Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  “Maybe we can do them together,” I say.

  She looks at me sharply. “By the time you have to worry about it, hopefully there will be a cure for breast cancer. That or better surveillance techniques. I wonder if anybody ever thought about what all this genetic testing means to real people. Yes, hooray, we’re able to see the mutations in our genes, but what do we do with the information? We cut off body parts. I pray every day we will find a cure for these diseases we can predict but not stop.” She reaches over and pats my leg. “There’s no reason for you to worry about it right now. Who knows what the future will bring?”

  “But I do worry! I walk around feeling like I’ve got an expiration date stamped on my forehead. How do you live like that?”

  She is quiet for a while. “Whenever I start thinking about it, I think about you, and your father. I think about the people I love, and even if my time is short, at least I had the incredible luck to have you in my life. Which would you rather, to have a long miserable life, or a short, beautiful one?”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Jason and I walk along the shore of our island, and the tide is low, the mud laid bare in all its intimate glory. We go slowly, the clattering crabs racing in front of us, and Jason points out the distinctive five-finger mark of a raccoon, which looks like a small hand. Birds wheel and dive, come to feed on the cornucopia of crabs, worms, mollusks, and other small creatures that are the Happy Meal of the shorebirds.

  “The tides are different here in southwest Florida.” Jason bends down and slides his hand through the water. When he stands, the water falls like diamonds from his fingers. “Most places the water ebbs and flows twice a day very predictably, little foamy soldiers advancing and retreating.” He uses his fingers to make little legs marching along and I smile. “But here, the tides are pretty much a mess. They come and go as they please, some days having two very unequal highs and lows, other days only one high and low. And some days the tide waits and waits until all of a sudden it piles up on shore all at once.” He sweeps his arm around, making a whooshing sound like the tide just wiped out everything around us.

  I laugh. “What I would pay to spend one day in your head. It must be pretty crazy in there.”

  “Crazy good, or crazy you-need-to-be-medicated?”

  “Time will tell,” I tease.

  We walk in contented silence.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to come to the island, which is why we left it to the last day. I’m not sure why I was hesitant, except that the island had become such a magical, healing place in my mind that I was afraid reality would ruin it. I shouldn’t have worried though, it was just the way I remembered it.

  It’s been a great visit, not only with Jason, but with his family as well. Jason lives in an apartment on the first floor of his parents’ house, and I stayed upstairs in Ashley’s room. She and I talked late into the night, not about the BRCA gene, which she still doesn’t know about, but about everything else. After all she has been through with her family, she has a quiet serenity that fills a room. I suspect that the news of the gene mutation is not going to shock her. There’s been too much cancer in her family to not know something is wrong. It might even be a relief to her to know one way or another.

  “I’ve been thinking … ,” I say.

  “Uh-oh.” Jason turns to look at me. His curly hair is untamed and messy, his blue-green eyes brilliant with the glitter of water.

  “Seriously. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my BRCA mutation. I think I’m going to get the surgery to remove my breasts. I don’t think I can stand waiting the rest of my life to get cancer.”

  It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud, and it’s like a sneeze that finally came.

  Jason doesn’t say anything at first. He sits on a log and I sit beside him, digging my toes in the cool, slippery sand. I listen to the cranky creak of palm fronds moving in the light breeze and the sweet whisper of the light-shattered water.

  “Everything I read said I’m going to need to start really paying attention five or ten years before my mom’s first onset of cancer, which was when she was thirty-five. Cancer comes earlier every generation, so I’m thinking I’ll remove my breasts by the time I’m twenty-five or so, and my ovaries in my thirties. My risk will be a lot lower then. What do you think?”

  “Erin …”

  “I know it seems crazy to be talking about cutting off my breasts when I’m only seventeen, but don’t you see? It’s the only way to not have to worry for the rest of my life. It’s the safest way.”

  “Life isn’t safe, Erin,” Jason says.

  “I know that. Don’t you think I know that? What would you do if you had a choice?”

  “I don’t, though. I’m glad I don’t have a choice. I don’t want to have to make a decision like you and Ashley will. But if there was some part of my body I could cut off to reduce my risk? No way.”

  “But it’s the only way I can minimize the risk, to make myself as safe as possible. Don’t you understand?”

  “I understand you want to live your life safely, Erin. I don’t. I want to live, period. I don’t think you can do both at the same time, not really.”

  I shake my head, not knowing what to say. Jason always says exactly what he thinks, so why am I surprised he would tell me his opinion? But I want him to understand. I want him to tell me it is all right.

  I want him to tell me it is all right because I’m falling for him. I have been for ages, but it is only today, as it is almost time for me to leave, that I see how much he means to me. Thinking about the months ahead when he will be in Florida and I will be in Georgia makes me feel cold and alone.

  “Erin.” He tilts my face toward him with the tip of his finger. “It’s your choice. You have to do what’s right for you. But if you’re asking my opinion, I think you should wait until you’re older to decide anything. Don’t worry about the future until you have to.”

  “I wish I could do that,” I say in a small voice. “I wish I knew how to do that. But I don’t. I’m not like that.”

