I laugh but it’s bitter. “You’re gonna tell my mom? Are we six? I’m gonna have to tell my mom anyway. What other threats have you got up your sleeve?”
Grant stands, looks down at me. His whole body is tense. He has no words. He merely stares, his jaw clenched. I can’t tell if he’s going to hit me or not. He looks like he wants to.
“Look,” I say. “I know that isn’t the plan. But, Grant…I cannot go through any more of this. I just can’t. It’s too hard. I want my life back. I want to go and…live—and do the things I’ve put on hold.”
“I know it’s hard,” he says.
I’m exhausted, I know that now. Mentally, physically, I have nothing left. I look up at Grant. “I’m done,” I say with a sigh, and Ifeeldone. I let my shoulders dip. I’m not going to have that last round of chemo. The doctor said it’s all but gone. I need to stop all of this now.
“But you have to keep going,” he says in desperation.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t.”
Chapter 18
Davey
I’ve never seenGrant this angry, this shocked and confused. The more I think about it, the more I know I’m making the right decision in not having the final round. I am done. I can start making plans now. Plans to live.
Before he leaves, Grant asks me if I genuinely mean it or if this is a cry for help and he’s misreading the signs. I can’t help but admire his tenacity, clinging on to the final threads of an argument, checking to make sure I haven’t gone entirely insane. But I haven’t. I tell him this isn’t a cry for help.
“But this is suicide,” he says. “You really can’t see that? This is you…killing yourself…really fucking slowly.”
“I’m not,” I tell him, and now that I know I’m not doing the chemo, I feel lighter, brighter. I feel the way I felt the night before I was supposed to leave for England—like all this fresh possibility is within reach. I just have to grab it. I can start making plans. I have no idea what those plans will be. But I can finally start, hit play, begin again. When Grant’s gone, I’m going to google flights to Rome, find a culinary school. Maybe I’ll take a year and go traveling, forget that the last few months ever happened.
He doesn’t know what to do, what to say. I can see that. And instead of feeling sorry for myself, which I have done a lot of, I now feel really sorry for Grant. It’s the same helplessness mymom and dad have felt, and I owe them so much simply for being there. I need to cut everyone some slack. They would have let me get away with murder. But I just retreated into crashing waves of silence, sleep, lack of appetite, and then, when no one was looking, crying in my bedroom. But this is me, done, moving on from all of that.
In his confusion, Grant can’t stop staring. He runs his hand through the place where his hair once sat, and confusion barrels into him again as he remembers he shaved it all off.
“You OK?” I ask him. It’s only fair.
He comes to his senses. “You’re a selfish prick,” he says and leaves.
I sigh deeply. I know it’s going to be like this, and I wonder if I can change my mind. But the thought of going to the hospital again, sitting in that chair, having them drip those drugs into my veins on and off over the next month…It brings a sudden bout of bile into my mouth and I use all the energy I have to get up from the couch, run to the bathroom, and vomit. I can’t do it. I know I can’t. I’ve come to the end.
—
Ordinarily I would have about a week-long break, but knowing at the end of that I don’t have to go back to the hospital makes me smile all day, every day.
“You OK, sweetie?” my mom asks.
“Yeah,” I say, turning to her, and I mean it. I really am. My energy returns in fits and starts and tonight I’m cooking dinner for the three of us. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat it. But I’ll try. I can’t really eat that much, but I’m making pasta carbonara, my favorite. I’m making the pasta from scratch and it’s going a bit lumpy. I think again of that culinary course in Rome that I’m determined to find. I haven’t told my parents yet that I’m dipping out of the last round of chemo, that I don’t think I really need it. And it’s clear Grant didn’t make good on his threat to tell my family. I lookat my mom’s blissful ignorance and decide I just might not tell them. What they don’t know can’t hurt them. There’s nothing they can do about my decision, so why rub in the fact that they’re powerless in all of this? I walk over, kiss her on the cheek. Hold my egg-and-flour hands up as if I’m a surgeon. She looks older than ever and I guess that’s my fault. Watching her only child go through this has dusted more sprinkles of gray into her hair.
“I love you, Mom.”
She smiles. “I know.” She tells me she loves me too and asks if she can do anything to help.
“Make a salad?” I suggest.
“I didn’t mean with dinner.”
I look at her, smile, shake my head. “I got everything covered.”
I need to shut her down. She wants to pour her heart out to me and I know when she does that I’ll break down, cry, tell her I can’t go on like this. But instead I say, “Could you add some sun-dried tomatoes?”
I sense her turn, move away from me, hear her opening cabinets, and then we make dinner in silence, waiting for my dad to get home from work.
—
