This could be my chance, I thought, to make amends for everything. For all the burdens I’d imposed as a hyperactive child, for all the vitriol I’d spewed as a tortured teen. For hiding in department stores, throwing tantrums in public, destroying her favorite objects. For stealing the car, coming home on mushrooms, drunk driving into a ditch.

I would radiate joy and positivity and it would cure her. I would wear whatever she wanted, complete every chore without protest. I would learn to cook for her—all the things she loved to eat, and I would singlehandedly keep her from withering away. I would repay her for all the debts I’d accrued. I would be everything she ever needed. I would make her sorry for ever not wanting me to be there. I would be the perfect daughter.

Over the course of the next two weeks my father was able to arrange an appointment at MD Anderson and my parents flew to Houston. With better imaging, they discovered my mother did not have pancreatic cancer but a rare form of stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma that had likely originated in the bile duct. The doctors told them if they had moved forward with the surgery the first doctor suggested, she would have bled out on the operating table. The recommended course of action now was to return home and hit it with a three-drug Molotov cocktail, then follow up with radiation if the results were positive. My mom was only fifty-six and despite the cancer, relatively healthy. They felt if they went in strong, there was a possibility she could still beat it.

Back in Eugene my mother sent me a photo of her new pixie cut. She’d had the same hairstyle for more than ten years, simple, straight, and falling just below her shoulders. Sometimes she’d wear it in a loose ponytail, often with a visor or a sun hat in the summer, a beanie or a little newsboy cap in the fall. Aside from the perm she had when she was younger, I’d never seen it styled any other way. “It suits you!” I messaged back ecstatically, following up with a number of enamored, animated emojis. “You look younger!!! Mia Farrow!!!” I meant it. In the photo she was smiling, posing in front of a white wall in the living room, near the kitchen counter where my parents kept their car keys and the landline. There was a plastic port on her chest, its edges secured with clear medical tape. She looked almost coy. Her expression was hopeful, her posture slightly bent, and it made me hopeful too.

In spite of my mother’s initial objections, I quit my three jobs, sublet my apartment, and put the band on hiatus. My plan was to spend the summer in Eugene and return to Philadelphia in August for our two-week tour. By then I would have a better idea of what my family and I were in for, and whether or not I should move out indefinitely. In the interim, Peter would visit.

I landed in Eugene in the afternoon, the day after my mother’s first chemotherapy infusion. I’d done my best to look poised and put together, spending my layover at the San Francisco airport in front of the women’s room mirror. I washed my face in the sink and dabbed it dry with a rough paper towel. I brushed my hair and reapplied my makeup, cautiously lining my lids with the thinnest flick of a cat eye I could manage. I took the lint roller out of my carry-on and rolled the sticky paper over my jeans and picked at the pills on my sweater. I smoothed the wrinkles as best I could with the palms of my hands. I put more effort into composing myself for my mother than I had for any date or job interview.

I had prepared for our visits this way since college, when I’d return home for winter and summer breaks. In December of my freshman year, I carefully polished a pair of cowboy boots she sent me, dipping a soft cloth into the waxy paste they came with and running it over the leather, blending it in small circles with the bristles of a wooden brush.

Though my mother and I hadn’t parted on good terms, once a month, huge boxes would arrive, reminders I was never far from her mind. Sweet honey-puffed rice, twenty-four packs of individually wrapped seasoned seaweed, microwavable rice, shrimp crackers, boxes of Pepero, and cups of Shin ramen I would subsist on for weeks on end in an effort to avoid the dining hall. She sent clothing steamers, lint rollers, BB creams, packages of socks. A new “this is nice brand” skirt she’d found on sale at T. J. Maxx. The cowboy boots arrived in one of these packages after my parents had vacationed in Mexico. When I slipped them on I discovered they’d already been broken in. My mother had worn them around the house for a week, smoothing the hard edges in two pairs of socks for an hour every day, molding the flat sole with the bottom of her feet, wearing in the stiffness, breaking the tough leather to spare me all discomfort.

