Just Once

by Lori Handeland

  She moved on to David. At least he answered.

  ‘David, hi. This is Frankie.’

  Dead silence.

  ‘Charley’s … uh …’

  ‘Ex.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  He sounded a little too happy about that, and Frankie had a bad feeling this was going to go about as well as she’d expected.

  ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘You’re his brother.’ Though he certainly wasn’t acting like one.

  ‘I haven’t talked to him since 1983. Maybe it was 1984.’

  If that were the case, then how did he know she was the ‘ex’?

  ‘You two never talked after that stupid rift over money?’ Sure Charley had told her the same, but lately, what did Charley know?

  ‘It wasn’t stupid to us. We lost the farm.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  Yet he was still mad about it.

  ‘What are you … uh … doing now?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘I sell farm equipment.’

  ‘That sounds …’ Awful. ‘Good.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What about Ben?’

  ‘Ben drinks.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I. He never got over losing the farm, never figured out what to do with himself beyond farming. He hired out to other people who were able to keep their places going. But when you’re a hired hand at thirty, forty, fifty …’ He let out a long breath. ‘What’s wrong with Charley?’

  ‘He has brain cancer.’

  Silence met that statement.

  ‘It’s not a good one.’

  David laughed – just one short, sharp bark. ‘Is there a good brain cancer?’

  Frankie’s thoughts exactly. ‘Charley’s is worse than most. He needs immediate treatment and the prognosis is iffy.’

  ‘Why are you calling me?’

  ‘He needs help.’

  David laughed again.

  She really hated that laugh.

  ‘I’ll help him as much as he helped us.’

  ‘He did help you.’

  ‘I don’t remember it that way.’

  She was coming to understand that no one ever remembered anything the way anyone else did, even without a brain tumor.

  ‘What happened to bouncy, blond sweet young thing?’

  It was Frankie’s turn to laugh. She never would have described Hannah that way, even when she’d still been young.

  ‘How do you know about our divorce and Hannah if you never talked to Charley?’

  ‘He wrote me a letter. After Lisa. I was sorry to hear about her. No one deserves that.’

  ‘Deserves,’ she echoed. What an odd thing to say. What had Charley’s family wished on him? On them? She didn’t want to know.

  Quickly she told David the particulars of Charley’s condition.

  ‘If he thinks you’re still married, then why would he need me?’

  ‘We’re not still married. He is still your brother.’

  ‘Not in my mind.’

  What was wrong with people?

  She gave up. Even if she managed to convince David that it was his duty to take care of Charley, she didn’t want him to. As he’d said: No one deserves that.

  ‘Are there any uncles, aunts, cousins?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘You could call them, but they aren’t going to help. No one’s seen or talked to Charley since he met you.’

  ‘Me? What do I have to do with it?’

  ‘Once he had you, he didn’t need us. He never needed us. All he ever really needed, Frankie, was you.’

  ‘Obviously that wasn’t true.’

  ‘If not, then why has he gone back in his mind to a time when it was?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a choice about how his mind works with a big, spreading, cancerous tumor in it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Hmm.’ David didn’t sound convinced. ‘Let me know when he dies.’

  The line went dead.

  Frankie stared at the phone for quite a while. She was almost afraid to call anyone else, but she had to.

  She’d just found the phone number for the Waz when a nurse called her name. Well, she called ‘Mrs Blackwell’ but Frankie was getting used to it.

  The woman appeared frazzled in a way that nurses rarely did.

  Oh, crap, Frankie hadn’t even considered that the machine for radiation might be similar to a CT scan.

  ‘Did Charley freak out?’

  ‘No, ma’am, just sick. Follow me.’

  Frankie accompanied her to the treatment area, letting out a relieved breath when she saw that the radiation machine wasn’t enclosed but rather a movable table, with a huge light source hanging from a tall, white lump of hard plastic.

  Charley sat on a chair, fully clothed and very pale.

