Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
.
Slade—
So the funniest thing happened. I was in Kennebunkport last weekend with my mother and my aunt, and I saw this guy sitting at this sidewalk cafe who looked exactly like you. I pointed him out to my mom, who of course had to point him out to my aunt. Only with all the pointing and whispering going on, the guy noticed. Mom apologized and explained that him he looked like someone we knew. Then, of course, my aunt started chatting him up about random things because she’s never not talking. In the end, he added me on Instagram, and by the time I got home, he had slid into my DMs and asked me on a date. Anyway, his handle is @AlexStone91857 if you want to check out your doppelganger.
Campbell (age 20)
Campbell—
What was your intention with that story? Were you trying to make me jealous?
Also, he looks nothing like me. Not even close. I’m actually kind of insulted that you think that’s what I look like.
Slade (age 21)
Slade—
I don’t have the time or energy to worry about making you jealous.
The fact that you’re even mentioning the feeling of jealousy suggests you might have felt a twinge of it? I think Freud would agree.
Campbell (age 20)
Campbell—
Freud also believed that young boys develop sexual feelings towards their mothers and that little girls experience “penis envy”. Get out of here with that psychoanalytical bullshit.
Slade (age 21)
18
Slade
“Is there anything I can get you before I leave?” I’m seated next to my parents’ bed after a long day of getting Mom settled at home. She’s spent the past week in the hospital, but her doctors finally discharged her after having exhausted every treatment option under the sun. The last thing they said was that all we could do was keep her comfortable.
“I’m fine, sweetheart.” The wince on her face contradicts her words. “Though maybe if you stop by tomorrow, you could bring some daffodils? I could use a little sunshine.”
“Of course.” It’s May so I should be able to find some somewhere. If not, I’ll have them flown in. I’ll fill her entire room with them if it means putting a smile on her face and a little joy in her day.
“Aren’t you leaving for Maine soon?” Her voice is cracked and her eyes are closed. The medication she’s on makes her groggy. But despite how exhausted her body gets, her mind always tries to fight it, to have one more conversation, one more deep breath, one more foot in amongst the living.
I’d do the same.
“I cancelled it,” I say.
“Hopefully not for my sake.”
“I’m not leaving when you’re …” I can’t bring myself to finish my sentence. “Campbell’s actually here now. At my house.”
When Campbell visited last month, I wasn’t the easiest person to be around. I was short and curt and I spent as little time with her as possible, blaming work when I was mostly keeping watch over my mother at my parents’ house. I hated lying, but I didn’t have a choice.
Every night when I’d come home, I’d walk through the doors and tell myself I was going to be kinder to her this time, but it never happened.
I took my anger out on her … and I couldn’t apologize or explain, which only made it worse. She kept asking if I wanted to “vent” about work. One day she and Fiona baked cookies, thinking it would cheer me up. Another night, I came home and she’d set up a bunch of board games in the dining room. I bypassed the scene, telling her I wasn’t in the mood to play.
After a few days, she gave up trying at all.
I didn’t blame her.
“You haven’t gone up there for a while. I feel awful if I’m keeping you from them,” Mom says, scratching her nose with a crumpled Kleenex.
I’m about to say I have the rest of my life to travel to Maine, but I keep it to myself. No sense in reminding her of the one thing she doesn’t have: time.
“Campbell really wanted to see you last time she was here,” I say. “She keeps asking about you.”
“I wish I could spend time with her. We had the best time together that day.” She turns towards my voice, her eyes forming thin slits as she tries to look at me. “You haven’t told her anything, have you?”
“Of course not.” I wish I could, but my mother won’t have it. She’s afraid Campbell will make a fuss over it or mention it to her parents. Once Cedric and Blythe catch wind, it’ll be game over. The entire world (at least their entire social circle, which is essentially their entire world) will know my mother is dying by the end of the next business day, and that’s the antithesis of what she wants.
We’ve known this moment was coming for a while now and she’s never wavered in her wishes to go out on her own terms: privately and surrounded by me, my father, and Oliver.