“How come you never visit when I’m alone?” she said.
“Your Minna doesn’t appreciate visitors.”
Claire nodded, not believing him. Alone in the glory of her empty living room, she sprawled on the couch.
On the coffee table, Gwen had left a stack of books she’d brought about cancer survivorship that Claire refused to read. Now she skimmed through them, intending to dump the whole pile in the trash as soon as everyone was gone. She calculated her best bet was to stay as ignorant as possible of what could happen. She thumbed through a pamphlet on alternative medicine Lucy had included. Formulas for vitamin combinations, herbal elixirs, teas and pastes and poultices. Offers for copper bracelets and crystal charm necklaces. Discounts on pyramid structures built out of lightweight PVC that could be suspended over one’s favorite chair or bed, so that the healing energy of the cosmos would be diverted to cure one. Remedies included bleeding with leeches, diets of macrobiotic food, injections of shark cartilage or third-world embryos, or even a payment plan for prayer directed to one’s recovery, as if lobbying would improve your odds for holy intervention.
Instead she flipped through the growing piles of women’s magazines.
GET 10 YEARS BACK
WE KEEP OUR PROMISES
LIFE IS BETTER WITH BEAUTIFUL SKIN
She blinked her lashless eyes, sucked in her hollowed cheeks, too busy keeping alive to worry about being beautiful.
FOR SKIN SO FIRM
YOU’LL WANT TO SHOW
IT OFF AGAIN
There was nothing she wanted to show off. The airbrushed models made her feel more decrepit by the moment.
LIVE LIKE IT’S ONE BIG PREMIERE
She tossed the magazine down, disgusted and demoralized in equal parts, and a sheaf of white papers fell out. It was an appraisal of the property done a month before. Paid for on Gwen’s credit card. Why, no matter what Claire tried, did Gwen stay so determined to sell the farm? Minna hadn’t been lying.
Claire needed to go through the rest of her treatments, become a model patient, survive, for the simple reason that she had not yet taught the girls what was important in life. Could it be possible her mothering was still not done?
Head spinning, she went to the kitchen to make tea from the last of the mixture Minna had left her. As she leaned over the stove, watching the kettle, a whish of air blew the flame high, high enough to lick the cuff of her housecoat. A singe of flame spun her around and straight into her ten-year-old son. Her eyes swam, and she savagely brushed the blur away, but still he stood in front of her. Fresh and sweet as her dreams, mischievous, and just the smallest bit weary, as if he’d had a poor night’s sleep. Yes, she recognized that, and it broke her heart. Did the dead tire from the grieving constantly calling on them, not leaving them alone to enjoy eternity? Her heart lifted although she knew this was an unthinkable mistake, an error so treacherous that if she allowed herself to believe, it would wreck her.
Many times she had dreamed her boy would return, had returned, that it all had been a horrible mistake. Always unchanged, although his sisters and Claire had aged, and everything else around him had been transformed by time. Even as she reached out for the longed-for hug, she lost consciousness.
* * *
The sun was in Claire’s eyes when she woke, still on the floor. Gwen was running for the phone, yelling directions. The afternoon passed quietly in the emergency room. Gwen stood by her gurney, holding her hand. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“For what?”
“Not preventing this, for going to lunch.”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t always be there just in case.” Even when one was there, one could not always prevent bad things from happening. How long would it take till she herself believed that?
That night, back in her own bed, Claire poured the vitamin drops Minna had left for her on her tongue. Hours later her throat had swelled so big that she could hardly breathe, her chest a vise twisting the breath out. Her skin turned raw with rash. Back in the emergency room before sunrise, the girls and the grandchildren sleeping on chairs in the waiting room, Claire’s blood count again plunged. The on-call doctor asked what she had eaten, then took an analysis of the vitamin drops. Some unidentified compound in the drops had caused an allergic reaction. He threw the drops away, shaking his head.
“Your cell count is low. Your immune system is weak. Stay away from crowds.” He glanced at Tim, who was sniffling. “She needs to be isolated from anyone sick.”
“We’re her family,” Gwen said.
The doctor looked up from his clipboard. “Germs are germs. Do you want your mother healthy?”
“Of course.”
“Then have the kids stay at a friend’s. And why did you take her to Mexico?”
“It wasn’t our doing.”
“You need to take care of your mom,” he said. “She needs you all on board.”
“That’s complicated,” Gwen said.
“Of course we will,” Lucy said.
Chapter 11
A quick family meeting was held around the breakfast table, and it was decided that Gwen would leave early with the children. Mrs. Girbaldi would drive them to the airport. As the girls washed the breakfast dishes, Claire heard Gwen whispering to Lucy, “I’ll have her checked out, too.”
“Have who checked out?” Claire said.
“No one,” Gwen said.
“Turn around,” Claire said. “Sweetheart, quit going behind my back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know about the appraisal of the ranch.”
“I’m protecting you. Has Minna convinced you to stay?”
“Don asked her to marry him.” Another untruth blurted out. “She hardly needs me.”
Gwen shrugged.
“You’re my daughter. I love you. But this jealousy…”
Gwen blinked her eyes rapidly. “Why do you like her more than us?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Claire said, even though she suspected it might appear that way. “Before I passed out … I saw your brother.” She had intended to keep this a secret, suspecting their reaction, but in her desperation to win them over, she found herself ruthless.
“I just can’t do this. This morbid stuff,” Gwen said.
“It’s a sign. I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Claire said. “I want you to come back here to live. Children need to live here again. It will be like the old days.”
“No one wants the old days back, except you.”
* * *
Gwen passed instructions to Lucy on how to give the injections, but Lucy’s hands shook so badly that she jabbed the needle in like a dart, with such force that it left small, grape-size bruises on Claire’s skin. The grandchildren were herded out the door. Both glanced backward, wondering, she was sure, if they had done something wrong and Nana was sending them away.
“Have them call me on my cell phone,” Claire said.
They stood on opposite sides of the glass window in the living room.
“Alice, will you send me pictures? So I get better?”
The little girl nodded, but she was so young that out of sight was out of mind.
“Gwen, get them some markers.” On Claire’s side of the glass she drew a happy face. Once they realized they wouldn’t get in trouble, the children went wild with the forbidden pleasure of drawing on the glass.
“Can you draw some hair on? Pretty hair for me?” Claire said into the phone.
“Oh, boy.” Gwen laughed. “We’re going to have trouble at home now.”
Tim stared at Claire, not hiding his fascination at how bad she looked, what might be happening inside her, what his mother told him. He started to draw round bugs with scowling faces. “These are the bugs that are eating you,” he said into the phone. “The cancers.”