by Leslie Gould
Caye was distracted from her thoughts by Marion walking back into the waiting room.
Caye smiled at her. She would do her best to be nice to Marion. It would make the day easier for Rob. Ultimately easier for Jill.
“How are you doing?” Caye asked.
Marion sat back in her chair. She opened her purse and pulled out a tissue.
A minute passed. She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to stop crying, struggling to regain her composure.
“My last phone call with Jill wasn’t good. And then she didn’t even ask me to come up when she left that message last night.” Marion stopped to wipe away a single tear. “I don’t even know if she wants me here.”
Caye put her arm around Marion and pulled her close, but she felt no warmth, no connection, only a bony shoulder.
Moments later Marion opened her attaché case. Caye couldn’t help but look. On one side were white and pink floral pajamas and a toothbrush, on the other several Manila folders. Marion pulled out the stack of folders.
Caye knew that Marion was a real-estate investor. “She buys properties that she resells or rents. Sometimes she fixes them up. I used to help her. She never let me use good supplies—too much money. It was all cheap paint, dirt, and plants.” Jill had explained that her father was a real-estate agent and had purchased three rentals by the time he died. Marion had sold one of those rentals, bought two more, fixed them up, and then sold them both with enough profit to buy four more houses. “She became obsessed with it,” Jill said. “I practically raised myself. I joined every club and team I could because I was so social, I wanted to be with people. I even played basketball and Softball just to be with people.
“I didn’t even like sports that much,” she added.
“That was high school. In college I spent too much time on the beach.”
Nathan and Rob walked through the door. Rob had a cup of coffee in one hand.
Marion slipped the files back into the case. “That coffee looks good. Where’s the cafeteria?”
“I’ll get you a cup,” Rob answered.
“No, thank you,” Marion replied. “I need to walk around. Which way?”
Caye glanced at her watch at uneven time intervals: 9:30, 10:05, 10:46, 11:28.
The surgery was supposed to take five or six hours.
Caye’s hope was real. Is this faith? Is it faith that gives me hope? Even when I know how bad the prognosis is? What the odds are?
Marion had been gone for two hours.
Jill was tall and thin like Marion, and their eyes were both beautiful and blue, although Marion’s had faded, but that was where the similarities ended. Marion appeared classy at first glance, but she was stiff and evasive. Jill is nothing like her—except maybe the evasive part. Caye sighed. She stood and looked out the window.
Caye looked at her watch again: 12:10. She sat down on the couch. “Let’s go for lunch,” she said to Nathan and Rob.
Marion wasn’t in the cafeteria. Caye sipped a bowl of minestrone soup. Nathan ate a turkey sandwich on sourdough. Rob took a few bites of a cheeseburger.
After they were done, with nothing else to do, they trudged back to the waiting room.
A half-hour later Caye stood to go get coffee. “Either of you want another?” she asked.
“I do,” Rob said, digging into his pocket.
“Don’t worry about it.” Caye smiled. She wanted the coffee, but she also wanted to hunt around for Marion. Caye was beginning to worry.
She hadn’t told the guys about her vision or that Marion had cried.
Marion wasn’t in the cafeteria this time either. But on the way back to the waiting room, Caye spotted her in a side hall, sleeping, curled up on two chairs pushed together. Caye thought of Jill, who could sleep anywhere, anytime. If she was feeling stressed, Jill could simply go to bed and sleep until she felt better. Not Caye. She would go to bed only to end up feeling anxious, more and more anxious until she couldn’t even stand to listen to her own breathing.
Caye could see the surgeon, still in scrubs, sitting on the edge of a chair, talking to Rob and Nathan as she hurried into the waiting room. Caye sat down next to Nathan and handed Rob his coffee. She wrapped her hands around the coffee cup, seeking comfort.
“…a good portion of her pancreas. She’s strong and healthy, considering. She’s in recovery now. It’ll be an hour or so until you can see her.”
