“Do you remember when I told you that I wanted a different ending to the story of Bryce and me?”
“Of course,” I said.
She gazed up at me, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. “With you, I got the ending that I wanted.”
*
Maggie’s parents came to stay in February, settling in at a boutique hotel not far from Maggie’s apartment. Like me, her mom and dad simply wanted to be close to her. Her dad remained quiet, deferring to his wife; most of the time, he sat in the living room with the television tuned to ESPN. Maggie’s mom occupied the chair near the bed and wrung her hands compulsively; whenever the nurse arrived, she demanded explanations for every adjustment to Maggie’s pain medicine, as well as other aspects of her care. When Maggie was awake, her mom’s constant refrain was that what was happening wasn’t fair, and she repeatedly reminded Maggie to pray. She insisted the oncologists in Seattle might have been able to do more and that Maggie should have listened to her; she knew someone who knew someone who knew someone else who also had stage IV melanoma but was still in remission after six years. She sometimes lamented the fact that Maggie was alone and had never gotten married. Maggie, for her part, endured her mother’s anxious nattering patiently; it was nothing she hadn’t heard her entire life. When Maggie also thanked her parents and told them that she loved them, her mom seemed nonplussed that Maggie felt she’d needed to say those words at all. Of course you love me! I could picture her thinking. Look at all I’ve done for you, despite the choices you made in your life! It was easy to understand why Maggie found her parents draining.
Her parents’ relationship with me was more complicated. For nearly a quarter of a century, they’d been able to pretend that Maggie had never been pregnant at all. They treated me warily, like a dog that might bite, and kept both physical and emotional distance. They asked me little about my life but overheard quite a bit when Maggie and I were talking, since her mom tended to hover whenever Maggie was awake. When Maggie asked to speak to me alone, Mrs. Dawes always left the room in a huff, which only made Maggie roll her eyes.
Because her children were young, it was harder for Morgan to visit, but she made it out on two separate weekends. On her second visit in February, Maggie and Morgan spoke for twenty minutes. After Morgan left, Maggie briefed me on their conversation, cracking a wry smile despite her now-constant pain.
“She said that she’d always been jealous of the freedom and excitement of my life.” Maggie gave a weak laugh. “Can you believe that?”
“Absolutely.”
“She even claimed that she often wished we could trade places.”
“I’m glad the two of you were able to talk,” I said, squeezing her birdlike hand.
“You know what’s craziest, though?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“She said it was hard for her growing up because our parents always favored me!”
I had to laugh. “She doesn’t really believe that, does she?”
“I think she does.”
“How could she?”
“Because,” Maggie said, “she’s more like my mom than she realizes.”
*
Other friends and acquaintances visited Maggie in the final weeks of her life. Luanne and Trinity came by regularly, and she gave them both the same gift she’d given me. Four different photo editors also swung by, along with her printer and someone from the lab, and during these visits I heard more stories about her adventures. Her first boss in New York and two former assistants made appearances, along with Maggie’s accountant and even her landlord. For me, though, all of those visits were painful to watch. I could see her friends’ sadness as they entered the room, could sense their fear of saying the wrong thing as they approached the bed. Maggie had a way of making all of them feel welcome, and she went out of her way to tell them how much they’d meant to her. To each of them, she introduced me as her son.
Somehow, in the few periods I wasn’t around her apartment, she also made arrangements for a gift for Abigail and me. Abigail had flown out again in the middle of February, and as we sat on the bed, Maggie said that she’d prepaid for a safari to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Kenya for Abigail and me, a trip that would last more than three weeks. Both of us insisted it was too much, but she waved off our concerns.
“It’s the very least I can do.”
We both hugged and kissed and thanked her, and she squeezed Abigail’s hand. When we asked her what we might expect to see, she regaled us with stories of exotic animals and camps located in the wilderness, and as she spoke, there were moments when she seemed exactly like her old self.