Once Upon a Project

by Bettye Griffin

  Grace would trade her life for Susan’s in a hot minute provided she could still get to have a daughter like Shavonne, and provided she could keep her own looks, figure, and size. Not that Susan was bad looking, if you went for the light-skinned / good-hair type. Personally, Grace felt that if Susan was about ten shades darker and had nappy hair, no one would rave about how pretty she was. And while she had a reasonably good figure, she was so damn tall. Now that she’d put on some weight she looked positively Amazonian.

  Grace had never had a weight problem in her life. She bounced right back into shape after having Shavonne, and she started paying attention to what she ate and exercising regularly while still in her twenties, during the seventies’ fitness craze, when everybody from Jane Fonda to Richard Simmons had workout routines on tape. It had become a habit, one that served her well in the years to come. Every part of her body was firm, and nothing sagged. She might be fifty, but her body looked years younger.

  Her eyes closed. No point in wanting to change places with Susan or anyone else. Her life was her life. Its path had probably been predetermined the moment she’d been born.

  She’d go on doing what she’d been doing, looking for another husband. And in the meantime, she’d do the best she could with what she had . . . namely, Eric Wade.

  Chapter 25

  Early May

  Chicago

  Elyse looked at her watch, disappointed to see that only four minutes had passed since her last time check. This surgery was taking forever. She knew from the doctor’s explanation that a Whipple procedure was considered major surgery, involving removal of multiple organs and reconstruction of the GI tract. It would take some time to complete, six or seven hours, maybe more. How would she manage to get through the wait?

  Brontë squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, Mom. Daddy will be fine.”

  “I wish I felt as confident as you do.”

  The kids had been wonderful. She’d called both of them and asked them to come home that weekend because their father would be undergoing surgery on Thursday morning. She refused to tell them any more until they were home.

  Together, she and Franklin explained to them about his workup and diagnosis, plus his need for immediate surgery to have the tumor removed.

  As Elyse expected, the news stunned them. Todd recovered first, stating that Franklin would beat this. Elyse looked on, praying that Franklin wouldn’t be quite so blunt with their son about his chances for long-term survival as he’d been with her. Todd was just twenty years old and was in that invincible stage, where he felt his parents would live forever.

  Franklin didn’t disappoint her. He’d told the children as gently as he could that if it was meant for him to conquer this hurdle, he would, but that they had to consider the possibility that he might not.

  Brontë, always a daddy’s girl, had sobbed and held on to her father. Todd hadn’t cried, but he looked terrified at the thought of losing Franklin.

  In the end they joined hands, and Franklin led them in prayer.

  Elyse was grateful for the support from her children, as well as from her friends. In addition to Kevin’s e-mail, Pat had called Sunday evening, explaining she’d gone out of town over the weekend as a last-minute thing. And Grace had called last night, offering assistance and encouraging words after Pat informed her about Franklin’s diagnosis.

  Elyse hadn’t gotten around to calling Susan yet. Maybe tomorrow. How nice it would be to be able to report that everything had gone well and that Franklin was recovering nicely.

  She looked at her watch again. Exactly three minutes had passed.

  This was torture.

  Chapter 26

  Early May

  Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin

  Elyse called Susan on Wednesday and told her about Franklin. “I don’t know what to say, Elyse,” Susan said after an audible gasp. “I’m glad to know that Franklin came through it okay, of course. I just wish I’d known sooner. I would have, I don’t know, made dinner for your family or something.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Susan. Franklin isn’t ready to tell a lot of people about his illness, but I did call Pat last week, as soon as I found out. I just felt so overwhelmed. I had to confide in somebody. I knew Pat would tell Grace, and I felt you should know, too.” Elyse hoped Susan wouldn’t feel left out, but the truth was that she’d always felt closest to Pat.

  “I appreciate it.” Susan sighed. “You know, Elyse, you and I really should see more of each other. We live closer to each other than we do to Pat and Grace. Of course, with everything that’s going on, I realize this isn’t a good time for us to start being girlfriends, but surely there’s something I can do to help. Just tell me what I can do.”

  “I think I’ve got everything covered. Franklin will be in the hospital at least until next Thursday or Friday. I’m off today, and I’ll be going down to see him as soon as I’m off the phone. The kids will see him this evening, and then again in the morning before they go back to school. They’ll be back on Saturday. They’re getting ready for their final exams.”

  “Are you off the rest of the week?”

  “No, just today. I’ll be working a light schedule for now, so I can see Franklin in the mornings and again after work. They’ll release him to the skilled nursing center where I work in Evanston.”

  “Will you be his physical therapist?” To Susan that sounded like a surgeon operating on his or her spouse.

  “No, that wouldn’t work. But at least I won’t be far away and I can speak with his therapist about his progress. He’ll get daily strength training for about a week, two sessions a day. If all goes well he should be back at home by the following weekend.”

  “It sounds like he’s had a very intense procedure.”

  “He did. They took out the head of his pancreas, half of his stomach, his gallbladder, some lymph nodes, and part of his digestive tract. It took over seven hours. Some patients don’t even survive it.”

