by Jean Stone
“God,” Donna said, “nobody’s safe. Just yesterday I heard that Lena Payson out in Tisbury—Remember her? She has a son Riley’s age that they sent to military school?”
Hannah nodded, but she was thinking about Evan. Would he feel better if they made love tonight? How long had it been? They’d stopped when Evan’s mother died and he’d lost interest in most things, including Hannah. She tried to be understanding; she tried to be patient. But when John Arthur—the junior high vice principal—moved to town, he paid attention to Hannah. He smiled and encouraged her to take up running. And he stirred up feelings that reminded her she was a woman—and that she was human. Still, Hannah was a faithful wife and hadn’t acted on her feelings, well, not yet, anyway.
She eyed the felt strip. She clipped out one and then another. Maybe she and Evan could make love tomorrow. After the biopsy. After her two-, no, three-mile run.
“So I said to her,” Donna continued, “ ‘Lena, what did you expect? The stress that you’ve been under …’ ”
Hannah began to weave the felt strips together and realized she could sleep late tomorrow, which meant she could stay up late tonight, maybe finish a dozen or more flowerpots that would be in demand once the season started.
“Donna,” she interrupted, “could you do me a favor? Evan is tied up in the morning. Would you take me to the hospital?” No sense asking Evan; he’d only get more upset.
Donna shrugged. “Sure. What time?”
Hannah smiled. “Nine-thirty?”
She was lying on her stomach on a way-too-hard table. Her breast had been stuck through a hole and now it dangled from her like an unwanted growth. On top of feeling humiliated, Hannah was freezing.
She tried to block out the murmur of voices—the radiologist, the technologist, the whoever-else-ologists who were there in the room, touching and tapping and taking pictures of her breast as if it had nothing to do with her.
She refused to be scared. Instead she pictured herself running the five-miler, in pace beside John Arthur, gliding along the shady, tree-lined road toward Chilmark, the early-morning sun warming her insides. She tried to sense her legs and the muscles of her butt and feel a stride that would be steady, forward, strong, almost sensuous.
“Don’t move.”
Hannah winced. Of course she wasn’t going to move. As if she hadn’t been lying there half an hour already, hardly blinking. She knew what came next. The radiologist would insert the needle and begin sucking samples. Sucking samples—cores, they called them—telltale buggers that would be sent out and tested and returned with the label of malignant or not.
She tried to focus on positive thinking, walking—running—through the fear. It had brought her this far in life. Besides, the percentage of biopsies that came back malignant was only … ?
She couldn’t remember.
Was it thirty percent? More? Less?
Why couldn’t she remember?
“Almost there,” the radiologist noted, as if they were at mile-marker four and their destination was in sight.
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut.
She thought about mid-term exams; about the race this year and if the weather would be nice; about Donna Langforth, who was sitting in the waiting room, perhaps flipping with benign indifference through a tattered Family Circle.
She tried not to think about Evan, or that somewhere on the island, he no doubt would be thinking of her now, and that he’d have a knot inside his stomach just like the one lumped up in hers.
It would take three days for the results. Hannah refused to think about it. Instead, she used the time to catch up on cooking, cleaning, laundry; shopping for more flowerpots and creating lesson plans that would take her classes through to June. She supposed her busy-ness was some sort of denial, but what the heck, she thought, at least she was productive.
The third day at last arrived. Hannah stayed home so she could take Doc’s phone call privately without an audience that might include the junior high vice principal.
After the kids had left for school, she decided to look for scrimshaw in Mother Jackson’s trunk. She climbed the pull-down stairs up to the attic. With a small twinge of reluctance, she left the trapdoor open in case the telephone rang.
For a brief moment Hannah indulged the fantasy that the call would never come, that she wouldn’t have to hear a voice say, “Hannah? Doc Hastings here.”
