Page 84 of The Last to Let Go
“Yeah, but are you—”
“Dying?” she finishes. “We’realldying. Most of us just don’t know what we’re dying from.” She pauses, then smiles. “I have emphysema. Some days are worse than others. I have oxygen in there”—she hitches her head in the direction of the sliding door—“if I really need it. Sometimes I do.”
“Do you ever think you should quit smoking?” I ask, gesturing to the cigarette case and the lighter in her hand.
Smirking, she shakes her head, pulls one of those long, slender cigarettes out, and lights it. The tendrils of smoke snake around her head like fingers. “It’s my one remaining vice. My father always said”—she lowers her voice to a deeper pitch—“?‘You’re allowed one vice in life, Caroline, so choose wisely.’?” She wags her finger, grinning as she mimics her father, this man I’ll never know.
She looks off for moment before turning back to me. “He told me that when I married your grandfather. At the time I didn’t know people could be vices. But they can. I told your mother the same thing right before she married your father. That was the last time she ever spoke to me. Well, until now.” She sighs sadly. “Of course, I wasn’t the most credible person back then. So I can see why she didn’t listen.”
“But you changed,” I remind her.
“That’s right,” she begins. “I’ve been clean and sober for over twenty years. I quit all that stuff when your mother got pregnant with your brother. Not that she was speaking to me then. But children change things. I knew that firsthand. And I wanted to be able to be there if she needed help. So I kicked her father to the curb for the last time, and then I kicked all the other stuff that was bad for me. Except these.” She shakes the cigarette in her hand above her head.
“That must’ve been hard,” I tell her.
She nods. “It was, but not as hard as it would have been to just keep going. You know, in that way I can understand how your mother could’ve done what she did—but mind you, that doesn’t mean I think it was right. It was obviously wrong, there’s no question about that. It can be hard to figure out the right way to get free sometimes.”
I let a wave of silence wash over us, her words sinking in, and I start to think maybe I understand a little bit too, because after all, haven’t I been doing the same thing—trying to figure out the right way to get free?
“Do you talk to Mom now?” I finally ask.
“Yes, I’ve gone to visit her a few times. I was surprised I was on her visitor list. But I was.”
“Do you think I am? After everything?”
“I know that you are.” She pauses to take a long, deep drag of her cigarette. “Would you like to go with me next time?”
“I think I would, actually.”
“Okay,” she says, swatting a fruit fly away from our glasses.
“I came here to—well, I came here for a lot of reasons, but mainly I came to ask a favor.” I take a sip of my iced tea, trying to clear my throat so that the words come out easier. It’s sweet and sour, sugary and lemony, all at the same time. “It’s hard for me to ask for help, I guess.”
“You get that from me,” she says with a patient smile. “You can ask. Whatever it is, you can ask me.”
“Well, things have gotten kind of...bad. At school, they need to meet with my guardian because I have all these absences. But Aaron left. And honestly, I don’t even blame him anymore. And I think I’m probably about to get evicted from the apartment. Callie went to go stay with Jackie. And I know she’d let me stay too. But I don’t belong there. And I’m so sick of being where I don’t belong.” I pause, inhaling deeply for the important part. “And I thought maybe, I don’t know, maybe I might belong here. With you.”
She’s nodding before I’ve even finished my sentence, and I think I see her eyes watering up, just barely. “Brooke, I think you might belong here too. So if you’re asking if you can live here with me, I’m saying yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Your boyfriend won’t mind?”
“Hell no, this ismyhouse,” she shouts, with a laugh. “And you know what else?”
“What?”
She crushes her cigarette in the tin ashtray on the table. “I think I might actually try to kick these damn things after all.”
COMING CLEAN
“YOU’RE AVOIDING ME.”I swing around, startled by the voice as I exit our building. Jackie. She stands there waiting for me like she’s been camped out on the steps all morning.
“I’m not avoiding you,” I lie.
She raises her eyebrows and continues standing in my way, holding two to-go cups from the shop. She hands me one. It burns my fingers even through the corrugated sleeve. She sits down on the top step. I know I don’t have a choice but to sit next to her. “So, where are you off to?” she asks, carefully removing the plastic lid from her coffee.
