Leaving Unknown (17 page)

“I beat you,” he reminded me, panting. We’d been doing sprints between the bar and the jukebox.

“I need to see the instant replay.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. What matters is whether
I
win or lose.”

We’d competed in a decathlon of sprints, long jump, speed drinking, quarter hockey, breath holding, thumb wrestling, hopping on one foot, and handstands. Vic had nixed the mustard toss. The final game was bar football.

“She shoots! She scores!” I flicked the folded paper football through the goalpost Noah created with his hands.

“Damn!”

“I won! I won!” I bounced up and down.

“Beginner’s luck,” he dismissed.

“Mad skills,” I corrected.

“How’re you guys doin’?” Vic called.

“No more.” I shook my head. “I’m done. I’m Drunky Drunk, the Mayor of Drunkville. This little athlete is retiring.”

“We are in violent agreement.” Noah nodded. “Except I’m Drinky McDrinky Pants.” He tossed Vic a credit card, and waved off my effort to contribute. “The boss can pay for the company meeting.”

I was surprised when we tumbled out of the Wagon Wheel into bright sunshine. It wasn’t usually the case when I left a bar after hours of serious drinking. We lingered, looking at each other. Noah opened his mouth, when I ripped a loud hiccup. I fell apart into giggles.

“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Noah said with a grin. “Now get thee to a nunnery.”

“To sleep, perchance to eat ice cream.” I responded, as I turned away. I carried his smile with me as I staggered home. I needed a serious nap to sleep it off before my date with Samuel.

“Ready?” Samuel asked several hours later. I hadn’t shared my afternoon’s escapade, but that wasn’t what he was asking about. Tonight was my first public appearance Post Cancergate. I didn’t feel anxious, though. I felt floaty and happy.

“Yeppers.” I giggled. He gave me an odd look. I wiped off my smile. Proper ladies didn’t go boozing in the middle of the day. I concentrated on walking a straight line to the door.

“What should I say? If people ask.”

“What do you want to say?”

“None of your beeswax, Jack?” I pronounced with relish.

He laughed. “How about ‘I tried leukemia for a while but it didn’t fit me, so I moved on.’”

“Ooh, that’s good.” I was impressed. I’d spent a long time trying to come up with just the right language and cadence. I’d have to remember that.

“I’ve had some practice.” He grinned. I was pulled out of myself for a second into a flash of the pain and loss Samuel must face on a regular basis as a doctor. I flung my arms around him and gave him a spontaneous squeeze. He was surprised, but recovered to hug me back. I squeezed harder, and within seconds I found myself dangling as he easily bent backward, hauling me into the air. I staggered when he put me on my feet, but he set me right. I took his hand to aid my steadiness, and we headed out.

“What’s the movie, groovy?” I asked.

He gave me another look. “Same as it was twenty minutes ago.
The Thin Man
. One of my favorites.”

“Mine too!” I gave a little hop. “I tried to match the main characters Nick and Nora drink for drink once watching it, and was on the floor halfway through. Never again.”

He laughed. “Three drinks puts you on the floor! I’m surprised you made it to the twenty-minute mark.”

I decided not to tell him I had more than three in me already. Thank God I’d managed a nap and a shower. I adopted a lofty tone. “I used to put them away like anybody else,” I informed him. “You’re looking at my high school’s spring break downhill funnel women’s champion. I only stopped drinking after I got sick.” Right after remission, I hadn’t wanted the vulnerability that went with intoxication. I giggled again. Today had gone just fine.

“I’m not complaining. Being a lightweight makes you a cheap date.” He leered at me. “And easy. Did I mention I brought wine?”

Uh-oh. I swatted him as we rounded the corner of Main Street. “Like you have to work that hard.”

He stopped and kissed me, and we spent a few minutes in that pleasurable pursuit before resuming our walk. The square was a checkerboard of blankets on which picnics were being consumed or prepared. We saw Tuesday waving and headed in her direction. We weaved our way through the patchwork of quilts.

