“Did I do it wrong?” I ask when I return from the garage with an arm full of paint rollers and brushes. Hannah has peeled all the trim tape from the wall.
“This stuff is pointless.” She yanks the last strip from the baseboard. “It never works and you don’t need it.” She tosses it into the pile ofdiscarded tape in the middle of the room before throwing me a self-satisfied smile.
I hold out an angled brush. “Looks like you’re on trim then, Picasso.”
“Duh.” She swipes it from my hand. “Feminism and paint rollers can’t coexist peacefully. Those things make my arms tired.”
“Fair enough.”
I’m howling so hardI can’t see. The roller lies abandoned on the drop cloth while I keel over at the waist, hand clutching my side.
Hannah’s in hysterics, body shaking. “Oh my god, stop! I can’t paint a straight line when I’m laughing.”
Instinctively, I grab the leg of the ladder she’s on to stabilize it. “There’s no way that story’s true,” I say.
“Yes, way.‘G.E.M. is a P.O.S.’is forever immortalized on the donor wall of the chimpanzee exhibit at the Denver Zoo.”
“And you had no idea?”
“No clue,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I sold the engagement ring on eBay, gave the money to Mom because I didn’t want anything to do with it, and shetoldme she was gonna donate it to a good cause.” Hannah blinks, meets my eyes at the bottom of the ladder. “I’m thinking cancer research, malnourished orphans, clean water wells in third world countries, but no. Mom decides: chimps.”
I’m dying again.
“You know those fundraisers where you donate a certain amount and get, like, an engraved brick on a wall?” I nod. “Just inside the main entrance, to the right, third row from the top, eighth brick from the left:G.E.M. is a P.O.S.And then underneath”—she sets her fingers like she’s framing billboard—“Anonymous Donor.”
My lungs cannot get air, I’m wheezing so hard. Tears fall down my cheeks.
“That woman’s a freaking menace to society,” she huffs, dragging her paintbrush against the can’s edge.
“I don’t know. She sounds pretty awesome. And to think, you came out so level-headed.”
Hannah snorts, our raucous laughter fading. “She needs someone to bail her out of jail. Guess it’s gotta be me.”
“Wait, have you had to do that?”
“No, but there’s still time.”
Her gaze freezes on the paint can in her hand. A long swallow runs down her throat as she registers her own words.
“Another death joke she’d be proud of?” My voice is gentle. I poke her calf to try and coax a smile.
Hannah’s lips only twitch, a flash of sorrow and memories, there one second and gone the next.
Palm flattened against her lower leg, I stroke my thumb across her skin. “How much time does she have?”
“Christmas, if she’s lucky.” I barely hear it through the tightness in her chest as she turns away. “Maybe not even that long.”
Five months? I find it hard to reconcile with the woman I met two nights ago. “That’s…wow…the other night she seemed so…”
“Healthy?” Hannah finishes for me. “She has her good days, but…” A pause as she starts to paint again. “She’s lost a lot of weight and her skin is…” She rattles her head and sets the brush aside before climbing down. Once both feet are on the ground, she turns to face me. “Her skin used to be golden and now it’s…I don’t know…lifeless? Some days she barely eats anything.”
She shrugs one shoulder like she’s faced this a thousand times before. Like it’s nothing new. The truth of it is a knife straight to the heart. Lydia’s been diagnosed four times. Four times the doctor sat across from her and said,“cancer.”Chemo, hospital stays, infections, remissions, time and again, all for it to come right back. No sane person would blame Lydia for refusing to go through that again, but it doesn’t make the pain any easier to bear for the daughter she’ll leave behind.
Here I am feeling sorry for myself andmymom while Hannah’s watching hers wither away. In the end, I’ll get to keep mine; Hannah won’t.
I respond with the only words that come. “I’m sorry.” They’re not enough, not even close.
Her cheeks lift a bit. “With my luck she’ll pop out from behind the stage at her own memorial service in a hot-pink gown and yell,‘Psych!’”