Five Days Left (30 page)

My sweetest Laks,

I left this letter with Daddy, and asked him to give it to you when he thinks you are old enough to read it. The fact that he has given it to you now means he thinks you’re old enough, mature enough. Good for you for being so mature. I am so proud of you. I was always so proud of you. I always will be.

I honestly don’t know if there is a God, or a Heaven. We didn’t talk a lot about it, you and I. By now, Auntie Gina may have taken you with her to church a few times, and you may know more about all of it than I ever did. If you believe, then I do, too. Children are often able to understand things like this better than their parents are. And I hope it makes you feel better to know I am in Heaven, watching you, loving you. With you. But even if you don’t ever believe, I will always be with you. Just close your eyes and think of me. It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember what I look like—you just have to think, “Mama,” and I will be there.

And that leads me to a few important things I want you to know. The first is that I love you. More than anything in the world. And
I don’t want you to ever think that if I’d loved you more, I’d have stayed. I couldn’t love you more.

The second thing is that it’s okay if you stop remembering what I look like. Or what my voice sounds like. That is totally normal. I don’t remember how my mother looked or sounded when I was five. You can look at my pictures if you want to see me. And if you don’t want to see me, that’s okay, too.

The third is that if Daddy remarries, it’s okay if you love your new mom as much as you loved me. Or more than you loved me. That’s normal, too, I promise. And I also promise that it’s what I want for you.

The fourth is that my dying is not your fault. It was Huntington’s fault. You know this. We talked about it many times, how Huntington’s made Mama sick, and how it couldn’t be stopped. I know Daddy will have already told you this. Your grandparents will tell you, too, and I know Those Ladies also will. Please believe them. Huntington’s is a very powerful disease that I couldn’t fight any longer. There was nothing you, or Daddy, or even the doctors could have done to save me.

The fifth is that if you ever need anything, Those Ladies are there for you. Daddy knows this, too. He also knows I believe he is the most amazing father in the world, and that he can help you with anything that comes up. But if there is ever a time when you think it would be helpful to talk to another woman, Daddy will not be upset if you tell him you’d like to speak with them. Or shop with them, or get your nails painted with them . . . or any of that girl stuff.

The sixth, and last, is that well-meaning people will probably tell you that now that your mother is gone, you must “be good” or “be brave” or “be strong” or “be a big girl” and that you need to do that for your father, or for your grandparents, or even for me. And I want you to know those well-meaning people are wrong. You don’t need to be good or brave or strong or big or anything you don’t feel like being. You
need to be who you are, and act how you want to act, and feel what you want to feel.

And you need to do that for you, and not anyone else. And anyone who tells you different is wrong. Don’t tell them that—but you can think it. And when you do, think of me, and know that I will be nodding my head and saying, “You’re right.”

I love you, my sweetie, my Lakshmi. And I have loved every second of every minute of every day of being your mother.

Thank you. Thank you for making me the luckiest mama in the world. That’s what I was, because I had you for a daughter.

Love, Mama xo

Dear Tom,

My one true love, my darling, my heart, my everything.

Do you remember the first day you asked me out? We were standing in the foyer of Morrice Hall. I had run in there to escape the rain and you walked into the wrong building for an interview. We talked for a while, waiting for the rain to stop. And then you asked me out. I didn’t answer you for a long time and you thought it meant I wasn’t interested, and you apologized and turned to leave. I stopped you and explained that I’d thought I was about to sneeze and that’s why I delayed responding.

That was a lie. Do you know why it took me so long to answer?

Because I couldn’t breathe.

You were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. And when you looked up and saw me there and struck up a conversation, I told myself you were only being polite. We were the only two people in the foyer—you had to talk to me. I told myself you likely had a line of gorgeous women standing outside your door every night, vying for your attention. If any of them had been around then, or if it hadn’t been raining, if you hadn’t been forced into that enclosed space with me, you’d never have given me a second look. So when you kept talking to me for ages, even after the rain stopped, I couldn’t believe my luck. And when you asked me if I’d go out with you, well, like I said, I couldn’t breathe.

