That Birthday in Barbados

by Inglath Cooper

  “I’d have a lot more friends though.”

  “You have me.”

  “And I need to do a better job of showing how much I appreciate that.”

  “You show it. I liked my last bonus.”

  “Mercenary.”

  “Hey, a guy’s gotta eat.”

  “You do eat well.”

  “So what’d you do last night? Blow out your candles alone?”

  “I didn’t have any candles.”

  “No one should spend their fortieth by themselves.”

  “Actually . . . I didn’t.”

  He sits up in the desk chair. “You didn’t?”

  “I went out to dinner.”

  “With someone you met there?”

  I shrug, nod once.

  “Well, all right. It’s about time.”

  “Oh, don’t get too excited. After I got drunk and made a fool of myself on the beach, I’m sure he’ll do his best to avoid me.”

  “I’ve never seen you drunk. Are you a fun drunk or a mean drunk?”

  “A sloppy drunk, I’m afraid.”

  “Sloppy can be fun,” he says.

  “Or just plain embarrassing.”

  “I’m glad you decided to take this trip, Cat. It’s definitely time to see what else is out there for you. Life needs to go on.”

  “He was just being nice because it was my birthday.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” He hesitates, and I can see there’s something he wants to say.

  “What is it, James?”

  “Your sister called yesterday and tried to get me to tell her where you are. Of course I didn’t know at the time so I couldn’t tell her, but she seemed upset. And very much wanted to talk to you.”

  “Did she say why?”

  James shakes his head. “And I would ask where you are, but if you don’t tell me, I can’t accidentally let it slip.”

  “Should I come back?” The question is out before I realize I even intended to ask it.

  “No,” he says immediately. “We got this here for now. You do some you time. It’s long overdue. If anything catastrophic looks like it’s going to happen, I’ll be the first to call you.”

  Part of me wants to protest, insist that I should just get back to real life because we both know this isn’t me. Even so, I don’t want to leave just yet. Something about this place makes me want to forget about the life I’ve made in New York and the never-ceasing demands of an always hungry to grow business.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll leave my phone on for the rest of the trip.”

  “That much I will ask of you. I’ve been in a state of panic.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just unwind and come back to us revved up and revived.”

  I smile, even as my stomach dips at the thought of the workload that will be waiting for me. “Tall order. I’ll try.”

  We click off, and I’m newly grateful for my assistant and his loyalty. We genuinely like each other, and I think we would even if we didn’t have a working relationship.

  I glance at the clock on the nightstand. Too late to opt in for spin even if I could find the courage to face Anders.

  A run is what I need. A good sweat and something to focus on aside from my stinging conscience.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Did I do that?”

  ― Steve Urkel

  Anders

  I’M JUST LEAVING the spa still dressed in my workout clothes when I spot Catherine headed up the driveway away from the hotel. She’s running at an impressive pace, given the fact that I’m pretty sure she has to have a banger of a headache this morning.

  I take off jogging in the same direction, not wanting to look like I’m chasing her. She’s passed the gatehouse at the main entrance and crossed the road to the residential street that winds up past the tennis courts by the time I catch her. I call her name, but she keeps going. I jog up beside her, tapping her on the shoulder when I realize she has headphones in and hasn’t heard me.

  She jumps and screams. “You scared me!” she says, a hand over her heart.

  “Sorry,” I say, holding up two hands in peace.

  She bends, grabs her knees and pulls in air. When she straightens, she shakes her head and says, “If you’d been a bus, I’d be dead.”

  I laugh. “That might be true. I thought you’d go back to bed.”

  “Yeah. That. I chose self-recrimination and sweat detox as more deserving options.”

  “Hey. It was your birthday.”

  She lets herself meet eyes with me then. “It was fun. Thank you. I’m just sorry I-”

  I reach out a hand, touch her shoulder. “There’s nothing you need to be sorry for.”

  “Not even the terrible dancing?”

  “No.”

  “Assaulting you on the beach?”

  “That was actually kind of fun.”

  The red in her cheeks darkens. “The counseling session where I drowned you in my romantic history?”

  “Nope. Don’t need to be sorry for that either.”

  “Thanks,” she says again, obviously embarrassed. She hesitates, holds my gaze for a few beats, and then, “Would you be up for finishing this run with me?”

  “Matter of fact, I’m all warmed up,” I say, taking off up the hill at a sprint.

  “Hey! No fair!” she calls out. “And why aren’t you hung over?”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  “You don’t look like it,” she says, puffing between words.

  I slow my pace, let her catch up. “There are some incredible houses along here.”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “Just stating the obvious.”

  “Okay. Here’s another obvious for you. I don’t think I’m going to make it up this hill, beautiful houses or not.”

  I reach out, grab her hand and forge ahead. “Come on. No quitting now. You’ve still got that English buffet to earn.”

  “Oh. Don’t mention food, please.”

  “Missed you in spin.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to throw up before we’re done here. I don’t think the class would have appreciated that.”

  “You may have a point there.”

