The Sister Season (11 page)

She did what she always did when she felt self-conscious. She lifted her chin, swished her hair over one shoulder and then the other—this snow was not helping the frizz in her hair at all, by the way—pooched her lips in as hoity a look as she could muster, and plowed forward, as if she knew exactly what she was doing. She bought up cheap plastic junk in big-box stores every day, by God, or at least she looked like she did.

She pulled a folded piece of notebook paper out of her coat pocket and smoothed it open. “I’ve got a list,” she said. “Mostly toys and candy. I shouldn’t be too long.”

But Claire had already started off down the main aisle, ducking into a rack of workout clothes, and Julia had become engrossed by a bargain bin filled with tacky seasonal socks just a few steps away. Elise blinked and absently brushed her bangs away from her face, distractedly looking over Maya’s shoulder at the list.

“We’ll all just meet back here, then, in about an hour?” she said, but Claire was long gone. “I’ll go with you,” Elise continued, placing her hand between Maya’s shoulder blades. “I want to get some things for the kids, too.”

“You’ve already got things for them under the tree, Mom.”

Elise waved Maya off. “Those were bought in a hurry. Besides, it’s not every day I get to have all of my grandkids in one house for Christmas.”

True, Maya thought. It wasn’t every day her mother had all her grandkids in one house for . . . anything. She felt a tiny twinge of guilt. She knew that was partly her fault. If she’d just forgiven Claire, who knew what the family might be like today? But she brushed away the thought like the snowflakes she’d just shed. She didn’t have the luxury of thinking about history right now. She barely had the luxury of thinking about the future.

The women spread out, the sheer space of the store bringing relief. It was easy to be alone there. It was easy to lose the others and have some space to think. To be silent and not feel as if that was a bad thing or as if someone would read something into it.

Maya stormed the place as if she knew it by heart, because that was what she did best. The action made her feel better, made her feel in control. Elise trailed behind her pushing a shopping cart, which Maya filled without even really trying. A football here, a board game there, a scooter, a bottle of fancy bubble bath, slippers with cute little character faces on the toes. Candy canes and chocolates and rolls and rolls of wrapping paper. A little doll. A pack of cars. Cheap shit that she knew her kids would delight over in the morning, but would never look at again once they were back in their bedrooms in Chicago, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was Christmas. You never knew which Christmas would be your last one.

Why couldn’t she get rid of those dismal thoughts? She had promised herself that she would leave them behind in Chicago. They weren’t healthy. They weren’t going to help matters at all.

But little lipsticks and building blocks and a pair of flimsy pajamas that didn’t smell like sleep crotch would help. Those things would help tremendously.

She knew that Bradley would balk when he saw all the things she’d bought. He’d complain about how they were never going to be able to get them back to Chicago. He’d question what would happen to the closetful of Christmas gifts that awaited the kids at home. He’d say they would get spoiled with this kind of behavior, and that would lead her to remember her dad and how he was always so damned worried that any measure of happiness would spoil his daughters, so he spent his every miserable day making sure they were decidedly unhappy, and she’d have to take painkillers and go to bed with a warm washcloth to cover her eyes like she’d taken to doing so often lately. But it would be worth it to see the looks on her kids’ faces tomorrow morning when they saw that Santa had arrived after all. That hope and magic still existed, by God.

She was so busy shopping, so engrossed at a turning rack full of faux-leather wallets (finding something for Bradley in this place was going to be no easy task; she might as well get him something practical, if not ugly), she didn’t even notice that her mother had gone missing.

“What do you think of this one?” she asked, holding out a black tri-fold that wasn’t too obviously plastic. When she got no answer, she turned, but found only the cart behind her. “Mom?” she called. No answer. “Mom?”

She gave another look to the wallet, and then dropped it into the cart. She shrugged and moved behind it to push it, though she hadn’t pushed a cart in ages. Not even at the grocery store, where she always just carried a basket over her arm to pick up necessities. Her housekeeper, Tildy, did all the hard grocery shopping for her. Especially since the treatments had begun.

She moved on, casting glances down every aisle that she passed, looking for Elise, while at the same time continuing her shopping. It was odd that her mom had just disappeared, but she wasn’t too worried—the woman wasn’t six years old, for Christ’s sake.

