Stay Gone Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Rae

  Rae

  Thomas

  Thomas

  Marlene

  Rae

  An Excerpt from This Is Not Over

  Excerpt: Chapter 1

  About the Author

  By Holly Brown

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Rae

  Right Now

  My mother is dead.

  The worsening of her illness was inexorable, and this ending inevitable. Hospice workers have been coming to the house for weeks—palliative measures only, the relief of suffering without treatment, comfort without cure. They were very clear on this point. There should have been no room for denial.

  But somehow, when it’s your mother, you deny until the end.

  It’s not like a dance recital, and you can practice, practice, practice. There is no preparation, not really. I’ve never lived in a world without her. Marlene Joy Kalatchik. Mom. Mommy.

  No one else has ever leveled me with a look like she could; no one else could affirm or destroy like my mother. She was the repository for all my insecurities. She fed them, unknowingly. I like to think unknowingly. Simon says otherwise, but he first met her a year ago, and given the cancer, she wasn’t herself. Not exactly.

  My mother is dead.

  I say it out loud, experimentally, full of wonder as much as pain. Impossible. I whisper it. I touch my tongue to it, like it’s a loose tooth.

  Simon is beside me, and he’s got his arm around me, he’s murmuring something, but I can’t seem to hear it. I can’t feel him. There’s nothing but her, nothing but absence and loss and something else, just out of sight, just beyond my reach.

  Natural causes. I think that’s what the coroner will say, even if it was by her own hand. A hand that was coerced by someone else, or a hand that’s an extension of hers, because isn’t that what family is? An extension. A proxy. A way to go on.

  Thomas is staring down at her, too, his expression inscrutable. No, it’s not her. Already, it’s her body.

  He shouldn’t be here. Why didn’t he just stay gone?

  I wish I’d said no, I won’t find him, let the past be the past, it’s just us now, Mom, and that’s enough. I should have tried harder to convince her that I’m enough, though that had already been a lifelong project, a study in futility and false hope. I’ve been flexing my denial muscle for a long time. And yet . . .

  I think I see Thomas and Simon exchange some sort of look. I’ve seen that look before. There’s mischief in it. No, mirth. No, it’s the satisfaction of collusion. Like they’re in it together.

  No. Simon’s here for me, and Thomas is here for himself, just like always. Simon’s mine.

  And if I’m wrong about that? Then what do I have?

  My mother is dead.

  My mother’s body is dead. Her spirit? Does that continue?

  It must. Because suddenly, I feel it here. I feel her, like radiant heat whooshing up from the floorboards, filling the room. She’s always been larger than life, in my eyes. Illness couldn’t shrink her. Maybe death can’t, either.

  We were closer in those last days. She told me something I’d waited my whole life to hear, and now she has a message for me. There are things I’ve never known, and I need to. I’ve always sensed them, the secrets, like movement in my peripheral vision. I could never turn my head quickly enough.

  But she wants me to know now. It’s time.

  I lean in close, and listen.

  Rae

  Ten Weeks Earlier

  “You’re not dying,” I said firmly.

  My mother raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you in my body, Rae?”

  “You’re not a doctor, Mom.”

  She shook her head like I’d never get it. I was intimately familiar with that gesture, having been infuriated by it all my life. But I didn’t allow myself those kinds of negative reactions anymore. My mother’s illness had been my wake-up call. She wasn’t going to die; this was all just a reminder that I was lucky to have a mother at all. Sure, she’s feisty and opinionated. She’s a force. Not always a force for good, but you can’t have everything.

  “You’re only a stage III,” I said.

  “Stage IIIB.” She emphasized the B and some spit landed on my arm. She was on the slate gray fainting couch, and I squatted beside her. My knees were starting to hurt. I wasn’t so young anymore myself. Twenty-eight as of a couple of months ago, and getting married. This was supposed to be a great time for me. This will be a great time. My mother will dance at my wedding, her pessimism aside. She’s always been a pessimist. Cancer doesn’t change a person’s essential self; that’s what the oncology social worker told me, like a warning.

