“What exactly did she tell you about her condition, the reason for this surgery today?” she asked, whipping and snapping her consonants and vowels.
“I told you. She said she had a small cyst and had to have a hysterectomy and . . .”
“C’mon,” she said, jerking her head toward the hospital entrance. “There’s a little coffee shop just down the street. This is going to take some time yet, maybe a lot more time.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
She glanced at me as if I had asked a stupid question and started out. I leaped up to follow.
“What did those nurses tell you?” I asked, catching up to her at the door.
“You were right to be suspicious. It is more serious than she’s told you. She’s having a radical hysterectomy, M.” She paused. “I know a little too much about it. One of my regulars just happens to be a surgeon, not working here in the city but a surgeon nevertheless.”
“What does that mean? What are you saying?”
She kept walking. I was practically jogging to keep up with her.
“What are you saying?”
She paused. “She doesn’t simply have a precancerous cyst or something. She has cervical cancer. The operation in a radical hysterectomy is quite a bit more involved. Let’s go in here,” she said, nodding at a coffee shop. As soon as we entered, she asked me what I wanted.
“Nothing,” I said, impatient to hear more.
“I’m having a latte. Nonfat. I’ll get you one, too,” she said, and ordered at the counter. Then she led me to a table.
“What does this mean?”
“They remove the uterus, the cervix, the top part of the vagina, ovaries, fallopian tubes, lymph nodes, lymph channels, and tissues in the pelvic cavity that surrounds the cervix. That’s why I said she’ll be in there a while.”
“A doctor client told you all this?”
“After I asked him. Someone I knew had contracted cervical cancer, too, and he described what was going to be done. At the time, it was a lot more information than I wanted, but he was not a very emotional man. He treated everything like an operation, and I mean everything,” she added, raising her eyebrows in an obvious reference to sex. “Anyway, I was close to this friend, so I wanted to know what to expect.”
“How did it all go?”
“She lasted for about six months afterward, but she was a lot younger than your mother.”
“She’s your mother, too!” I practically screamed.
Roxy barely smirked. She looked away and then turned back, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she put off her own health issues to service the general.”
“What do you mean?”
“Avoided her annuals, whatever. He always came first,” she said as the waitress brought our lattes.
“Can’t you stop hating him for a few minutes?”
She smiled and sipped her latte. “Hating him is what kept me going, M. That was his gift to me. You think it’s easy to leave someone you don’t hate? I kept myself alive thinking I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of failing or dying. It worked. With a little luck, of course.”
“What about Mama?”
“Je suis ici. I’m here, n’est-ce pas? Bien que je préférerais être aileurs. Even though I’d rather be somewhere else,” she translated. I didn’t need it, but I didn’t say so.
“How did you keep up with French?” I didn’t want to tell her about the day Chastity and I had followed her and Chastity had heard her conversing easily in French.
“Someone who helped me a lot after I left home just happened to be French, or should I say ironically was French. She’s technically my boss,” she added. She continued drinking her latte. I sipped some of mine. “Speaking of French, did she call anyone in France about this?”
“No.”
“Just like her not to look to any other family for help,” she said. “She’s still used to having him around, I suppose.”
“She has me,” I said, fixing my eyes squarely on hers.
She smiled. “Tough kid, huh?”
“Yes, I am.”
She laughed.
“I am!”
“Oh, really? What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had, M? A pimple on your chin, a boy you like ignores you, your boobs aren’t big enough?”
“They are, too,” I said, and she laughed again.
Then she paused to study me a little. Whatever it was, it brought another smile to her face.
“What?” I asked.
“That expression on your face reminded me of how upset you would get when he came after me. You did all my crying for me back then. Maybe just because of you, he was less severe.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t an angel, Roxy. There was a lot going on that I was too young to know about back then.”
“He talked about me, did he. Described my sins in detail?”
“Not often.” I didn’t want to stress how forbidden her name had become. “Almost never. Mama told me the most. Then he found out more about you himself. You had a coworker of his as a . . . what do you call them? Clients?”
“Get to the point.”
“One of Papa’s coworkers called and got you, didn’t he? You picked him up outside the offices, and Daddy saw you in the limousine.”
“How can I forget?” She looked away for a moment and shook her head. “The guy was pathetic. Well, maybe he wasn’t as bad as I made him out to be. I couldn’t help it. Despite myself, I kept thinking about the way he looked at me.”
“Papa?”
“Oui,” she said. “I got bawled out for how that one worked out.” She finished her latte. “Let’s go back. This isn’t going to be easy,” she warned as she stood. “Especially since it’s all coming more or less as a surprise for you.”
“I’ll be all right,” I said.
She smiled softly. “Maybe you will be. You look more like him than I remember.”
I followed her out.