The surgeon and Rob both stood and shook hands. “Thank you,” Rob said.
The doctor nodded and left the waiting room. “It went well?” Caye asked.
“Not really,” Rob answered, pressing the heels of both hands against the sides of his head. “They got most of what they went after but not all of it. And it’s already spread. It’s in her lymph nodes, too.”
15
“Your mom’s here,” Rob said, stroking Jill’s hair.
Jill lay flat on her back with a breathing tube down her throat, an IV in her left wrist, and a blood-pressure cuff on her left biceps. She knew she was out of recovery; she was conscious as they wheeled her down the hall, aware of the faces looming above her, floating along in the hallways, smiling at her as they transferred her onto the bed.
Her throat was sore, her lips dry and cracked.
So Marion had shown up.
Jill’s body felt as if she’d been yanked from under a pile of bricks.
“Your mom’s here,” Rob said again. “In the waiting room with Caye. She’d like to come in. Just for a minute.”
Jill shook her head. She could feel the tears well in her sand-filled eyes. The back of her throat began to itch.
“Jill, baby, she came all this way. Can’t she just come in for a minute? And then Caye and Nathan will take her to the house.”
Jill tried to swallow the tickle, the cough, the tears.
“I’ll tell her to be nice, extra nice. She knows you can’t talk, not with the tube in. She’s worried.” Rob pulled his fingers across Jill’s ear lobe, across the empty earring hole.
When are they going to take the tube out? She closed her eyes.
“It hurts,” Rob said. “I know it hurts.”
Jill nodded her head.
“She’ll just come in for a minute. I promise.” Her mother’s hand brushed her cheek. She knew it was Marion by the almond scent of her hand lotion. “It’s Mama,”
Marion said.
How long had it been since she’d called Marion “Mama?” Twenty-five years?
Jill opened her eyes and looked into Marion’s craggy face.
Jill blinked. Marion smiled, the lines curving down deeply around her mouth.
Jill felt Marion reach for her hand, take it, squeeze it. Jill’s heart squeezed back. Just a little squeeze. Why? Why did she have to respond like a five-year-old?
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Marion said.
Caye came forward and kissed Jill’s cheek. Jill saw Nathan beside the bed standing next to Rob.
She closed her eyes again.
When she felt like a five-year-old, she wanted nothing more than to have Marion take care of her.
Jill thought of a trip to the mall to buy school clothes, a rare moment of intimacy with Marion. Jill was twelve or thirteen. She confided, as Marion drove her navy blue Buick, that she wanted to have five children someday.
“You shouldn’t have any children,” Marion had responded, turning the wheel with purpose, not looking at her daughter. Jill remembered Marion’s head floating alongside the dashboard.
“Why?”
“The cancer. The pan-cre-at-ic can-cer.” Again Marion chanted off the morbid litany. “Your father died from it. Your grandfather. Your aunt. Having kids might wear you down—make you more likely to get it. And pass it on.”
It was the first of many times that Marion advised Jill not to have kids.
“The nurse is here.” It was Rob. Jill
opened her eyes and made out his face in the dim light.
“I’m going to go home and check on the boys. I’ll come back this evening,” Rob whispered. Why was he so quiet? How much time had passed? Rob bent down and kissed her cheek. She turned toward him. The tube pulled against her lips, against the corner of her mouth.
Nathan rode with Rob on the way home. They were going to get pizzas while Caye and Marion went straight to Jill’s house. As the day progressed, Marion seemed older and older to Caye. She knew Jill’s mother was seventy—although she appeared much younger with her classy clothes and business demeanor. But the day had taken a toll. Rob suggested that Marion ride with Caye; Marion did not protest.
“Jill’s probably told you that I didn’t think she should have kids,” Marion said. The sky was clear. The late afternoon was too bright. Caye felt the incongruity of the weather. It should be cloudy, even raining. The earth shouldn’t be celebrating with sunshine on a day like today.
