The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

  Marie’s head lifted, and her eyes were glistening. “Was he?”

  Her expression made me think of Suzanne, and I added to my list of regrets. Why had I waited so long? Was life entirely comprised of “if only I had”? When did one get to the “I’m glad I did” part?

  “Yes, he was,” I said firmly. I didn’t even know if I believed the words myself, but I wanted them to. Although they had done nothing for me during my marriage to their father, neither had I done much for them.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Joanna. She leaned her elbows on the table, drew them back, then put them down again.

  I thought of the end of Tonsil Lake that had my name on its deed; of my mother, so content in her assisted living apartment; of Jean and Andie and Suzanne.

  I thought of Lucas Bishop and the cozy house on Hope Island, and realized the answer was the same either way.

  “I’m going home.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Andie

  The guest room in my house is okay, but it’s not very big. A hospital bed and other medical paraphernalia would fill it to uncomfortable proportions in no time. So we spent a bittersweet afternoon preparing the dining room for Jake to occupy. Paul and David brought in a hospital bed, Suzanne and I heaved in the recliner that had sat in her condo, Jean brought over the hospital tray table that had been above their garage since David’s mother’s death.

  “How are you going to do it?” asked Miranda directly. “Do you want me to take a leave of absence? I can, you know. We can live on Ben’s salary for a while.”

  Miranda and Ben were both schoolteachers. The only way they could live on one salary was if they gave up eating and my youngest grandchild stopped getting ear infections and changing shoe sizes every two weeks. “No,” I said. “I can do it.”

  He came the week of Columbus Day. Lo and Sarah drove to Chicago on Lo’s days off and helped him close his apartment, pack what he wanted to bring, dispose of or place in storage what he didn’t. When they arrived at my house, Jake was gray and sick-looking and Lo looked ten years older than when he’d left.

  “They’re both exhausted,” Sarah said in a low voice as we carried things inside my house. “I think it’s the first time Lo’s accepted that he’s going to lose his father.”

  I nodded. “Take him home, Sarah. Jake and I will deal with this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. We’ll be fine.”

  She hugged me hard, and I reflected that giving my son up to another woman wasn’t difficult at all when the woman was like this one.

  After seeing them off I went inside and looked at the clock. It was six o’clock and already growing dark. This was one of the things I hated about winter, that days were too short to do what needed doing. Too short to say what needed saying.

  Jake was in the recliner, sitting with his face toward the window. He turned to look at me when I came in. I didn’t switch on any lamps, and I fancied the feeble light of dusk would be kind to his ravaged face and my white hair.

  “I’m so sorry, Andie. I wish I’d had the balls to take care of things myself before it came to this.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I said tartly. “The Tonsil Lake girls would insist I drove you to it. You know they would.”

  He laughed, then began coughing. “Damn!” he said, his voice a shadow of what it had once been. “I couldn’t do it,” he said, “because of the kids. It’s bad enough their old man’s going to die of AIDS, they don’t need suicide added to it.”

  Our eyes met in the half-darkness, and I understood what he was saying. That he was asking my permission. Explain it to them so they’ll understand it wasn’t because I wanted to leave them. I never wanted to leave them.

  It had been the worst part of our divorce, that the kids had felt as though he were leaving them. Even after they knew why he’d gone, they’d felt the emptiness caused by his leaving and grieved for it. They would grieve for it again soon.

  I thought of my chemotherapy days, when I’d prayed for deliverance without caring what form it took. I’d become determined to live only when I was pretty sure I was going to. I still remember that day, when I woke to the sun in my face and Jean saying, “Come on, let’s go plant flowers.”

  She’d done most of the planting, while I’d sat bald and exhausted on a lawn chair, but I knew as I sat there that I would see the multi-colored fruits of her labors. That was the day of my deliverance.

  Jake would not have a day like that.

  “Are you hungry?” I was unable to face his unspoken question or compose an answer I could deal with.

  “No. Nothing tastes good anymore.”