  Suddenly, I’m aware of how close he is to me. It’s not the first time this week I felt this searing flash of attraction between us, but always before he would turn away, or say something, and nothing would happen. I’m not even sure he felt it. But this time, this time I know. I feel it deep inside, in that newly minted woman part of me that can tell when a boy is looking at her like that. I’m warm and jittery and without meaning to, I lean closer to him.

  And we’re kissing, and man, oh man, it’s not like kissing Ted Hanson in ninth grade or even Michael. I tangle my hands in his hair, and his hands slide up my back under my shirt and they feel hot, burning, and the taste of him is like wild honey.

  I’m not sure how long we kiss, but when he finally pulls away, my shirt is unbuttoned and my lips feel bruised and swollen, and I’m already missing the feel of his lips on mine.

  “Dammit,” he says, looking at me.

  “Wow. Not exactly what a girl wants to hear after she’s been kissed.” I’m smiling though, because I can tell he felt it too, that unbelievable heat between us. “Can we do it some more?” I playfully reach for his hand to draw him closer to me.

  “Erin. No,” he says, standing up. “We … can’t. We’re friends. It has to stay that way.”

  “Friends can’t kiss?”

  “No!” he says explosively. “Not like that they can’t.”

  “Okay.” I get up and stand in front of him. “This calls for an experiment. We need to try it again and see if we still feel like friends.” I cup his face in my palms and draw it down to mine.

  If anything, it’s better the second time. How can I even think about removing my breasts when it feels this good to have someone touch them? I had no idea. None whatsoever. I wonder what else I don’t know. Then I don’t think anymore and just feel.

  “Erin, stop.” He takes me by the shoulders and physically moves me back a step.

  “What?”

&nb
sp; “We can’t do this!”

  “No, I guess we can’t, not as friends. But I think I might like to kiss you some more. So where does that leave us?”

  He takes a step away from me. “Don’t you understand? I can’t fall in love with you. I think I have, a little already. I feel happy whenever you’re around, and when I talk to you, I want to keep talking to you forever. But I can’t fall in love with you. There’s no future for us. I told you. I warned you. I will not fall in love. I can’t risk us falling in love and down the road you having to watch me get cancer. If we can’t just be friends, and after this,” he waves a hand at my unbuttoned shirt and I reflexively cross my arms over my chest, “I don’t think we can, then I don’t think we should talk for a while. We need some distance.”

  “Are you kidding me? How can you say that?” My heart is pounding and I feel shaky, sick. I can’t believe this is happening.

  “I’m trying to protect you!”

  “I don’t need you to protect me!”

  We stare at each other angrily, and he sighs, running his hand through his hair. “But don’t you see? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing since I brought you to the island. The way you feel about me is all tied up with that. You’ve got to find your own happiness, Erin. You can’t rely on someone else to provide it for you. It’s my fault, because I liked helping you, I liked being there for you. But I’m not always going to be there, and you need to know you can do it on your own, without me.”

  “What are you, my father? I don’t need a protector, Jason. I need someone who feels the same way about me as I feel about them.”

  “And I can’t be that for you.”

  “No, you are refusing to be that for me.”

  “I think we should take a break,” he says quietly. “Until we can just be friends, I don’t think we can be anything at all.”

  “Then I guess we can never be friends,” I say, and my voice is shaking.

  “Maybe not.” His voice sounds anguished, but his face is determined.

  “This is the guy who is always talking about living in the moment and not worrying about the future until it happens. You’re such a hypocrite!”

  I call the words after him, because he is already walking away from me, along the shore the way we came.

  Words crowd my mind as we make the short trip back to his house, but by the time we arrive I’ve slicked over the fear and anger with a thick layer of glacial determination. If he doesn’t want me, well, I don’t want him either. I won’t let him see how much he has hurt me. I talk with Ashley and Miriam as I wait for my mom to arrive, and my smiles and words skate across the slippery ice of my armor.

  When Mom arrives, Jason comes from his apartment and without speaking, helps me load my stuff into the back of her car. When it is time to go, Miriam gives me a hard hug, whispers, “I don’t know what’s going on but it’ll be okay,” Ashley gives me a small smile, and his dad shakes my hand firmly.

  Then Jason and I are standing in front of each other.

  “So long,” he says, and it is casual, friendly, unbearable.

  “Yeah,” I say. “See you later.”

  My heart is breaking as I get into the car, but there is no way to change anything.

  Mom seems distracted on the ride back, but I am in misery and don’t pay much attention. I tell her Jason and I are fighting, and she says, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry” and I spend the rest of the trip staring out the window in silent agony.

  When we are almost home, she clears her throat. “I have something to tell you, Erin.”

  I turn to look at her and see she is pale, her jaw clenched in pain. Her pulled muscle didn’t get any better the week I was gone.

  “What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

  “I went to the doctor while you were gone. They did a PET scan and—Erin, the cancer is … everywhere. It’s in my bones, in my liver … It’s bad, honey.”

  “What?” I stare at her in shock. “I thought you were better! I thought they cured you! How could this happen?”

