“I’m okay, Fitz,” she replies quickly. “Don’t worry about me. I want you to enjoy your trip.”
The worry flashes into anger. I know she’s evading me. “Can you honestly tell me that you’re really okay? That you’re not having early symptoms?”
“Fitz—”
“Mom,” I cut her off. “Tell me the truth.”
The silence on the other end of the line says everything. “I wanted to wait until you were home.” Her voice is different now, unrecognizably shaky. I sink onto the nearest empty bench, my legs unsteady. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Juniper noticing. She starts to walk in my direction. “This was expected, okay?” Mom continues. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve just been presenting early symptoms for a little while. Sometimes I forget the newer students, miss the occasional deadline, that kind of thing.”
“Have you gone to your doctor?” I ask. It’s the first question I can think of, and I grasp onto it, my only lifeline.
Juniper sits down next to me without speaking. Her expression is wrought with concern.
“Yes. We have a plan. I’ll share it with you when you come home,” she reassures me, except it’s anything but reassuring. It’s worse, in a way. It means her symptoms have gotten severe enough that she went to her doctor without telling me.
Furiously, my mind recites the prognoses I’ve read a hundred times over online. She could have ten years, or she could have as few as three.
“How could I not have known?” It’s half rhetorical.
“I knew you would worry,” she says. “I didn’t want my health to influence your college decisions.”
It’s infuriating, how wrongheaded she is. Of course her health was going to influence my college decisions. It was only a matter of when and how. How much opportunity I would have—how much freedom she would mislead me into feeling—to fall in love with schools far from home. How horrible it would be when I discovered that freedom was founded on a lie.
I laugh harshly. “You sent me on a college tour knowing you were presenting symptoms.” She tries to cut in, but I continue, harder. “How could you? How could you show me these places knowing I might never have the chance to go to them?” I let the bitter truth fly. “I was happy going to SNHU before this.”
She sniffles over the line.
It tears me in two. The resentment splits off, and suddenly I’m left with only overwhelming remorse.
“I’m sorry,” she struggles to say through tears. “I’m sorry, Fitz. I should’ve told you. I just . . . I didn’t want it to be real. I guess I wanted to pretend I was still a normal mother who could send her son away to his dream college.” Her voice chokes. “I wanted more time.”
I understand everything she’s telling me. I understand the profound difficulty of her position, why she would put off revealing this the way she did. A few forms of grief unfold in me. Grief for her, for the unraveling she knows is coming. Grief for myself, for the watching and the waiting. Grief for the visions of the future I’ve entertained the past few days, which have vanished in an instant.
But there’s one more thing I understand with cutting clarity. This isn’t about me.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say over the ragged breathing I know she’s trying to stifle. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. We’re going to figure it out.”
Juniper’s hand finds my knee, reminding me she’s here and she’s definitely heard enough to know what’s happened. I turn from her, from her worried frown, her caring eyes. From every way I’ve let her change me. I want to continue being the emboldened new person she thinks I’ve become. The person I know she’s expecting, even with her comforting hand on my knee.
I just don’t think I know how. Not anymore. Not when every fear I’ve quieted during the past few days has come raging back.
Fitz
WE SKIP THE rest of the day’s itinerary. While I explained the conversation with my mom