Garden of Dreams

by Leslie Gould

  She’d think more about Caye’s painting later.

  She picked up her paintbrush and started the background wash of the magnolia.

  Stephanie stood gaping at Jill.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Jill said, standing to give Stephanie a hug.

  Caye held Simon and watched the scene unfold, seeing Jill the way Stephanie, who hadn’t seen her in weeks, saw her. Elbows jutting out, skinny legs coming out of her short overalls. Her face accented by her cheekbones. It was her belly that was the most alarming—it looked as though she were six months pregnant.

  “How are you?” Stephanie asked.

  “Hanging in there.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  Jill looked around the room. Gwen and John sat on the sofa. Joya was in the kitchen helping Thomas prepare Communion. Nathan and Rob were out in the backyard looking at a sprinkler head that needed to be fixed.

  “The doctors say…,” Jill began. “They say they don’t know.”

  Caye walked downstairs with Stephanie.

  “She looks horrible,” Stephanie whispered. “How is she really doing?”

  “It doesn’t look good. She was getting better, but now she’s not.” Stephanie shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

  All the members had arrived. Caye sat in the circle and looked at each member, one by one. She looked at Jill last. She sat by Rob on the couch and held his hand. Caye was aware of her secret, of the baby she carried inside her. Nathan thought they should tell the Fellowship and get it over with. Caye wasn’t so sure. She convinced him to wait at least another week. They’d decided to tell Audrey and Andrew that afternoon after Fellowship.

  Thomas led them in communion. He broke the bread and served each member. “The bread we break is in remembrance of Christ’s body,” Thomas said. “He gave his body that we might live and have eternal life.” Together, the Fellowship ate the bread.

  Next he poured the juice into a pewter chalice. “This cup represents the communion of Christ’s blood,” he said. “Christ’s blood was spilled to cleanse us. Just as our blood cleanses our bodies, his blood cleanses our lives.” He served each member the juice from the chalice.

  When he finished, he looked at Jill.

  “Tell us, Jill, what God is teaching you.”

  Caye shifted her weight on the hard chair and looked around.

  “I’ve been painting again and praising him for the people I love. He’s teaching me to let go—”

  “Let go!” Joya exclaimed, her voice low and incredulous. “How can you give up?”

  Thomas put his hand on Joya’s leg.

  “I’m not giving up,” Jill said. “I’m letting go. I’m not trying to control things that I can’t. I’m trusting God more deeply than I ever have before—with my life, with Rob, with the boys—with all of this.”

  Thomas nodded.

  Caye crossed her legs and leaned forward. Nathan began rubbing her back.

  “We’ve seen your faith,” Thomas said. “You’re an inspiration. We’ll keep praying for a miracle. In the meantime, if God should call you home, are you ready to go?” Joya looked at Thomas with fierce eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Rob pulled his hand from Jill’s and put it up to his face. Jill looked at him.

  “I’ll never be ready to leave Rob and the boys—and all of you,” Jill said. “But I can still be ready to go.”

  The word go reverberated through Caye’s head. Go. As if Jill were preparing for a long journey.

  “I’ve heard of people,” Thomas said, “who, once they were ready to die, were then healed. We have no idea what God is doing. We know that the cancer has metastasized to your liver. We also know that God can still heal you.”

  Jill nodded.

  Caye expected Summer to cry or Joya to speak again or Gwen.

  Everyone was quiet.

  “Lets pray silently,” Thomas said.

  Jill looked around the room. She did not pray. She soaked in the scene. The people against the blue gray walls with heads bowed, some with hands clasped. Rob prayed with his hands held open, resting on his thighs. He wore khaki shorts, a plain white T-shirt, and Nike sandals.

  She wondered if they were all praying for her.

  She loved them, all of them. She praised God for them. She hoped they were praising God for her.

