by Leslie Gould
Jill began to run, shoving the bulbs into the pockets of her coat. She stripped the gloves off and slipped them into the waistband of her jeans. She thought about ditching the trowel in a bush but then decided to keep it. If the tulips didn’t survive, she’d still have a memento of the evening.
She turned left at the next block, circling back to the rental car, stumbling several times on the broken sidewalk.
As she reached the car, she saw a state patrol cruiser slow to a stop right in front of the old place. She opened the car door, dug through the dirt and bulbs for the keys, quickly started the motor, and pulled away from the curb toward the highway.
Would the state patrolman stop her? Charge her with stealing tulips?
She began to laugh.
The Great Tulip Caper.
She felt lighthearted driving east toward New Jersey in the dark. She’d seen where she’d come from. Well, where her dad came from. She never wanted to go back. Unless it was to steal more tulips.
She started to laugh again, tapping the steering wheel with her dirty fingernails. Why had she bothered with the gloves? She pulled them from under her sweater, rolled down her window, and flung the white canvas onto the highway.
She got a room at the Howard Johnson on the Pennsylvania side of Trenton and put it on Marion’s Visa. As soon as she entered the room, she spread the bulbs on tissues on the bathroom counter to dry. The flowers had begun to wilt. She tore them off their stems and pressed them in the Gideon Bible. In the morning she took the Bible with her.
That summer, when she moved to Argentina, she wrapped the bulbs in fabric and smuggled the bundle in her carry-on bag. Later she refrigerated the bulbs, giving them the winter that they needed, and then planted them in pots and kept them in her room. They bloomed for Christmas. Jill kept the bulbs indoors in pots or in the refrigerator until she planted them in the garden of her Victorian house in Ashland on the day they moved in.
Jill woke to Simon’s cries. Hudson was at the bedroom door. “We’re up,” he said.
The pain was back. She’d forgotten to take another pill before she fell asleep.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked.
Hudson shrugged his shoulders.
Jill swung her feet over the edge of the bed. What had Joya told her after Fellowship? Jill sat for a minute, not wanting to get up too quickly.
“Have faith,” she’d said. “Don’t go by how you feel. Believe that you are healed. Act like you are healed. Take care of your family.”
She heard Rob at the front door. “Go tell Daddy to get Simon,” she said to Hudson, standing to reach for the bottle of pain meds on her dresser.
11
Caye woke with a start. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. First she thought of the kids. Is it Andrew? Is it Audrey? Her heart raced. No, they’re all right.
Nathan?
And then she remembered. It was Jill.
She lifted her head to look at the clock on Nathan’s nightstand: 4:50 A.M. Caye thought of her relief three months before when 1999 uneventfully turned into the year 2000. It wasn’t that she anticipated a catastrophe, but still she felt her guard let down as the first of the year dawned without any repercussions. Now her guard was up again. Did calamity loom ahead?
She slipped out of bed twenty minutes later and pulled a pair of socks from the basket of clean laundry on the landing. She padded down the staircase, turned up the heat, started a pot of Monday-morning coffee, and grabbed Nathan’s black sweatshirt that he’d draped over a dining room chair the evening before. She pulled it on, leaving the hood on her head, covering her short, disheveled hair.
She looked out the kitchen window while she waited for the coffee. She imagined the weeds working their way to the top of the soil in the unplanted garden. Dawn filled the backyard; the early morning light bathed the newly green trees in a golden hue.
Caye poured the coffee and wrapped her hands around the mug, hoping to draw some comfort, some solace from the warm ceramic. She picked up her Bible from the hutch as she passed through the dining room, plodded into the living room, and sat in her rocking chair.
She sipped the coffee, taking in the hot liquid; the comforting aroma filled her head. When she was growing up, her mom would start the coffee in the gallon stainless steel pot with the black plastic spigot early each morning. Caye would wake to the smell long after her father had gone off on the ranch with a thermos full of strong, black Folgers. She’d find her mother with a mug in her hand sitting at the kitchen table in her cleaning-lady uniform, ready to leave for the hospital. Both of her parents’ breath always smelled of coffee from morning to night.
Nathan would be up soon. Then Audrey, and finally Andrew. Rob and Jill were going to drop Hudson, Liam, and Simon off by 10:15 on their way to Jill’s appointment with Dr. Scott.
Caye shivered as she sat with her legs pulled up to her chest, her nightshirt stretched over her knees, the Bible on the cushion beside her. It was the only time she’d have to herself all day.
“God, I’m afraid,” she whispered. “So afraid.”
She took another sip of coffee.
It was a dream, a bad dream. Not even Caye, in her worst fit of worry, could have come up with this. Just the thought of Jill having cancer was unbelievable. But a cancer as threatening as pancreatic cancer was beyond comprehension.
She put the mug on the end table and picked up her Bible. It fell open to Galatians. There, underlined during Thomas’s teachings from two years ago on the apostle Paul’s letters, was the verse: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Jill and Rob waited in an examination room.
“What are you thinking?” Jill asked Rob.
“I’m trying not to think,” he said, spinning around on the stool. “Just trying to get through this next part.”
