The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (25 page)

E
very school year at the university began with a faculty get-together held in one of the buildings on the grounds, and the very first person Eve met when she arrived was Irving Russell himself.

She literally fell into him in the foyer when she tripped over a book bag someone had left on the floor. He caught her fall, and she looked into his face with a start of recognition.

“Excuse me,” she said, flustered. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled, and behind the smile she imagined a life filled with loss and fear and sleepless nights.

“And I’m Irving Russell.” He held out his hand. She usually offered her less painful left hand for a handshake, but she was so caught off guard by the abrupt meeting that she gave him her right and was instantly sorry. He was a squeezer, his hand clamping down on hers so hard and for so long that it brought tears to her eyes.

“I’m Eve Elliott, President Russell,” she said, once she’d rescued her hand from his. “I’m a therapist with Counseling and Psychological Services. Welcome to the university.”

“I’m delighted to be—”

Someone pushed in front of her to meet the new president, and she was only too happy for the interruption. She went into the ladies’ room and stood in the stall, holding her throbbing hand close to her chest and crying, though from pain or guilt, she couldn’t have said.

She heard from Cory several times a day, usually through e-mail and occasionally by phone. The e-mails were easier to bear, because she couldn’t hear her crying. Cory begged to come home. She hated Carolina. Everyone was into sports, she said. The kids were wild. They all drank. She hated Maggie and was afraid of Maggie’s friends.

“Stick it out,” Eve told her. “It’s normal to be homesick for a while.” But it broke her heart to picture Cory so far away, feeling isolated and scared.

When Cory’s situation hadn’t improved by November, Eve and Jack agreed it was time to bring her home.

“You’ve got to see a therapist when you come home, though,” Jack told her on the phone, as if it were a condition of her homecoming, and Cory readily agreed. Eve started thinking about family counselors she knew in the area, but caught herself. Cory’s issues were all about breaking away. Much as she wanted to be a part of Cory’s therapy, this time she would have to let her go alone.

1998

E
ve woke up early the second Saturday in September and knew immediately that something was different. She lay in bed and raised her hands in the air above her, making fists, then spreading her fingers wide.
Nothing hurt.
Her wrists and fingers were still disfigured, but not nearly as swollen as usual. Beneath the covers, she moved her feet. A little pain, but barely noticeable.

“Jack?” she said.

He grunted.

She shook his shoulder. “Jack?”

He rolled onto his back. “What’s up?” he mumbled.

“I’m not hurting,” she said.

He sat up. “What did you say?”

“The drug’s working.”

Two weeks earlier, she’d started a new drug for RA that had the medical world abuzz. It required Eve to give herself injections, but that was a small price to pay for this result. “I thought I’ve been getting better a little each day,” she said, “but I was afraid to say anything until now.”

“Oh, Eve.” Jack was truly awake now. “That’s the best news!”

For a moment, she thought he would leap to the mattress and do his happy dance, but he was forty-five years old now and, although he was still trim and fit, his leaping days were behind him.

He put his arm around her and she snuggled close.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I was worried that Cory leaving again would make you worse.”

They’d taken Cory back to Carolina the day before. After two years living at home while attending UVA and nearly three years in therapy, she was ready to try UNC again and Eve was as ready to let her as she was going to get. She’d gone to see Cory’s therapist in April, at Cory’s invitation.

“There’s a lot of love in your family, Eve,” the therapist had said. “But you and Cory have a classic co-dependent relationship and I’m sure you know that. Now, Cory’s ready to swim away, and you need to stop trying to reel her in.”

Eve taped a note to her bathroom mirror.
Stop reeling,
it read.

“I’m okay,” she said now to Jack. “She—and I—have both grown up a lot the past few years.”

She got out of bed, wincing as her feet touched the floor. The new drug was no miracle cure. The doctor had warned her that it wouldn’t erase the damage already done in her feet and hands, and she had plenty of it. Still, after battling this disease for more than five years, she would settle for any improvement she could get.

Cory was not only swimming away, she was gradually disappearing beyond the horizon. Her e-mails, which came daily at first, quickly fell off to a couple of times a week, and sometimes she was not in her dorm room when Eve called in the evenings. Eve pictured her out with girlfriends. Maybe with men, her beauty always a lure.

In October, Cory asked Eve not to call so often.

“I need to break away from you, Mom,” she said. “You know that. Help me out, please?”

Eve felt guilty. Cory sounded like an adult. She could take care of herself now, and that was a good thing.

“Should I let
you
call
me
when you want to talk, then?” She didn’t want that! She might have to go weeks without knowing what was happening in Cory’s life.

“No, that’s okay. Just, not every few days. How about once a week.”

“Sure,” Eve said. “All right.”

