by Jean Stone
EIGHT
Katie hadn’t been in her mother’s room since her father had slept there, too, when they’d huddle on the big bed, just the three of them, singing silly songs or reading from great books or making stories up about the kings and queens in her mother’s bedtime song.
She’d never gone inside if the door was closed. She’d known it was their “private” time together, her father’s and her mother’s. But he was gone and she was nowhere to be seen and there was nothing private between them anymore, anyway.
Katie held her breath a little, then opened the door.
The room still looked the same. The flower-print wallpaper had darkened, the small braided rug had faded, but the four-poster bed remained tucked under the slanted roof, its covers rumpled and inviting, as if none of them had ever left. She felt an ache of longing, a familiar ache that had been dulled by time and life, but was not completely gone.
Pausing in the doorway, she could almost hear their laughter.
“Katie-Kate,” her father said, tickling her rib cage.
“Don’t call me that!” the five- or six- or seven-year-old giggled.
“Katie-Kate, Katie-Kate.” It was his favorite game.
She hated it, but still she could not stop giggling. She burrowed under the covers until her mother rescued her. “He’s a goofy old man,” Joleen had laughed. “Come on, let’s get him!”
And the two would scurry to the head of the bed and attack Cliff Gillette from either side until the three of them laughed so hard that one of them peed their pants, usually Joleen.
Katie listened at the doorway, but did not hear the laughter now.
She stepped inside. She recalled the reason she was there. Paper. A notebook perhaps. A pen.
She moved to the small secretary that stood beside the window. The Secretariat, her father called the desk in jest, giving it the name of the horse that won the Kentucky Derby the year Joleen’s first album went platinum.
Katie did not know when the laughter stopped; it might have been that last summer when her mother had the miscarriage.
Pulling down the desktop, Katie peered into the cubbyholes lined up along the back rim of the green-blottered wood surface. The compartments were jammed with papers: wrinkled, folded papers, littered like old bills someone forgot to pay.
Her eyes drifted to the bookcase that sat atop the desk. Behind its glass doors, the books did not stand up like normal books. This was Joleen’s house, where the books lay on their sides as if they’d just been read and the reader set them down in stacks, the last-read on the top.
She did not see any notebooks.
Poking through the pigeonholes, Katie unearthed more clutter. Her forehead tightened in a frown. Was Joleen in debt? Was the money Katie earned for her not enough?
“The remakes of your mother’s music help keep her alive,” Cliff said several years ago. “Without the royalties, she might break down again; she might lose her Vineyard house.”
“What about her own royalties?” Katie had asked. “Lots of stations still play her songs.” She might have been a little jealous: Each time Katie recorded one of her own compositions, the stations seemed to limit airtime. They loved Joleen; they only liked her daughter, Katie.
“Joleen’s own royalties are not enough,” Cliff said. So Katie kept rescoring and recutting her mother’s biggest hits so that Joleen would not break down again. The ploy had worked: The world had loved Joleen’s music with the nineties twist. And Katie had put away her own songs and quietly didn’t mind, because she’d rather be onstage than writing anyway.
Pulling out a fistful of papers, Katie shuffled through them. But something wasn’t right. Since when did bills arrive scrawled on yellow, lined sheets? She looked more carefully. Then she realized she did not hold a batch of unpaid bills, but pages of poetry.
It was a bright, blue morning
when the smile of the sunshine
sparkled off the water
and glinted off the land.
And then a host of anger
crashed into the smile
and the suffering began
and the suffering will not stop
over a bright blue land.
Above the words were tiny, hand-pencilled letters. A. B-flat. D. Not letters. Chords. And this was not a poem; it was a song.
Katie turned the paper over. Nothing indicated when Joleen had written it, if it had been penned yesterday or thirty years ago and was as old as the flowered-paper on the walls.
And then she saw a small notation in the corner. September 11, 2001. Not decades ago.
Quickly, Katie scanned the other papers in the secretary. More poems. Songs. Verses of creation from her mother’s silent soul. Verses so much more magnificent than Katie’s had ever been.
“My God,” she softly said.
“Your God, what?” came Joleen’s voice from the doorway.
Katie dropped the papers. She did not turn around.
“How dare you enter my bedroom without asking,” Joleen said in a voice that had fallen to a husky whisper. “How dare you go through my things.”
Katie inhaled a small breath. “I didn’t mean to …” Slowly Katie turned and faced her mother. Anger was not common to Joleen: It showed its mark now in deep parentheses at the corners of her mouth.
“I was looking for some paper,” Katie said. “Rita wants us to keep a journal.” Why was her heart racing? Why did she feel so … awkward? “Mother,” Katie said, “these are beautiful. I didn’t know you were still writing.”
With eyes set on the mismatched scraps scattered on the floor, Joleen undid the elastic around her long thick ponytail. She toyed with it a moment, then snapped it back in place. She left the doorway and withdrew down the hall.
• • •
They had made love, if not like teenagers, then the best they could for a fifty-year-old man and a thirty-eight-year-old woman with breast cancer and no hair. Evan told her she was beautiful. In his arms she actually believed it.
