Lone Stars

by Justin Deabler

  She awoke at the sound of water. Julian was in boxers, hurrying down the hall to the bathroom, where Philip was running the shower. She wondered if they had sex. All the bad feelings the nap blunted came flooding over her again. Julian’s embarrassment at his home and mom, the Texas rube. Her son had sold her out for better people. And what was so great about the Rosenblums? Did they raise Julian? Pick up the phone when he called? Lacy put years into her boy, so he could take on the world. Then he did what she told him to and left. To be safe, to build a life, fine. But did he have to put a knife in her back when she was already dying?

  “Can we help?” Philip asked when they entered the kitchen, pink and fresh from the shower. Julian set three bottles of wine on the counter and started rummaging through drawers.

  “I’m good,” Lacy said. “Dinner’s ready. Right there, Jules,” she said irritably, pointing at a drawer. “The corkscrew?” She turned back to the slow cooker and stirred. “I didn’t know you liked wine. A lot of wine.”

  “Yeah.” Julian opened a bottle. “We know what we like, so we brought it down. Phil?”

  “Sure, I’ll have some. Let me get that for you, Lacy.”

  “I got it.” She felt both of their eyes on her as she lifted the tub from the Crock-Pot and slowly made her way to the table. Julian brought over two giant glasses of wine and the bottle and sat at the place farthest from Lacy. “Philip,” she said as she served the pasta, “big things coming up for you. For both of you.”

  “Yes!” he said brightly.

  “It’s your last semester too, right?”

  “Oh.” Philip frowned. “Yeah, we’re both graduating. I’m not quite the speed demon this one is,” he said, nudging Julian, “finishing in three years. Accelerated course load, a million extracurriculars, the journaling?” He grinned at Lacy. “Did you know he journals every night?”

  “I did.” She gave a proprietary nod. “Do you have plans for after?” she asked Philip.

  Julian guzzled wine. Philip talked about going back to the city to work in finance, temporarily and not for his dad, until he figured out what he really wanted to do. She asked how long he thought that might take, and Julian shot her a dirty look. She asked for an update on Julian’s law school apps, whether Columbia was still his top choice, and what if he got into a better school not in New York? He answered impatiently, refilling his glass. Was Lacy avoiding stuff? Running the clock on dinner? Maybe. But did Julian have any idea how bad she felt, living her greatest fear? She had sharpened her son’s mind to a razor, refined his taste with a true moral sense, always aware someday he might return to judge her. Think less of her once he went off into the world, and looked back, and saw her in full. The day had come. Her son was home. And all she wanted to do was hide. Or smack him hard across the face.

  “In other news,” Julian abruptly turned the conversation, “we’re … engaged?”

  “Yes, I know,” Lacy said to her plate. “Congratulations.” She twirled the same bit of pasta around her fork that she’d been working the whole meal. It tasted like metal, like most things. “How’s your spaghetti, Philip?”

  “Delicious.”

  “We’re pretty excited,” Julian pressed. “We’re thinking about doing it here, in the spring before it gets too hot.”

  “This spring?” Lacy asked. “Before your last exams? You’ve been together—is it two years now?”

  “Two and a half,” Philip said. “Since Jay’s first semester.”

  Jay. Philip had his own pet name for Julian. Her son, the more ambitious of the two, who had a legal career ahead that he’d worked hard for—that she and Julian had both worked for. “I hear a lot of young couples these days are getting married later,” Lacy said. “Take their time planning a wedding down the road, once they finish grad school and get settled.”

  “How long did you and dad wait?” Julian asked, emptying the bottle in his glass.

  “Those were different times. But today?” She smiled. “What’s the rush?”

  “What’s the rush?” Julian snapped.

  “Well,” Philip cut in. “We’re glad you’ve got the great care here at MD Anderson, and we’re optimistic, but I had an aunt with renal cell carcinoma like you and—you never know, so we thought, we know we’re getting married and we really want you to be a part of it.”

