by Lesley Kagen
Was Jerry referring to her dive into the Sea of Unconditional Love? Was he part of some cosmic conspiracy?
She replays the watery excursion. She could still hear Frank’s reassuring but light-hearted voice, her daddy’s singing, and feel the joy she’d experienced when she’d been reunited with her lost loved ones, and the silvery warmth of the silver-lilac water caressing her skin. What happened? Could she have had one of those near-death experiences people claim to have had on Oprah? Or maybe it was some sort of religious epiphany—number seven on her list. If so, it wasn’t the kind she’d had in mind. She envisioned one more Biblical in nature. A Saul on the road to Damascus sorta thing. Yet, seeing her departed family, and experiencing the powerful no-strings-attached love, did feel awfully divine. And then there was her daddy’s absolution. She’d been told by Dr. Drake and other therapists that she was not responsible for her father’s death, but there’s nothing quite like hearing it from the horse’s mouth.
The longer the scenario replayed in Tess’s mind, the clearer it became to her that there was no way of knowing exactly what she’d experienced. No proof of any kind, other than a profound sense of well-being, but, she tells herself, that could be the drugs in her system, or just relief that the surgery was over. The only thing she’s absolutely certain of is that the same way traumas are imprinted in her brain, the sacred experience was indelibly tattooed on her soul.
Still…she is the most mentally unreliable person she knows. Utterly untrustworthy. She’d like to bounce what had happened off somebody, but who? Can’t be the children. Will? Uh-uh. He’d probably say something about her ability to make erroneous assumptions even while she’s unconscious. About the only one who might understand what she’s feeling is Birdie, who has had many a strange trip of her own. And then, of course, there’s another who might understand what she went through. Her new best friend.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
Tessie slowly opens her eyes when she senses my presence. “Hey, Grace,” she says with a blissed-out smile.
She knows who I am now the same way Birdie knew who Bee was when she appeared in her life. And as I suspected, once she figured it out, Tess willingly surrenders to my existence without a fuss.
She asks, “Do you think that…ah…adventure or pilgrimage, or whatever that was I just had, would allow me to scratch number seven off my list?”
“That the religious epiphany one?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.”
I’m not allowed to answer that question directly since she needs to piece it together herself. But a little nostalgia and a dollop of hope can go a long way. When they were kids, Tess and Birdie loved those Davy Crockett TV shows with Fess Parker, so I tell her, “As the King of the Wild Frontier would say, ‘I ain’t sayin’ yes, and I ain’t sayin’ no, I’m just sayin’ mebbe.’”
She grins. (When she gets more comfortable with our relationship, she’ll become less compliant. Pushy even. Mark my words.)
“Now would be a good time to call Will,” I tell her.
Her husband answers on the first ring, “Count Your Blessings.”
The diner greeting had always felt like a reprimand to Tess, but this time it feels like a reminder. She tells Will, “You were right.” Might as well get it out of the way. “I lived. Come get me.”
The two of us remain in companionable silence until Jerry returns with supplies in tow. “Pain level?” Tess lies and tells him that she doesn’t feel a thing before he can whip the laminated unhappy faces out of his pocket. He looks skeptical, but says, “Okay, then let me show you how to empty your drain.”
Discombobulated by the drugs and the discomfort, she’s sure that Jerry just said, “Let me show you how to empty your brain.” Maybe I should’ve read the consent forms more thoroughly, she thinks. Had her lymph nodes been so visibly ridden with disease that Dr. Whaley followed a trail to her frontal lobe and removed some of that as well? Is that what this unfamiliar, unworldly contentment is about? She’d had a partial lobotomy?
She asks, “Did you just say…? Empty my what?”
Jerry folds back the bed clothes so she can squint down at the shoulder-to-mid-abdomen bandage. The wide adhesive tape holding it all together has an off-putting smell. A clear tube with a black bulb is lying beside it. The nurse points at it and says, “Your drain. Some of your lymph nodes were removed for testing and the excess fluid needs to go somewhere.” He pops open the top of the bulb with this thumbnail and pours the blood-tinged liquid into a plastic cup with numbers on the side. “You’ll need to empty it three times a day and keep track of how much fluid there is and,” he takes out a small notebook from a bag with the hospital’s logo printed on the front, “enter the numbers in this diary.”
