDeletenow we have two literary critics. but yours is helpful literary critic.