Mauro Altamura

THIS ISN’T GOING TO KILL ME

“The progress has been pretty rapid, Tessie.” The doctor scribbles a few notes on the top page of a clipped stack. “We’ll have to make decisions right away.” He holds the papers against his starched white shirt and red tie. “Stage three isn’t the end. Just close.” He finally looks at her. 

“Any questions?” 

 Mom nudges me. “Nicky?” She’s quiet while the doctor runs through possible treatments, none very appealing, dabs her eyes with a shredded tissue that’s too far gone to work. I hold her hand.

“Fine.” The doctor raps his pen three times on the papers. “I’ll have the information posted. You decide a course of action. Make an appointment. We’ll take it from there.” He’s out the door, but pops his head and slicked-down hair back in. “Have a good day.” 

We pass through the waiting room of anxious patients, walk through sliding glass doors opening to the parking area outside. The lot is elevated, on a slight hill above the doctor’s office. Over the building, toward the west, the sky is gray. The temperature dropping fast. A strong wind carries late fall weather, sure and steady, toward us. In the distance, darker, slate-gray clouds float too close, fat with what will surely be cold rain. Jets bank to their right, lower even than the clouds. They roll over to expose fat bellies, glide easy into a landing pattern. We watch for a moment. The sound of jet engines fills the space around us.    

“What do you think, Mom?” 

“Your book is written when you’re born.” She repeats the phrase I’ve heard too often. “It’s in his hands.” She lifts her head, points her chin to the sky. “Just help me walk now. My back is acting up.” She loops her arm in mine and we move toward the car. 

Mom’s seventy, I’ve crashed unexpectedly through forty-five. Her hair is still black, gray coming strand by strand, not enough to make a big difference. Her face sags, though. Scrunched and dark half-moons float under her eyes. Her joints and fingers bent with arthritis. She wears sweats and sneakers daily since she quit working in the Catholic school office around the corner from the house. She liked it there, with the other women. But a mugger knocked her down three years ago so she stopped going out. She called in her resignation, began collecting the small pension and Social Security. Mostly she stays home now. Once in a while she’ll walk to the library to borrow a few romance novels. She’ll go shopping for food and meds. That’s about it. 

Mom’s matching sweatpants and shirt – both too-bright green – balloon with wind, then sag in return to cover her thin arms and legs, protrude some at her belly. Th sweats are creased on the front and sides, the scent of perfumed laundry detergent surrounds her.  She waits for me to open the passenger door. I drive when we go anywhere.

“How was work yesterday?” She watches the floating jets. 

“Painting’s always the same, mom. What could be different?” I’ve been painting walls, ceilings and window frames for fifteen years. I feel like I’m breathing in poison every time I go to work. Plus it’s boring as hell. The walls and ceilings get done and so what? I finish and I leave. What’s the point?

“You should take it easy. Try a different job.” She turns her back to me. “Let’s go home.” She grips the door handle, her voice carried away by a gust of wind. A single sheet of newspaper and a thin white plastic bag get swept up, swirl over our heads.

“Why don’t we get something to eat, Ma?” 

“I’m not so hungry. I’ll make you a sandwich when we get home.” She looks at me, at last. 

“Well, if you want to. OK. I’ll sit and wait while you eat.” She does this all the time. I don’t get a “no,” which is what she really wants to say. “Let’s go to the place across the street.” She points, her arm held close to her cheek. There’s a blank look on her face. We leave the car in the doctor’s lot. I lead. She’s quiet as we walk.

The diner’s breakfast crowd is gone, lunch an hour away. Five waitresses gather under a TV, secured into the wall, high, over a glass-fronted refrigeration cabinet. The waitresses huddle, two of them sitting on round counter stools. Slits in the empty stools’ maroon vinyl covers have been patched with neon red tape. The tape is frayed, the edges soiled black. The waitresses’s attention is fixed on the TV, waiting for a private space shuttle to launch. The cabinet’s bottom shelf is crowded with scooped-out cantaloupes and honeydew melons. Jell-O and fruit cups line the top shelf. Tiny green grapes dot the red Jell-O. 

“Maybe I’ll have a little of that.” Mom points to the Jell-O. There’s slight frost on the inside top of the cabinet, condensation beads on the glass interior. 