We hadn’t had any heavy snow yet, even though it was early February, but the air felt like snow, cold and wet. Gray clouds had been shifting about all day, as if they had been playing tag with any piece of blue sky. It was finally completely overcast. I hugged myself. I could have worn something warmer, I thought, but clothing wasn’t on my mind that morning.
She looked up. “It’s supposed to snow lightly late today. Mostly flurries.”
I didn’t say anything. The last thing I wanted to talk about was the weather.
“I was planning on getting away for five days. St. Thomas,” she continued. “On someone’s private jet.”
“Planning? What happened?” I asked.
She paused and tightened her lips. “You happened,” she said, and walked on. I hurried after her.
We sat and waited for nearly another two hours before one of the nurses walked over to inform us that Mama’s surgeon, Dr. Hoffman, wanted to see us. During the two hours we had spent together, Roxy hadn’t talked about herself very much, and I hadn’t felt like asking any questions. I was still feeling numb after she had told me what she had learned about Mama.
The nurse explained where we were to go. For the first time, I saw real fear in Roxy’s face. Just for a moment, she looked more like a little girl than I did. Then she either felt it or knew I felt it and tightened up again.
“Gird your loins,” she muttered.
“What’s that mean?”
“Prepare for the worst,” she said, and we turned down a hallway to an office. Dr. Hoffman was seated at a desk. He was still in his operating scrubs but bent over his desk writing. Roxy knocked on the opened door, and he looked up. I hadn’t met him before. Mama had kept everything quite secret and had never taken me with her to see a doctor of any kind.
Dr. Hoffman was stout, about fifty, with dark brown hair that looked as if it had begun what Papa would call a strategic retreat. I always looked at a stranger’s eyes to see if he or she was someone I could like. Dr. Hoffman’s hazel eyes w
ere soft and, I thought, full of compassion.
“Which one of you is Emmie?” he asked.
“I am. This is my sister, Roxy,” I quickly added.
“Oh. She told me only to expect you.”
I could feel Roxy bristle, but why should she be surprised or upset? Mama didn’t expect her. Neither had I.
“Please,” he added, gesturing at the chairs. We sat. “I don’t know how much you two were told.”
“Practically nothing,” Roxy said. “She told my sister she had a cyst.”
He nodded. “Well, we’ll wait for pathology, but regardless, she’ll have to undergo chemo, I’m afraid. She came through the operation fine.”
“Be grateful for the little things,” Roxy muttered loudly enough for him to hear.
“Yes.” He looked at me. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
He smiled. “I have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” he said.
I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, feel comfortable, but Roxy would have nothing of it. “With a healthy mother, I imagine,” she said.
He looked at her. I could see his whole demeanor change. There was going to be no sugarcoating as long as Roxy was there. He was back to being a scientist.
“I can’t give you an exact prognosis yet.”
“What stage is she in?” Roxy demanded.
He looked at me again and then back at her. “She’s stage four.”
“The worst,” Roxy muttered. He nodded. “Did she neglect herself, her symptoms?”
“I’m not her primary,” Dr. Hoffman said. “You’d have to speak to her gynecologist, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions. Everyone’s different.”
“Yes, everyone’s different,” Roxy said dryly.
“We’ll do the best we can. She’ll be here a while,” he told me. “Right now, she’s still in recovery. I’d say give her a few hours before trying to visit. We’ll keep her there a few days before moving her.”
“How long do you give her?” Roxy asked.
His face hardened. I was sure he didn’t like Roxy’s tone. The children of most of his patients were nowhere as cold or as tough and surely didn’t ask such a question so quickly. For a few fleeting seconds, he was probably wondering about the relationships, but I could see he didn’t want to spend any of his time on that. It wasn’t the world he worked in. He looked at me again, obviously deciding whether to be evasive. Something told him that Roxy wouldn’t let him get away with it.
“Fifteen percent at stage four make it to five years,” he replied. “I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“That’s enough. Thank you,” Roxy said, rising.
Dr. Hoffman nodded. I looked up at Roxy. I was feeling a bit dizzy. All of these terrible things had been said so quickly. I think she saw it and reached down to take my arm to get me to my feet. None of it felt real to me. It was as if I were in a dream.
“C’mon, M,” she said.
I glanced at the doctor. I could see his eyes narrow, his face fill with disapproval.
Roxy didn’t speak again until we were almost back to the lobby. “If I didn’t push him, he’d have you believing in Santa Claus,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
She stopped and spun me around. “What don’t you understand, M? Mama might have been sick quite a while. Maybe if she had taken better medical care of herself, it would have made a difference. I don’t know, and neither does he. You see how quickly he came to the defense of another doctor. Everyone’s different, he said. What a catchall for everything.”
“But what was all that about five years?”
She softened. “Where are you going now?”
“Going? I don’t know. Where would I go?”
“Right. Where would you go?” she asked herself. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to see someone. Go home and take a shower or something. Fix yourself up a little. You look too drab. We’ll be back here in two hours and visit her, and then I’ll take you to dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“We’ve got to eat, M, and if you go in to visit her looking so overwhelmed and terrified . . .”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I said sharply.
