by Jean Stone
She rang off without saying that she loved him, or giving him the chance to say—or not say—it back.
NINE
“How did you know?” Faye tried not to sound angry when she phoned Gwen.
“It was warm in the office one day,” Gwen said. She seemed unruffled that it was late at night and that Faye must have awakened her. “You took off your suit jacket. You had on a sleeveless sweater: I saw black marker lines under your arm. My Dad had radiation. I knew it was a sign.”
It must have been the day she’d had the CT scan, when they’d pinpointed the area that needed to be zapped.
“Plus,” Gwen added, “after that, you left the office every day at the same time for six weeks.”
Faye laughed at herself, because she thought she’d been so secretive, so clever. “Actually it was six and a half weeks,” she replied. “But didn’t you think it might be something else? Maybe I was getting fitted for a new implant?” Gwen had been so supportive during Faye’s first diagnosis. She’d kept the office running smoothly and earned her boss’s trust.
“I knew it was the other side. Forgive me if I crossed any boundaries, Faye, but I was worried about you. I remembered your doctor’s name from the last time. I called the hospital and said I was you and that I’d been there that morning and misplaced my scarf and wondered if anyone had turned it in.”
“And no one had, right?”
“No, but the receptionist was very nice. She said she didn’t recall that I’d been wearing one when I’d walked in that morning.”
Faye laughed again. “So you told my sister to pretend to be me, too. I guess that’s why I hired you. Because you are so brilliant.”
Gwen grew silent. “Faye,” she said, “I am so sorry. And I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could tell me this time.”
“Nothing personal. I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
“And now? How are you now?”
“I’m okay. I’ve had my last treatment. Now I’m catching up on a few things. Sleep. Life.” Faye did not mention business.
“I’m sorry about Claire,” Gwen said. “She cornered me, not that that’s an excuse.”
“No matter. I can handle my sister.”
“You handle her and I’ll take care of things here. I’m catching an early morning flight to Chicago to meet with RGA.”
Faye’s eyes darted to the sideboard in the dining room where her laptop sat, unopened. She knew she should feel guilty, but she did not.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure it will go great.”
“I’ll call after the meeting.”
Faye wished her luck, then hung up and wondered for the first time if she should get out, if she should sell Gwen the business and stop pretending she still cared.
On Thursday, Donna Langforth hadn’t been available to take Hannah for chemo, nor had Sally Dotson or Melanie Galloway or anyone else who had spent so many hours in Hannah and Evan’s small kitchen. At first they’d been supportive—chokingly supportive—bringing casseroles for dinner and offering to watch the kids. But as the weeks had passed, the offers dwindled, and Hannah’s friends returned to their own busy lives. She supposed the same would happen if she were to die.
Evan could bring her to the hospital, but he could not stay: The storm had delayed the work for spring, and now he was expected to be in three places at once. But because he didn’t want Hannah to have to be alone in a dreary closet-of-a-room, propped in a high-backed chair with her feet on a footrest, her arm hooked to an IV that was hooked to a pole for two and a half hours, Evan had made other arrangements. She liked that he seemed to want to be protective; she was not as sure his methods had been the most appropriate, but she had not interfered.
They pulled into the parking lot: Evan, Hannah, and the princess-of-pouting, Riley. Last night Hannah had heard Evan’s orders through the thin walls of their house.
“You will go with your mother tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because she is your mother.”
“I didn’t ask to be born.”
“And I’m not asking anything either. I am telling. You will go with your mother.”
“You can’t make me.”
“No, but I can ground you for a month.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“I can ground you for being selfish.”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes I can. I am your father. I make the rules.”
So Riley was with them now, alighting from the truck as soon as Evan stopped.
“She’ll get over it,” Evan said.
“Sometimes being the oldest must be difficult,” Hannah replied. They watched her stalk across the lot and disappear inside the doors to the Emergency Room. “Well,” Hannah said, “I guess I’d better go.”
