The Milestone Tapes (2 page)

However strong the need for the baby may have been, the lives they led were suddenly complicated, successful ones and no longer exclusively their own. She was now an author with demands and pleads for another book, working exhaustively under deadlines. Gabe architectural firm had grown in bounty, he was now a senior partner with a following of people who appreciated his style and commitment to his work. Together, Jenna and Gabe, powered through life with projects and tasks and time management, and more quickly than ever before, months slipped into years.

Jenna awoke at thirty-seven and knew that the time had come for the hard decisions she’d been meaning to make for years. She loved her career and she’d fought hard for it; she was finally enjoying the pinch of success she had been slaving for, having just returned from an East Coast tour. Gabe’s senior level with his company meant something different. He still oversaw, but his days in the trenches were behind him, leaving Gabe with more time on his hands than he’d had in what felt like eons. He still worked projects, but his ability to delegate was as deep as it was wide. If there was ever a time to create the life they had wanted for their baby, it was now.

Convincing Gabe to leave Seattle behind had been more of a challenge than Jenna had anticipated. Gabe loved the culture and the steady hum of life in the city. It was from all of that around him that he drew the inspiration for his work. Jenna’s life was to create a world which could be real but was not, and Gabe’s was to add to the world visually in ways he felt it was lacking. She could work anywhere, but he was unsure how he would fit in small town America.

Gabe had fussed and put forth a valiant effort of pleas trying to sell her on staying. Gabe rallied endlessly for what benefits the city could offer a child; the culture was right, the weekend trips were doable, the schools were better than most. He took her to large Victorian brownstones and promised her any one she wanted, he could give her space and a home right there. He made a point of taking her to the most versed shows, the cleanest parks, the culturally diverse districts and shops. But Jenna wouldn’t be budged. What it boiled down to in the end was that Gabe honestly believed doing his work outside the confines of Seattle and mainstream industry at large was an impossibility, and it all felt so foreign.

To be fair, they had always been city folk. Having met fresh from college, shortly after they had independently descended on the big city, they didn’t know small town life or even if they could really adjust to it. Jenna had been born in Chicago, and lived her entire life in the expansive suburbs, but never isolated from mainstream industry. Gabe was a rarity, a Las Vegas native who lived his whole life a stone’s throw from the strip, not even on the outskirts or in a pretty suburb like Henderson. City life was engrained in them and as natural as breathing.

Having converged on Seattle for different reasons, Jenna because of her love for all things artistic in nature and Gabe simply because of a job offering, they had gotten to know each other during strolls at Pikes Place Market, sipping Starbucks coffee from the famed original storefront. They’d never owned more than one car, never mowed a lawn or hosted a party with the simple intent of getting to know their neighbors. City life offered the ability to be local or be lost, and it was comforting to them. Leaving it behind was the corner of bitter and sweet, painful though done for the right reasons.

Being classically Jenna, she met this challenge on with her particular style. She offered Gabe a job: build her a home. Jenna had saved away some of her royalties and wanted to give this home as a gift, not only to herself, but to Gabe and their future. Design it, execute it, live in it with her and their baby. She knew that appealing to him on his level, in his element, would be most favorable. And it had been. But, of course, there was a compromise involved. Gabe would leave the city proper, but he needed to be able to access his firm easily and he was set on not wanting to leave Washington State. Jenna willingly agreed to those terms. The Olympic Peninsula offered life by the mile. Jenna knew that moving to a town where her baby would feel the Pacific Ocean and sand beneath bare feet, see the snowcapped mountains from any room in their home, hike the Hoh rainforest and marvel at the amount of the green, and in equal measure, take in the culture of the big city, would be a beautiful balance.

