by Mindy Raf
“What? No, I’m sorry. I—”
“God, Izzy, it’s like you’re not even listening at all.”
“No, I am! I’m sorry I’m … I’m just a little distracted. There’s just … there’s a lot going on right now and I just saw this—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re always distracted. There’s always something going on.”
“I’m sorry. And I am really sorry about what happened to Amy. That’s so terrible and I—”
“Forget it, it’s fine. It’s not even a big deal really.” She picks up her box of invites and heads for the door.
“Jenna, I’m sorry,” I call after her. She turns around and gives me a small smile. “No worries, flaky girl. Get your work done. I’ll see you at rehearsal.” The studio door closes with a clang-thud. I sit there, very still, staring at the door for I don’t know how long. Then I pick up my half-finished map. Then I set it back down on the table. Then I walk to the table next to me. I lean forward slightly, studying my fractured reflection in the mirror. Then I turn back to my computer screen, clicking back and forth between the map image and my mom’s support group screen.
The rest of the hour passes, but kind of without me. I don’t finish the foundation for my map, or figure out what to do with that mirror. I just sit there on my stool. I just sit there, and read Mom’s post over and over and over again.
CHAPTER 10
I’m having trouble breathing.
I’m trapped in a lighting booth trying to go over cues with Derrick Hunter, who’s working the spotlight. Except he’s in the middle of a love spat with Emily Belfry that’s making my lunch come up. Or maybe reading about how one’s lunch comes up via gastroparesis on Syptomaniac earlier is the real cause of my queasiness.
“Babycakes, I have to kiss Curly in the show, but I’m only acting,” Emily says again for the trillionth time.
“I know, Sugarmuffin. But I have to sit here, night after night, watching you suck face with that moron and it makes this Babycakes very jealous.”
“Aw Pumpkinnugget, you’re so cute when you’re jealous.”
Nope, it’s them. I’m pretty sure they’re solely responsible for my nausea.
“Sorry to interrupt.” I finally step between them.
“We’re kind of in the middle of a talk,” Emily informs me, her upturned, girlfriend-smile souring into its I’m-tasting-bitter-air shape.
“So Derrick,” I continue, turning away from Emily and handing him a binder. “I have these new lighting cues for you. Jenna wrote them all down again because I guess you’ve been missing a bunch. She wanted me to go over them with you, so—”
“Oh, sweet.” He runs one hand through his greasy black hair and takes the binder from me with the other. “Yeah, there are too many cues in this show,” he informs me, as if that’s an excuse to just not light someone while they’re singing a solo on a darkened stage. Then he starts talking about how the lighting system in the theater needs an upgrade and something about flimsy gel frames and how it’s not his fault the equipment isn’t working. I nod at him, my head feeling especially heavy, full from reading about gastroparesis and all the concerned, informative, but mostly alarming support group responses from my mom’s post.
“Emily, get down here, we’re doing a vocal run-through!” Jenna pops into the booth and hustles Emily outside. Derrick follows after her, leaving his new binder behind. Jenna pops her head back in. “So is he all set with this?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “I think he knows which ones he’s missed now.”
“Awesome, thank you. You gonna head to the choir room now?”
“Why?”
“The set. We just talked about this, I asked you to help paint earlier?”
“Oh, right. Yes, sorry, I’ll head over.”
“Great. And if you need me, I’ll be onstage listening to the vocal run-through and giving the tenors a thumbs-up, even though they sound like a bunch of dying cats in heat.”
“How kind of you.” I smile.
Jenna whips around fast to head out of the lighting booth and knocks into Meredith and Cara, who are on their way in.
“Let’s try and walk with our eyes open, girls,” Jenna says shortly.
Meredith shakes her head as Jenna dodges around them and down the auditorium stairs. Then she turns to me. “So, where should I go?”
“Um, for what?” I suddenly need to lean back against the booth window.
“The square dance. I have to teach the basketball klutzes how to do the basics.”
“Can’t do it in the choir room ’cause of the set,” Cara adds, bending over to pull the fabric down on her dance leggings.