Evan touched her arm. His eyes glistened, but he had no more words.
Hannah picked up her purse. “I’ll see you tonight.” She tried to sound upbeat. She kissed him on the cheek. Just then a rap-rap sounded on the window on the driver’s side.
Turning to the window, Evan hesitated, then rolled it down. “Morning, Doc,” he said quietly.
Oh, Hannah thought, she could have done without a confrontation between her husband and her doctor, the former fishing buddies whose friendship Evan had abandoned after Mother Jackson died.
“How’re you doing, Evan?” Doc asked.
Evan nodded but did not say, “Fine, and you?”
“He’s real busy on account of the storm,” Hannah interjected. “Riley’s going to sit with me this morning. She’s already gone inside.”
It was Doc’s turn to nod. “Well, if either of you need anything, you know where to find me,” he said, and reached inside and patted Evan on the shoulder. Then he headed off toward the building, and Hannah and Evan watched him go, the way that they’d watched Riley.
The nurse took Hannah’s blood pressure and her blood as well. She guided Hannah into the lounge, sat her in the big chair, then wrapped a heating pad around her arm, to warm the veins and ease the IV insertion.
After the nurse left, Riley spoke. “This is bogus,” she said, as she flipped through an issue of Seventeen.
“What’s bogus?”
“Breast cancer. I saw an article on the Internet that said doctors are treating women who don’t even have it. That it’s a fad now, like the way they did hysterectomies back in the fifties. It’s all done for the money, because doctors are losing so much since managed health care took over.”
She sounded so adult, so authoritative, Hannah had to remind herself that this was her daughter, her fourteen-year-old daughter. “You don’t believe that, do you, honey?”
“Why not? Could you prove otherwise?”
The nurse came back and removed the heating pad. She searched for a decent vein.
Hannah did not blink when the needle went in.
“The only way to prove otherwise is to stop treating people,” the nurse said. “Are you willing to risk your mother for some tabloid garbage?”
Riley looked up from her magazine. Her eyes moved to the IV, then up to the nurse.
“Besides,” the nurse added as she adjusted the drip-drip, “if your mother had been a doctor like she almost was, I’m sure she wouldn’t want her patients thinking all her hard work was ‘bogus.’” After one last look at Riley, she left them alone again.
Hannah sighed. She’d never told her children the truth about her life before Evan, before Martha’s Vineyard. She hadn’t told the kids that she’d once planned to be a doctor: She hadn’t wanted them to think that she wasn’t “smart enough,” that she was a quitter.
She kicked herself for the nervous admission she’d made to the nurse during her first round.
Riley shot a sharp look at her mother. “You? A doctor?” She laughed. “Now that’s bogus.”
“No,” Hannah said quietly. “It’s true.”
“Oh, right. And I’m sure you decided that being a junior high sc
ience teacher would be more exciting.” Riley stood up. “Think I’ll go sit in the waiting room. This is boring.”
Moments after Riley left, Hannah felt the rush of the chemicals swoosh into her, especially the one that went coursing from the back of her hand straight to her vagina. She repositioned herself in the chair to quell the orgasm that the Dechadron created. The nurses called it the “hootchie-cootchie” drug, the one reward of pleasure amid the anguish of the rest … anguish that had now surfaced with one of her many secrets.
“He’s coming here?” Joleen asked Katie as Katie stood at the bathroom mirror, putting on makeup, trying to look like the star Miguel expected. He’d left the message last night: “I’ll be there in the morning on the eleven-fifteen boat.”
Katie knew she should be pleased that her mother was interested. It was the most communication that they’d had since Joleen had found her in the bedroom.
“He’s coming because he loves me, Mother.”
“And the baby?”
Katie shifted on one foot and leaned into the mirror with her mascara wand. If she’d had permanent makeup done like her father always suggested, she wouldn’t have to worry about being beautiful for Miguel. Then again, she’d avoided it because at least this way she could choose when to look like Katie the star or just Katie the kid.