  “Okay.” I wouldn’t fight him on it tonight. We were both too tired.

  He went to bed early. Paul called, offering to stop in when his twenty-four hour shift ended at seven in the morning. “Would you mind if I said no this time?” I said. “I need…” I stopped. I didn’t know what I needed.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Try to get some rest.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  I couldn’t sleep when I went to bed, and finally I gave up. I put on sweats to guard against the chill that permeated the house at night and went into Jake’s room. I pushed the recliner all the way back, tucked a small pillow under my weak left arm, and fell into an uneasy doze.

  He had coughing spasms a few times through the night. I woke each time, going to sit on the bed beside him and hold him up.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he whispered. “You need your sleep, Andie, and the kids need to live their lives. Let’s call the nursing home tomorrow.”

  “Hush.” I stroked his hair and stared into the darkness, knowing he was right. Energy levels at fifty aren’t the same as they are at thirty in the best of cases. Throw a little breast cancer, some surgery, and a whole lot of chemo and radiation therapy into the works, and your stamina’s pretty well gone to hell in a hand basket.

  AIDS patients aren’t like people who have heart trouble or brain tumors; people are scared of them, scared of their body fluids, of the hopelessness of the situation. There wouldn’t be volunteers coming out of the woodwork to help with his care.

  My tears dripped into his hair, and I fell asleep like that, his head pillowed on the breast that was really me. He slept, too, undisturbed by coughing for at least a few hours.

  Maybe some deliverances are just shorter than others.

  Jean

  “I’ll be back at noon,” David whispered. He gave me a kiss and a squeeze, and left.

  I made coffee, nearly as familiar with Andie’s kitchen as my own, and cooked oatmeal, putting it in a casserole dish in a warm oven to keep it hot. I didn’t know how Jake’s appetite or digestion was, but I didn’t figure a fried breakfast would be a good thing.

  With coffee in front of me, I sat down and opened my laptop to check my e-mail. The first message was from Vin, and it made me grin, sitting there in morning’s half-light. “SEND MORE!”

  Okay, I could do that.

  Andie came in as I worked, wearing faded green sweats. Her hair stood up in frosty spikes. “What are you doing here?” she said crossly, going to the coffeepot.

  “Giving you a break. Here, I’ve made out a schedule.” When she sat down, I pushed the worksheet across to her.

  She emerged from her cup to stare down at it. “What in the hell is this?”

  I got up to prepare her a bowl of oatmeal. “Stop complaining and read,” I said. “You can’t do it on your own. That’s why you have children and friends and friends’ children.” I plunked the bowl in front of her. “Is Jake awake?”

  “No.” She read the entries on the worksheet. “Jean, you can’t come over this often. You’re still recovering.”

  “Oh, phooey. If I recover any more, I’m going to go crazy. Eat your oatmeal and go back to bed. David will be here at noon. He’ll help Jake get a shower and all that good stuff.”

  Jake was awake when I too
k his breakfast in, his face turned toward the window. I set the food on the tray along with ice water and his medication. “How are you feeling?” I asked, arranging his pillows behind him.

  “Like I should be dead.”

  I looked at him and thought of myself, of the benign tumor that I’d thought was my death sentence, of my “second chance.” I wondered why I’d gotten one and he hadn’t. “Well,” I said, “obviously you shouldn’t be. Who would charm our socks off if you weren’t around?”

  “That’s the hell of it.” The old twinkle lit in his eyes. “You girls always insist on stopping at your socks.”

  I gave him one of those come-hither looks that look ridiculous on older women but we do them anyway. “Well, darlin’, you know how fussy David is about sharing.”

  When I picked up his scarcely-touched breakfast dishes to take them into the kitchen, he said, “Did you bring your laptop with you?”

  I nodded.

  “Will you bring it in here when you come back? I’d like to write some letters—private things to different people—and my writing looks as though I’d spent twenty years in medical school.” He moved his thin hands restlessly. “It wears me out, though. Would you do it for me, write what I dictate?”