Jill had never told Caye that Marion didn’t want her to have kids.
“I was worried about her health. Worried about the cancer going on to another generation.”
Caye smiled, probably what looked like a knowing smile to Marion. It wasn’t. But she wanted Marion to keep talking.
“But if she was going to have one and then keep having more, I kept hoping she’d have a girl. I kept thinking that if she just had a girl, maybe she’d understand me better.”
Marion began to dig in her leather bag.
“Do you need a tissue?” Caye asked.
“Yes.”
Caye reached behind the driver’s seat and retrieved a box of tissues.
“I don’t know how Jill ever turned out to be such a good parent,” Marion said, blowing her nose. “I think she got it from her dad. I know she didn’t get it from me. She takes after him. Confident. Artistic. Both determined to get exactly what they want.”
Caye noted Marion’s present tense.
“I didn’t really love him,” Marion said. “Not the way a wife loves a husband. There was passion at the very beginning, but it died quickly.” Caye waited for her to go on, but Marion didn’t elaborate.
“I won’t stay long,” Marion finally said. She was looking at the window now, talking to the willow trees bowing along Bear Creek.
Marion wadded up the tissue and pulled another from the box.
Caye smiled an awkward, confused smile. It didn’t matter. Marion’s nose was practically pressed against the passenger window.
How much should she say to Marion? She had no idea what Jill wanted her to say. If the circumstances were reversed, if Caye were in the hospital and her mother and Jill were driving along, they’d be talking about the surgery, what the doctor said, what the boys needed, tomorrow’s schedule.
Caye could come up with something to chat about with any stranger. But not with Marion. Maybe they were both too stressed, too tired.
“I’ve never told Jill this. It’s very ironic. But as much as I didn’t want her to have kids, the thought of her first one, when she first told me she was pregnant—that saved my life.”
Caye was confused. Was she talking about the baby Jill aborted? Or Hudson?
“Do you mean Hudson?” Caye asked.
Marion didn’t answer.
“How did he save your life?”
Marion turned her head back toward the creek and the weeping willows.
Alzheimer’s. Caye stole a glance at Marion. She’s not making any sense.
“Mama!” Audrey screamed as Caye stepped out of the station wagon. Marion struggled out of the car and then hurried up the steps. Liam ran out of the house.
“The paints peeling,” Marion said. “It shouldn’t be peeling. I paid too much to have this old place painted.”
Caye felt her fake smile freeze on her cheeks. Her face hurt. She didn’t want to deal with Marion any longer.
Stephanie was standing at the door with Simon.
“How’s Jill?” Stephanie asked. “How was the surgery?”
Caye stopped smiling. “So-so. They got most of what they’re after, but it’s already spread.”
“Oh.” Stephanie frowned. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
Caye felt exhausted. She wanted to curl up on Jill’s window seat that looked out over the garden. She wanted everyone to go away. She didn’t want to take care of children or do laundry or wipe snotty noses or fix meals.
“I’ve got to go,” Stephanie said, handing Simon to Caye.
“I know. I hope we haven’t made you late.”
Stephanie grabbed her backpack and was off. “It’s okay. I called work. They understand. Call me when you need me again.”
Marion stood in the living room and looked around.
“The ceiling looks good. But the walls. What is it about cold colors and Jill? All these shades of blue. I was hoping she’d have them repainted.”
“Hasn’t Simon grown?” Caye asked.
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
Lady, you’re wearing me out. “When was the last time you saw him?” Caye was doing her best to keep the conversation light.
“Thanksgiving,” Marion said. She reached out and touched Simon’s bare foot. He pulled it away. “Jill’s children aren’t very fond of me. Perhaps you’ve noticed.”
Caye wanted to collect the children in one swoop and fly away, away from Marion, away from the word cancer, away from Jill’s house with no Jill.
No, she wanted Marion to fly away.
“I’m exhausted,” Marion said. “Do you think the sheets on the spare bed are clean?”
