I realize, even as I think it, that this is not necessarily true.
This is nothing like when I lost my father. Back then, it felt like a rip in the fabric of my world, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hold the edges together. Even now, four years later, when I am going about my day, sometimes I brush up against that seam and it hurts like hell.
I find a bottle of ca?a in the cupboard—Gabriel gave me my own supply after our campout, along with a box full of fresh vegetables for meals this week. Since I don’t have a shot glass, I pour a little into a juice cup, and then—shrugging—fill it to the top. I take a healthy swig, letting the fire run through me.
Right now, I just want to get fucking drunk.
I peel off my clothes, the ones in which I had hiked to the volcano （was that today?） and run the shower. Standing in the stream of water, needles pelting at my skin, I say the word out loud: orphan. I am nobody’s child now. I’m an isolated island, just like the one I’m stuck on.
There are logistics that will have to be sorted out: burial, funeral, liquidating her apartment at the facility. Right now even thinking about it is exhausting.
I pull on clean underwear and one of Gabriel’s old Tshirts, which hangs down to my thighs. I braid my hair to get it out of my face. Then I sit down at the table with the bottle of ca?a and pour my second full glass.
“Well, Mom,” I say, tasting the bitterness of that title. “Here’s to you.” I take another gulp of the liquor.
By tomorrow, the media worldwide will be reporting on her death. The obituaries will be retrospectives of her career—from her first embedding in a war zone to the Pulitzer she won in 2008 for photos of a street demonstration in Myanmar that turned violent.
The award ceremony for that was held at a swanky luncheon in New York City in late May. My mother attended. My father did not.
He was in the bleachers at my high school graduation, cheering as I crossed the stage to get my diploma.
I put my head down on my crossed forearms and sift through my mind for one pure pearl of a memory of my mother. Surely there’s one.
I discard one after another as they start off positive—a work trip I tagged along for; an image of her opening a Mother’s Day gift I’d made in preschool; a moment where she stood in front of my canvas at a student exhibition and canted her head, absorbing it. But each of those recollections devolves quickly, pricked by a thorn of self-interest: a sightseeing promise broken when something came up; a phone call from her agent that interrupted the gift giving; a blunt and brutal criticism of proportion in my painting, instead of a crumb of praise.
Did you really hate me that much? I wonder.
But I already know the answer: No. To hate someone, you’d have to consider them worthy of notice.
Then something drips into my consciousness.
I am little, and my mother is putting film into her camera. It is a magical black box and I know I am not supposed to touch it, just like I’m not supposed to go into her darkroom, with its nightmare glow and chemical scent. She balances the little machine on her knees and gently winds the slippery film until the teeth catch. It makes soft clicking noises.
Do you want to help? she asks.
My hands are tiny and clumsy, so she covers my fingers with her own, to circle the little lever until the film is taut. She closes the body of the camera, then lifts it and focuses on my face. She snaps a picture.
Here, she says. You try.
She helps me lift it and positions my finger on the shutter. I’ve seen her do it a thousand times. Except I don’t know to frame the shot through the viewfinder. I don’t really know what to look at, at all.
My mother is laughing as I push down on the shutter so hard it takes a flurry of photos, the sound like a pounding heart.
It occurs to me that I never saw those images. For all I know she developed them and got a crazy collage of blurry wall and ceiling and rug. Maybe I didn’t capture her at all.
But maybe that doesn’t really matter. For one second, it had been my turn.
New memories are sharp, and I wait for this one to draw blood. But … ?nothing happens. If anything it’s even more depressing to be sitting here half a world away, clinging to five seconds of motherhood, and wishing there had been more.
“Diana?”
I lift my head up from the table to find Gabriel standing in front of me. I blink at him as he turns on the light. I hadn’t even noticed that it had gotten dark.
“I was headed back to the house,” he says, “but wanted to see how you were.”
“Still sober, that’s how I am.” I push the bottle across the table. “Join me.” When he doesn’t at first, I refill my glass. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t get wasted.”