“On Thursday, he asked about you,” Mom said.
She looked at me.
“He asked what you were like,” she said. “I told him everything. That you’re a dental hygienist. That you’re married to a good man named Dave. That you have two children. That you call me every night. That you’re stubborn and bossy and kind and you never let me get away with anything.”
She almost laughed.
“He said, She sounds like me,” Mom said. “He said Carol says he’s stubborn and bossy too.”
“And then?”
“And then he asked if he could meet you,” Mom said quietly. “Not for the transplant. Not just for that. He said even if you weren’t a match. Even if you didn’t want to be tested. He said he’d just like to meet his sister. Once. Before.”
“So on Friday, I left,” Mom said.
“You took the train from Pittsburgh to Erie.”
Mom nodded.
“I was going to come straight home and tell you,” she said. “Friday night. I bought the ticket. I had it all planned out what I was going to say.”
“But you didn’t come home Friday.”
“I got as far as Erie,” Mom said. “And I got scared. I couldn’t get on the train to Cleveland. I just couldn’t.”
She looked down.
“I stayed in a motel in Erie for three nights,” she said. “Near the station. The Red Roof Inn. I sat in that room and tried to figure out how to say it. I wrote it out on the motel notepad. Forty times. Every version. None of them sounded right.”
“That’s why you didn’t call,” I said. “Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You just texted.”
“I couldn’t hear your voice,” Mom said. “If I heard your voice, I’d have told you on the phone. And I didn’t want you to find out on the phone.”
“And the suitcase?” I asked.
Mom looked down the hall. Toward her bedroom.
“My blue bag broke,” she said. “On Thursday. In Sam’s room. The zipper split. Carol gave me one of theirs. Sam’s. He used to take it to science teacher conferences.”
She smiled faintly.
“Sam put the camera in it,” she said. “And the envelope. Before I left. He said, Give these to Annie. If you can’t find the words, maybe these will help.”
I picked up the brown envelope.
It was still sealed.
I looked at my mother.
She nodded.
I opened it.
Inside were two things.
The first was a medical kit. A small cardboard box. With a printed label.
UPMC HILLMAN CANCER CENTER
HLA TYPING — SIBLING DONOR TEST KIT
Patient: SAMUEL J. REINER
Potential donor: ANNE ABERNATHY COLE
Inside were four long cotton swabs. In sealed plastic tubes. And an instruction sheet. And a prepaid FedEx envelope.
Swab inside of both cheeks for 30 seconds each. Return within 24 hours.
The second thing was a letter.
Handwritten. On lined notebook paper. In blue ink.
The Js had big loops at the bottom.
Dear Annie,
I’m sorry to meet you this way. In a letter. In a suitcase. Through Mom.
That’s what I’ve been calling her this week. Mom. I hope that’s okay. I know she’s your mom. I know you’ve had her your whole life, and I’ve had her for six days. But I’ve had a mom my whole life too, and she always told me that somewhere out there was another one who loved me first. So now I have two. I’m a lucky man.
I don’t know how much Mom’s told you. Probably not much. She’s been trying to tell you since April. She says she can’t find the words. I understand. I’ve been trying to find them for sixty-three years.
Here are the facts. I’m sixty-three. I teach high school chemistry in Pittsburgh. I’ve been married to Carol for thirty-eight years. We have a daughter, Jenna, and two grandkids, Lucy and Max. I like the Steelers and the Pirates and bad science fiction movies. I’m bald now from the chemo, but I used to have dark curly hair. Mom says you do too.
I have leukemia. AML. The doctors say I need a stem cell transplant. They’ve searched the whole national registry. No good match. My best chance is a sibling.
You’re the only sibling I have.
I know that’s a lot to put on a stranger. You don’t owe me anything. You didn’t know I existed a week ago. If you don’t want to do the test, I understand completely. Please don’t feel guilty. Please don’t let Mom feel guilty. She’s carried enough guilt for one lifetime.
But here’s the thing I really wanted to say.
Even if you’re not a match. Even if you don’t want to be tested. I’d still like to meet you.
Just once. Just to say hello. Just to see my sister’s face.
I always wanted a sister. When I was little, I used to ask my mother for one every Christmas. She’d laugh and say, “Maybe someday, Sammy.”
Turns out she was right.
Room 612. UPMC Shadyside. I’m not going anywhere. Well. Not yet.
Your brother,
Sam
P.S. The camera has four pictures. I asked Carol to take the last one. I figured if Mom couldn’t say it, I would.
I put the letter down.
I looked at my mother.