Her mouth fills with nervous saliva. “Is it like one of those…you know, those bags that people have attached to them to collect their…um….” She can’t remember the proper medical word. “Poop movement?”
“No,” Jerry reassures in his big bass voice that Tess suspects he puts on because he’s a male nurse. “It’s not a colostomy bag, and it isn’t permanent. Once the fluid diminishes, Dr. Whaley will remove the whole kit and caboodle.”
She’s not concerned about coming in contact with body fluids, she’s a mother, but Will is another story. When she pictures how put off he’ll be when he sees the drain, the rejected, hurting part of her takes pleasure picturing his squirming, but another greater part of her that wants his love back recoils when she imagines the look of utter revulsion on his face.
Jerry checks her temperature again. “Looks good. Did you call for your ride?”
She nods.
“You feel up to dressing?”
She tosses back the covers.
“Well, then,” he says with a little bow. “That concludes our business for today. Here you go. Everything you’ll need until your next doctor’s visit. Enjoy Valentine’s Day tomorrow.” He passes her a navy-blue plastic sack. “I’m bringing my wife to Count Your Blessings for lunch. It’s her favorite spot. Maybe you know her? Mare Hanson?”
That about stops her heart. She’d been too jumpy to pay much attention during check-in, but she now notices Jerry’s full name on his shirt badge. She knew that Mare’s husband worked in the medical field, but for some reason, Tess had it in her mind that Mr. Hanson worked for a drug company.
This is exactly what she feared might happen. Somebody she knew finding out about the cancer. She believes that Jerry is required by law to keep today’s surgery confidential, but she’s not leaving anything to chance. She reminds him in her sternest voice, “I signed that Right to Privacy form.”
He works every day with drugged-up patients, so he doesn’t take offense. He replies with a good-hearted smile, “My lips are sealed. Scout’s honor.”
Despite his reassurance, and curious reference to To Kill a Mockingbird, Tess cannot still her panic. She can’t help but think that the nurse might call in an anonymous tip to the Ruby Falls Gazette during his coffee break, or maybe he and Mare will engage in pillow talk tonight and her secret will be out!
She jerks her head my way, gives me the cutthroat sign, and frantically points to Jerry who’s heading toward the room door.
Since our relationship is still new, at least from her perspective, Tess is unfamiliar with its boundaries. All IFs come with standard equipment like invisibility, telepathy, and high empathy, but it’s up to our friends to bestow any other special powers upon us. (Birdie’s Bee was a hell of a shoplifter, swimmer, and snappy dresser. She could also perform slight-of-hand magic, and with her telekinetic powers, she was able to move the snow drift that saved her friend’s life.) And while I do have special talents, it’s too soon in Tess’s and my relationship for them to be of much help. They build on her trust in me. But even if I was firing on all cylinders, I certainly wouldn’t do what she is so rabidly requesting. I would not do away with Jerry. (There are rules.)
The best I can offer her at the current time is
Calpurnia-like reassurance. “Jerry’s not gonna tell the newspaper or his wife or anybody else about your cancer. Faith not fear,” I whisper in her ear. “How ’bout we get you dressed? Will’s almost here.”
Tess navigates the room floor like she’s crossing stepping stones set in raging water. Arms straight out and little choppy steps. Once she makes it safely to the bathroom, she changes into her street clothes, and grows calmer after she’s reunited with her purse. She fingers her babies’ blankets, brushes against her daddy’s Swiss Army knife, and withdraws her copy of the book that’s been patched together over the years with tape and admiration.
“Could you read to me until Will gets here?” She passes me To Kill a Mockingbird. “From the beginning?”
