Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “Hey,” Dan said, walking over to the refreshment table, where I’d wound up serving lemonade because why not.

  “Hey.”

  “Pretty cool night, huh?” he asked. He was wearing surfer-boy formal—pink hibiscus-emblazoned board shorts with a white shirt and tux jacket.

  “Yeah. I like the DJ.”

  “Why aren’t you dancing? Where’s Trevor?”

  Did he mean Trevor Griffin, from Patrick’s class? “No idea,” I said. “Why?”

  “Uh, because I thought you guys were dating. I’ve seen you in his car.”

  “No, he just gives me rides sometimes. He’s my brother’s friend.”

  “Hmm. My mistake. Too bad.”

  I handed him a paper cup of pink lemonade to cover my mad blush. He sipped it, looking into my eyes. At that moment I saw not just stars but a whole galaxy. Too bad. Was he saying that if he hadn’t thought I was with Trevor, he would have asked me to the dance?

  “You going to write any more plays?” Dan asked.

  “I’m always writing one,” I said.

  “Bring back Ada and Timothy,” he said, referring to the characters he and I had played onstage, in front of the whole school. The characters who had kissed. I turned even redder.

  Then Gillian walked over in her slinky white slip dress, straight blond hair spilling over her tan shoulders. Dan reached out for another cup of lemonade, handed it to her, and slipped his arm around her waist. They walked away, and in a move designed to torture me, Dan glanced back over his shoulder with a small head shake of regret.

  A while later, the song “Angel” by Jack Johnson began to play. That brought Lizzie and Jeff back from their walk down the beach, onto the dance floor. He had called her “Angel” ever since that day at Paradise Ice Cream. Dan and Gillian were dancing, too, along with half the school, but I felt that song was for Lizzie and Jeff alone.

  And sitting on my bed in the cinder block room, I remembered again the phrase Lizzie had used to describe her mother: street angel/house devil.

  “Everyone has moods,” I’d said to Lizzie that day.

  “You don’t get it,” Lizzie replied. “And I hope you never see her the other way.”

  Before now, I did, just once, see Mrs. Porter “the other way.” When Lizzie went into the hospital, I skipped school to go see her. Her mother had told mine that I’d better go soon. My mother not only gave me permission, she drove me to Williams Memorial in Boston.

  “Take all the time you need, love,” my mother said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you get out.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, kissing her, lingering in her embrace for an extra moment because I was nervous about seeing Lizzie.

  When I stepped off the elevator onto Lizzie’s floor, I smelled antiseptic. The linoleum gleamed like ice. Walls were lined with bright drawings, obviously by children. They had been enlarged and framed, and some of the stick figures were grinning and others had big round tears plopping down their cheeks. Speech bubbles said Hope! and We’ve got this! and Cancer makes me mad. The grass was green, the chimneys were red, nearly every picture had a garden full of flowers. A handsome doctor with a stethoscope around his neck passed by and smiled when he saw me looking at the art.

  Lizzie was in the third room down. Jeff stood in the hallway. He saw me coming. His face was wet, and he shook his head. Tears streamed into his red beard. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his plaid shirt.

  “Only one person at a time can see her,” he said.

  “Who’s in there now?” I knew her mother was spending most days here as both mom and nurse. Chloe had missed school all week to be with her sister.

  “No one,” Jeff said. “She got tired. I wanted to let her rest.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “No, Emily. She’s not okay.”

  “But she will be,” I said, stubborn and refusing to believe otherwise.

  His tears just kept running. His mouth was slack, no words. He looked hopeless. I touched his hand, then stiffened my shoulders and walked past him. I was expecting to see Lizzie bald—people who had chemo lost their hair. My aunt Cathleen had. But when I walked through the door, there was Lizzie, with her long black hair flowing on the white pillow, that one strange curl—natural, she didn’t do anything to make it happen—falling across her terrifyingly pale face.

