Tell Me Something Real (17 page)

He takes my hand, long enough for me to feel he's shaking. I'm about to ask what's wrong, when he releases me.

“Dad?”

He points to a familiar face, a guy selling small portraits
of dolphins and starfish. I used to beg for one. A couple haggles prices with him.

“I think it's time,” he says.

His smile looks forced, his eyes tired, his jaw tense.

“You always said they were overpriced and cheesy.”

He gives me a hard stare and my palms fill with sweat, something that only happens when I'm unprepared for a solo. I wipe them on my skirt.

“I see it differently now. Look at the seahorse painting. That's beautiful.”

He gestures to a small canvas. I remember reading that the seahorse is the symbol of fatherhood in Greek mythology. I wonder if he knows.

The painting isn't bigger than eight square inches. The artist painted the background a deep blue and the small sea creature with its tendril tail a tangerine orange.

“I know it doesn't match your room,” he says, “but I'd like to get it for you.”

“Adrienne's the one who cares about how stuff matches. Not me. I love it.”

Dad withdraws his wallet from his briefcase while the artist wraps one of the larger canvases for the haggling couple. I hope they paid a fair price. I always expected the artist, a middle-aged guy with long dreads, to be charming and chatty. Up close, I see that he's shy, maybe more introverted than me. I want to know why he parks himself on the boardwalk, displaying his work to tourists and jaded locals.
But he wraps my painting with such care, like it's glass, without a word. I don't want to intrude. His silence feels intentional, not in a rude way, but a meditation.

“Thank you,” I say to Dad as I gently slip the painting into my backpack.

“I'm glad you like it,” he says, but he doesn't look my way.

The mood changes and we walk in silence, but not the contemplative kind I sensed from the artist. Dad seems far away. I pull his arm around me, hoping the weight will make me feel less alone.

He pulls me closer and wraps both arms around me, kissing my forehead. In this position, I could be four, seven, eleven years old. Young enough to believe my father will always be there to protect me. “Hungry?” he asks.

I stand still for a minute, allowing my body to rest next to his. When I adjust my backpack, he steps away and I'm on my own again.

He points to a new seafood restaurant decorated with a sign flapping in the wind:
GRAND OPENING
. A restaurant without memories.

He turns to me. “Want to try it?”

I nod. We cross the street and scan the menu. Pub food. Fish and chips, battered shrimp, casual and easy.

I want to keep walking, to have a few more minutes with Dad without a hovering waitress, but my stomach growls and Dad is halfway through the door.

“Coming?” he asks.

Something about his voice, about the way he holds his mouth, makes me swallow hard. I follow him inside.

The hostess escorts us to a quiet corner booth. I look out the window, at the tide coming in, the waves covering greater lengths of the shore. I can't help but think of Mom, of the rickety pier and clams, of something only she and I enjoyed.

When the waiter comes, Dad orders a salad and fish and chips, his favorite. I order the same because Dad makes it sound so good. Not the wine though. He smiles when I ask for my first latte, something Caleb mentioned loving, a Seattle treat.

After three packets of sugar and a few sips, I feel the heat in my cheeks and neck. I'm as warm as if we were sitting in front of a fire.

“Vanessa,” Dad says.

When I meet his eyes, he looks different, beaten and despondent in a way I never imagined. Like the light went out of his eyes. Now they seem as flat and worn as old pennies.

“I need to explain something to you. It's going to be very difficult to understand. I barely do. Your sisters don't know yet.”

I'm scared and open my mouth, unable to say anything. “What?” I finally ask.

“I need to talk to you about what's really wrong with your mother. Where she is.”

It doesn't matter that I spent the last couple of days
crisscrossing the city, searching for answers. Now that I'm about to learn the truth, all I want to do is cover my ears and bolt. I reach for my backpack and pull out the book.

“Look at the second-to-last page,” I say.

After reading it, he places the book back in my hand. “This has been hard on Caleb.”

“Is that why Barb isn't letting him call me?”