  My father’s cancer was stage IV when it was discovered. I was nine years old, and he was gone within six months. I’m sure that experience has only heightened Mom’s natural tendency to look on the dim side. I tried to tell her that she’s a whole integer ahead of my father, and today’s treatment options are far more advanced. Put those together, and it would equal a long life ahead of her.

  “You’ll dance at my wedding,” I said, and she let out a humph, the companion piece to the you’ll-never-get-it head shake.

  At fifty-nine, and despite the cancer, she was still pretty. Not handsome or attractive or any of the other adjectives usually applied to women of a certain age—no, she’s pretty. Her auburn hair had thinned from the chemo but you had to know her well to notice; it was improbably thick before, with the perfect hint of wave. She’s petite with delicate features, which made her personality seem even more formidable through contrast. I’ve always felt oafish, coarse, beside her, at five-foot-eight, though people have said I’m attractive, too—my hair long and fine, darker than hers, and my eyes hazel where hers are sea-glass green.

  She’d have no trouble finding a date for the wedding. Since Dad died, she’d often had someone to dance with, for a little while. They never stayed long, and that seemed to be her preference. I had the impression every ending was either mutual, or her choice, but she probably wouldn’t let on if it was any other way. Vulnerability equals weakness, that was the algorithm she’d lived by, and she’d die by it, too.

  But not now. In many, many years.

  It was strange, in a way, that she found my father so irreplaceable. Their marriage had seemed neither happy nor unhappy, more of a functional unit, in the traditional mold: He worked late every night to provide, she made a home. I don’t have much insight into the inner workings of their relationship, since she never talks about him and I was only nine when he died. My perspective is limited by the narcissism of childhood.

  In my recollections, my father was mild-mannered, and gentle with my brother Thomas and me. He pretty much always missed dinner but when he got home, he liked to read to us, his arms draped around each of our shoulders as one of us got the coveted job of turning the pages. He didn’t like roughhousing, jumping on the furniture, or even loud voices. His own was quiet, and that’s how he liked our home.

  It’s a surprisingly modest home, given the fortune that he amassed: two thousand square feet, a four-bedroom, in a suburban neighborhood close to San Francisco and Silicon Valley that wound up being yet another of his brilliant investments, now worth a few million itself. Apparently, he was a clandestine business genius, or perhaps he wasn’t hiding at all; maybe he just liked achievement for its own sake and not because he wanted it on display.

  There were answers I’d never possess when it came to my father, given Mom’s silence on the subject. But I knew she must have truly loved him, because why else would it be so painful to invoke his name? Why else would she still be in this same house when she had the means to live anywhere
? Sure, she’d redecorated the place five times over; she’d knocked out walls and redone the kitchen and bathrooms; her bedroom had been merged with my father’s old home office (she now had a master suite befitting royalty); she’d filled the new custom-made cabinetry with expensive vases and statues and collectibles from her extensive travels, and the walls were covered with original art, so that her wealth was now fully, irrefutably visible; but she had never left.

  When I looked around as an adult, I couldn’t picture Daddy, Thomas, and me huddled up on the couch; the setting never triggered any forgotten moments. My memories have remained as sparse and wispy as my father’s hair. He died young but he looked old. Or maybe all parents look old to children. You’re always looking up, and they become dusty superheroes.

  Thomas was okay while my father was alive. Dad’s calm energy served as an anchor. After, my brother was unmoored.

  Oh, and he smoked constantly. My dad, not Thomas. Cigarettes were pretty much the only thing Thomas wouldn’t smoke. My father smoked so much that he not only gave himself cancer; he managed to give it to my mother, too, all these years later, when she’s never smoked herself. Man, did that piss her off. She was so full of vitriol that she was banned, kindly, from two different support groups. The funny thing was, if it had been breast or bone or stomach, she still would have found a reason for fury. She was not built to commune with strangers, or to simply take her lumps. She’s made to roar. That anger would carry her through to infinity, I was sure of it.

