by T. Greenwood
His grip loosened on my shoulders, and the veins at his temples stopped pulsing. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said. His eyes were softer now, less angry. “Don’t do that again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. That was the first lie I’d ever told my brother.
It did not begin with this. I am older now, and I know it began long before he found me on the side of the road crying. And it didn’t end a month later, when it seemed to end. Maybe it hasn’t ended yet.
When my fingers begin to ache from sewing, I put away the widow’s dress and pull out the printout from my bag. His name is not uncommon. According to the website I checked, he could be living in New Jersey or New Mexico, Alabama or Alaska. I looked for clues in the e-mail addresses, something that would tell me it was he instead of someone borrowing his name. And when I found the listing for a Nick Hammer whose e-mail address was [email protected], I knew I had found him. There was no other information. No address. No phone. Just the e-mail address, just a link that could instantaneously connect me to him. My hand shook as I moved the cursor over the link, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I scribbled down the address and shoved it in my purse like an old tissue.
Finding him is not in my schedule. I’ve learned that when you’re sick, there is little room for deviation from the various tasks at hand. Becca would think this a ridiculous waste of precious time and energy. She would see it as a futile expenditure of my heart. But she knows I need to spend at least a little time making amends. She knows as well as I do that even though there’s so little of it left, time to make apologies is a necessary expense.
Becca had been on the phone all morning with hotels in Seattle, with the doctors at the transplant center, with my insurance company, which was reluctant to make a decision. The transplant procedure was still considered experimental, as if everything else I’ve been through could be considered somehow tried and true.
“Can we go for a drive?” I asked.
“Now?” Her face was red with frustration, her hands shaking, when she hung up the phone.
I nodded.
It was snowing softly outside. As we drove through town, Becca pointed to the lights and decorations, talking excitedly about plans for Christmas. The electric nativity scene in front of the Methodist church had avoided vandalism so far; last year, someone kidnapped one of the Wise Men. Red poinsettias, white lights, and sparkly green garlands. Tacky plastic snowmen in shop windows, and cardboard reindeer.
“I love Christmas,” Becca said, beaming.
We stopped at the gas station so she could fill up the tank, and she came out of the mini-mart with two candy canes.
I sucked on mine until the red stripe was gone and the tip was sharp.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked. “We could see if there’s a matinee. Or we could go to St. J and do some Christmas shopping? How are you feeling?”
“Let’s go to the lake,” I said.
“Gormlaith?”
I nodded and kept sucking on my candy cane.
“Okay,” she said. “I don’t know if the car will make it. My studs are pretty dull.”
“Let’s try,” I said.
Becca talked about Seattle, about a special one of the airlines was having, about a hotel she’d found near the hospital that gave discounts to patients’ families. I thought about all the water there. That it probably never freezes like the lakes and ponds around here. I thought about taking a ferry. I thought about rain. She told me about all of the restaurants and cafés and bookstores; we would have some time between the harvesting of my marrow and the treatments. We could explore the city together. I thought about a city made of water, about bridges and umbrellas. She told me I would have to be in isolation after the chemotherapy, because my immune system would no longer exist; she told me about the risk of infection. She told me she would stay with me, though, read to me, play me my favorite music. I thought about rain making everything clean. I thought about drowning.
I took the candy cane and gently pressed the pointed tip to the top of my hand. I tried to remember the pain of a needle, but it was already too far away.
“What do you want to do up there?” Becca asked.
“In Seattle?”
“At Gormlaith.”
I looked out the window at the white fields, cows, and evergreens.
“I want to go by his house,” I said.
Becca stared straight ahead at the winding white road in front of us, at the snow that hit the windshield as we passed through the tunnel of snow. She didn’t ask why, and she didn’t say no. She just kept driving, holding on.
“Do you mind if we stop for coffee at Hudson’s?” she asked.
I shook my head.
We parked in the dirt lot and went into the store, the sleigh bells jingling. Becca made us two cappuccinos at the self-service machine and asked the girl at the register for two scratch-off lottery tickets. She handed me a foam cup and one of the tickets.
In the car, I peeled back the plastic lid and blew on the coffee.
“Do your ticket!” she said.
I set my cup in the cup holder and used my nail to scratch off the sticky gray stuff.
“I lost,” Becca said, crumpling up her ticket and tossing it in the ashtray.
“Two bucks!” I said, excited.
“Really?” she asked, grabbing for my ticket. “You should cash it in and get a couple more.”
“I don’t think I’ll push my luck,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I hurried back into the store and handed the girl my ticket.
“You want a couple more?” she asked.
“No. Just give me the two dollars.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” I held out my hand. I looked at the bills once before I folded them and put them in my pocket. Evidence of my good fortune.
The roads to Gormlaith are still unpaved dirt. In the winter, the washboards freeze into dangerous ruts. We had to drive Becca’s car slowly to avoid getting stuck or damaging her muffler.
Becca’s folks still live at the Pond, but she doesn’t visit them much anymore. They never liked her decision to leave Vermont and pursue her theatrical aspirations in New York, and even now that she has returned, they aren’t much more supportive.
We parked at the boat access area, and Becca asked, “Do you want me to come with you?”