“The grapes don’t look good, mom. Maybe you should get something else.” The grapes look like they were harvested too soon, shriveled, probably moldy and laced with bacteria.

“You’re the boss,” she says.

A waitress points to the empty booths without shifting her eyes from the TV. “Seat yourselves.” The other servers talk as they watch the shuttle’s engines fire. One woman twists the wrapper from a straw around her fingers, lays it on the table like a coiled spring. Another spins quarters, flicking them with her index finger. The coins twirl on their edges, whirring like polished gears until they slow, wobble, and drop.  

The shuttle lifts off. “They still televise these?” I ask the waitress. I get only silence. I’m expecting it to explode, like that time years ago. I was a kid, watching TV. The rocket gained distance from the earth, but still in clear camera sight. Then the silent explosion. At first the crowd thought it was another engine firing. The smoke blossomed and separated into three puffy white carnations, followed by thin trails. When people realized what happened, their smiles and clapping changed. One by one they brought their hands up to cover their faces, held each other close. Some cried. The smoke looked like sky-writing, like it might spell words of explanation. 

 I find a booth next to the window. “This okay, Ma?”

“Fine.” Mom picks up a menu set in a metal holder on the end of the table. A ketchup bottle sits in the middle, crust around the cap hardened into a dark skin. The tabletop’s pattern of tiny, white and pink boomerangs fade into a soft gray background. The table’s surface is smooth, worn by so many elbows and sliding plates, by so many people eating the same food for years. My mother looks like she might be reading the menu, but I know she’s not. She hangs her head forward, a hand at her brow. I hope she’s thinking about ordering, at least.

 “Maybe you really want that Jell-O, mom. Order it.”
 

“No. You’re right. I shouldn’t.”  

The wind picks up, sucks at the tops of a row of small trees that bend in our direction. Thin twigs and dead leaves pull off, hit our window with soft taps, like knuckles cracking. A flock of birds, dense and black, swarm thick above the treetops. The diner’s windows rattle. A whistling sound enters the room, flits under the suspended ceiling, swirls around the walls. The wind surrounds us, streaming in from every crack in the building. 

“Looks like it’s trying to clear.” Mom gazes away, her eyes drifting to an indeterminate point in the unimaginably distant sky.

 I look in the direction and squint. The sight is the same as when I open my eyes underwater.

“How’re you feeling, Mom?”

“What can I say?” She could say something, but keeps looking out the window instead. Her reflection seems to stare at me, though her eyes close as if she’s deep in thought, or sleeping.

 “Must be nice to live around here.” Mom’s lips move in the window’s reflection.

“Not for me. I’d never live here. I need the city, people.”

“At least you could try, Nick.” We come out to the suburbs for her doctors. Our city has gotten too poor and all the professionals left. So did anyone else who could. Not us. All we had was the house after Dad died.

A stream of cars pass on the busy road in front of the parking lot. There aren’t any buildings besides the doctor’s, only cars and trees, and a few large houses. Patients walk into the office. I notice too many silver or black cars. All new, expensive models, and big. The traffic is stop-and-go since the lights stay red too long. No one has synchronized them to make things easier. People talk to each other as they wait inside the cars. Solo drivers mouth the silent words of silent songs. 

 “Some nice cars around here.” Mom points to a Mercedes. “That’s the life I’d like.”  

A waitress turns from the TV and walks over, stands ready to write. She looks at mom. Neither says a word.

“Get something, Ma. Get some food in you. Have a sandwich. Some soup. My treat.”

“No, I’m really not hungry.” Mom looks at the waitress. “Well, maybe a tea. Just regular.”

The waitress is near my age. Her face shows hours standing at tables, waiting, looking forward to days off, to something else that might happen. She wears soft tan shoes; really sneakers disguised as shoes. They’ve got Velcro flaps to keep them closed. Her pants are gray and her shirt is black. The green apron, stained with ketchup and brown gravy, shows the diner’s name in script on top. Perfume shoots into my nose, directly inside my head, with a sharp, electric shock. 

Her fingertips show the waitress smokes. She flicks her thumbnail between her two front teeth. Every few seconds the click…click…click begins. She breathes heavily through her nose, little snorts that gurgle in her throat. I cough loud, clear my own throat. 