Back home now, Hannah pulled herself from their bed and adjusted the scarf around her head. Beautiful or not, she wore the silk-and-polyester square. She did not want the children to see her head uncovered.
Evan. Hannah was convinced that the Lord had made the spring blizzard just so she and Evan would be stuck in Boston and end up staying not one but two nights because it was so good to be together, alone again like before the kids, alone with nothing or no one but each other to be with and to love.
She was silently ashamed for her attraction to John Arthur; she said a prayer of thanks that she had not acted on it.
Hannah wondered if the kids had noticed any difference between their mother and their father when they’d finally returned home, if they’d seen that Evan put his arm around her while she stood at the kitchen sink, or that they’d gone to bed the same time as the kids—except, of course, for Riley, who’d insisted on watching Letterman.
“Pink is on,” she’d said, but Hannah suspected it was another test grown out of her daughter’s new defiance. She tried to remember when Riley had metamorphosed from a sweet, loving child into a sometimes-angry, always-unhappy girl.
Hannah went into the bathroom, slid from her robe, and stood unclothed before the tall, oval mirror. She inhaled a long breath and began her checklist of the day:
Bleeding. None.
Bruising. None. Well, there was that little purple mark under her elbow where she banged her arm against the bedpost when Evan … well …
She smiled.
Other bruising. None.
Fever. None.
Rashes. Nada, nada, nada.
She’d escaped the perils of the toxic chemo monster once again.
She put her robe back on and sat down at the counter. The small stool creaked beneath her.
“I keep hoping chemo will make me skinny,” she’d said to Evan when he’d traced his fingers across her stretch-marked belly.
“I just want you well again,” he’d whis
pered.
She wondered how it had happened that she’d become this lucky.
The oval glass sent back her smile. She noticed that her skin was not yet gray; maybe she’d avoid the ghastly pallor; maybe Evan’s love had given her a new glow.
Evan, her husband.
It was nice to feel in love with him again.
She removed the scarf around her head and studied the tufts of hair. Touching one, it fell out in her hand.
“Well, so much for my smiling self,” she said aloud. She sat there, staring at the puff of blonde that insisted she was sick, not well. It did not care that her husband thought she was beautiful; it did not care that today she was not bleeding or did not have a rash. Hannah still had breast cancer—Stage Three—one stage from the grave.
Two tears dropped onto the puff of hair. She blinked another tear away, then looked up just in time to see Riley reflected in the mirror, staring at her. Their eyes met for an instant, then Riley turned and quickly walked away.
• • •
“My mother caught me going through her things,” Katie said when the group convened again. “I was only looking for some paper for my journal. But I found some songs she’d written. I wish I could put them in my journal. Maybe we should do that—instead of just our thoughts and feelings, maybe we should include pictures, ticket stubs … things. Souvenirs of our lives.” She paused, then added, “Anyway, I feel bad that my mother caught me. Like I’d been doing something wrong.”
They were silent for a moment.
“My daughter caught me without my wig on,” Hannah said. “She hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Rita gripped the edges of the plastic chair. She did not mention that Mindy had caught her talking about Katie, about her baby and her cancer. Instead, she turned to the silver-haired woman who, for an unknown reason, had returned. Did that mean the Women’s Center was not a dead deal after all?
The woman did not meet Rita’s eyes. “Doc Hastings caught me feeling sorry for myself,” she said, her voice not as regal as before, yet still well-bred and well-spoken, like any of many summer people educated in private schools because their families had the means. “I don’t know how well any of you know him, but trust me, that’s not what you want to have happen.”
Yes, Rita silently agreed, Doc had little patience for self-pity. Much, Rita supposed, like her. Was that the real reason he’d asked Rita to run the group?
“Years ago, before my cancer or my divorce, I had tragedy in my life,” the woman continued. “It happened right here on the island and Doc helped see me through it. He could have told me to go home to my own physician. Instead, he encouraged me to talk with others who’d gone through something similar. He forced me to find a reason to go on.”
A quiet filled the room, a gentle pause that waited to learn what the reason was.
“As frightening as it is to be told you have breast cancer,” the woman said, “it can’t compare with the horror of losing your child.”
There was no motion in the room. No words, no sound, no breath. Then Rita realized that her mouth was open. She thought of Kyle—of course she thought of Kyle—and knew the woman was correct. Nothing could be worse than losing a child. Doc had suggested that Rita go to a support group, too. But Rita had not gone. Another flaw inherited from Hazel.
“So,” the woman went on, “that’s why I’m here. Because Doc was right. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. And because those other people who had been through something similar helped me to survive back then.” She folded her hands with practiced poise. “This is my second time with breast cancer,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s not exactly a ‘recurrence,’ but, to me, it doesn’t matter what they call it.” She told them about her diagnosis, then and now. She asked if they had questions.
“If you already needed one mastectomy,” Katie asked, “why didn’t they do another?”
“This was a different type. And it was caught early.”
“I have a question,” Hannah interjected. “What’s your name?” she asked. “We don’t know your name.”
