Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [16]
You can’t just do that when you get ill, girls. (Maternal lesson alert!) You have to do it all the time. Do it always. Life is short. Even if you don’t get cancer. Even if you die an old lady in your bed. It’s still a blink-and-you-miss-it, ever-increasing-speed, white-knuckle ride.
I’ve been pretty good at that. Not always. I’m not perfect. But not bad. I’ve lived a life. Even had a Shirley Valentine moment, but if you think reading on will reveal the secrets of that to you, you’re much mistaken—you don’t need to know everything…! (That’s called a teaser.) If this goes the way I want it to, I will have died an old lady in my bed. I’m just covering myself. In case.
But if you think I’m going to start drinking wheatgrass, you’re very much mistaken. Make mine a G&T, ice, and a slice….
October
“Happy Birthday, Hannah!” They were celebrating in a restaurant. Everyone was here, except Stephen, who was working. They’d always done family birthdays at home, but this year the local bistro seemed safer. This was the first birthday. In her head, Hannah called it BD and AD. Before death and after. This was her first birthday AD. So far so okay. She’d woken up, been to school, come home, and changed to come here, and she still hadn’t cried today.
“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know the look. And I’m not seeing it.”
Hannah pressed her lips into a Marilynesque pout, blew a kiss at Lisa, and grabbed her last unopened present. She knew it was Amanda’s not so much by process of elimination, but because it wasn’t actually wrapped, just shoved in a bag. An ethnic shop type of bag that smelled of sandalwood and still contained a receipt. No card. Occasionally, while she was traveling, Amanda would send a card in lieu of a present—always in a foreign language, always containing some joke no one understood, since it was in Croatian, or Malaysian. In attendance this year, she saw no need for a card to say in writing what she could very well say in person. Mum would have been terribly disapproving. Jennifer’s gift had been a big bottle of Stella McCartney, wrapped in thick lilac paper that matched the perfume bottle and tied with a silver chiffon ribbon. Lisa had given her a Whistles voucher, with a card attached saying the condition was that she be present when it was spent. Mark had upgraded her far too childish Shuffle to an iPod that played films and music videos. He’d had the back engraved with her name, and even downloaded some concerts onto it. The presents made her feel quite grown-up.
“I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE NOW.” THEY’D FINISHED dinner, and the waiters had brought a chocolate mousse cake with candles in it from the kitchen, and all the diners, much to Hannah’s excruciating embarrassment, had sung “Happy Birthday” to her. They were drinking coffee. “I hope Hannah doesn’t mind me doing this here,” Jennifer was continuing, “but we aren’t all together all that often, and I wanted us to be all together for this.”
She’s pregnant, Mark thought.
She’s left Stephen, Lisa thought.
Jennifer pulled out a thick sheaf of papers from a tote bag she’d kept beside her at the table. The pages were all neatly bound with plastic edges. Amanda thought, not for the first time, what a good but scary teacher her sister would have made.
She’s not pregnant.
She hasn’t left Stephen. Mark and Lisa independently wondered whether their disappointment could be heard.
“Mum left us…left me something, when she died. She left me this.” She held up a colorful folder. “It’s a journal, really. Things she wrote. Things she wanted her daughters to know. When she was ill, and when she knew…when she knew she was dying. She left it for me first because”—she paused; she didn’t want to say why—“because my life is such a mess…. But she obviously wanted the rest of you to read it, too. I can’t give it to everyone all at once, so I’ve made some copies….”
She