  “I’m going to die,” she said now, almost triumphantly, like it’s a chip to be cashed in.

  I tried to ignore the feeling in my chest, the one that foretold of a brewing storm. “We see Dr. Parma next week. He’ll tell us how the chemo is working.”

  “It’s not working. Trust me. A mother knows.” It was one of her favorite aphorisms, and it was most recently and frequently invoked where Simon was concerned. “I need to ask you to do something for me.”

  I stood up, shakily. My legs had fallen asleep. I wasn’t sure they’d carry me safely out of the room, though I really, really wanted to go. I tried to pump the blood back into them, discreetly.

  “I just remembered,” I said. “I really need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “When?”

  “After work. I’ll bring dinner.”

  “I have sores in my mouth, don’t forget.”

  Like she’d let me forget the list of chemo-related discomforts and indignities. I felt sympathy, I did, but it’d be so much easier if she could ever suffer in silence, or better yet, if she could count her blessings (she had far fewer symptoms than most people with her diagnosis, hadn’t even had a cough), or if she understood that cancer happens to millions of people, or if she could see how hard this was on me, too. If she could just see me.

  “I’ll make you a soup,” I told her. “Something creamy, and non-acidic.”

  “My time is short, I know that.” Her voice stalled me, unusually quiet, the equivalent of fingers grasping my wrist. It was a vise.

  “You don’t know that.” But I didn’t sound nearly as convincing as she did. It’s a gift she’d always had, the ability to sound so certain, and it had been a large part of her power over me. When she told me I was good, I believed her, absolutely. And when she told me the opposite . . .

  “What I know is, I’ve always had a strong intuition, and right now, it’s saying, quite distinctly, that the treatments won’t work.” I was about to protest again, but something in her face stopped me. My fearless mother was afraid. Of dying? That would be normal, but somehow, I didn’t think so. What could be scarier than death? There’s definitely no public speaking in her future.

  “It’s time,” she said, “to find Thomas.”

  I felt myself sagging. Under the weight of her request, and the weight of my own stupidity. How could I not have seen this coming?

  She’d always loved him most. His absence couldn’t change that, if his presence hadn’t.

  “If he wanted to be in our lives, he would,” I said.

  “This isn’t about what he wants. Find him for me. Please, Rae.”

  “The chemo’s going to work, Mom. You don’t need to do this.”

  She fixed me with a steely green gaze. “What’s the point of staying alive if I don’t have both my children in my life?”

  Her initial treatment had been radiation, but the cancer had spread, so now she was on to chemo. Only two treatments in, she’d handled them like I would have expected: she wasn’t bed-ridden, only temporarily couch-ridden. She was going to live. Which meant that Thomas could be back in my life, for years.

  “He’s the one who decided to leave,” I said. But I could see it was falling on deaf ears. She’d never listened to me like she listened to him. And I was the one who actually made sense, the one who went to college, and never to jail. I had a split-second’s inspiration. “By contacting him, you’d be going against his wishes. Think how angry he’d be.”

  “It’s a chance we have to take.”

  We. As in, her and me. As if I had any say in this at all.

  She should go find him herself. A few mouth sores and the occasional nausea and fatigue aside, she didn’t seem that sick. Plus she had plenty of money to pay someone to do it. It didn’t need to be me.

  Why did she want it to be me?

  She’d always nursed a fantasy that someday, Thomas and I would be like other siblings. Maybe that was it. She thought that if I showed up on his doorstep, there would be some bittersweet reconciliation. The past would be erased.

  “He doesn’t want us,” I said.

  “You can’t know that for sure, any more than I can know that I’m truly dying. They’re just beliefs, Rae. They’re conjecture. But I believe this is my dying wish, and you can’t deny me. You wouldn’t.”

