The Black Suitcase
My mother had always been a cheerful, slightly overweight woman.
That’s how I’d describe her if you asked. Round face. Soft arms. A laugh that came from somewhere deep in her stomach and filled up every room she walked into. She wore cardigans with pockets full of tissues and butterscotch candies. She smelled like vanilla extract and Jergens lotion.
She loved baking. Cinnamon rolls every Saturday. Apple pie every Sunday. Banana bread whenever a banana got a single brown spot, because she couldn’t stand to waste anything.
And she never missed Sunday dinner.
Never. Not once in my whole life. Not when my father had his heart attack in 2009. Not when she broke her wrist in 2016. Not during the pandemic, when we did it over FaceTime with her propping her iPad up against the gravy boat.
Every Sunday at four o’clock. Pot roast or roast chicken or meatloaf. Mashed potatoes. Green beans with bacon. Rolls from scratch. Pie.
So when she announced in October that she was spending a week with her childhood friend Margaret, I was happy for her.
I really was.
“Margaret?” I said. “Margaret from Erie?”
We were sitting at her kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. After the pot roast. Before the pie. She was cutting the pie into eight perfect slices with the same knife she’d used since 1971.
“Margaret Feeney,” Mom said. “We grew up together. On Plum Street. We were best friends from first grade until…” She paused. The knife stopped. “Until we weren’t. For a while. Then we were again.”
“I remember her,” I said. “She came to Dad’s funeral, didn’t she?”
Mom set the knife down.
“No,” she said quietly. “That was her sister. Margaret couldn’t make it.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
Mom thought about it.
“Twenty years,” she said. “Maybe a little more.”
“And she just called you? Out of the blue?”
Mom picked the knife back up. She started cutting again.
“Something like that,” she said.
Margaret lived three hours away. In Erie, Pennsylvania. Up on the lake.
Mom said she’d take the train. Amtrak. The Lake Shore Limited. From Cleveland to Erie. It would take two and a half hours.
“I can drive you, Mom.”
“Annie, you work. You have the kids. You have Dave. I’m eighty, not dead. I can sit on a train.”
“For a whole week?”
“Seven days,” Mom said. “Monday to Monday. Margaret has a guest room. She said I can stay as long as I like.”
She smiled.
“We have a lot to catch up on,” she said.
My name is Annie Cole. I’m fifty-four years old.
I’m a dental hygienist in Lakewood, Ohio. Just west of Cleveland. I’ve been married to Dave for twenty-nine years. He manages a Home Depot. We have two kids. Tyler’s twenty-six and lives in Columbus. Grace is twenty-two and just started nursing school at Kent State.
My mother is June Abernathy.
She lives alone in the little white Cape Cod on Hilliard Road in Rocky River where I grew up. Seven minutes from my house. My father, Bill, died in 2009. They were married forty-four years.
She’s eighty years old. She drives to the grocery store. She volunteers at the library on Wednesdays. She goes to Mass at St. Christopher’s every Saturday at five. She plays bridge on Thursdays with three women she’s known for fifty years.
She’s never been anywhere without telling me first.
I drove her to the Amtrak station in downtown Cleveland on a Monday morning at five a.m.
She had one bag. A small blue travel bag. Hard-sided. With wheels. I bought it for her in 2018 when she went to visit my aunt in Florida. It had a little pink ribbon tied to the handle so she could find it on the baggage carousel.
She was wearing her good navy coat. And a cardigan underneath. Gray. Too big for her. I noticed that. I remember noticing it.
“New sweater?”
“Old one,” she said. “From the back of the closet.”
It hung on her. The shoulders were too wide.
I didn’t think anything of it.
At the station, she kissed my cheek.
“Call me when you get there,” I said.
“I will.”
“And call me every night.”
“Annie.”
“Every night, Mom. I mean it. You’re eighty.”
She smiled.
“I’ll call you every night,” she said.
She went through the door to the platform. Pulling her little blue bag with the pink ribbon.
She didn’t look back.
She called the first night.
She sounded tired. She said the train was fine. She said Margaret’s house was lovely. She said they’d stayed up late talking.
“What did you talk about?”
“Old times,” Mom said.
She called the second night. Shorter. Tired again. She said they’d gone for a walk by the lake. She said she was going to bed early.
She called the third night. Very short. Two minutes. She said she was fine. She said she loved me.
She didn’t call the fourth night.
I called her. It went to voicemail.
I called again. Voicemail.
I almost drove to Erie.
Then at eleven p.m., she texted. Sorry, sweetheart. Phone died. All fine. Love you.