But it wasn’t long before she was done and ready to go. She’d run across Julia, who had a cart full of things for her son as well, and then Claire, who carried two pair of yoga pants awkwardly over her arm as if so much fabric was weighing her down.

“You seen Mom?” Maya asked, rolling up to each of them, and each, in turn, shook her head. “She just took off,” Maya mused, standing on her tiptoes to scan over the tops of the clothing racks for the sight of her mother’s silver hair. She was starting to grow alarmed.

“Well, she couldn’t have gone anywhere,” Julia said. “I drove.”

“Unless she got it in her head to walk somewhere,” Claire said. “You know, she’s been a little . . .”

“Scattered, yes, suicidal, no,” Maya snapped. “She wouldn’t just take off walking down the highway in a snowstorm. That’s ridiculous.”

Claire backed up a few steps, offense registering on her face. “Sorry. It was just a thought.”

“Well, it wasn’t a helpful one,” Maya said.

Claire pressed her lips together tightly, then nodded once and said, to Julia, “I’m going to go try these on.” Julia nodded back, wordless, and stared at the ground.

“That was mean,” Julia mumbled after Claire got out of earshot. “She didn’t do anything.”

Maya sighed. “Yes, I know. I’m a horrible sister. But can we concentrate on the more pressing issue at hand? Where has our mother disappeared to?”

“Let’s check the seasonal section. Maybe she went . . . for more poinsettias.”

The two sisters locked eyes and snickered. The last thing their mom needed was more poinsettias. The laughter took the edge off and they pushed their carts, side by side, to the aisles where Christmas trees and ornaments were already being replaced by Valentine’s Day candies.

They split up, each of them going up and down aisles and then meeting in the middle. No Elise.

“Electronics?” Maya suggested, and they repeated the process there. And then in sporting goods. And then in grocery.

And finally, just as Maya began to get a lump in her throat, imagining that maybe Claire had been right all along, she turned down an aisle in pharmacy and there was her mom, standing behind a cart loaded with pack upon pack of tinsel, clutching an armful of aftershaves to her chest.

“Mom?” Maya said, then called to the next aisle, “Found her!”

Elise didn’t look up, or even budge. She seemed deep in thought.

“Mom?” Maya asked again, and put her hand on her mom’s shoulder. “Where were you?” Though one look in Elise’s cart answered that question. They must have just missed her in the seasonal aisle. But, dear God, why did anyone need that much tinsel? The tree was already overloaded with the tacky stuff as it was. “Mom? You okay?” Movement caught her eye, and Maya looked up to see Julia turning her cart down the aisle to join them, her eyebrows creased with worry.

Elise seemed to startle, but her face relaxed when she saw Maya. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I guess I got wrapped up in trying to decide which aftershave to get your father this year. You know how picky he can be. Which one says ‘I’m sorry’ the most?”

Maya swallowed against the lump in her throat. They’d all mentioned it—even Bradley had said something when they were alone in the bedroom the night before. Elise was acting unusual, and Maya wasn’t sure she could attribute all of it to losing a husband. Was it normal to forget he’d died before he was even buried? “What do you mean, ‘I’m sorry’?”

“Mom,” Julia said, stepping around her cart. “He’s gone. Remember? He died three days ago.”

Elise blinked, seemed to take in Julia’s words one syllable at a time, her mouth moving slightly as if she were repeating the words to herself. Finally, after a spell, she nodded and, one by one, placed the aftershaves back on the shelf. She let out a breath of air that might have been meant to be a laugh, but was a little too confused-sounding to actually be mirthful. “Of course. What was I thinking?” She gazed at her daughters, standing side by side with matching concerned expressions on their faces. “This is going to take some getting used to, I suppose.”

Maya felt a quiver in her chest like her heart was breaking, and put her hand on her mom’s shoulder. “But you will,” she said, and inside she felt crushed, like her insides were wearing down. She’d never have guessed that anyone would miss her father, much less the woman whose life he made miserable, and the knowledge that you weren’t safe from love even in an abusive relationship was almost the bleakest thing Maya could imagine. She suddenly felt very tired, like she’d pushed herself too hard. Her body needed rest. Bradley was right—the doctors had been clear about the importance of rest right now.