  “Of course.”

  We only got one letter written that morning, to Miranda. I’d barely gotten past “My darling daughter” before tears were blurring my vision, but I typed on.

  So many journals have started since those first books Suzanne bought us. I don’t know if the other girls have continued theirs, only that I have. And now I’m typing what is essentially Jake Logan’s final journal. It makes me sad, but it also pleases me to be able to do something for him.

  I watched him as he faded off to sleep, and remembered when we were all younger, with our children playing together while we talked and laughed and played cards. Had we known the sadness that was in store—Mark’s and Tommy’s deaths, Andie’s and my illnesses, this horrendous disease that was robbing us of Jake—what would we have done? Would we have laughed harder, played more, loved better?

  Or would we have slogged on as we did, doing the best we could with whatever we had to work with: dancing in the moonlight in our kitchens, bringing in New Years with beer toasts in our living rooms, caring for our sick on rented hospital beds in our dining rooms.

  David came in as I daydreamed, his arm around Andie. “We’re running away together,” he said in a whisper. “Can we use your car? You have more gas.”

  “Sure,” I whispered back, pushing myself out of the recliner. “Will you be back in time for supper?”

  “Depends,” said Andie. “You cooking?”

  We huffed quiet giggles. I watched David lean over Jake, touch his hand gently, then sit in the recliner. When my husband looked up to say goodbye to me, his eyes were glistening.

  We talked this morning, David and I, about Hawaii and about friends. Although we didn’t say much, it was enough. By the time I got out of the shower, he’d already canceled the reservations. Hawaii didn’t fit into the schedule I’d laid on Andie’s table this morning.

  I guess, all things considered, I’d stay with dancing in the kitchen, beer in the living room, and hospital beds in the dining room.

  Suzanne

  Andie was hollow-eyed and had lost at least half the weight she gained back after her illness. Even with the schedule Jean devised and with everyone taking four-hour shifts whenever they could, the weight of Jake’s increasing needs was on her shoulders.

  I pushed her out of my way. “I’ll just put my things in the spare room,” I said over my shoulder. “Good thing we got it all ready for company, isn’t it? Not that I’m company, but I am partial to clean sheets even if they are plain white, which we both know I’m sick to death of.”

  “Suzanne.”

  Going through the dining room with her hot on my heels, I waved at Jake and Paul, then blew a kiss. “Hello, you gorgeous men, you.”

  “Hey, Suzy-Q.” Jake’s voice was so weak I could barely hear him.

  “Hi, Suze.” Paul lifted a hand.

  “Suzanne.”

  By the time I got to the guest room, Andie was pushing me ahead of her. “I know what you’re doing.” She closed the door behind her. Rather firmly. “It’s not necessary. Things are going all right.”

  I tugged open the top drawer of the dresser. “Sure, they are,” I said. “They’re going so well that now Lo and Miranda are worrying about losing both their parents instead of just one.” I shot her a look. “You look like hell that’s frozen over and thawed out again.”

  “Thank you very much. Did you know your ass was dropping? You’ll be feeling the old slap on the backs of your knees any time now. And all that plastic in your face is melting.”

  I grinned at her, then turned back to dump my duffel bag into the drawer. “You said I could stay.”

  “If you needed to. Not as a one-woman rescue unit.”

  “No one-woman to it.” I began peeling off the clothes I’d worn in the daycare center that day. Carrie’s little girl had puked all over me. “We’re all in it together, kid. I can be more helpful here than from out at Sarah’s. Besides that, I think I sort of cramp their style. Hers and Lo’s, I mean. They spend an inordinate amount of time checking on the animals in the barn, and it’s getting really cold for that sort of thing. Hand me that other bag, will you?”

  I rummaged through the bag she tossed on the bed, coming up with some sweats. “Now,” I said, “go get Paul and you two go for a walk.” I pulled a sweatshirt over my head and fluttered my eyelashes at her. “Find a barn and check on the animals.”

