by Leslie Gould
With her fingertips she felt her incision under her sweatpants. It was bumpy. It still itched.
Jill heard Caye come in the back door, open the refrigerator, and walk into the living room.
“The grill is heating up,” she said, handing Jill a glass of ice water and sitting beside her on the couch.
“Fellowship was weird today,” Jill said. She couldn’t keep herself from talking about it. The whole meeting, under Thomas’s direction, was spent in prayer and silence. “I feel like the thorn in the flesh of the whole group. Like I’ve changed everything. Thomas isn’t teaching. Joya isn’t praying. They never explained why they canceled Fellowship last week and then didn’t come for the potluck either. Gwen isn’t talking. Summer looks like she’s going to burst out crying any minute. I just want it to be the way it was before.”
“It can’t be the same,” Caye said as the phone rang. She went to get it.
Jill heard Caye say, “Let me see if she’s up to talking,” as she walked back into the living room.
“It’s your mom,” Caye mouthed to Jill, holding her hand over the receiver.
Jill started to shake her head and then stopped. She reached for the phone.
“Hi, Mother,” she said slowly.
“How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Have you started the chemo?”
Caye stood in the doorway looking uncomfortable.
“Yes.”
“How are Rob and the boys?”
“Hanging in there.” There was a long pause.
Jill wanted to ask Marion if her father had had chemo. She didn’t even know if he’d had surgery.
“Well,” Marion said, “I shouldn’t keep you. I’ll call in a few days.”
After she put the phone down, Jill looked at Caye. “I don’t get her,” she said. “Not at all.”
By the time Caye and her family went home, it was hot, over ninety. The day turned into a spring scorcher. Audrey had the Chutes and Ladders game out on the dining room table. Caye changed into shorts and a tank top and collapsed on the couch with a book about surviving cancer while Nathan and Andrew went out to play catch. Dirty laundry was piled up in the basement, and the breakfast dishes were still in the sink. She decided to ignore both. Caye felt sticky.
“Hold your mitt up,” Nathan yelled.
Caye heard the ball bounce on the pavement—again.
Even now, feeling exhausted, she wanted to go back over to Jill’s. She was obsessed with being with Jill. All day, five days a week, plus half a day on Sunday didn’t feel like enough. When she was away, all she thought about was Jill and her house. What Jill might eat. What chores needed to be done.
She wanted to fix soup for Jill, help put the boys to bed, throw in a load of wash. She knew it was driving Nathan crazy.
“We still have a life, Caye,” he’d said last night. They were climbing into bed—she’d just returned from Jill’s after taking Hudson, Liam, and Simon home. She’d stayed and bathed them and helped Rob put them to bed. “You have your own home and kids to care for.”
“What’s really bugging you?” Caye had asked.
“I just told you.”
Caye knew it was something more.
“Mommy,” Audrey said, “would you play with me?”
“Ask Andrew.”
Audrey banged out the screen door. Caye was sure Andrew would say yes just to get out of playing catch.
Nathan followed Audrey and Andrew in and sat beside Caye. She reached over and rubbed his sweaty neck with one hand, still holding the book with the other. The hair on the back of his neck was fuzzy. He took off his baseball cap and nudged her hand with the top of his head.
She tousled his hair and then went back to her book.
“Rob was pretty chatty on our walk,” Nathan said, wiping his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt.
Caye glanced up. Rob was usually pretty chatty. It was Nathan who was the quiet one. Rob must have said something significant for Nathan to want to talk about it.
“What he said kind of bugged me. The timing is just hard to take, harder than it would be normally. Although normally I’m sure he never would have said a thing.”
Caye put the book down. “What did he say?”
“Well, I asked him if he was still upset that Jill hadn’t told him about the cancer, like he was that first night at the hospital.”
“And?”
“He said he wasn’t, that it made him feel better about his stuff.”
“His stuff?” Caye asked. What was Nathan talking about? “It’s not like he’s been unfaithful.” Caye sat up straight.
Nathan looked at her. “I can’t tell you this if you’re going to overreact. You can’t talk to him about this. You can’t say anything to Jill. I just need to talk with you about it.”
Caye tried to slouch a little.
“He said that he and Jill had drifted since Simon was born. Jill was always so tired, so preoccupied with the house and the kids. He was traveling all the time. When he had that project in Raleigh, his liaison was a woman.”
Caye remembered Rob traveling to Raleigh several times in the months before Jill’s surgery, since Christmas.
“Late twenties. Not married. Smart. Pretty. They’d go out to lunch. Talk. They started e-mailing back and forth. Nothing heavy. Just chatty stuff. The last trip to Raleigh he stayed longer than he needed to. He justified it—said he needed a break. He took the woman golfing—a business outing, he told himself.”
Caye frowned.
“He’d just gotten home the day before Jill got so sick. He’d been gone more than two weeks. He said at first he just tried to process Jill’s stuff, how vulnerable she was physically.
“Still it made him angry that she’d never said anything. But then it hit him how vulnerable he was too. He said if, in fact, Jill had sinned it was a sin of omission. But what had he been doing? What if he had been unfaithful and then Jill got so sick? What if he’d thrown it all away?