Julia reached over and tugged on her mom’s arm. “I think we’re ready to go,” she said, giving Maya a look, and Maya sprang into motion, pushing her cart toward the checkout counter as Julia pushed her own cart with one hand, her other leading their mom, both of them pretending the abandoned cart full of tinsel didn’t even exist.

T
he best part about wrapping Christmas gifts, in Maya’s estimation, was that you had an excuse to be undeniably alone. You could lock yourself in a room for hours, and the children would only grow happier as time passed, imagining that there must be a mountain of toys in the room with you to be taking so long to wrap.

At home, Maya would shut herself into the guest bedroom, pop a chick flick into the Blu-ray, and snack on gummy candies and microwave popcorn while spread out across the bed, slowly, slowly winding paper and tape around each gift. It was like a mini-vacation. A reward for all the hard work she’d put in shopping.

But that was before. That was when she felt like she would never run out of time with the kids.

That was before her doctor had said the word
cancer
.

Now every second away from the children felt like time falling through an hourglass.

But these were Santa gifts, so she waited until the kids were distracted in the kitchen with Elise, then quietly snuck downstairs to the basement and shut herself in her father’s old workshop. She pulled the string to turn on the bare lightbulb that hung in the center of the room and looked around. It was dusty, as if it hadn’t been touched in ages. She wondered when was the last time he’d been down there.

She used her palm to brush off the worktable, sawdust and cobwebs flinging into the air and drifting downward. The room smelled like him. She felt as if she could close her eyes and hear his saw running, hear him banging metal against metal or scraping sandpaper against something. She blinked, determined to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to remember him right now. Even the most innocuous memory would certainly be followed by a nightmarish one. And she had enough nightmares in her life as it was.

As if on cue, her side began to ache, high up next to her armpit. A light but nagging pain so un-pinpoint-able that she almost wondered if she was imagining it. Right where the lump had been cut out. Right where the radiation dot had been tattooed on her. So they could fix her. So they could make her live. After her first treatment, she’d joked that she was going to get a target tattooed there, just for a laugh, but now that she was in the thick of it, she just wanted the damn thing off of her, just wanted the ordeal to be over with. She wanted to be done. There was nothing funny about cancer, nothing funny about radiation. She couldn’t help but think the permanent dot would be a cruel reminder of the scariest time of her life. And the most painful.

Absently, she rubbed the pain away, even though she was never sure if it was real pain and she was quite certain it wasn’t something that could just be rubbed away like a sore muscle. It was habit.

Setting her bags on the floor next to the worktable, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed her friend Carla, the one she’d met in the waiting room at the oncologist’s office.

“Maya! Happy Christmas Eve!”

Maya smiled, closed her eyes, took in her friend’s cool, deep voice. “Merry Christmas to you too!” she said, trying mightily to keep lightness in her voice. God, the workspace smelled like him. Why did she choose to wrap gifts in there? She rubbed her side again without even realizing it. “How’s the family?”

“Oh, fantastic!” Carla answered. “Scotty and Phillip are having a blast with the cousins. John is in football heaven. And I just got a makeover.”

“Makeover, huh? Sounds highbrow.”

“Oh, it is. Going to be the new trend, I tell you. My little niece just painted my head to look like a Christmas ornament.”

Carla laughed out loud, and Maya couldn’t help it—Carla’s laughter had always been contagious to her—so she laughed too. She pictured her friend’s bald head glistening in red and green paint.

“Imagine what she’ll do with you at Easter,” Maya said.

“Well, I do have that Easter egg quality about me, don’t I?” Carla said. “I think it’s my stylish lack of hairdo,” and they both laughed again. Though something about the laughter felt uncomfortable to Maya. Probably the gnawing knowledge that Carla might not even make it to Easter.

Maya had met Carla while trying, and failing, to be stoic in the oncologist’s office months before.

Although she hadn’t been searching for one, Maya had found a lump in her breast one morning in the shower, and her life had been a blur of doctor appointments and frightening words ever since:
biopsy, tumor, malignant, lumpectomy, radiation, oncologist.
Cancer.