  She thought of Stephanie with the kids. She prayed a blessing on her. Poor girl didn’t know what to think of me. Jill would forget how much her appearance had changed until a neighbor stared when she walked from the car to the house or a short way along the sidewalk. Jill would wave and say hello, and the neighbor would continue to stare. “I’m sick,” she’d say. Some of them, after seeing her, had brought meals and flowers to the house.

  “Amen,” Thomas said after what seemed like hours.

  Joya turned to Jill. “God has not changed his promise to me,” she said. “He’s promised to heal you. I can’t understand why you aren’t claiming that.”

  “I am. I still believe he’s going to heal me. But right now I’m getting worse.”

  “But why?”

  “I can only assume it’s for his glory.”

  “His glory?”

  “Like the man born blind. Christ said that he wasn’t blind because of his sin or his parents’ sin, but so that God could be glorified.”

  “You think,” Joya said slowly, “that by not healing you God could bring glory to himself?” Jill nodded.

  “Jill,” Joya said, “the man born blind was healed. That’s the whole point.”

  “I am not giving up,” Jill said to Caye. Caye sat on Jill’s bed and fingered the afghan that she’d crocheted. The rest of the Fellowship had left. Rob and Nathan had taken the kids to the park. “Do you think I am?”

  “Do you still believe you can be healed?”

  “Yes. Didn’t I say that during Fellowship? Did anyone hear me?”

  “Then you haven’t given up.”

  “God will heal me,” Jill said. “Either in this life or the next.” Caye reached over and squeezed Jill’s hand. “How do you feel?” Jill asked.

  “Okay. Not finding out for the first two and a half months sure has made for a quick first trimester.” “You didn’t suspect you were?”

  “No. I felt tired and nauseated, but I thought they were sympathetic symptoms. I just thought I was being a good friend.” Caye paused. “It’s embarrassing that I didn’t know, didn’t figure it out.”

  “I’m happy you’re pregnant,” Jill said.

  “I feel really guilty,” Caye said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you wanted more babies.”

  “Don’t feel guilty. It’s not fair to God. He’s blessed you. Feeling guilty doesn’t thank him.”

  Caye smiled. Quick-to-speak-the-truth Jill, she thought. “Okay,” she said, flashing her dimples. “Lesson learned.”

  “When are you going to tell everyone?”

  “Soon. Andrew and Audrey today,” Caye said as she continued to finger the afghan. “There it is. There’s the dropped stitch that threw the whole thing off.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jill asked.

  “This mess of an afghan. I hate that I dropped the stitches, that it gets skinnier toward the end. All I need to do is rip it out to here and recrochet it.” Caye flipped the afghan over and started picking at the knot at the end.

  “No,” Jill said.

  “What?”

  “It’s mine. I won’t let you.” Caye laughed. “Why not?” “I like it the way it is.”

  “Okay.” Caye dropped the afghan into her lap. Life was like the afghan, she decided. She thought about Joya and the way she dealt with David’s death. How she never told the Fellowship, never talked about it. That wove a pattern with a missing stitch. And Marion—what if she had told Jill about her breast cancer when it hap
pened? And about whatever else she was keeping secret? Marion had created a flawed pattern years ago.

  “Don’t you wish we could go back, rip out the stitches of life, pick up the stitches again, and do it over?” Caye asked as she wadded the afghan into a big ball and tossed it to the end of the bed.

  “No,” Jill said. “I don’t want to do any of it over. It’s life, Caye. It’s supposed to be this way.”

  Jill sat in the waiting room. The nurse had already taken her blood. She was waiting to start the chemo.

  Caye was at the playground with the kids.

  “Jill.” The nurse directed her into a consulting room. “Your blood count is down. I called Dr. Scott, and he recommended that we don’t do the chemo.”

  “Really? What does that mean?”

  “Blood counts vary—it could be nothing.”

  “Or?”

  “Talk to Dr. Scott. When is your next appointment?” “On Thursday.”

  “Call him sooner. It really might mean nothing. Plan to come in next week—sooner if your count is up and he recommends it.”

