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planned for that possibility. Jennifer and Roy, she knew, were old enough to take care of themselves. But her heart went out to Ernest, who had stayed at her breast the longest, born late in life, born after the divorce had come through. Little Ernest—he had lots of colds, and few friends; crybaby, tattletale, once, a teacher told her, even a thief. He sat there across from her, innocent, a noodle hanging from his mouth.
    “I wonder if Greg Laurans will be at the party,” Jennifer said.
    “Why, do you like him?” asked Roy, leering.
    “Screw you. He’s very involved.” Jennifer reached to put a chicken liver she had accidentally taken back on the platter. “He runs a singing group at the state hospital through Young Life.”
    “Watch out for him, Jennifer,” Mrs. Harrington said. “This is just another phase for him. Last year he was stealing cars.”
    “But he’s been born again!” Ernest said loudly. He said everything loudly.
    “Talk softer.”
    “He’s reformed,” Jennifer said. “But anyway, he won’t be there. His parents aren’t speaking to him, Gail told me.”
    Mrs. Harrington didn’t blame the Lauranses. They were good Jews—gave a sizeable chunk of their income to the UJA. Jennifer played loud music and got low grades; Roy had bad acne, didn’t wash enough, smoked a lot of marijuana; but compared to Greg Laurans, they were solid, loving kids, who knew what they wanted and weren’t caught up in the craziness of the world.
    Jennifer and Roy both knew about the illness—though of course she couldn’t tell them “six months,” and they never talked about time. She guessed, however, that they guessed what she guessed. Dr. Sanchez had told her, “If you’re alive in two years, it won’t be a miracle, but if you’re not, we can’t say it would be unexpected.”
    Ernest, however, knew nothing. He wasn’t old enough. He wouldn’t be able to understand. It would be hard enough for him, she had reasoned, after she was gone; at least let him live while he could under the pleasant delusion that she would be there for him forever.
    But now, Mrs. Harrington stared across the table at her son, and the reasoning that had kept her going for six months seemed warped, perverse. The way it stood, she would die, for him, as a complete surprise. It might ruin him. He might turn into Greg Laurans. And already she saw signs that worried her.
    She knew she would have to tell him soon. In a way that his seven-year-old mind could understand, she would have to explain to him the facts of death.
    For in light of new knowledge, she was questioning everything. In those dim months when the doctors themselves, as well as Mrs. Harrington, had stopped thinking about the fact that she was to die, she had become too complacent, she had not made enough plans for what would be left after her. Die. The word struck, and bounced off her skull. Soon, she knew, when the chemotherapy began, she would start to get thinner, and her hair would fall out in greater quantities. She envisioned herself, then, months, or perhaps only weeks from now, so different—bones jutting out of skin, hair in clumps like patches of weeds on a desert. She anticipated great weariness, for she would be lucid, fiercely lucid, and though she would look like death, she would live for the day when once again she would feel well. Her friends would come to see her, frightened, needing reassurance. “You look so tired, Anna,” they’d say. Then she would have to explain, It’s the radiation, the drugs, it’s all to make me better. And when they assailed her, begging her to complete that tantalizing hint of hopefulness so that they could leave without worry or fear for themselves, she would have to temper their desire for anything in only the middle ranges of despair; though she was getting better, she would probably be dead by next Christmas.
    Dead by Christmas; she wondered if her children suspected that this would be her last Christmas. Then