A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

The air in the garage is frozen. She pulls her head in and I clear the doorway. I think of honeymoons, the threshold. She is pregnant. She is a knocked-up bride. The tumor is a balloon. The tumor is a fruit, an empty gourd. She is lighter than I thought she would be. I had expected the tumor to create more weight. The tumor is large and round. She wears her pants over it, wore her pants over it, the ones with the elastic waistband, the last time she wore pants, before the nightgowns. But she is light. The tumor is a light tumor, empty, a balloon. The tumor is rotten fruit, graying at the edges. Or an insects ’ hive, something festering and black and alive, fuzzy on its sides. Something with eyes. A spider. A tarantula, the legs fanning out, metastasizing. A balloon covered in dirt. The color is the color of dirt. Or blacker, shinier. Caviar. Like caviar in color and also in the shape and size of its components. She had had Toph late. She was forty-two then. She had prayed in church every day while pregnant. When she was ready, they cut her stomach open to get him but he was fine, perfect.
    I step down into the garage and she spits. It is audible, the gurgling sound. She does not have the towel or the half-moon receptacle. The green fluid comes over her chin and lands on her nightgown. A second wave comes but she holds her mouth closed, her cheeks puffed out. There is green fluid on her face.
    The car door is open and I aim her head in first. She shrugs her shoulders, tries to make herself smaller for an easier fit. I shuffle my feet, adjust my grip. I move in slow motion. I am barely moving. She is a vase, a doll. A giant vase. A giant fruit. A prize-winning vegetable. I pass her through the door. I lean down and place her on the seat. She is suddenly girlish in the nightgown, selfconsciously pushing it down to cover her legs. She adjusts the pillow against the door, behind her, and slides back into it.
    When she is settled she reaches for a towel on the floor of the car and brings it to her mouth and spits into it and wipes off her chin.
    “ Thank you, ” she says.
    I close the door and wait in the passenger seat. Beth comes out with Toph, who is in his winter coat and is wearing mittens. Beth opens the station wagon ’ s hatchback and Toph climbs in.
    “ Hi, sweetie, ” Mom says, craning her head back, looking up at him.
    “ Hi, ” says Toph.
    Beth gets in the driver ’ s seat, turns around and claps her hands together.
    “ Road trip! ”
    You should have seen my father ’ s service. People came, third-grade teachers, friends of my mother, a few people from my father ’ s office, no one knew them, parents of our friends, everyone bundled up, huffing inside, glassy-eyed from the cold, kicking their snowy feet on the mats. It was the third week in November, and prematurely freezing, the roads covered with ice, the worst in years.
    All the guests looked stricken. Everyone knew my mother was sick, were expecting this sort of thing from her, but this, this from him was a surprise. No one knew what do to, what to say. Not that many people knew him—he didn ’ t socialize much, at least not in town, had maintained only a handful of friends—but they knew my mother, and they must have felt like they were at the funeral for the husband of a ghost.
    We were embarrassed. It was all so gaudy, so gruesome—here we were, inviting everyone to come and watch us in the middle of our disintegration. We smiled and shook hands with everyone as they walked in. Oh hi! I said to Mrs. Glacking, my fourth-grade teacher, whom I hadn ’ t seen in easily ten years. She looked good, looked the same. Huddled together in the lobby, we were sheepish and apologetic, trying to keep things breezy. My mom, wearing a flower-print dress (it was the best thing she had in which she could conceal her intravenous apparatus), tried to stand and receive the comers, but she soon had to sit, grinning up at everyone, hello hello, thank you thank you,