Summer of Joy

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Of course, what was it her mother used to tell her back when she was a teenager? That there were all kinds of ways of being ugly. And beauty was only skin deep. Adrienne had told her that was the reason a girl needed to take such good care of her skin. That good looks took a girl places, and Adrienne intended to go places.

  Eventually she’d figured out it took more than looks. It took nerve too. Nerve to just get in the car and drive away from her old life to find a new life. That nerve had carried her all the way to California. But now her looks were gone and her nerve seemed to be leaking out of all those holes they had punched in her when she had let them cut off her breast.

  Francine lied to her and told her she didn’t look that bad. Dear Francine. She’d sat with Adrienne in the hospital after the surgery, cried for her when the bandages had come off and revealed the hideous scar on her chest, pushed her to do the arm exercises, even slipped her part of her tip money to help Adrienne pay her rent.

  The last couple of weeks Francine’s husband had started giving her grief. Said she might as well move in with Adrienne since she was over at her apartment so much. He hadn’t had much use for Adrienne ever since she told him to take a hike when he’d hit on her at that party for Francine’s thirty-fifth birthday last year. He was a bona fide bum, but even so, Francine loved the bozo. Adrienne didn’t want her cancer to be the reason he split.

  Bad enough that it had made Eddie split. She’d known it would happen. From the moment the doctor had said the C-word, she’d known it was just a matter of time. Eddie had actually stuck with her longer than she’d thought he would. Hadn’t left until after the surgery. After they’d mutilated her, smiling all the while and telling her that with a properly fitted prosthesis, she’d be good as new. Once it healed. Once she could lift her hand back over her head. Once she stopped worrying about the way the scar on her chest looked. Once she regained her appetite for food. Good as new.

  Eddie couldn’t wait till then. He had good as new, better than new, hitting on him at the club every night. He didn’t have to come home to a one-breasted old woman who could barely summon a smile most days.

  Francine said Adrienne should say good riddance, that Eddie couldn’t have loved her very much to desert her at a time like this. And of course Francine was right. Eddie hadn’t loved her very much. Eddie didn’t love the pretty young thing he was with now. Eddie loved Eddie. Adrienne knew that. Had always known that. The trouble was, Adrienne also loved Eddie.

  Who could explain love? She sometimes thought about that in the middle of the night when her arm was aching and she couldn’t sleep. David had claimed to love her all those years ago, but he’d loved his God more. She’d met many men who had claimed to love her since then. Maybe some of them had. She’d pretended to love some of them back, but until Eddie, it had just been a game she’d played.

  Love. Eddie had changed her. Love had changed her. Made her willing to forgive the unforgivable. Made her forget her pride. Pierced the hard shell that had made her invulnerable over so many years. And even while she was hurting, while her heart was breaking, she wasn’t sorry she had loved Eddie. Still loved Eddie.

  Love was a mystery. Unexplainable. Unreasonable. Made no sense. There could be no sensible reason to explain why she loved a baby clear across the country she’d never even seen except in pictures. She hadn’t properly loved his mother. Yet she loved that little baby in the pictures.

  In the night when the darkness threatened to overtake her in spite of the lamps she left burning all the time, she would hold a picture of Tabitha’s baby and stare at his little round face until it seemed to almost lift off the photo and come alive. He was getting bigger, but his eyes hadn’t changed. They were her eyes peering up at her. It didn’t matter that the color wasn’t the same. The eyes were. She recognized them. She’d stare at the picture until she dozed off or the darkness gave way to the morning sun.

  “Adrienne Brooke.” The nurse held open the swinging door with her plump shoulder while she waited for Adrienne to stand up and venture forward. They hadn’t changed the name on her file even though Adrienne had told them she didn’t use the name Brooke. They’d said it would be too confusing to have a different name on her insurance card and her file. Now Adrienne was glad they hadn’t. She could turn into someone else while she was in the doctor’s office. Someone who had very little to do with the real Adrienne Mason.

