Write Anyway

Calling All Angels - Part 1
an excerpt from an upcoming novel by Michael Nolan

In the distance she could hear a throng of carolers singing the too-happy and too-joyous songs of a too-commercialized holiday and she questioned the empty room as though the lamp or the fading string art owl would respond.

“Why do they insist on singing the same damned songs year after bloody year? Its only the 15th for heaven’s sake!” She laughed to herself, “And still they have that alto who wouldn’t know her pitch if she had a catcher’s mitt.”

She turned the TV up and listened to the news anchor rambling on about how the folks down at Dover Street Methodist had outdone themselves again and how everybody needed to make sure that was a stop on their Christmas light tour this year. They had a drive-through nativity scene with live farm animals. It had been four years since Betty had left her little white Masonite® cottage for anything more than a few bags of groceries and she didn’t have any designs on changing that to go watch Alan Jenkins’ goats eat the heads off plastic wise men, or some chickens crap all over the baby Jesus.

A knock at the door startled her. She squinted and looked through the sheers to see the silhouette of a young woman standing on the stoop. If she stayed quiet enough, maybe the intruder would think she was asleep. It was 8:30 after all.

It didn’t work.

With a defeated sigh she unbolted, unchained and opened the door.

“I don’t know what you’re selling, but I don’t need any Christmas cards or cheese logs and I’m on Social Security so I don’t have any spare canned goods to give to the…”

As the visitor turned to face the door, the porch light lit her face and stopped Betty mid-sentence. She opened her mouth to take a breath but forgot to inhale.

“How…what are you…Mallory?!?”

“Hello, Mom.”

She took off her glasses and squinted - she had to be seeing things. Mallory lived just three miles away but Betty hadn’t heard a word from her since she refused to take care of Paulie when Mal did two years in lockup for trying to kill her pedophile ex-boyfriend. That was over six years ago.

“Wh…What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?” She walked in and was already taking off her coat when she looked back and saw her mother still standing motionless at the door. “Nice to see you too. We need to talk.”

Betty snapped back to reality and closed the door.

“I’ll make us some tea.”

Betty’s kitchen was exactly as you’d expect it to be. A bowl of fruit lay perfectly centered on the small aluminum and Formica table. Two perfectly pressed tea towels emblazoned with bold red poinsettias were folded over the handle of the oven door. The chipped porcelain of the sink was the only betrayer of its true age.

Betty reached into the yellowed pine cabinet and retrieved two matching cups and saucers, calling over her shoulder as though to a casual visitor “How do you take yours? I could never remember that. I have such a terrible memory for some things but I can still make fruit cake from scratch.”

“That’s because there’s alcohol in it” Mallory mumbled to herself.

“What’s that, dear?” Betty said, never looking up from the stove. “Two sugars will be fine, thanks.”

Betty turned and placed the hot cups on the table. She remained standing. “You look good, Mally.”

“Sit down, Mom. I have something to talk to you about.”

She took a long sip of her tea, took a deep breath and began.

“There’s a lump in my breast. I went to see the specialist at St. Francis yesterday and the tests showed that it is malignant.”

Betty’s hands cradled her still untouched tea as her eyes finally made contact with her daughter’s.

“You can’t be serious. What about a second opinion? I saw on Oprah the other day how a woman thought she had lung cancer for years and then it turned out she was allergic to her dog. It happens all the time. They’re just wrong, Mallory.”

“It’s called ‘mammary ductal carcinoma’. Breast cancer, Mom. And I’ve got it.”

Mallory took Betty’s hand and placed it on her right breast and half-whispered. “I’ve got it.”

About the Author: Michael Nolan is the oft-opinionated but never duplicated writer for Frugal Mania and a dozen other blogs scattered here and there across the ‘net. He is a full-time freelance writer who is working on his first novel. Feel free to visit and leave your love/hate letters anytime…he gets bored and needs something to laugh at from time to time.