“I want to work on a real dance,” Meredith says, almost whining. “Can’t I just help you with the ballet?” she asks Cara.
“No, totally, no,” Cara responds.
“So … Izzy?” Meredith prompts me for a solution.
“Um … I guess you could go into the vending machine alcove. Jenna’s using the stage for music rehearsal so—”
“Ugh, Jenna is being an extra nightmare today,” Meredith says, pulling her hair out of its loose ponytail and shaking her head back and forth a couple of times before attempting to pull it back up again.
“Uh-huh, extra nightmare, totally,” Cara agrees, bobbing her head up and down.
“Right, Izzy?” Meredith blinks at me.
I blink back at her, wanting to respond but instead re-loading all those support group responses into my brain; words like blockage, scar tissue, complications, all flashing under my eyelids.
“Oh, sorry Izzy, I know she’s your friend and she’s in charge and all, but she’s making it difficult for us to do our jobs. I just think … Whatever, I’m pretty sure she still hates me.”
“Yeah, she does, totally.”
“Thanks.” Meredith rolls her eyes, poking Cara.
“I think she still blames me, you know? Izzy?”
I snap back to the conversation, looking around the tiny lighting booth, then at the two of them, willing my eyes to unblur. I don’t think there’s enough oxygen to go around in here.
“Do you think she still hates me?” Meredith asks.
“Wait, what? Who?”
“Jenna! God Izzy, are you alive in there?” Meredith mimes knocking on my head. “You know her the best. Should I just call her, smooth things over once and for all?”
“Yeah, yeah, call, sure, that sounds good. And … um … yeah … square dance, fine, in the hall, no problem.”
“Okay … thanks,” Meredith laughs and pats me on the head like I’m a little kid who’s just uttered her first sentence.
Then I say something about going to the bathroom, or painting the set, I don’t know. But I’m pushing past them, out of the tiny booth, down the balcony stairs, and out the theater doors.
• • •
I should be heading to the choir room to help with the set, but my legs take me to the studio. I’ll just work on a painting for a half hour and then go to the choir room. I just need to sit at my studio table. I need to sit in the studio all by myself: no Miss S., no 101ers, no Jenna, no laptops with topographical maps or support group sites popping up, no … Marcus Mason? Why is Marcus rummaging around the studio supply room?
“Can I help you, sir?” I say in my best customer service voice and tap him on the shoulder. I don’t mean to startle him, but I guess I do, because his shoulders twitch, he turns around fast, and then drops four of the wide paint brushes he was carrying in his arms.
“Hey,” he says, scrambling to pick them up and dropping them in the bins next to us. “Didn’t see you.”
“Sorry.” I bend down to grab the one by my feet and toss it in the bin. “So, you’re stealing from the art room, huh?”
“Nooo,” he says in this exaggerated way, as if that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. And then, without missing a beat, he whips his cell phone out from his pocket, covering the mouthpiece with his other hand as he speaks into it in hushed
tones. “Abort mission, busted with crusty old paintbrushes, don’t come back for the wood glue.”
I’m not trying to encourage his antics, but I can’t help smiling when I ask, “Seriously, what are you doing here?”
He puts his phone back in his pocket without taking his eyes off me, and then, only moving his arms, grabs the first thing he can reach from the top of Miss S.’s junk pile with one hand, and pulls out a paintbrush from his pocket with the other. He backs away from me slowly, pointing a teeny-tiny paintbrush at me like a gun, and holding a scary decapitated baby doll up in the air as his hostage.
“So …” I saunter closer to him, trying to play it cool. “Did Miss S. say you could take this stuff for set painting?” Then I surprise jump him, trying to grab his hostage.
“Nice move.” He ducks away, recovers, raises his eyebrows approvingly. He laughs and then his face and voice go cold. “You come any closer, Izzy, and this baby loses her head.” Then he looks back at the doll, feigning shock as if he’s seeing it for the first time. “Oh crap, too late!”