  The nurse handed Frankie a prescription. ‘Anti-nausea medicine. You can get that filled at our pharmacy so you’ve got it on hand if he has a reoccurrence.’

  ‘I wanna go home, Fancy.’

  ‘They always do.’ The nurse clomped off in the colorful clogs they all seemed to wear these days instead of the white shoes they’d been wearing the last time she’d been in the hospital – when she’d had Lisa.

  What a night that had been. She’d been terrified that the beginning of a new life would be the end of her old one. What if Charley walked out of the hospital and he never came back? But he’d surprised her.

  She’d woken up in the gray light of dawn. Charley had been sitting in the armchair holding their daughter. He’d been whispering to her. Frankie swore she’d heard the word Disneyland. His expression …

  He was never leaving either one of them.

  She’d fallen back asleep secure in the belief that everything would be all right and that the beautiful life she wanted was right around the corner. And for a while it had been.

  ‘Charley?’ His eyes were closed. She shook his shoulder. If she couldn’t wake him, she was going to have to get help.

  His eyes opened – so, so blue in his too-white face. ‘Hey, baby.’

  Her heart went ba-dum the same way it always had whenever he’d called her ‘baby’.

  Shit. Irene would say she was being sucked in by Charley’s delusion that she was his wife, by her own delusion that he was again ‘Her Charley’. Maybe she was.

  His smile was dopey and he hadn’t had any dope.

  She should ask about dope. Wasn’t it good for cancer?

  ‘Can you get up?’

  ‘Why couldn’t I?’ He lurched to his feet, nearly overbalanced and fell on his face.

  She snatched his elbow, hauled him back.

  He threw his arm around her shoulders. ‘Was I drinking?’

  ‘Radiation.’ She started inching toward the door.

  ‘Right.’ He came along and their steps soon got in sync. ‘So far, not a fan.’

  He squeezed her shoulder, pulling her more closely against him, then turned his head, kissed her temple.

  She closed her eyes for an instant and it was twenty-four years ago. No one had died. No one had been betrayed. No one had left. Divorce was just a word that other people used.

  He smelled the same; his body aligned with hers just the same. If she kept her eyes closed would she hear Lisa shout …

  She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. ‘My car.’ She lunged for the Volvo like a lifeline.

  At the house, she had a difficult time waking him up; he leaned on her heavily getting inside.

  Mrs Stuckey next door stood watering the grass seed she’d planted along the driveway. She ended up watering her shoes as she gaped at Frankie hauling Charley up the sidewalk.

  Frankie didn’t wave. She didn’t have an extra arm. She didn’t explain. She didn’t have the extra time.

  She dragged him into the
hall and kicked the door shut. The staircase loomed insurmountable.

  ‘Living room it is. Come on, Charley, just a little farther.’

  ‘’K,’ he slurred, and stumbled the few feet to the couch.

  She straightened, her back growling at the abuse. She couldn’t lug him home every day. She was too damn old.

  She was not going to be doing this every day. No. Way.

  If Hannah continued to ignore her calls, maybe she’d contact the police. There had to be some kind of law against abandoning cancer-ridden veterans on their ex-wives’ doorsteps. Didn’t there?

  Perhaps a lawyer would be a better option.

  ‘You need anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Hmm?’ Charley had his forearm over his eyes the same way he always used to whenever he was trying to sleep and she was trying to talk to him.

  So she lifted it, the same way she always used to, and blew into his face until he looked at her.

  He gave her a lazy hey, baby smile. ‘You know what I need.’

  She dropped his arm as if she’d picked up a snake. ‘Ginger ale? Crackers? Water?’ Her voice was too high and too bright. Pan Am stewardess on crack.

  He shook his head, gaze on her face, then moving up and down her body.

  Her cheeks heated like a fifteen-year-old’s. ‘Get some rest.’ She headed up the steps.

  When she reached her room, she locked the door behind her, then pulled out Charley’s phone. Her hands shook. He was making her crazy.