I stood before the full-length mirror in my dorm room and scanned myself for errors, scouring my outfit for snags and loose threads. I tried to see myself through my mother’s shrewd eye, pinpoint the parts of me she’d pick apart. I wanted to impress her, to demonstrate how much I’d grown and how I could thrive without her. I wanted to return an adult.

My mother prepared for our reunions in her own way, marinating short rib two days before my arrival. She filled the fridge with my favorite side dishes and bought my favorite radish kimchi weeks in advance, leaving it out on the counter for a day so it was extra fermented and tart by the time I got home.

Tender short rib, soused in sesame oil, sweet syrup, and soda and caramelized in the pan, filled the kitchen with a rich, smoky scent. My mother rinsed fresh red-leaf lettuce and set it on the glass-top coffee table in front of me, then brought the banchan. Hard-boiled soy-sauce eggs sliced in half, crunchy bean sprouts flavored with scallions and sesame oil, doenjang jjigae with extra broth, and chonggak kimchi, perfectly soured.

Julia, the golden retriever we’d had since I was twelve, fell onto her back, paws up, submitting her giant stomach in a pose my mother always referred to as “breasts up!” while my mother grilled the galbi I would always associate with the taste of home.

“Julia is getting fat,” I said, running my hand over her protruding belly. “You’re feeding her too much.”

“I only give her dog food…and just a little bit of rice! She’s a Korean dog; she loves her rice!”

Blissfully I laid my palm flat, blanketed it with a piece of lettuce, and dressed it just the way I liked—a piece of glistening short rib, a spoonful of warm rice, a dredge of ssamjang, and a thin slice of raw garlic. I folded it into a perfect little satchel and popped it into my mouth. I closed my eyes and savored the first few chews, my taste buds and stomach having been deprived for months of a home-cooked meal. The rice alone was a miraculous reunion, the cooker having imbued each kernel with textural autonomy, distinguishing it from the gluey, microwavable bowls I’d been surviving on in my dorm room. My mother lingered to take in my expression.

“Tastes good? Masisseo?” She opened a package of seaweed and placed it next to my rice bowl.

“Jinjja masisseo!” I said, my mouth still half-full, fainting in dramatic appreciation.

My mother sat behind me on the couch, pushing my hair behind my shoulders and out of my face as I gorged ravenously on the bounties of the feast. It was a familiar touch, her cool and sticky hand smoothed with cream, one I found myself no longer lurching away from but leaning into. It was as if I possessed a new internal core that gravitated toward her affection, its charge renewed by the time I’d spent away from its field. I found myself eager to please her again, savoring the laughter she broke into as I regaled her with stories about confronting adulthood, drawing out the details of my ineptitude. How I’d shrunk a sweater two sizes in the wash, how I’d taken myself out to a fancy lunch and accidentally spent twelve dollars on sparkling water, thinking it was complimentary. Admissions that surrendered, Mom, you were right.

As I descended the escalator of the Eugene airport, I half expected my mother to be waiting for me like she used to, alone in the terminal just beyond security, waving as I came into view. She’d always be there to get me, dressed neatly in all black with a large faux fur vest and huge tortoiseshell sunglasses, looking out of place among the other residents of Eugene in their baggy green Oregon Ducks hoodies.

Instead, I found my father outside, parked by the baggage claim exit.

“Hey, bud,” he said. He gave me a hug and lifted my suitcase into the trunk.

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s okay. She went in for the chemo yesterday. Says she just feels a little weak.”

We were quiet in the car and I rolled down the window to take a deep breath of Oregon air. It was warm and smelled like cut grass and the beginning of summer. We drove past the long stretch of empty fields, then the big-box stores on the outskirts of town, past the home of a best friend I no longer knew, repainted now, the lawn fenced in.

Per usual, my dad drove aggressively, weaving in and out of traffic at odds with the naturally slow pace of the small college town. It felt strange to be together without my mother. The two of us never spent much time alone.

My father was happy as a provider. His mere existence in our lives was testament enough to how he’d transcended his own upbringing and overcome his addictions, and that counted for something.

