Free When the Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane

when she says, I’m sorry I’m so tired. I really wanted to visit , and I eat the cold cuts in the kitchen with my dad after she goes to sleep and when he says, Your mother’s not doing very well , I say, I thought she was better , and I decide she just overdid it with the party. When he says he’s going to take her to the hospital tomorrow if she’s not feeling better, I put down the cold cuts.
    And when Mom wakes up the next morning not feeling better and my father says he’s taking her to the hospital, I remain calm as she simultaneously shrieks and rings a bell she brought with her into the bathroom in case she needs help but I silently wonder how I’m going to survive a week of simultaneous shrieking and bell-ringing. I have not forgotten how bad the shrieking sometimes was even before she got cancer and a bell. I am aware that drugs + cancer + shrieking + bell = my imminent commitment to a mental health facility. I long for the days of good old unadulterated shrieking. I am aware that d + c + s + b = 10X worse than my worst nightmare, and that x = a gazillion. I help her out of the tub and I do not cringe at the sight of the scar down her back that I have seen dozens of times now anyway as she hasn’t lost her nudist leanings. Which sets in motion another train of thought that includes the memory of countless embarrassments beginning when I was six as a result of her nudist leanings. It includes wishing I were still six. It includes wishing my mother were still sneaking me under subway turnstiles even though I will never be mistaken for a five-year-old again and even though I hated that she did that at the time. It includes wishing Mom and I were still pretending that the Calder sculpture in Lincoln Center was an ice cream stand or a lemonade stand or a hot dog stand or any kind of a stand, or that she was still letting me stay up late just this one time to watch Laugh-In because I love Lily Tomlin even though she lets me watch it every week and I don’t get half the jokes anyway because I’m six. It includes wondering what my mother was like when she was six.
    I button her shirt and pull her sweater over her head and pretend not to notice that she’s trying to pretend it’s not as exhausting to her to hold her arms up for 2.4 seconds as it would be for me to suddenly run a marathon tomorrow. I blend in her makeup and feel reassured that I have been blending in her makeup for years now because she’s had bad vision since the failed chemistry experiment when she was ten. Which is followed by wondering what my mother was like when she was ten. I finish blending in her makeup and I wish that my complexion was for even one day as good as hers is now and I ignore the irony that the person who so steadfastly avoided the sun and cigarettes came down with cancer anyway. I look for an overnight bag and when she shakes her head and says, No, the wheelie bag is ready , I ignore the way she has to breathe in before she says each word and also ignore that she’s got a bag half-packed for times like these and I follow her instructions to pack the baby’s needlepoint she hasn’t finished along with the latest Robin Cook novel and some hotel stationery from a trip she took twenty years ago and her book and I do not remind her that she is going to the hospital and not for a week in the country. I put in a pair of pink socks, a nightie and a worn Ziploc bag with eighteen prescription bottles in it (recognizing only the ones I might personally care to ingest) and I close up the wheelie bag. I half-smile at my mother calling it a wheelie bag. Under no circumstances will I openly cry or yell or appear to have any human feeling that might make her feel worse. I tell her I love her when she gets into the car with my dad and I make a mental note that this is the first time I’ve ever said it first.
    When my father comes home late that night and tells me my mother has pneumonia