Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

  “It’s you I love,” I whisper. “Don’t be afraid.”

  He flinches, as if I’ve struck him, and perhaps I have. I’ve touched him where he’s most sensitive. The most terrible thing about marriage, I suppose, is that we know and understand each other’s weaknesses and fears as much as we know our strengths and desires.

  “I’m afraid, too, Max, for Jeremy. I’m terrified. But we should be. This is scary stuff we’re dealing with. But think how brave Jeremy is going to have to be. You have to be brave, too. You have to be brave first. If you’re going to stay with me, with me and Jeremy, you can’t do it halfway. You can’t do it and expect me to be grateful. You have to do it with all your heart and soul and body, Max. You’ve got to conquer your fears. You’ve got to show Jeremy and me you’re doing it. You’ve got to show us how to do it.”

  “You’re asking a lot.”

  “I know.”

  “What can I say?” He looks tired, drawn, old, and as young as the boy I fell in love with in college.

  “Say you’ll call a psychiatrist tomorrow.”

  He looks at me bleakly. Then he nods, once. “I’ll call a psychiatrist tomorrow.”

  “All right then.”

  We are facing each other like adversaries, our faces tense, our bodies taut. And all at once Max looks at me, really looks at me. A tenderness falls over his face. “I do love you, Lucy.”

  I dissolve at these words. I can’t go on. I’m nearly crouching on the floor when Max reaches out to catch me. He holds me against him as we cry together, and the weeping hurts, but the embrace sustains us both.

  Tuesday morning I wake to good news: Jeremy’s fever is down. He eats the breakfast the nurse brings him, and asks for more.

  That afternoon, Max and I tell Jeremy that he has cystic fibrosis, emphasizing its effect on his lungs. It is why he coughs so much, we tell him, and the coughing is good. In fact, we’re going to learn, all three of us, and Margaret later, how to perform the chest percussion therapy that loosens up the mucus in his lungs. It makes the mucus jump off his lungs, we tell him, so that he can cough it up and spit it out. If it stays there, it makes it easier for Jeremy to develop lung infections. So we want to get it out, and we’ll pound on his chest and back for thirty minutes three times a day. Also, he’ll have to take enzymes every day, to help him digest his food, because the same mucus that troubles his lungs also prevents proper digestion.

  That’s enough information for now, we think. We’ll have the rest of our lives to tell him more. We’ll be learning along with him.

  Jeremy doesn’t appear frightened or upset when we talk to him about all this, and afterward Max and I congratulate each other. We haven’t shown our fear, so Jeremy isn’t afraid. And when the flowers and candy and gifts arrive from his friends and his teacher and the Gazette staff, he begins to see that being in the hospital does have its positive side.

  While Jeremy naps, Max and I phone a Sussex psychiatrist and make appointments. Then Max drives out to Sussex to organize his papers and the necessities he’ll need for spending the night here.

  He’s only been gone minutes when Andrea Cobb arrives, with Margaret in tow. There’s much commotion, it’s like a birthday party, especially because the Cobbs have bought Jeremy a present: the expensive dual-control Space War set that he’s been yearning for.

  “Andrea,” I exclaim, “you shouldn’t have. It’s too much!”

  “No, it’s not, Mom!” Jeremy cries, and we all laugh. “Wanna play, Margaret?”

  “Sure, Germ.”

  Margaret and Jeremy settle on the bed, all attention focused on the game.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs,” I tell them.

  Margaret waves a careless hand: Go.

  I stroll around the hospital halls with Andrea. It feels good to walk.

  “Jeremy looks good,” Andrea says.

  “They’ve got the pneumonia licked, I think, but we’ll be living with the CF every day.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “Well, to be honest, I’m tired and scared and heartbroken. And I’m thoroughly sick of the inside of my own head. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about town meeting.”

  Andrea chortles malevolently. “It was pretty colorful! It lasted till midnight.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. And several of our, shall we say more distinguished town leaders—Cory Richmond and Daniel Swartz, among others—had to be reprimanded for using profanity and shouting.”

  I laugh, imagining it. “It must have been wild.”