“And slow down on the articles.”

Eve grimaced. She was always seeing things in the paper about good nutrition and getting enough sleep and the harm loud music could do to one’s hearing. Nearly everything she read made her think of Cory, and it took only a minute to tear out an article and pop it in the mail to her. “All right,” she said.

Jack communicated with Cory by forwarding jokes sure to make her groan and roll her eyes. Dru e-mailed her regularly, and Cory was faithful about keeping in touch with her. Thirteen-year-old Dru missed her big sister. They were as different as night and day, both in looks and in personality. Outgoing Dru now wore both glasses and braces. She had Eve’s wild, dark hair and Jack’s thick eyebrows, while introspective Cory had never even suffered a blemish. But there was a sisterly bond between them Eve hoped would always be there.

In early November, Cory e-mailed Eve to say she’d met “someone very special.” Eve stared at those words for a moment. She’d never heard Cory say anything of the sort before. As far as she knew, Cory had never even had a date. She wrote that Ken Carmichael was a TV reporter for a Raleigh news program and that she was falling in love with him.

Eve picked up the phone. She
had
to hear more. How could Cory give her so little information?

“I want to hear all about Ken,” she said when she got Cory on the line.

“He’s a wonderful guy,” Cory said nonchalantly, and Eve could picture her shrugging her shoulders as if to say,
What more do you want to know?

“Where is he from?”

“Rocky Mount. Which brings me to another subject.” Cory hesitated. “I’m going to go to his family’s for Thanksgiving this year.” She didn’t add an “all right?” or “okay?” at the end of that sentence, the way she usually did. She was not asking for permission.

“Oh, okay.” Eve swallowed her disappointment. “We’ll miss you.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll miss you, too, but thanks for being so understanding. Dru said you would be. That you’re really not tearing your hair out about me being gone this time.”

“I’m trying not to.” Eve laughed. Her medication was making her hair fall out enough as it was. “When will we get to meet Ken, though?”

“Maybe winter break,” Cory said.

Maybe?
Eve thought, but she kept her mouth shut.

“I’ve got to run, Mom. We’ll talk later?”

“Sure. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Eve hung up the phone with a bittersweet mixture of happiness and sorrow. Cory was finally behaving like a normal young woman. She’d met someone. A TV reporter! But Eve was losing her daughter in the process. She could feel it.

Cory went to Rocky Mount for winter break as well, and her calls and e-mails grew further and further apart. She sounded cooler, more distant, each time Eve spoke to her, sharing less of herself and her feelings. Eve missed her, but when she had her on the phone, it was like talking to an imposter, someone with Cory’s voice but without her warmth and caring. At times, Eve teared up as she spoke to her, struggling to find the words that would bridge the chasm growing between them. She’d enjoyed twenty-one years with Cory, she reminded herself, every one of them stolen. Maybe that was all she would get.

“He’s divorced,” Dru announced at dinner one night.

“Who is?” Eve asked.

“Ken. Cory’s boyfriend.”

Eve and Jack looked at each other. “Did she tell you that?” Jack asked.

“Uh-huh,” Dru said. Her unruly hair rested on her shoulders in a puff of dark, wiry curls. “Not only that, but he’s twelve years older than her,” she added.

“Oh, no,” Eve said. “No wonder she hasn’t wanted to tell us much.”

“Or have us meet him.” Jack’s lips were white. They always turned white when he was angry but trying to hold it in.

“Well, we’re going to meet him at spring break,” Dru said, “because I told her if she didn’t come home then, I was going to have sex.”

“What?”
Eve asked.

Dru laughed, her braces glinting in the overhead light. “Just seeing if you’re listening,” she said. “Anyhow, she said they’d come. But they want to sleep in the same room.”

“Forget that,” Eve said. “He can have her room and she can have the sofa.”

“You’re fightin’ a losin’ battle there, Evie,” Jack said.

She couldn’t stand Ken Carmichael. Her dislike of him was instantaneous—and probably unfair. He walked into the house carrying Cory’s suitcase, reaching his hand out to shake Jack’s. He had a sweet, almost pretty, face, too tan for March, with thick dark blond hair neatly cut and sprayed into place. He had eyes every bit as green as Tim Gleason’s and the slick charm to match.

She didn’t give them a hard time about sharing Cory’s old room. Jack was right: it would only lead to an argument and that was not how she wanted to spend her precious time with Cory.

Ken complimented her and Jack on the house and the yard, which made her distrust him more than his green eyes did. This time of year, the garden was a mass of naked trees and vines and shrubs that looked as though they would never come back to life. In a few months, it would look fabulous, but for now, Ken was merely kissing up to his girlfriend’s parents.

“We’re making dinner in the kitchen,” Eve said to them. “Come on in and chat.”

