Free Summer of Seventeen by Jane Harvey-Berrick Page B

have given anything to be able to complain about curfews or parent-teacher conferences. Julia did some of that stuff instead now, but it wasn’t the same; it never would be again.
    I didn’t feel hungry anymore, so I set the plate down on the sand and pulled my sunglasses over my eyes.
    “You never talk about your mom,” Yansi said quietly.
    I didn’t reply.
    “I wish I’d known her.”
    Mom was already sick when Yansi and I started dating. We didn’t know at first. Or if Mom knew, she didn’t say anything. I guess I just hadn’t noticed, or noticed but not realized what it meant. I remember small things that she did or didn’t do—not finishing the take-out food, even though it was her favorite chicken enchiladas; losing weight even though she’d been on every diet known to woman, and it had never made any difference; and just being tired all the time.
    I remember her asking me why I was late back from school one day. She knew I hadn’t been with Sean, because he’d stopped by on his way home, looking for me, pissed when I wasn’t there. And I admitted that I was seeing someone—someone I liked a lot.
    I thought I’d get another lecture about respecting women and being safe—but I didn’t. She just gave a small smile and said she was glad that I’d found someone.
    “When can I meet her?” she asked.
    I told her, Soon, maybe , but I hadn’t meant it, and then it was too late.
    Mom knew it as well, because in small ways, she started preparing us, me and Julia. Suddenly, it was important for her to tell me that that main valve for the house’s water supply was at the back of the garage, and that the electricity bill was monthly. I listened halfheartedly, itching to be outside, surfing or skating or shooting the breeze with Sean; Julia pursed her lips and kept looking at her watch. And I don’t know why Mom didn’t scream at us: Pay attention! I’m not going to be here to hold your hand .
    And I didn’t bother to listen when she told us to wash dark loads and white loads separately in the machine; and Julia was impatient, saying she already knew that; Mom, tired and defeated, trying to pass on a lifetime of advice in just a few short weeks.
    Because that’s the thing about cancer … even when the doctors give you a deadline, it still sneaks up on you. They don’t like to be too certain—I suppose they can’t. But they never say, You’re not going to need to order a turkey for Thanksgiving this year, or, I don’t think you’ll get much use out of your Christmas sweater .
    So despite everything, I think dying took Mom by surprise. And she forgot to pay the phone bill. We only found out when the landline stopped working and it took weeks to reconnect. So we didn’t have any internet either. And that’s at the same time as having to pick out a coffin, even though Mom had left instructions that she wanted a cremation. She said not to pick a real expensive one because it’s only going to get all burned up anyway.
    Julia said Mom wanted a cremation because she was afraid of the dark. I thought it was because she was creeped out by the thought of being in the ground with all the worms and bugs and then they’d … you know. But she’d always hated yard work too, even though she liked it to look nice. So it might have been because of that and because she didn’t want to put us in the position of tending her grave. But I’m just guessing because I was too chicken shit to ask her anything real when she was dying.
    So Mom never met Yansi. I think she would have liked her though.
    Mom always had a soft spot for Sean, even when he was the reason I got detention every afternoon for three weeks for putting saran wrap over the toilets in the staff restrooms when we were in ninth grade. I think she felt sorry for Sean. And he made her laugh.
    The second to last thing Mom said to me was, Don’t forget to put out the recycling .
    The last thing I said to her was after the nurse had given her a morphine