As summer set in, Jenna and Gabe drove the coast each weekend, visiting the multitude of port and harbor towns. Once they had reached Port Angeles, they stopped driving. The town wasn’t small but was quaint in its own right. The main street was lined with locally owned specialty stores and boutiques offering antiquities, arts, practicalities and necessities. The plots of land still available for developing offered spectacular views of the Port and the Olympic National Park. All of that appealed to Jenna. Gabe took comfort in the ease of access to both the ferries and the small airport which boasted several charter flights in and out of Sea Tac daily, either of which could deposit him in the heart of Seattle within an hour on the occasion he needed to be there.

Gabe and Jenna coupled to create a true family home. Jenna would sit up at night in their tiny pre-war apartment and make her plans. Design magazines would clutter the tables and surfaces, and design boards were taped to the walls, tacked with fabric samples and paint colors. They made trips to the wild coast of Rialto Beach and gathered stones of various shapes and colors, which Jenna laid by hand in all the bathrooms. Together, they had spent weekends ordering stained glass from local artists, evaluating the particulars of exotic woods, mulling over paint samples and all the other trivial yet defining bits that would equal their home. It was an exhausting labor of love.

The completion signified a dream realized and two more years of their lives. The Chamberland home stood high above Port Angeles, slopping downward to the water’s edge, nestled primarily on a large plot of land rimmed with lush gardens, and beyond them, the natural forest. Thick craftsman pillars dotted the wraparound porch, and leaded glass windows were in abundance, set neatly into the shaker, ocean blue siding. The home was wide and long. The ceiling was crafted of peaked glass, letting the sky inside. The rear wall, which faced the Port, was a series of glass panels that could be folded inward, opening seamlessly. The kitchen was central, just as Jenna wanted, with plenty of cabinet space, thick soap stone counters and double butcher block islands.

Jenna had, of course, celebrated Gabe and his brilliance over the years as he worked various mediums into visual, practical works of art, beautiful buildings that touched the sky. They had toasted to his ability many times over, but never before had she so viscerally understood his gift as the moment when she first stood in the kitchen of her finished home.

Jenna sighed deeply and rolled over, curving herself around her husband in an effort to stay just that warm and safe for a minute longer. Today would be a long day for them both, she could feel that settle into her bones and tears prick her eyes as everything piled upon her in one fell swoop. The looming charter flight to Seattle, the meeting, the final decisions they would make and then the last flight home. But none of that felt as daunting or exhausting as what would await their return: Mia.

Mia, her miracle baby. Once life was settled and they had officially moved in, they had agreed to start trying. Jenna had been creeping ever closer to 40 and knew getting pregnant wouldn’t be easy, that those days were long gone. She knew that by having waited past her peak, it could be years before the blessing of a baby would grace them. But life worked in mysterious ways. As the house began to wind itself down, Jenna and Gabe started to have fun with trying. They would often open a bottle of wine on the bare floors of their new home, giggling and feeling adventurous, and, feeling every bit as though they were teenagers again, they made love. They never believed or dreamed it would be so simple. But it was. Within a few short weeks of pitching her birth control, Jenna discovered, much to her joy, she was pregnant.

Jenna had always scoffed at the women who swore they knew the minute they had conceived. She was a realist in so much as that she knew the difference between not pregnant and pregnant wasn’t an instantaneous thing. Until that one evening, as she lay beside her dozing husband on the cool expanses of the wood floors, marveling over the idea that any day they could at any time be plus one, she felt something shift. It would be weeks before the confirmation, before the double lines and the congratulatory smile of her Ob-gyn, but Jenna could no longer scoff in disbelief, for she knew then exactly what they meant.

For the first year after Mia joined them, life was bliss. Jenna doted on her baby, loving the changes motherhood had brought her more than she ever dreamed possible. Even the sleepless nights and long stretches of days never displeased her. Parenthood had realigned Gabe’s focus in equal measure. He commuted to Seattle for a few months after Mia was born before tiring of the grind, but more so, he tired of missing time with his daughter and wife. He left his firm and opened a local custom home construction company to meet the booming demands of the area. It flourished slowly, but soon became steady and dependable work.

