Suffocating
Elizabeth thinks she has cancer but she has decided that she's not going to do anything about it. She won't see a doctor, even though she doesn't mind doctors, not really. She finds some secret enjoyment—no, not enjoyment, exactly— but some deep-seated pleasure from her possible cancer that she's not fully aware of herself, but it's there.
It's there when her son, who is off in college, decides he is going to spend Christmas with his new girlfriend. He asks, "Is it okay?"
"Yes, that's fine," she replies. "Yes, go. Go."
When she hears the dial tone she places the phone back into its cradle. "You'll be sorry when I'm dead next year," she says. There is a sweet finality in her voice. He'd be sorry he didn't spend his Christmas with his dead mother. He'd cry, cry, oh, he would cry over her grave. Shocked, so shocked, that she died. He'd wonder why she didn't tell him about her cancer. He'd be stupid, ignorant. It would be all his fault. Her death is his fault. He should have come to Christmas. Should have spent time with the family, see her cancer—but no, she doesn't want him to know.
Every night Elizabeth lies awake, sleepless . She moans, moans in distress. She is going to die. There is so much left for her to do. She looks at the brown spot on her breast, the spot she's had all her life. She stares at it and laments. Her cancer, her brown cancer. Pills, and pills. More pills washed down with Milwaukee's Best. Red, white, and brown pills that don't work. Never work. She is sure the spot is growing. Soon she will run out of time. She won't be able to get that job she got her degree for, spent thousands of dollars for. She won't ever get a dog, a dog like she always wanted. Small and black with a long pink tongue.
Elizabeth moans until she wakes up her daughter, the eldest, who still lives in her house, her house, and she comes into her room and complains and complains. Her daughter tells her she's melodramatic, that there's nothing ever wrong with her. Elisabeth tells her to keep complaining. She thinks that her daughter will miss her moans when she's gone—dead and gone. Elizabeth knows she has cancer. She knows it, and she savors the thought. Both of her children sobbing, sobbing. If only they had asked. If only they had asked their poor, dying, helpless, mother.
But no, she doesn't want them to be sad, and yet she does, she does. She is powerless to stop her cancer. They need to know—to find out, but she can't help them. They are too stupid to understand her. They could never understand. She doesn't want them to. They are too much like normal people to understand her. If she wasn't crippled by her sickness, she would help them, but she is. She is afraid, terrified, but she isn't outwardly, not to everyone else. She doesn't want them to know.
She is, as it's said, underground. Suffocating.