Shaking off her thoughts, she plunked into an old rocking chair that sat beside the trunk. It had been a long time since she’d been up there: she’d forgotten the quiet and the comfort of being near Mother Jackson’s things.
With a small smile, Hannah lifted the trunk lid. She sorted out the neatly piled contents, parts of Mother Jackson’s life: program guides from the Vineyard theater she’d established, scripts that she’d adapted, clippings from the island newspapers that praised productions of Death of a Salesman and The Cherry Orchard.
And then she found the overalls, the child’s costume Hannah had made for Scout—played by the aspiring Riley Jackson—in To Kill a Mockingbird. Riley had been eight and Mother Jackson had passed her love of drama on to her. When Mother Jackson died, Riley said it didn’t matter that the theater was abandoned. She said she was “too old” now for pretend.
Beneath the overalls Hannah found scraps of yarn and fabric and a cigar box filled with several bits of plastic scrimshaw, small round and oval shapes with black ink sketches of tall ships. They’d used them once as buttons on a sea captain’s navy coat; the play was about old whaling days and had been written by an islander.
“Thank you, Mother Jackson!” Hannah said happily.
She removed the box and scraps of fabric, careful not to disturb the false bottom of the trunk, the place where Hannah had once tucked some memories of her own—memories that had no need to be remembered.
As she began to close the lid, Hannah noticed something else—an unfamiliar velvet purse, another prop, perhaps, whose plump sides were as bulging as her curiosity. She unsnapped the catch and reached inside. The purse was filled with several thick rolls of paper—no, of dollar bills! Silver Certificate, the top one read; valuable, Hannah surmised. Four rolls were there, each banded neatly.
“Surprise!” read a note inscribed on the band that encircled one. Hannah recognized the penmanship as Mother Jackson’s.
Hannah laughed aloud. It had been that way with Evan’s mother: so much spontaneity, so much unexpected fun. Hannah stared down at the money and felt her smile fade. Mother Jackson had loved Hannah and Hannah had loved her. She’d welcomed Hannah into the island community and never questioned Hannah’s past.
They’d made a good family; they’d made a good life with the kids and the neighbors and the safety of it all.
And then Mother Jackson died.
And Evan withdrew.
And Hannah began to think about another man.
And now, downstairs, the phone rang.
Cold air rushed up at her from nowhere. She dropped the purse into the trunk and sucked in a short breath.
The telephone rang again.
THREE
MARCH
If she could possibly be objective, Faye Randolph might have wondered why, of the two Randolph sisters, she was the one who always ended up with the short end of life’s stick, while Claire seamlessly moved from one European trip to another health spa vacation, from one cocktail party to another round of golf.
It wasn’t that Faye wasn’t capable of being objective. Standing in the walnut-lined conference room of her Boston marketing firm, Faye only had to glance around at the shelves of awards and acknowledgements to know that objectivity was a huge part of her success. She had learned how to dissect the corporate bellies of her clients; how to unearth their flaws, redirect their strengths, and create programs that launched their new products into a global marketplace.
She pressed her forehead against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Beacon Hill, the Boston Commons, and the notorious
Big Dig. From her perch seventeen stories above Back Bay, she knew it was easy to be objective when it came to business.
It was not as easy when it came to herself or her life or the breast cancer that she’d thought she’d put behind her eight years ago. It was not as easy when it came to “recurrence,” that dreaded, three-syllable word.
She had looked it up. To happen, come up, or show up again, Mr. Merriam-Webster had proclaimed. She looked down at her small breasts that were covered by the gray silk suit weskit and wondered why the bad things tended to recur.
Technically, it wasn’t a recurrence, because this time it was her other breast. But the way Faye saw it, cancer had recurred inside her body, so who cared which location it had picked?
She had searched for a bright side: at least this time her treatment had been only a lumpectomy and radiation, so her discomfort had been less. At least this time no one had known—not her employees, not her sister. Faye had lied to keep her privacy; she’d said that she was here or there on business, never that she was stretched out on a table in a lead-lined room.
