All the Water in the World Read online

  I jumped when my mother uncrossed her legs and inserted her bookmark. My mind was stuffed full of Antonio, and my mother’s mind was stuffed full of other things, and neither of us knew what the other person was stuffed full of. She stood up and smiled at me, and I smiled back. Mine was a fake. She beamed her gaze deep into me in a way that used to signal a moment of humor and solidarity but that nowadays was likely to mean weariness or badly concealed fear. Maybe it also meant the guessing of secrets. Maybe through genetic telepathy she knew that I had emailed my father and she was trying to decide whether to bring it up or wait for me to. She always tries not to intrude. I turned my Tweetie-Pie eyes on her. Bring it up, Mom! Ask me!

  My mother only stretched and went to get coffee. Drinking coffee is the one unhealthy thing she does. It is her daily pleasure. She won’t give it up, no matter how badly she sleeps.

  The bare skull of the boy sitting opposite had crisscrossing tracks of metal stitches and a purple map of skin above his ear. Eyes in dark shadows. Cheeks the only babyish part of him left. Head down, he was playing on his phone while his mother flipped through a magazine. All at once the boy swung his legs, and smiled right at me.

  I stared to the side. It was a policy of mine not to meet the eyes of the other kids. My head was a boulder that received and transmitted nothing.

  I pretended to be fascinated by the four-paneled painting on the wall called Each Day Life Begins Anew, as if I didn’t know it by heart. The four panels represented the seasons. Each girl started in one season and swung her feet into the next, except for the fall panel, where the swing was empty and run aground in mud. The last girl swung her yellow boots into a violet-colored winter, which proved only one thing—big deal!—that this so-called artist had studied the color chart.

  “Do you like that picture?” The boy was as hoarse as an old man.

  “Not very much.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at how crooked the swings are! I could do better than that. Her hands are like mittens.”

  “I think it’s pretty,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “I’m ten. What’s your name?”

  “Maddy.”

  “Is that a real name?”

  “Of course it’s a real name! What’s yours?”

  “Torrence.”

  “Don’t tell me that’s a real name?”

  He ducked and covered his grin with both hands. Kids that age, their teeth are too big for their mouths. His mother glanced up and straight down again.

  “They said I’d be okay if I made it to three years. I was so close! I only had two months to go. Then it came back. Are you getting chemo?”

  I nodded.

  “What do you have?”

  “Cancer of the cells that are supposed to protect me.” He wouldn’t appreciate the irony. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  Torrence glanced sideways. “That’s my sister.”

  So that was why she looked so young and bored. To head off the question, I volunteered: “I’m an only child,” just as my mother took her seat, coffee in one hand and a hot chocolate for me in the other. “That’s my mother.”

  The women exchanged guarded smiles and returned to their reading.

  He held up his phone. “Summer gave me an iPod Touch. So I could play Angry Birds in the car.”

  I licked the whipped cream off the top of my drink.

  “Do you know what Angry Birds is?”

  “A game where these birds try to kill pigs who are stealing their eggs.”

  He pointed to a purple wristband he was wearing. “This is for Team Summer. I loved Summer. She died.”

  “Oh.”

  Torrence gripped the edge of his seat and swung his legs. “Can I give you something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s how it works. Once you get a gift, you can give one to another kid with cancer. To cheer them up. What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  His look bordered on the scornful. “You must want something.”

  “Torrence,” said his sister, warningly. “You know it has to be a surprise.”

  He lowered his head and swung his legs some more, and then I was called in.

  My favorite nurse, Carla, was on duty. When she saw me, she crowed like I was her long-lost lover and gave me a smothering hug. Her frizzy hair was in a ponytail. Behind the glasses, she had the warmest eyes. Though I knew better, and though being embraced by Carla brought tears springing to my eyes, for a minute it seemed as if everything was going to be all right just because it was her giving me my chemo. Mom held my hand and rubbed my shoulder and exchanged smiles with Carla while she accessed my port and hooked me up and fussed with the valve, peering at the bag with a practiced eye.

  Some of the kids I knew were there, Sandy and Rita, the dancer who’d lost her leg, but it was Torrence I couldn’t get out of my mind. Tracks across his scalp. Covering his smile with both hands. Wanting to tell me things. Give me things. At least when I was ten I was carefree because I had no idea what was going to happen. At least this part didn’t hurt, like getting IVs did; with chemo the ugliness came later. I smiled at my mother and made a mental effort to welcome the liquid in. Some other girl was lying on the bed in my place. I was soaring over the hospital and the peaks of the trees and the traffic going around and around in circles. Above and beyond and away.

  • • •

  When we were leaving the hospital, I thought of Torrence again, though he was nowhere to be seen. He might have been there just for scans. We passed as always the stained glass windows of daisies and daffodils, the framed photographs of beaches, bridges, and peacocks. They don’t let me out until my counts are up, but still the first week home is awful. Disappearing Girl. Monster Baby. I wondered if Torrence’s mother took care of him when he was sick, or if he had a grandmother, because if you ask me, his sister would be chewing gum and waiting for the minute she could leave the room. It was possible Torrence didn’t even have a mother. I couldn’t bear to think about that.