Mom never texts. She hates texting. She says her thumbs are too old.
She didn’t call the fifth night either.
Or the sixth.
She texted both nights. Short texts. Fine. Tired. Love you.
Seven days later, I picked Mom up at the train station.
Monday afternoon. Four-ten p.m. The Lake Shore Limited, arriving from the east.
I stood on the platform with a cup of hot chocolate for her. Her favorite. From the Starbucks in the station. Extra whipped cream.
The train pulled in. People got off. Business travelers. College kids. An old man with a cane.
And then her.
I barely recognized her.
I mean that. For about three full seconds, I looked right at her and didn’t know who she was.
A small old woman in a navy coat. Stepping carefully down from the train with one hand on the rail. Her clothes hung loosely from her shoulders. The coat that used to fit snug across her middle was hanging on her like a tent. Her gray cardigan underneath was swimming on her.
Her cheeks were sunken. The round face I’d known my whole life was gone. Her cheekbones stood out like I’d never seen them. There were hollows under her eyes. Dark circles. Her skin looked gray.
Her hands were bony. Her wrists were thin.
She’d lost so much weight. In seven days.
And she was dragging an enormous black suitcase.
I dropped the hot chocolate.
It splattered on the platform. I didn’t care.
I ran to her.
“Mom,” I said. “Mom, what happened to you?”
She looked up at me.
She forced a smile.
It didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were red. Swollen. Like she’d been crying for days.
“Just a little stomach trouble, sweetheart,” she said.
“Stomach trouble?” I put my hands on her arms. I could feel the bones through her coat. “Mom, you’ve lost twenty pounds. Thirty. You look sick. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”
“I haven’t been very hungry,” she said.
“We’re going to the hospital. Right now.”
She pulled her arm away.
“No,” she said.
“Mom—”
“No, Annie.” Her voice was sharp. She never uses a sharp voice with me. “I don’t need a hospital. I need to go home.”
“You look like you’re dying.”
“I’m not dying,” Mom said. “Please. Just take me home.”
Then I noticed the suitcase.
Black. Huge. The kind of hard-shell suitcase that costs four hundred dollars at Macy’s. With four spinner wheels and a telescoping handle and a brushed metal finish. Expensive. Nothing my mother would ever buy.
Mom had left home with a small blue travel bag. With a pink ribbon.
“Mom,” I said. “Where’s your luggage?”
She gripped the black handle. Tighter. Her knuckles went white.
“Margaret gave me this one,” she said. “Mine broke.”
I drove her home.
She sat in the passenger seat with the black suitcase in the back. She didn’t say anything. She looked out the window at Lake Erie as we drove west on the Shoreway. Gray water. Gray sky.
I kept glancing at her.
At her hands in her lap. Thin. Shaking a little.
At her face. Gaunt. Older than I’d ever seen it.
“Mom,” I said. “Did something happen? At Margaret’s?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mom.”
“I’m tired, Annie,” she said. “I’ll tell you later. I promise. Not now.”
At home, Mom carried the suitcase straight into her bedroom.
She didn’t let me help. She dragged it up the front steps by herself. Through the living room. Down the hall.
Into her bedroom.
And she locked the door.
My mother has never locked a door in her life.
Not the bathroom. Not the front door, most nights. I yell at her about it. She says she’s lived on Hilliard Road for fifty-four years and nobody’s ever broken in.
She locked her bedroom door.
I stood in the hallway and listened.
I heard the suitcase unzip.
Then nothing.
Then, very quietly, through the door, I heard my mother crying.
I knocked.
“Mom? Can I come in?”
“Not right now, sweetheart.”
“Mom, please. You’re scaring me.”
“I’m fine,” she said through the door. Her voice was thick. “I just need some time. Go home, Annie. Go home to Dave. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Please,” she said. “Please, honey. I’m begging you. Just give me one night.”
I didn’t go home.
I sat in her living room. On her floral couch. Under the framed photo of my parents on their wedding day in 1965.
I called Dave. I told him what happened. He said he’d keep dinner warm.
Then I sat there for a long time.
Thinking.
Margaret gave me this one. Mine broke.
We have a lot to catch up on.
Twenty years. Maybe a little more.
That evening, I called Margaret.
Mom had given me the number before she left. Written on a Post-it note. In her neat Catholic-school handwriting. Margaret Feeney and a phone number with an 814 area code. Erie.
I’d stuck it on my refrigerator.
I’d brought it with me in my purse. I don’t know why. Just in case.
I dialed it.
It rang four times.
A man answered.
“Hello?”
