by Steve Gannon
“I know, Ali. It’s all right.”
“How did you get sick?” Nate asked in a small voice.
“Nobody’s sure what causes leukemia,” Mom explained. “Exposure to chemicals and radiation can play a part, but there is a lot doctors still don’t know. They do know it’s not contagious, and it’s not passed through the genes. You three aren’t at a higher risk because I’ve developed this illness.”
“But how do you get rid of it?” Nate persisted.
“That’s the hard part,” said Mom. “Over the next months I’ll be receiving chemotherapy at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. During that time I’ll miss things in all your lives, and I’m sorry for that, more than I can say. I wish I could protect you from the uncertainty we’re facing, but I can’t, so we’ll just have to be strong and help each other get through this. Understand?”
“Sure, Mom,” Travis replied. “I’ll cancel my recitals—”
“No. I don’t want you to do that. You’re to continue with your piano engagements as planned.”
“But—”
“Please, Trav. Canceling your recitals isn’t necessary. I’ve talked with Grandma Dorothy. She’s coming down from Santa Barbara to stay here while I’m in the hospital. She’ll look after Nate and keep things running.”
“I don’t need looking after,” objected Nate.
Mom smiled. “I know you don’t, but I’ll feel better knowing she’s here. And she wants to come. Now that Grandpa is gone, I think she’s kind of lonely.”
“Well … it would be nice having her visit,” Nate conceded.
“She thinks so, too.”
“When are you going to the hospital?” asked Travis.
“Your dad’s driving me to St. John’s first thing Friday morning”.
Nate looked dismayed. “That soon?”
“I’m afraid so. I have to start treatment right away so I can get better,” Mom replied. Then, forcing a lightness in her voice, “Who wants to ride in with me?”
“I do,” Travis replied.
“We all do,” I said.
My mother turned to her youngest. “Nate? Do you want to come?”
Nate looked away. “Will you be all right?” he asked, voicing the question on all our minds.
Mom glanced at my father, then back at Nate. “As I said, Dr. Kratovil is an excellent doctor, and my condition was discovered early. I’m going to receive the best treatment poss—”
“But will you be all right?”
Mom hesitated for a long moment. “You deserve an honest answer, Nate,” she said at last. “You all do. The truth is, I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll simply have to take things one day at a time. Okay?”
Instead of replying, Nate crossed the room and threw his arms around Mom’s neck. Mom hugged him tightly, clearly wishing she had been able to answer his question differently. “Don’t worry, I’m going to be fine,” she whispered, willing her words to be true. “You’ll see. I’m going to be fine.”
After the meeting, Dad and I descended to the redwood deck, out of earshot of the other family members. Our exchange did not begin well.
“Just what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Dad demanded, dispensing with the preliminaries.
“You’re referring to my working at CBS?”
“No, I’m referring to your changing laundry detergents. Of course I’m referring to your job at CBS. I swear, kid, I keep thinking there must be some pharmaceutical explanation for your behavior. What are you on? Jesus, we have enough problems right now without your pulling a stunt like dropping out of school to work at some scumbag news station. Which reminds me. Is Lauren Van Owen still the bureau chief over there?”
“Uh …”
“I knew it. Damn, I can’t believe she’s doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“I have to spell it out? It’s simple. She figured I’d be investigating the Jordan French case, so she—”
“Does everything have to be about you?” I broke in, chafing at my father’s assumption that I had been hired at CBS simply because of my connection to him. “Ms. Van Owen offered me the position on Tuesday, before you assumed the French case. Your involvement with the Jordan French investigation had nothing to do with it.” Not exactly true, but in my anger I had no difficulty suppressing my doubts—at least for the moment.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, it is. Why is it so impossible for you to believe I could achieve something on my own?”
“It’s not. Hell, you’re a Kane. When you set your mind to something, it gets done. But this will cause trouble, and Van Owen knew it when she hired you.”
“In all fairness, she made the position conditional on my telling you and Mom.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“After you withdrew from school,” Dad pointed out angrily. “Putting things as diplomatically as possible, Ali, your behavior on this sucks.”
“If that’s being diplomatic, what’s your blunt version?” I asked, nervously attempting a smile. “Delivering it strapped to a cruise missile?”
“You have a real talent for sarcasm, you know that?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. But I want this job.”
“Tough.”
“Are you going to call Ms. Van Owen and get me fired?”
Dad hesitated. “You really want this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you can make up your summer credits at USC and still graduate with no loss of time, like you said?”
“Yes, sir. Please let me do it.”
Dad vacillated a moment longer. “Okay,” he sighed. “It’s against my better judgment, but as this is the first thing you’ve shown any interest in for a long time, I’m going to say yes. Your mother won’t like it, and normally I wouldn’t cross her when her mind’s made up. But in this case, as it looks like it’s a done deal anyway, I’ll run interference for you. Just don’t screw up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“By the way, I don’t think it would be the best thing for your mom to know who you’re working for.”