“He said he felt like he’d escaped from a fire.”
Caye was silent.
“Do you hate him?” Nathan asked.
“Not entirely.”
“He feels like he’s escaped the fire, but—”
“Jill’s still in one.” Caye finished Nathan’s sentence.
He nodded.
“And so is he.” Caye paused. “Is he going to tell Jill any of this?”
“Maybe. He doesn’t know what to do,” Nathan continued. “I told him to talk to Thomas.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Yes.”
“But what if Thomas tells Joya?” Caye asked.
Nathan wrinkled his brow. “It’s all so messy,” he said. “Jill and Rob. Marion. The stuff with Joya. Why does it all have to be so messy?”
“I know how much you hate messes,” Caye said. “Especially other people’s messes. At least when they’re your own, you can clean up.”
“You cheated,” Audrey yelled.
Caye heard a game piece hit the floor.
“Sometimes,” Caye said. “Sometimes you can clean up. Why would Rob think about straying when he has a wife like Jill?”
“He took her for granted. Like we all do. We all take each other for granted.”
“I’m never going to take all of this for granted again,” Caye said. “Are you?”
“We all will. A few months will go by. A year. That’s our nature.” “You were the one who wanted to play,” Andrew told Audrey calmly.
“Go play baseball again. Maybe you’ll actually catch the ball.”
“Audrey,” Caye said, “don’t be rude.”
“Was the game yesterday really that bad?” Nathan asked. Caye frowned. She didn’t want to talk about the game. “If Joya finds out about Rob, she’ll say it’s his fault Jill has cancer.” Nathan crossed his arms.
> More game pieces hit the floor. Audrey laughed her high-pitched cackle.
“Put the game away!” Nathan yelled. “Do you think Rob is telling the truth?” Caye asked.
“Audrey, I’m never playing with you again, ever!” Andrew yelled.
Nathan started to stand. Caye caught his hand. “Just ignore them. Please.” She wanted to finish their conversation. He sat back down.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she asked again. “Is there more?
Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think he would have said anything at all if there was.” The board hit the floor.
Nathan sprang to his feet and rushed into the dining room. “Audrey, pick up the game, or I’m taking it away for the next year.” Audrey began to wail.
Jill sat with her hand wrapped in a heating pad. The nurse had already drawn blood. After Jill’s hand was warm, the nurse would insert the catheter for the chemo.
It was Monday. Thursday she’d have another dose of radiation.
“Think of the chemotherapy and radiation as power in your body,” one of the books Caye had read advised. “Don’t think of it as poison.”
Again she thought of the chemicals rushing through her blood, tearing out the bad cells.
“Nausea does not have to occur. Tell your body not to lose its hair, not to give in to sickness. Healthcare providers set up patients for side effects by focusing on the worst-case scenarios,” the same author had written.
She hadn’t been nauseated, not any more than she’d been for the last six weeks.
Caye had pulled up in front of the clinic, dropped off Jill, and then taken the kids to the play structure with the little white house and the picket fence on the hospital grounds.
The woman with the turban sat down next to Jill. The nurse handed her a heating pad, and the woman wrapped it around her hand.
“Hi,” she said to Jill.
“Hello.”
Her name was Marguerite. “I have kidney cancer. They took the one out, then it showed up in the other,” she said with a sigh. “Double jeopardy. I get chemo once a week and dialysis three times a week.”
“How long have you had cancer?” Jill asked.
“Altogether? Three years. Not straight. But six months on, a couple of months off. I keep getting sick, from the chemo—every Tuesday I’m a mess.”
The woman patted Jill’s right arm and then let her hand rest on Jill’s wrist. Jill liked the feel of the talon-like fingers against her arm, holding on, keeping her from floating away.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” Jill nodded.
“What do you have, honey?”
“Pancreatic cancer.”
“Really? You look so good.”
“That’s because I’m going to get well,” Jill said with a smile. The woman chuckled. She’s a classy lady, Jill thought. That’s what I want. To get through this with class.
Caye put the last of the lunch dishes into the dishwasher and thought about how much she looked forward to Mondays, to Jill’s chemo. It gave her hope. The little boys were down for their nap. Caye realized how relieved she felt when nap time rolled around.
Jill was sitting in the living room. Audrey and Hudson were playing in the garden with Scout.
Illness could elicit many responses, Caye had decided. Summer, with all her crying, seemed pessimistic, even fatalistic. “God already knows the outcome of all this. It’s already been decided,” she’d said on Sunday. Then there was Joya’s dogmatic response, that all it took was enough faith.
What did Caye believe?
The phone rang.
It was Marion again.
“Is it you, Caye?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I want to talk to Jill. But tell me first, is she worse than she was?”
“No, no, she’s not worse.”
“Is she better?”
“She seems better, at least a little.”
“Well, there’s something I need to tell her. Unless you already have.”
“About?” Caye responded.
“About my cancer.”
“No,” Caye said, “I didn’t tell her.”