  The road flattens for a short stretch. “Oh, thank goodness,” she says, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “The view at the top will be worth it. I promise.”

  “Can we walk?”

  “No. You’ll thank me once you’ve reached your goal.”

  “Who says I had a goal?”

  I laugh, picking up the pace again. “Come on. No talking until we get to the top. Focus on your breath.”

  “If I’d known you were wearing your trainer hat, I wouldn’t have invited you.”

  “I’m not even going to charge you.”

  “Hah!” The laugh sputters out of her, and suddenly, she’s bolting past me, headed up the next hill.

  “Hey, wait for me!”

  She laughs, but runs on as if I’m chasing her. I let her keep the lead because it seems like good motivation for her.

  And it isn’t until we reach the top where a view of the ocean sails out before us that she does exactly as she had predicted: drops to her knees and promptly throws up.

  *

  SHE IS MORTIFIED.

  I’m pretty sure she’d like to make a rope of my sympathetic reassurances and hang me with it. A few minutes pass while she takes in air and regains her composure.

  “Am I destined to humiliate myself in front of you?” she finally asks.

  “Don’t waste any energy worrying about that. I’ve paid the price for over indulgence more times than I’d care to admit.”

  “I’ve never done this. Ever.”

  “Then you were overdue. Everyone needs to lose control once in a while.”

  “Why?” she asks, leaning back to look at me with an incredulous stare.

  “Be
cause what control freaks fear most is losing control.”

  “How do you know I’m a control freak?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She’d like to deny it. The evidence is there on her face, the struggle between making an argument to the contrary and the realization that she’s already given me plenty of evidence to support my assertion.

  She shrugs. “Not that it does any good being one. Trying to control life is like trying to hold water in your hands. There’s only so much that will fit in your palm. The rest is just going to leak out.”

  “Come on. Let’s walk. Don’t want to cramp up.”

  “More discomfort at this point really won’t make a difference.”

  I put a loose arm around her shoulders and nudge her forward. “Yeah. It will.” We walk a couple of hundred yards before I say, “So you’re looking at a reformed control freak.”

  “You?” she asks, the doubt clear in her voice.

  “I look way too laid back, right?”

  “Well . . . yeah. Control freaks don’t usually walk away from things like Wall Street.”

  “No. They don’t. I was a perfectionist. Had to make straight A’s in school. Graduate at the top of my class. Be among the top hires.”

  “That’s great, isn’t it? Impressive anyway.”

  “Yeah, if you actually appreciate yourself for those accomplishments. I couldn’t do that because I was always looking for the thing I hadn’t yet done and defining myself by that.”

  She’s quiet, and I have to wonder if she’s recognizing herself in what I’ve just said. “A counselor once told me the need to control is really about perfectionism and the inability to accept uncertainty. Do you agree with that?”

  I glance out at the ocean to our right, stare at it for a few moments before I say, “I grew up in foster care, not knowing whether I would be in a different home from one week to another. And I guess my trying to create a life as perfect as I could make it was all about denying uncertainty.”

  “Oh. Anders. I didn’t mean to pry-”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “My mom was a teenager when she had me. Motherhood proved too hard at that point. She left me alone overnight when I was three and the state took me away from her.”

  She looks horrified. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrug. “That was part of my life. I can’t deny it. I guess I’ve finally gotten to a place of accepting that all of that has made me who I am today. A man who accepts that there’s little in this world that’s for certain. At some point, I decided to take each day as it comes and try not to mold it in my image.”

  She stops, folds her arms across her chest and stares out at the ocean far below. “Do you ever see your mother?”

  “She died when I was seven. I never knew who my dad was.”

  She looks at me, holds my gaze for several long moments. “That’s an awful lot of uncertainty.”

  “It was. I tried to outrun it by trying to prove that the bad stuff can’t touch you if you’re perfect enough.”

  “I know what you had to do to get a job with that firm on Wall Street. After all that, you just found the courage to walk away?”

  “There’s a little more to it,” I say.

  “What?” she asks, caution entering her voice.

  “We’ll save that for another day,” I determine, suddenly certain I do not want to change the way she sees me. Because I know that if I tell her the truth, she will not look at me the same. And I’m not ready for that yet. I suppose it’s inevitable, but I don’t want to see that look in her eyes. Not yet.

  *

  Four years ago

  ONCE PEOPLE REALIZE you have cancer, they don’t look at you the same. It’s not that I blame them or don’t understand the reaction. I do. If I’m honest, I can admit I’ve had the same feelings myself. Pity. Empathy. And there’s fear too. Maybe all us are so afraid of getting it that on some level we’re afraid it’s contagious.

  When someone looks the way I look now, it is an understandable fear. I am the poster boy for what cancer does to a human body.

  I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and realize I have given up on the only hope I’ve been given. Six weeks ago, I knew nothing about cancer. Nothing about treatment options other than the most obvious facts known to the public. What I know now is that conventional treatment will not be for me.