“We both agreed that we need some time to sort out our situations. They've been through the wringer too. I couldn't have done this without Barb.”

I sip my latte, hoping to return some warmth to my skin. “Barb helped you with what?”

I wait, watching Dad stare at his wine glass, looking at everything at the table but me. Finally, he says, “Your mother isn't dying. She never was.”

I gasp so loud that he looks startled. My fingernails dig in to my arm, hard enough to leave a mark. I need to redirect the pain. Words ricochet around my head, but I'm not able to pull together a phrase. Finally, I ask, “What do you mean?”

“Your mother never had leukemia. She was never sick. Not even in college—that small tumor. It was nothing. Probably just a piece of bone or a cyst.”

I don't know how long we stare at each other, but the waiter delivers our salads. I gaze at the lettuce; the baby leaves of fancy greens mixed with figs and blue cheese dressing.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, shaking, looking at the food and wanting to puke all over the table.

He's quiet, and I glance around the restaurant, wondering if I just screamed at him. I don't think I did, because the handful of other customers keep chatting and eating their food like nothing happened.

He doesn't say anything, so I lean closer and ask, “What are you saying? If she's not sick, then where is she?”

“I don't know how to explain this, so just stay with me, okay?” His eyes are red and wet. Drops of sweat line his forehead. They cover his upper lip and collect in that soft spot between his neck and collarbone.

“I don't understand what you're trying to say.” I struggle to get out each word.

“I know,” he says. “Do you remember when I said she'd never come home again?”

“How could I forget that?” After months of illness, it's hard to believe that there's an end. Terminal means final, but leukemia is like death row: You get the sentence but know you'll be sitting in prison for months, maybe a year, maybe longer. “She's been so sick,” I say. “She lost so much weight. She couldn't fake that.”

Dad doesn't say anything. He seems to choke every time he opens his mouth.

I blink a few times so I won't cry. “You're telling me that isn't real?”

He struggles with his words. “Your mother is ill, but mentally ill,” he says. “There's a psychiatric disorder called Munchausen syndrome.”

“That sounds like something from the Nazis.”

“I think it's a German name. People who suffer from Munchausen's deliberately act like they have a terminal disease. They lie and make everyone believe they're sick. They're desperate for the attention. A lot of people go to great lengths to convince everyone they're sick. Some even have surgery. Your mom was poisoning herself with Laetrile.”

I try to listen, but I feel just as I did that last day when Caleb left, when Dad came home from the clinic alone, like everything was pulling away from me, like I was caught in a riptide. “So you're saying she's just some sort of hypochondriac?”

“Not quite,” he says.

“But Mom had doctors. I went to the clinic with her. I saw all of those sick people and Mom looked just like them. She couldn't get out of bed for days, Dad. She was sick. She was really, really sick. I was there. We all were there. There's no way she made that up.”

Now I know I'm yelling because the restaurant is still and people are staring. I look at my untouched salad. I want the food to go away. I want to be anywhere but here. My heart beats so fast, I wonder if
I
am the one who is actually dying now. Maybe I'm pretending that my heart is racing. Maybe I'm having chest pains and believe I'm having heart failure, but I'm really not. What was true? What wasn't true? The world collapses, or maybe just pretends to collapse.

“It helped that your mom's a nurse; she was especially convincing.”

“What about the blood tests? Leukemia is a blood disease. They test your blood and know you have it. Mom had blood tests.”

Dad pulls a thin folder from his satchel, sliding the top sheet across the table. “Here, read this. It will help you understand. It helped me.”

The paper is filled with Dad's handwriting, notes written in tidy capital letters, not written in a rush.

MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME:

INTENTIONALLY FEIGNS PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS IN ORDER TO ASSUME THE PATIENT ROLE. WILL GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO MANUFACTURE SYMPTOMS AND ILLNESS, INCLUDING SURGERY.

MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME BY PROXY:

A PARENT INTENTIONALLY MANUFACTURES AN ILLNESS OR PERCEIVED ILLNESS IN A CHILD. PARENT IS MOTIVATED TO ASSUME THE PATIENT ROLE BY PROXY.