“Oh.” Marion hesitated. “I was wishing you had.”
“I’ll get her,” Caye quickly said, feeling Marion might lose her nerve any minute.
Caye walked into the living room and handed the phone to Jill. “Guess who?” Caye mouthed.
Jill pursed her lips.
Caye started to leave the room, but Jill motioned for her to stay. Caye sat down in the rocking chair. It was hard to sit when there was so much to do.
“Hi, Mom,” Jill said.
Caye listened. It sounded as though Marion jumped right into her confession.
“Before Hudson was born?” Jill asked, looking up at Caye. Jill was silent for a couple of minutes. “What kind of cancer?”
Jill was quiet again. Caye imagined Marion rambling on and on. She wondered if she was making sense.
The conversation continued for a few more minutes. Jill said the boys were doing fine. That Simon was practicing his walking. She didn’t mention Liam’s broken arm.
“Did you have chemo?” Jill asked.
Caye was sure that Marion had.
“Did Daddy have chemo?”
Caye was surprised at the question. She gathered he hadn’t by the short answer.
“I’m going to go rest. Talk to you later,” Jill said. “Bye.” Jill turned off the phone. “Did you know?” she asked Caye.
“By accident.”
“So Mother had cancer. No wonder she didn’t come down when Hudson was born. Did she tell you the thought of a grandbaby gave her the will to live?”
Caye nodded.
“Do you know about Rob, too?” Jill continued. Caye grimaced.
“Did Nathan tell you what Rob told him? About the woman he was attracted to in Raleigh? His emotional affair?”
Caye nodded. “But Nathan didn’t call it an emotional affair.”
“Neither did Rob.”
Jill ran both hands through her hair, a quick flick-back, off-her-neck gesture, and changed the subject back to Marion.
“She’s so glacial,” Jill said. “So colossally cold and monumentally slow. ”
Caye smiled.
“What are you thinking?” Jill asked.
“How much you have to live for,” Caye answered. If Marion could will herself to live, then surely Jill could too.
That night Rob set up a laptop in the bedroom, and Jill went on the Web to look up pancreatic cancer. As she scanned the cancer sites, she thought of Caye’s advice: “Remember, it’s just information. Possibilities. You are the exception.”
Jill found information about genetic studies on breast cancer and pancreatic cancer. Although the evidence wasn’t conclusive, it seemed that there was a link between the two.
“So why not breast cancer, God?” Jill had asked aloud. “Why couldn’t you have let it be breast cancer?”
She entered a cancer survivors’ chat room and stared at the screen for a moment before logging off. She wasn’t up to chatting with strangers about her cancer. She snapped the laptop shut.
Rob was putting the boys to bed. Scout was sprawled on the floor.
She found it ironic that Marion, who said she’d been saved by the thought of a grandchild, didn’t seem to like being a grandmother.
Jill thought about when Hudson had been born and the months that followed. She’d wanted to leave Argentina because she was suddenly afraid of dying. But it had been Marion who was fighting for her life.
She wasn’t angry earlier on the phone. The confession just seemed like another weird Marion thing. In fact, as Marion told her, Jill felt relieved to hear it, as if it might be a clue to why Marion was the way she was.
But now she was angry. The anger had grown thought by thought throu
gh the afternoon and evening. She reached for the phone.
“I thought you’d call,” Marion said as soon as Jill said hello.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your cancer?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Bull.”
Marion was silent.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jill asked again.
“There’s more I haven’t told you,” Marion finally said.
“More?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Just then Rob walked into the bedroom. “Mother?”
“Let me call you back,” Marion said. “I promise I will. In a day or two.”
“Mom?”
Rob sat down on the bed. “I’ll call you,” Marion said. Jill hung up the phone.
“What’s up?” Rob asked.
“I don’t know.”
23
“Let’s go to Emigrant Lake today,” Jill said to Caye. She was thinking of the woman in the turban at the clinic who said she was always a mess on Tuesdays. It was Tuesday. Jill refused to be a mess. “Are you sure?” Caye asked.
Jill nodded. Sure of what? Sure that I’m not in pain? Not nauseated? No. I’m both. “It’s supposed to be nice today,” she said. ” A little cooler. In the eighties. Doesn’t it sound like fun to go to the lake?”
“What about Liam’s cast?”
“We can wrap it in plastic. We’ll tie a garbage bag around it.”
Jill made a bottle for Simon and packed the diaper bag while Caye spread cream cheese on whole-wheat bagels.
“I think I’ll try to garden some tomorrow,” Jill said, looking out the window. “It’s not too late to plant the dahlias.”
“I’ll help,” Caye said. “I noticed the tubers in the garage.”
Jill sat down on the couch to rest while Caye went upstairs to wake Simon.
Liam walked up beside his mother and stroked her hair.
“Uh-oh,” he said, pulling his hand away from her head.
“What?” Jill asked, afraid the nurse had been wrong, afraid her hair was falling out after all.
Liam looked down. A circle of wetness was spreading across the front of his shorts.
She’d have to climb the stairs for clean underwear and pants. And then mop up the floor.