  I tiptoed to the chair. I didn’t want to make a sound because Lizzie’s eyes were closed, and I assumed she was asleep. I leaned close, over the bed rail, to watch her breathing. Her chest went up-down, up-down. Was her respiration really fast, or was that my imagination? I had figured she’d be in an ugly hospital gown, so it was reassuring to see her in one of her familiar nightgowns, this one dark blue silk. But there were bottles hanging on poles over the bed, tubes going into her arms.

  “I’m awake,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Oh,” I said. “I couldn’t tell.”

  “It’s kind of creepy that you’re watching me.”

  “I’m totally not watching you. I’m spying on that doctor out in the hall. Pretty cute.”

  “Yeah, and he went to Harvard.”

  “How do you know which one I’m talking about?”

  “I know your taste,” she said. “Both Jeff and I think he looks like Dan Jenkins. Tell me he doesn’t.”

  “Well, he does,” I said, even though he didn’t really. I always loved talking about Dan. Just hearing his name then sent chills through my bones, and it relieved me to hear Lizzie joking. We always joked about boys.

  “Is Jeff jealous?” I asked. “You and Dr. Handsome?”

  “We’re getting married,” she said.

  “You and the doctor?”

  “Me and Jeff.”

  I laughed and pretended to jab her arm, brushing it lightly with my knuckles, and she flinched and cried out.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, shocked.

  “It hurts,” she said. Tears were plopping down her face, just like Jeff’s, just like the ones in that picture in the hall.

  “I’m sorry. I barely touched you,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”

  “‘They’?” I asked.

  “The tumors,” she said.

  “Where? How many?” I asked, steeling myself, because I couldn’t really bear to know.

  “I wasn’t kidding about me and Jeff,” she said. “We’re going to get married before …”

  “Before what?”

  “I die.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “I don’t want you to be shocked when it happens. You’re my best friend, my other sister. I love you.”

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  “I want you to do something for me,” Lizzie said. “Marry us.”

  I tried to laugh. “I’m not a minister.”

  “You can sign up online. There’s a website, you sign up and get ordained right then and there. Do this for me, Em. And don’t tell my mother.”

  “Okay,” I said, completely confused, wondering if Lizzie even knew what she was talking about. We were fifteen. Jeff was a class ahead of us, sixteen. But in my church only men could become priests, a fact that seemed ridiculous, totally unfair, and completely ticked me off. So yes—I was on board with becoming a minister.

  “I’m tired, Em,” Lizzie said. “You’d better go now.”

  That scared me more than anything. Lizzie had never asked me to leave before. We always wanted to stay together longer, prolong our visits, delay making it home in time for dinner. We were always asking our mothers if the other one of us could eat over, sleep over, spend the weekend. What did it mean, how bad was her cancer, that she was kicking me out?

  I stood in the doorway, just staring at her for a long time. If she knew I was still there, she didn’t say anything. I told myself the tubes were full of strong medicine making her better. The fact her hair hadn’t fallen out was a good sign; she was tough, and the tumors would dis
appear without chemo.

  Outside the room, I looked for Jeff, but I didn’t see him. I figured I’d wait a while in the hospital and return to Lizzie’s room later, maybe in an hour, when she was feeling better.

  A family clustered at the end of the hall. I could see sunlight pouring through big windows in the room behind them. It was probably the solarium. Visiting Aunt Cathleen, taking turns with everyone else in my family for the chance to go into her room, I’d gotten very used to the comfy chairs in the hospital sunroom. Bea and I were usually in there together, bored and texting our friends till it was time to leave.

  So I aimed toward the solarium to wait for Lizzie. Later, I’d go back and sit by her bed and tease her about wanting to get married. Or, riffing on the fact she’d kicked me out before, I’d sing lyrics from a song my dad constantly butchered on the Fender Stratocaster us kids had chipped in to give him on his fiftieth birthday to fulfill his middle-aged rock-guitarist dream: Should I stay or should I go now? I’d make her laugh.

  Halfway down the main corridor there was a small alcove, the door ajar. I heard the familiar voice with a hissing buzz in it and stopped short.