I could have died happy that day. And yet, lucky me, I was given so many more days after that—so many more happy days with you. Some sad ones, too, as everyone has. But more happy than sad, without question. And more happy than I ever, in all my dreams, thought I would have.

I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world that day and I have thought that every day since—until Dr. Thiry came along. But no one
can be so lucky for so long, I suppose. And I have come to think of it as a universal fairness that my glorious life with you has come to an end—it’s not fair for one person to corner all the happiness, or even as much of it as I have. It’s time to redistribute it again.

You are my dream come true. You are everything I ever wanted. Strike that—you are more than I ever wanted. More than I ever thought of wanting, more than I imagined I could want. And my life, since that first day I met you, has been so much more than I ever thought to plan for, or dream of.

Because of you.

I know you will be angry with me, my love, and I don’t blame you. And if one day you tell Laks how I really died, and she asks if you were angry, or if you still are, I hope you will answer her honestly, so that if she is angry, too, she won’t feel alone.

But please don’t only be angry. Please be fond sometimes. And please remind Laks to be also.

Also, Tom, please allow yourself to be relieved, and let Laks know it’s okay if she is. You don’t have to admit it to her—I know you won’t ever let yourself say it out loud. But please admit it to yourself. And know that when you finally do, my soul will finally be freed (no, I don’t suddenly believe, but I’m allowing for the chance that you may, one day).

I want you to be relieved, my darling. I want that more than anything—to relieve you of me, and this horrible disease that’s turned me into someone so different from the girl whose breath you took away that day.

That’s why I’ve done this—to spare you and Laks. And the others, too, but mostly the two of you. You deserve all the happiness and adventure the world has to offer, and you would never get it with me around. I don’t want you saddled with a wife who can’t be taken out in public without humiliating herself; I don’t want Laks stuck with that kind of mother. Or tied to the house, feeding, bathing and changing a
grown woman when you should be out, living. I can’t bear the thought of you wasting hours of your lives visiting some empty shell of your former lover, Laks’s former mother, in a nursing home.

I did this for me, too, yes—I could never fool you into thinking it wouldn’t have driven me insane to lose control of my life. But I did it, above all, for you, my dear, kind, altruistic husband, who would have spent the next however many years chained inside, to me, while the best years of your life drifted by outside the window without your noticing.

And no, you didn’t drive me to this by acting like I was holding you back. I never felt any kind of resentment from you, any hint that you felt ripped off, choosing the one woman in all of McGill, maybe, with a time bomb inside her DNA strand. Quite the opposite—I have felt, for the past four years, that you were willing and able and even cheerful about the thought of caring for me as this progressed. That you would have been more honored than bothered to brush my hair for me, to blend my food and feed it to me from a spoon, to wipe my chin after every bite.

On the subject of getting my own way (you knew this was coming when you found my letter, didn’t you?): I want you to date. I know you’re shaking your head right now. Stop. Listen to me: I mean it. I want you to meet someone wonderful and I want you to fall in love.

If it helps, don’t think you’re doing it for yourself. Do it for me. I am torn apart by guilt at leaving you this way, for you being the one who has to face it, to break it to the others. Knowing you will one day be in love again, with someone strong and healthy and vibrant who can travel with you, run with you, be a real partner to you for the rest of your life, absolves me of some small fraction of my immeasurable guilt. Please, please let me have that absolution.

But most of all, do it for our daughter. She’s too young now to realize how wonderful a husband and partner her father was. She needs to see you in that role again, when she’s old enough to observe
and absorb it. She needs to witness how romantic and loving and thoughtful you are. How you remember anniversaries and Valentine’s Day and birthdays. How you bring home flowers for no reason. How generous you are with kisses and compliments.

How else will she know what to hold out for?