  I go into my small living room that has not seen the touch of a decorator and is bare in the way of a place more passed through than lived in. A desk sits by the window that overlooks a busy Manhattan street. My laptop sits in the center, and I realize I haven’t touched it in weeks.

  For the first week of chemo, I went to work after the session. But as the nausea kicked in, and I was spending more time going to the bathroom to throw up, it became obvious there was little point to my being there. And so, I asked my manager for some time off. I couldn’t give him any idea of how much time. I didn’t know myself. I realize now I am never going back to that office.

  I stand next to the chair beside the desk, study the people walking by below, joggers weaving their way down the sidewalk. A wave of weakness hits me, and I sink onto the chair, wondering if my body is telling me it is time to give up.

  Some part of me wants to. I’m shocked by the thought. Two months ago, I would never have believed I could even think it. But it feels like the easy way. The road that won’t require more struggle to find the will to fight. I glance at the bed visible through the bedroom door and wonder if I should just lie down and wait for death to take me. Stop eating. Stop drinking. Let the inevitable hurry toward me. Is that so unreasonable if that is where I will end up, anyway?

  If there is an actual bottom for a person to hit, I realize that I am there. There is nowhere to look but up.

  I reach out and lift the lid to my laptop. The screen lights up. Facebook is the window I’d last had open in the browser. I stare at the page, and I don’t have the heart to scroll down the feed and see the undeniable evidence that the world is already going on without me. Birthdays being celebrated. New babies being born. Dogs being adored by their people.

  As the wireless signal registers, the page refreshes, and a new post pops up in the feed. It’s a picture of an infinity pool with a person standing at its edge. The water looks so inviting that I am captivated by it. I glance at the type on the picture and then read it. Where Hope Lives. The words settle for a moment, and I click on the photo. It takes me to the home page. Sanoviv Medical Institute. Curious, I read the recommendations of people who had been there. I quickly realize I’m reading about people like me, people on the verge of giving up. Who did not want to go the normal route of conventional medicine.

  I click over to the website and read further. And for the next two hours, I lose myself in reading every piece of information available on the website and then I read every review and testimonial I can find.

  By the time I sit back and close my laptop, I know that I am going to this place. I have absolutely nothing to lose.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.”

  ― Louise Gluck

  Nicole

  Twenty-eight years ago

  SHE CAN SEE that Catherine is going to have breasts before she does.

  They’re at Camp Wagamucha in North Carolina for a four-week stay away from home, the first time their parents let them go for this long. Their original intention had been to let only Catherine go, but Nicole had begged until they couldn’t stand hearing her ask one more time and finally said, okay, you can go too.

  The Camp Wagamucha T-shirt is the clue to Nicole’s observation. Catherine’s once flat-as-a-pancake chest is no longer flat at all, and the T-shirt does little to conceal the small but notable buds(they’d learned in health class that’s what they were called ooh gross).

  Even though she finds the whole idea nauseating in the same way she feels after eating too much popcorn at the movies, she still knows a pang of jealousy.
She’s only ten. Catherine is twelve, and Nicole can only begin to guess at all the things Catherine will start to want to do without her.

  She really doesn’t have any idea what those things will be but just the thought terrifies her. For as long as she can remember, as far back as her memory goes, she and Catherine do everything together. Where Catherine leads, Nicole follows. Their Grandpa’s nickname for them was Pete and Repete. If it was good enough for Catherine to do, Nicole did not need to question it.

  Sitting here now on the sandy beach made for the camp on Lake Wagamucha, Nicole would like to burn the eyes out of Johnny Atkins. He’s been staring at Catherine’s chest for the entire ten minutes they’ve been waiting for their canoes to be brought over from the storage dock. Or most of it anyway. And somehow, even though she doesn’t think Catherine has noticed yet, she has a feeling she will like Johnny’s attention when she does become aware of it.

  Nicole steps in front of Catherine, blocking Johnny’s view. “I want to ride with you, Cat,” she says.

  Catherine glances around, as if to make sure no friends have heard Nicole’s heartfelt plea. “Don’t you want to ride with Sarah and Penny?” she asks, her gaze skipping to Johnny. And it’s then that Nicole knows she has been wrong. Catherine has noticed Johnny looking at her, and she’s hoping he’ll ask to ride with her in the canoe.

  Nicole clutches her stomach and puts on her most pained expression. “My stomach hurts, Cat.”

  Catherine fails to hide the flash of irritation, but it is quickly replaced by concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It just hurts.”

  “Did you eat something you shouldn’t have? I saw that gigantic box of Milk Duds under your pillow.”

  Nicole shakes her head. “I didn’t eat any this morning.”

  “Where does it hurt?”

  Nicole isn’t sure which spot will be the most convincing, but she remembers Ellen Summers had her appendix out last year, and she’d told Nicole her right side hurt like heck. So Nicole puts a hand on her right side. “Here.”

  Catherine nods and then considers the information. She puts a hand on Nicole’s forehead the way their mom does when they’re getting sick. “You don’t feel hot.”