to remodel the kitchen, and she presses me for advice. “Do you like harvest yellow or that green color?”
“I don’t know.” I am impatient with her, anxious to deal with the crisis at hand. She pretends that this is like any other summer, that once, a year ago, she was sick and gaunt but now she is well again. It is early July and the serious heat is here, moist and languid, settling upon the town like sleep. In the evenings we drive into the cooler countryside in search of air-conditioned rural restaurants. My mother eats hearty meals—mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken, buttered corn. I think about her liver struggling to sort out the proteins, the fats, the poisons. Something must be done. She lingers over the menu, wondering whether to order liver andbacon, liver and onions, or chicken livers in wine and sour cream. Watching her, I wonder whether this is an unwitting irony or part of a secret plan to attack the diseased cells with surrogates. Suddenly I can imagine them, the bad cells, as cartoon cousins to my evil kidney, planning their defense with small knives and guns and miniature cannons.
Under her bed I find a stack of new books, optimistic in their clean dust jackets.
Mind Over Matter. Long Life and Nutrition
. In the mornings, when she thinks I am reading the newspaper on the porch, she goes into the kitchen and blends a viscous concoction of raw eggs, goat’s milk, brewer’s yeast, honey, kelp, bananas, wheat germ, cooked rice—everything she has ever heard was good for one’s health. I am a spy in the house. In her desk I find a brochure describing a health spa in Mexico where inoperable patients are given a vegetable diet and coffee enemas. In her purse I find a newspaper clipping about a Catholic shrine in Indiana, where blind people are able to see again and arthritics stand up straight. Her disease is becoming a secret that each of us keeps from the other. At night, after she has gone to bed, I read about the side effects of chemotherapy. I discover that one of the chemicals used in what is called “chemotherapy” is similar to the fuels used in jet airplanes.
“Rachel has a secret,” my grandmother said to my father at the dinner table that Sunday as they sat beforetheir hot dogs and wondered why the grocery budget, so carefully calculated by my father, was so badly mismanaged by my mother. It was true. My mother did have a secret. Since her marriage, she had never had a job, and now she had decided to go to work. She had decided to become an American Fragrance Lady, selling cosmetics and perfumes door to door. For weeks she had been taking a few dollars from the various household budgets in order to raise the capital for the initial investment. She invited me along the day she went to collect the merchandise from the regional representative. I was fourteen years old and already beginning to talk in the superior way my grandmother and father had, but still she took me into her confidence. On my lap I held the huge envelope of fugitive dollar bills.
“Maybe I’ll let you take a few of the products around to some of the high-school girls,” she said, already imagining the empire we would build, a magical place where money flew out of every house and followed us through the streets.
“She always had secrets when she was a kid,” my grandmother continued. “She used to steal money from my purse.”
“That was me,” I said. “I stole quarters.” It was a joke, a diversionary tactic. My mother smiled faintly.
“You stole from your grandmother?” my father said.
“So did Rachel,” my grandmother said. “This is a wonderful family.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said my mother. She left the room and returned carrying the American Fragrance display case, which she placed on the table and snapped open to reveal the rows of glittering bottles. They were made of heavy glass in red, blue, and opaque white, and were cast in the shapes of the Liberty Bell, Independence
“I don’t know.” I am impatient with her, anxious to deal with the crisis at hand. She pretends that this is like any other summer, that once, a year ago, she was sick and gaunt but now she is well again. It is early July and the serious heat is here, moist and languid, settling upon the town like sleep. In the evenings we drive into the cooler countryside in search of air-conditioned rural restaurants. My mother eats hearty meals—mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken, buttered corn. I think about her liver struggling to sort out the proteins, the fats, the poisons. Something must be done. She lingers over the menu, wondering whether to order liver andbacon, liver and onions, or chicken livers in wine and sour cream. Watching her, I wonder whether this is an unwitting irony or part of a secret plan to attack the diseased cells with surrogates. Suddenly I can imagine them, the bad cells, as cartoon cousins to my evil kidney, planning their defense with small knives and guns and miniature cannons.
Under her bed I find a stack of new books, optimistic in their clean dust jackets.
Mind Over Matter. Long Life and Nutrition
. In the mornings, when she thinks I am reading the newspaper on the porch, she goes into the kitchen and blends a viscous concoction of raw eggs, goat’s milk, brewer’s yeast, honey, kelp, bananas, wheat germ, cooked rice—everything she has ever heard was good for one’s health. I am a spy in the house. In her desk I find a brochure describing a health spa in Mexico where inoperable patients are given a vegetable diet and coffee enemas. In her purse I find a newspaper clipping about a Catholic shrine in Indiana, where blind people are able to see again and arthritics stand up straight. Her disease is becoming a secret that each of us keeps from the other. At night, after she has gone to bed, I read about the side effects of chemotherapy. I discover that one of the chemicals used in what is called “chemotherapy” is similar to the fuels used in jet airplanes.
“Rachel has a secret,” my grandmother said to my father at the dinner table that Sunday as they sat beforetheir hot dogs and wondered why the grocery budget, so carefully calculated by my father, was so badly mismanaged by my mother. It was true. My mother did have a secret. Since her marriage, she had never had a job, and now she had decided to go to work. She had decided to become an American Fragrance Lady, selling cosmetics and perfumes door to door. For weeks she had been taking a few dollars from the various household budgets in order to raise the capital for the initial investment. She invited me along the day she went to collect the merchandise from the regional representative. I was fourteen years old and already beginning to talk in the superior way my grandmother and father had, but still she took me into her confidence. On my lap I held the huge envelope of fugitive dollar bills.
“Maybe I’ll let you take a few of the products around to some of the high-school girls,” she said, already imagining the empire we would build, a magical place where money flew out of every house and followed us through the streets.
“She always had secrets when she was a kid,” my grandmother continued. “She used to steal money from my purse.”
“That was me,” I said. “I stole quarters.” It was a joke, a diversionary tactic. My mother smiled faintly.
“You stole from your grandmother?” my father said.
“So did Rachel,” my grandmother said. “This is a wonderful family.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said my mother. She left the room and returned carrying the American Fragrance display case, which she placed on the table and snapped open to reveal the rows of glittering bottles. They were made of heavy glass in red, blue, and opaque white, and were cast in the shapes of the Liberty Bell, Independence
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