Edgar
The conversation about her death was the worst conversation of my life.
Sit next to me, she said, patting the hospital bed beside her. I’m not going to break.
It started with a headache that wouldn’t go away.
And then, one day, I couldn’t make sense of things.
I thought I was hallucinating. I saw a boy who looked like my son…
but who I just knew wasn’t. The doctors call it Capgras syndrome—when you believe that a close family member has been replaced by an imposter.
I went to a psychiatrist first, but he referred me to a neurologist. Someone who could take a look at my brain.
The MRI found the brain tumor. It’s in the glial cells—they’re sort of the glue of the nervous system.
They hold neurons in place, and they supply nutrients and oxygen to the brain.
They insulate one neuron from another. And they destroy toxins.
Finding out that you have a glioblastoma is kind of like finding out that you have termites eating the structure of your house.
They don’t eat the aluminum siding, your plumbing, or your appliances… but good luck living in that house.
As she spoke, I felt like I should have been kicking. I should have been screaming. Turning over tables. Yelling at the top of my lungs. But instead I just felt numb.
As she spoke, I felt like my mother should have been sobbing, shouting, cursing. Instead she was relating the details in an even voice, as if she had practiced.
It was like we were having a discussion about something horrific that was happening to two people who were not us.
The reason we moved from Wellfleet was because the best neurologist in New England happens to be here, at St. Brigid’s. When you were at school, I was at appointments. And I was trying very hard to get the courage to tell you what was happening to me.
I don’t get it. Why can’t you have surgery? I asked. What about chemo?
This type of tumor is so similar to normal brain cells that it’s impossible to treat without destroying a lot of healthy cells too.
So any medicine or operation is only going to prolong the inevitable.
I’m going to die, Edgar. The question is whether I want to spend fifteen months suffering through a treatment that isn’t going to cure me, or if I’d rather have four perfect months with you.
I swallowed hard.
Does it hurt? I asked.
Only when I think about what I’m missing, my mother said. Cheering for you on your graduation day. Dancing with you at your wedding. Holding my first grandchild. Watching you grow up into a magnificent man.
But I couldn’t imagine growing up without her there to witness it. I took a deep breath and tried and could only see a great, big blank. I felt like I was going to be sick.
What happens to me? What am I supposed to do without you?
Your birthday’s in a week. You’ll be eighteen—which means legally, you’re an adult. You have cousins in California you can live with. You can go to college—your father and I set enough money aside to make sure of it. You’ll go on, and you’ll live a spectacular life.
What I wanted, in the middle of that conversation, was a do-over.
Like when I used to go to the town pool with my mom and practice my somersaults off the diving board and wound up doing belly flops instead.
That one doesn’t count! I would yell from the edge of the pool, and she would nod, and I’d start again.
I wanted this—this hospital room, this conversation, this reality—to not count.
I wanted to go back in time, to before we were in this hospital.
Before I went into her office at home. Before I found out her secret.
I tried to tell her this, but what came out instead was I should have said I love you more.
I’m your mom, she said. Don’t you think I know?
I started to cry then. After my dad died, I thought I was safe—that the world could never get that bad again.
I figured the worst had already happened and things could only get better from there.
But I’d managed to win the suckiest lottery twice: two parents with terminal illnesses.
I thought of how I willingly left my mother to go into a stupid book, giving up months I could have spent with her.
I thought of how she would tell me to clean my room or take my dirty dishes to the sink and I would tune out, when now I wanted her to keep speaking so I would never forget her voice.
It’s not fair, I whispered.
Oh, Edgar. She squeezed my hand. Life’s not fair.
When I was in the fairy tale and miserable and Oliver came to check on us, I instinctively told him things were great, even though they weren’t. It was Frump who said, afterward, that we all hide things to make the people we love happy.
So I forced a smile onto my face, a square peg in a round hole, a shoe two sizes too small.
I told her we’d better start working on her bucket list.
When I was five, my mother and I went apple picking on Cape Cod.
It was September, and the farm had a corn maze.
The air smelled like cider and fresh-baked donuts, and families were dotted throughout the orchard, collecting apples in canvas sacks.