  She tried Hannah again, with both their phones. Straight to voicemail. If it wasn’t after five, Frankie would call a lawyer right now. Instead she found the phone number for the Waz.

  Their conversation went about as well as the one with David had. The Waz was dying too. Sarcoma. One of the cancers on Dr Lanier’s Agent Orange Hit Parade. He wasn’t surprised when she told him about Charley.

  ‘It’s a story I’ve heard too much already. You know there’ve been class action lawsuits. Government’s covering some medical expenses. You should check into that.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it.’ For Hannah. ‘You take care, Waz.’

  Her only answer was a coughing fit, followed by a dial tone.

  ‘Take cover!’

  A crash punctuated the shout.

  ‘Get back on the radio. Tell them we’re here.’

  Frankie was on the landing and she didn’t remember having unlocked her bedroom door.

  As she raced down the stairs, a heavy thud made the house shake. More disturbing was the scream.

  ‘Incoming!’

  Hannah

  Washington DC. Late summer, 1991

  A cold had followed Heath’s low white counts. They’d returned to the doctor, but pneumonia happened anyway.

  Heath tried to get better, but he just … couldn’t. Not completely.

  He got over the pneumonia, but he never gained back the weight he’d lost. He never got back the bounce he’d had.

  Then, one day, when it was ninety in the shade and Heath was still so cold, they got the news that made Hannah colder.

  ‘The most recent tests show Kaposi’s sarcoma,’ Dr Beattritt said.

  Considering Heath’s lesions were back, Hannah had feared the worst. This was it. Several steps above, or perhaps below, herpes simplex, Kaposi’s sarcoma was the most common cancer for AIDS patients.

  Heath’s shocked intake of breath at the diagnosis started him coughing.

  Hannah handed him a tissue. Lately when he coughed, there was blood. It frightened her.

  ‘We’ll use radiation on the lesions close to the surface, like in the mouth and throat.’

  ‘Are lesions causing the …’ She pointed at the Kleenex, spotted with red.

  ‘Yes.’

  Beattritt wasn’t delivering this news from behind his desk but had instead taken a chair next to them. As soon as he’d done that, Hannah had known the news was grim.

  ‘The radiation will help.’

  She noticed he said help, not cure.

  ‘Is DDI available yet?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  Hannah wrung her fingers together so she wouldn’t curse. It only upset Heath to hear his previously ‘never swear even when you smash a hammer to your thumb’ twin cursing like a drunken sailor. But sometimes, swearing was all you had.

  ‘We’ll get started on radiation, followed by chemotherapy.’

  ‘Will that fix him, save him, cure him?’

  ‘Hannah.’ Heath took her hand and she wanted to cry.

  She didn’t; she couldn’t. Heath cried enough for both of them. She was the strong one. Someone had to be.

  Heath squeezed her hand. ‘This is the beginning of the end. You need to accept it. I have.’

  ‘No,’ she said, but her voice was pathetically weak. She cleared her throat and sat up straight. ‘No.’

  That was better. Perhaps too loud and confrontational, but she preferred the second no to the first that had sounded like she’d given up too. She hadn’t. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

  ‘Tell him it’s not the end,’ Hannah insisted.

  ‘Of course not,’ Beattritt agreed, though his voice was far too hearty.

  She almost expected him to finish with ‘Ho, ho, ho!’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother with radiation and chemo if it wasn’t worth the trouble.’

  Hannah wanted to ask about survival rates and percentages, but she knew from past experience that Beattritt wouldn’t discuss them with Heath in the room. With Heath in the room, he was unfailingly upbeat, religiously optimistic, annoyingly chipper – what Hannah liked to call yippy-skippy. It made Heath laugh. Or at least it used to.

  Now, when Heath laughed, he often coughed, so he’d stopped laughing, and Hannah had stopped trying to make him.

  ‘I’ll have my receptionist schedule an appointment for radiation. Tomorrow is good, this afternoon would be better.’

