her hands and arms, the calmness and sweetness that came off her like incense as she enfolded my flailing, slippery daughter.
March 5, 2010
I was walking out the door, literally walking out the door with my tennis racket in hand, when I made the mistake of answering the phone. Tinsley’s words sounded as if they’d been filtered through a wall of tears.
“Ann, I know you must have meant well, but… we really need to discuss what you told Ellie.”
“Tinsley?” I asked dumbly. Was I stalling for time, or was I really surprised? Her voice seemed unusually deep, and there were several long stunned seconds when I believed, truly, that I had no idea who she was or what she was talking about.
“Yes, it’s Tinsley, Ann, we need—”
“I’m afraid you’ve caught me on my way out—I, uh—”
“You need to explain this to me, Ann. What on earth made you tell a little girl she had the breast cancer gene?”
“That’s certainly not what I told her.”
“Well, that’s what she heard.”
I wrinkled my nose. Maybe that’s what Tinsley heard. It was hard to believe that was Ellie’s interpretation. She hadn’t given any indication in that direction. None at all.
“Why, Ann? I don’t understand.”
“Well, the subject… just… presented itself.”
I struggled to recall the exact context of our breast cancer discussion. I confess I could not. Later I looked up my diary entry to remind myself that it did, in fact, come up naturally. I wanted to show it to Tinsley as evidence, like a courtroom drawing.
“Well, how would that subject just come up, Ann? I don’t—”
“Something… in the store prompted it, I believe.”
“Did she touch your prosthetic, or—”
“Yes, something like that.”
“I know she asks a lot of questions, but you can’t give her too much information. It needs to be managed. Maybe you should have asked her to speak to m—”
“Ellie is very mature, Tinsley. She doesn’t need to be mollycoddled.”
“She was up all night, Ann! I think she was afraid she had cancer!”
I shifted my weight from foot to foot in my sneakers. I thought of the float we’d shared at Stuart’s, the scoop bobbing in the fizz.
“Well, she did have a little cola with her ice cream. Maybe that kept her awake.”
“You gave her caffeine?”
I sighed. Tinsley made it sound like I’d put a goddamn IV in her arm!
“No,” I said firmly. “She drank a little cola, that’s all. A few sips.”
I couldn’t wait to end the conversation so I could tell Betsy about it. Betsy, who had hated every girl her son ever dated. Over the years we’d raised eyebrows at their clothes and their helmets of hair and their earnest fund-raising careers. Now he was dating women with fake breasts and grim unwrinkled smiles. And then there were the women all around us, at the grocery store, restaurants, the club. We could go on and on about these young mothers who didn’t let their children get a little tan or climb a little tree or eat a little cotton candy a few damn times a year when the carnival came to town. And having only one child made it worse. You never learn to relax because you never get a second chance at anything. Every year, every stage, every phase—it’s all new and requires the same fumbling about. But Tinsley—well, we always had hope for Tinsley. Were we wrong?
“She’s only allowed to have root beer.”
“Oh,” I said archly, as if that explained it. As if root beer were somehow more acceptable than a Coca-Cola! As if they both wouldn’t rot your damned teeth! Tinsley was lucky I didn’t give her a few sips of my beer!
There was a long pause, and I’ve been living on this earth long enough to understand what that space was supposed to contain. I gathered up my breath and my pride and filled it.
“Well, I’m sorry, Tinsley, if I did something to upset you or Ellie.”
I heard her sniff on the other end of the line and that small sound made me cringe. She sounded prissy and particular and whiny in that moment; not the sensible, openminded high-energy Tinsley I thought my son had married, not at all.
“I guess,” I sighed, “cancer is a subject one just can’t talk about.”
“Oh no, Ann, that’s not true. Look, I’m sorry, too. It must be—well, it must be hard for you. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”
I smiled. I had her now, didn’t I? At the end of the day, shouldn’t a cancer survivor be given the