As a kid I was enthralled with the stories of his past, his machismo and grit. He would regale me with the fights of his youth, sparing no detail. How he’d once blinded a man, how he’d been held at knifepoint, how he’d stayed up for twenty-three days on a speed bender living under the boardwalk. He rode a Harley and wore an earring and his stockiness always made me feel safe and protected. And he could drink. After work he’d hold court at the Highlands, a local bar across from his office. He could knock back shots of tequila and a half-dozen beers like it was nothing and the next morning appear completely unscathed.

Unlike my mother, he tried to raise me with indifference to gender, teaching me how to ball a fist and how to build a fire. When I was ten he even bought me my own Yamaha 80cc motorbike so I could follow him along the muddy circuit in the backyard.

But for most of my childhood he was away at work or at the bar, and when he was home, most of his time was spent roaring into the phone, looking for a missing pallet of strawberries or trying to find out why a truckload of romaine was running three days behind. Over time our conversations became a lot like explaining a movie to someone who has walked in on the last thirty minutes.

My father often blamed his work for the distance that grew between us. I was ten when he took over his brother’s business and his workload practically doubled. But the truth was his new position coincided with the purchase of our family’s first desktop computer, which was when I first stumbled across the paid affairs he’d been scheduling with women online. It was a secret I kept from my mother my entire life.

Even at a young age I was quick to rationalize my father’s infidelity. He was a man with needs and I assumed my parents must have come to some sort of understanding. But as I grew older the secret began to fester. The same stories grew tiresome and repetitive, his violent past less the exploits of a hero than excuses for his shortcomings. His constant lack of sobriety was no longer endearing; the drunk driving after work, irresponsible. What had been a delight as a child fell short of what I needed from a father as an adult. We were not innately, intrinsically intertwined the way I was with my mother, and now that she was sick, I was unsure of how we’d manage to pull through together.

We headed up Willamette Street, clearing the steep hill that passed the sloping cemetery. The pavement changed where a sign marked the end of city limits and a sequence I’d seen a thousand times unfurled. There still were the same bends where deer were likely to jump, the straightaways where my dad would try to pass slow-moving Volvos and Subarus headed up to Spencer Butte. Then the winding stretch of guardrail and the clearing, where hills of yellowing grass opened west to the uninterrupted sunset. Up and up, the pines taking over, obscuring the houses behind them, past the butte and Duckworth’s Nursery, where peacocks roamed freely through the groves of potted trees and shrubs, past the Christmas-tree farm on Fox Hollow Road, and down the gravel path covered by a canopy of trees and ferns and moss all growing into one another like a lattice until the lush mass broke open to our home.

Dad parked the car and I hurried inside, lining my shoes up neatly in the mudroom. I called out to her as I entered through the kitchen, and she stood up from the couch.

“Hello, my baby!” she called back to me.

I went to her, embracing her cautiously. I felt the hard plastic port between us. I ran my hand over her hair.

“It looks so good,” I said. “I love it.”

She sat back down and I slinked off the leather couch and sat on the rug between her and the coffee table. Julia panted beside us, her tongue lobbing over the missing canine my father had accidentally knocked out a few years ago, driving golf balls off the driveway tee. I hugged my mother’s calves and leaned my head on her lap. I had expected our reunion to be emotional, but she seemed calm and unmoved.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine,” she said. “I feel a little weak, but I feel fine.”

“You have to eat a lot to keep your health up. I want to learn how to make all the Korean dishes you like.”

“Oh yes, you becoming such a good cook from the picture you been sending me. Tomorrow morning how about you make me some fresh tomato juice? I buy two or three organic tomatoes and I blend it in the Vitamix with some honey and ice. Taste so good. Lately I’ve been making that one.”

“Tomato juice. Got it.”

“In two weeks Mommy’s friend Kye is going to come. And then maybe she can teach you how to make some Korean foods.”