“Okay,” I laugh, and even though set painting isn’t the mentally soothing artistic activity I had in mind right now, I find myself saying, “Come on, I’ll help you get this stuff to the choir room.”
When we get there, I see what Cara meant. The choir room is stuffed. The velvet curtain that usually flanks the mirrored wall is closed, with risers, set pieces, and rolling racks of costumes pushed up against it. The grand piano in the corner seems small compared to the giant set pieces surrounding it.
I get to work on Aunt Eller’s house while Marcus adds green to what we hope is a bush and not a tumbleweed. We paint silently for a long time. I almost forget to think.
“You’re probably so bored right now,” Marcus calls over after a while.
“No, not really.” I pop up and turn to face him.
“I just mean this kind of painting is probably torturous, not getting to do anything … artistic.”
I take an exaggerated breath in. “You don’t think this looks artistic?”
“No, I do. I absolutely love how you’ve multi-layered the brown paint on the stairs.”
“Thanks.” I gesture to my last freshly painted plank. “I call this piece Brown on Brown on Brown … on Wood.”
He grins. “You should at least sneak something of your own into those stairs—some hidden work of art?”
“I’m sure Jenna wouldn’t want me turning her Oklahoma! set into one of my paintings.”
“It could be something small. Or … oh, you could use that invisible paint that only shows up with UV light.”
“Black light?”
“Yes. I’ll just have to rig Derrick’s spotlight with a black lightbulb …”
“Okay, so what should I invisible-paint—dirty pictures?”
“Um … oh. Well, do you … often paint dirty pictures, Izzy?”
“Yeah. Wait, you didn’t know that hidden-black-light-dirty pictures are my niche?”
“No, but now I’m very interested in getting a look at your portfolio.”
I laugh.
“What if you painted messages on the set, like … you know that TV show where they play a music video and then random facts pop up?”
“Yes! I should invisible-paint random facts all over the set—”
“And then I’ll black light them at key moments of the show.”
“Perfect! It would be like …”
“Pop-Up Musical!”
“Exactly,” I laugh. “Look closely at the back row in all the dance numbers, those are the singers who can’t dance.”
Marcus offers, “Did you know that Emily Belfry has five-point-seven percent more perfect, perfect pitch than Sara Ronaldson?”
“Or how about a meta one like … Guess what? The person sitting next to you didn’t wash their hands after using the bathroom at intermission!”
“Genius!” he laughs, and then adds, “But gross.” Marcus stands and wipes his hands on his smock shirt. “You hungry?”
“Nice transition,” I point out.
“Oh … yeah … but I almost forgot!” He goes to his backpack and presents … a pint of ice cream!
“What are you doing with that?” I feel myself break into a huge smile.
“Didn’t you say you wanted ice cream?”
“I was kidding!”
“I know, but I figured, why not? It’s, um, kind of melted by now, but it’ll still be good.”
He hands me a plastic spoon and sits down, leaning against an unpainted part of Aunt Eller’s porch.
“Thanks, Marcus. Wow.” I drop my brush, sit down across from him, and go in for a big spoonful, making sure to get a strawberry chunk.
“So”—I talk with slight ice-cream mouth and hand him back the pint—“you do anything fun with Meredith’s photos today?”
“Messed around with them a little,” he tells me, taking a giant spoonful.
“They’re good.” I’m remembering the slides I saw on her computer. “I was expecting them to be just … the stuff that’s in yearbook, but they’re not, they’re really good.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Marcus says through his own ice-cream mouth and hands me back the pint.
“Maybe I should just forget about my paintings and submit her photos for my portfolio. You think she’d mind?”
“Nah.” He laughs, and then all of a sudden I realize that’s exactly what I’m going to do—well, not literally submit them for my portfolio, but use them if Meredith will let me.
“What’s up?” Marcus asks me. “You disappeared there for a sec, and you look … very serious all of a sudden.”
“Nothing, I was just …” And I mean to tell him about my new Darfur map sculpture idea, but instead find myself saying, “Have you ever heard of eating ginger to help with nausea?”