  “You’ve probably heard: We voted to let the CDA Development Corporation build its building. All this,” Andrea points out, “without either Max or Chip Cunningham to lead the battle. We know Max was at the hospital, but we don’t know what happened to Chip. He just didn’t show up. His assistant was good, but not as good as Chip. In fact, that might be why his side lost. But maybe not.”

  “Mmm,” I respond, ambiguously.

  We turn the corner, following the bright floor tiles back to the medical ward. Andrea says, musingly, “I hear the Cunninghams are getting a divorce.” Andrea would like to hear what I think about this, I’m sure. Everyone knows that Kate and I are best friends. Were. I owe Andrea something, at least an explanation for why I’ve sent Margaret to her house instead of the Cunninghams’.

  “I haven’t talked to Kate recently,” I admit. “I’ve been so busy with Jeremy, and of course Kate with Garrison.”

  As we turn back toward the medical ward, Andrea goes off to buy some cookies and coffee. I’m alone as I approach Jeremy’s room, and so I hear my children talking to each other.

  “Am I going to die?” Jeremy is asking.

  I freeze outside the door.

  “Get out of here!” Margaret responds. “No-oo. Duh.”

  “But I’m in the hospital.”

  “That’s because you have pneumonia, Germ. If I had pneumonia, I’d have to go to the hospital, too, maybe.”

  “But I’ve got cystic fibrosis.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re going to die. It just means you have to do special things. It just means you’re special, Jeremy.”

  “But I could die.”

  “We all could die. Would you stop talking about dying? Mom and Dad would kill you if they heard you talk like that. Let’s play Space Wars again.”

  Her voice is sharper than it should be. Give him a break! I mentally chastise her, and then I think: She’s frightened, too. Max and I need to spend some time with her.

  I sweep into the room to see them bent over the electronic game, thumbs clicking. “Hi, guys.” They’re too engrossed to do more than mutter a reply.

  Andrea takes Margaret back to Sussex; Margaret has homework to do and it’s a long drive. Jeremy’s tired and falls into a light doze while watching television. Later tonight Max will come in to spend the night here and I’ll go home to look at my mail, listen to the answering machine, and sleep in my own bed.

  The corridor is busy tonight with families and friends visiting the other young patients. Laughter rises and falls in the air and footsteps beat eagerly against the floor. I look out at the lights of the city, feeling melancholy and lonely. I try to read but my mind won’t settle. Tomorrow I’ll call Jared Falconer to tell him I can’t take the job. I could call Stan right now; I’m not sure he knows we’re here. Probably he does, because everyone knows everything about everyone else in Sussex. But just in case he doesn’t, it wouldn’t hurt to call him. I should find out how Write?/Right is, even though I’ve only been away from the phone for two days. But I don’t want to talk to Stan, not really. Write?/Right seems frivolous, part of another life. I can’t get my thoughts to settle on work. Every path in my mind leads to Jeremy.

  “Auntie Lucy?”

  I look up to see Abby in the doorway, holding a present wrapped in paper covered with balloons. She looks great, with her long brown hair brushed out around her shoulders and held back by a pink headband t
hat matches her pink dress.

  “Abby!” God, how I’ve missed this child with her sensible freckled nose and her smile.

  Kate stands behind her, unbelievably perfect in her plain fawn-colored dress and shoes. Her summer tan still glows so that she’s caramel all over, head, skin, and clothes, and burnished, like a well-polished lamp. Cool as ice, she greets me. “Hi, Lucy.”

  “Kate.” I’m too stunned to say more.

  “I brought this for Jeremy.” Abby holds up a package. She blinks rapidly as she takes in the formidable equipment of the room, the height of the hospital bed, Jeremy’s bandaged arm.

  Jeremy’s eyes flutter open. “Abby!” Suddenly he’s a packet of six-year-old eagerness. “Look at my arm! I have a shunt! I get antibiotics twice a day from a tube that comes out of there! I have cystic fibrosis! And the Cobbs gave me Space Wars!”

