Today, five years ago,
July 13 Maxx was "officially" diagnosed with Hepatosplenic
T-Cell Lymphoma. The "official" beginning of the end.
When I was a girl at home
with my mother, who had she not died from breast cancer would have
drunk herself to death on Smirnoff 100 proof vodka (red label, not
blue), we participated in a particularly memorable danse macabre. The
"Begging Dance." The first move was hers. Wherever she
happened to be sitting, the corner of the couch, or in bed, she would
turn her head in my direction, face contorted in an agony of anxiety,
eyebrows pinched into a little hill of despair, mouth pulled down at
the corners, eyes swimming in tears and the glassy confusion of
alcohol, and move out onto the dance floor.
"Lisa, do you think
he will come home this time?"
She was referring to my
delinquent, whoring father who was at sea as a third mate, gone
usually at this point about 4 weeks.
Depending upon my mood,
which was usually at this point, about 4 weeks, a sober match for her
own, I would say irritably, "Of course, mom. Do we have to do
this again?"
And this was where the
dance took off. Out onto the gravel floor in our bare feet we would
begin the Begging Stomp.
"But Lis, are you
sure? Do you really think so? How can you be sure? Why do you think
he'll come home this time?"
I loved her. I hated her.
She repulsed me. But I took her hand and we danced on that stoney
ground until our feet bled anew.
And here's the thing about
that dance. We always knew, she and I, how it would end. In her case,
with another drink and a handful of tranquilizers. I could no more
answer her frenzied questions about my father's return than I could
refuse to be her partner.
Now, I am two years shy of
the age she was when she died; about 10 years beyond the age she was
when she invested so much of her survival in the outcome of a dance
whose end never varied. And, finally I get it.
"Please, let this
never have happened. Please, please, please. Let this never have
happened. Please bring him back. Please, let him be here. Please.
Please, I want him so much. Please."
Here I am 45 years later,
flinging myself into the same choreography of despair, eyes brimming,
muscles knotted, bent legged, back bent into a C of sorrow. Empty
arms.
"Please bring him
back. Please."
My father always came
home. Maxx cannot.