She’d managed to keep a stiff upper lip when telling Bradley about the diagnosis, when laying out for him the treatment plan. She’d managed to get through all of it without so much as shedding a tear or wavering from her steadiness even the tiniest bit. She was a champ. The queen of positivity. She let only a few close friends know. She kept it a secret from her kids, her mother. No reason to worry everyone needlessly. Like with everything else, Maya would face this roadblock in her life with steadfastness and control.

But there had been something about sitting in an oncologist’s office that was more than she could bear. An oncologist, for God’s sake. A cancer doctor. You went to cancer doctors because you had cancer, and people died of cancer every single day and there was nothing to be done about it, and how would you know whether you would be a lucky one or the one your children don’t even remember because you died so swiftly it was as if you’d never existed at all?

Carla had been sitting next to her, thumbing through a magazine, a pink bandanna tied around her head, little bits of fuzz standing up on the back of her neck.

“It gets easier,” she said as Maya sniffled into a wadded tissue, trying her level best to be unnoticeable. “Soon you’ll only cry at night.”

Maya had looked over at the woman (no easy feat, by the way—Maya had never noticed it before, but looking directly into the face of someone who has clearly been battered by chemotherapy is never comfortable to do) and attempted a smile. But she found she couldn’t say anything. She didn’t want to be that woman with the bandanna wrapped around her head, and she couldn’t think of how to talk to that woman without saying those words aloud.

But the woman had smiled, extended her hand. “Carla. IBC.”

Maya found her voice. “IBC?”

“Inflammatory breast cancer. Kinda rare. Makes me special.”

“Oh,” Maya said. “I’m sorry. Um . . . something carcinoma in um . . .”

Carla nodded. “Ductal carcinoma in situ?”

Maya swabbed at her eyes again. “Yeah, that’s it. And I’m Maya, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Maya.” She leaned toward Maya and lowered her voice. “The first visit is always the hardest. You still think you’re going to die every second of the day. Like, you might not even make it up the elevator to this office before you keel over, am I right?”

Tears threatened again. Maya shrugged hopelessly. The woman was right. Maya had had constant thoughts of dying since getting her diagnosis. She imagined herself collapsing midway through cooking dinner or while driving down the highway or while walking to the bathroom. Even though she knew it didn’t work that way, that her thoughts were irrational and ridiculous, they still scared her so badly she’d begun being frightened to do anything. “I’m just afraid of leaving my kids behind.”

“Me too. I have great kids. But . . .” Carla closed her magazine, looked toward the ceiling contemplatively. “But eventually you get used to that idea too. It’s funny how the brain works, you know? It protects you.”

Maya sniffled, her chin quivering dramatically, and swiped at her face with the tissue some more. “But I don’t want to have to be protected,” she said, and even she could hear the plaintive, childlike tone in her voice. She didn’t like it, but understood that it was there, and having it there despite her dislike only served to fuel her tears. Is this what imminent death would reduce her to? A child?

Carla had put her magazine down on the empty chair on the other side of her and had reached over to pat Maya’s shoulder. And for the next thirty minutes Maya had practically fallen into the other woman’s eyes, dark green and glistening and hopeful, taking in her every word, trying to wrap herself in them like a blanket just out of the dryer. She wanted to have the same positivity that this woman had. She wanted it to be real, not just an act for Bradley. Not just another extension of her maddening need for perfection.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Maya and Carla became the best of friends. Maya found herself trying to time her appointments with Carla’s so they would meet up in the waiting area, the two of them sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, Maya holding on to her new friend with a grip that practically begged for her not to go. Soon they began going back to Carla’s house after their appointments, for coffee, for long chats about life and death and regret and dreaming. Their visits sometimes lasted long into the evening, the cute college girl at Will’s preschool bringing Molly and Will home from school for extra cash.

Maya could hardly believe how much she already loved her new friend. How much she was rooting for her. How it hurt her to see Carla on her chemo days, when she was sick and exhausted and could barely keep down a sip of water.