  Jill walked out the double doors of the clinic onto the glaring asphalt. She’d left her sunglasses in the Suburban. She could barely keep her eyes open in the bright light.

  She followed the sidewalk around to the front of the hospital. She stopped at the steps and leaned against the handrail. She felt beads of sweat on her brow. She looked down at her protruding belly. A stranger might think she was on her way to the maternity ward.

  She started walking again to the patch of shade in the far corner of the parking lot. She could hear the kids at the playground before she could see them. She stood against the little picket fence and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  “Jill—why are you here? Is everything okay?” Caye asked as she stopped walking Simon around the playhouse. It was obvious that he would be walking soon on his own—within a day or two.

  “Mommy!” Hudson shouted.

  “Mommy!” Liam mimicked.

  “Hi,” Jill said.

  “What is it?” Caye asked again.

  “My count is down,” Jill said. “They wouldn’t give me the chemo.”

  “Pull over,” Jill said. “I’m going to be sick.” She hadn’t even had the chemo. Why was she sick now when she hadn’t been all these weeks?

  Caye slowed the car. They’d only gone a mile from the hospital. “Audrey, throw Jill a diaper from Simon’s bag.”

  A disposable diaper came bouncing onto the front seat. Caye grabbed it and handed it to Jill.

  Jill retched into the open diaper. All she’d had for breakfast was a sip of a banana smoothie. She retched again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Caye.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Now what?” Jill rolled the diaper and taped the ends shut. Her hands shook.

  Caye pulled into a parking lot. “Audrey, throw me a plastic bag, okay?”

  A wadded plastic bag just cleared the front seat.

  “You guys make quite a team,” Jill said.

  Caye dropped the diaper in the bag.

  “We all make quite the team,” she answered.

  Jill thought of last spring when she’d gotten the Suburban stuck on Mount Ashland. It was Caye, with her farm-girl confidence, who finally maneuvered it out of the mud.

  “Jill, did you know we’re going to have a baby?” Audrey asked, leaning forward.

  “Yes,” Jill said. “It’s such wonderful news.” She turned to Caye and smiled weakly. “Do you have my cell phone? Could you call Rob? I want him to phone Dr. Scott and ask what the blood count means.”

  28

  Rob talked to Dr. Scott Monday afternoon. “It doesn’t mean anything definite,” Rob told Jill and Caye when he got home.

  Later, after Jill had fallen asleep, Rob told Caye that Dr. Scott had said the blood count was a bad sign. Caye knew that. She’d done enough research. She knew how fast and furious pancreatic cancer could move. She’d read the biographies on the Internet. Feeling good one week, dead the next. But she’d also read the biographies of people who were near death one week, better the next, and then fine two years later. Not many of those stories, granted, but a few. One woman even went on to have a baby.

  That’s what Caye wished for Jill. Hoped. Prayed. Wished. Pleaded.

  But Caye was afraid that Jill was shutting down. She wasn’t conversing. She spent her time painting or sleeping. She wasn’t eating—only drinking juice and water, a few sips of broth and two bites of the custard Caye had made the day before.

  Tuesday was a particularly hard day. Liam clung to Jill before nap time. In the late afternoon he stood beside her bed and jumped up and down. Caye heard Jill’s frantic voice come over the intercom that they’d set up in her room. “Caye, Caye, I need you.” Liam had wet his pants again for the third time that day.

  Jill cried. “He’ll never be potty trained. It will be my fault.”

  Hudson wasn’t sleeping well. He wandered, scared, into Jill’s room night after night and crawled up on the end of the bed. Jill cried about that, too. And the whites of her eyes were yellow again.

  On Wednesday morning Caye sat in Dr. Scott’s waiting room with Jill. Stephanie was watching the kids. It was Simon’s first birthday—the plan was to have dinner and cake in the evening with just the two families.