  She didn’t bother ignoring the first call of her name as she’d been wont to do when she first started coming to this doctor’s office. Still, as she stood up she left the sunshine with reluctance. She wished she could gather handfuls of it to stuff in her pockets to carry back into the sterile room awaiting her beyond the swinging door.

  The nurse’s name was Candace. She was married, had two little boys, Joshua and John. Good Bible names. She sometimes showed Adrienne pictures and laughed about the naughty things they did. The little boys had big smiles and shining eyes full of mischief, and once or twice, Adrienne had considered bringing one of the pictures of Stephen to show the nurse. Trading cute for cute. But she hadn’t. She might have to explain how she’d never actually seen Stephen. How she might never see him.

  Candace chatted cheerfully about the weather as she led the way down the hall past closed doors with other thick files in clear bins on the doors. She stopped beside the scales. “Let’s see how your weight’s doing. You should be rebounding after the surgery by now.” The nurse waited for Adrienne to step up on the scales.

  Adrienne shoved her hands hard into her pockets as if that would help the pointer go up higher. Barely over a hundred. Fashionably thin. That starving look that was so popular with models.

  Candace made a tsking noise with her tongue as she wrote down the number on Adrienne’s chart. “You’ve lost two more pounds. You have to eat, Adrienne. Your body can’t fight without fuel.”

  “I haven’t had an appetite.” She didn’t know why she bothered making excuses to the nurse. She’d have to say it all again for the doctor. Dr. Mike. She knew his last name. Rollingsworth. But he said she should call him Dr. Mike. That they were in this fight together and so should be on a first-name basis while they were battling the enemy.

  Today he was supposed to tell her which side was winning. They’d done blood tests, every kind of test to tell if carving her left side down to her rib bones had done the job and gotten the cancer before it had a chance to escape to another place in her body.

  A radical mastectomy. Radical. She used to imagine being radical while she was back in Hollyhill. Radically different. Radically wild. The word had seemed exotic and desirable then. Not now. Not when paired with mastectomy.

  Candace went away to fetch another patient and left Adrienne sitting on the examining table in the paper gown. White, of course, just like the rest of the room. Once she’d hit her shoe against the wall to make a scuff mark just because she couldn’t stand the unending white. The next time she was in that room, the mark had been cleaned off the wall or painted over.

  Adrienne shivered. She was cold to her roots. If only she had that sunshine in her pockets to warm her as she waited for Dr. Mike’s news. She yearned for good news. The yearning was like a bubble inside her growing bigger with each breath until it was pushing so hard against her heart that she knew something was bound to burst. Either her heart or the bubble.

  Dr. Mike was smiling when he came in the room, but it wasn’t the right smile. She’d come to know him too well in the months since Christmas. He was still good-looking. Vibrantly young. Seeming to get younger every week while she was aging years.

  “And so, Adrienne, how have you been feeling this week?” He took a quick look down at her chart. “You’d been having trouble with nausea. Perhaps stress related. Is the nausea better?”

  She looked at him and wanted to ask how nausea could be better, but he wouldn’t understand, and it did no good for her to pretend she didn’t know what he meant. “Not yet,” she said. If she’d had anything in her stomach, sh
e could have emptied it out on his pristine white doctor’s coat to prove it.

  “It will be,” he said as if he could control the universe and her stomach. He sat down on the stool with rollers and stared down at her chart. “The weight’s still going down, I see.”

  “Heck of a diet plan you guys have,” she said.

  “It’s good you can still crack a joke.” He smiled, but it was a small smile, an almost sad smile.

  She tried to hold on to her smile in return, but it drained away when the bubble burst inside her. The truth was in his eyes.

  “So we didn’t beat it?” She didn’t know why she said “we.” She was the one who was still harboring a killer inside her. Not him.

  He stood up and adjusted his stethoscope. “Let’s do the examination first. Then we’ll talk.”

  As if it mattered whether she had her shirt on when he told her she was going to die. She let him poke and prod on her and took the deep breaths he ordered as he listened to her heart rattling around loosely in her chest now that the bubble of hope had burst inside her.