“Oh Samuel,” Liz called. “Tommy got into the poison oak. I was wondering…”

Samuel was already extracting a bag from his pocket. “Ruby mentioned it,” he said. “I brought some samples. If this doesn’t work, come see me.” She accepted the package gratefully.

“And Maeve, thanks so much for agreeing to babysit next week.” Liz looked so appreciative, I hid my wince. Minding Tommy was like caring for ten Ritalin-deprived demons.

“No problem,” I lied.

“I imagine watching him will make cancer seem like a walk in the park.” Her smile was rueful. I started, then appreciated the casual acknowledgment.

“Don’t be so sure,” I joked. “Except when I’m watching Tommy, I’m still gorgeous.”

We moved on as Samuel whispered, “Don’t touch him with your bare hands. Poison oak sucks.”

“Maeve, I finished fixing the belts and caps on Elsie. She’s looking right sexy on the inside, except for that missing piece. I even gave her a hot wax.” Barney was stretched out on a plaid blanket with a woman who was the embodiment of Elly May Clampett from
The Beverly Hillbillies
, right down to the handkerchief halter and platinum-blonde curls. The three-inch press-on nails with crystal chips were her own individual touch.

“Can you say that in Portuguese?” I kidded.

Barney screwed up his face seriously. “Only the last bit, and only in the form of a question,” he said seriously. We navi
gated on to the sound of him muttering “Posso eu ter uma cera quente?”

“It’s polite to arrive no later than six so that you don’t trample more considerate people’s blankets,” Helen sniped as we passed.

“But then you would have trampled ours,” was my logical retort. My tongue had a mind of its own.

“Don’t think just because you were sick you get special treatment, missy. You don’t. I’ve been plenty sick in my lifetime, I can assure you.”

“She’s never been sick a day in her life,” Samuel muttered in my ear as he hustled me on.

We were almost at our destination when we reached a seamless row of blankets. There was no way across without stepping on one. The dirtiest one, next to April and Busy’s blanket, was unoccupied. I gingerly hopped toward the middle to vault to the other side, when I tumbled into a heap.

April’s braying laugh called the attention of the whole town. She was doubled over in fits. Busy’s breathy giggles accompanied her. Samuel reached down and helped me stand. I staggered up and dusted myself off, red faced. I’d stepped into a hole, covered by the blanket.

“Haw, haw, haw,” April’s deep honk sounded over and over as she delighted in the success of her trap. It was her Sistine Chapel.

“Sleep with one eye open.” I managed my threat through gritted teeth.

“Haw, haw…” Her laugh stopped abruptly as her eyes widened and her face froze. “I think I just peed myself.”

We reached the safety of Tuesday’s blanket, as April reassembled her joke. Bruce hadn’t arrived yet, so he was a prime target.

“Yay!” Tuesday smiled and wiggled when we arrived. “I got
here super early so I could get all our blankets together. It’s perfect!”

“Mahalo,” I said. I was ready to sit. I was starting to feel a headache coming on, and I was famished. “Ruby, is that your chicken salad?”

She passed me a plate while Samuel poured us wine, and Tuesday spread out dips and crackers. I was scouting a place to discreetly dump some of my wine when April’s guffaw sounded again, accompanied by an enraged shriek. We looked over to see Beth, hair askew, panties flashing, taking an unexpected tumble. She flailed as she struggled to right herself, making the exposure worse. It’d been a while since laundry day, from what I could see. Noah and Bruce skirted the trap and reached to help.

“Goddammit April,” Beth screeched. “You’re more cow than Cowbelle! I could have been seriously injured. Quit grabbing me.” Beth turned on Noah and Bruce, slapping their hands.

As she tugged down her pink linen pencil skirt and teetered for balance on matching heels, Tuesday muttered, “Who wears that to a picnic?”

April was still guffawing. Her Sistine Chapel had become her Taj Mahal.

“All right now April, that’s enough.” Bruce tried to silence her mirth.

“Noah,
do something
.” Beth’s pitch was glass shattering.

Noah looked at her in disbelief. “Like what? You want me to fight April?”

