Chopped Liver

I strained to hear what Sue was saying over the din of my household. Surely, the story on social media wasn’t true. She looked amazing in the picture; her alabaster skin and white hair offset by the deep green around her, like those first few pictures of spring that show a crocus popping up through the snow. Sue didn’t look sick. Then again, who looks like they do on social media in real life? 

“Is it a scam?” My husband Bart asked pausing his Criminal Minds episode.

I waived him off and focused on my stepsister Sue. Her voice was the same as I remembered it from 30 years ago, minus the awkward pauses and heavy breaths. The sun beat in through my sliding glass door, swiping a mustache of perspiration across my upper lip. I felt ten again and she was the glamorous older stepsister who breezed in for a few hours on a random Sunday with a can of Tab in her hand like it was a permanent accessory. 

“I had cancer. Now I don’t.” She continued.

Her words were separated by painful canyons of time, not stacked on top of one another like how my children told stories.

“She has what?” Bart asked.

I stabbed the mute button. “Doesn’t have it.”

“What?” he questioned.

“The doctor says I need a transplant but…” Sue’s hesitation reminded me of when my friend Katie called, and she would be sneaking in a smoke thinking I couldn’t hear the silence followed by a thin-lipped exhale. You can hear a lot on a phone.

“Tell her it’s your birthday,” Bart suggested.

It had been 3o years since we last talked. I was fairly certain she didn’t care if it was my birthday. Three decades since we had talked in person but never on the phone. A phone call, after all, was a planned thing, an action. Talking in person could be an accident like when I was playing in the living room when she and my father walked in. I hated being caught like that and forced to answer questions like what grade was I in and if I liked school. At that time, I was still young enough to not have to return the social niceties of conversation. Six was safe. It gave me a non-socially-awkward excuse to allow the line of questioning to die with my soft-voiced answer directed at my feet.

“We have reservations.” Bart reminded me.

“But I’m not sick enough to be at the top of the transplant list.” 

Hours ticked by before she could finish her sentence.

“Did she say transplant?” 

“For real?” 

“Does she want you to do it?” 

“When?” 

Bart fired questions, machine gun style. Each stinging into me raising my anxiety. He repeated them again as if I hadn’t heard them in the initial iteration. 

While he paused and readied another inquisitive assault, she exhaled the words “University of Pennsylvania.” 

“Surely you could give here, not 1,000 miles away.” Bart pressed the controller, unfreezing the action. “Then they can Med Flight your liver. No reason for you to be there.”

 “Are you…” I stumbled over the right verb to use. “Uh, working with anyone else?” I asked but as soon as I did, I regretted it. Working? How is getting a donor lined up “working”? Plus, if she had a good donor lead, why would she have posted on Facebook and ultimately called me? We hadn’t even exchanged Christmas cards since my father’s funeral, nor had it occurred to me to do so.

The dead air across states made me want to hit the hang-up button and forget the whole thing. Surely her silence was not anger induced. What atrocity had I committed to be treated with a wordless conversation? I was 17 years younger. What could I have possibly said? Still, my memory wasn’t great. I searched it for our last conversation. I couldn’t recollect what it was about. Had I forgotten to tell her I thought she did a good job on Dad’s eulogy? Maybe it was something I had said in my own speech?

“No. Marilou’s daughter came forward, but she wasn’t a match.” 

“Should I call and cancel dinner?” Bart asked the TV.

“Carter offered but his wife said no.”

I nodded wondering why she didn’t mention either of her adult daughters. Maybe they had been turned down too. But wouldn’t she have added them to the list? I glanced at the photos of my boys on the mantle, their sweet buck-toothed grins. It must feel lousy knowing you gave life to someone who hadn’t offered to try to help you in return. Maybe they had health troubles. 

“It takes at least 20 minutes to get there, wouldn’t you say?” Bart asked but no one on Criminal Minds answered him. When he repeated the question a few minutes later during a commercial, no one eating at McDonald’s answered either.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Yes, what?” Sue asked.

“We’ll never make it. I should just call and cancel.” Bart reached for his phone sitting in the couch’s cupholder. It slipped out of his hand and down into the crack of the sofa. He dug around up to his shoulder, pulling out an old candy wrapper covered in dog hair.

“Yes.” I repeated.

Bart sprinkled the dog hair onto the floor. He looked at me from under his baseball cap and nodded. He knew that my “yes” wasn’t intended for him, but he didn’t fight me on it. Instead, he reached into the crack between the seats and fished out his phone, placing it back in the cupholder. He folded deeper into the couch, kicking out the footrest and turning his face from mine.

I walked back over to the sliding glass door and the bright light of the late afternoon. What is it like to imagine this summer as your last? I didn’t live with finalities like Sue. My world was one of possibilities and new beginnings, young kids, a new house, even a new husband.

“I’ll do it. I’ll get tested. Just let me know what I have to do.”