What else can I say to you, my love, my heart, my best friend, my lover, my husband, my everything?

Only that I am so profoundly sorry to have left you without warning or the kind of goodbye I longed to give. Please understand I had to. I could never have risked letting you suspect my plan, and having you prevent it, which we both know with certainty you’d have done.

And thank you.

Thank you for your patience and forgiveness over the last several trying years.

Thank you for being my rock.

Thank you for holding me on the nights I howled in rage at being sentenced to such a terrible and premature ending.

Thank you for telling me every day that you loved me more than ever, that this thing hadn’t gotten between us, that you weren’t sorry you had chosen me. That you would stay with me forever, and that it was because you wanted to, not because you felt you should. I believe you, Tom. I know you would have stayed with me. I always knew you would have.

I never thought you should have to.

And thank you for taking my breath away in the foyer of Morrice Hall, all those years ago.

And every day since.

Your
Mara

My profound gratitude to Amy Einhorn for her brilliant editorial insights, for helping to create a new literary drinking game and for letting me sneak in a reference to a certain UK boy band in honor of my three favorite teenage girls. Thanks also to Elizabeth Stein, Anna Jardine and the rest of the team at Amy Einhorn Books, and to Thomas Dussel of Penguin Group USA.

Thank you to my agent, Victoria Sanders, who took a chance on a new writer and whose magical agenting powers resulted in the most exciting vacation my husband and I have ever had. Thanks also to Bernadette Baker-Baughman for answering my many newbie questions, to Chris Kepner and to everyone else at Victoria Sanders Associates. Also, thank you to Eric Rayman.

It was vitally important to me to portray Huntington’s disease (HD) accurately. I am more thankful than I can adequately express to the experts who so generously took the time to educate me about the condition, especially Bonnie L. Hennig, MSW, LCSW, QCSW, DCSW, who spent hours explaining the medical, emotional and social aspects of HD, and Kelvin Chou, M.D., who listened to me run through every plot point in Mara’s story and advised whether each was medically accurate and, if not, how to make it so. In addition, Barb Heiman, LISW, and Elynore Cucinell, M.D., provided their significant expertise and experience. Any inaccuracies are mine alone.

I am lucky to have smart and helpful friends. Kate Baker, Jeanne Estridge, Jana Timmer Bastian, Terri Eagen-Torkko, Meghan Eagen-Torkko, Mary
Beth Bishop, Jennifer Bondurant, Julia Kailing Cooper, Sarah Roach Plum, Ruth Slavin, Anna Cox and Sonja Yoerg read and commented on early drafts, as did Kate Kennedy. The amazing Benee Knauer helped massage a manuscript with potential into something much better. Rina Sahay, Elisha Fink, Lori Nelson Spielman, Linda VanAcker, Pamela Landau and Meghan Eagen-Torkko provided expertise in a variety of areas, from Indian culture, Michigan criminal law and school district policy to the social environment in Detroit and the emotional challenges related to adoption and infertility. Nicole Ross, The Cool Kids, Glenn Katon, The Monday Night Ladies, Nick Kocz, Mike Coffman, Patrick Cauley, Charley Hegarty, Mary Bisbee-Beek and Adam Pelzman offered moral and other support at various times along the way. Thank you, all of you.

My children, Samantha, Jack, Libby and Maddie, have been loud and enthusiastic cheerleaders, and never once complained about hearing, “Just let me finish this chapter,” as an answer to almost every question they asked me for twenty-four straight months. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Finally, I am so grateful to my husband, Dan, who took on all the work of running our hectic household for two years while I hid in a corner, hunched over my laptop. He served as my first-line editorial adviser, too, and has been labeled The Plot Doctor by my writing friends because of his uncanny ability to solve the thorniest plot and character issues. His “reward” for this talent was constant interruption—from reading, working, watching Michigan sports and even sleeping—by my repeated refrain, “Can I ask you one more question about the book?” Always, his answer was, “Sure.”