  She’s right, I wouldn’t.

  But it wasn’t because she’s dying. It’s because even (slightly) enfeebled by chemo, she had a dynamism—a refusal to be ignored, to be passed over, to go unseen—that I’d never possessed, and had always wanted. One of the things I’d never tell anyone, not even Simon, was that part of why I put up with her was because I had a fantasy of my own. It was that her charisma would transfer to me osmotically, that I would become her daughter in more than name only, the same as Thomas was so fully, so obviously, her son.

  “Veal parmigiana!” Simon called to me.

  I breathed in deeply. It was a sentimental choice, my father’s favorite dish, and one that brought me back to simpler times. Simon’s a gem. He knew I needed simpler right then, even without knowing about Thomas. Just being with my mother every day was complicated enough.

  I followed the scent and took a seat at the center bar stool where I could watch Simon work in the galley kitchen. The appliances were all new and stainless steel; the black marble and wood cabinetry seemed high quality. It’s a nice condo, the one Simon already owned when we got together. I wouldn’t have chosen a gated community in Richmond, a small Bay Area city that’s otherwise crime-riddled, but the community itself had a surprisingly bucolic feel, and I loved the paths along the water. Most nights, Simon and I walked to our bench and watched the sunset. Not that night, though. I was too late for that.

  Simon was sautéing the veal, and the smell was incredible. I’d say it smelled like home, but that’s not entirely accurate. It smelled like the Italian restaurant our family went to on the rare nights my father didn’t work late, the kind with red-checked tablecloths and a host who greeted us by name in an accent so heavy that it seemed a little put on, theatrical, but we loved it, and him. Before my father died, we were still a real family; it wasn’t nearly as apparent that my mother loved Thomas more. Much more.

  “How was she today?” Simon’s back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face. His tone was carefully neutral. He always said that he had nothing against my mother, except that she had something against him, but I knew, all too well, how much her disapproval could sting.

 
I sighed. Should I tell him now? I poured myself a glass of red wine from the bottle that he’d thoughtfully left open on the counter in front of me. I saw that he had a mostly-drunk glass near the sizzling pan. I was not yet properly buffered, though he might have been. I took a long swallow.

  “She’s convinced she’s going to die,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re sure she’s going to die?”

  “No, I meant, of course she’s convinced she’s going to die. She always thinks the worst, right? The truth is, no one knows when their number’s going to be called. You could die tomorrow. I could die tomorrow.”

  This was not comforting to me.

  He turned the veal with a pair of tongs. I watched his well-muscled back in his fitted T-shirt. He’s handsome, even from behind, and he doesn’t look like a Simon. But then, what electrician would? His father was an academic and an anglophile.

  I quickly drained my wineglass and poured another. As he layered the veal in a pan with cheese and sauce, he told me about his day. He’s so good at filling his time between jobs. Right then, he was working on making a new dining room table out of reclaimed wood, and it was housed in his buddy Jim’s garage. Someday Simon hoped to have his own garage that he could turn into a workshop or even better, a separate detached structure behind the main house. He occasionally sent me links to properties to ask what I thought. What I thought was, We’re not in any position to afford those, with how stratospheric the real estate market is right now. What I texted back was, Love it!

  Simon wasn’t exactly slurring, but there was a looseness to his speech that wasn’t explained by the amount of wine missing from his glass. I had the sense that he and Jim had had a couple of beers before he drove home on his motorcycle, which didn’t thrill me, but I wasn’t about to say anything. I had to trust him. He’s a good person, and we were getting married, and I didn’t want to be his mother. So . . . enough said.

  Once the pan was in the oven, he came and sat down on the stool beside me. He took my face in his hands and gave me a lingering kiss. Not a mere “Glad you’re home” but an “I want to have you later” kiss. It might have even been an “I need to have you later” kiss. It stirred me, though I’d never been that sexual of a person. After almost a year together, I couldn’t believe he still wanted me so much.