  “Oh, Elyse.” The distress Susan felt carried into her tone. “How will you manage when he comes home?”

  “It depends. I’ve thought about hiring a home health aide to care for him, but patients aren’t released from rehab until they can manage their daily activities on their own. Still, I hate to think of him being home alone.”

  “Won’t Todd and Brontë be finished with their exams by then?”

  “Yes, but they both have jobs lined up for the summer, and I don’t want to ask them to give them up. The sticky part will be trying to convince Franklin that he needs someone to help him. I know my husband, and he can be awfully stubborn.”

  “Do you think he’s worried about the cost?”

  “No. There’s no need to. We carry supplemental insurance to help with lost income due to illness or accident. That kicked in the moment of Franklin’s diagnosis, even though we don’t really need it now. I spoke to the benefits specialist at his job and found out that Franklin will collect a full paycheck for up to twelve weeks. Plus, he’d bought another policy for home care so that we won’t go broke if either of us ever needs a home health care aide. So it’s definitely not the money. It’s more of a pride thing.”

  “It’s hard, especially for men, to be ill,” Susan remarked.

  “He’s not going to be an easy patient. I wanted to take more time off, but Franklin insisted that he doesn’t want me hovering around him like a mama bear. He wants things to be as normal as possible.”

  Susan nodded. She, too, had hoped for a return to normalcy after her lumpectomy, but her marriage never recovered. “I understand. But promise you’ll call me if you need anything.”

  “I will. Maybe we can have lunch or something, like Kevin and I are going to do on Friday.”

  “Kevin Nash? You’ve spoken to him?” Susan didn’t hide her surprise.

  “I haven’t actually spoken to him, but he dropped me an e-mail while I was waiting for Pat to respond. She didn’t call me back right away. It turns out she was getting ready to go out o
f town for the weekend, but I didn’t know that at the time. When she didn’t call back I tried e-mailing her. In the meantime, there was Kevin’s note. By this time I was about to bust from holding everything in, so I told him about Franklin. I e-mailed him last night to let him know everything went well, and he suggested we have lunch together. He said it might take some of the stress off. He works in Evanston like me, so it’s convenient. Maybe you and I can do the same next week.”

  “Sure.”

  After they finished talking, Susan wondered how wise it was of Elyse to lunch with a handsome and virile man like Kevin Nash when Franklin would be at his weakest.

  Matters between her and Bruce had barely improved over the last few weeks, since her efforts to regain his physical interest in her had gone so horribly wrong. She’d slept most of that disastrous Saturday night in their spare room, arising shortly after dawn and returning to their bed before Quentin and Alyssa got up. Relations between them were civil but not much else. She kept telling herself it would still be wrong to reach out to Charles Valentine. She was married to Bruce, and she didn’t believe in cheating.

  But she was desperately unhappy. She felt like she was going through each day with a twenty-pound weight around her neck.

  Saturday night she and Bruce made love—no, that wasn’t the right definition of what they’d done. They’d had sex, with him pushing her nightgown up to her waist and gripping her hips, satisfying himself and, much as she hated to admit it, giving her some degree of pleasure in the most basic of ways. As always since her surgery, he ignored her breasts, even the one that had been unaffected. Once more she hoped he would come around, perhaps give them a little squeeze through her nightgown; or, even afterward, grasp them in his sleep like he used to do. Once more she’d been disappointed, and she fell asleep with tears in her eyes.

  Her oncologist had offered her a referral to a plastic surgeon to correct the shape of her right breast, but Susan thought the best action would be to let it be. The last thing she wanted was to undergo another surgical procedure, no matter how minor. Besides, she wasn’t sure it was such a hot idea to remove the evidence of what she’d gone through. She almost liked having that small physical imperfection to remind her daily that her future was by no means guaranteed. Having cancer changed her entire outlook. She learned to view life in six-month increments, like the six-month follow-up she’d had recently, after which she was given a clean bill of health. No more planning for what she would do next year or the year after that; not until she had a damn good idea that she’d still be around. She would never be the same or feel the same . . . so why should she look the same?

  She wished Bruce would understand that, or that he’d even talk to her about it. His face showed no revulsion the first time he saw the breast with the bandage removed and the little cone protruding from the side.

  She could still see the relief on his face, could still hear him say, “Thank God you’re all right, Susan. I’d be lost if anything happened to you.”

  She remembered how anxious she’d been that day, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. There’d been no hints of the change in his demeanor that lay just ahead, once his relief that she would survive began to wear off.

  At first she’d been sure it would pass, but eight months had gone by with more of the same. And it was eating her up inside. Susan wanted—hell, she deserved—full and complete happiness, not just a placid, empty existence for the benefit of their children.

  She thought about how Elyse, whose husband’s illness seemed much more pressing than her own, had reached out to friends, including one who happened to be a man, for support. Because when you were feeling lost and alone, it didn’t really matter where your support came from, did it?—as long as it was genuine and heartfelt.

  Susan considered that maybe she’d been suffering silently long enough.

  She reached for her wallet and pulled out the folded paper on which Charles Valentine had written his number. Then she pulled out her cell phone.