Four years in Port Angeles flowed by, lost in sippy cups, new friends and home cooked meals. Jenna published, Gabe built, Mia grew. They had a full life and it came to feel as if it had always been that way. There was no room to miss the before; the present was so rewarding and enveloped them so entirely.

Then the clouds rolled in.

When Mia was a jubilant three-year-old, speaking and walking and engaging the world around her with opinions and imaginative play and friends, Jenna first found the lump. It was backwards really, unfair and cruel and so entirely unkind, how she first found out.

Mia had been playing with an unleashed hose in the back yard on a warm summer’s day, leaping over the green rubber snake that flipped and twisted haphazardly under the force of water spurting across the yard. Jenna watched her, listening to her scream with laugher and delight, flashing a huge toothy grin when she got splashed with an errant flood of reckless water. That was all it took, watching Mia enjoying her life so completely, sitting on the cushioned furniture on the back patio, her khaki pants rolled up to her knees, a tall glass of pineapple tea sweating in her hand; it had dawned on her, she needed to do this again, wanted it so bad it took her breath away. The pregnancy and the baby and the toddler. She wanted Mia to have a sibling, and she wanted another child. She was older now, hedging on forty four. But to have another one, it would be worth anything it took, even adoption she reasoned if all else failed. Her family grew before her eyes then and she could see it so clearly.

But this time would be different, there would be no chirpy smiles and blue lines and toasts of apple cider in chilled champagne flutes. They had found it then, the irregular mass in her left breast, over her heart, deep within the tissue. It felt like a golf ball beneath her fingers, pitted and pebbly and surprisingly hard. Her doctor made no more mention of trying to have a baby once her fingers fell upon it, she only pushed Jenna towards an oncologist for further testing with a regretful smile, watery eyes and best wishes.

“Hello, this message is for Mrs. Chamberland. Mrs. Chamberland, hi, this is Lisa from Doctor Vaughn’s office. We received the results of your test this morning, and the doctor would like to speak with you, in person, at your earliest opportunity. Please call us back so we can make arrangements. Thank you.”

That was it, all that it took. The long. The short. The message that effectively changed her whole life. Took the axis the Chamberland world had so effectively spun on for years and reduced it to dust.

Jenna had stood in her kitchen, doubled over at the waist, feeling light headed, pressing her hands against the cool expanse of her countertops knowing her world just exploded. Mia squealed with the delight in the family room as something on the television amused her to bits. It was so normal, and so not normal, Jenna crumbled to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on her kneecaps. Jenna had been down this road at 18 with her own mother, with the same lump and the same phone call and the same heartbreak.

And now, three years from that message, the phone call, that visit, the same outcome. She was dying.

Jenna knew from experience that doctors didn’t see you to tell you that you were perfect and that nothing was wrong and that your life would continue down the same tried and true path. No. Doctors made time for you, squeezed you and spoke with you over their lunch hour when something was gravely wrong. This was what Jenna knew, but what she didn’t understand in that moment was why not just tell her and be done with it? Wasn’t it better to just know facts and fill in the details later, rather than be left with a cryptic message on an answering machine? Something was wrong and this was her life, and yet, until she had the opportunity to make the drive or flight or ferry to Seattle and meet with Dr. Vaughn, she would remain effectively in the dark.

Jenna had righted herself and grabbed the phone, punching in a series of familiar numbers that she could detect both by touch and by the harmony the numbers created when hit in their particular sequence.

“Gabe?” She brushed her husband’s shoulder lightly. “Honey, are you up?”

“Yeah, I’m up.” he sounded horse, exhausted and beaten. This man, the man she’d love for more than half her life.

“We should get moving. Ginny will be here in an hour and our flight leaves in two ... ” Jenna let her voice trail off. She didn’t want to get moving, she didn’t want to face the nanny or board the flight or see the doctor or give up. What she wanted was to sink back into sleep, back into her memories of three years ago when life was no more complicated than juggling a baby, a book and an impending grocery store visit.