“You go ahead, hon,” Cory said to Ken. “I have to go upstairs and I’ll be down in a minute.”

Ken walked with Eve and Jack into the kitchen, which was filled with the aroma of the pork tenderloin roasting in the oven. Dru was cutting peeled potatoes into chunks and she dropped the last piece into a pot of water as they came into the room.

“You must be Dru,” Ken said. He looked appropriately awkward, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. He rested them on the back of one of the chairs.

“That’s me,” Dru said. She picked up a can of Pepsi from the table and leaned against the counter, her eyes boring into his from behind her glasses. “So, what are your intentions regarding my sister?” she asked.

“Dru,”
Eve laughed as she started snapping the ends off the green beans in the sink. “Give him a chance to relax before the inquisition.”

Ken looked unflustered. “My intentions are to treat her as she deserves to be treated,” he said.

“That could mean a lot of different things,” Dru said. She took a sip of her soda.

“What would you like to drink, Ken?” Jack opened the refrigerator to peer inside. “We have soda and wine and beer and…” He leaned over to peer behind the gallon container of milk. “Apple juice,” he said, straightening up.

“Do you have bottled water?” Ken asked.

“No, sorry,” Eve said. “But the tap water’s filtered.”

“That’s okay, I’ll do without,” Ken said. “I’ve been drinking special water lately. I’ll pick some up tomorrow.”

Dru was studying him intently. “So, are you, like, one of those reporters you see on TV at a car crash?” she asked.

“That would be me.” Ken flashed a smile at her.

“What’s the worst thing you ever had to report about?”

“Dru,” Eve said again. “Let Ken relax, okay?”

“That’s all right,” Ken said. “The worst was a school bus accident.”

“Were people killed?” Dru asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Kids?”

He nodded. “Elementary-school kids,” he said. “It tore my heart out.”

Eve snapped the end off a bean. Why didn’t she believe him? Was it that no man was good enough for her daughter? Had she truly become that type of mother? Or was it that he reminded her of Tim, the most dishonest person she’d ever known?

Cory walked into the room, her face lighting up when she saw Ken. He put his arm around her shoulders and she put hers around his waist. They both wore navy-blue sweaters and khaki pants. They looked like one person with two very beautiful heads.

“You have an inquisitive little sister,” Ken said to Cory.

“I know,” Cory said. “She’s always badgering me for the dirt on you.”

“Help yourself to something to drink, Cory,” Eve said.

“There’s no bottled water,” Ken informed her.

“There never is,” Cory said. “We should have brought some.”

Facing away from them at the sink, Eve rolled her eyes. She thought of the pork tenderloin.

“Are you a vegetarian, Ken?” she asked.

“No, I eat meat. I just try to balance what I eat. You know, a certain percentage of protein, carbs and fat. And I try to make the fat olive or hazelnut oil, of course.”

Oh, of course,
Eve thought to herself.
How about some friggin’ pork fat?

“I used olive oil in the salad dressing,” Jack said, as he turned the knob on the salad spinner.

“Corinne told me you have rheumatoid arthritis,” Ken said to Eve.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“I know a lot of people who’ve been able to get rid of their arthritis by eliminating sugar and wheat from their diets.”

She saw Jack’s smile of sympathy as he opened the spinner. He knew how irritating she found it when people offered their simple solutions to a complex medical problem, and she particularly loathed it coming from Ken. It took her a moment to come up with a response that would not be harsh or sarcastic.

“Well,” she said finally, “there are many different kinds of arthritis and I doubt anyone’s cured themselves of RA through changing what they eat.”

“What would it hurt to try, Mother?” Corinne asked. Since when did she call her “mother”?

“I follow my doctor’s treatment plan,” she said. “And I’m having good success with it.”

“But the drugs you take are so toxic,” Cory said.

Eve was losing her patience. “So is this disease, Cory,” she said.

“Mom is doing really well on her drugs and they really don’t have bad side effects,” Dru said.

“Since when did you become a pharmacology expert?” Cory asked her.

“Since when did you become an asshole?” Dru responded. She whipped past Cory and out of the room before Eve or Jack had a chance to reprimand her.

“That’s unacceptable, Dru,” Jack called after her, but there wasn’t much volume in his voice.

No one said a word for a minute. “Can we help with anything?” Cory asked.

“Just go sit in the living room,” Eve said. “It’ll be ready soon.” She shook her head at Jack as they left the room. Their special welcome-home evening with Cory was off to a rocky start.

Ken went out in search of bottled water after dinner, and Dru went upstairs to do her homework. Cory helped Eve and Jack clean up the kitchen in silence. Eve figured they were worn-out from trying to be polite throughout the meal. Even Ken had refrained from saying anything provocative.