Chapter 53
Chapter Fifty-Three
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Bancroft
Somehow, everything here is slightly dream-like, slightly magical, the way memories tend to be when you're trying desperately to hold onto them. Though, it’s a weird way to describe a diner. Mom always said this place had the best fries in all of Boston, but I think what she really meant was that there was a saltiness to them that is a reminder of her and dad’s youth.
I slide into our corner booth, the one with the wobbly table that rocks whenever anyone puts their elbows on it. It’s the outcast table for the three black sheep. This is the booth nobody else wants, which makes it perfect for us. We’ve come back to this place more often because of the proximity to mom’s appointments. Doesn’t matter the year, the season, or the time of day, a diner’s menu can satisfy anyone and this one remains unchanged.
Dad's already ordering before any of us can even think about opening our menus. ‘Fries for the table,’ he says to our regular waitress who's known me through a few seasons of my own.
"French fries are a love language," mom says, her voice carrying that particular lilt that always makes her sound like she's about to share some profound secret. Even now, after everything, she still has that way about her, like she's carrying around this endless source of light inside her chest and we're all just lucky enough to bask in it. Even though the fact that we’re back here again tells us it isn’t endless at all. "Our first date was in a diner like this..."
"Sharing my french fries pretty much sealed the deal," dad adds, and I watch their hands find each other under the table, the way they always do, like magnets that can't help but pull together.
"The deal was already sealed..." she starts, and I can't help but roll my eyes, channeling my best Cher Horowitz. They both gasped when I called Clueless vintage last week, one of her favorites, but technically speaking, it is.
"Can you not ?" I groan, but there's no real annoyance behind it. How could there be? These are the moments I collect like seashells, storing them away for when the tide goes out. The cyclic nature of this whole thing, of the tests, the results, the options, the treatments, the real celebrations, the tests, the results, the options, the treatments… Well, that’s why we spend so much time in this diner.
Mom looks tired today. The kind of bone deep exhaustion that seems to follow us home from every appointment like an unwanted shadow. But when she looks at him, her eyes still light up with the same spark I've seen in every photo album, every video, and every stolen glance across this very table.
"Your father's right, it sealed the deal," she continues, her voice warm with memory. "Then he ordered a piece of pie..."
"And he pretended he didn't want any but ended up eating half," I finish, because I know all their stories by heart now. The way some kids memorize fairy tales, I've memorized my parents as the blueprint, even now.
"I never pretended," dad protests, his mock offense making Mom laugh.
The fries arrive, golden and perfectly crisp, steam rising from them like little prayers. Dad automatically pushes them closer to her side of the table, and I pretend not to notice how she takes smaller bites these days, how she sometimes has to pause between them, and how she still shows up here anyway.
She casually talks about the next phases of treatment, as if she's talking about the weather or tomorrow's homework. ‘The doctors are optimistic.’ She says this last part with a slight frown.
She is busy picking around her omelet and I’m two bites into a burger when she decides to fully pivot the conversation.
“How’s Ollie?” she asks as my dad mouths the words ‘apple pie’ to the waitress as if we can’t see it.
“Ollie is… Ollie. He’s good. He’s busy. You know him.” And they do know him. They’ve known him since before I was born . Though she says that based on the time I was her ‘womb-mate’ — gross — that technically she’s known me longer than she’s known him. Oliver has been my on-again-off-again everything since we were infants. Currently, we're back into the same space which seems to be our default setting post puberty.
They've had front row seats to the Bancroft-and-Oliver show for our entire lives after all. Both the ones we made them watch when we got super into Meryl Streep, and the ones where I spent a week crying after he pop-kissed Lindsey Lovewell, yes that was her real name, in truth or dare.
I watch them, these two people who've built their entire world around each other and then somehow made room for me in it too.
"Same time next month?" I ask as we're getting ready to leave, and I see something flicker across mom's face, quick as a shooting star, gone before you can make a wish on it.
"Same time," she agrees, her voice steady even though her hand trembles slightly as she reaches for her purse. Dad pretends not to notice, just like he pretends not to notice how she leans on him a little more heavily as we walk to the car. And you can see in the way he looks at her, he would carry any part of her for as far as she needed.
The evening air wraps around us like a blanket as we make our way across the parking lot, our shadows stretching long beneath the street lights. I trail slightly behind them, watching how they still walk in perfect step with each other, how his hand finds hers without either of them having to look.
He whispers something softly to her, and even from behind, I can see how her whole body softens at his words, like a flower turning toward the sun. For a moment, watching them, I can almost believe that nothing's changed, that nothing will change, that we'll keep coming back to this wobbly table until we're all old and gray and still arguing about who gets the last french fry.
But then I catch her reflection in the car window as she gets in, see the careful way she holds herself now, like she's made of something a little more delicate. I see the way his hands linger on her shoulder just a second longer than they used to and the way his eyes follow her every movement more than I recall him doing ever before.