I FLEW BACK TO BEIJING right after the day of Mary's funeral. Cameron and Mason didn't even know. I didn't bother to tell them.
Adele was being treated at one of the best hospitals in the city, but best hospital or not, it was not anything to delay the coming of her death. She looked like a limp figure when I arrived in her hospital room, small and looking...almost dead.
Her face barely draws to that classic sharp smile of hers. "Awe, look who's here. You didn't have to cry for me, you know."
I laughed scarcely, sitting down on the chair that was set next to her bed. "It's not for you. Someone else died recently."
She turned slightly in her bed, trying to sit up. I settled my hands over her to stop her, but as Adele always did, she resisted and sat up at last. "Well that makes sense. You were always a pretty damn cold child growing up."
"Where is he?" I asked, seeming to be the second biggest question in my head.
She coughs for a long time, the sound sounding drastic and awful. "I don't know. I spent half of my life with that asshole, glad he's finally gone." She coughed some more, and I quickly grabbed a tissue for her. "Thank you."
"So you're...dying." The word sounded so weird, Adele dying? How? It never seemed possible to me that such a hard woman can be knocked out like that with that word labeled to her. Dying. Dead.
"Yep, and so are you. Just such a shame that I won't live to see it happen."
Her sarcasm manages to draw a grin on my face. But it fell when she coughed again, this time blood coming out. "What is it? How are you just suddenly...dying?"
"I don't fucking know! Ask the doctor, why won't you." She tilted her head on the pillow, trying to face the window. "It's probably the drinking and all the cigarettes though, that's what I know. I don't regret it." She retched up a bunch of red and clear substances, and even though I don't exactly love Adele, it was scaring me.
"Should I get the doctor?"
She lifts up a limp hand, hardly being able to call a wave. "I'm already dying, darling, it doesn't matter." She then smiled. "Do you think they'll broadcast this in the news or something like that? I am your 'mother' after all. I really liked that interview they did with you and me five years ago, wasn't that nice? Mother and daughter. Being famous must be nice. If I could go back in time, I would've made that choice. You made a good choice choosing this path."
I nodded even though I didn't totally agree with her. My hand was somehow holding hers. I don't know how that ended up happening.
"If they ask about Joseph, just say he's dead. I'm pretty sure he'll overdose sooner or later anyways with that addiction of his."
I nodded again, my hand starting to tighten in hers. "What are your last words you were going to say to me?"
She turned her head from the window to me, and then grinned. "Awe, you care?"
I swatted at her; "It's your last words, anyone's last words I'd hear."
"Well," I suddenly realized her head was balding, it was so unusual of Adele to be like that. But again, everything happening now was so unlike her. "I lied." When my eyes widened, she laughed. If you can call coughing and huffing a laugh. "Who knew how long this damn body of mine could hold? I had to think of something to make you come and see me as soon as possible. Anyways, even though it's not any last words, I did want to let you know something."
I sat a little intently, not that I was wanting to show I really cared, it was always that with me and Adele. I wanted to be above her, to be the one more powerful. I guess I finally got what I wanted.
"Years ago, remember that virus?"
I nodded, remembering how I had caught it and it was miserable. But the prize that came afterwards was my friendship with Mason. I felt my heart sink at the thought of him, was Cameron taking good care of him? Was he still crying? Did he need me? Has he noticed I was gone? I turned my attention back to Adele, after all someone I know is dying again. Just a week after, how convenient. Life really wanted to hurt me I guess.
"When you were quarantined in the hospital, a lady came by." She then rolled her eyes, but barely. "And gosh! She scared the shit out of me and Joseph. She was wearing a mask, but her skin was off colored and she was," she gestured at herself. "Like basically me right now. Dying. Anyways, she probably had the virus.
"Her words were disoriented, but the whole time, all I could notice was her eyes. They were brown, big, and with long eyelashes, so pretty. If I had eyes like that, I thought, I would've gone and modeled for those glasses commercials you see."
I laughed, "That would have been a whole other story if you did."
She nodded, smiling herself. "Yes, it would have. But yeah, the whole time, I just kept thinking how beautiful those eyes were. They felt rather familiar. She started talking, and her words were disoriented and everything, barely understood it. She was trying to come into our house and all, it was freaky, so of course we called the building's security and shooed her off.
"But after, like about an hour or so, I started to understand what it was." She looked at me, and then her hands in mine, her nails, it dug gently into my skin. "I swear at you, child, that I am sorry and never told you this until now."