  She stood still, her gaze and mine clashing as our personalities almost always had. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Go.”

  Vin

  “You just got here.” Lucas nuzzled my neck.

  “Two weeks ago,” I corrected him, keeping my knees from wobbling by leaning them against the kitchen cupboards, “and now I need to go to Indiana.” I turned in his arms. “I’ll be back.”

  He pushed my hair behind my ears, looking down at me, and I finally understood what romance writers meant when they wrote about getting lost in someone’s eyes. If I’d ever memorized any poetry after Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” in the seventh grade, I’d have started spouting it.

  “Well, I gotta go. Have a good flight and give me a call to let me know you got there safe.” He gave me a kiss, long and leisurely enough to weaken my knees again, then tapped the end of my nose. “Love you, Lavinia.”

  I closed the back door behind him and lifted the curtain to watch him negotiate the path toward the village. He turned to wave before he moved out of sight and I lifted a hand in response. It felt as weak as my knees did, and I let it drop to my side. “ ‘I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…’ ”

  Archie came into the kitchen, carrying my bag. “Excuse me?” she said absently.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, but I could feel myself blushing. “Are you sure you don’t mind being stuck here?” I said.

  “Stuck?” She gave me a look of astonishment. “I love it here. Reminds me of home, it does, but with differences.”

  She looked younger and prettier, I noticed, and wondered if she’d met someone on her daily trek into the village. “Archie, how long have you been widowed?” I asked.

  “Twenty-five years. We were only married a couple of years, but we made them good ones.”

  I almost asked why she had never remarried, but then I remembered how she’d felt about Mark. “What do you think of Lucas?” I asked instead.

  “He’s lovely.” She grinned at me. “Seems more to the point to wonder what you think of him. I must say, I’ve lived in the same house as you for over twenty years, and I’ve never heard you recite poetry before. Though I did wonder at your choice in verses.”

  “It’s the only poem I know,” I admitted. “But he is lovely, isn’t he?”

  ****

  I rented a car in Ind
ianapolis and arrived unannounced at Andie’s, too late for supper and too early for bed. I tapped lightly on the back door and went in just as Jean walked into the kitchen pulling on a jacket.

  Our hug was silent and hard.

  “He’s sleeping,” she said quietly. “Do you want to see him?”

  I nodded and followed her into the dining room. Young Jake, or Lo, as I couldn’t seem to get used to calling him, shared a recliner with Sarah. I touched their heads, kissed their cheeks, then turned to the hospital bed.

  I’d thought I was prepared. I’d talked to one of the girls almost daily, so I’d expected to scarcely recognize the skeletal man in the bed. But I couldn’t stop my horrified gasp, and when I touched my cheek lightly to Jake’s, mine was already wet.

  Andie and Suzanne came in shortly, and we put blankets around our shoulders and carried coffee to the patio.

  “The doctor says it’s probably a matter of days,” said Andie, her voice low and thin with exhaustion. “Happy goddamned Thanksgiving.”

  Her eyes glittered in the dim light that flowed from the house. “When he first came, he talked a little about suicide, and I was so afraid he’d do it. Now, I almost wish he had. This isn’t living.”

  “We may not feel like it’s living, but this time has been a gift.” Suzanne had her face turned away from the rest of us, and her voice was muffled. “He’s been able to say his goodbyes, put everything in order. I’d give anything…” The words trailed away unsaid, but we didn’t have to hear them to know what they were.

  “See that brightest star up there?” Jean’s voice was cheerful and strong. She pointed. “No, not the tower lights, the other big one above them.”

  We all craned our necks and nodded.

  She smiled at each of us. “That’s Tommy, you know, waiting for Jake.”

  It was the kind of thing Reverend Parrish said to us in Sunday school at the little church that sat on a hill right in the middle of the Hendersons’ farmland. We’d trudge up there every Sunday morning, not putting on our shoes till we reached the churchyard because the road was dusty and we figured dirty feet were better than dirty shoes.