  Later she let herself into her apartment. First, the same as every time she came in the door, her eyes went to the spot on the wall where Eddie’s guitar had hung as if she expected the guitar to be back. The nail was still there in the wall. Still as empty as she felt inside.

  She flicked on every light and lamp in the apartment on her way to the kitchen. Francine had been there, brought her some soup before she went to work at the restaurant. She’d left a note on top of a stack of mail on the table.

  She needed something all right. Another twenty years. Dr. Mike hadn’t promised her another twenty months. He hadn’t promised anything even when, sitting there with her fake breast poking out her shirt properly, she’d pushed him. “How long?”

  “That’s impossible to say,” he’d said, no longer avoiding her eyes. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had reached over and taken her hand. No doubt delivering unwanted news was something he had to do often in those cold, sterile rooms. The fact was, most women died of breast cancer when it was as advanced as hers had been. He’d told her that early on when he’d talked her into letting him hack off her breast as her only hope of survival. Perhaps it would have been better to die as a whole woman.

  He kept looking straight at her as he went on. “Every case is different. Sometimes even when the surgery doesn’t eradicate the cancer, it still goes into remission for a while.”

  “Miracles happen,” she said. She hadn’t expected him to take her seriously. She entertained no illusions about miracles.

  But he had looked relieved that she might think a miracle was possible. “They do,” he said. “Every day. As a doctor I’m constantly seeing things I can’t explain. That no one could explain.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” she said. “But I shouldn’t count on it, right? So how long?”

  He’d never really given her a time. Just told her that if there was anything she wanted to do, that she should consider doing it soon. Just in case the miracle didn’t come through, Adrienne supposed. Then he’d said she would need someone to help her in the latter stages. And did she have anyone she could depend on?

  Adrienne looked through the mail. Advertisements for things she couldn’t buy. Bills she couldn’t pay. A get-well card with a verse she didn’t even bother to read from that silly little waitress they’d hired on down at the restaurant a few weeks ago. A letter from her mother in Florida. Then there was what she’d been looking for. Tabitha’s handwriting on an envelope.

  Adrienne still hadn’t written Tabitha back, but the girl had always been persistent to a fault. She’d sent at least one picture every month even as the notes along with the pictures had gotten shorter and shorter. Tabitha had only scribbled a few lines with this one.

  Adrienne stared at the photograph. Tabitha must have gotten down on the floor to snap the picture of the baby crawling toward her. His eyes looked determined as if he already knew that whatever he wanted in life he was going to have to get on his own. His eyes that were so like hers even if they were brown instead of green.

  If there’s anything you want to do. The doctor’s words echoed in Adrienne’s head as she stared at the baby who seemed to be trying to crawl out of the picture right into her arms. She lifted her left arm until the pain stopped her and wondered if she’d be able to hold him if he did magically appear in front of her.

  31

  Thursday, April 8, 1965. I can’t believe spring break is almost over. I’m ready for school to be over. Two more months. I surely can survive that. I survived January and February and March. That was three months.

  Jocie was sitting in Leigh’s car in the parking lot waiting for Leigh to get off at lunch. Leigh had taken the afternoon off so Jocie could go with her to Lexington to shop for a wedding dress. Leigh was nearly in panic mode. The wedding was less than two months away and she didn’t have her dress.

  They’d dabbled at shopping a couple of Saturdays in February, but Leigh hadn’t found anything she liked. She hadn’t been worried. She had plenty of time. Weeks and weeks before June. March had passed with no time for shopping. Leigh said everybody and his brother in Hollyhill put off getting his or her new license plates until the last minute and then showed up at the courthouse and groused about standing in line. Leigh couldn’t take off work until after that madness was over. Besides, she said she figured she might lose another pound or two.

  Jocie’s dad kept telling Leigh not to worry about losing any more weight, that she looked perfect the way she was, and she did look pretty. Glowing all the time. Like she was walking around on air. Zella said that was the way brides-to-be were supposed to look. But Zella did think it was high time Leigh had her dress. That a person shouldn’t procrastinate about something that important.