I shook my head and got out of the car.
“I’ll leave the engine running,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”
I nodded and closed the door and started to walk toward his house. I heard the radio click on in Becca’s car, and the vague sound of her singing along.
A long time ago someone bought it and made it into a summer home. For many years, the summer resident was an artist, a man whose little sister had drowned in Gormlaith. He makes shadow boxes, beautiful little worlds of paper and glass. I’ve seen them for sale at the art gallery in Quimby. A couple of years ago, he and Effie Greer, the little elfin girl who my mother said would never grow, fell in love. Now they both live in the McInnes camp year round. She drives the mobile library for the Atheneum.
I don’t know who lives in the house now. I hope it is another artist.
The swing was still standing, though it was weathered now. My heart nearly stopped as I rounded the corner and saw it there, under snow. The driveway had not been shoveled. The shades were drawn; the house was still. The stained-glass windows were frosty. The little studio, the artists’s studio, across the yard was sagging with the weight of time and ice. I walked through the snow, knee high and cold, to the steps. I sat down and put my face in my hands.
“Come out?” I asked softly. “Please?”
I went to him again. And again. When the letters from the college in Boulder arrived, when I saw Daddy walking along the side of the road near the high school with fresh cuts on his face, when Mum sent back our missing silver ice cube tray, I went to him. Each time, convincing him that what we were doing wa
s not wrong. That I was not a child, and that he was not a monster.
I became a liar. It was easier than I had thought. Easier than telling the truth, anyway. Lying to Becca was the hardest, because I still had to go to rehearsals every afternoon and listen as she swooned. There were only three weeks left before our performance. Sometimes we stayed in the high school auditorium so late that Mr. Hammer would offer to bring me and Becca back to the Pond so that Quinn wouldn’t have to wait around for us after work. On those nights, Becca and I sat in the backseat and she kicked me every time he glanced at us and smiled in the rearview mirror. He would bring her home first and then I would sit in the backseat as he drove the mile more to my house. He would drive with his left hand and reach back with his right to touch me, as if I would disappear if he didn’t.
On Sundays, when I went to his house for lessons, I still sang for him. I gave him my voice and for the first time, I think I understood what my mother was doing. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the things she was returning to us, but that they were all she had to give back. And in return for this peculiar gift, he read to me. Curled up in his lap, I would press my head against his chest, my bare feet dangling to the floor, as he made music out of words.
I knew he was falling in love with me. And I never reminded him that I was only fourteen; I even forgot it myself on those January afternoons when I lay in his bed and he touched my back with his fingers. But I think he knew it wouldn’t last. He was a grown man; he had to have known that something this dangerous was necessarily transient, that spring would inevitably come, that all of this was as ephemeral as snow.
What are you doing? I asked as he traced the outline of my body with the soft tips of his fingers.
I’m memorizing you, he said softly.
When we got home from Gormlaith that afternoon, I was exhausted. I used to blame the chemotherapy for making me tired and sick, but now, I know it is just the cancer. I am coming to appreciate its power, more potent even than the poisons sent in to kill it. Some mornings it’s all I can do to make myself get out of bed. The fatigue is like an extra blanket, one made of lead.
Becca kept muttering under her breath. I knew she was angry at herself for letting me wear her down, allowing herself to be talked into driving me to his house. I have heard her chastising herself for other similar missteps: allowing me to go into a restaurant where people were smoking at the bar. Letting me eat a bag of Cheetos while we watched a basketball game on TV with Boo. Not stopping me from running around the park when the leaves fell; I twisted my ankle and it swelled up like a fleshy balloon.
She made a nest for me on my couch, gathering blankets and pillows, brewing some hot tea. She turned on the TV, and didn’t make me change the channel when I insisted on watching Sally Jesus Raphael and her panel of cheating wives.
“Why don’t you go home tonight?” I said. “You haven’t been home in over a week.”
“I just went yesterday. Remember? I picked up that issue of People you wanted.”
“I don’t mean ‘stop by.’ I mean, why don’t you go home and spend the night in your own bed? You must miss it. This couch isn’t very comfortable.”
Becca looked at me, dipping the teabag in and out of the cup. Her eyes were hurt.
“Besides, if we go to Seattle, you won’t be home for a month. Don’t you want to spend a little time there before we go?” I thought she would brighten at my mention of Seattle. She usually clings tightly to each shred of enthusiasm I offer. But she only stared into the steam. What she was waiting for was for this: “Becca. I need some time alone. Come by tomorrow. I’ll be okay.” This way, she wouldn’t be the villain.
She nodded, brought me my tea, and kissed my forehead. “Call me. Call me if you need anything. I’ll have my cell phone with me all the time. I’m going to call you in a few hours. Let me put the phone right here so you won’t have to get up. Do you want me to have Boo come by with some dinner?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “There’s the leftover Chinese in the fridge still. Now go.”
I had to do this every now and then. She would never do it on her own. She barely lived in her house anymore. And there was a bit of truth to what I’d said. Though I was terrified of it, I did need some time alone.