“You should be fine,” the doctor said, because what else would he say to a fifty-something woman who’d now had cancer twice? Would he admit what her battered heart believed, that her body and her spirit were finally breaking down?
The first time, Faye had studied everything she could—she read every breast cancer book and digested what few related Web sites were around eight years ago. Stages One, Two, Three, and Four; invasive, noninvasive; low-grade, high-grade. She exhausted and confused herself with knowledge. Finally, she found solace in her work. Solace, courage, and a false will to go on. This time, though, it was different; this time she was simply tired.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the voice of Gwen, her buttoned-up, right-hand assistant called as she strode into the room. Faye squared her tired shoulders and tried to get back to work.
“The results for Summer Lace are in,” Gwen said as she set a stack of color-coded file folders and an armload of ivory-and-pale-blue boxes on the conference table.
“How do they look?” Faye asked. With twelve years in the business, Gwen was the most capable of Faye’s dozen employees. She knew how to analyze focus groups, including those for Summer Lace, a new line of toiletries that appeared to come from a cozy cottage industry on Cape Cod in New England. In reality, the cottage was owned by RGA, a Chicago conglomerate, and its products were manufactured in Taiwan. Faye had been hired to determine if the products would sell. From San Diego to Boston, her network of consultants had quizzed groups of female consumers about the fragrance, the lotions, the packaging, and the proposed ads.
“It should be a winner,” Gwen replied, “except on the West Coast, where it’s considered too homespun and quaint.”
Faye nodded; it didn’t matter. RGA already had the West Coast saturated with other collections. She sat down on a deep burgundy leather chair. Two decades ago she’d insisted on a masculine-looking office, because those things had still mattered, especially in business, especially in Boston. Now, like Summer Lace, it all seemed trivial.
Gwen leaned against the table. “By the way, did you forget lunch with your sister?”
Claire, Damn. “I forgot,” she said.
“She called four times.”
“I was needed at the hospital. The new brochures arrived.” She turned from Gwen as if her assistant might see through her deception.
It was true that the brochures for the children’s center fund-raiser had been delivered. And Faye had dashed to the hospital. But the real reason she’d gone was for her last radiation treatment, her souped-up, power boost.
“See you in two weeks,” the perky receptionist had said. Faye was scheduled for a mammogram in two weeks, final proof—or not—that the cancer was really gone. She did not plan to go. She did not want or need to hear what she already thought she knew: that cancer liked her body and was not going to leave for good. She did not need three strikes to know when she was out.
“Gwen,” she asked her assistant now, “can we review RGA later?” The results needed to be compiled into a detailed, yet concise narrative; a formal presentation needed to be arranged in Chicago.
Gwen shrugged. “Sure.”
Faye removed the large, Bailey Banks & Biddle pearl clip-on from her right earlobe as if she were going to answer the phone. Instead, she rolled the earring between her fingers—a worry stone that had been in her family for three generations and was passed on to Faye not because she was the older sister, but because Claire preferred pink diamonds to classic pearls. “I’m going home early,” she said. “I might be coming down with the flu.”
Before she left the office, she supposed she should call Claire.
• • •
“It’s rude, Faye. You should be grateful, but instead you’re rude.”
Well, Faye supposed she’d asked for it. Claire, after all, led the tribe of family and friends and acquaintances on this side of the Charles River, and some on the other side, who’d been trying to set Faye up with one man after another since the belated demise of her marriage. That day’s missed lunch had been with a widower named Adam Dexter from Nashua, New Hampshire, whom Faye had left sitting in a Newbury Street café with, of all people, her sister. Faye often wondered how it happened that she was such a sharpshooter in business and such a screwup with men. She looked out at the skyline and wished she hadn’t made the call.
“I’d suggest you reschedule,” Claire continued, “but I’m sure Adam wouldn’t bother. You’re not the only woman over fifty searching for a rich man.”
