“Oh my God, exactly! That’s totally what I thought too.” Kate and I grinned at each other.
A moment later, though, Kate leaned back on the couch, turning quiet. “Is he still the prince, even if he’s not there?”
I nodded solemnly. “Yes, he’s still the prince. Royalty is something you’re born with. Like when Sleeping Beauty was hidden in her castle, asleep, she was still a princess, even if she wasn’t going to balls and holding court.”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah.”
Kate smiled then, like she’d just figured something out. “That’s like me, then. Sleeping Beauty. ’Cause if Jeremy’s a prince, then I’m a princess, huh?”
I never thought anyone else would find sense—would find comfort—in my fairy-tale world.
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“Yeah.” She nodded, and we both smiled, sitting close.
Tonight, the three of us are in the den: Kate is reading the book I gave her, Jeremy is taking a practice SAT, and I’m reading about the current situation in the Middle East for my Conflicts class. None of us is paying particularly close attention, though, because the TV is on in the background. Kate’s face is swollen from the chemotherapy; her cheeks are pudgy—grotesquely chubby, making a joke of what a healthy face is supposed to look like; not at all like cheeks that make you want to squeeze them. Jeremy makes a joke of it; calls her a chipmunk, storing nuts in her cheeks for the winter.
Jeremy’s phone rings and he picks it up, then gets up from his chair and goes into the other room. I put my reading down and turn to Kate.
“How are you liking the book?”
“The writing is better than the story.”
“I thought the same thing when I read it. But I loved the main character.”
“Yeah, me too.” She smiles at me. “I like the parts you underlined.”
“Thanks,” I say, because what she says sounds like a compliment.
Kate pauses, and then she says, “Did you read this in school, when you were in seventh grade?”
I shake my head. “I just read it for fun.”
“’cause I thought maybe the teachers might have asked you to bring me my homework or something, like, Oh, Connelly, we hear you’re spending time with the Coles. Bring this to Kate Cole so she can catch up. Like they don’t realize I might not come back—or anyway, not anytime soon.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself: I giggle.
“What’s funny?”
“I’m sorry, I just never thought of your name as Kate Cole before. It just sounds—”
Kate interrupts me. “I know! Like the nursery rhyme! You’d think my parents would have thought of that before naming me. But they were thinking Katherine Cole; they didn’t stop to think about the nickname. So stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“And the worst is my middle name. Ann. Katherine Ann Cole. So boring.”
“My middle name is Jane; can’t get much more boring than that.”
“Yeah, but at least your first name is interesting.”
“Except I hate when people shorten it to Connie. It sounds like I should be wearing white tights and clogs when I hear that.”
“Jeremy calls you Connie.”
“Yeah, but he’s not people.”
Kate grins at me, and I blush. I think Kate likes to make me blush.
“Anyway,” she says, “I was just wondering if this was on some teacher’s reading list. They keep sending e-mails letting me know what to study so I don’t fall behind. I ignore them, so maybe they thought they could go through you.”
“Nope. I just gave you the book because I love it.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. I really do like it.”
I smile and turn back to my homework, but then Kate says, “Can you believe they knew before I did?”
“What?” I say dumbly.
“The teachers. My parents told the school about the cancer before they told me. They just told me I was sick, that they were running tests. But they knew what it was.” She sounds angry.
“Maybe they were just—”
“Protecting me? That’s what Jeremy says, but that’s a stupid idea of what’s protection. As if it wasn’t scarier going to the hospital without knowing why. I thought I had some rare, horrible disease that the doctors had never heard of and that they wouldn’t know how to fix me.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Jeremy was the one who got them to tell me. I heard them fighting about it.”
It’s strange; I’ve never imagined Jeremy fighting with his parents. I wonder what it’s like—it must involve yelling, or something like yelling, if Kate overheard them.
“When they finally did tell me, they didn’t tell me the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t tell me how bad it was—they said ‘leukemia,’ but they didn’t tell me how bad it was. Like they didn’t think I could just go Google it or something.”
I don’t know what to say. She seems so calm.
“So I asked Jeremy, and he told me the rest of it. He told me what the prognosis was. He told me what the real chances were. They didn’t.”
I think about my mother, about the things she’s kept from me. But then, I’m a liar too.
I ask Kate, “Were you angry at them?”
Kate shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I think I was just—I don’t know. I know they thought they were protecting me, but didn’t they know that keeping me in the dark made it so much scarier?”
I pause, and then I say, “Maybe they weren’t trying to protect you. Maybe they were actually protecting themselves. Like they just couldn’t face having to tell you that.”
Kate thinks about this for a minute, and so do I.
Kate speaks first. “I don’t know. That’s so …” She seems to be searching for the word. “Weak,” she says finally, sounding disappointed.
“Yeah. And I wasn’t trying to defend them—I was just trying to understand.”
“I know,” Kate answers, but I can tell there’s more she wants to say.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I want to ask you something, but it’s private.”