She was sitting in Dad’s blue recliner. Wrapped in the quilt. Forty-one pounds lighter than she was in May. Her sunken face wet with tears.
“I’m sorry, Annie,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. For lying to you. For Margaret. For sixty-three years. For not being brave enough to—”
I got up off the couch.
I knelt down in front of the recliner.
I put my arms around my mother.
She was so small. I could feel every bone in her back.
“Mom,” I said into her hair. “Stop. Stop apologizing.”
“I gave him away,” she sobbed. “I gave him away and I never told anybody and now he’s dying and—”
“You were seventeen,” I said. “You were seventeen and scared and your boyfriend was dead at the bottom of the ocean and everybody told you that you were a sinner. You did what they told you. You knitted him a blanket. You held him for three days. You loved him.”
I pulled back. I held her face in both my hands.
“You loved him so much,” I said, “that his mother told him about you every night for sixty years. That’s not something to be ashamed of, Mom. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
My mother looked at me.
And for the first time in five months, something in her face let go.
She cried. Really cried. In my arms. In Dad’s recliner. Sixty-three years of it.
I held her.
Then I stood up.
I picked up the test kit.
I went into her bathroom. I washed my hands. I opened the first sealed tube.
I swabbed the inside of my left cheek for thirty seconds. Then my right. Then the second swab. Then the third. Then the fourth.
I sealed them in the plastic tubes. I put them in the FedEx envelope.
I came back out.
Mom was watching me from the recliner.
“Annie,” she whispered. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
Then I grabbed my car keys.
“Get your coat, Mom,” I said.
She stared at me.
“Where are we going?”
“Pittsburgh,” I said. “Room 612. I want to meet my brother.”
We stopped at the FedEx on Detroit Road on the way. I overnighted the swabs to UPMC Hillman. Priority. Seven-dollar extra for Saturday delivery.
Then I called Dave.
“I’m driving Mom to Pittsburgh,” I said.
“Pittsburgh? What’s in Pittsburgh?”
I looked over at my mother. In the passenger seat. Wrapped in her navy coat. Holding the yellow baby blanket in her lap. She’d taken it out of the black suitcase. Sam had sent it home with her. He wanted me to see it.
“My brother,” I said.
Dave was quiet for a long time.
“I’ll pack a bag,” he said. “I’ll meet you there tomorrow.”
It’s two hours and fifteen minutes from Rocky River to Pittsburgh. I-80 to I-76. Through Youngstown. Into the hills of western Pennsylvania.
Mom didn’t talk much.
About an hour in, she said, “Annie.”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
I looked over at her.
She was looking out the window. At the trees. At the hills. The leaves were turning. Red and gold and orange.
“I haven’t been hungry since May,” she said quietly. “I’m hungry.”
I pulled off at the next exit.
There was a Cracker Barrel.
I bought her chicken and dumplings and mashed potatoes and biscuits. And a slice of apple pie.
She ate all of it.
Every bite.
She cried the whole time.
We got to UPMC Shadyside at four-fifteen.
Room 612.
Mom walked in first. Slowly. With the yellow blanket.
I stood in the doorway.
He was sitting up in bed. Bald. Pale. Thin. An IV in his arm. A tube under his nose.
Carol was in the chair next to him. She stood up when she saw us. Her hand went to her mouth.
And Sam looked past Mom.
He looked at me.
I can’t describe it.
I’ve tried. Since then. To Dave. To my kids. To my friends at work.
I can’t describe what it’s like to look at a stranger’s face and see your own.
His eyes were mine. Dark. Deep-set. A little crooked.
His nose was mine. His chin. The way his mouth turned down at the corners before he smiled.
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he smiled.
Crooked.
Like mine.
“Hi, Annie,” he said.
I walked across the room.
I don’t remember doing it. I just remember being in the doorway, and then being next to the bed.
I didn’t know what to say.
I’d driven two hours and fifteen minutes and I didn’t know what to say.
So I said the only thing I could think of.
“I always wanted a brother.”
Sam laughed. Then he started crying.
“I asked for a sister every Christmas,” he said. “Every single year. For sixty-three years.”
“I know,” I said. “I read your letter.”
He held out his hand.
The one without the IV.
I took it.
His hand was cold and thin.
It was the same shape as mine.
Carol took a picture.
I didn’t see her do it. She told me later.
It’s on my refrigerator now. Me and Sam. In Room 612. Holding hands. Both crying. Both smiling the same crooked smile.
And behind us, in the chair by the window, our mother. In her navy coat. Holding a yellow baby blanket with ducks around the edges.
Watching both of her children.
For the first time.
In the same room.