  “… so talented, so smart,” Mrs. Porter was saying. “Everything your sister does turns to gold. While you … well, I’m not seeing any gold. I’m seeing laziness, a bad attitude, a selfish girl. That’s what you are, selfish. Your sister is lying in that bed, she is dying, yes, dying, and she is my shining one. Will you be that for me? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

  I melted against the wall.

  Chloe walked out of the alcove. Back then, she still looked like herself. Her straight hair was chestnut brown. She met my gaze. We stared at each other long enough for me to register her shame and grief. Her eyes brimmed. I reached out my hand, and she did, too, and we brushed fingers, like members of opposite teams after a game. She drifted away.

  I wanted to follow her, to not have to face her mother, but it was too late.

  Mrs. Porter emerged from the alcove with an armful of sheets and towels. Her forehead was a knot, her mouth was pinched with rage. I turned into a statue, hoping she would just walk by. Instead she stopped, her face relaxing into warmth and the affection I’d always felt pouring my way.

  “Oh, Emily,” she said. “You’ve come to see Lizzie.”

  “I—I did,” I said, slowing, stammering, wondering if she knew I’d heard her. “She told me she needs to rest.”

  “Yes, she’s right. And you’re a peach for understanding. She needs that right now.”

  “Can I do anything? I want to help her. I want to be here for her.”

  “Just be you,” Mrs. Porter said. She hiked the linens under one arm, hugged me close with the other. “Be her other sister and be strong for Chloe. She’s having such a hard time. She loves Lizzie so. It’s so awful for her. I know she’d trade places if she could.”

  “So would I,” I said.

  “I believe that,” Mrs. Porter said, hugging me even harder. “What would we do without you? Now, come with me. We’ll let Lizzie sleep for a little while, and you, Chloe, and I will go down to the nurses’ lounge. I’ll sneak you in. We can have some hot chocolate; that’s just what we need.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I was in shock that day. I had heard the words cancer, tumors, soft tissue, rhabdomyosarcoma, metastases, and stage four about Lizzie. But that afternoon was the first time I had heard the word dying. I wanted to run, scream, and tear my hair out. But I was a zombie. All I could do was stagger alongside Mrs. Porter and try to block out the vicious way she’d talked to Chloe.

  In that moment, Lizzie’s voice had filled my mind. Street angel/house devil.

  Now, sitting in the jail-cell replica of Lizzie’s room, with Mrs. Porter silently watching me eat, I glanced up from my chicken sandwich and met her eyes. She smiled, just as she used to, but hadn’t since I’d thrown Chloe’s phone. Just as if I were her third daughter, happy to see me enjoying the food she’d so lovingly made.

  When I was finished, she examined the stitches on the side of my head. Then she undid the support boot and gently prodded my bruised ankle. She was making sure I was healing. Then she took my plate and empty glass. She didn’t say good-bye or ask if I wanted anything else or whether I was ready to send that email.

  But she turned, gazed at me with pure love, and shut the door behind her.

  I sat very still on the bed for a long time after she had gone.

  Five more days of silence. That seemed to be the pattern: If I did something out of line, they’d stop speaking to me. The food came, the empty tray went, and as the days went by, Mrs. Porter would barely look me in the eye. I started to wonder if I was real. Was this a dream? One night she brought me an orange. I sat on the side of the bed, holding it in my hands. I lifted it to my face, smelled the citrus tang. If the orange was real, then wasn’t I? But the scent faded, and I put the orange back on the tray, and the feeling of unreality came back.

  Also on the tray was a small white container holding green contact lenses along with a note: No more blue eyes. Practice putting these in and taking them out, please.

  I couldn’t believe it: another way for me to not look like myself. Touching my own eyeball made me blink like crazy and feel like throwing up. The contact lens was squishy. The fact that tears were spilling out didn’t help. I was shaking and stopped after two tries.

  I took a shower. The water felt warm on my skin. It trickled down my back; I stared at my wet arms, how they glistened. When I washed my hair, some shampoo got in my blue eyes, and the sharp sting was a reminder that I was still human, I was still alive, not floating between worlds. My fingernails were growing back, my scabbed, raw fingertips starting to heal. That wasn’t all good, because it meant I hadn’t tried to claw my way out lately, that I was somehow getting used to the horror of being held prisoner in a basement, and I turned up the water as high as it would go and screamed.