I smile. “You can ask me anything—really, I don’t mind.” And I don’t; I don’t think there’s anything I can’t talk to Kate about.
Kate bites her lip. “Did your parents do any better—when your dad was sick?”
It takes me a minute to figure out what to say, but I smile at Kate to let her know I’m not upset that she’s asked.
“No,” I say finally. “They didn’t do any better.”
“Maybe all parents suck at telling their kids things.”
I smile. “Maybe. But I was so young; it’s different.”
“How?”
“I was two. Even if they told me, I wouldn’t have known what cancer was.”
“So what happened when your mom did tell you?”
I’m not scared to tell Kate. If anyone can understand what it’s like not to know something important, it’s her.
“She didn’t.”
“What?”
“No one ever told me how he died.”
Kate’s eyes go wide. “No one told you?”
I shake my head.
“So how did you find out?”
I blush. “Your brother. He let it slip when …”
“When he told you about me,” Kate finishes for me.
“Yeah.”
“That must have been so embarrassing.”
I look straight at Kate now. “Yes!” I say emphatically, kind of excitedly. “Yes, it really was.”
Jeremy comes in then. Kate looks at me and I know she’s not going to tell him what I’ve told her, because she doesn’t know whether I’ve told him about my dad.
“Who was on the phone, Jer?” she asks, and I’m glad she does because I never could. But as his sister, she has every right to invade his privacy.
“Mike Cohe
n. Spreading gossip as usual.”
“Funny,” I say. “You don’t generally think of boys as being gossips.”
“Sternin, boys are the worst gossips, believe me.”
“So what’s the gossip?” Kate asks.
“Brent Fisher and Marcy McDonald are breaking up.”
Kate makes a face like she’s tasted something sour. “Ugh. Marcy.”
“I know, kid. Serves her right.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say, feeling left out. “One of these days, one of you is going to have to tell me what happened with Marcy McDonald!”
Kate grins at me. “One of these days, one of us will.”
“Good comeback, kiddo,” Jeremy says approvingly.
“Are you kidding?” I groan. “She’s full of them. Kate always knows the right thing to say.”
“Anyway,” Kate says, “Brent’s a nice guy. Hope he’s the one who dumped her.”
“Kate,” Jeremy mock-admonishes. “I don’t like this nasty side of you.”
“Got it from you, big brother,” Kate says, and Jeremy pounces on her, gently and very carefully play-wrestling, and Kate dissolves into giggles. I allow myself a jealous glance at them and then go back to my Middle East reading.
We ride silently to my building. Jeremy always takes me home so we can share a couple of bedtime cigarettes. We almost never talk in the cab, so tonight’s silence doesn’t have any big implications. I’m thinking about Kate—about her family, being foolish enough to think that they might get away without telling her the truth about her disease, without even telling her that she had cancer at all. What did they think—that she wouldn’t figure it out when the chemo made her hair fall out? What did they say to the doctors to make them not insist upon telling her? That they would tell their daughter when the time was right, some other time, like maybe after this whole thing had blown over, which surely it would?
And I think about what Kate said, that her parents were weak not to tell her, no matter how hard it might have been for them. I think about my mother and me, the care we take to avoid confrontation, be it about my father, or about what I do every day after school with the Coles, or why I came home so late that Saturday night. My mother doesn’t ask. Tit for tat—I don’t ask, so she doesn’t either.
Weak, Kate called it. I never thought of my mother that way, but then, I did think that I had to be strong, strong enough to protect her from my questions. Like by inventing a deadbeat dad sunbathing in the desert, I could protect her from the truth. But she’s the one who knows who my dad really was, and I’m the one in the dark.
I’m sick of thinking about this. I want to think about something else, anything else. I think about Jeremy and Marcy McDonald. By the time we reach my block, I’ve built up quite a curiosity.
Outside my building, cigarette in hand, my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened with Marcy McDonald?”
Jeremy’s surprise is written on his face. I think he wonders why I even care.
“I’m sorry, Jer. I just … I just really want to know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being girly or something. I just want to know.”
“I promised Kate I’d never tell.”
“Kate?”
He breaks his gaze; looks above me, behind me. “Yeah. She was embarrassed. I promised her.”
He still isn’t looking at me, so I hold the sleeve of his shirt. “Okay. I understand.”
“Okay.” Jeremy takes a last drag and flicks the cigarette onto the ground. “See you tomorrow,” he says, and heads toward the corner.
“Are you mad at me?” I say to his back. The possibility scares the absolute crap out of me.
Jeremy turns around. “Mad?”
“Yeah. For asking.”
Jeremy grins at me and without stepping any closer says, “Sternin, you got a lot to learn about me still, huh?”
I exhale. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath. I feel better and turn to walk into the lobby.
16
On Thursday, a couple of weeks before winter break, Jeremy tells me to meet him in the library at lunch.
“What for?”
“I have an idea,” he says mysteriously. I think this must be some kind of prank that his friends want to pull and they need me as an accomplice. The teachers would never suspect me.
