The Rules of Inheritance

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUDSON STREET PRESS

Published by Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published by Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Printing, February 2012

Copyright © Claire Bidwell Smith, 2012

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Smith, Claire Bidwell.

The rules of inheritance : a memoir / Claire Bidwell Smith.

p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-55986-4

1. Smith, Claire Bidwell. 2. Children of cancer patients—United States—Biography. 3. Daughters—United States—Biography. 4. Bereavement—Psychological aspects. 5. Psychotherapists—United States—Biography. 6. Women psychotherapists—United States—Biography. I. Title.

RC265.6.S647 2012

616.99'40092--dc23

[B]

2011025136

 

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

1996, I'M EIGHTEEN.

M
Y FATHER'S VOICE is tinny through the phone line. I am in the booth at the bottom of the stairs in Howland dorm. It is my freshman year of college.

 

Claire, he is saying, your mother is back in the hospital.

 

It is a Tuesday. My mother was just here two days ago, visiting for parents' weekend, and I am immediately confused as to why she is in the hospital.

 

Claire, are you listening to me?

 

I take a deep breath.

 

I'm here, Dad.

 

Listen. I don't know how to say this. The doctors, they don't think there is anything else they can do. The cancer is too far gone.

 

What do you mean?

 

I don't like the words “too far gone.” They make me think of a ship lost at sea.

 

As I listen to my father run through the details of my mother's hospital visit, the previous weekend replays in my head on fast-forward, scenes flashing by in blurred succession.

 

My mother had arrived on Friday. We drove along the winding mountain roads together, Vermont like a foreign country to both of us, the autumn trees like bursts of flame—orange and gold and deep, deep red. There was a weird silence between us, a space that had never been there before.

 

The two months since I'd been at college were as long as we'd been apart in my whole life.

 

My mother worked hard to close the new distance, acting chipper, and I tried to fill the gap too, telling her about my classes and my roommate, Christine. That night we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. She ordered two glasses of wine, let me have one. Around the room two or three other students sat at tables with their parents, and for no real reason I felt embarrassed for all of us.

 

On Saturday we strolled around campus, the white clapboard buildings and rolling green hills like a New England postcard. I pointed out my poetry teacher, an old hippie with a scruffy beard, and the boy I have a crush on, Christopher. From the steps of the dining hall we watched Christopher swing one leg over an old motorcycle, kick the thing to life.

 

He has a girlfriend, I told my mom.

 

Of course he does, she said. I watched her watch him, knowing that she already knew that kind of boy.

 

That afternoon we went shopping, and she bought me a shirt and a pair of hiking boots. In the coming months I'll cling to that shirt as though I'd cared about her that weekend, as though I'd actually been grateful for her visit. As though I hadn't wanted her gone already so that I could get back to my life.

 

As the weekend went on my mother grew too loose with me. She let me ignore her, let me smoke cigarettes in her rental car, and invited my friends out to dinner with us on the second night. She seemed desperate for me to let her in.

 

But I had only just discovered how to be without her. Why would I want to let her in?

 

On Sunday I watched her drive away, my lip between my teeth, blood on my tongue from the force of it.

 

That was two days ago.

 

I tune back in to what my father is saying on the phone. Something about hospice.

 

Wait, wait, I say. Back up.

 

She collapsed in the bedroom this morning, sweetie. There wasn't anything I could do.

 

I picture my mother in one of her long Yves Saint Laurent nightgowns in their bedroom in Atlanta. Picture my elderly father stooping to help her back to bed.

 

But she was just here, I say.

 

I know she was, sweetie. I know.

 

Months later, after she is gone, my father will tell me that he thinks she stored up that last burst of energy just to visit me. He will tell me that once she saw me safely ensconced in my life there, she was finally able to let go. When he says this, I will immediately wish that I had been more of a mess.