“No! Yes! Aaargh! You are so passive! It’s like dating goddamn Gandhi!” She grabbed Noah’s arm and hauled herself upright. “Drunk-in-the-middle-of-the-afternoon Gandhi, that is.” I flushed at that. I felt furtive and illicit about our afternoon’s secret escapade.

“I’m going home.” Beth announced, and stomped out of the square, not caring whose blanket she trampled.

“Beth.”

Noah started after her, but stopped when she snarled, “Don’t follow me! I strongly suggest you give me some space for a good while.” And off she went.

“She’s always had a temper, that one,” Ruby observed. “Chicken salad, anyone? Lawrence, I’ve saved you a seat.” Bruce packed April’s blanket into the hole and joined Ruby.

Noah looked unsure.

“Don’t worry Noah,” I said. “You’re not smart enough to be Gandhi.”

He made a face at me.

“And you don’t wear dresses like Gandhi, either,” seconded Ronnie Two Shoes.

Tuesday groaned. “Ronnie, those weren’t
dresses
, they were
robes
…” I tuned out the ensuing dresses-versus-robes debate as Noah sat on the blanket next to ours.

“She’s a handful,” Samuel said.

“She prefers when I say ‘piece of work,’” Noah joked. “She thinks I mean masterpiece.”

Dark clattered down in a Monty Python instant, the way it did in southern Arizona, and we looked toward the screen set up against the back of the community center. I settled against Samuel’s chest, ready to enjoy myself. I’d faced the town and it hadn’t been bad at all. They knew I’d had cancer and it didn’t change a thing. I smiled at the opening scene of the thin man’s silhouette on a wall. I did not think at all about the man alone on his blanket next to me. It was hard, though, because we laughed at exactly the same bits.

E
ating a fresh, cold bell pepper on a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon is like a religious experience. Since I didn’t go to church it was as close as I was going to get, at any rate. I’d spotted the smooth, golden vegetable in Ruby’s fridge when I was putting away her groceries and even though it was her only one I couldn’t resist its organic curves. I fondled it, then stole it. I felt bad for taking it—yellow peppers weren’t cheap—but more in a William Carlos Williams way than truly penitent.

I paraphrased.

I settled onto the edge of the picnic table, legs dangling, thinking Noah would have appreciated my poem. I
had
decided to try an experiment. I tore off the top of the pepper and gutted the seeds. Then I crunched into it, loving the cool crispness exploding like juicy bubblewrap in my mouth, feeling the hot sun, the dusty planks under my butt. I was a girl sitting in the sun, enjoying a pepper. I took another bite.

“I remember this,” rejoiced the inner voice that did the movie narration for my life. I caught my breath. This was the sort of thing I didn’t think. “I remember this,” the rogue thought repeated, firmly. I forced myself to relax. This was the experiment after all.

“Yes,” I said out loud. “I remember this. I liked this. I
like
this.” I felt a scary delight in articulating the words, a thrill of panic accompanying my daring, as if acknowledging my pleasure would alert someone to take it away from me. I took another bite.

“I wonder what else I can remember,” I challenged the empty
yard. The yard didn’t do anything. It just sat there, gnats flying lazy circles over the yellowing grass.

“Well, if no one is going to stop me…” I wondered if I hoped someone was going to stop me. But of course no one did. No one ever had. Only me.

“Honeycomb cereal,” I pronounced. “Eating an entire watermelon with a knife while reading a trashy novel. Watching a dog chase sticks into the waves. Finding money you didn’t know you had in your pocket. The smell of bergamot…”

After a while I stopped speaking aloud. I let my mind wander wherever it wanted for a change, reacquainting itself with forsaken memories, lost friends regained. Funnel cake. The way your stomach drops when you spin the Tilt-A-Whirl fast enough. The way the two sometimes don’t mix. I surveyed all the simple pleasures I’d walled off because to admit they mattered would be to suffer if I lost them, and apprehension slowly, slowly, let go the talons. It was hard to fear the reaper snatching flavor from your mouth when you were bathed in mellow afternoon sunshine in a sleepy yard, after all.