They redid the library recently, so it doesn’t have that old-book smell you’d expect. It feels like there are more computers here than books. I manage to find a table entirely surrounded by bookshelves, except for one side that’s up against a window. I’m reading when Jeremy taps my shoulder.
“What’s this all about?”
“Okay.” Jeremy looks ridiculously excited. “Don’t take this the wrong way. Okay. If you don’t like this idea, I promise not to bring it up again.”
“Okay,” I say warily.
“I’m sure I can find things out for you.”
I look at him blankly. I have no idea what he’s talking about. My cluelessness must be written on my face, because Jeremy says, “About your father, I mean.”
“What about my father?” I say, still dumb.
“About his … about what happened to him. I’m sure I can find out more for you. From the oncologist, maybe.”
I look hard at Jeremy. Part of me is angry. It will be easier for him to find out than it has been for me.
But Jeremy’s right: he can find things out for me. What’s more important to me—knowing the truth, or the way I find the truth? I’m not really sure what my answer is, actually. Because all this has to do with how I feel about the truth having been kept from me. How I feel about being left in the dark regarding the death of my own father, about my family.
So I have a decision to make. Do I want to find out because I’m ashamed that I don’t know, or do I want to find out because I just have to know? I think I need to know. I’ll take Jeremy’s help. He can ask questions I can’t ask. If nothing else, he’ll get me that much closer.
“Sternin?” I’ve been quiet for a few seconds, considering. Jeremy must think I’m mad, because he continues, “Only if you want me to. If you want me to stay out of it, I promise I won’t ever bring it up again—”
I interrupt: “No, Jer. It’s a good idea. You’re right.”
“I’m right?”
“You might be able to find something out. You already knew more than I did.” He nods. “At least, maybe you can find something out from the oncologist, get him to draw a comparison between your father and Kate.”
I immediately wish I hadn’t said this, but Jeremy enthusiastically agrees. “Exactly. I figured I could say, Remember that girl you mentioned, the one whose dad had leukemia like Kate? Let on that I think that’s how he died, and so I’m upset about Kate, having the same kind of sick, and play on the doctor’s sympathy—”
I look at Jeremy, my eyes wide. I can’t believe he just said that.
“Listen, Sternin,” he says, “I’m sorry, but I could use the distraction. It’d be nice for the cancer to be about something else, just for a while.”
“Okay,” I say, and nod. And I completely understand what he means. For me, investing myself in Jeremy’s life and family has been a distraction from my situation, so I can’t blame him for using my situation to distract him from his. At least he’s being honest about it. That’s more than I can say for myself.
Turns out, the oncologist, the Coles’ dear family friend, Dr. Graham Kleinbaum, is having dinner at the Coles’ next Wednesday. He’s not Kate’s doctor, because the Coles wanted a pediatric specialist, but Jeremy says his parents pretty much look to him before making any decisions about Kate’s treatment. In the last few weeks, there’s been some talk about a bone marrow transplant for Kate.
At first I think Jeremy is going to invite me over for dinner that night. I have dinner there all the time as it is; it wouldn’t be odd or anything if I was there. But he doesn�
��t, and I’m relieved. First of all, I don’t think Jeremy would be able to ask the doctor questions about my father if I was there, and second of all, I don’t know how I would be able to stop myself from asking questions, and that would be the worst humiliation of all—interrogating my father’s oncologist in front of the Coles. What if he remembered who I was and just started talking about it on his own, expecting that I would know about my father’s disease and I’d have to play dumb—or actually, play smart, pretending to know more than I do?
Jeremy comes over late on Wednesday. I pull on my coat and rush downstairs. I don’t know what I think I’m going to learn, since I’m so sure my father didn’t die of cancer after all, but I’m anxious, and the elevator has never seemed so slow. It’s freezing out, and the air is so dry I know my sheets will crackle with static electricity later. Jeremy’s hands are shoved in his pockets and his cigarette dangles precariously between his lips. We stand close. Jeremy promised me the play-by-play, but I just want to hear how it all ended—what he found out.
“We’re definitely moving forward with the bone marrow,” he begins, without saying hello or even giving me a cigarette.
“What?”
“The bone marrow. I go to get tested to see if I’m a match tomorrow.”
“Oh. Okay.” I’m a little put out that he’s opening with this instead of with my father. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help it.
“I’m nervous, though. I mean, I hope I’m a match, of course, but …” Jeremy’s voice trails off, and it looks like he’s about to cry. “My parents are so excited. They’re sure I’ll be a match; they’re sure this step is all that Kate needs. I don’t want to disappoint them. But I’m so scared.
“Isn’t that awful? I mean, of course I want to be a match and of course I don’t care what they have to do to me to get the marrow out for Kate. But I’m still so scared of how much it’ll hurt. God.”
I don’t know what to say. I mean, I would be scared too, but it’s strange to see Jeremy acting so frightened. Jeremy covers his eyes with the heels of his hands. I can see he’s pressing hard. I don’t know how to change the subject to my father.
The Beautiful Between Page 11