  Abby climbs up on the bed and kneels facing him. “I brought you a present.” She watches while Jeremy tears off the paper to find five videocassettes of the latest children’s movies.

  “Thanks!” Jeremy explodes in a spasm of coughing. Kate and Abby freeze, and I put my hand on his back and hand him some tissues. When he’s through, he says confidently, “I’m supposed to do that. I’m supposed to cough. I have to get all the yuck out. Want to watch a video?”

  Abby eyes the Space Wars set. “That’s cool.”

  “Wanna play?”

  “Yeah,” Abby says eagerly.

  Kate’s looking a little white around the edges.

  “Let’s step out into the hall,” I suggest.

  “I hate hospitals,” Kate mutters.

  “I used to. I guess I’ll learn to love them.” I steer her toward the far hall by the elevators and the telephones.

  “How long will Jeremy be in?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks!” Kate goes pale. “Jesus. That’s awful.”

  “Well, it looks like it’s going to become part of our lives.”

  “This is terrible. I’m really sorry.”

  “I know.” Up close, Kate doesn’t look so perfect. She’s lost weight, and beneath her makeup her eyes are shadowed. “Tell me, Kate, how are you?”

  She eyes me warily. “You really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  Heaving an enormous sigh, she slouches against the wall. “The truth is, I’m just one great big emotional snarl. Garrison’s really sick. I spend all day taking care of him and trying to keep his spirits up and hiding in the bathroom weeping, then Abby comes home from school, so I plaster on a fake smiling face and act like Donna Reed.”

  “You do it so well,” I interject wryly, as if this were old times.

  “Yeah, thanks so much,” she shoots back. “And then, there’s all the rest of it—” She glares at me.

  “Chip, you mean.”

  “Chip. I’m furious at him, but to be completely honest, I’m glad that something finally happened that enabled me to change things. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

  “This.”

  “Divorce.”

  “You’re really going through with it.”

  “I really am.”

  “So I did you a favor,” I say, only half joking.

  “Yeah, right.” Her face is grim. “I’m seeing a therapist.”

  “Which one?”

  “Sam Campbell.”

  “Max has an appointment with him. For antidepressants.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. I’m going to see him, too.”

  “Good God,” Kate says. “How bizarre. Sam’s head must be spinning.” We stare at each other and we can’t help it: We connect; we grin. Then Kate’s face grows somber. “Chip’s put the farm up for sale. Although you probably already know that.”

  “What about Abby and Matthew?”

  “You mean, how will they deal with the divorce? They’ll survive. I mean, Matthew’s already had a lot thrown at him. He knows Chip had an affair with you. He knows Chip is Jeremy’s father. If he can absorb that, he can handle anything.” She takes a deep breath. “He’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Chip?” I gasp, incredulous.

  “No! Matthew!”

  “Matthew?” I don’t know why I’m so surprised. And irrationally insulted and jealous; I want him to like Margaret. “Who?”

  “Cecilia Clark. The little tramp.” Tears well in Kate’s eyes.

  “Kate, Cecilia is a perfectly nice young woman.”

  “Cecilia’s a slut. She wears the tightest—”

  “Kate. Get a grip. Remember what it was like when you were their age.” In a softer voice, I add, “Remember what it was like when we first met?”

  Kate looks at me, and for a moment I hope she’s seeing not me, exhausted, harried, frightened, guilty Lucy West, married mother of two and adulterer, but the Lucy West I was that long-ago spring afternoon when our eyes met at the baseball game. When Matthew and Margaret were three years old and we were not yet even thirty. When the air was sweet with the fragrance of new-mown grass and with the sight of so many young daddies coaching and cheering on their young sons. When lust was something to grin about, and mischief only reminded us that we were still young.

  Kate’s blue eyes darken. “I remember how we used to joke about living in a retirement home together. Max would write a newspaper and Chip would sell stocks and you and I would sit on the front porch in wicker chairs and gossip.”

  “Yeah.” An elevator opens, ejecting a nurse who hurries past in the opposite direction from Jeremy’s ward.

  Kate looks at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait, Kate. About you and me. Do you think …?”

  Kate stares at me levelly. Her voice is tight with control as she says, “Do I think we can still be friends? I don’t know, Lucy.”

  “I think we need each other, Kate.”

  “You could be right. It’s too soon for me to judge,” Kate says quietly. Then, as if she’s conceded too much, she straightens. “Anyway, I should go. I just wanted Abby to see Jeremy, I didn’t intend to get into true confessions.” Abruptly she turns and strides back to the medical ward.

  Following behind Kate, I notice a few especially pale hairs sweeping down to her immaculate collar: gray hair! Kate has gray hair. Shocked, I find myself patting my own curly mop, thinking not of vanity but of the relentless passage of time.

  Back in the room, Kate announces, “Time to head home, Abigail.”

  “Not yet, Mom!”

  “We’ve got a long ride and you’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “But Mom—”

  Kate kisses Jeremy’s forehead. “Bye, guy. See you.”

  “Good-bye, Auntie Kate.”

  I hug Abby. “Good-bye, Abby. Thanks for the gift.”

  “Good-bye, Aunt Lucy,” the little girl says, pouting as her mother ushers her toward the door.

  Kate’s shadowed eyes, her sulking child dragging at her arm, her thinness, all make her appear so vulnerable, even frail.

  “Kate—”

  Kate stops in the doorway and looks back at me guardedly. “Yes?”

  I love you, Kate, I want to say, but she looks too stern, too defensive. I’ll have to wait until she’s ready. “Thanks for coming.”

  She nods. “Good-bye, Lucy.”

  They go off down the hall, Abby tired and still protesting all the way to the elevators that she doesn’t want to leave yet. Jeremy’s tired, too, and crabby with it, and more than ready to collapse back into the comfort of his bed watching The Little Mermaid video. I pile the new videos on a table, ready for tomorrow. The rest of the ward is quiet now. Visitors have left, patients are asleep.

  I stand at the window, looking out into the night. This room has a view of the parking garage, and suddenly I see Kate and Abby, four floors below, crossing the street.

  They seem both far away and near. Kate’s head shines golden, no gray visible from this distance, in the glow of the streetlight. Kate is holding h
er daughter’s hand and after they’ve crossed the street, they still hold hands, so Abby has already forgiven her mother for taking her away from Jeremy. I can imagine the conversation they will have in the car on the way home. Abby will want to know about the hospital room, Jeremy’s shunt, cystic fibrosis. Kate will explain it all to her in simple terms, then she’ll change the subject, guiding Abby’s thoughts to more cheerful matters so that Abby won’t have trouble falling asleep. Perhaps during the drive to Sussex Kate will sing songs to Abby, songs that we once all sang together as we drove down to Hyannis to begin our August vacation.

  Kate and Abby walk across the sidewalk and through the glass door of the parking garage where only last night I stood with Chip. My window provides me with a view of my friend and her daughter as well as a reflection of myself and Jeremy in this hospital room. The futuristic-looking components of the Space Wars game lie at the foot of Jeremy’s bed. Jeremy rests, eyelids heavy, watching the television screen. Overlaid, blurrily, are the hem of Abby’s pink dress, her white socks, the gleam of her black dress shoes, then it all disappears as Kate and Abby head into the cavernous building.

  I feel so alone.

  Suddenly they come back outside. Standing on the very edge of the sidewalk, they tilt their heads, looking up, counting the floors, scanning the lighted windows, and then all at once they see me standing pressed against the glass. From here it looks as if Kate’s face is wet, but perhaps that’s a trick of the light. Kate and Abby are holding hands, and with their free hands they wave at me. They wave and wave and wave. When I wave back, making great sweeping arcs with both my arms, Kate drops her daughter’s hand and presses the tips of her fingers to her lips, then cups her hands beneath her mouth and blows, as if sending an invisible balloon of kisses into the air all the way up to where I stand. I can almost feel them arrive. I clap my hands together above my head, as if catching the kisses. And from all this distance away, I can see Kate smile.

  This book is for my friend, my sister, Martha Wright Foshee, B.S.H.A., R.N. She saves lives.

  Acknowledgments