“He wants the baby. I told you he wants to marry me.”
“And what about the cancer?”
She swept up her lashes—top, then bottom. “I’m going to tell him today.”
Joleen remained standing, watching her daughter.
“It will be fine, Mom,” Katie said. “Miguel loves me. I am carrying his child. I want him to know the truth.”
“And what if it’s not fine? Men start acting strangely when there are complications.”
Katie sighed an exasperated sigh. “Miguel and I would have been married by now except Daddy wouldn’t let me. He didn’t think it would be good for my career.” Blaming Cliff was easier than saying she hadn’t married Miguel yet because she wasn’t sure that it was right.
“I got married,” Joleen replied.
“You married Daddy. That was different.”
She studied Katie in the glass. “Are you going to tell Miguel about my songs? The new ones that you found?”
It was the first time Joleen made reference to those bits of yellow paper that Katie had returned to the pigeonholes in the desk. “No,” Katie replied, “I won’t tell Miguel.”
“Well, with or without the cancer, if he thinks there is new music … if he thinks you’ll still be a star …”
Gripping the mascara wand, Katie stared into the mirror. “Is that what you think? That I need your songs to be a star?” At least Cliff had never come right out and said it.
Joleen chuckled. “Oh, no. Oh, no. You’re much better at that than I ever was, Kathryn. Much better. Since you’ve been singing my songs, we make more money than I ever could have imagined.”
Katie frowned. “Mother,” she asked, “are you okay? Financially, I mean.”
Her laugh was off-center, but it was definitely a laugh. “Honey, I have more money than I know what the hell to do with.” Shaking her head, Joleen toddled down the hall, leaving Katie to wonder if that were true, and why Cliff thought otherwise.
• • •
Rita didn’t have a chance to get to The Gazette until Friday because Olivia had an ear infection and Hazel was wrapped up in plans for the Senior Center’s Spring Bazaar, and Amy was off-island registering for courses at Northeastern. Even for a bunch of islanders, life could get complicated.
But on Friday Rita had been determined to get to the newspaper office, which was why she now stood in the archives room, which wasn’t a room at all, but a long row of filing cabinets that held clippings cross-referenced with a database by event and date. Hopefully the room was not in the part of the building where the resident ghost hung out.
Then again, maybe a ghost had seen a thing or two and could help Rita on her quest.
She stared at the file drawers without a clue where to begin. She did not know either an event or a date. A woman named Faye lost a child on the Vineyard, was hardly a definitive lead.
At least eight years ago, she remembered. And most likely in the summer. Faye was somewhat older than Rita, which meant she could have had a child over thirty years ago, probably no more than thirty-five. Rita couldn’t base her research on how long Doc had been on the Vineyard because he’d been there forever, or at least as long as Rita had been alive, and some days that seemed pretty much the same.
A maximum of thirty-five years, a minimum of eight. 1968 through 1995. June through August.
She plunked down on a folding chair and opened up a drawer, wondering how long this would take and why it seemed so damn important.
When Faye had been a child, they’d come to the Vineyard: her mother, her father, and Claire. Few summer people owned property on the island back then: most rented for a week or two or for the whole month of August if they were privileged. Because Faye’s father, however, taught archaeology at Harvard, they spent entire summer vacations on the island. Because his brother, her Uncle Patrick, was linked to what was called the “Irish Mafia,” they used a cottage right on the water at no charge. Her mother used to say Uncle Patrick was despicable, but they went to the Vineyard every summer nonetheless. If her parents knew who actually owned the place, they never mentioned a name in the presence of the kids.
Faye loved the Vineyard. She loved it for its beaches and its sand dunes and the comforting cries of its seagulls. Mostly, she loved it for the freedom that it wrought, for chasing the tide line and digging up clams, for searching for Indian treasures like wampum and clay, and for making good things to eat like chutney and chowder and feel-good Irish scones. They were riches she’d tried to pass on to her kids, memories of simpler days, neatly packaged with the odd belief that life had once been perfect.
