Georgia Road

She remembered the day she received the phone call as if it had happened only an hour ago. The phone was ringing when she got back to her apartment after her ten hour shift at Betty’s Café, which she found ironic because the owner’s name was Phil.
She raced to the phone, but froze when she saw the caller ID: KIM THOMPSON. Her feet were on fire. All she wanted to do was lie down on her couch and rest her eyes. Talking to Kim was only going to infuriate her but she knew that if she didn’t answer now, Kim would just call back again.
After a few more rings, she took a deep breath and picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sweetie,” Kim said in an overly cheery voice. “Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
Yes, never is a good time for you to call, Brooke thought. She gritted her teeth, telling her the same lie she told her every time she called. “No, it’s not a bad time. I just walked in the door.”
“Oh, good. I was getting worried after you didn’t pick up,” She paused. “Anyways, how’s New York?”
“It’s New York, Kim. What do you want?” She asked, putting her hands on her hip. Typical. Brooke never had any desire to talk to her, but did she get the hint? Ever?
“Okay, no small talk then,” Kim said quickly.
She was silent.
There was a long lull in the conversation while Kim tried to find the right words to say, something Brooke could tell was difficult even through the phone. Brooke looked at the phone, trying to figure out if they had been disconnected. Before she could hang up, Kim found her voice.
“Are you sitting down?” Kim said suddenly very somber.
“Yes.”
“No you’re not.”
Brooke exhaled sharply, walked over to the couch and plopped herself down in silent resentment. Her patience was running thin. “Okay, I’m sitting down. What is it?”
“I know we haven’t spoken much in the last four years. I take all of the blame for that. I wasn’t the best mother to you, and I want you to know that I regret that every day. I should have been better.”
“Just spit it out,” Brooke snapped. She had heard this sob story many times before. Just because she was sorry didn’t mean anything. She was still ignored growing up, and Kim cared more about alcohol than about her. Apologies didn’t change the past.
There was a long pause on the other side of the phone again. “Honey, I have lung cancer.”
Her stomach sank to the floor. The room began to spin. She took a deep breath and steadied herself for whatever was coming next. She swallowed hard fighting back the vomit that would surely come up after they hung up.
“When did you find out?” Brooke asked suddenly realizing how dry her throat was.
“I found out yesterday,” Kim said weakly, choking back a few tears. “It’s not very advanced, so the doctors say Chemotherapy has a good shot at working, but they won’t guarantee anything. Eventually I might need surgery, but we are going to cross that bridge when we get to it. You know what they say, there’s medicine and then there’s God.”
Brooke sighed taking the huge blows one hit after another. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. She knew that the sooner they detect and treat cancer the better chance they have of recovering. By what Kim was saying, they caught the cancer early. “So it sounds like you are going to be alright.”
“I hope so.”
“Just keep me posted on how things are going, okay?”
Kim didn’t reply right away. “Brooke, I was hoping you would come down and visit for a while. You haven’t come down since I moved to Sansville. It’s gorgeous and I have a house right on the beach. You would love it here. It’s a great place for you to sit and draw in your notebook.”
“I don’t draw anymore,” Brooke lied. All she wanted to do right now was sketch through her fears, and the realities of the situation. Kim had a disease that killed millions of people every year. Her throat tightened.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I would love to come down, but I can’t,” Brooke said so fast the words slurred together. “We’re swamped at work and they need all the help they can get.”
“Oh, I see. I understand,” Kim said.
Brooke could hear the disappointment in her voice, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to hang up the phone and pretend this conversation never happened. “I’m sorry. Look, I have to go, but let me know how things are going with your Chemotherapy and stuff.”
“I will.”
“Bye.”
“I love you.”
Brooke hung up, not saying another word.
The rest of the night Brooke sat by her window overlooking the busy streets of New York. By the time her best friend and roommate Kayla got home, Brooke had already sketched four different images, each one of her mother. Kayla kept asking what was wrong, but Brooke never told her. If she did that would somehow make it real. Kim really did have cancer, and that phone call was not a nightmare.
Even after that phone call, they still didn’t talk much over the next two years. In fact, they didn’t talk at all, only emails every few weeks letting her know that the Chemotherapy was painful, but it was going well. Brooke never responded.
This hostility didn’t happen over night. It had been brewing between them for a long time producing wounds so deep Brooke knew they would never fully heal.
After her father, Ron, was killed in a car accident right after her birth, Kim turned to the one thing that would stop her from killing herself too. Alcohol. By the time Kim put down her bottle of Jack Daniels and noticed she even had a daughter, Brooke was a junior in high school. She was partying every weekend, had gotten suspended three separate times for fighting, and was barely passing her classes.
Brooke somehow managed to pass her classes, though she couldn’t figure out how. The school probably let her graduate just to get her out of there. Kim tried to bring up the subject of college to straighten out her life, but Brooke had already made up her mind. The day after graduation, she moved to New York to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. Not long after her move to New York, Kim found a job as a kindergarten teacher in the tiny town of Sansville, Georgia.
Brooke hadn’t seen Kim since.
After what seemed like an eternity of driving, she finally saw a small sign that read SANSVILLE BEACH. It was a small town with only one main road that held numerous businesses from a coffee place to numerous beach shops. She spotted a church, a police station, and many pizza places. There were so many people around that it took almost thirty minutes to get through what she assumed was downtown.
As she drove out of the downtown area, she saw the gorgeous beach. The water was crystal clear with the most beautiful blue sky she had ever seen. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. The beach was filled with people of all ages, from children to an elderly couple getting a kick out of the children freaking out when the cold water touched their feet.
The longer she drove, the more residential her surroundings became. The houses all looked similar. Most were different shades of brown, and only a few actually bothered to keep up with their front lawns. After a mile down the road, she found her mother’s address.