  “It was an even more aggressive form of cancer than they realized. It had probably already spread back when I had treatment before, we just didn’t know it.”

  My mind whirls with horror. Oh no, not again, my poor mother …

  I try for casual, this-is-old-hat-but-what-can-you-do? “Okay, what next? Surgery?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s too widespread for surgery. I’ll go back on chemo, radiation, to keep it from spreading any more, and hopefully that will shrink the tumors some so I’m not in pain.” She puts a hand to her back and in horror I remember talking to a lady in the radiation waiting room, the skin-and-bones one who said cheerfully, “Got to radiate the little bastards before they break my bones. Before long I’ll be glowing in the dark!” Talking about the tumors, growing like rocks inside her bones. Oh God …

  “How long will you be in treatment this time?” The thought of more rounds of chemo and radiation is nauseating.

  “You don’t understand, Erin.” Mom reaches over and grabs my hand. “This is not curable. I’ll be in treatment for the rest of my life.”

  Part Four

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “How’s she doing?” Miriam asks when she picks up the phone on a beautiful spring day in late April. No “Hello, how ya doin’?” because I’m on her caller ID and she knows how I’m doing.

  “Not good,” I say and my voice wavers. “They told her today the latest round of chemo isn’t working, and it was so much worse than the last time, so they’re going to try something else, but … I don’t know …”

  Miriam is comfortable with silence and is not one to offer insincere platitudes, like, It’s okay, honey, I’m sure it’s all good, and let’s talk about the bright side, you know, getting ready in the morning is so much easier without hair!

  I’ve been talking to Miriam since January, right after Mom started her first new round of chemo and I spent the entire night holding her as she lay on the bathroom floor. (Look, Mom, it’s nice down here, cold and smooth and I agree! Let’s hang out here all night!) The next morning, I picked up the phone and dialed Jason’s mom. I needed someone to talk to, someone who would really understand, and Miriam was the only person I could think of who understood exactly what I was going through.

  I’m still talking, babbling, my thoughts gushing from my mouth. “But I go to school, because it upsets Mom when I don’t, and everybody knows, the teachers know because Mr. Jarad told them that’s why I’ve been missing so much school, but the kids know too. I walk through the halls and everyone is nice to me, and it’s just wrong. I’m walking along and everybody is talking about stupid stuff, math tests, senior projects, and parties, and what so-and-so is wearing, and I’m like a shadow nobody can really see. Don’t they understand none of that stuff matters?”

  “But it does, Erin.” Miriam’s voice is firm. “It does. That’s life, every little bit of it. It’s silly, it’s terrible, it’s messy, it’s pure, it’s life. Dying is just one small part of it. The vast majority is made up of those frivolous, glorious moments. That’s what those kids are doing, they’re living. And I’m afraid you’re not. You still need to appreciate the funny shape of a cloud, or a joke that makes you want to pee your pants, the way the warm breeze makes your skirt flip up around your knees. You still need to feel the sunlight on your face.”

  “What, are you telling me to stop and smell the freaking roses?” I ask, incredulous.

  She chuckles, sympathetic but with a touch of humor, which is exactly how she’s been helping me get through this. “Every once in a while, yes. Give it a try.”

  I’m silent, because I’m sure she’s wrong, but a little part of me knows exactly what she’s talking about. I cannot dismiss the words of this woman who has held her mother and sister in her arms as they died.

  “I don’t know … I don’t know if I can do it, Miriam. I’m trying, but it’s not enough, and I need to stay upbeat for her, but sometimes it’s hard …”r />
  “You’re doing it, Erin. You already are. Some things are simply too much for a person to bear. And yet people do. Every day. They do it because they have to. They do it for love. It takes courage to live in joy instead of despair.”

  “How … how is he doing?” I ask after a while, because I always do at the end of these conversations, and the ones I have with Ashley as well. It seems like I am talking to everybody in Jason’s family except for Jason.

  She sighs. “Erin, I wish you would let me tell him. I feel dishonest not telling Jason I talk to you, and what’s more, he would want to know about your mother. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say miserably. I know it’s wrong to ask her to keep this secret, but I can’t help myself. “Please don’t tell him. If he knew about my mom it would make him feel guilty and I don’t want him calling me out of pity. And I don’t want to put this on him either. I wanted so much from him … it wasn’t fair. I see it now. And I’m scared I’ll do it again, because it’s easier to lean on him. I just want to know … is he okay?”

  “He’s hanging in there, honey,” she says and her voice is soft. “Just like you.”

  I go downstairs and Mom is lying on the couch, gently crying. The tears stream silently down her face and I’m not sure she is even aware of them as she stares at the TV. I look to see if there is something sad on, but it’s some sort of game show. She is lost in her thoughts, staring unseeingly at the screen as the tears drip onto her pillow.

  “Mom,” I say softly. I kneel beside the couch and take her thin body in my arms and she sobs soundlessly. I don’t ask what’s wrong, because she does this often, and what is she going to say? Oh, don’t mind these silly little tears, Erin. This cancer thing? A real bummer!