I think then, the moment she got to the eyes part, I already knew what she was trying to tell me. "What is it, Adele? Tell me."
She took in a very long, ragged breath, and I felt her nails release off my skin.
"Your mother, 陈家玲 (Chen Jia Ling), came by, looking for you."
My hands let go around hers, and I got up, but not knowing where I was going, sat back down in my chair again. I swallowed the saliva collected in my mouth. "Are you sure her name was that?"
She rolled her eyes. "Ugh, you should know me by now after at least twenty years of working together, that I don't forget a name. Yes, it was that. It was exactly that, after all she did repeat it five times, and also calling this name 陈星星 (Chen Xing Xing) several times along with it. Was that what your name was?"
What was the point of lying anymore to her? "Yes. So...my mother came by. What did she want?"
"Like I said, her words were disoriented. But the main sense of what I got was that she saw you on TV and was somehow coming back to 'claim what was hers' and that she was going to call the police on us for keeping you." She shook her head, smiling and laughing, while coughing. "And I thought I was a bad mother. Was she always like that to you? Because hell, you should've seen her, she was insane and sounded out of her mind. I think she tried to punch Joseph."
All these times, I've been trying to prove myself, to the world, but most of all, to this one person. So she did know my fame. She did know. Did she regret treating me the way she did? Did she see me win that Oscar a week ago?
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know." She reached for my hand again. "Are you mad at me?"
I took a hold of her hand, wrinkly and has lost its once existing grace. "I don't want to be mad at a person who's about to die. So I guess no." I looked around the room, so white and huge. "Can we talk about something else?"
I helped Adele find a better position in her bed, since she said she had a hard time breathing. I don't think that was because of how she was sitting, but I didn't tell her that.
"We should talk about how god awfully you're going to bawl your eyes out at my funeral. I'm sure your acting will be very on point. It will hit headlines, won't it? The backstories they'll write, the things they'll assume, they might as well make a movie out of it and cast you! Isn't all of that just terrifically amazing? Oh, I've always wanted to be in the New York Times. Do you think they'll put me up there?"
I laughed heartily, her hand in mine. It was going cold slowly as the minutes passed. "Honestly? I do not know. I did win an Oscar, but I'm not sure the New York Times would care all that much about me. They are very serious businesses after all. Maybe the gossip sights though. I'm sure you'll be all over those."
She nodded, pleased. "Well that will be enough for me. Usually I'd ask for more, but since I am a pack of saggy skin now, I don't really want my pictures taken like this."
I thought I couldn't have any more tears come after all the crying I've done over the week, but I felt them in the edge of my eyes. I suppressed it down with a smile.
"That will not really be up to me, but since no one knows you're here in this hospital other than me and the doctors, I think you should be fine."
She sank into her pillow and for a moment, since she looked so skinny and small now, I thought it was going to swallow her. "Hey, can you go outside to the corner store and buy me a pack of cigarettes? Oh yeah, and a lighter of course. Those damn nurses took mine away."
"Seriously?" I raised my eyebrows at her, but could barely maintain my smile because she just looked so god awful sad.
"A last wish?" She begged with her thin eyes, and I finally caved in.
"Fine, but you stay here and don't go anywhere."
"Do you not see me? Where else can I go? Now go get my cigarettes before I get up and smack you." The thing about Adele was, even though she hated me most of the time and used me, she never once physically hit me. Unlike my real mother.
I laughed, or more like giggled, and walked out of her room as calm as one could. But I was eagerly running for the corner store once I was out of sight, wanting to get back as fast as I could yet at the same time not showing I cared. That was just how it was with me and her, so I guess maybe some moments she did care about me and pretended she didn't like how I did.
I was walking back toward her room, a pack of cigarettes and lighter in my hands, when a bunch of nurses and doctors were gathered right outside.
One of the doctors came to me, handing me a golden necklace I remember getting for Adele years ago, along with several other jewelries I had got at her request. I didn't know she still kept this one, the necklace I had gotten her with my first paycheck.
The doctor's face was fallen with the expression I knew you used to give bad news.
"I'm so sorry."
Her cigarettes fell limp in my hands, their purpose having been suddenly gone. I finally let the suppressed tears come, and yes, Adele, you were right, I did bawl my eyes out at your funeral. But you were also wrong, and I know you hated being wrong so it makes me slightly happier to tell it to you.
I was not acting when I did.