And then when Maya had found out . . . well, when all the awfulness had hit, followed by the news of her father’s death, she honestly didn’t know how she would have made it through without Carla. Even though she knew there very well might be a day when she would have to make it through troubles without her. They both already knew the prayer that Carla would make it much longer was not much more than that: prayer.

“So what’s Santa bringing to your stocking tonight?” Maya asked, easing back onto her father’s workbench and shutting her eyes, pretending she was sitting across a kitchen table from Carla rather than miles away.

“World peace, I hope,” Carla answered and they both laughed. They had been doing this for a couple of weeks now, coming up with lists of gifts they wanted more than to be cured of cancer. It helped keep things in perspective. “And yours?”

“Mmm . . .” Maya had to think for a minute. She’d already used the expected—kids’ health, happiness, long lives. “Clarity,” she finally said. “Not for me. For my mom.”

“She having a tough time?”

“A bit. I guess. She won’t admit it. Today she was shopping for a gift for him, saying something about needing to apologize to him. As if she’s the one who has anything to be sorry about.”

Carla made a
tsk
noise into the phone. “It’s got to be hard for her. They were married for a long time, right?”

“Unhappily. He was a horrible person. Forty-seven years.”

“Well,” Carla said, the phone clicking as she moved around, “death does something to horrible people, don’t you think? Once they’re gone, everyone remembers them as being really great. I think it’s another one of those protective things that makes death easier, don’t you? You know you’ll be forgiven when you’re gone.”

Maya flashed to an image of her father digging his fingers painfully into her knees under the kitchen table because she wouldn’t stay still. Remembered biting her bottom lip to keep from crying because she knew that crying would only make it worse for her. It was one memory of a million. Did she forgive that? “No,” she said aloud. “Not always. Though it is a nice thought to think that all of the times I’ve disappointed the kids or said something nasty to Bradley will just be swept under the rug after I’m gone.”

“Many, many years from now.”

“Of course. And you can spit on my grave if you wish, old lady.” This had become another of their jokes of late—a threat that if one of them died, the survivor would spit on her grave for giving up the battle.

“I can hardly wait.” There was a pause, and Maya heard little children talking in the background. She regretted taking Carla away from her family on what could very well be her last Christmas Eve with them. But her nerves were so much better already. She needed Carla as much as they did. Maybe more. Especially right now. As if she could read Maya’s mind, Carla asked, “So what about Bradley? How’s he been through all this?”

Maya groaned, leaned her head back against the concrete wall. Little strands of her hair adhered to the pocks in the concrete and tugged when she moved her head. “I can barely look at him. At them. It makes me feel physically sick. I want to strangle her. I want to smack him. I want to divorce him. I want to live forever with him. I want to forgive him. I want . . . God, I don’t even know what I want.”

“What does he want?”

“I haven’t asked.”

“What? You still haven’t said anything to him about it?”

Maya felt pain in her chest so raw and open it felt like she was being ripped apart, her guts spilling onto her lap, hot and slick. All she could think about was the curly blond hair, the taut, tan dancer’s legs, the lilting laugh and fake-ass smile that the bitch used every time Maya . . . “It’s never been the right time. First Dad dies and now I’m here, with her, with him. All I can think about is my missed radiation appointment this week and I’m trying to give the kids a perfect Christmas and . . .”

“Whoa whoa whoa. A perfect Christmas? Who has one of those? My head is red and green right now.”

“I know.” Maya squeezed her eyes shut tight. “I know. But damn it, it’s just . . . it’s like there are two cancers eating me, you know? One on the inside and one on the outside and it’s a race to see which one swallows me first.” She felt a tear trickle out from under her closed eyelid and down one cheek and let it fall. She hadn’t said it so plainly until now.

There was a pause. Maya could hear Carla whisper something to a kid. Then, “You have to concentrate on fighting the cancer that you can kill, Maya,” she said. “Let the other one go. Listen, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run. I am apparently late for a hot date with a cookie and some icing. Call me after the festivities, though?”

“Sure, yeah, of course,” Maya said, and she bent to pick up a toy out of one of the bags at her feet to busy herself, even though she knew Carla couldn’t see her, so the motion was pointless. “I’ve got to get all this wrapping done.”