  Leigh hadn’t exactly been procrastinating. She just couldn’t find the right dress. The perfect dress. When Jocie asked her what the perfect dress looked like, Leigh couldn’t tell her. Just said she’d know when she saw it.

  Jocie checked her watch and rolled the car window down. It was warm with the sunshine coming through the windows. Leigh had told her she might be late getting off at lunch, but Jocie didn’t mind waiting. She liked having time to write in her journal.

  I’m going with Leigh shopping again. I told her maybe she should take Tabitha and let me stay home with Stephen Lee, but then Tabitha started working at the Family Diner Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Aunt Love has Stephen Lee for about an hour before I get home from school and she still takes care of him even after I’m there. But it makes Tabitha feel better with both of us around. She worries about Aunt Love leaving the door open or forgetting something on the stove and catching the house on fire or letting Stephen Lee climb up the stairs. Of course when it comes to Stephen Lee, Tabitha worries about everything. She goes a little nuts every time he pulls on his ear with an earache or falls down and bumps his head.

  I think she’s going overboard. Half the time when Stephen Lee bumps his head he doesn’t even cry. He’s a tough little rascal. You can look him in the eye and tell that. He’s more likely to cry because he’s mad than because he’s hurt. But you should see the list of what me and Aunt Love have to watch out for that she leaves us every day. Aunt Love just laughs about it. And I don’t think Tabitha has to worry for a minute about Aunt Love forgetting to take care of Stephen Lee. He’s in there in her brain along with all those Bible verses she’s always throwing out at me.

  I’ve got so I don’t mind her Bible verses that much. “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.” Psalm 48:1. She says that one nearly every morning now when I go in the kitchen for breakfast. I’m back out sleeping on the porch again. I love it out there where I can see the stars through the windows and Zeb can sleep on the floor beside me. Anyway how could anybody be upset by a verse like that? Great is the Lord. I mean a person ought to be ready to shout that one out whenever. Off the rooftops or wherever. Dad just preached about that—getting up on
the roof to tell the good news of the Lord. That’s in the Bible somewhere.

  Aunt Love doesn’t shout out her verses much anymore. Most of the time she’s singing the Psalms to Stephen Lee these days instead of using them to try to control my unruly behavior. Maybe I’m just growing up and getting less unruly. Wes says it happens to the best of us. Just look at him and how he’s been earthed and goes to church every Sunday now. That he’s just getting rulier and rulier. When I asked him what rulier meant he said he guessed it was the opposite of unrulier and meant a body noticed there was a rule here and there that might make sense.

  He and Robert have been writing some. Not as much as Robert and Tabitha. Those two keep the mailman busy. Tabitha has a whole stack of Robert’s letters hidden away in her dresser drawer. Says if she catches me trying to read them she’ll tear all the pages out of my journal notebooks and mail them to Zella. I don’t know why she thinks I care if Zella reads what’s in my notebooks. There’s nothing secret here. Not secret like those letters. I think they’re in love.

  Everybody’s in love, I guess. Believe it or not, Paulette and Ronnie are still going strong. And Charissa is still swooning over Noah every time she sees him or thinks about him. Noah hasn’t asked her out yet, which I tell Charissa is just as well since there’s no way her daddy is going to let her go on a date. Not till she’s sixteen and we’ve got two years to wait for that. Of course I couldn’t care less about going on a date with anybody. I guess I still have a problem with arrested development.

  Charissa tells me if I’d spend half as much time thinking about boys as I do worrying about what Mr. Teacher Creep is going to do next, I’d be better off. And more normal. She starts rolling her eyes if I so much as say the first word about Mr. Creep. That’s one reason I have to write it all down in here. I mean she knows he’s a creep and that he does pick on me, but she says so what? That happens to a lot of kids in school when they get on the wrong side of this teacher or that. That black kids like her have that problem all the time just because they don’t have white skin and they just have to learn to get along with it.