“I’ll have some pancakes, and a couple of sunny-side eggs on top. I’d like bacon, too.” Whenever I go to diners, breakfast is my favorite thing to order. Even if it’s three or four in the afternoon, I don’t care.   

“To drink?” 

 “OJ. But not if it’s syrupy. Is it? I don’t like that syrupy OJ.”

 “It’s fine with me.”

“No syrup?” I smile at her.

Her pen is poised. 

“Bring me ice water instead. And tea. You have peppermint?”

“Sure. Anything else? Toast with your eggs?”

“No. That’s it,” I say. “Well, a grapefruit.” I pause for a second. “Never mind, skip the grapefruit.” I remember how they looked.

     “

Thanks, honey.” She slips her pen into her apron’s little breast pocket. Stray ink lines trail up from the top of the slit, blue and red veins leading nowhere, except maybe to some ketchup stains, or a burn mark. I wonder how many aprons she has, and if she washes them every night. I wonder how many eggs she serves in a day. I start to ask her the last question to break the ice, but I stop, know it’s dumb. Or worse. I wouldn’t want to hurt or trouble anyone who works at a diner. 

Mom’s tea arrives right away. Our waitress slides it across the table. Mom puts in Sweet n’Lo. Two packets.

“Maybe you should stop with that stuff.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You know. What they say about it. Probably not healthy.”

“This isn’t going to kill me.” She waves her fingers in sequence from the pinky to the index in a dismissal of my fears. Her fingers end up in a fist. She looks out the window, then stirs another packet in, with emphasis. She wraps her teabag around the spoon and squeezes, forcing drops into the cup. She does this every time she drinks tea. When she puts the spoon down on the saucer the sound chimes through the room.

Three men walk in, bringing a rush of wind from outside. They’re wearing work boots and jeans. Two of them in sweatshirts, one in a short sleeve t-shirt, despite the temperature. He’s built, really cut muscles. His back is wide with a thin waist. His bulbous head is shaved and his arms taper to thin wrists. The white t-shirt stretches tight across his chest. A tattoo on each forearm.

“Look, Ma,” I whisper. “Popeye.”

She doesn’t laugh.

They sit a few tables away. All the contractors order coffee and Danish. The built guy also orders a grapefruit. 

“I should’ve gotten that grapefruit,” I say.

“When do you eat grapefruit?” Mom asks.

“All the time. I love them.”

“No you don’t.”

The guys’ orders are brought quickly. Nothing to cook. A bright maraschino cherry sits on top of the grapefruit half. 

“I love those cherries,” Mom says.

“They’re no good either.” 

She frowns, blows on her tea, stirs it, takes a sip. “You gotta die from something,” she says. The built guy goes right at the grapefruit, cutting sections with a curved, serrated knife. He is delicate and deft with the whole operation. 

“What are you looking at?” Mom asks.

“Nothing. I’m just watching that guy eat his grapefruit.”

“Don’t stare.”

 Our order takes a long time to arrive. We talk about mom’s aunt, about to turn one hundred.

“She doesn’t know where she is anymore,” Mom says.

“Well, maybe she does. Maybe she just can’t tell anybody where she is. She might understand everything but can’t get it out. Like a baby. She can’t find the words.”

“I don’t know.” She’s silent for a minute. “If I get like that, just shoot me.”

A tall boy finally delivers our food, putting all the plates in front of me. I’m impressed that they always know who gets what, without asking.  

“Gracias,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

“They don’t like that, you know,” my mother says when he leaves.

“Like what?”

“Speaking Spanish to them.”

“Yes they do.”
     

“They should speak English, anyhow,” mom says.
     

“Let’s eat,” I say. “Why don’t you have some of this”?

 “I can’t. How could I eat now?”
    

 I pour syrup over the pancakes, bust open the yolk of the eggs. The yellow liquid oozes over the stack of pancakes and onto the plate. I wish I’d gotten the toast. But then realize I can mop up the yolk with the pancakes. Who needs toast? Who needs it at all? I dig into the pile of pancakes and eggs.

“Your father ate eggs every day.” She stirs her tea. “That’s why he got the heart problem.”
    