It was sunny and cold all at once, and the sky was so blue it looked like a movie backdrop.
A shaggy horse pulled a wagon to the parts of the orchard where the trees hadn’t been picked over yet.
My mom and I walked as far as we could, to the edge of the field, where a bored teenager took our money to let us into the maze.
The stalks were taller than me. I ran down the straight edge of the corridor, high-fiving the fronds like they were my adoring fans. My mom chased after me, careful to make sure I didn’t get too far ahead.
It was dusty and dry, and after about fifteen minutes my eyes and my throat began to itch. My mother scooped me up and put me on her shoulders so I could be her periscope, but even with that vantage point we weren’t tall enough. I was pretty sure we were going in circles.
After a while the sun lit the tips of the cornstalks, as if they were candles. I was hungry and tired, deadweight in my mother’s arms. Edgar, she said, desperate times call for desperate measures.
Instead of turning at the next fork in the maze, my mother kicked at the stalks with her boots, creating a small passage.
Like ghosts, we began to walk through the walls.
Finally we got spit out on the far edge of the farmland, in a field we had never seen before.
It was like someone had pulled the rip cord, and night floated down over us.
“Where are we?” I asked. Everything looked unfamiliar, and I was starting to get that weird feeling in my stomach that came when I was scared.
My mother took my hand. Let’s find out, she said, and just like that, I wasn’t afraid. I was on an adventure.
Jules is right.
My mother is going to die if she stays here.
But what if she didn’t have to?
Given the number of times characters have traded places with ordinary people, there’s got to be a way. And no one would know that way better than the author of the fairy tale. But that means coming clean with my mother and explaining everything that’s happened.
When my mother’s eyes open, they are foggy for a moment, and then they fix on me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer; she just nods.
“Mom, there’s something I have to talk to you about. And it’s going to be hard for you to believe, so I have witnesses.” I motion for Delilah and Jules to come inside. Delilah is cradling the book in her arms. “You know Delilah already, and this is her best friend, Jules.”
They step into the room gently, as if the floor is made of lava. “Jules, hello. And, Delilah,” my mother says. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’m really, um, sorry…to hear that you’re sick,” Delilah says. “If there’s anything I can do—”
“You already have. You’ve made my son very happy.” She smiles at me.
“That’s kind of what I need to talk to you about,” I tell her. “Delilah isn’t really my girlfriend.” I pull up a chair beside the bed and sit down so I can take my mother’s hand. “And when you thought I was an imposter, living in your house? You weren’t really all that far off.”
My mother frowns and tries to sit up in the bed. “I don’t understand.”
Delilah takes a step forward. “It all started with me,” she says, gesturing to the book. “I found your story in my school library. And I fell in love with it. I read that fairy tale ten times a day. I knew every word, forward and backward. Then one of the characters spoke to me.”
“It’s always nice to hear when a reader feels a connection to a character,” my mother says.
“No,” Delilah explains. “This character? Actually spoke to me.”
“It was Oliver,” I jump in. “The prince you wrote.”
“Except he didn’t want to be a prince,” Delilah says. “He wanted to be real. And he wanted my help escaping the book. So I did everything I could think of to help him—including coming to your house and asking you to rewrite the ending.”
“But I wouldn’t,” my mother says, remembering.
“No,” I agree. “And to be honest, I thought she was nuts. Until I opened the book, and Oliver spoke to me too.”
“But that’s impossible,” my mother says, and then she relaxes against her pillow, as if it suddenly all makes sense. “This conversation isn’t happening. It’s the medication.”
“We figured out a way to get Oliver out of the book,” I tell my mother. “But it meant that someone else had to take his place: me.”
“Edgar, honey, I know this has been a really difficult day for you. There are people here you can talk to who can help—”
“He’s not crazy,” Jules interrupts. “I was inside the book with him. And Delilah’s been there too. I know it sounds insane. And I know every fiber of your being is telling you not to believe this. But you have to, because it’s true.”
My mother turns to me. “All right,” she says, in the tone you’d use to placate someone who’s nuts.