“Yeah, okay. My brilliant little brother. Listen, Sherlock, I need the phone now. Not next Easter.”
He’s as good as his word. And even though it’s a Tuesday and free minutes don’t start until seven o’clock, I call Meredith. She’s still sick too, home from school. Her mom’s at work. After she makes me promise to call back, I hang up and count to 120 so it’s after seven. We talk for half an hour and then Mom the warden comes in and makes me say goodbye.
After she settles me back in Nick’s bunk with covers and all, she tests my forehead with the back of her hand. “I guess Meredith’s more than a friend?”
I can’t help the grin.
“Her mother and I bumped into each other at the library. She said the girls might go to their father’s house for Thanksgiving this year. Apparently they switch on and off.”
“Meredith hasn’t even mentioned her father.”
“That’s sad.”
Truly. How much is there I don’t know about her? It’s even more sad than Holden holed up in Phoebe’s room, whispering because he hopes his parents don’t come up and give him grief about being kicked out of Pencey. He doesn’t even realize that having a father to give you grief is way better than not having one at all.
Mom rearranges the covers and shuts the blinds. “One more nap and you may feel like some dinner tonight.”
I wait until she’s gone, then I bring out the phone from under the covers—she’s forgotten all about it—and call Meredith.
She answers. “Daniel.”
“I forgot to tell you something.”
She doesn’t ask what or even giggle. This girl is so awesome.
“I hope this doesn’t spoil it, the phone and all, and not being able to see your eyes, but I just can’t wait any longer.”
At her end I can hear her breathing, maybe a little gasp, maybe holding her breath for whatever the surprise is. My imagination has her in cream-colored pajamas with cobalt blue piping, the kind of pajama top that looks like a man’s shirt and buttons down the front. Straight out of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. A couple of buttons are undone and those bones—the bones on either side of her neck—are showing. I know those bones. I like those bones.
Now, with the hesitation, the buildup is huge. I don’t want to choke on this. How can she not know I’m serious?
“I love you.” And when she only breathes, I add, “I guess you already knew that.”
“I did,” she says.
So, it’s official. I can go back to sleep.
Without even arguing, Mom concedes visits from Meredith and Mack are important for my mental health. Sometimes they come together and we play Hearts or Risk or watch a movie. And sometimes Mack rows Meredith over and leaves us alone. Not alone, alone. Dad’s there editing in the back cabin. I know he remembers what it was like being sixteen and in love because he always makes a huge amount of noise on the deck before he comes in the front cabin. I’m not allowed to take Meredith into the bunk room—that’s one of Mom’s rules. Too late, I want to say, but it’s a secret I enjoy hoarding. Meredith does too.
Her visits are random. She likes to surprise me. Since my swallowing problem makes it hurt to talk, she brings things to read to me. No mushy poetry. I didn’t even have to say anything. She’s so incredibly awesome she wouldn’t like it either. Newsweek articles or the school newspaper. She reads some from a book about Africa by a woman pilot named Beryl Markham. A woman pioneer: that’s one of the attractions for Meredith. The more she reads, the clearer it is why she picked this story. Markham went where no other woman had gone, where not many other pilots had gone. It’s the future of the world Meredith’s reading to me from way back then. Too cool.
While she reads, I usually close my eyes. I can hear better. I hear her hand smoothing the page, that light brush of skin to paper, and it takes me back to our one perfect night.
“What are you doing?” she asks, like about the second time she’s reading from West with the Night.
I open my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Your right hand. You’re rubbing your blue jeans, there on your leg.”
It’s hard to describe how it feels to have the person you love so close, her voice all around you in this warm enclosed space, and not be able to lie next to her and let her skin melt into yours. I haven’t forgotten one second of that night. I dream it all the time. But it comes back to me most clearly when she’s here, talking, her voice tunneling into my subconscious or whatever. Thank you, Doc Freud. I’m agonizing over how to explain to her how I feel without sounding truly ridiculous, one big teenage cliché. But it’s not.
The worry lines collect around her eyes. “Why are you doing that? Does it hurt?”
I hear that same hint of panic that is a constant when my mother talks.
“No. I’m just remembering. That night.”
It’s only a second that she hesitates, her eyes widening, and then she looks back at the book and begins to read again. She’s blushing.
I can’t lie. We do spend a lot of time kissing. Once I’m over the flu and I’m mobile again. All of a sudden on her visits she wears loose T-shirts and never a bra so we don’t have to waste time with all that fumbling. I’d love to know how those guys in the movies do it so smoothly. It wasn’t my idea about no underwear, but it helps.
Mom explains in laborious detail to Meredith that I may be contagious with things they don’t even know about. After that warning, I tell Meredith we can’t kiss anymore. She has seventy years ahead of her. But when she threatens not to come back, I know I can’t live with that.
She argues. “Fine, then. I’ll have to date Leonard. Maybe he was right about you.”
“Why, what did the creep say?”
“It was a joke. God, Daniel, lighten up.”
“Please don’t be mad. This is new to me, too. Can’t we talk about it?”
“Talk is cheap. I don’t want a boyfriend who doesn’t want to kiss me.”
“I never said I didn’t want to.”
“Well, then. That’s settled. Shut up.” She sits on my lap and convinces me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After the flu episode, when I discover that I still can’t swallow, Dad panics and insists on taking me back to the doctor. Although Mom tries to argue with him that Miss T. can handle this, he won’t back down, so I spend two nights at MCV. It’s a zoo.
MCV is supposedly a clinic. Associated with a medical school—heck, named for the school—and smack in the middle of downtown Richmond, the hospital has a constant stream of patients funneled in from its emergency room. A kid with leukemia might be in line behind a two-year-old with third-degree burns from being held in scalding bathwater or behind a husband whose wife just escaped by hitting him over the head with a frying pan. It’s a city. And they say it’s the city with the highest murder rate in the U.S.
But MCV is a hospital even Mom can live with. Like the Statue of Liberty it takes anyone and everyone. Very democratic, she says. The docs in training—they’re called residents because they live there around the clock—treat the patients. They tell the docs what’s what and not the other way around. Okay by me since I’ve read the Internet articles on AML and it’s obvious no one really knows a damn thing about the stuff. I’m not holding out much hope anyway.
Once they release me, we wait for the results. And we wait. Incredible that with a life-threatening illness, the test results from the lab can take a week or longer. I still can’t swallow, which means I can’t eat, which means I’m not getting all those vitamins and minerals that make strong bones and feed brain cells. Mom’s livid and leaves nasty messages for the doctor every day. I dream about the food pyramid from kindergarten, solid food in all the food groups. Red meat, oranges, cheese, even Brussels sprouts. Just the thought of another milk shake is starting to make me woozy.