  Then, one morning, Chloe brought my breakfast. She entered the room with the tray, but instead of locking the door behind her, she left it a few inches ajar. I noticed the food was different this morning. Instead of the super-healthy farm-fresh eggs, whole grain toast, and bowl of cut fruit that Mrs. Porter had served every day since I’d gotten here, this tray contained a bowl of Frosted Flakes and a glass of orange-mango juice.

  “I’m supposed to eat this?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You probably poisoned it.”

  “I didn’t,” Chloe said. “And I thought you’d like something sweet instead of the usual organic whatever. Besides. It was Lizzie’s favorite cereal. When Mom wasn’t looking.”

  “I thought I was Lizzie.”

  Chloe gave me the fishiest look ever. She raised her eyebrow. “You’re Emily,” she said.

  I felt this huge swoon of emotion—a combination of relief and despair that rushed through my skin and bones. “If you know that, how can you keep me here? Why are you helping them?” I asked.

  “You don’t know what it’s been like,” Chloe said. “Since she died.”

  “I do,” I said. “I lost her, too.”

  “It’s not the same. She was my sister, your friend. But she was my mom’s favorite daughter. Yeah, I know Mom loves me, blah blah blah, but, Lizzie … oh my God. Without her, my mother might die herself.”

  “But she won’t. Not literally.”

  “She’s draining away, Emily. My dad sees it, too.”

  “Your mother was … like my second mom. I cared about her, I always did,” I said. “I still do, in a way. Because she has to be sick to be doing this. Really sick. She needs help, and you should get it for her.”

  “You’re her help,” Chloe said.

  “If you think that, you’re as insane as she is! Lizzie wouldn’t want you to be doing this. I can practically hear Lizzie begging you to stop, to let me go.”

  “See?” Chloe asked. “That’s why they want you here. Because you loved Lizzie so much, you can still get
right into her head. They are making you part of Lizzie World. Actually you are pretty much the whole thing.”

  My skin crawled. Did she mean that ironically? Or was her family literally creating something called Lizzie World? It sounded like a theme park, but the opposite of the Magic Mountain of Mom. There was nothing exhilarating here, only a dull and creepy basement dollhouse filled with furniture, objects, and clothes from Lizzie’s past. My eyes were on the half-open door.

  “But I have a life,” I said. “With my own family.”

  “You can say that all you want,” Chloe said. “But that’s over.” She paused, as if she knew that sounded harsh. “You feel it, right? You know they’re serious?”

  “But I’m serious, too,” I said. “I’m a Lonergan. I’m stubborn.”

  Chloe shook her head sadly. “That’s the problem, and why you’re still in the cellar. They won’t let you out until they’re sure you’ve let go of that dream, of ever going back. Don’t you get it?”

  “What?” I asked, but I wasn’t really listening for the answer. I was just making conversation. In a minute I’d distract her and bolt.

  She ruffled her hair, and I saw: Her roots had started growing out. There was a half inch of reddish brown showing along her part and forehead.

  “Now that they’ve dyed your hair black, mine can go back to my natural color. I don’t have to have the curl anymore. They don’t dab the birthmark on my cheek. Just look around this room. They took a million pictures after Lizzie died, before we moved here. They documented every inch. Movers came for the rest of our house, but not this room. My dad moved it himself, with every single box labeled exactly, and the three of us put it all together. Do you know how long that took?”

  “A long time,” I said.

  “They made me stay here once we got it ready.”

  “You mean they wanted you to be Lizzie?” I asked.

  “My mom did. But you see—there was still that empty chair at the kitchen table. She couldn’t pretend our family was the same because one of us was still missing. Lizzie wasn’t here.”

  “She still isn’t,” I said.

  I was bigger and stronger than Chloe, and if she tried to stop me, I’d have no problem shoving her aside. While she was still staring at her feet, I walked straight toward the door.