“Do you think Joya is right?”
“You don’t want to know what I think of Joya right now.”
The nurse, a tiny middle-aged woman with prematurely gray hair, came in and took Jill’s blood pressure: 150 over 110.
“It’s a little high,” she said, patting Jill on the shoulder.
“I’m a little nervous,” Jill replied as the nurse left the room.
“The doctor is twenty-five minutes late,” Rob reported, looking at his watch, before the door completely closed behind the nurse. “Awfully inconsiderate of him, isn’t it?”
“He’s busy,” Jill said. “He’ll be in soon. I think you’ll like him.”
Rob spun around on the chair again.
A quick little knock on the door was immediately followed by Dr. Scott coming into the room.
He stuck out his hand to Rob. “Dr. Scott,” he said.
“Rob Rhone.”
“Hello, Jill. How are you?”
“Better.”
The doctor sat on the vinyl seat of the straight-back metal chair. “I’m sorry,” Dr. Scott said, clearing his throat. “I have some difficult news to tell you.”
The room moved, shifted, began to tilt.
“The biopsy came back positive for pancreatic cancer.” Dr. Scott raised his eyebrows as he spoke.
Jill’s spine felt as if it were going to give, as if she were going to collapse on the table and then slide onto the floor. She folded her arms around her chest, forced herself to sit straight, to stop the fall, to brace herself against the emotional gravity that tugged so heavily, that threatened to take her down.
Rob stood and walked to the examining table; he wrapped his arms around Jill in a clumsy sideways hold, as if he were communicating to an unseen enemy—or maybe the doctor—that she was his, that she belonged to him, and she was not to be taken. They stayed that way for a moment, Jill hugging herself, Rob hugging Jill. Finally she grasped his forearm and held on.
“What do you know about pancreatic cancer?” Dr. Scott asked softly.
�
��We know it’s bad,” Rob answered.
“My father died from it,” Jill added. Did the doctor remember that? He was nodding; yes, he’d read her chart. Jill knew it was bad, but she didn’t know the particulars, not exactly. She knew Marion thought it meant sure death, which made Jill want to believe desperately that it didn’t, made her want to rebel against cancer the way she’d rebelled against Marion-the-doomsayer in little ways all these years. And besides, her father had died nearly thirty years ago. Surely advances had been made since then; surely the odds weren’t as bad as in the early ’70s.
Jill had lived with the specter of cancer since childhood. Marion had snaked it around her life. She’d struggled to escape it, to wriggle away, to flee and leave it behind. Pan-cre-at-ic can-cer was how Marion said it, pronouncing each syllable with distinction, making it sound like one long, dirty word.
And now here it was, winding itself tighter, threatening this life she had created.
“Our course of action is to be aggressive,” the doctor said. “Very aggressive. We’ll start with surgery and then follow with chemotherapy to keep the cancer from spreading. And then radiation to shrink anything that’s left.”
“What is the prognosis?” Rob questioned.
“Have you done any research on pancreatic cancer?” The doctor asked.
Jill shook her head.
“Not really,” Rob answered.
“The statistics aren’t good. But Jill’s young and healthy. She has a lot to live for.”
“What are the statistics?” Rob asked.
“Twenty percent of patients who undergo surgery successfully have a five-year survival rate. But there’s only a four percent survival rate over five years for all patients.” Dr. Scott looked directly at Jill.
Jill struggled for air, for oxygen. She felt as if she were breathing fog—no, smog. Southern California smog. Buenos Aires smog. Twenty percent. Four percent. She couldn’t grasp what it meant.
Jill wanted to ask about the statistics again, to have the doctor explain it slowly, but she couldn’t get her mouth open to form the words. Twenty percent. Four percent. What did he mean, exactly?
“Is this the best place for Jill to be?” Rob responded. His voice sounded defensive. “I mean,” he continued, “should we go to the Mayo Clinic? Or Johns Hopkins?”
“I trained at Stanford,” Dr. Scott answered. “I feel fully competent to handle Jill’s case. Of course the decision is up to you.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” Jill said. She couldn’t leave the boys. Wouldn’t leave the boys. And to take them along would be so upsetting. She wanted them all together. In her house. In their house.
“I have to tell you,” the doctor said as he hunched forward and leaned toward them, “I have a wife and two little girls and a third baby on the way, a family much like yours. I’ve thought about the two of you and your boys all weekend, wondering what the results would be.”
He paused. “I’m sorry. Your case hits very close to home for me. I promise you that I’ll do everything possible, everything within my power.”
“Thanks,” she said to the doctor.
“When is surgery scheduled?” Rob asked.
“This Thursday. Dr. Kendall will do it. I have great confidence in him. He can see you tomorrow afternoon. His receptionist will call to set up a time.”
The doctor handed them two packets of papers stapled together—one on pancreatic cancer, the other on surgery.
“Please call me if you have any questions,” he said as he stood to leave. After he was gone, Rob sat back down on the swivel chair and looked at Jill, stared at her, pulled her in with his gray eyes. She inched her way off the table, stood, picked her leather purse off the floor, and slung the strap over her shoulder.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He spread the palms of his hands, of his big, big hands, into a cup, covered his face and began to sob. Big, shaking sobs. Jill squatted on the floor in front of him and placed her hands on his wrists and pulled him toward her.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. Her strength was building. Gravity had eased its grip. “It will be okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “You should be crying, not me. I should be strong.”
