A full decade. “That’s . . .” I was going to say amazing, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t feel amazed. In fact, save the couple of tears that had already escaped, I felt . . . kind of underwhelmed, to be honest. “Time flies when you’re still alive,” I finally managed.
“Doesn’t it? I’m so happy for you,” she said, rising from her chair. She came around to the other side of the desk, which was my cue to stand. “This is a big deal, so I hope you find a way to celebrate it.”
Dr. Malone didn’t have to add what I’d already been thinking about in her waiting room: some of her patients wouldn’t have that chance.
“That’s a great idea,” I told her—and because I’m not a sociopath, this time I was the one to initiate the hugging. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“You’re so welcome, Libby,” she said. “I’m glad you won’t have to see me again unless anything changes, but your sunshine will be missed around here.”
I thanked her again and fled before she could figure out that my sunshine was hiding behind a rain cloud.
As I escaped the frigid medical building for the sweltering, overcrowded comforts of Manhattan’s streets, I wondered why I wasn’t hearing birds sing sweet melodies or smiling like a just-burped baby. After all, I was only thirty-four when another doctor all but declared me a goner—but he’d been dead wrong. It took nearly two years of treatment, but I’d gone into remission. Now my lucky numbers had been drawn yet again. Why didn’t it feel that way?
No woman is an island, I reminded myself; I probably just needed to share the news with someone in order to get in a celebratory mood. I ducked under the awning of a flower shop and pulled my phone out of my bag. My husband Shiloh, who was a pilot, was in the middle of a flight, so I’d have to tell him later. My finger hovered over my twin brother Paul’s number, but it occurred to me that he was probably stuck in a marathon of meetings. Anyway, I could let him know when I saw him for lunch tomorrow.
So I called my father. Paul claims that I inherited my rose-colored glasses from my mother, and she was certainly the more exuberant of our parents. But much of my sanguine outlook was owing to the guy who’d done the job of two parents most of my life. He’d always managed to shine a light on a dim situation by sharing a few choice words or a story that started out completely unrelated to the topic at hand, only to reveal itself as precisely on point. Really, he was the first person I should have reached out to.
But his phone had only rung once when I remembered he would not be picking up. Not today. Not ever again.
Now all of the tears that I’d been anticipating in Dr. Malone’s office sprang to my eyes as I remembered that he was dead.
He may be gone, but you are here, I reminded myself, drying my eyes on my sleeve before I descended the stairs to the subway that would shuttle me back to Brooklyn. Rather than wallowing, it was my job to do all the living that my father could no longer do—that’s what he would have wanted. How incredibly lucky I was to still have that opportunity!
So . . . why didn’t I feel more alive?
TWO
There were years, many of them, when I thought I would never get the one thing I wanted most, which was to be a parent. Finding out that I was pregnant with my daughters was the second- happiest day of my life (the first, of course, was the day they were born). Even so, sometimes mothering felt like being asked to put out a raging fire with nothing but a cape and a pair of pom-poms. It required degrees of grit and patience I could not have imagined possessing before two tiny humans emerged from my body.
It helped to try to be the mother my own mother was to me. There was a lot I couldn’t recall about the brief time we had together—but if there’s one thing I did remember, it was that she led by example. I couldn’t storm around while expecting Charlotte and Isa to act like they were sliding down a rainbow. No, I needed to adopt the same attitude of gratitude I was always telling them to have. And so, on the several-block-long walk back from the subway, I made a point to focus on what I was thankful for. How blue was the sky, how lovely were the brownstones in our cozy Brooklyn neighborhood! How wonderful it was to be coming home to the people who loved me!
My life, I reminded myself as I let myself into our apartment, was charmed.
“No, you shut up, you stupid—”
“You’re the stupid one! I am so sick of your dumb—”
I can’t bring myself to relay the rest, but let’s just say I can’t believe my daughters kiss their mother with those mouths.
“Girls!” I said, flinging their bedroom door open. They were tangled up on the floor like a couple of cage fighters, and the irritation on their faces made me feel—if only for a split second—like I’d interrupted something important.
But I must have been staring back at them just as fiercely, because they quickly released their headlocks and scrambled to their respective beds.
“What,” said Isa, who’d tucked her arms into her T-shirt and wedged herself into the corner where her bed met the wall. At least her nose wasn’t in a book. She spent nine-tenths of her waking hours reading and pretending the rest of us didn’t exist. Ever the pessimist, Paul said it was normal—reading was a perfectly healthy way to cope with the dumpster fire that was reality, he claimed. But lately when I tried to get her to bake or go out with
