Nan was in the living room when I let myself into our apartment. I heard a yoga video and her steady breathing that paused when the door slammed shut behind me.
“Cass, is that you?”
“Yeah.” I tossed my bag to the corner near my room, its heavy thud reminding me briefly of school. The thought of going back there after today was both comforting and incomprehensible. The foyer was filled with the sweet, rich smells of cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Nan was brewing homemade tea—my grandmother, using her own grandmother’s Corinthian recipe.
“What are you … Oh, sweetie, you’re soaked!” I watched Nan’s feet as she hurried from the living room across the foyer to where I stood. They were bare, her deep maroon pedicure stark against translucent skin. She cupped my chin and drops of rain—or maybe it was tears—fell onto her wrist.
“What happened?”
I took a breath, cleansing, as her video would say, but my voice still shook. “I saw one today.”
She inhaled sharply and seemed almost as afraid to ask as I was to tell; but Nan would never shy away from something that needed doing, no matter how unpleasant. “And?”
I nodded and Nan put her arm around me. “Oh, Cassie. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” Gently she led me through open French doors into the living room and lowered me to the sofa. The thought crossed my mind that I’d leave a big wet spot on the slipcover, but it didn’t bother Nan. She squatted, holding both of my hands in hers, and searched my teary face.
Nan’s black eyes were sharp and framed with long lashes, paler now than the charcoal of the faded photo on her dresser. She had once been beautiful—it always surprised me how I could still see it in her face—but it was her spirit, an old friend of hers once told me, more than her exotic Mediterranean looks that had charmed the boys of their childhood neighborhood. Like me, she was short and small-boned but far from frail. There was an unmistakable strength to Nan, both inner and outer. Though her dark hair was now white and her olive skin no longer smooth over prominent cheekbones, Nan was anything but a little old lady.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get you some towels.” She crossed the room, deftly turning the TV off and the stereo on, before passing back through the French doors. Mozart played softly. I leaned back, the sofa getting wetter, and let the rising notes from strings, slightly melancholy, wash over me as I tried not to think.
Nan was back a minute later with two fresh Turkish towels, warm from the radiator they’d been draped over, and a change of clothes.
“Here. Dry off; get comfortable while I make you something hot to drink.”
Numbly, I stood, undid my ponytail, and dried my straight dark hair, too long and thick for the towel to do more than soak up the heaviest of the rain. I peeled off my dripping clothes, wrapping them in the towel, and slipped on the fleece pants and hoodie Nan had brought, cozy like a hug.
I heard the soft clank of the teapot and mugs, a rush of water, and the closing of cabinet doors in the kitchen. Nan’s busyness was soothing, but I knew she was worried. Nan always hummed while she worked, and her silence gave her away.
When she returned a few minutes later, I was tucked into the dry section of the couch. She handed me a steaming mug, keeping one for herself.
“Tea?” I asked.
“With a top hat.” All grown-up, she meant. With alcohol. “Sip slowly.”
I did. Slowly, but often. She waited until I was halfway through before asking, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
No. But I did anyway. It hurt to talk about it, a clenching in my chest like the heart attack I’d hoped might be the kind of death I’d witness.
Nan and I had known this day was coming, though I think we both wished otherwise. That I’d never see the mark again or it would turn out to be something else—an optical illusion, night blindness, some rare and random problem with my eyes. It had been a presence forever, in my oldest memories, though not many of them. Some years passed when I didn’t see it at all. It was only after Nan’s last stay in the hospital, more than a year before, that I finally realized what it meant.
As she’d gotten older, Nan’s diabetes became less and less manageable at home. We could both handle the drill without panic now: call the ambulance, ride to the hospital, fill out the forms. The nurses knew us and worked quickly to whisk her to the best room available, usually semiprivate. While she was inpatient, I’d take the bus downtown—the B3, as it happens—and walk the few blocks to the hospital.
On the second day of her last lockup, as she called it, I found her reading, lines from her IV draped like ribbons across the bed.
“Hello, sunshine,” she whispered. That and the drawn curtain told me Mrs. Gettis in the other bed was sleeping.
“Hello back,” I said, pulling over a chair and layering it with pillows to lift me to her level. At five foot one I felt small almost anywhere, but next to the hospital beds on their hydraulic jacks, I could almost inspect the underside of the mattress.
“Are you the princess?” Nan teased, watching me climb onto the stack and sit. “I think housekeeping collected all the peas last night.”
“I just don’t want you lording over me,” I said.
Nan was fine other than feeling like an overloaded pincushion. I told her about my math test—another A—and Spanish paper—only a B. I had almost forgotten about Mrs. Gettis completely until the orderly, Norton, pushed through the door.
“Came to take your roommate for her therapy,” he said, nodding at Nan with a smile.
He disappeared behind the curtain and Nan and I paused, knowing it was rude to eavesdrop, but suddenly reminded that we weren’t at home. Mrs. Gettis snorted awake, groaning at Norton’s urging to get up, help him move her to the wheelchair. Mrs. G. also had a chronic condition—bronchitis or asthma, something like that. Not serious, just a nuisance like Nan’s diabetes. But when Norton wheeled her out, both of them waving briefly as they passed, I saw it. The mark.
It’s like the haze at the edge of a flame or the glow of a lightbulb through fog. Constant and surrounding, but not obscuring. I could see Mrs. Gettis perfectly. She wasn’t blurry or misty, but she was outlined with a soft luminance.
“What is it?” Nan asked. I’d been staring after them.
I shook my head, smiled, and turned back to her. “Nothing.”
When I walked into Nan’s room the next day, the curtain was pushed back, sunlight spilling through the plate glass window and across the neatly made second bed. I think it started to connect then because I felt a heaviness in my gut that shouldn’t have been. It was a perfect day. I’d aced my history test and even found an extra five in my backpack on the way to the hospital.