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2006-01-03 || 10:56 p.m. || the list || she's on this list and seems to be stuck on it. it's like when you decide, with the knowledge of how sunday mid-mornings tend to go, to put your name on the list for brunch at the crowded cafe on the corner. you sit on the curb or you read the paper or you spend time with your friend visiting from a faraway place, suddenly noticing they have changed their eyeglass frames some time ago without mention. you expect there to be a block of time to fill up; you can make the best of it or you can sit there and wait for your name to be called. my mother and father are redoing the guest bathroom. they are pulling up the old tub to replace with a larger jet-lined one big enough for my gentle giant father. they have stripped the wallpaper and pulled down the mirror. they are grouting for hours at a time. they get dizzy from chemical fumes and my dad takes the dog for a walk while my mother pours her wine from a box and curls up on the overstuffed couch to watch whatever home makeover show is in its new year marathon. my mum makes dinner. she writes me clipped emails asking if i got home okay. my dad goes to his auxiliary coast guard meetings, sitting in a folding chair trying very hard to make small talk with the old men bearing scars on their faces from skin cancer removal. two weeks ago i started calling. i was beside myself the first day of the list. i called home and my dad answered and his sentences were three words long. he stuttered. the empty spaces that usually pad his conversation were longer and more pronounced, and when i told him i would get off the phone now i tried very hard not to let my voice break at the good-bye-love-you. clearly there was cause for concern, this list. two hours later, while at work, after crying two times and explaining the list to two different co-workers, i called my sister. i asked her if she had heard about this list. i told her dad sounded funny and i was worried to death. she said she was in the room while i talked to dad, and he sounded like dad. everyone was fine. she had completely forgotten about the list. i then talked to my mother. my mother is on this list. i imagine it to be a chart with her name, her phone number, and her biopsy results. if the biopsy results come back benign, the nurse says she is okay; everything's fine. if the results come back as cancer, the nurse asks to schedule a meeting with the doctor. my mother was to be at the top of this list, in line for her explanatory phone call, two weeks ago. the first time i talked to my mum about it she made fun of me for being so upset. back when i was home visiting she had flashed me her boob in the kitchen on christmas eve to show off the bruise. she laughed it off. when we are on the phone she says there is no sense in worrying. what happens happens and god knows it could be so much worse. if what happens happens she was told it would just be a little radiation. she wouldn't have to do chemo. she talks about the possibility like it's a bad head cold and then she starts talking about grouting. how kelly made dinner one night, a clear sign of her sympathy. that i really need to get a duvet cover for the down comforter she bought me. i can never tell if she's scared. when i try to ask her she makes fun of me for being upset and changes the subject. she puts dad on the phone. she gets back on to tell me she will call the minute she finds out; there's no point dwelling on it until then. i keep thinking of all the people on the list. that it is someone's job to sit and call the numbers next to all the names, follow along the page with the tip of their finger to the result. stopping for a lunch break. stopping to talk to their own children on the phone. finding the line they left off at before lunch. you came back clear. you need to meet with the doctor. how there all these women with battered breasts beginning to heal as the results come back going on about their lives, making dinner, redoing bathrooms, asking their children to please shut up. late at night after washing their faces and applying age-defying creams looking into the mirror and imagining what they might look like without hair and eyelashes. without a breast. dying. how their lovers and family think about it every so often, walk the dog, drive across the state back to their own lives, keep their cellphones in their pockets so that when they ring they'll know right away; they are uncertain whether their mothers will leave such information in a voice mail. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |