They’d arrived when New York was in a period of crisis, but because they’d left a greater crisis, in which heaps of bodies were left to rot, they took the city’s crumbling in stride. They sent Gina to school and pushed her to succeed. She was a model student. She was even valedictorian of her class at St. Dunwen High School for Girls. She went on to start a degree in animal psychology at Brooklyn College, but then she met Luis.

Alfonzo’s dad had been handsome in his day, and he had a fast way of talking that charmed this serious immigrant alpaca. They got married pretty quick, and his mom left school. Alfonzo knew it was because his mother got pregnant with him.

Later, once Alfonzo was safely in grade school, his mother enrolled in a program at LaGuardia Community College to become a dental hygienist. Alfonzo could sense, without anyone ever coming out with it, that his grandparents were devastated their daughter hadn’t finished her four-year degree.

Alfonzo going away to college awakened something long dormant in his mother. Out of the blue she enrolled in some continuing-ed classes, then decided that was insufficient and leapt into a full-degree program. She finished the same time Alfonzo did. Much to the family’s surprise, she kept on. She enrolled in a master’s program to become a therapist. All of a sudden, his mother wanted to share ideas about what she was reading. She told Alfonzo about the theory of learned helplessness, about Harlow’s experiments, and the mirror stage. She grew her wool full and fluffy in a Peruvian style. She started wearing bold colors and silk scarves with flowers and fruits. Gina had an adorable mom-style. All his friends thought so.

A cancer diagnosis would have been shattering no matter what his mother had been doing. He would have mourned and raged no matter what. But somehow the illness felt more cruel because it attacked just as Gina was in the midst of self-transformation. She had been so happy and free.

The doctors explained lymphoma and its stages.

Alfonzo was never curious about the cancer. He had lived life as a model student, but when it came to this illness he turned dull. He refused to study it because no matter what he learned, the cancer would still kill her. He had felt sure of this. The doctors explained palliative care. Alfonzo plucked strands of grass from his wool and arranged them in a pile on the desk.