“Clean enough,” Caye said. She bent over to pick up Simon’s bottle that was dripping formula onto the oak floor. Marion headed up the stairs with her two bags, her trench coat draped over her arm.
After checking on Andrew and Hudson, who were playing pirates in the basement, Caye shooed Audrey and Liam downstairs too. “Turn on PBS,” she yelled down to Andrew. Who cared if they vegged in front of the TV? She didn’t.
She lay down on the couch, tucked Simon between her arm and chest, and put the bottle in his mouth.
“Hey, sweet baby,” she whispered. “Your grandmother is really something.”
Caye’s mind went back to the first months of her friendship with Jill. Caye didn’t feel lonely for months, not the way she had before she met Jill. That lonely-for-a-friend feeling, that need to tell someone good news or bad news or an idea or a sad thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t tell Nathan, but he never wanted to talk things through the way she did, explore the possibilities, rehash it one more time. After she met Jill, Caye realized she’d been longing for a friend like Jill her entire life. Waiting to pour out her thoughts and feelings and hopes, waiting to finally have someone who would listen.
Nathan had commented that Caye was happier than he’d thought she’d be, that staying home full-time suited her better than he’d expected. She wondered if he had any idea it was because of Jill.
But one day, as she unlocked the door to the house after picking up Andrew from kindergarten, a hint of the old loneliness met her. It wasn’t because she hadn’t seen Jill recently—they’d been to the park just that morning. Pulling her key out of the deadbolt, she realized Jill couldn’t meet all her needs any more than Nathan could. Not even Jill and Nathan together could.
“There’s a part that only you can fill. Right, God?” she had prayed.
In that moment she realized that the components of her life were all tied together. Trusting God made her a better wife and friend and mother. Having Jill as a friend made her a better wife and mother. And having a good relationship with both Nathan and Jill made her more trusting of God.
Caye pulled the bottle from Simon’s mouth. He’d fallen asleep.
Rob and Nathan should arrive any time with the pizzas. Sesame Street would end in fifteen minutes. S
he hoped the dads showed up before then.
Simon had been out of sorts the last couple of weeks—and with good reason—but he was usually a mellow baby. He seemed to know from the beginning that Jill had her hands full with Liam. Simon never needed to be rocked to sleep. Jill would put him down in his bassinet, and he’d simply drift off without a fuss.
He was a good nurser. Caye would laugh at Jill who, while talking with Caye and nursing Simon, would run after Liam, struggling to get a marker out of his hand before he reached the newly painted wall, or to grab the air freshener away from him before he squirted his eyes.
“I’ll get it,” Caye would say, running after the three of them.
Liam would scream in anger over his foiled plans. Caye saw clearly how Jill spent her days.
“Am I a bad mom?” Jill asked. “Have I done something beyond-repair wrong with him? Now be honest.”
“No,” Caye would say. “Liam is just Liam.” But she did wonder if Jill was so overwhelmed that she didn’t make Liam mind consistently and if that was why he was such a wild little man.
He was a darling child. Big blue eyes. Curly blond hair that was surprisingly thick. People would stop all of them in the park to comment on how lovely Liam was; strangers would reach out and rub his curls. Both Jill and Caye wondered how the attention made the other children feel. “Here’s someone to pet Liam again,” Andrew said one day on their way to the playground after a middle-aged woman said, “Look at that curly blond hair! And those blue eyes”
Caye would never say it, but Liam was her favorite of Jill’s boys. She had two theories on why. The first was that, although no one else seemed to agree, she thought Liam with his high energy was a lot like Jill. The second was that Caye had been present at his birth.
Jill had asked her to be there. At first Caye thought it was because Jill felt obligated to since she’d been with Caye when Audrey was born.
Caye, although grateful that Jill was with her and had saved the day, wouldn’t have asked her to be there. At the time she only wanted Nathan with her.
But Jill was serious. “And bring your camera. I want photos.”