  He went on detailing what they could expect both during the procedure and afterward.

  ‘Possible nausea and fatigue. Wow, that’s new,’ Heath deadpanned.

  Beattritt handed Hannah a prescription. ‘Anti-nausea medicine. Best to fill that and have it on hand.’

  Which meant there was no ‘possible’ about the nausea. Goody.

  Hannah was still at National Geographic, though Ray had said she could work from home two days a week and today was one of those days. She knew Charley was behind the allowance, but when she’d tried to thank him he’d pretended he knew nothing about it.

  They continued to live with Aunt Carol who refused to hear a word about them moving anywhere else. She was rarely at home. She said it was because she preferred to do Heath’s job as well as her own; she wasn’t hiring anyone to replace him. He would be back when he was well. She also had a new boyfriend and she stayed at his apartment nearly every night.

  ‘She’s afraid she’ll catch something,’ Heath had said.

  ‘You know better than that.’

  ‘Do I?’

  Hannah didn’t argue. Maybe he was right. The number of people who treated Heath like a leper, when before he’d been the star of every show, was staggering. Most of them were people who should know better. It made Hannah so damn mad.

  The only person who continued to treat Heath exactly the same, and came around as often as he was able, was Charley. He was due in tonight from England where he’d been photographing Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist who had recently released his idea for something called the World Wide Web.

  It was gibberish to Hannah, but a lot of people were excited.

  She was not looking forward to breaking the news of Heath’s cancer to their friend. She wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to anyone, including their parents. Although, perhaps, the information might convince them to visit.

  She wouldn’t hold her breath.

  Later that evening, Heath was ensconced on the couch, wrapped in blankets with the big bowl they’d once used for popcorn front and center on his lap.
They should probably buy Aunt Carol a new big bowl. Heath had thrown up in this one so many times no one should ever eat out of it again.

  Someone knocked on the door. Since they had a doorman who kept anyone not approved from doing just that, and Aunt Carol had a key, it could only be—

  Hannah opened the door. ‘Hey, Charley.’

  He walked in bearing plates of hot dogs and apple pie. ‘Why isn’t the Yankees game on?’

  ‘Because the Yankees are irritating,’ Heath said.

  ‘Not when they’re getting slammed by the Red Sox. It’s beautiful. Turn it on.’ Charley set the food on the kitchen counter.

  His gaze met Hannah’s over Heath’s head. He jerked his thumb toward the rear of the apartment. ‘Gonna hit the head and be right back.’

  Hannah waited until he noisily closed the bathroom door, though he still stood in the hall. She took one step after him.

  ‘Tell him everything, OK?’ Heath stared at the baseball game and not at her. ‘Even what Beattritt told you when you called him later.’

  Twin radar. She was going to miss it.

  ‘Could you put that food in the fridge or something? The smell’s making me wanna gack again.’

  Hannah did as he asked, mortified when the scent made her stomach howl. She did not need hot dogs and apple pie. As Heath lost weight, she seemed to gain it, though she wasn’t eating any more than she had before.

  It was probably the drinking. Some nights after Heath fell asleep, she polished off a bottle of pinot by herself. That was often the only way she could rest.

  She and Charley stepped into her bedroom and she quietly shut the door.

  ‘What is it?’ His blue gaze flitted over her face; the concern on his own made her heart stutter.

  ‘Kaposi’s sarcoma.’ Her eyes sparked tears. She turned away, blinking like a forties starlet to make them stop.

  ‘Prognosis?’

  ‘Five-year survival rate for AIDS patients is less than ten per cent.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Charley muttered. ‘Fuckety fuck.’

  Hannah gave a short, sharp laugh, then stopped because laughter these days often led to tears and she was halfway there. If she started crying now, what would she do when things really got bad?

  Now the laughter pressed on her throat so hard she started coughing.

  ‘You OK?’ Charley patted her shoulder.

  She managed to stop. ‘No.’