  “Boys.” Lacy sighed and rubbed at the pain her temples. “You shouldn’t be making decisions like that because of me.”

  “Of course!” Philip’s eyes flew open. “For all we know you’ve got ten years, twenty! And you’ll be telling your grandkids about that awkward Christmas dinner back in the day. It was me, not Julian. Sorry. I proposed. I said let’s speed it up. Edith was my favorite aunt, and maybe it triggered—I didn’t mean to offend you or—”

  “Did you get your last scans?” Julian asked. He’d been staring at Lacy the whole time Philip talked. It was terrible how well they could read each other. All the years of watching Law and Order together on the couch, spotting the red herrings and guessing the killers.

  “Last scans?” she said.

  “You were supposed to get them a week ago? You said the doctor wanted another radiologist to look at them?”

  “Right.”

  “And did he?” Julian sat up straight. “Did you hit your target for shrinkage?”

  Lacy nodded vaguely.

  “That’s great! See?” Julian said, poking Philip. “I told you.” He turned back to Lacy and smiled, his eyes shining. “So what’s next?”

  “Dessert.” Lacy set her napkin on the table. “I made gingerbread men.”

  “About your treatment?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that now.”

  “OK,” Julian persisted. “But it’s good news. And it looks like the chemo’s been hard on you. Did the doctor say how many more rounds before you can stop?”

  Lacy studied her son’s face, full of cautious hope, as though she were saying goodbye. “We’re focused on pain management now,” she said.

  Philip sighed, sucking the air out of the room.

  “What does that mean?” Julian asked. “Like until the next round?”

  “We’re not doing any more rounds. We’re stopping chemo.”

  “Why? They got it all already?” She could feel Julian’s eyes on her but couldn’t look up. “Why stop if it’s working?” he asked. “You said you hit your target.”

  “I—the other radiologist did look at the scans.” She could hear each word coming out, slowly and distinctly. “It didn’t shrink. It spread. To my lymph nodes. Lungs. They think it’s past the point of treating, so for whatever time I’ve got—”

  “Nope.” Julian downed the rest of his wine in one swig. “That’s one opinion. To stop treatment? One random Texas doctor? We have to get a second opinion.”

  “He consulted with others.”

  “Not here. New York. Philip’s parents know lots of doctors. The best in the country.”

  “Jay,” Philip whispered, laying a hand on Julian’s arm.

  He shook it off. “When did you find out? Were you planning on telling me?”

  “I found out last week.”

  “How?” Julian shot to his feet. “How does it go from chemo and treatment plans to this? In a week? How’d that happen?”

  “We caught it late. It was already—”

  “You said you were fine.” He wrapped his arms around his chest. “All semester he’s been going crazy”—he thrust a finger at Philip—“talking worst-case scenarios. I told him you’re fine. You said not to come down.”

  “Jules,” she said.

  “I said I’d fly down. Over and over! You said, ‘Finish your midterms, law school apps, finals, I’m fine.’ Lying the whole time.”

  “It’s your most important semester of college,” she said.

  “College? Do you hear yourself right now?! Do you actually hear the words coming—”

  “Stop yelling!” she exploded with a heedless force. “Taking! I’m dyin
g, all right? And when I’m dead there’ll be nothing left to take.”

  Julian froze, dumbstruck. And then, before Philip could stand and reach him, he took off out the front door. Philip waited in limbo a moment, halfway up and leaning on the edge of the table. He looked at Lacy. “I think I’ll try and—”

  “It’s a dead end,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s a cul-de-sac. He won’t go far.”

  Philip nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded as best she could, before he left too. Then she sat alone at the head of the table, her eyes traveling across the remains of the unfinished dinner.

