A few days later, after recovering from emergency surgery, I underwent a series of tests, which revealed that my stomach was riddled with a constellation of tumors. Yes, they were malignant. And yes, according to the medical center oncologist who shall remain nameless, my cancer was somewhat advanced, well into the Stage Two phase of metastasis.

Here’s some general information:

My name is Bella Lee Baird. I’m fifty-three years old. I was born at Saint Francis Hospital, in Evanston, Illinois. I am healthy. I eat a low-fat, high-fiber diet. I’ve never smoked cigarettes. Over the years I’ve occasionally enjoyed various forms of marijuana but I don’t abuse it. Aside from a bottle of red wine now and then, I’ve never been much of a drinker. I do own a thirty-year-old single-malt scotch. And I do eat meat, but only a few times a month and exclusively the six-ounce filet over at Jack’s Bar & Steakhouse on College Street. I’ve never so much as suffered a broken bone.

I have no children and I’ve never been married. Like many single, self-possessed women who’ve managed to find solid footing in the slippery foothills of higher education, I’ve been accused of being a lesbian. And a witch. And a maker of Bulgarian cheese. And a collector of cat calendars.

Both my parents are dead. My father suffered a fatal heart attack at sixty-two and I’ll get to my mother in a minute. I have no brothers or sisters. I live in faculty housing. I don’t own property. I’m essentially a walking social security number with a coveted Ivy League professorship and a handful of moth-bitten sweaters.

Besides those sweaters, my greatest claim to this life has been my book collection, which I’ve been carefully curating since my early twenties. Everyone from Edith Wharton to Samuel Beckett. I’m a whore for first editions. An American Tragedy, Ethan Frome, and the French version of Beckett’s Watt, to name a few.

Scattered among these monuments are three of my own contributions to the world of letters: two slim volumes of short stories published before I was hired by Yale, and an underappreciated novel written in my late thirties that, despite some flattering reviews and a mention or two on a handful of year-end lists, is struggling to stay in print.

So back to my mother.

Lorna Baird died of stomach cancer at the age of fifty-four. She had a rare disease called neurofibromatosis, which the cancer infiltrated. Neurofibromatosis is a condition in which tumors manifest either topically, as moles or skin tags, or internally. In her case, one of the more tenacious little bastards attached itself to one of her adrenal glands and burst apocalyptically, seeding little baby malignant tumors all throughout her abdomen. At the time there was no known protocol for treatment. They tried everything: chemotherapy; radioactive isotopes; transcendental meditation. They even fed her shark cartilage. But the tumors organized their attack and grew so quickly that her abdomen swelled to the size of a cantaloupe.