She paces around her room, circles an invisible spot. She takes out her phone, dials half a number, then puts it down again. The room feels smaller than ever, and every circle shrinks it further—soon, she thinks, I’ll choke. With her eyes closed, she dials in her mother’s number, presses the call button, and holds her breath. The phone rings four times.
“Hannah?”
“Mom, I … I’m sorry, I—”
“You sound so different,” Delilah interrupts. She takes a few moments to think, which feel like long, excruciating, nail-dragging minutes, but eventually, she speaks again. “How have you been?”
“Good.” Six years, six fucking years, just ‘good’ in the end. “And you?”
“Oh, you know, same as always,” Delilah replies, knowing full well that her daughter has no idea what that means. “It’s … been a while.” Hannah covers her mouth and nose with her free hand, drying whatever tears she can with her thumb and pointer.
“Yeah,” she says, trying her hardest to keep her voice from breaking. You sound so different.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
Hannah moves her hand off her face and lets out a loud sniffle. “Yeah. It’s been a while.” They talk about their weeks as if no time had passed at all. Hannah spent some time with Emil, went to the bar twice (she’s careful to omit this detail), didn’t do anything else particularly interesting. Delilah just says that she’s been working a lot. That brings up the feared topic, of course, and Hannah does her best to deal with it.
“I, um. Well, I guess I should start with, I did manage to graduate on time.”
“Congratulations!” says Delilah, the earnestness in her voice freaking Hannah out.
“I work at a lab here. I research addiction, that kind of stuff. It’s fine. The people are fine. No benefits or anything, though. The pay’s not great.”
“You think you could get a raise?”
“I’m scared to ask.” What if I’m not good enough? What if they think I’m being greedy? What if they cut my hours?
“Do it! Hell, I’ll do it for you,” says Delilah.
“Mom, I’m not a kid anymore.” Then the obvious response; you’ll always be my baby, and so on. My son. My daughter. “Really, I swear it’s fine.”
Time flows like molasses as they idly chat, ignoring still the time that has passed between then and now, ignoring it as best they can, anyway, and, eventually, the sky outside Delilah’s window turns a vivid purple. For Hannah, three timezones apart, the sun is still out, but she imagines a sunset nonetheless. The sun blackens as it reaches the horizon, and its yellows burst onto the canvas of the sky. The clouds, too, vanish, and the first stars come by. Sarah points them out: Scheat, Alperatz. Polaris. And that’s Mars. Delilah, meanwhile, looks at the clouds, at the way that their wispy edges point to the horizon line, the way that they blend into the night sky as it darkens. Her silver hair shines in the moonlight.
“It’s been nice to catch up”, says Hannah, really meaning it. Her mother responds in kind. Then she coughs, and coughs again. Hannah gathers that Jasnomir brought her some cloth or something because, all of a sudden, the coughs are much quieter. “You okay, Mom?”
“I’m fine—don’t worry about me. I’m not worrying about you, you know … you’ve grown into a wonderful woman and I’m sure everything will be alright one way or another. Just a cold, is all..”
“I wish I could put it all behind me, Mom,” Hannah mutters, though Delilah doesn’t hear it.
“Have you gone to the hospital?”
“No! I told you I’m fine. I’ll get back to work tomorrow.”
“Okay. Just promise that you’ll go to the hospital if you’re still sick tomorrow.” “Okay, honey,” Delilah replies. “I promise.”