I don’t need to actually follow the words that Miss Harper Lee put down since we’ve got a lot of the book memorized, but I crack it open anyway for show. Louise didn’t read to her when she was younger and it was something she’d always envisioned as the motherly thing to do. Like baking a birthday cake from scratch or placing a cool hand on her fevered forehead or caring if her child lived or died.
I clear my throat and say, “‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.’” I’d made it through the Finch family history and had just begun the paragraph that would set the tone of the story. “‘Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town…,’” when Will steps into the room with a young woman dressed in a navy hospital-issued pantsuit.
He kisses Tess’s cheek and says, “Ready Freddy?”
The hospital girl insists that the patient get into the wheelchair before she’ll take her out of the room and to the side of her husband’s turquoise-and-blue ’57 Chevy that’s parked in the patient pick-up area, so Tess has no choice but to comply.
Will asks as he helps her into the car, “Does it hurt very much?”
Number 6.
“I’m fine,” Tess tells him.
Even if the pain was off-the-chart, she wouldn’t admit it. She sees her ability to endure discomfort as one of the only qualities she possesses that makes her feel superior to normal Will, and she’s not above lording it over him.
As they pull away from the hospital, she tells her chauffeur-husband in an uppity voice that is an almost exact replica of her mother’s, “Home, James. And be quick about it.”
Love Is a Tree with Many Limbs from Which to Hang One’s Self
It hasn’t escaped Tess’s attention that despite being in a hurry to return to work, he always is these days, Will has taken the route home from the hospital that he knows she likes the best. Carver Road ribbons over the thickest part of the Ridge River south of town. As they rumble over the covered bridge, she gazes out the Chevy’s window at the wide expanse of flowing water below. It’d been an unusually temperate winter, but jutting out from the right bank, a fringe of ice thoughtfully provided by Mother Nature is acting as a rest stop for a flock of geese.
Once they enter into the town proper, they’re welcomed by St. Lucy’s. High atop the hill that overlooks the town, the church’s copper spire is standing in bas relief against a sky of a deep blue. The day Will brought her home to Ruby Falls, Tess fell for the town almost as hard as she had for him, but she’s experiencing more than her normal appreciation. The downtown shops appear even more charming, the red-brick buildings and cobblestone streets reminiscent of a Dickens novel or Main Street Disneyland. As they pass Count Your Blessings, Will lays on the Chevy’s horn the way he always does. Ah…oo…ga. Lunch is busier than usual. Milwaukee Magazine had featured the diner in its yearly restaurant issue and world-weary customers have been showing up in droves. Through the plate-glass window, Tess gets a quick look at Connie Lushman greeting a young couple and two tow-headed kids. Even seeing the happy, well-configured, scarless woman who Will might love more than her doesn’t substantially alter her newfound zest for life. (We’ll see how long that lasts.)
As Will makes a left onto Chestnut Street, Tess’s heart swells with the love she feels for the home that’s included in the Chamber of Commerce’s walking tour. Some tourists might linger longer in front of the grander houses, but to her, the Blessings’ is the prettiest of them all.
In the front window of the colonial, Garbo, who’d been keeping watch for her mistress the way she always does, barks and scrambles off the back of the couch when she spots them turning into the driveway. After he pulls into the garage, Will rushes around the back of the finned car to help Tess out.
“What can I do?” he asks.
He thinks she’s hunched over because she’s in pain, when in reality, it’s a defensive move designed to protect her heart from the one who has damaged it the most—her mother. She’s passing the garage shelf where Louise is still waiting to be scattered. Tess is preparing herself to be verbally attacked, but oddly, not a peep comes out of the golden cube. Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard from Louise since the surgery. Had the anesthesia put her to sleep as well? Note to self: Send Dr. Gritzhammer a thank-you note immediately.
A sight for sore eyes, Garbo is waiting in the mud room with her Frisbee. The pain in Tess’s chest and throwing arm sharpens when she bends to stroke the top of her dog’s head. “Maybe later,” she tells her as she steps into the kitchen that she’d lovingly painted eggshell to better show off the children’s artwork on the refrigerator and walls. Her attention is drawn to a third-grade crayon drawing of Henry’s. Curlicue smoke escapes from the chimney and V birds fly across the sky. The Blessing stick family is standing on their front porch. It’s not the first time Tess thinks that the rendering Henry did of his sister back then is now almost accurate.
