Luis, in contrast, became Gina’s self-appointed specialist and spoke of disseminated lymphoma, carcinomas, and total nodal irradiation over dinner to his silent wife and son. He made Gina stop wearing her signature perfume, and he threw out the throw rugs lest the dust hurt her immune system. He cut and added foods to her diet: corn was out; beets were in. He saved a folder of articles about antioxidants and free radicals and the benefits of green tea. He prepared chopped salads with lemon. Gina pushed her plate away and cried. She didn’t have an appetite; everything tasted like sand. She only wanted ice cream, green-tea flavor if possible.

For a while the disease was invisible, until she began losing wool. She became skinny except for her stomach, which swelled and hurt. The skin above her knees sagged, and she bruised easily. Her cancer was ever changing; in phone calls, Luis spoke in numbers. Alfonzo just hummed along. Numbers up was bad; thus down was good. Not like the stock market, like a debt. But whom did Gina owe? She seemed to be making payments with her hair and her fat, with her saliva and her ability to stay awake.

Alfonzo accompanied her to the grocery store, where she studied packages.

“Your father wants me to buy ancient grains and says I can’t have potatoes anymore.”

“Get what you want, Mom.”

Alfonzo’s head ached all the time. Gina bought only a carton of banana ice cream, because the store had no green tea.

“Don’t tell your father,” she said.

Who was in control? No one.

Alfonzo went with his parents to doctors’ visits. The doctors talked in war metaphors. Her territory was occupied by internal enemies. Her immune system didn’t know how to battle the insurgency. The cancer changed form and disappeared into the civilian population. The doctors sent in pharmacological reinforcements. Gina had to fortify herself, they said. The doctors recommended further treatments that would, they said, trick her body into fighting harder.

Instead of reading his father’s clippings or the doctor’s pamphlets, Alfonzo read a scholarly book on metaphor. He read that war wasn’t an appropriate trope for illness, yet it was the most popular.