“There’s nothing still, uh …”
“Between Lauren and me? Hell, no. I just think your mom has enough on her mind right now without throwing Van Owen into the equation. Speaking of which, with all the lousy news stations in town, how’d you wind up at CBS?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
With a disgusted shake of his head, Dad stared out over the darkened beach, his eyes raking the horizon. A three-quarter moon had risen at the foot of the bay, illuminating the ocean with restless flickers of silver and gray. “One more thing, Ali,” he added quietly. “I know that you and your mom have been locking horns recently about just about everything, which I suppose is normal for mothers and daughters, but these next few months are going to be hard. Really hard. Don’t make them worse.”
On the drive back to school, I thought about my father’s words. At the time, his admonition not to make things worse for Mom had seemed unnecessary. Of course I wouldn’t make things worse. Mom’s illness constituted a family crisis, and during a family crisis, in the dogma Dad had drummed into Travis and Nate and me all our lives: Kanes stand together, no matter what.
When I was younger, those words had held little meaning. The heartbreaking loss of my older brother Tom had changed everything, the strain his death had placed on the fabric of our household eventually leading me to embrace the spirit of my father’s simple precept. No, I swore to myself as I drove through the night, I would never do anything to make my mother’s ordeal more difficult. Yet despite my conviction, doubts I had earlier pushed aside kept returning.
Am I being selfish by taking this intern position? I asked myself. Trav offered to cancel his recitals. Maybe I should do the same—quit my new job at CBS and move back to the beach to help out. But even if I did, what good would that do? Grandma Dorothy is coming to stay. And naturally, Mom insisted that Trav continu
e his recital tours. She wouldn’t want genius boy’s budding career to suffer simply because she’s sick. But when it comes to something I want …
Jeez, what’s wrong with me? I wondered in disgust, despising myself for my envy. Shaking my head, I again resolved to heed my father’s warning. Things would be difficult enough for our family over the next few months. I couldn’t make them worse. I just couldn’t. If I were needed at home, or my working at CBS caused problems, or whatever, I vowed to take any and all steps that were necessary to make things right.
No matter what.
13
Sweeping back her long auburn hair with her fingers, Catheryn closed her eyes and raised her face to the shower’s soothing jets, letting the water stream into her mouth and across her shoulders and over her breasts, its warmth flowing the length of her legs to the tiles below. Steam filled the bathroom, but she turned up the water temperature even higher, as if the near-scalding spray could somehow burn away her cancer. Though the time to leave for the hospital was fast approaching, she lingered a few minutes more in the shower’s cleansing embrace. Finally, with a reluctant sigh, she turned off the water.
As she tipped her head and gathered her hair in a thick rope to twist it dry, an unsettling thought occurred. What did Dr. Kratovil say? Two weeks before she started losing it?
Oh, well. At least she would save on shampoo, she thought wryly as she stepped from the shower and grabbed a towel from a rack by the door. After wiping the steamy mirror above the sink, she inspected herself in the glass, examining her lean torso, firm breasts, and a stomach still as flat as the day she had married. She had always been proud of her body. Now, with insidious and unexpected cruelty, it had betrayed her.
“How’s it coming in there, gorgeous?” Kane yelled from the adjoining bedroom. “Need any help?”
Catheryn began drying her legs. “I think I can handle things in here just fine, Dan.”
“Too bad. I wouldn’t mind handling ’em a bit more myself,” Kane replied, lowering his voice suggestively.
“You’ve already taken care of activities in that department quite nicely, thank you,” said Catheryn, smiling at Kane’s salacious tone. In truth, their lovemaking the previous night had been glorious, their impromptu rendezvous beneath the covers that morning even better. Nevertheless, each time desire had carried them away, Catheryn had sensed a trace of desperation tingeing their passion, the specter of her impending medical treatment adding a darker color to what had always been a joyful sharing of their love. The children were acting differently around her as well, offering to help at odd times, doing chores that would normally have required reminding. Despite everyone’s good intentions, their anxious solicitude had progressively made Catheryn feel like a guest in her own home.
“Whatever you say, sugar,” Kane called. “Although in my opinion, when it comes to that particular activity, you can’t get too much of a good thing. I’ll go make sure the kids are getting dressed.”
Catheryn heard the strain in his voice. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” she called back, attempting to sound lighthearted and almost succeeding. “And before we leave, would you please clean up that mess you left on the dining room table? What were you doing with my back issues of Architectural Digest, anyway?”
“Something to do with work,” Kane replied. He rarely discussed details of his investigations with Catheryn, and by tacit agreement, she seldom asked.
“Just because I won’t be around for a while is no reason to let things go.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Catheryn finished drying herself, wrapped a fresh towel around her damp hair, another around her torso, and stepped into the bedroom. The small bag she had packed the previous evening lay open on the bed, a collection of pictures on top. She picked one up, a shot of Nate when he was four. The family pet at the time, a black Labrador retriever named Sammy++, sat nearby, the dog’s eyes intent on a stick Nate was laughingly holding above his head. Catheryn paused, remembering how much Nate had loved that old dog. Putting off dressing, she flipped through several other photos she had chosen to take to the hospital. One showed a much-younger Travis performing in his first piano recital. Another, taken the summer before her oldest son, Tom, would have started college, depicted Tom and Kane grinning foolishly on a high-school football field, arms around each other’s shoulders. The next was of Allison and Travis at Allison’s fifteenth birthday party. The two were sitting on the old downstairs swing—Travis unaware his picture was being taken, Allison smiling innocently, her index and third fingers poking up behind her brother’s head in the familiar “rabbit-ears” prank.