Will says, “I’ll make us tea. Can you get up the stairs without help?”
She grins at me and says, “No problem.”
She’s always been a hard-work-pays-off person, so she feels uncomfortable when I insist she slips into her Champs-Élysées nightie just a little past noon. After I help her into bed, she grimaces and edges the covers down to adjust a piece of surgical tape that’s pulling against her side. She’s in the midst of it when Will comes in holding the promised refreshments.
He jostles and almost drops the tray when he sees what Tess is fiddling with. “What’s that?”
She says, “My drain,” and then attempts to explain what she thought Jerry had told her.
Reaching for her teacup with her left hand because her right arm feels so heavy and numb reminds Tess of the long-ago days she and Birdie would pretend they were victims of attention-getting ailments of one kind or another. One of their most creative ideas came from a newsreel they’d seen on President Teddy Roosevelt. Those little Finley girls spent days letting their legs go as lifeless as Tess’s arm now feels. Once they had that crippled feeling down pat, they whiled away the good part of an afternoon attempting to fasten a jump rope around two old bike tires and a cast-off kitchen chair so they’d have their very own wheelchair. When that didn’t work out, they sat on the front stoop of the duplex looking wan and courageous with a wool blanket across their legs yelling, “Bully!” at passersby with the same enthusiasm they’d seen the ex-president deliver the line. Ahhh…the good old days when she and her sister had wished that Jonas Salk had gone into a different line of work.
Will tries, but fails to hide his discomfort at the sight of his wounded wife. “If you’re feeling okay I should get back to the diner.” He rakes his hands through his hair that Tess notices again looks less tarnished. It’s also fuller on the top, like he’s using a product to give it more body. “I left Connie alone.”
Tess is about to snippily say, Well, God forbid Connie feels abandoned, but the pained look on his face stops her. Is he concerned about the business? His hostess? Her? She’d ask, but he’d only give her his usual happy-go-lucky shrug.
“Mom?” Henry calls from downstairs.
“What’s he doing home so early?” Tess asks concerned. “You think he was suspended again?” Henry’d already been sent home twice thi
s semester. Once for wearing a Santa Claus costume to school and the other for lipping off to a biology teacher who he’s had problems getting along with since he liberated the frogs that were about to be dissected.
Will says, “Lemme check.” He kisses her on the forehead. “If you need anything you know where to find me.”
On his way down the steps, Tess hears him ask their son why he’s home earlier than expected.
Henry doesn’t like to be interrogated. Peeved, he tells Will, “I told you this morning that the teachers are having some kind of meeting. Where’s Mom?”
“Resting. Take it easy on her. We just got back from the hospital.”
Henry’s size elevens take the remainder of the steps two at a time. He’s forgotten to put on his I-am-a-cool-teenage-boy face when he sits on the edge of the bed next to Tess. “Are you okay? How’s your shoulder?”
“What—” She’d momentarily forgotten the lie she’d come up with. “It’s a little sore, so you might need to help me out for a couple of days.” If Haddie, her lover of Lifetime medically themed movies was here, she’d have a bunch of questions, and maybe even ask to see beneath the bandage that she has artfully arranged the down comforter over. She’d eventually wheedle the truth out of her mother, but Henry? He may love to play bloody video games, but just like his dad, at the sight of the real thing he turns the color of bone.
He knits his brows together and asks, “Do you need something now?”
She spoils him, she knows that. He’d used to being cared for, not the other way around. If she keeps her requests simple, he’ll do just fine. Nothing complicated like, Could you come closer so I can nuzzle your neck because I was positive that up to a few hours ago that I’d never see you again? I saved all your baby teeth in a jar that I keep in my dresser beneath the little blue knit hat you wore home from the hospital. You wanna see?
