She leaves then because I’m crying like a professional mourner in those old timey movies. She probably thinks, What a loser.
The next morning Mr. McIntyre and Bethany are not at breakfast. I knock on the women’s dormitory door on my way to treatment. No answer. I ask a passing nurse and she says, “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Please, I’m worried about her. She’s not trying to get better.”
“The doctor felt she’d had enough. Her parents agreed.”
At least that is good news. Her parents gave up their war long enough to listen to Bethany.
When my mother asks about the McIntyres at lunch, Director Jenkins simply shakes his head. “That is not public information. Suffice it to say, she’s on her way home.” When he beams, I feel sick to my stomach, but, for a change, it has nothing to do with the leukemia.
On Wednesday, my last day of treatment, Mr. Hovenfelt isn’t in the treatment room with me.
“Where’s Mr. Hovenfelt?” I ask Tomao, my nurse.
“He’s gone,” says Tomao. “They ship him out yesterday.”
“He’s cured?” I ask.
Tomao looks confused and I scramble to think of the Spanish word.
“He’s dead,” says Tomao. “Died happy. In his sleep.”
Here is another thing I can’t share with my mother, who waits so patiently in the Mexican sunshine for me to get well.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The D.C. airport looks great to me. So many different faces: white, black, Asian, Slavic. If I survive, I’m never going back to Mexico.
Out of the clumps of families waiting by the cordoned area outside the international arrivals gate, a girl in a blue coat runs straight at my wheelchair. Meredith. The airline has insisted on the wheelchair because one of the flight attendants overheard Mom talking about my trip to see “Doctor Jenkins.” Before I know it, Meredith’s wrapped herself around me, practically sitting in my lap.
Joe gives me the thumbs-up across the barrier. Nick’s watching wide-eyed. Dad winks at Mom who may have missed it because she’s staring at Meredith. I can’t not kiss her. When I do, the whole room cheers. It’s pretty embarrassing, but okay in a way. Meredith whispers in my ear, “You’ll never see any of them again. Don’t stop, you idiot.”
In the car Dad listens to Mom tell the whole thing without interrupting. Nick and Joe thumb wrestle and Meredith fills me in on what’s happening at school.
“What about Mack?” I ask when we’re on the other side of Fredericksburg.
When no one answers, I can feel everything in me stiffen. “Guys? Did something happen to Mack?”
Joe nods to Meredith, a knowing signal that ought to upset me, except she’s clearly committed to me.
“Mom, Dad. Somebody tell me what happened to Mack.”
Meredith looks at me. “He’s okay, really. But he had an accident. In his dad’s truck.”
“What happened?”
“A stone wall ran into him,” Nick says.
“God, is he hurt?”
“A broken arm,” he answers.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“The truck doesn’t look so good,” says Joe.
“What else? You guys are acting like it’s someone’s funeral.”
“DUI,” Dad says in a soft, terrible voice.
“Mack knows better than to drink and drive,” I argue.
“Apparently he doesn’t feel the same way about drugs.” Dad is so angry he doesn’t even try to excuse Mack’s behavior or soften it for me.
The image of Mack in handcuffs in the back of Brewer’s cruiser is crystal clear.
When Dad speaks again, his voice is flat. “Mack’s off-limits, Daniel. We can’t have you getting mixed up in that.”
“Maybe I can help him.”
“You’ve heard me enough times to know it doesn’t work that way, son. He has to help himself.”
Meredith inches closer. Although no one speaks, I spend the remainder of the trip home imagining my life without Mack. It strikes me that, with my concentration on Meredith and the restrictions of the disease, perhaps that’s exactly what he’s been doing in reverse.
April Fools’ Day we move back onto the houseboat after another huge argument. Mom says it’s too soon. Dad says we need a change. I get the feeling she’s weakening though. Instead of the triumphant parent of an almost cured son, she’s losing hope. I’m vomiting again and back to sleeping half the day. She doesn’t go on and on about the weather, but lets the argument stand at a draw. When Dad starts packing, so does she.
There are mouse droppings in the galley cupboards and under the rubber mat in the head. While they clean everything with Lysol, I find my first-semester bio book in the cabin and hide out on the top deck with a sleeping bag and a box of Ritz crackers, about the only thing I can keep down lately. Once the sun escapes the thick cumulus cover, I spread out on top of the bag, my legs bare below the boxers. It reminds me of our patio in Mexico and the drying stretched skin on my face while I lay on the lounger and Mom read out loud from Dad’s emails, which the staff printed out for us in the director’s office. As if we had all the time in the world and no place else to be, we baked in that sun, so deliberate in our routine, so sure of its power to heal.
The bio book actually mentions leukemia. The theory of the lavender cure is not totally off-base. I read and try to match this with the half-Spanish, half-English explanation of the nurse’s aide in Guadalajara. The technical language puts me to sleep though. When I wake up, my stomach doesn’t churn, my head is light, no dull throb behind the eyes. I feel great.
“Mom,” I call to her from the deck.
She comes out of their cabin so fast she careens into me on the ladder. As her feet slide out from under her, I grab both arms and she rights herself like a gyroscope, tilting, rising, then straight.
“What is it?” She’s not smiling. She anticipates bad news. I’ve done this to her.
“It’s working. I feel clear-headed. Less sore.”
She smiles, but it’s forced. I know what she’s thinking. It’s early yet. They warned us there might be temporary relief, but that the treatment had to work its way through my system and there would be bad days, too.
“Can I swim?”
“Oh, Daniel. It’s April. The water’s so cold.”
“I haven’t been able to for months. And I feel stronger. I won’t do laps. I’ll quit before I get tired. Please.”
“Maybe the Rec Center would let you even though we’re not members, since it’s such an unusual situation.”
“Never mind.”
“You said you wanted to swim.”
“Swim like I used to, in the river, not in some chlorinated tank with a roof and no blue sky, and everyone watching me like I’m a freak. They’d probably take pictures and use it for some PR campaign to sell more damn memberships.”
I leave her there on the deck and haul out the oars and the life jacket and the seat cushions for the dinghy. Once while I’m setting up the little rowboat, I see her face in the back cabin window, but it disappears instantly. The little boat slides along in the upstream current. When I’ve rowed past the defunct marina, I look back and she’s standing on the top deck, a hand over her eyes, staring in my direction. She doesn’t wave. Neither do I.
Nine Inch Nails rocks out of the Petrianos’ garage. It can’t be Mack’s father. It has to be Mack. I peek under the electronic door—open a foot at the bottom—and Mack’s in his sweats, polishing a little bright blue Nissan pickup truck I’ve never seen before. His hair is scruffy and uneven and he’s bouncing on his feet as he works the rag in big circles.
“Hey,” I yell over the music. “Whose truck?”
He straightens and bends his head sideways to see who’s talking to him. “Dan the Man. Come on in.”