Holding hands. First dates. Clean sheets. Realizing you had another hour to sleep. As my thoughts roamed, I lightly held the kachina of the girl entwined with the crab, Cancer, warming it with my hands. I knew my mother had made it for the moment when I decided to let it go. In some ways, I hadn’t been in the grip of bad luck, but had myself been the crab, clutching the past tight with my claws. I rose and settled the fourth statue among the raspberry bushes. I sat back down to continue my musings, a fraction lighter. Inner tubes on the river. The pull-through parking spot. Relaxing outside on a sunny day.

I sat there a long time. A girl, just like any other girl. Enjoying her pepper. Only when the sun set and it began to get chilly did I go inside to get ready for dinner with Samuel.

I woke gasping for air. I was captured in tar, fighting to sit upright. The blindness, protective in the darkroom, was now menacing. My disoriented mind struggled. My last memory was the beast sidling outside my periphery, angling to burrow back in, scuttling claws poised for damage.

“A leukemia cell is a blood cell that transforms into a malignant cell capable of uncontrolled growth,” my doctor had explained. My imagination saw a dark, evasive creature, not dissimilar from its crablike namesake. The slightest brush would pervert a normal cell. Once infiltrated, it would multiply in the marrow, shredding healthy cells as it went, my very bones hosting their own destruction. I put a hand on my chest to feel red blood turning inky. But there was nothing. Just my rapid heartbeat.

The nightmare loosened. The sound I’d attributed to dragging claws became Samuel’s deep, easy breathing. I lay back, shaken. My experiment earlier in the day had had consequences.
Everything
I’d blocked for so long was flooding back, good and bad alike.

“It’s like school,” my mother said. I wondered what
her
school had been like. Young Jane Eyre attended, apparently.

“Sort of.” Dr. Gerber played along. “A two-year course of radiation and chemotherapy is automatic for your type of leukemia. We’ll do a regular rotation of three weeks on, two weeks off. We like to follow the same schedule every week, but of course we adjust for specific conflicts.”

“See,” my mother said. “Like a class schedule.”

“I quit school and I still have a regimen?” I joked. “English One-oh-one and Intro to Sociology replaced by Induction, Consolidation, and Maintenance? No fair. I thought I was going to get to smoke pot and write bad poetry.”

“Maeve!” My mother chided.

“Okay, okay. No pot. Do I get Cliff Notes before the exam?”

“That’s what I’m for.” Dr. Gerber smiled. “Induction is the first step, reducing the cancer and evaluating reaction to treatment; consolidation is the intense phase, to eliminate all leukemic cells; and maintenance delivers lower doses over a longer period to destroy strays and outliers.”

“Spring break?”

“Between consolidation and maintenance.” He had the grace not to say “
if
you pass.”

I liked the preset regimen. It spared me the worry on adult patients’ faces as they dissected the meaning of adjusting treatment schedules. I didn’t have to decipher the import of every radiation session. Radiation meant it was Thursday. Thursday happened every week.

“We like Thursday so you can have the weekend to recover,” Dr. Gerber explained. What he meant was you had the weekend to collapse.

“No different from Thursdays now—I usually need the weekend to recover from quarter beer night. Instead of quarter beers, I get quarts in here,” I joked. “And I don’t have to pay. Thanks Blue Cross! I’m no cheap date.”

“But you’ll take your clothes off every time.” Dr. Gerber smiled. My mother looked horrified. That’s when he became the Gerberator.

Back in bed in Arizona in the dark, my heart rate slowed to normal. I had expelled cancer from my blood, but it continued its grip on my mind. When was it over? When did “remission” become “normal”? I thought about looking at pictures in the darkroom. What “normal” would I go back to? I didn’t know who cancer-free Maeve would have been. She didn’t exist.

Except.

Except we both liked bell peppers. We both laughed at
David Sedaris until we tinkled a little. We both fought a constant battle of wanting to stay slim and wanting to eat every single package of Rondelé garlic-and-herb spread in the Harris Teeter. And…

“Samuel,” I whispered, shaking him. “Samuel, wake up.” There was something else that we both liked.