It takes most of the morning and afternoon, sorting the things in her closet, her drawers, making piles for charity, trash, and to keep, the what-to-keep pile being the smallest of them all. Rufus watches with mild curiosity from his perch just inside the door to the room. I break down the bed, pushing the frame, mattress, and box spring out into the hall, along with the dresser, the nightstand. And then I dive into the first of her three jewelry boxes. I know it’s all costume—she took the few good pieces she owned with her to Long Island—but I go through it all, anyhow, if only just to hold each necklace and earring one last time. To conjure the memory of when I last saw her in them.
It’s not until the bottom of the third box that I find it—a letter, addressed to Kimberly Yount in Fountain City, Tennessee. The return address is my mother’s, mine—from when we lived in Fountain City. A black rubber stamp has been pressed into the front between the two—RETURN TO SENDER. I flip it over to find that it’s unopened.
I stare at it. And wonder who it could be. She never mentioned a Kimberly, even when we lived in Tennessee, apparently just a few miles away from this woman.
I sit down on the hardwood floor and slide my thumb under the flap, ripping through the old glue with little effort. I pull a folded piece of lined notebook paper out of the envelope and unbend its creases. I start reading.
Kimmy,
I know you don’t want to hear from me, but you won’t return my calls. Not that I blame you, I guess. I just need somebody right now. And you’re the closest thing to a friend I ever had.
Jubilee—that’s my daughter, that’s what I named her, maybe you already knew that, I don’t know—anyway, the doctors, they’re saying she’s got something awful. And I’m scared. They’re saying I can’t touch her. That no one can.
She’s always been an anxious girl—long before these problems started. She would wake up in the night screaming bloody murder like you never heard. Night terrors, that’s what the doctor said. But I knew it was something more—like she was born scared of the world. Like she always knew what she had before I knew it. And I thought it must have been my fault. You know I don’t believe in sinning or God punishing people or whatever, but I also know it’s not right, what I did—and maybe Jubilee has to pay for that? Like karma, or something.
And now that she’s got this thing, she’s even more jittery than before, although I guess I can’t blame her. She won’t let me anywhere near her. The doctors said if I was safe, if I wore gloves, didn’t have any skin-to-skin contact, it would probably be all right. But she’s just so frightened.
I bought this nightgown at Belk—this ugly old thing with long sleeves and about eight miles of fabric. (I don’t know who sleeps in something like that—although on second thought, I guess it’s exactly like something you’d wear. No offense.) And some nights when Juby’s sleeping, I sneak into her room and put my arms around her, careful not to wake her, not to touch her skin. And oh, she smells so good. Just like my baby girl, even though she’s six now. And it just breaks my heart.
I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, except maybe it’ll make you feel better to know that I’m in a world of hurt. And I guess I deserve it for ruining your marriage like I did. Or maybe I just want you to feel sorry for me. Lord knows I could use a friend right now, even if it’s out of pity.
Anyway, for what it’s worth. I’m sorry.
Vicki
When I finish, I read it again. And then a third time. And though it’s got clues to who my possible father is and insight to my mother’s past that I never dreamed of knowing—and am not even sure that I wanted to know—all I can focus on is that ridiculous nightgown I found in her closet and used as my Halloween costume. And I’m laughing even as my hands shake and tears roll down my face. My mother—who owned far too many too-tight blouses and smoked far too many cigarettes and was far, far from perfect—she held me. She loved me. The only way she knew how.
EVENTUALLY, I PICK myself up off the floor, put my mom’s letter in the what-to-keep pile, and continue with the sorting. A few hours later, muscles aching, I go downstairs, satisfied with the day’s work. I sit on the sofa, pick a book off the top of one of my teetering stacks, and decide to spend the rest of the evening reading, Rufus’s head in my lap.
Tomorrow, I’ll move my furniture in.
Right after I call Dr. Zhang.
epilogue
Seven years later
“What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle—it’s just a web.”
“Ever try to spin one?” asked Dr. Dorian.
E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
* * *
* * *
The New York Times
A RARE CONDITION, A RADICAL CURE by William Colton
Every day for the past eighteen months, Jubilee Jenkins drank tea. But not just any tea—a special brew, formulated with a heady mix of Chinese herbs by New York doctor Mei Zhang. The same mix of herbs that Jenkins also applied to her skin as a lotion twice daily and bathed in every night.
No, it’s not the latest fountain-of-youth trend, but a treatment for a rare condition that has left Jenkins, 33, on the sidelines for most of her life. An allergy. To humans.
It may sound like something out of a Michael Crichton novel, but it’s all too real for Jenkins, who was first diagnosed at the tender age of six. “It was devastating,” she said. “I couldn’t have a regular childhood, for fear of being touched.”
The affliction (first reported by the New York Times 28 years ago) only grew worse as she got older, confining her to her house for most of her twenties. But then she met with Dr. Zhang, who had an idea: to use genetic sequencing to isolate the human protein she was missing—the one (or ones) her body would attack when it was detected on her skin after contact with others—and to slowly introduce it to her system in the form of immunotherapy, a treatment that’s had some success with severe food allergies.
Jenkins resisted at first. “I had lived my whole life this way.” She shrugs. “I guess I was just scared.” But then something changed her mind. “I met someone,” she says, ducking her head. “I guess he made me realize I wanted to be a part of this world—with or without my allergy. It would just be easier to live in it without it.”
Dr. Zhang’s team of geneticists isolated the protein rather quickly—within five months—but five years of treatment garnered disappointing results. “She could tolerate minuscule amounts, but every time we tried to increase it, she would react. After a few years, we were finally able to up the dose, but we were nowhere near a cure. Nowhere near the realm of her getting a handshake or hug from somebody without a severe reaction. And that, obviously, was the goal.”
That’s when Dr. Zhang decided to try a novel approach that she’s been researching for more than ten years: HFAT-3, or Herbal Food Allergy Treatment. It’s a combination of Chinese herbal compounds and extracts that have been found to reduce inflammation, block histamine release—and even alter the molecular biology of immune system cells. In other words, they reduce the body’s knee-jerk reaction to a known allergen and can even prevent anaphylactic shock.
“My herbal treatment has worked very successfully—about an 80 percent cure rate—for various food allergies. And I just thought, why not? What did we have to lose?”