“It’s okay,” she singsonged. “We’ll get through this. We’ll make it. I’ll make it.”
“I don’t want you to die,” he said.
He pushed the swivel chair back and knelt on the floor beside her, taking her in his arms. He stroked her dark hair, pulled his fingers through it.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your dad? About the others?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“I would have been more prepared for this.”
“And written me off years ago the way Marion has?”
“No, baby, no.”
“We’d better go,” she said. “They’ll need the room.” “To break bad news to someone else.”
Rob stood and helped Jill to her feet, held her arm as they walked out of the room. Take care of me. Take care of me, Rob.
Reading the literature in the car on the drive home, she realized it would take more than Rob to take care of her and the boys.
The sun was warm against Caye’s back, against Nathan’s black sweatshirt that she’d worn all morning.
Audrey and Hudson played in the sandbox, both singing, “Take me out to the ball game,” as they lined up gritty sand cakes and cookies along the edge of the railroad tie box that Nathan had built three years before. Audrey’s new bike was parked next to the garage. Caye had promised her a trip around the block after Simon woke from his nap.
Liam swung from the rope on the big leaf maple, back and forth, back and forth, his muddy yellow boots flying over the grass. She looked at her watch: 11:40. She should start lunch for the older kids before Simon woke.
She’d planted the white geraniums and lobelia in the window box and had begun to level the garden with the rake. The rain had formed clods of mud that needed to be broken up.
Why hasn’t Jill called? She pulled the rake, yanking it through the lumpy soil. Maybe everything is fine. Maybe she and Rob went out to lunch.
She pulled the rake again.
Liam walked away from the swing over to Audrey’s bike. “Get away from it!” Audrey shouted.
“Audrey,” Caye said, “where are your manners?”
“Mom, he’s so annoying.”
Annoying was Audrey’s new word. She’d learned it from Andrew.
“And he’s copying me. He keeps wearing his boots.” Audrey looked down at her own black rubber boots. Caye knew her daughter was jealous that Liam’s were yellow.
“Come on, Liam,” Caye said. “Do you want to help me? I’m getting ready to plant the garden.”
As Caye took his hand to lead him to the back of the yard, the phone rang.
She dropped his hand. “Be right back,” she told him and hurried up the deck stairs into the kitchen, snatching the phone from the table.
“Hi, sweetie,” Jill said.
“How are you?” Caye blurted out, unable to control her words, never meaning the question more in her life.
“It’s cancer,” Jill said, the words cascading into a sob, the sob gaining momentum.
“Oh, Jill. Jill, oh, Jilly.”
The sobbing continued. “I’m sor…sorry.” Caye heard Jill take a raggedy breath. The sobbing stopped. “Jill? Are you there?”
It was a man’s voice. “Hi, Caye.” It was Rob.
“I’m here.”
“We’ll call you in a few minutes, okay? I’m going to pull over. I think Jill and I both need to cry.”
Caye turned the phone off, gripped it in her hand, and looked out in the backyard. It looked like a foreign land. The world had shifted. She felt as if she were standing on a steep slope, as if they were all ready to slide off the landsc
ape. Liam flung dirt out of the garden plot onto the grass with the rake. His hands were covered with mud, and he’d smeared it across his face. Audrey sat on her bike, arms crossed. Hudson was throwing sand out of the box toward Audrey.
Caye wanted to run upstairs and fling herself across her bed. She wanted to call Nathan and say, “It’s true. It’s true. How can it be true?”
She stood at the window and imagined going outside and patting Hudson on the head. “Don’t throw sand,” she’d say. Then she’d add, “These are lovely cakes, Hudson, just lovely. I think you’ll be a cook like your mommy.”
Then she’d walk over to the garden. “Liam,” she’d say taking his hand once more, “why don’t you swing again? You looked so happy swinging.”
Instead she stood and watched the scene unfold as the word CANCER reverberated through her head. Oh, God, why would you let this happen?
Cancer. Cancer. Not to Jill. Her heart constricted with love for her friend. Not to Jill. She thought of Jill crying, of optimistic Jill sobbing.
Tears flooded Caye’s eyes. She wiped them on the sleeve of the sweatshirt.
Liam picked up a dirt clod and threw it at Hudson.
Still, Caye stood watching the children as if she were watching a movie in slow motion with the sound turned off and the color turned up. The clarity of the shifting landscape was electrifying. Her head ached.
Liam threw another dirt clod and hit Hudson’s shoulder.
Caye’s feet began to move. She realized the door was opening and she was moving, stepping into the foreign Technicolor world before her. The phone was still in her hand.
“No, no, Liam,” she said. “We don’t throw dirt clods.”
Hudson threw another handful of sand at Audrey.
“Stop it, Hudson,” she said, swiping her sleeve across her nose. “Please be kind.”
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Audrey asked, climbing off her bike. “Have you been crying?”
