She looked at the guest room.
She said: it’s a nice room.
She said it with the specific appreciation of someone who is trying to let themselves have something without immediately qualifying it back to nothing.
I said: it’s across from the bathroom.
She said: that’s thoughtful.
I said: the chemo.
She said: yes.
She said: thank you.
She said it simply, without apology attached.
That was the best she could do, and it was enough.
The first treatment was on Thursday.
I drove her.
I sat with her in the infusion room for five hours, which was the time the first session took, and I watched my mother undergo the specific experience of chemotherapy, which is the experience of lying in a chair while a bag of something powerful and expensive drips into your arm, your body both fighting and surrendering, and which produces in the people watching it a particular helplessness.
