“Effie.” Mom swerves away from the automatic doors to hug the plump woman in an apron decorated with a purple lion. “What’s the matter?”
“They’re cutting my hours.”
“Oh, Effie.”
Mom takes her hands and makes her sit on a bench in the shade. Effie’s been crying, but now that she has an audience, she rants, getting louder and louder. The tiny angel tattoo on her shoulder dances as she warms up.
“No health benefits if I work less than forty hours. No sick days. No vacation. It stinks.”
“Who told you this?”
“The district director from Raleigh.”
I’m backed up to the building with only my toes sticking out in the sun. It’s almost like being invisible, the two of them are so deeply entrenched in their outrage. A real break, ’cause Mom’s hardly been able to leave me alone for ten minutes all summer. As I stand there watching customers come and go, the back of Mom’s neck turns pink. She only planned on errands, so she didn’t load up like usual on SPF 50. All of a sudden this summer she’s ballistic about sunscreen when she’s been only mildly enthusiastic about it before. Although she doesn’t say her concern is related, it’s obvious it’s all about the lurking terror The Disease has injected into our lives.
I’m not the only one who’s suffering. It kills me that she and Dad tiptoe through their days trying to avoid the very thing that caught me. They’re afraid to talk about it in front of me. They try every way they know to keep things the same. It’s ass-backwards. The same is what got us here. Because our parents are so worried about upsetting me, Nick gets the raw end of every decision. When Joe came home one weekend, they unloaded on him the minute I left the room. He played his music the rest of the weekend and hardly talked to me. No jokes, no funny stories—he was definitely in shock. Not that he broke all the garage windows like Holden did when his brother Allie died, but it could still happen. If things go as expected.
Joe left early that Sunday without much of a goodbye. What none of them twig is that it’s the fear, not the cancer, that makes me feel so fucking bad.
After ten minutes of listening to Mom and Effie go back and forth about the unfairness of employment-at-will, Virginia’s conservative bent, and its long-standing hatred of unions and minorities, the sweat is running down my spine in a river.
“Mom.”
“In a minute, Daniel.”
“Mom, give me the list. You can meet me at the register.”
She looks at me and smiles—a real smile—for the first time since breakfast. Someone needs her and she can help without anticipating a burial. What a relief that must be.
“Thanks.” And she lets me go without asking the inevitable “are you sure you’re okay?”
The list includes six things with vitamin C—Mom read somewhere that it counteracts nausea and it’s all she’s been talking about since. Nature cures itself, a constant theme in our house. The thing is, honestly, why does nature just not create diseases in the first place? Then nature wouldn’t need to waste any energy on finding cures.
Trained well, I choose the cheapest kind of orange juice, the store-brand cans you mix with water. But I do check the back of the package for the list of vitamins. Daniel Vitamin Landon—maybe I’ll get a nickname out of all this attention. HC must be chuckling.
The candy aisle catches my attention. Girls like candy. Unfortunately, I have no idea what to pick for girls from Charlottesville or girls period since candy has always been a huge NO at home. I’m lingering in front of the Hershey Kisses. Too obvious, too dorky. I’m debating whether I should bring snacks at all to Friday’s date with the twins and wondering what else besides candy would work, when my stomach lifts and slams itself into a bottomless hole. Doubled over, I’m looking for a place to sit as Mom comes around the corner.
Shoving past another customer, she grabs my arm. “Effie,” she screams.
It hurts my eardrums. “It’s all right, Mom. It’ll pass in a minute.”
At either end of the aisle people stop and stare. Which doesn’t faze my mother. She sweeps the cereal boxes off a stack of cardboard cartons and steers me to it. Effie and the produce clerk crash around the end display. Bags of Fritos fly everywhere.
“Should we call an ambulance, Miz Landon?”
“No,” I croak. “Don’t, Mom. It’ll pass.”
“No, no, he’s okay.” She could be talking to herself. “I’m sorry, Effie. I just panicked.”
The produce clerk, who looks like a kid in my Spanish class last semester—except taller and with more acne—hands me a towel from his back pocket. “Water?” he asks.
“That’d be great.” I roll my eyes and he rolls his back at me. Mothers.
Back on the boat I offer to unload groceries, but Mom insists I go and lie down. In the galley the cell phone beeps, so I know she’s calling the herbalist to report this latest incident. I’m not the best patient they’ve ever had, but I do keep them busy.
“Here, sweetie, drink this.” Mom hands me a mug with steam curls floating above it. The outside temperature has to be one hundred degrees and she’s smothering me with hot liquids.
I sniff. “Ugh.”
“Misty says tincture of lavender helps with cramps.”
“My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“She means it deters recurrence.”
“Does she know what causes it? That might be a better place to start.”
“Daniel, don’t be like that. Misty’s had lots of cancer patients.”
“Yeah, but are any of them alive to give an endorsement?”
Later I hear her weeping into the phone. Misty Underwood, whom Leonard Yowell nicknamed Miss T. Undertaker in one of his more clever moments, is Mom’s best audience for this kind of meltdown. She tends to fall apart when she’s alone, although I never noticed it much until this summer. Dad’s at the Richmond airport, on his way to a conference for his biggest client, a Chicago textbook publisher.
Nick stands by the door to our room, the ever-present soccer ball on his hip.
He glares. “Nice going. Mom’s a mess.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it on purpose, you turd.”
“Whatever. Why do you always do this when Dad’s away?”
“I don’t do it. It does it.” I throw the book I’m reading at him. He ducks and it slides along the deck, hits the gunwale, and catapults into the river.
“It’s a library book,” I yell as I try to stand, but my stomach won’t let me.
Nick kicks off his shoes, climbs over the rope railing, and cannonballs a perfect ten, water everywhere. When he resurfaces, he holds the book above his head. “And the winner is…”
It’s impossible not to laugh. HC gets an unexpected bath. He’d get a kick out of that. If the library won’t take the book back, I’ll have to pay for it, but at least I’ll have my own copy. And it’s already been underlined.
Mom had her first meltdown in July, when she found out the nurse at the family doctor’s office spilled the beans to Mack’s mother about the leukemia. Mrs. Petriano is a talker, which made it worse. The Essex County grapevine at its finest. I could hear my parents’ argument through the wall. Houseboats are not built for privacy.