As Catheryn turned to the final photo, she heard Kane enter the room. “Everybody’s ready when you are,” he announced, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her waist. “I remember that one,” he added, peering over Catheryn’s shoulder. “Mexico. One of the busboys took it.”
“I recall,” Catheryn murmured, studying a shot of the entire family on a vacation they had taken two years back, a week after their house had been reduced to char and rubble. Homeless and with most of their possessions gone forever, they stood grouped before a palm-thatched palapa on a beach in Mazatlán. Kane, an arm around Catheryn, his leg in a cast, was sporting a tastelessly loud Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts. Catheryn was wearing a tiny black bikini, a straw hat, and a carefree smile. Travis, Allison, and Nate, browned from a week of surfing and lounging on the beach, were clowning in the foreground.
“Those were good times,” said Kane softly.
Her vision blurring, Catheryn placed the pictures into her bag. “Yes,” she said, turning to her husband. “Despite all that had happened, they were. With the exception of when our children were born, I think those were some of the happiest moments of my life.”
Gently, Kane took Catheryn’s face in his hands. “I love you, Kate.”
“Oh, Dan,” Catheryn whispered. “I love you, too.” Closing her eyes, she raised her lips to his.
Kane returned her kiss, circling her protectively in his arms. “We’ll get through this.”
Catheryn kissed him again, longer this time, a familiar passion beginning to stir as Kane tightened his embrace. Pulse quickening, she pressed against his strong body, her mouth warm on his. Finally, with a gasp, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him away. “Let me get dressed or we’ll never get out of here,” she laughed.
“What’s the rush? The hospital’s not going anywhere.”
“But …”
“One more kiss,” said Kane, running his hands down the curve of her back and unfastening the towel.
“And then you’ll let me get dressed?”
Sensing her resolve slipping, along with the towel, Kane drew her to him again. “Maybe. We’ll talk about it later.”
*
On the ride to St. John’s, I sat wedged between my brothers in the back of our family’s green Expedition. The late-model Ford, a recent addition to the household that an auto-dealer friend of Dad’s had picked up for him at auction, was a definite improvement over our former vehicle—a battered red Suburban that had been the family car for as long as I could remember. Still, the ancient Suburban had held fond memories for me: riding to my First Communion, driving lessons Dad had given me in a Pepperdine University parking lot, leisurely trips our family had taken every summer up the coast to Oregon. I missed it.
I had driven to the beach earlier that morning to accompany Mom to the hospital. I had barely seen my father before we left the house for Santa Monica, but I’d sensed that a strain still remained between us from our conversation on Wednesday night. Since then Dad’s recent visit to the Frenches’ estate had been televised both locally and nationally, with Brent’s on-the-scene coverage culminating in an exclusive revelation that a search warrant had been obtained by police to reenter the house. But if my father had deduced that I was Brent’s source of information regarding the search warrant—especially now that Dad knew I was an intern at CBS—he
hadn’t said anything. At least not yet. It was something for which I felt thankful. With all that was happening, I couldn’t face another argument.
Nonetheless, as our family drove toward Santa Monica, a deeper tension than the one between Dad and me permeated the car—a tension eased only occasionally by forced conversation and falsely cheerful remarks about the weather, Nate’s baseball team, and a recent proposal by the New York Philharmonic to schedule another presentation of Travis’s piano concerto. As we neared the Health Center, I felt as if I were mired in a dark and endless nightmare. I glanced at my parents in the front seat. At that point Dad was mostly concentrating on his driving. Mom sat beside him going over a checklist to ensure that everything would function smoothly in her absence.
“Ali, don’t forget that Grandma Dorothy is coming down from Santa Barbara this afternoon,” said Mom, turning to me in the backseat.
“I know. My room’s all ready for her,” I replied. I had insisted that Grandma use my bedroom while staying at the beach—opting to use our house’s small guestroom whenever I returned home.
“Believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to seeing the old broad,” Dad noted.
“She loves you, too,” said Mom. “Although considering the way you two butt heads, I can’t imagine why.”
“She appreciates class, sugar.”
Trying to lighten things, Mom winked at us in the back seat. “Of course she does. I, however, don’t see the connection.”
“Unless you’re talking about low class,” offered Nate, halfheartedly making an effort to join in.
“Or no class,” Travis added, sensing the lines of battle being drawn in one of our family’s good-natured patriarchal challenges—a diversion on car trips usually reserved for longer journeys when Dad had been mellowed by hours of driving.
Though normally I would have been the first to join in the mutiny, I remained silent.
Playing along, Dad scowled at us in the rearview mirror. “Last time I checked, my arm still reached to the backseat, rookies.”