  * * *

  In the morning Lacy was back in the same chair, trying to keep down some water. She had cleared the table, cleaned the kitchen, lain awake for hours, gotten up and made breakfast. Cinnamon rolls, eggs, coffee. None of which she would enjoy, like the Christmas cookies or the tree and decorations she’d hauled out from the garage. Why bother? she asked as she steeled her stomach and sipped. What was the point? Because it was living. Cooking, preparing for guests, marking time: the rituals remained the only game she knew.

  She leaned over the table and adjusted a glass ball in her centerpiece. This year she’d cribbed from a Pottery Barn catalog—a mirror for the base, reflecting up glass ornaments and candles she had carefully arranged. Julian was right to be upset. He’d been a self-absorbed jerk lately, and still she had misled him. Told him every word the doctor said and omitted the reality of the situation. How the doctor looked at her, listing things they could do, technically, as his face waited for Lacy to say, Enough. She knew she was terminal at the first appointment. But how was she to live with death?

  The coffeemaker beeped and turned off with a full carafe. She thought of a dream that plagued her lately, a memory of the one time she took Aaron and Julian to meet her family. She was nervous on the way to McAllen, yet hopeful too, wondering if her childhood home wasn’t as bad as she remembered. Aaron whistled when they parked at the mansion in town, where her family moved after they sold the farm and her dad’s heart gave out within a year. During lunch, Lacy ignored her mom’s slights about her weight. Her brother Junior turned out fat too, and aimless and short-tempered, a man who never left home. His daughters barely spoke. At four years old, Julian was his chatty, irrepressible self, and during coffee, while he was still in earshot, Lacy’s mother advised her to deal with that sissy boy before it was too late. Junior nodded like a drunk in church. She stared at her mother, a woman who spent her life in hiding, naming the weaknesses of others. Lacy felt the blood rise in her face, certain she never should have visited and risked the disease of her family touching Julian. She never did again.

  Yet whom did her son have now? MIA Aaron? Bonnie? No one, she thought. A whole family in Mexico neither of them would ever know, that she never even mentioned to Julian because of the questions it stirred up about her own past—why she cut ties, and how do you do that to your own family? Through all that hadn’t happened in life, a failed marriage and so-so career, she always had her son. But on Christmas Eve, Lacy didn’t know if he’d be OK when she was gone. She wondered what her life amounted to. A pile of unanswered questions is what it felt like, jumbled memories, moments in time that faded like they never were. A wave of nausea hit her. And out of despair, or to keep from throwing up, Lacy resolved to make one last gift for Julian. She took the yellow pad she kept with her since the chemo brain set in, and started writing.

  The creak of the front door startled Lacy from her task. The house hadn’t stirred since she got up. She craned her neck. “Philip?” she called.

  “Hi, Lacy.” He kicked off his sneakers in the foyer. He moved for the hall, on the way to Julian’s room, but stopped and looked at her.

  “There’s breakfast if you want,” she said.

  He wound headphones around a white gadget. “Thanks,” he said, approaching the table. “If you don’t mind me sweaty. I went running. It’s pretty here. Royalwood. All so—planned.”

  She started to rise. “The food’s on the—”

  “Sit, I’ll get it.”

  “Is that an iPod?” she asked. “Bonnie said the kids started showing up with them this semester, listening to music during class.”

  “Yeah! This tiny thing holds a thousand songs.” He brought his plate and sat by Lacy. “I’m one of those Apple geeks who gets in line to buy it first. Every new gadget. Pavlovian.”

  “Must be nice,” Lacy muttered. He paused, midchew. She regretted her words, sort of. “So,” she resumed, “I know a little about your parents. Jules mentioned a sister?”

  “Older, yeah. She’s out west. A labor organizer. We don’t see her much. We’re close,” he blurted, glancing at Lacy. “A good family. But sometimes close means you have to go away. Did you ever—” He smiled and shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Did you ever think of having more kids, besides Julian? He always wants to meet my sister, like the sibling thing really excites him.”