My eyes scan the words, meaningless in the moment, they blur together. It might as well read
lies, lies, lies, lies, lies
. It's like my mind split in half, sliced like an apple, and my mother's lies are the seeds.

He hands me another sheet. “Now read this.”

Treatment Plan: August 29, 1976

Administer 1,200 mg IV Laetrile weekly

Administer 300 mg tablets Valium twice daily w/ food

Limited activity recommended

Suspend bed rest

Patient's improvement indicative of remission

When I finish reading the sheet, I look up. I can't breathe. “August twenty-ninth is next week,” I say, feeling sick to my stomach. “It says remission.”

“I know. Read the name of the doctor,” he says.

I feel like someone pushed me out of an open window. Jonathan Murray, M.D., signed the form. My grandfather.

“He died when your mom was a senior in high school. She must have his business stationery and prescription pad.” Dad flips through the folder and pulls out various prescriptions for the medications that still cover our kitchen counter.

“Look at this one.” He hands me a nearly identical sheet of paper.

Treatment Plan: August 8, 1976

Administer 1,800 mg IV Laetrile daily

Administer 500 mg tablets Valium twice daily w/ food

Mandatory bed rest

Patient's decline indicative of late-stage leukemia

I look up. “So she was dying two weeks ago and is in remission next week?”

“Do you understand what this means?” Dad asks. “She made it all up. She told the doctors at the clinic that
Dr. Murray
was her primary oncologist and he was unable to administer Laetrile because of the FDA ban. She told them that he managed everything—including her blood work. She's the only one of us who speaks Spanish. She controlled all of the information. She had paperwork for different scenarios: remission, bed rest, hospice. I never would have thought of questioning her. I wouldn't have, except that doctor got suspicious, the one who insisted on taking blood samples. Dr. Flores.”

“How did you find out?” My voice sounds young, the same tone I used when I figured out Santa wasn't real. I feel as young and foolish for believing something so obviously make-believe.

“Barb. She knew something wasn't right. She found the folder when she was cleaning. She spoke with Dr. Flores and insisted he meet with me immediately. It happened very fast.”

I try to assemble memories of that day just a week ago, but I was in so much pain from falling off the skateboard. Then the shot.

“Then what?”

“I confronted her. I found the prescription pad in her purse. She said she needed to go to a hospice. She said she picked one out, but when I called them they didn't have a record of
her. She started screaming, hitting herself, pulling out her hair. Dr. Flores had to sedate her. Barb said that was how she acted the last time he took a blood sample. Hysterical. That was the day I told you she wasn't coming home.”

“What do you mean? I don't get it. You knew she wasn't dying when you said she was going into hospice?”

I put my hands in my lap, holding them tightly, and try to stay upright. I want to sweep the dishes aside and rest my head on the table. All I can see is the kind woman at the hospice, her eyes full of tender pity. It's like a balloon pops inside my chest and I want to rest right here, in the booth. I close my eyes and squeeze my hands tighter.

“I was trying to protect you.”

He stops talking and takes a sip of wine.

I speak carefully, choosing every word. “How could you do that? How could you think it was better for you to tell us she was on her deathbed than that she was crazy?”

His eyes stay on his glass. He picks at a fig, disarticulating the seeds, peeling the fruit from the skin. He places his fork on his plate and looks at me.

In that moment, I think what Dad has done is worse. He had the chance to stop things and he didn't. He had the full story. He is the dad, the adult.

He finally meets my eyes. “This week has been devastating. We spent hours talking. She told me everything, all the lies. She almost looked relieved. A psychiatrist insisted that I check her into an inpatient psychiatric hospital, but
your mother refused to go. I got a lawyer who helped me commit her. I did everything they told me to do. Absolutely everything.”

“Why didn't you just tell us the truth?” I hiss out the words like an anaconda. I welcome the flash of anger—anything to make me feel the least bit strong. I can barely speak above a whisper.