“C’mere, Bog,” I said. “Snuffle?” And he loped over to me, his jaws quivering in the way that only greyhounds’ do, and stuck his long nose into the crook of my arm. He stayed like this until I motioned for him to lie on the floor next to me. But he, like Becca, was a worried soul, and kept glancing upward to make sure I was okay.
I fell asleep to the drone of talk shows and soap operas, waking only once, when I dreamed I’d stepped into a puddle that had no bottom.
Two days before the performance of The Sound of Music, the cast and Mr. Hammer took a field trip to the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. I always thought it was incredible that such a famous family had settled in Vermont. The possibility that anyone would choose to live here dumbfounded me. Everyone I knew was always trying to leave, and those were the people who weren’t even famous.
Becca was looking forward to the trip because it meant spending an entire day with Mr. Hammer. She agonized for a whole week over what she should wear. At Boo’s, she dug through boxes and bins she had already been through a hundred times. “Haven’t you got anything new yet?” she asked Boo.
Boo was working on a paint-by-numbers picture of two ballerinas. Someone had dropped off the kit half done. “Nothing new, honey. It’s the dead of winter. Nobody’s doing their spring cleaning just yet.”
Becca sat down, exasperated.
“What’s so important that you need to get all dressed up?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Becca pouted. “What are you wearing?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. I had only been thinking about how strange this trip would be, how I’d have to concentrate on not touching him. And he on not touching me. “It’s just a dumb field trip.”
While an elder Von Trapp took half the cast inside for a music lesson, the other half of us took a sleigh ride around the sprawling grounds on which the lodge sat like a rustic gem. Mr. Hammer rode in the front of the sleigh with Mrs. Applebee, who was dressed from head to toe in a white ski suit with white fur framing her hood and cuffs. White furry mukluks. She looked like the rich French Canadian ladies who came to Quimby to leaf-peep in the fall. She kept trying to sit closer to Mr. Hammer, and I felt my skin grow hot despite the cold air around us. Becca, Lucy Applebee, and I sat behind them. Becca had given up Melissa Ball’s hand-me-down coat in favor of a Navy peacoat she’d found in her father’s closet. She almost disappeared inside it. Lucy was dressed in an outfit identical to her mother’s, only it was pink. I thought she looked exactly like a pile of throw-up.
The horses were beautiful but smelly; they left steaming piles of manure in a trail behind the sleigh as we crossed over hills and valleys. By the time we got back to the Lodge, I was cold and tired and ready to go inside even if it meant having to endure Mrs. Applebee’s showy removal of her white snowsuit.
Inside, she did, indeed, make a big fuss about her zipper, asking Mr. Hammer to help her. It seemed the zipper had gotten stuck on a bit of the rabbit fur collar. After he had freed her, we all went into a large room with a stone fireplace, and our group was given a music lesson by two women wearing traditional Austrian dress. Mrs. Applebee sat next to Mr. Hammer, looking over his shoulder at the program they had given us at the door. Afterward, we were given fifteen minutes to browse the gift shop before we were supposed to return to the bus.
I saw some things I would have liked to buy for Quinn. He would have loved the pictures of the Austrian Alps, painted on ceramic plates and coffee mugs. But I was still angry with him.
I was holding a music box, with the same picture of the mountains on the wooden lid, when I felt Mr. Hammer standing behind me. I didn’t turn around.
I wound up the music box and let it play the first few bars of “E
delweiss” before I slammed the lid shut and moved to a stack of View-Master cards with tiny pictures from the movie. When Mr. Hammer tapped me on the shoulder, I turned toward him, still holding the red plastic View-Master to my eyes. Instead of seeing him, I clicked and saw Maria in the convent. Click. Liesl coming in out of the rain. Click. The Captain and Maria dancing outside the party. Click.
“Piper,” he said.
I lowered the View-Master.
“Everybody’s getting on the bus now.”
I looked at him hard, wanting to be angry for everything Mrs. Applebee had been doing all day, but his eyes were soft and sad. Pleading.
I fell asleep on the bus. And somehow, while Becca and I were both sleeping he managed to find my open backpack and slip the music box inside. When I saw it sitting in there, on top of my English and math books, I softened. I touched my finger to the frosty window of the bus as Becca stirred next to me, and I started to write the letters of his name. But my finger would not move, so I just rested my fingertip there until it grew numb.
Becca returned in the morning before I had even woken up. I hadn’t had the strength to pull myself from the couch and into my bedroom the night before, so I woke up to sun streaming through the living room curtains, and sharp pains in my back. It could have been the couch or it could have been the sickness in my bones.
She used her key, quietly turning the knob, and let herself in. I closed my eyes tightly, pretending to still be asleep. She was carrying grocery bags. She never comes here empty-handed. Just once I want her to forget something, to be selfish or cruel. But her generosity is remarkable, consistent. I can always count on her. And funny, now that she was here again, I drifted off to sleep, the winter sun warming my face. When I woke again, she was popping open a little wooden TV tray next to me. She went into the kitchen and returned with a plate of fresh fruit, things that don’t grow here in the winter, and whole wheat toast lightly buttered, a soft-boiled egg balanced in a china egg cup that was a gift from Boo last Christmas. She also set a little package next to my plate.