Was that what Faye was doing?
She ran her hand through her silver hair—“the color of polished pewter,” her stylist boasted, as if he, not Mother Nature, were solely responsible. She’d once thought of dyeing it, but Gwen said it looked regal. Claire did not look regal: at forty-seven, she looked a little foolish with platinum-blond highlights and her hair pulled into a ponytail as if she were still seventeen. Faye closed her eyes. “I said I was sorry, Claire.”
Claire’s sigh resonated from her Brookline mansion to the seventeenth floor in Back Bay.
Faye studied the floor and wondered why she and her sister bothered staying in touch. The only time they’d really gotten along was when they’d spent summers as kids on the Vineyard. With their parents both gone now, what on earth was the point?
Then, while Claire prattled on, Faye’s eyes landed on the package comps for Summer Lace. She thought about summer, the beach, the Vineyard. Was it time to get away? She could go down to the island for a week or maybe two. Maybe then she’d have a chance to piece together what was left of her life.
“Claire,” Faye interrupted. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. A client has just arrived.” She rang off abruptly, without mentioning the Vineyard. Perhaps the less she and Claire were involved in each other’s lives, the easier it would be to tolerate each other.
She did not care that it was only March and the Vineyard house was not open. After leaving the office, Faye drove her new Mercedes to her Park Square condo, her post-divorce, downtown Boston condo that she supposed she should be used to since she’d been living there for four years. She said hello to the doorman, whose name still escaped her, rode the elevator to the large, sunny domicile she’d paid someone to decorate, and, upon entering, tried to ignore the ever-present feeling that someone else lived there and she was just a guest.
The Vineyard house was not like that. For all the good and bad times it had weathered and not weathered, it was familiar and friendly and, God help her, it was home.
She smiled at the thought of going, and at the notion that she, Faye Randolph, was being irresponsible, especially in the middle of the week.
“Mouser,” she called out, not that she expected her ancient Persian cat to respond or reveal his whereabouts. “We’re going to the beach house.”
She went into the bedroom and there was the cat, lying in the center of the thick down comforter, looking
at Faye as if to ask why she was intruding. She wondered what would happen to Mouser if something happened to her. Claire would probably not take him. Claire and her husband, Jeffrey, had been too self-centered to have children, let alone pets.
Shaking off her thoughts, Faye began to pack. Surely the sea air would recharge her soul and make her feel as “fine” as the doctor said she’d be. But as she zipped the suitcase and began to change her clothes, Faye made one mistake: slipping off the recommended soft, cotton bra, she looked down at her breast. Her tattoo stared back at her, the inky cluster of purple dots that were not a fashion statement, but had been etched into her flesh in case more radiation was to come, so the technologist would know exactly where she had been zapped.
Zapped.
Branded for life.
Radiation was here.
She dared not look at the other breast or its deep underwire scar.
She closed her eyes; she sucked in air. “Goddamnit,” she said, because no one was listening except maybe the ghosts of her parents, who would be appalled because they hadn’t raised their daughter to “swear like a trooper,” as Father often remarked. He’d never clarified if he meant a state trooper, a paratrooper, or some other kind of trooper, and how he, a Harvard archaeology professor, would have known anyway.
Thinking of her father, the kindest man she’d ever known, comforted Faye, and helped smooth the edges off the ache.
She finished changing into a fleece-lined jogging suit. Though the calendar said it was now spring, Faye had a hard time staying warm. She reapplied her makeup and quickly brushed her hair. Then, with Mouser’s carry-on in one hand and a suitcase in the other, Faye headed from the room. Halfway out the door, she caught sight of the photo that sat atop the bureau. She did not mean to look, but she could not help herself.
Dana.
Greg.
Faye’s daughter and son. Smiling from the sailboat that skimmed across Vineyard Sound. Young and eager, with eyes that were bright and hearts that were hopeful, and why wouldn’t they have been?