“Well, that runs in the family and he didn’t exercise.”
     

“No one exercised then.”

My father died a month after by-pass surgery for six blocked arteries. The night before the operation the surgeon called and told Mom there was a thirty percent chance of success. She thanked him for the call. I’d visited that day and my father told me to take care of Mom if anything happened to him. I moved back in and never left.

“So, Nick. What are you going to do?”

“Well, we could see another specialist. There’s lots to do. It all depends on what you want. Do you want to see someone else?”
    

 “No. I mean you, today.” She points with her gnarled index finger. “You.”  

“Me?”

“Don’t you have to go to work?” 

 “Work? Really? I took a personal day.”

My mother turns toward the window as if someone just yelled her name. She stops talking, doesn’t look back at me. She’s been doing this as long as I can remember: stopping our conversations in mid-stream, leaving me hanging, alone.  

The trees are still being blown, and fiercely. More birds try to fly toward one tree, higher than the others, as if it had shot up suddenly to attract them. For a while it appears as if the birds are suspended in the air in front of the tree, furiously flapping wings, but getting nowhere.  

“Hey, look at those birds,” I say. “Isn’t that weird? They look like they’re stuck in mid-air.”

 “They’re pretty.”

“They might not make it!” 

“That’s some wind,” she says. 

The guys are on their cell phones, too loud and too close. None of them talk to or even look at each other. They yak to their pals, make plans with girlfriends.

“I’m gonna tell those guys to keep it down.” I stare at them.
     

“Don’t, Nicky. Don’t start trouble. Please. We’ve had enough today.”

The bald guy stares back, his eyes scrunched together, his forehead furrowed, his chin jutting. 

“What are you looking at?” I say.

The guy walks over and places his hands flat on our table. He leans close. I don’t look at his face, but at his hands. His fingernails have been bitten to nubs, his cuticles flaky and raw, irritated, and red. He breathes loud through his nose, as if it’s clogged.

“Tough day for you, buddy?” he asks. “Something the matter?”

I look into his face. “Tough for my mother.” I point. Mom’s sipping the tea, stirs in another Sweet n’ Lo. “She’s had it tough. You know what cancer is? Have you heard about it? She’s got it. Stage four.” I lie slightly about the severity. “Leave us alone. OK? We just want some quiet.”

The contractor blows air out his nose. A crumb of Danish sits on his top lip. 
     

“You have some food on your face. Want a napkin?” I hold one up.
     

He grunts and walks back to his friends. The other two stand, still on their cells. The three get into separate cars and drive off, right hands on steering wheels, left hands pressing phones to their ears. The bald guy drives a restored VW Bug. The souped-up engine roars when he starts it. Between fat tail pipes the license plate reads ‘BOB-BUG’. Black rubber mud flaps are embossed with silhouetted silver girls, one for each flap. The girls are naked, with bouffant hairdos. Their breasts point straight and they face into each other as if they were talking. 

“What are you looking at now?” Mom whispers.

“Nothing. Just that car.”

“You had one like that once.”

“Mine was red. I had to push it to the junkyard when it died. Remember?”

“Just be happy, Nick. Promise me.” She stares into space once more.

The waitress comes with our check, curled into a spiral, like a party favor. On the back she has written: Seize your day!!! Sharon 🙂   

“Look, Ma. A personal message.”

“Is it a poem?”

“Sort of. It’s a message, at least.”

My mom reads the looped cursive. “That is so true.”

Sharon comes back to the table five minutes later. I open my wallet and hand her my credit card. I know she just had a cigarette.

“You should stop smoking,” I say. Sharon smiles and waits for the card. “My mother has cancer.”

“And I never smoked a day in my life,” Mom’s voice fills the diner.

“Nobody should ever smoke,” I say. “It’s too damn dangerous.”

 “I swear to God,” Mom says and crosses herself. “Not a day.”

Sharon shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She walks away with the credit card. Mom and I watch Sharon hand the card to the register woman, who has a gray face and dark bags under her eyes. I can tell she’s smoked for years, too. She’ll die before too long. I can tell that, as well. She taps the card, punches in the amount.  

“She has our lives in her hand, Mom.” I chuckle, but stop.

