What's Worth Keeping

by Kaya McLaren

  * * *

  He was so glad that he hadn’t known the future on that day. He would not have believed it, anyway. So sure had he been that he and Amy were for forever, he could not have fathomed it. He could not have fathomed the bombing of the federal building or the role he would play in its aftermath. He could not have fathomed how it would change him … how it would leave him feeling so isolated all the time. He could not have fathomed that cancer would happen to a person as good as Amy … could not have fathomed that he would come so close to losing her. And he certainly could not have fathomed that prior to the cancer he had actually filled out divorce papers. He thought of his twenty-one-year-old self, of how angry he was at his father, of how protective he felt of Amy, of how he was going to show his father that he was not just a man but a man of worth, a man worthy of Amy, and a man far more capable than his father had been of being a lifelong good husband. His twenty-one-year-old self would have kicked his forty-seven-year-old self’s butt for not treating her right.

  When Carly finally did wake, she looked with alarm at the wide-open spaces beneath a sky filled with cauliflower clouds rising and growing before their eyes. “Where are we?” she finally asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied because he thought it would be more fun to be coy.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, it sucks not to understand, huh? Your mom and I haven’t understood the choices you’ve been making for the last month and a half.”

  Seething, Carly looked at the dashboard and shook her head. “Where are we going?”

  Paul paused before he told her, thinking that if she considered the possibility that he was taking her to rehab or a naughty kid wilderness camp, she might actually be happy when she learned that they were only going to Aunt Rae’s.

  Carly

  It was unreal—her dad thinking he could just pick her up and take her to Great-Aunt Rae’s like this, like he picked people up and took them to jail. So she had some beers, smoked a little pot, and spent a few nights at friends’ houses without telling them—could her parents really blame her? After all, their home had become a sick ward of sadness. Everything was just cancer and sadness.

  When her mom was going through chemo, Carly had been strong for her. Many nights, she alone had cared for her mom, a responsibility so great that she often felt she was buckling under its magnitude. She had cut up mangoes for her mom, opened cans of peaches, and kept her water glass full of lemon water. She had looked up recipes for new soups and then put them in the blender on days when her mom’s mouth was too tender to chew. She had been the very best daughter she could be.

  * * *

  It had been day four of round one, the day they all learned that day four was the worst. It had caught them off guard. Her dad had stayed home on days one and two, the day her mom had the infusion and the day that followed, but her mom had felt much better than any of them had expected, and so, with a false sense of security, her dad had returned to work the graveyard shift. On every other day but day four, both before and after that round, Carly would wake to find her mom staring out the eastern window, waiting for the sun to rise, waiting alone for the long night to be over; but on day four, her mom stayed in bed and cried, unable to stop, unable to hide it. She just cried and cried into her pillow, her back turned to Carly.

  Instinctively and tentatively, Carly sat next to her and rubbed her back gently through her pajamas, studying the rash on the back of her mom’s neck and newly shaved head. “Can I make you a smoothie?” she asked.

  Her mom shook her head. As Carly’s hand reached her mom’s shoulder, her mom’s hand rose to meet it, patting the back of it, trying to comfort the daughter who was comforting her.

  “Peaches?”

  Her mom held still, thinking about it, and then nodded.

  Carly practically ran to the kitchen to open a can, drain it, dump it in a bowl, grab a fork, and return. Her mom rolled over onto her other side and cried big teardrops into the bowl of peaches as she ate. It was the worst she had ever seen her mom. She wondered how much more her mom could take, whether she would make it through treatment, and she was scared. Her mom laid her head back down on the pillow next to the peaches, so Carly picked up the bowl before it spilled.

  “How about I leave these right here so if you want more later, you have them?”

  Eyes shut, blocking out the world, the light … everything she could block out, her mom nodded.

  “I’m going to go get you some fresh water. I’ll be right back.”

  She filled a glass with tap water, squeezed some lemon into it, and dropped in a reusable straw.

  Her dad should have come home by now. That was the plan. He had arranged to work nights so that he could stay home with her during the day and Carly could stay with her at night. She wasn’t sure when he would sleep. Maybe he would do what she did—sleep lightly and wake often, every two or three hours, to check on her during the first week after her mom’s infusions. Night shift was hers and day shift was his, but this morning he was late. And it was day four, so she could not leave.

  She walked around the bed and curled up behind her mom, resting her forehead on her mom’s convulsing back, as if willing prayers to go directly from her mind right into her mom’s body, wondering whether this was going to be the day they both broke.

  Not too long after, her dad finally came home and took Carly’s place on the bed so she could get ready for school. By the time she was done, both her parents were asleep and she didn’t want to wake them—especially her mom—so she hopped on her bicycle and rode to school without a note excusing her tardiness.

  On the way, she remembered that there was supposed to be a test in her precalculus class that morning, and she was missing it. She pedaled harder, arriving at school sweaty, then locking her bike and running directly to Mr. Long’s class. She entered as quietly as she could so as not to disturb the others.

