He could not see Claire was blooming from the inside, blooming and blooming, alive in a way she hadn’t been in a long while. He could not see that she would no longer be defeated by anything as prosaic as cancer.
* * *
Bringing in the bags of groceries from the packed trunk of the car was like Christmas morning. Claire ate a few spoonfuls from the tubs of ice cream, a single butter cookie from each of the tins. Minna boiled a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs; after three meals, the amount still in the pot was hardly dented. They did this with the knowledge that these were treasured feast days, following doctor’s orders. Claire’s appetite would wane as surely as the moon, a self-induced famine would inevitably follow because Minna would lose her will, forget, and let food run out again.
On a Wednesday, Claire picked up the phone to Gwen’s call. When Claire told her that the chemotherapy was over, that now it was six weeks of radiation, Gwen started to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“Does this mean you’re okay?”
“The worst is over.” After Claire hung up, she stared at the phone. Minna walked by and asked what was wrong.
“I think Gwen loves me.”
“What kind of daughter doesn’t love her mother?”
* * *
In celebration of the end of chemo, Minna turned on the pool lights, which lit the now murky green into a romantic grotto. By candlelight, she brought out a tarnished silver ice bucket from the dining room — polishing silver another thing that had gone by the wayside. They popped open a bottle of French champagne Don had given Minna. Claire sipped one glass while Minna finished off the rest of the bottle. When the ice had melted, skeletons of insects floated to the top from the dusty bottom of the bucket.
“To Claire. The survivor.”
“I feel more like the kid passed on to the next grade who didn’t quite complete the work. But the chemo is over. Unless there is a recurrence.”
“Don’t say that word,” Minna whispered. “Words have power.”
“You’re right. Survivor.”
“A survivor is the most important thing to be. Nothing else matters.”
Claire sipped her drink.
“The spirits are aligning.”
They sat, the sky softening to a velvety blue. Clouds were coming in, the unheard-of promise of a summer shower. Birds roosted in the trees, feeling the change in the air in their bones, the promise of real moisture, unlike the irrigation. The pool was a mottled, embryonic soup, like the stirrings of a universe. Like housekeeping, cleaning the pool another useless worry to be let go. Claire decided she liked this more natural pond incarnation. Was that part of surviving, too, allowing things to morph into new uses?
“I think it needs fish,” Minna said.
Claire shook her head. “They’d die in the chemicals.”
“The chemicals are gone. Fish will eat the algae. Carp. Maybe koi. And goldfish. Except they get eaten by the bigger ones. A hard fish world.”
“I want to give you something.”
Minna grinned. “Aren’t you the suitor.”
Claire went into the house, which ticked in the cooling air like a car engine. When she turned on the light, a small lizard on the wall blinked. She dug in her closet and brought out a necklace Forster had given her years ago, a heavy gold filigree from Turkey, a place they had dreamed of going to but never did. The necklace consisted of semiprecious stones embedded in elaborate goldwork. It had always been too extravagant for her, and she thought Forster gave it to her in consolation.
“I can’t take it,” Minna said as Claire draped it over her collarbones, reaching behind her neck to fasten the clasp.
It glowed against Minna’s skin as Claire imagined it would. Without thinking she pulled down the sides of Minna’s T-shirt so that her shoulders were bared.
“You should never take that off. It was made for you.”
“Wear only your necklace?” Minna laughed and pulled off her T-shirt. Underneath she wore her two-piece bathing suit. Only the necklace and covered breasts and the bulge of belly. She rose and unzipped her shorts. Although it was clear even in clothes how narrow-hipped Minna was, in her seminakedness she was surprisingly boyish, unsuited for maternity — straight torso, muscular thighs and buttocks, no rounded softness except for the stomach.
Minna jumped in the air and gave a yell, then danced around the pool, the glow of the pool burnishing her skin. Wind started to blow in the trees, and the moon was covered by swiftly moving clouds that bunched against each other. When she came closer, the candles caught the necklace, made it flash and spark as if on fire. Claire felt a great contentment seeing it on her, as if it had been returned to the person who could give it its due. How she would have liked to trade places and live her life in Minna’s young body.
“Dance with me,” Minna commanded, but Claire couldn’t. Even though she took joy in the sight of Minna, her ease and lack of inhibition, it made Claire feel even more prudish, more nunnish. Minna’s dance brought to the surface all Claire had never been, that was no longer possible. Had there ever been a time when she could have been more like Minna, less like herself? Why had she rushed into marriage, rushed into maternity, without any experience or thought to what she was losing thereby? She regretted nothing, except that making one choice canceled out the possibilities of so many others. As she continued to watch, there was the smallest opening in Minna’s dance, like a dervish spinning for enlightenment, a pinhole through which Claire caught a glimpse of other possible lives than the one she had chosen.
* * *
After dancing a few minutes, Minna arched her body into a bow and dove into the pool, her dark form slicing the light open. Claire cringed, thinking of the necklace, but after Minna swam, she walked up the steps, glistening wet, and the necklace shone even more brightly. The things of this world were meant to be used, or they wasted. The necklace had always scared Claire — she would try it on, take it off, opting for something smaller, duller. Over the years, she had cleaned, preserved, and hidden it away in its velvet box. Wasted it. Minna was a perfect fit — the two matched in boldness.
“I’m so happy tonight,” Minna said.
Claire realized that she was, too. So happiness could be like this, dependent on nothing.
“I don’t want this to ever end. I never want to leave you.”
Claire wanted to say, Me, too, but she didn’t. “You’re going to go find a man. If not Don, someone.”
“I have Don. When I need him.”
They laughed.
“This is as good as it can be,” Minna said.
“Watching you reminds me of Antoinette swimming with Rochester.”
“You and your books.” Minna turned away, suddenly annoyed. “You ignore what’s right in front of you.”
Claire cursed herself for breaking the mood. They were silent, the harshness of Minna’s words jarring both of them.
Minna stretched out on the concrete, water beading off her body. “There was a book,” she said, her voice conciliatory, “that made an impression on me. Called Temporary Shelter.”
“What was it about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never read it.”
Now it was Claire’s turn to be irritated. “Why not?”
“Because … the title told me everything I wanted to know. If I read it, and the author meant it to refer to the cost of cats in China, well, then the whole thing would be ruined, don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see. That’s absurd.”
Minna lifted her eyebrows and sighed, summoning the infinite patience of talking to an especially dim-witted child. “What you want are the holes, the gaps, the blank spaces that your imagination can fill. There’s nothing in life more deadly than finished.”