“Oh. Um … yeah, I have. Why?”
“No reason, just curious” would be the correct response, and is what I plan on saying, but instead I ramble out, “Well, my mom, she’s been … I think having some stomach issues lately—it’s not a big deal or anything, but if there’s something natural like ginger or, I don’t know, then maybe …” But then I pause with this thought: How long exactly has Pam known about Mom’s digestive problems? Clearly long enough to research organic ginger and the effects it has on nausea. So Pam knows more about what’s going on with Mom than I do. Does Allissa know stuff too? Am I the only one who is completely out of the loop?
“So your mom’s stomach issues … are they related to her … What exactly does your mom have again?”
“Oh. No, I think it’s just indigestion, probably.” I focus on the pint and digging out another giant strawberry. “Sorry, what else did you ask?”
“The name … of what your mom has?
“It’s called PMP. Psuedomyxoma Peritonei.”
“Stomach … something?”
“Yeah, it’s just a fancy way to say a rare stomach cancer … thing.”
“It is pretty fancy,” Marcus agrees, and then says, “Peritonea,” in this squeaky, snooty voice. I laugh and say, “Epithelial mucus,” back in the same way.
He looks at me questioningly.
“Oh”—I wave my hand—“it’s just … it comes with the cancer. Weird cells and this mucus stuff …” I smile, but Marcus’s expression has gone serious. “Mom’s always saying how lucky she is that the surgery last summer went well,” I continue quickly, “and that there’s actually a PMP specialist that practices in Michigan … And I guess so, but …” I wave my hand again.
“But?” Marcus asks.
“What? Oh. But … I don’t know. I don’t … I guess I don’t think having a rare stomach mucus growing inside you is, you know, very lucky.”
Silence.
“But she’s in remission now?” Marcus asks.
“No … well … no,” I say, getting up to mix a new can of paint, “not really.”
“Oh,” is all Marcus says, but with that tone, that same tone that Mr.
Neil at the pharmacy uses when he makes small talk with me as I’m waiting for Mom’s prescriptions.
“There are different strains of PMP. Like speeds. And my mom has a really slow one,” I explain, pushing the paint around in circles against the can walls. Then I pause, mid-stir, because I feel like I can’t catch my breath. “She’s had it for almost thirteen years now, undiagnosed for most, though.” I sort of gasp this out. “They thought she had ovarian cancer for a long time.” What is going on? Maybe it’s this windowless choir room; poor ventilation combined with these paint fumes can’t be good. I need fresh air, but I stay where I am. “So yeah she has … a slower … speed of it,” I finish.
“Hmm,” Marcus says, and then, “Well, slow speed—that’s good, right?”
“Yeah.” I try to suck in a deep breath as I start to swirl the paint again, gripping the wooden stirrer as if my life depended on it. “Dr. Madson, that’s her specialist, he says she’ll probably be fine for a long time more, so …” And now it feels like there’s something pushing down on my chest, stopping me from taking a deep breath. I stop stirring and try to subtly put my head down, needing to get a full breath in without the chest pressure.
“You okay?” Marcus asks, getting up.
“Yes, yeah, I’m fine.”
But Marcus walks up to me anyway, putting his hand on my back.
“You sure?” he asks as I stand straight and lean back against his hand, feeling a little wobbly.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say.
Why am I so dizzy? Why can’t I get in a good breath? I shuffle through what I know. Hypoglycemia? Lyme? Or no—oh, no. Breast lumps metastasizing? If I feel this sick, it has to be in advanced stages. Okay no, just relax, breathe. You can breathe.
“Hey, listen.” Marcus turns his head toward mine. “I’m sorry if … I didn’t mean to ask all those questions if—”
“No, no I think … I just … I’m fine.” I manage to walk away from him, taking a seat on the steps of my half-painted porch.
Marcus stares at me with his scientific method, eyebrow-shifting face. He nods sort of uncertainly in my direction, and then walks back to his almost dry, green shrubbery piece.
“You know what? I think this was a tumbleweed,” he finally declares.