Kye was my mother’s friend from my parents’ time in Japan. She was a few years older than my mother and had taken her under her wing while my father worked the used car lots in Misawa. She showed her where to shop, where to drink, how to drive, and how to side hustle, black-marketing items from the PX, the discount department store on base where the GIs did their shopping. Coffee creamer, dish soap, fifths of foreign booze, tins of Spam—my mom would buy these rarities tax-free from the PX for a buck and flip them for five.

They had lost touch after my parents moved to Germany but reconnected a couple of years ago. She lived in Georgia now with her husband, Woody. I’d never met her and I was excited to learn from her, to prove to my mother how useful I could be. I fantasized about the delicious food we’d make together, finally repaying my debts, giving back some of the love and care I’d taken for granted for so many years. Dishes that would comfort her and remind her of Korea. Meals prepared just the way she liked them, to lift her spirits and nourish her body and give her the strength she’d need to recover.

We watched television together for a while, quietly picking the thistles out of Julia’s fur and searching for ticks to burn while she panted on her side, pawing at our wrists, hungry for attention every time our eyes drifted away from her and toward the screen. My mother went to bed early and I brought my bag upstairs.

My bedroom was above my parents’, a wide rectangle tapering into little alcoves with the hips of the roof on either side. My desk was nestled into one niche, my record player cabinet and speakers and a blue-cushioned window seat in the other. The alcoves were painted bright tangerine and the middle section mint, loudly proclaiming from the upper corner of the house: teenage girl was here.

“Stop making all that hole!” my mother would scold from the staircase as I nailed psychedelic tapestries to my ceiling and pinned gigantic Janis Joplin and Star Wars posters to my wall. I found the old record player cabinet and its hideous wooden speakers at Goodwill. “We can paint it!” I said, thrilled at the idea of sharing a creative project with my mother. But once we got them back to the house, I was left to my own devices. I laid out newspaper in the garage and spray-painted the cabinets black and, too impatient to let them dry properly, immediately set in on large white polka dots, which of course dripped and became misshapen, rendering the impression of a melting cow. It reminded me of many such half-baked teenage failures, underscoring the point when I put an old Leonard Cohen album on and remembered that it only played in mono.

I opened the window, the screen of which I’d removed and stashed in a storage closet years ago, and climbed onto the roof. I leaned against the coarse tar paper, setting my feet above the gutter and steadying myself on the slope. There were so many stars out, more brilliant than I’d even remembered, uncorrupted by the lights of the city. The sounds of crickets and frogs resonated from below. At the other end of the roof, when my parents were sleeping, I used to slide down the columns of the portico and meet with whichever kid I’d enlisted to drive for the night. Outside, I’d bound up the gravel driveway to my liberators, engines idling, and I was free.

There wasn’t much to do when we snuck out. Most of the time, the kids who picked me up weren’t even particularly close friends, just bored classmates or older kids with licenses who were still awake with nothing else to do. Every so often there’d be a rave in the woods and we’d dress in elaborate costumes and dance along with the anonymous hippies on ecstasy. Sometimes I would pilfer liquor left over from my parents’ holiday parties and, like a careful chemist, siphon from the various bottles inconspicuous levels of liquid to mix with soda and drink in the park. But most of the time we’d just drive around listening to CDs, occasionally venturing as far as an hour out to Dexter Reservoir or Fern Ridge just to sit on the dock and look out at the black water, dark as oil in the night, a bleak expanse we’d use as a sounding board for how confused we were about ourselves and what exactly it was that we were feeling. Other nights we’d drive up to Skinner Butte to get a good view of the dull city that kept us hostage or drink coffee and eat grated hash browns at the twenty-four-hour IHOP, or sneak our way through some stranger’s acreage where we’d once discovered a rope swing. Once we even drove out to the airport just to watch people at the terminal, flying off to cities where we desperately wished we could travel, a couple of nocturnal teens bonded together by a deep, inexplicable loneliness and AOL instant messenger.

It was not lost on me how different the circumstances were now. Here I was again, this time returned of my own free will, no longer scheming a wild escape into the dark but desperately hoping that a darkness would not come in.