  He looked up from his desk at her and held his hand out for the note from the office saying whether she was excused or unexcused. She approached and whispered, “Could we do this after the test? I’ve already missed so much of the time to take it.”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, can I make it up later?” she asked, worried that this test could affect her grade and cause her to lose her chances at scholarships. Even with insurance, Carly expected the expense of cancer would wipe out the money her parents had saved for her college. They would have to take out loans now, and she didn’t want to burden them with any more debt than they surely would have by the time her mother’s treatment was over.

  “If you have a doctor’s excuse. You know my policy. Sleeping in is not an excuse or a reason I should have to grade your test later.”

  Anger rose up within her. Anger and frustration. Couldn’t anyone see that she was doing her best? “Sleeping in?” she said, tears brimming and then spilling over.

  “Go to the office, Ms. Bergstrom. You know the rules. You have to check in whether you are excused or unexcused.”

  And there she was, standing in front of all of her classmates who were watching to see what would happen, crying in front of them because unlike most of them, she actually cared about the test, cared enough to pedal her heart out on her bike, and unlike all of them, she had been taking care of her mom, who had cancer.

  “You know what, Mr. Long? You’re a dick. You don’t know anything about me.” She slammed the door on the way out and instead of going to the office went to the girls’ room, locked herself in a stall, and cried. No one understood. No one had any idea.

  Between classes, students came and went. She silenced herself and listened to snippets of conversations, one of which was someone recounting how Carly had called Mr. Long a dick, while the listener expressed disbelief. She wasn’t sure she recognized their voices and didn’t really care.

  Traffic subsided, much to her relief, and then she heard the unmistakable click-click-click of Ms. Hepworth’s shoes. “Carly?” she called fr
om the doorway, then entered.

  Carly lifted her feet. She just wasn’t up for this day getting even worse. The clicking slowed as Ms. Hepworth strolled by each of the six stalls, stopping in front of hers to peer through the crack. Busted. Carly didn’t budge, though, curious about what would happen if she just didn’t leave her sanctuary.

  To her surprise, she watched Ms. Hepworth’s shoes walk on to the end of the row, then turn and slide out as she sat down on the bathroom floor against the wall.

  “Carly, I heard about what happened in Mr. Long’s class. That doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”

  What’s going on? What’s going on? Carly didn’t even know where to start. She simply cried, reaching for toilet paper before her sniffles totally gave her away.

  “Do we need to call your parents?”

  “That would be unkind,” Carly said quietly and deliberately.

  “Oh? How come?”

  Carly did not want Ms. Hepworth to call and wake them. “Because they’re both finally asleep.”

  Ms. Hepworth was quiet for a moment, trying to make sense of that. “What’s going on at home, Carly?”

  Carly was cornered and she knew it. There was no way out. And so she said the words out loud that she did not want to say, the words that would make it even more real when shared, the words that opened the floodgates when she spoke them. “My mom has cancer.” Sobbing, she opened the door and let herself be held by her principal, let herself cry, let her face be washed with a wet paper towel, let herself be led to Ms. Hepworth’s office, where she was allowed to sit at a little desk in the corner, normally reserved for naughty kids but today reserved for one who just couldn’t handle life, or pressure, or being seen by anyone.

  Later, a precalculus test was delivered to her by the secretary and then classwork from other classes. Diligently, she worked her way through it, but when two o’clock rolled around, she made herself go to science class because she could not figure out how she would make up the lab if she missed it. Besides, Andrea was her lab partner, and she could count on her to carry her through it.

  Feeling the stares as she walked through the hall and into her class, she looked down, trying to block out the world, the intrusion, the unbearable vulnerability, understanding something deeper about why her mom shut her eyes when she cried.

  After that day, her dad took leave on day four, along with days three and five, and stayed home.

  * * *

  Yes, she had tried to be the very best daughter she could be, but each step led to another step and it seemed to be never ending. No matter how hard she tried, she never felt she was good enough. Not good enough in school, where she couldn’t concentrate on much of what her teachers said. Not good enough at home, where she couldn’t make her mother better.

  Just when the chemo was all over, her mother had a double mastectomy. A couple of days after the surgery, lab results came back with great news. The cancer appeared to have been knocked completely out by the chemo. Her mother’s lymph node had come back negative as well. For about three weeks, Carly had been happy. But still, it wasn’t over. It was never over. Her mom had to have a second surgery—one to remove her uterus and ovaries.

  It was Carly’s senior year, the only senior year she’d ever have, and for the final two months of it, she just wanted to be a normal kid and go a little crazy. She just wanted to let go after holding on so tight. What was so wrong with that—especially when she might be the next one to have cancer?

  Yeah, how about that memo? How about watching her mom suffer for months and then find out that that experience is genetic—that she had better enjoy her boobs while she had them because one day they might need to be cut off? That very night, she had let Bryce Myers feel her up. There was no time to waste. Her chances of getting ovarian cancer were thirty times greater than for other women, and there were no mammograms for ovaries. In fact, doctors were now beginning to think that ovarian cancer started in the fallopian tubes, and those couldn’t even be seen with ultrasound. So, she could live with a gun to her head until she had kids and then get her ovaries out, or she could do it sooner and adopt, or she could skip having kids because she was probably going to die early anyway. That was her takeaway. Because it wasn’t just breast and ovarian cancer. She had gone online that night and learned a BRCA2 gene mutation gave her greater odds of other cancers too.