“It’s only a credit card. That’s the last thing to worry about.”

Sharon and the other woman speak to each other but are too far away for me to hear anything. I bet they’re talking about us, about mom having cancer, in particular. 

“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.” Sharon drops the card and receipt. “Take your time.”

I leave a twenty percent tip, even though she didn’t check on us during the meal to make sure everything was all right, no extra water, no refill on the tea. I know she can use the money.

*

Something’s wrong with the car when we get across the street. The front looks too low. I walk around. Flat tire on the driver’s side. The passenger’s side is low, too. Nails stick out of both tires. We’ve obviously driven over them, maybe near a construction site or they just happened to spill in the road. 

“Damn,” I say.

“Why would someone do this?” Mom’s brow wrinkles.

“No one did it, mom. It just happened. This stuff happens all the time.”

“No. Someone did it. I know! Maybe those guys. Maybe they didn’t like you speaking up to them. They can be like that. They’ll do things.”

 “I watched them drive away. We just drove over some nails. That’s life.”

“Oh, shoot,” she says.

I click open the door locks. Mom pulls the passenger door and bends slowly to conform to the seat’s shape. She fumbles inside her handbag before she pulls out house keys and squeezes them tight in her fist, so much that her knuckles turn white. She clenches her jaw. Two keys stick out from between her fingers. Mom stares through the passenger window. Fast-moving clouds reflect in the car window. Her face appears behind the window, now and again obscured by the reflected clouds. Her skin is ashen. I know she needs to be out more. I’ll get her to walk with me, get up earlier in the morning. We could walk around the block a few times. I could help that way.

I rap on the window. “I’ll call Triple-A.” 

She shakes her head up and down, then she rolls down the window. “You haven’t promised me yet.” Her eyes are tearing again. 

“Promise? What?”

“To be happy. I want you to promise.”

“I’m trying my best.” 

“You’ve got to get me a cell, too. That’s next.” She rolls up the window. 

I pull out my cell. “No reception here.” I cross the street and go inside the diner’s small waiting alcove, out of the wind. I dial Triple-A, get put on hold. There’s dead silence as I wait. I don’t even know if I’m connected. I wait anyhow. The wind still blows. I see the same birds as before, or some just like them, fight the headwind to get back to their nest. A lone bird veers off from the rest of the flock, takes a severe left turn, on a collision course with the doctor’s building. A gust pushes the bird faster, out of control, headed straight for a cement wall. I imagine running, trying to gather the bird safely in a net. I don’t have a net, of course, and there’s probably no net like that anywhere. And even if there were, who’d be fast enough to catch a bird in a net? 

The bird strains to right itself. The wind is strong, though, and the bird is borne along. When the wind suddenly shifts upward, it pushes the bird enough so it just misses the side of the wall. The bird lifts into the soft gray powder of sky, flying away until it’s only a speck, little wings and heart beating so fast. The speck disappears.

Across the street mom has gotten out of the car. She squints her eyes to see where I am. The wind pushes her hair back from her face and she looks young and old at the same time, as if her age is doubling back on itself. I wave, but she can’t see me through the darkened glass of the alcove. I wave again. I rest my hand on the glass and continue to wait. Condensation from my warm hand prints its outline on the cold glass.  

“Who needs this?” I say, about to hang up. But I stay on the line.

Then I see another jet banking, too low it seems, its landing gear descended. It keeps banking, lower still. The jet looks like it’s about to drop, as if it will fall from the sky.

 “Mom, mom!” I bang on the window, panicked, imagining the jet will crash. She can’t hear me. The jet rights itself, smoothly descending, on its way to the airport. I sigh into the phone, into to the silence, where there’s not even recorded holding music.  

The wind whips dust and dirt against the alcove’s window, little pops for the briefest moment, before quiet returns. Mom stands near the car, scans the horizon. I keep the phone to my ear, waiting.

Mauro Altamura is a recipient of the 2022 Prose Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and visual arts fellowships from NJSCA, NYSCA, and the NEA. His prose has been published in Ovunque Siamo, Crimereads.com, Yolk Literary, Showcase: Object and Idea, and Milk Candy Review, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers, Newark and an MFA in Visual Art from SUNY Buffalo.