  “I bet people open up to you. Tell you what you want to know?” She fingered the edge of her place mat. “I miscarried a few times before Julian. And then he was such a blessing and a handful—” Out of nowhere Lacy thought of the letter Aaron’s mistress sent her years ago, the last straw in their marriage, all of it playing out in her mind like it happened to someone else. And of how Aaron was alive, she figured, figuring she would’ve heard somehow if he died. The man who cheated and spent, while she grew a baby inside her and worked and worried herself sick for their family, and then grew a cancer inside her.

  “Lacy?” Philip said.

  “No, Aaron and I never had any other children, after Julian. Do you think you will?” she asked. “You want to be a dad someday?”

  “Are you kidding? My dad took me to the Natural History Museum when I was five—I’ve heard this story like a million times—and showed me the T. rex and said, ‘Someday you’ll bring your son here.’ The next time we went, I brought my teddy bear and explained the fossils to him, the exhibits, elevators.” He watched her. “Does Julian’s dad know you’re sick?”

  “I don’t know where he is.” Philip’s eyes were so blue, and keen, it took getting used to. It crept up on Lacy, the feeling that he was lovely to be around. She resented it. People like him with their money and poise. How easily things worked out, calling the shots like she never did, pretty like she never was, healthy like she used to be. But death had come quickly, outpacing her sensibilities. She clenched her jaw, pissed off at the world and how little her anger got her now. “That show, Les Mis?” she said. “Jules thinks it’s some hokey musical, whatever, fine, but it’s the story of—” She searched for the word. “Stewards, of a child. Cosette. The daughter of a prostitute, Fantine, who has to entrust her child to Jean Valjean, who protects Cosette until she meets the man she’ll marry. Marius.” She looked up at a sniffle from Philip.

  “Sorry.” He smiled. “I cry at commercials. But I love Julian so much. He’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met. We Rosenblums are penguins: mates for life. All the lecturing and kvetching and just-a-suggestion-ing till death do us part.” Philip put his hand on hers. “It’s nice to meet you. He talks about you all the time. Like you’re a hundred feet tall.”

  Lacy chuckled and shook her head, thinking of the Gay-Straight Alliance she started after Julian left, and how long he suffered and never said a word until the day Ben Cross was attacked. She imagined all the secrets her son must have told his fiancé by now. She nodded at Philip and pulled her hand away.

  “Morning.” Julian entered the kitchen. He was in boxers and a Harvard T-shirt, loping to the coffeemaker like the rumpled teen Lacy remembered. He came over without saying a word and leaned over to hug her. He kissed the top of her head and sat down at the table.

  “Where’d you guys go last night?” Lacy asked.

  “A playground,” Philip said. “Julian’s old school around the corner.”

&n
bsp; “His elementary,” she said. “Where he went after our lessons.”

  “Yeah.” Philip smiled. “He said you homeschooled him for a while?”

  “I was his first teacher.”

  “Did the doctor…,” Julian began. He sipped his coffee without looking up. “Did he say how long he thinks, once you stop chemo, how long you have?”

  “Hard to say. Six months. Maybe more.” Slowly Lacy got to her feet. “Could you guys clean up? Bonnie said she’ll be here at eleven, and I’ve gotta get a move on.”

  “Sure,” Julian said.

  For the second time in two days, Lacy showered and did her face, working some extra lipstick into her cheeks for color. She put on red slacks, a green sweater, and an Abominable Snowman pin she found at Big Lots and couldn’t resist. She plumped the couch pillows and fanned out some gingerbread men, and the boys were just about ready when Bonnie rang.

  “Knock-knock!” she said, coming in. She spotted Lacy, and her eyes watered. Silently she waved and put her purse down. Lacy had a sudden flash of the day they met, years ago at the pool, and of the person she was then. A woman convinced she’d measure her life by the people who died or disappeared or betrayed her, until she met Bonnie and for the first time knew the feeling of someone who was there for good.