  Suddenly, everything had seemed pointless. Good grades? Pointless. College? Pointless. All careful, healthy, or safe choices? Totally pointless. Her mom had made all the careful, healthy, and safe choices, and that had bought her a metric ton of jack squat. Yeah, when Carly looked at it, she realized that pretty much all of her goals had been long-term goals, and all of those were pointless when she might not be around long enough for the payoff. Delaying any kind of gratification seemed stupid.

  As she sat in the passenger seat, scowling out the window at the flat, mostly barren landscape broken up only with the pumps from oil wells moving slowly up and down, she tried to formulate new goals for herself. Learn to ride a motorcycle. Get a fake ID so she could go to dance clubs. Maybe she would move to L.A. or New York City. After that, she wasn’t sure what. She just felt so angry—so angry she didn’t know what to do with it all. None of it was fair. Not one ounce of it.

  As they approached a gas station, her dad asked, “Need to stop?”

  “Yes,” she answered. One-word answers—that’s all he would be receiving from her in the foreseeable future. He could try to control everything else, but he couldn’t control that.

  She weighed her options. She could try to make a break for it at the gas station. Her dad would chase her. She could shout that he was not her dad and to help her. She could. It wasn’t clear how that would work out, though. It would complicate things. So, she could do that … or she could work for Great-Aunt Rae, maybe earn a little money, and have that much more money in her pocket when she took off on her eighteenth birthday, when there would be not a damn thing anyone could do to stop her.

  * * *

  Carly began to pay attention later that afternoon when the plains turned into mountains, when the straight road began to wind and finally dropped down to Taos. She wanted to ask her dad to stop in the center of town or at least at the Pueblo so they could wander and explore, but that request would cause her to have to set aside her angst and her role as the victim and she wasn’t remotely ready to do that. But she felt sad as they passed it and turned left onto another relatively flat road west, one momentarily interrupted by the colony of earthship houses, many more of which had sprung up since they had last driven through there. Eventually, they drove through another town—if it could be called that. It appeared to be little more than a restaurant and post office. And then they climbed over more mountains, dropping at last into an awesome, expansive view of a whole lot of not much.

  Once in the valley, they drove through the tiny town of Tierra Amarilla, past the houses of people who appeared to have enough and past the houses of people who it appeared did not. Then they turned right onto the highway that would lead them to Chama and drove north.

  Although she had good memories of Chama, it now seemed entirely too small and too hopeless a place for her. A taco restaurant had taken over the large metal building that had been the feed shop. The Purina logo poked out from under the new sign. Farther up the road, a sign wishing Jesus a happy birthday sat on the roof of an abandoned building. There was a restaurant in an old, single-wide mobile home—not something she ever saw in Oklahoma City. Other things looked more normal to her—a small grocery store, two hotels, a Family Dollar store, and then a downtown so small that if she blinked, she’d miss it. Cute shops lined the west side of the street. The historic train was on the east. Her dad slowed after the restaurant they always ate at and before the bar they avoided, then turned up Third Street to the corner of Third and Pine, where he crept past the house on the northwest corner that her parents had bought years ago.

  “You should fix that up
,” Carly said, breaking her rule about giving one-word answers only because she knew it would irritate him to have anyone, but especially her, tell him something he already knew about what he should do. Let him see how it feels, she thought.

  He simply nodded.

  Continuing north on Pine until the road ran out, they found Great-Aunt Rae’s long gravel driveway and turned left onto it. Carly’s stomach began to tie up in knots as the reality of all of this hit her. This was where she would be spending the summer against her will.

  Great-Aunt Rae walked out of her barn and stood there waiting in her overalls and T-shirt, a little smile on her face, her posture nonchalant. She looked like an old woman to Carly now … yet somehow still mighty. Carly sized her up as Great-Aunt Rae appeared to do the same. The look on Great-Aunt Rae’s face seemed to say, I could flip you like a cheese omelet, kid, but I’d rather have fun. What do you say? Carly did not yet know her answer, but an early memory popped into her mind, a memory that should have been her first clue.

  * * *

  Carly had been tired. It wasn’t easy being a toddler and out of her daily routine, and in new places on top of that, new places that smelled all wrong—nothing like home.

  Her road-weary parents each thought the other was looking after her, her dad as he strolled the horse trail on the property line and her mom as she visited with her aunt. And so it was that she had no obstacles when she saw and smelled the perfect place to sleep and the perfect napping companion all rolled into one.

  It was big and round, covered with fur, and on the ground, like her giant teddy bear at home but better because it was warm, and it moved ever so slightly up and down like her mom or dad when she fell asleep on one of them. This one was already asleep, just like she wanted to be, and so she crawled right on top of it, worked her fingers deep down into its fur, laid her head down, and fell fast asleep.