The woman hesitated, then gave a small, slow smile. “Faye,” she said. “My name is Faye.”
Rita looked at the woman who had breast cancer for the second time around and who had lost a child and who had gone through a divorce, as if the rest wasn’t bad enough. The weird part was, the woman now seemed familiar. Was it because she’d lost a child? Her name was Faye. Did Rita ever know a summer person with that name?
“She has to be the benefactor,” Rita said to Hazel later that night, because what the hell, Mindy already knew about Katie Gillette and Rita had to talk to someone about the mystery woman. Sometimes being curious by nature could be exasperating.
Rita shook off her thoughts and poured them both more coffee. “Whatever happened to Faye’s child must have been more than eight years ago,” Rita went on. “That’s when she had cancer for the first time.”
Hazel shook her head. “Tragedy happens, Rita Mae. Even on the island.”
Her mother was no help at all. “But think, Mother! Can’t you remember a tragic time when a child died?” She did not mention Kyle, the worst accident most folks knew of because he’d been twenty-six and he was one of theirs and he had burned to death. She did not mention Kyle because, though it had been nearly seven years and a lifetime ago, some days Rita still did not think she could cope.
Hazel shrugged. “I never cared much about the summer people. We were too busy looking out for one another, trying to survive.”
We, of course, meant all the islanders—the ones who truly did belong.
“And don’t forget that I was gone for years.” A faint smile crossed over Hazel’s face. She must have been remembering her unexpected marriage spent down in Coral Gables, Florida, in a mobile home, with a man rumored to have had a ton of money, though Hazel claimed he never showed it to her. “If they were famous people,” Hazel added, “it would have made a difference.”
Was Faye someone famous? Was that why she seemed familiar?
“Of course, if the death wasn’t ‘natural,’ it surely would have made the papers.”
Rita set down her coffee mug with a bang. Shit. The newspapers. Why hadn’t she thought of that? It would be so simple. She could go to The Gazette. She could dig through the archives.
She jumped up from the table and wondered when Amy could watch the twins again and if they’d be ruined for life by spending too much time inside a tavern, all because their mother was too damn nosy and could not stop herself.
It can’t compare with the horror of losing your child.
Katie sat on the edge of the bed in the room that once had been her home. She cupped her hands around her belly and thought about Faye’s words. She thought about Miguel. How could she not?
With one eye on the telephone, Katie rocked back and forth. Was the real unfairness that she hadn’t told him what was really going on? That she hadn’t given him a choice to go on loving her … or not?
Then she saw his smile as clearly as if he were beside her. His wide and wonderful smile, the one he said he saved for her.
I have to tell him, she thought so suddenly and so clearly that it came as a surprise. No matter what my father says, I have to tell Miguel about the cancer.
She wondered if she could make a call without waking up Joleen.
The baby kicked. Katie smiled. She slid onto the floor and brought the phone down beside her. Then she placed the call.
He answered quickly, as if he’d known that it would ring and that it would be her.
“I’m on the Vineyard,” she said softly, “with my mother.”
He was silent a moment, then asked, “Are you all right?”
She cried. “I’m fine, Miguel. Our baby’s fine.” She cupped her hands beneath her stomach again and laughed. “He is moving, Miguel! I can feel him moving, kicking his feet.”
He hesitated; she did not know why. “It might be a girl,” he said at last. “The baby might
be beautiful like you.”
“Or handsome like you.”
He did not reply to that.
“Miguel,” she asked, “will you come and see me?” She gripped the phone cord, afraid he would say no. Why would he say no?
“You want me to come out to that island?”
“Well, yes. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be seen in the city.” She closed her eyes and pictured him in the small apartment he’d taken in the basement of her building; the studio that he’d rented to be close to her—his love, his star who lived so many flights up. She’d tried not to think of the symbolism there.
He laughed. Why did he laugh? “You know how I hate small planes, Cara Katie.”
Didn’t he want to see her? “Take the ferry,” she replied. “It’s really much more fun.” He did not answer right away and she heard herself give him directions from the train to the bus to Woods Hole to the boat that would bring him across Vineyard Sound to her.
“Katie, I don’t know.” The tone of his voice was level, steady. “I thought we agreed to wait.”
She closed her eyes. “Miguel …”
“No, Katie. I’m trying to adjust to this. You have no idea how hard it’s been on me … that you left New York. That you took away my baby …”
How hard it’s been on him?
What about Katie’s father? Poor Cliff had taken her to the hospital for the lumpectomy. He’d waited in the lobby, claiming hospitals made him dizzy, while she’d been sent upstairs with a stranger who wheeled her into the operating room and asked if there was someone in the waiting room they could notify when the procedure was complete, and she’d said, No, no one would be there.
How hard it’s been for him?
But, of course, Miguel knew none of that. Because she had not trusted him. Because her father had told her not to.
“Friday,” she said quickly. She would need tomorrow to think about this, to plan what she would say and do. And Hannah had offered to go with Katie on Saturday, to pick out a layette for the baby. Besides, Saturday might be too late; she might change her mind by then. “Friday,” she repeated. “Please?”