  I took my mother’s arm and we steamed as fast as we could go to the parking lot, home, and my own bed. Antonio flashed into my mind. I banished the thought of him. He did not belong in this part of my life. I did not want him there. Good thing I had not told my mother. Together we followed the corridor around the courtyard, where the sculptures made of painted wood were visible from all angles. One had arms and legs jointed like a beetle’s. One had a head like a giant pumpkin, under a hat from which a black feather protruded in the shape of fingers. The third character was seizing his skull with both hands, having been clobbered by a brick. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was roaring with laughter. Whenever I passed these sculptures, if you want to call them that, my question was: Is this supposed to be funny? Is this supposed to cheer people up? But today I was drawn to their dark goofiness. I stopped to examine the one hit by a brick. His head was nearly caved in, but he was laughing anyway, in this weird triumphant way, as if to say, Ha ha, you hit me, but you can’t really get me! It almost made me want to laugh.

  • • •

  Each time, it takes a little longer to recover. That treatment was the worst yet. My port got infected and I went back to the hospital for two days of antibiotics. They had to call the IV team to get the needle in my arm. Even then it hurt like crazy. When I came home I was running to the bathroom all night long. My mouth was on fire from the ulcers, and I could only eat mashed bananas and smoothies. Food fit for babies. My feet were so numb, I couldn’t even keep flip-flops on. Chemo does things to your nerves. Dr. O says once the treatments are over, that should go away.

  I lay facedown on my rug so I wouldn’t come to hate my bed too much, pushing Cloud away whenever she came near; then I felt bad and tried to coax her back, but she’d had enough of me. All I wanted was my mother, and she was there, kneeling beside me on the rug, her singsong voice flowing all around the place, strong for me.

&n
bsp; “Poor baby.” Even before I got sick, she used to call me that if I was miserable for some trivial reason. All reasons before now were trivial.

  “I want to be,” I said to the rug.

  “What?”

  “A baby.”

  “Well, you started out that way, and you can be again. Whenever you need to.”

  “I don’t mean a crybaby.”

  “You get that from me.” I heard the smile in her voice. “I get it from your grandmother. Runs in the family.”

  “I mean a real one. That people take care of because it’s fat and cute.”

  “You’re not fat,” she said, running her fingers down my spine, light as light could be; any harder and I’d be throwing up again. “And you’re not cute. You’re beautiful.”

  The blindness of mothers!

  “Maybe I used to be.”

  She put her face near mine and whispered: “People like us are supposed to cry. What would we do if we couldn’t cry?”

  “Okay, but why do we have to be the ones?”

  I had her there. She kissed me in lots of places and left the room on some excuse or other before she started to cry, thereby disproving her point that crying was nothing to be ashamed of.

  Little by little I got better until one day I was sitting up in bed, maybe not a shiny new penny, but not a grimy nickel either, when with a lurch of the stomach I remembered Antonio. Once my mother had delivered her lunch tray and gone back downstairs, I booted up my laptop and scrolled down all the boring ads and school announcements. Outside it was drizzling, but in here a giant bar of sunlight fell across my screen. Antonio Jorge Romero. There he was, waiting patiently in my in-box. Three weeks! Maybe he thought I had lost interest. Maybe he thought I was ghosting him. With a swift glance toward the mirror and another toward the door, my heart bumping like that of some elated creature who wanted to believe again in the universe and what it could deliver, I clicked on my father’s name.

  Dear Maddy,

  Naturally I was very, very surprised to get your email. It’s hard to know what to say and how to say it. It’s true your mother and I were together in Washington in 1994. I left America the summer I graduated. You probably know that Eve and I have not been in contact since that time. Your mother is a wonderful person. I have thought about her a lot over the years. That is all I can say for now. Thank you for writing.

  Antonio

  OMG. Wow. When I saw you in my inbox I could not believe my eyes! I took a while to answer because I’ve been away. Most girls my age are on Facebook all the time, but I still use email like an old person (not that you’re old). I think it’s more personal and I don’t always want everyone to know my business. I hope it’s okay to email you again.

  I’m not sure what I should call you. I am attaching a picture of me. It’s one of my favorites. My friend Vicky took it last summer in the park. That’s me on the left and Fiona on the right. You can see how much taller I am. I am a lot taller than my mother. I am in tenth grade. I play the piano (or I used to) and I love classical music. Robin, my mother’s boyfriend, knows everything about classical music. We go to concerts, mostly chamber music. This is something else that most kids my age are not into, but Fiona says I am not like most kids and I guess that’s a good thing, right? Being an individual etc. It feels so strange to be writing to you. I wonder whether I have made you up! My grandfather helped me find you. He’s the only one in the family who knows. He said you might not want to hear from me and that I had to be prepared for anything. I think maybe I have lucked out . . . Please write back. If you want to.

