103. Untitled [Walter Prescott driving], Detroit, 1970

JOURNAL ENTRY, AUGUST 1970: If I’d needed chemotherapy any earlier, I would have wanted to stay in New York; but these last nightmarish months of being truly sick taught me that you and I can’t do this on our own. When I asked my doctors if I could be treated in Cleveland, I learned how much I took for granted a city where everything from camera lenses to first-rate leukemia treatment is only a subway ride away. Though the Cleveland Clinic is the top of the line for heart disease, the best leukemia facility in the Midwest is in Detroit; and so three years after I denied your wish, and under circumstances too macabre for anyone to enjoy, you are finally getting to live with your grandparents.

Your grandmother has become careworn in the predictable ways, but I wasn’t prepared for the gray, slow-moving figure beside her. I should have expected it—your grandfather isn’t the sort to take early retirement unless he has to—but somehow that hadn’t revised my mental picture of a man whose arm I used to hang from like a jungle gym. While I’m glad the hospital transfusions returned some color to my skin, I guess nothing could have prepared your grandparents for the rest of me. Both of them recovered quickly from how thin I’ve become, but that first look on their faces is something I won’t forget.

For most of the three-hour drive west and north, your grandfather kept the radio loud enough to prevent much talking, giving me my first chance since I was seventeen to snap a decent picture of him; but as we neared Detroit, he turned off the music.

“Your mother didn’t want me driving you,” he told me. “If she had her way, I’d be splitting my waking hours between healthy walks, elevating my feet, and eating carrots, but when I told her I wanted us to talk, even she had to admit it was a good idea.” He darted a glance at me before turning back to the road, and his face was soft where I’d been expecting something sharp. “It seems silly now,” he said, “but I used to take it personally that at every turn, you seemed to make the choice I’d least approve of. If my heart attack taught me anything, it’s that we’re all a lot less important than we think. I still don’t agree with most of the choices you’ve made in life, but I’ve come to see that who you are has precious little to do with me. I love you, Lilly. You’re my daughter and I love you, and I’ll do anything to help you beat this thing.”