His Mother's Son

by Emmons, Cai

• ISBN13: 9780156028769
• ISBN10: 015602876X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Summary

To those who meet Jana Thomas, hers seems a perfect life, with a beautiful home, a successful career as an ER doctor, a loving husband, and a darling six-year-old son named Evan. But inside, Jana is crumbling. Evan's seemingly normal all-boy tendencies are escalating her motherly worry into something close to hysteria, threatening her job, her marriage, and even her relationship with her son. The real source of Jana's disintegration is a past she has kept buried for sixteen years. When that past begins to bleed into the present, Jana is forced to plunge into the emotional whirlpool she left behind-with results that are shattering, profound, and wrenchingly moving. Reminiscent of Sue Miller and Jane Hamilton, Cai Emmons's extraordinary first novel strikes a fine balance between keen psychological observation and page-turning momentum.

Author Biography

Cai Emmons has written for the stage, film, and television. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches at the University of Oregon. She is the mother of a son.

Excerpts

OneWhen Jana returns to the curtained cubicle, she finds eighty-three-year-old Mr. Cianetti has moved off the examining table and is sitting on a low metal stool. His frail crossed legs have hiked up the johnny so his genitals are visible, snuggled in the crack of his groin like resting mice, but he seems not to notice. His steady dark eyes follow her for a moment as she lays down his chart, then his face implodes in a grin which furrows the loose flesh of his cheeks and reduces his lips to mere lines but still comes out looking impish.Jana loves her old patients. Ambitions all played out, they sit before her, ink still, mysterious with memory, removed from the dirty march of time. Some of these people are the ages her parents would be, though she rarely thinks of this, rarely allows herself to think of this."Your parents must be proud," he says.She leaves his chart on the counter, takes a seat on the other stool, and rolls up beside him. "I'd like to admit you overnight, Mr. Cianetti. So we can do some more tests and get a better idea of what is going on. I want you to see a neurologist. His name is Ren Scofield and I've already talked to him about you.""Of course." He squints at her. "You can tell me I'm dying.""It's not a question of dying," she says, though of course it is and he knows it. He probably won't die today or tomorrow, or even next month, but at his age his prognosis is not good even if his brain tumor is operable.She would prefer to have this discussion when she had time for it, instead of at a moment when she is pressed to leave to get her son, Evan, but one can't always choose these things, and she would also prefer to be the one to talk to Mr. Cianetti rather than leaving it until the next shift when Gaffney and Ettinger come on. They're both good docs, but they can be abrupt with the older patients, often imparting just enough information to inflame the patient's anxiety and exacerbate the physical complaints."I'm not afraid of death," Mr. Cianetti says. "When you're my age it has a certain appeal."She listens to the aftermath of his words to see if he means it, to see if the words don't regroup in the silence to mean the exact opposite. Sometimes, out of the silence, more words and feelings will materialize. He recrosses his legs, reaches up to his earlobe, and strokes it with a single finger.Their silence is a small bubble in a hurricane of ER sound-a wailing child, frantic footsteps, the squeak of rolling carts and gurneys. And there's another subtler set of sounds embedded here, which only she can hear: the sounds of full-blown illness, not measurable in decibels, or detectable by the human ear, but easily amplified by the mind. The surge of adrenaline, the synaptic havoc of a brain in distress, a heart beating furiously to maintain itself. He glances around the cubicle and she sees his nearly lashless lids have moistened. She touches his loosely fisted hand. Lightly. Briefly. The skin is mushroom soft,

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Excerpted from His Mother's Son by Cai Emmons
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