“Maybe you do. Maybe you’re smarter than I was at your age.” She looked at her watch and said, “I’ll meet you in the lobby again in exactly two hours.”
“Okay.”
She started away. Suddenly, she paused and turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been on my own so long that I forgot what it was like to have someone you cared about and who cared about you. I don’t mean to sound so insensitive.”
She walked on.
That was the nicest thing she had said to me since we had met again, I thought, and I walked after her, but she was going too fast for me to catch up.
When I stepped out of the hospital, she was getting into a cab.
And the flurries she had predicted had begun.
15
I knew the house would be empty when I returned, but despite the brave face I had put on for both Mama and Roxy, I was simply not prepared for the silence and the shadows. Out of habit, I almost shouted, “Mama, I’m home.” For a long moment, I simply stood in the entryway listening. If stillness could be loud, it was deafening there, I thought.
The overcast sky spread thick shadows over the walls and floors. It looked as if a large, solid black cover was being thrown over all of the furniture. It was as if our lives in this home were going to be placed in storage, shut up in vaults that would never be opened. With a vengeance, I began flipping on every possible light and lamp. I would not let the darkness have its way with me. Then I hurried up to my room.
When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I knew Roxy was right. The waiting, the stress of the day, and especially the things Dr. Hoffman had said had drained me of all hope and happiness. I looked like a refugee who had trekked across scene after scene of death and destruction, a young girl without family whom misery had stunned and aged almost overnight.
Show this face to Mama, and you shut down all of her hope, I thought.
I jumped into the shower and then did my hair and put on some makeup. I chose a bright blue dress and some earrings. When I went to put on my watch, I paused and thought of something. I opened my dresser drawer and took out the charm bracelet. It brought a smile to my face. It would surely please Mama to see me wearing it, especially with Roxy right there beside me. I got my nice evening coat from the entryway closet, turned off almost all of the lights, and headed back to the hospital.
I was there before Roxy, but when a good half hour went by, I began to fear that she wouldn’t come. I looked up every time someone entered the hospital. When it was more like an hour, I got up and went to the desk to find out where I should go to see Mama. Before I went into the elevator, I paused and watched the entrance. Roxy didn’t appear. Angry and disgusted, I started for the ICU. I quickly decided that I could not in any way indicate to Mama that Roxy had been there and then failed to show up to visit her. I thought it was better that she didn’t know anything about it.
As it turned out, it almost didn’t matter anyway. Mama was under so much pain medication that she barely realized I was there. I held her hand and talked to her anyway. She smiled at me but closed her eyes.
One of the nurses came over to me and told me not to be upset. “She’s doing fine and will be better company tomorrow,” she said.
I thanked her, but I stayed as long as I could. I was afraid Mama would wake up and not see me or even remember I had been there, even though the nurse assured me that she would tell her. The whole time I was there, I still expected Roxy would show up, but she never appeared. Finally, I kissed Mama and whispered, “I’ll be back in the morning, Mama. I love you.”
When I returned to the lobby, I saw that the flurries had become a real snowfall. I stood there for a while just looking at it. The flakes were tiny jeweled butterflies surprised by car headlights. They s
eemed to flee into whatever pockets of darkness they could find, afraid that the light would melt them quicker and their short lives would be that much shorter.
When we are children, everything around us seems alive. We imagine trees and rocks, grass and flowers all have feelings and emotions. Precious possessions certainly do. My charm bracelet looked sad, even a little embarrassed, on my wrist now. I unclipped it quickly and put it in my purse. Whatever feeling my sister had for me when she gave it to me years ago and whatever feelings I had whenever I looked at it afterward were as brittle and dead as an old leaf decomposing between the pages of a book.
Where do memories go when we forget them? I wondered. Do they evaporate and disappear like smoke or crumble into dust and scatter in the wind? Where had Roxy put all her memories? Was she able to crush them or set them on fire with her anger? Was that why she didn’t come back? Were her memories resurrected, haunting her and punishing her for forgetting them?
Who was really stronger now, she or I? I recalled how quickly she had left me and hailed a taxicab. Maybe she was the one fleeing; maybe she was the one who wasn’t tough enough to face all of this despite the hard persona she had presented to the doctor. If I ever saw her again, I would tell her that, too.
I buttoned up my coat. An elderly man with hair the color of unpolished silverware stepped up beside me and made a clicking sound with his lips. He was about my height and wore a heavy winter jacket.
“We’re in for it now,” he muttered. “Look at it come down. It’s the kind that sticks.”
I didn’t say anything.
He glanced at me and nodded. “Better button up,” he said. He started out, paused, and then walked as quickly as he could, his hands up around his neck as if he didn’t want a single flake to touch his skin.
I followed him out.
Forbidden Sister Page 17