  Maddy

  Maddy,

  I am with you on the Facebook question. My children are too young for Facebook, but my wife makes fun of me because I do not even have an account. Thank you for the picture. It is so nice to see. This is very strange for me. Very strange! You can see my photograph on the UCL website. I am a neuroscientist. By the way, I think it’s better if your mother knows we are in contact. Do you agree? If you want, send me her email and I will contact her myself. I’m glad she is with someone. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

  Antonio (you can call me Antonio)

  9

  I printed out our exchange so that something of Antonio would occupy the same space as me. I put the printouts in a folder and slid the folder down the wall by my bed. Under my bed is one place in the house where no one ever goes. There are things under there with half an inch of dust on them. A fairy wand that used to light up, a Lalaloopsy doll, a collage I made in third grade, a plastic diary you unlock by punching in a code, a book called Sexwise, and probably lots of other things I can’t see. I know because when something drops between the bed and the wall, I have to shine a flashlight down and fish it out with barbecue tongs. The edges of the lost things are gray and furry like the objects that could be seen through the portholes when they found the Titanic. I was about to do a huge clearing out of my bedroom when I got sick. Now I’d rather just leave things where they are, along with the tongs and the folder of emails, where I’ll put the new ones when they come in. If they keep coming in.

  Luckily my counts weren’t high enough for the next treatment, so I had a few extra weeks of feeling good. Next time I went to visit Jack, I met his father. Coincidence! Two fathers in the same week. Maybe finding a father is such a big event it’s like a magnet that drags other fathers into it.

  Jack and I were on his laptop browsing when I heard the front door open and footsteps on the stairs. It made me jump, although we were doing nothing worth being jumpy about. Mr. Bell is stockier than Jack, but with the same broad face and narrowed eyes that give you the feeling he’s thinking deep thoughts, or at least amusing ones. He shook my hand as if he had bald girls in his kitchen every day of the week and said: “I guess you’ve been having a hard time.”

  “Dad!”

  “Sorry. Did I say something wrong?” He searched my face for signs of offense. “I’m always embarrassing my son.” He slapped Jack on the back. “It’s in the job description.”

  Jack shrugged his hand off. “Be like your hairline, Dad. Withdraw.”

  His father winked at me. I hoped he would see through my weak smile and ask me more specific questions about the hard time I was having. But he didn’t, so I hugged myself as if I were cold and picked threads off my sweater.

  Mr. Bell draped his suit jacket on a chair and loosened his tie. His case had been postponed, he said, which was why he was home early. He asked me some polite questions about my mother, where we lived, and so forth, and then the three of us talked about the campaign. He stood with his feet apart like a sheriff in a Western, rotating an invisible ball in his hands to make his points. He had a lot of points to make. Jack elaborated on whatever his father said, and I could see that underneath, he was full of admiration. Even if they didn’t give it a second thought, the time they’d spent together was obvious. Correction. The time his father had spent with him. Because let’s face it, children are stuck in one place, taking whatever comes. It was Jack’s father who had bothered to be there all along, so that now he could clap his son on the back in that fake hearty way and Jack could shrug off his hand. That was a true father.

  Having changed, Mr. Bell went out to Office Depot for paper and print cartridges—so he informed his son, who crossed his eyes to let me know what he thought about that level of detail.

  “Your father’s so nice.” For some reason Jack and I always spent our time in the kitchen. When we weren’t looking at something together at the breakfast bar, Jack liked to stand with his back against the counter, as he was doing now.

  “My father’s a pain.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Sheepish smile. “Sometimes.”

  “What happened between your parents? If you want to talk about it.”

  “They split up. I was ten. My sister was already in college.”

  “Why did they split up?”

  “ ‘Irretrievable breakdown.’ I used to put my headphones on at ni
ght when they were arguing. Apparently my father wasn’t exciting enough for her. My mother’s with someone more exciting now.” He caught sight of my face. “Don’t worry. I’m used to it. Back then all I wanted was for them to get back together. I tried everything I could think of.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I broke my leg jumping off the porch roof.”

  “Don’t tell me you did that on purpose!”

  He grinned. “Not really. But after that we were together every weekend for a while. Then the summer after seventh grade I ran away from camp with Freddy Cook. We were in the woods all night before they found us. We said we were trying out our survival skills, but my parents didn’t buy it. That’s when we went into family therapy.”

  I nodded, smug because we had never had to go to family therapy. Then I remembered that to go to family therapy you have to have a family.

  “This guy George.” He tucked his chin into his neck and harrumphed: “ ‘So how do you feel about that, Jack? Your mother doesn’t love your father anymore, and you don’t ask your friends over because you live in two places and neither of them feels like home. Any thoughts you’d like to share with us about that?’ ” Jack laughed. “I liked George, actually. I forget, has your mother always been on her own?”

  “She’s not on her own. She’s with Robin. He’s like a stepfather to me. I love Robin!” I was being a little too emphatic, but boys aren’t tuned in to that kind of thing. After a minute I said: “I never knew my real father, if that’s what you mean.”