Because of that, and on the off-chance Claire had stayed, Faye steered her Mercedes toward her sister’s cottage down the road.
She owed Claire an apology. As much as she could say Claire was self-centered and shallow, Faye supposed she had contributed to her sister’s societal demise. Faye Alice Randolph was the smarter of the two, the apple of their father’s eye, the honor-roll student, the student council president, the leadership club leader. Claire sought nothing except their father’s acceptance, and tried to achieve it by surrounding herself with other males, which only further distanced the one man she adored, because Father did not know how to handle his boy-crazy daughter, except to admonish his wife to “Talk to her. Please.”
In the end, of course, Claire perhaps had fared better, because her wealth had come from marriage, while Faye’s had come from hard work.
“You’re so jealous,” Claire had said on the night of the prom, when Faye said her dress was ugly and that the flower corsage from Claire’s date—the football and track star—was a gardenia, for godssake, how tacky could you get.
Claire was right, however; Faye was jealous. She had also been jealous when Claire married Jeffrey Scott—of the Lexington Scotts—and had seven attendants and received wedding gifts that mostly came from Tiffany’s or Shreve, Crump & Low’s. Faye stopped being jealous when she had her babies and Claire had none.
Faye turned onto the dirt road now and remembered that she had been the first to buy a house on the Vineyard, though Claire followed suit within a year. It didn’t seem to matter that she and Jeffrey only used it a few weekends a year.
Claire was not there. Faye stopped the car at the foot of the driveway and looked beyond the thorny, leafless bushes that lined the way to the house. A couple of inches of leftover snow remained layered on the ground: no car had driven on the driveway, no footsteps had trod its earth. Clearly, Claire had returned to Boston as quickly as she’d arrived, perhaps only touching down at Faye’s to yell and then be gone.
Faye rested her forehead on the steering wheel and wondered why it w
as that she was the one who needed to apologize. She sat there a minute, and thought of the others in the support group: Katie seemed to feel a need to apologize to the world; Hannah, the need to apologize to her family, at least.
Was that a common denominator of all breast-cancer patients? A need to say, “I’m sorry,” as if the disease had been their fault?
And was that the real reason Faye had commissioned R.J. Browne to find her son, so she could say she was sorry for the past and the present and her abbreviated future?
Greg. She saw him in her mind. He was riding on a sail-fish; he was smiling into the sun, his hair wet and salty, his yellow baggy shorts clinging to his frail frame. He had been so young and so filled with life.
She wondered what Greg, the man, looked like now. If he still resembled her sister Claire.
“Food!” he’d shouted every day of that last summer when they’d all been there together, every time he raced inside the back door after hours playing in the sun.
Faye had laughed and produced her latest baked delight: cookies or cakes or, his favorite, those Irish scones made from the secret recipe handed down on her father’s side, the side that was despicable.
Raising her head a little now, Faye felt a small, sad smile. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she knew what she could do. She’d go to the store and buy ingredients. Then she’d go home and make some feel-good scones. She’d bring a few to Hannah. And she’d drop some off to Katie while they were still warm. She knew where Katie’s mother lived; every islander did. But what about Hannah? Could Faye track her down?
Moving the car into reverse, Faye backed out onto the road, feeling less lonely now, feeling less alone, and knowing that she’d make an extra batch, in case her Greg came home.
Nineteen sixty-eight on the Vineyard had been a fairly calm year compared with the rest of the world: the assassinations of a King and a Kennedy, riots at Kent State and at a national presidential convention. The island made up for its quiet in the year that followed, with the incident at Chappaquiddick, when the nation’s eyes were on them. The next year Rita got pregnant and left the Vineyard to hide her shame; by some miracle, that item had not been newsworthy, at least not in The Gazette.