  Chapter 27

  Mid-May

  Chicago

  Susan sat in her parked car, asking herself what the hell she was doing. She’d just lied to Bruce, telling him she was going to spend the afternoon with Elyse in the wake of Franklin’s illness. In truth, she’d just had lunch with Elyse yesterday, returning to Pleasant Prairie in time to pick up Quentin and Alyssa from school.

  She believed in marriage. Her own parents’ union was a disaster, but the culprit had been alcohol abuse, not infidelity. In her heart, she didn’t want to do anything dishonorable. She wasn’t even sure she could.

  But she’d always been able to confide her deepest thoughts to Charles, and she really needed to talk to someone about the situation with Bruce. She didn’t want to see a counselor, not solo. Bruce had ruled that out. What could a psychologist possibly tell her when her husband wouldn’t even come with her? She didn’t need to pay someone big bucks for that person to tell her that Bruce was the one who needed help dealing with her illness.

  As far as nonprofessionals, Susan didn’t want to talk about her unhappiness to her mother, either. Frances McMillan, in Susan’s opinion, had weathered more than her share of stressful situations in her lifetime: a difficult interracial marriage long before such unions became common, single parenthood, and most recently, the death of her second husband from a sudden heart attack. Susan didn’t want her mother’s twilight years filled with worry about her firstborn. Frances did worry about Susan’s health, but Susan knew that Frances took comfort knowing that at least Susan had a strong marriage, because Frances had said as much on more than one occasion. Susan couldn’t bring herself to take away her mother’s peace of mind by telling her the truth.

  Then there was her sister. Sherry had decided early on that white was, if not right, at least better. She caught the eye of a good-looking finance major while at UIC and held on to him. Today he was a fund manager at a big brokerage firm, and they lived in Lake Forest, not far from Elyse. Sherry had taken off more than a dozen years to raise their children, but had returned to teaching at a private academy in town. While Sherry’s husband and children knew about her mixed racial background, Susan doubted they ran around telling anyone about their black grandmother. Sherry’s preference to downplay her biracial heritage had long been a source of friction between the sisters.

  Susan understood why Franklin had been against telling anyone outside of the immediate family about his illness. People looked at you differently when they knew you were sick. Franklin would probably be mad as hell if he knew Elyse had told at least four people—Pat, Grace, Kevin, and her—about his condition. Susan had asked Bruce not to disclose her diagnosis to anyone, and as far as she knew he hadn’t. When her neighbors asked what was wrong, or if she’d been hospitalized for anything serious, she just shrugged and said she was fine.

  She also understood that women tended to be less stoic than men. Women needed to share their concerns and needed to know they could trust their friends. Men seemed to be better equipped to keep their worries to themselves. Susan knew that Elyse and Pat would be sympathetic to her, but despite their best intentions they would feel sorry for her . . . a reaction she couldn’t bear.

  Grace was a different story. Ever since Grace had been a little girl, she’d always had a way of downplaying the good fortune of others and emphasizing their hard luck. It still annoyed her when, after Christmas the year they turned twelve, Grace had pointed out that the bottom of her new maxicoat had gotten all wet from a puddle. Grace made no secret of the fact that she wanted one of the new-style coats for Christmas, and her disappointment at not getting one was only compounded when Susan came outside for the first time wearing the one she’d just received. Grace sounded absolutely thrilled when she pointed out how dirty street water was. Susan could tell that Grace hoped her coat was ruined. It wasn’t, of course, but from that day on Susan looked at Grace with a certain degree of mistrust. Years later, when a trusted friend shared something she’d onc
e seen, it only added to Grace’s wariness.

  Grace didn’t like it when anyone had something she didn’t. When the girls had come to see her and baby Alyssa, in the midst of oohs and aahs from Pat and Elyse, Grace managed to point out two downbeat facts: one, how difficult it must be for older mothers to lose pregnancy weight, and two, that it was practically impossible for women to get back into the workplace after taking off years to raise children. Susan knew that a lot of Grace’s negativity stemmed from the recent bust-up of her second marriage. She was past forty and alone, and eligible men of the right age were hard to find.

  At the time Susan merely laughed it off. She and Bruce were in love, their family was now complete with the birth of their daughter, and things couldn’t be better. Let Grace sulk if she wanted to. Susan knew Grace would trade places with her in a second if she could.

  Just like Grace had tried to take her place years ago, right after Susan broke up with Douglas Valentine. Not that that mattered anymore. Susan knew that it really hadn’t mattered when it happened, even though Grace’s haste to grab Douglas right after Susan broke up with him did have her reeling. Grace didn’t know that Susan had found out about that fling with Douglas, and she had no intention of ever telling her.

  Susan knew nothing had changed with the passing years. She’d barely been in Grace’s company for fifteen minutes at the luncheon when Grace made that completely unnecessary comment about Pat never marrying, just to make herself feel better about not having a man in her life. Grace wasn’t the type of person you’d want around in a time of crisis. She came off about as genuine as a McRib sandwich when it came to the problems of others.