  It was also Andrew’s last day of school. Nathan’s last day of teaching had been the day before; he was finishing up grades and cleaning out his classroom.

  A high school girl sat across from them in the waiting room. She wore a baseball cap. Caye was sick of cancer.

  They were waiting for the results of Jill’s MRI and her latest blood test. Jill had the scan and lab work done just after breakfast. They’d been waiting an hour to see the doctor. Caye felt wiped out—she could only imagine how exhausted Jill was. She wondered how the kids were doing with Stephanie.

  Andrew was convinced that cancer was contagious and that Caye was going to get sick too. After breakfast, Audrey had decided she didn’t want to go to Hudson and Liam’s house. She wanted them to come to her house. “They can’t, sweetie,” Caye said. “We need to be there with Jill.”

  “Why?”

  “To take care of her.”

  “Why can’t she just take care of herself?”

  Caye had frowned at Audrey, given her that shame-on-you look without meaning to. Audrey started to cry. “Our girl.” Caye whispered Jill’s pet name for Audrey as she picked up her daughter and held her tightly. Our girl was hurting. They were all hurting.

  “Jill Rhone,” the nurse called.

  Caye stood up. Jill sat still. Caye looked at her friend—she was asleep.

  “Jill,” Caye said.

  Jill slowly opened her eyes.

  “Our turn.”

  “Where’s Rob?” Dr. Scott asked as he entered the examination room.

  “He had a conference call at work,” Jill said.

  The doctor sat down in the swivel chair. Jill eased her way onto the table. She wore sweatpants. She looked down at her belly. “I wish you were my OB instead of an oncologist,” she said.

  Dr. Scott smiled at her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too hot. I’m sleepy most of the time. I couldn’t take chemo on Monday. You know that.”

  Caye looked closely at the doctor. He looked uncomfortable.

  “This is such a wicked cancer,” he said. “First it exhibits hardly any symptoms—then it can progress so quickly.”

  “What have you found out?” Jill asked. She wants to cut to the chase. Rob should have come.

  “Do you want it straightforward?”

  Jill nodded.

  “The blood count is worse than it was on Monday. The MRI shows that the cancer has also metastasized to your left lung.”

  Caye felt as if she’d been slugged in the stomach. The
liver and now a lung.

  “Now what?” Jill asked.

  “When your count goes up, we can continue chemo.”

  Jill was silent. Caye wondered if she was dozing again.

  “Jill?” the doctor asked.

  She nodded.

  “How’s the pain?”

  “Painful.”

  “Enough for a morphine pump?” Jill shook her head.

  She leaned on Caye as they left the office, their arms linked, their steps slow.

  As Caye pulled out of the parking space, Jill looked at her intently. “We need more help.” “I’ll call Rita,” Caye responded.

  “No. It’s too hard on Rita. She doesn’t know what to do. Besides, she has work.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “Rob’s parents are in Houston for a missions conference that starts next week. His mom said they could come in two weeks.”

  “They’d come sooner if you wanted them to.”

  “They’re the keynote speakers.” They rode along in silence for a few minutes. “My parents would come to help,” Caye finally said.

  “Would they?”

  It’s the right time, Caye thought.

  “There are things we should do,” Jill said. “Like order a hospital bed. I should be in the living room—it’ll be easier for everyone, including the boys.”

  “Are you going to call your mom?”

  “I don’t know if it matters. She said she’d call me back. She hasn’t.”

  “It might make a difference—in the long run—to her,” Caye answered.

  Jill looked out the window. Caye could barely hear her words. “Rob and I need to talk to the boys.”

  Tears stung Caye’s eyes. She reached across the seat and squeezed Jill’s arm, her thin, bone-dry arm.

  Jill didn’t turn her head, didn’t respond in any way.

  Jill sat on the couch and listened to Caye in the kitchen.

  Letting go was so hard. She was irritated with Caye for bringing up Marion. There was enough to take care of right now without feeling responsible for her mother, too.