She picked a napkin from the table and wiped her face with it. “No, you shouldn’t have, but I probably would have reacted the same way if you treated me like we’ve been treating you. I wasn’t crying because of that, anyway.”
I waited for her to explain, but she just dabbed at her face. Afraid I’d send her into another crying fit if I pushed the issue, I decided not to ask. My grandmother had always been our family’s pillar of strength, and seeing her break down shook my sense of well-being, which was quaking as it was.
After we progressed past tears into small talk, I felt safe enough to excuse myself for my morning nap.
“Okay, kiddo.” She blew her nose. “I’m going to putz around a bit. Then I might rest too.”
I started to walk away.
“Jenny?”
I turned around.
“You know,” she said, “sometimes I tend to focus so much on the future that I forget about today.”
“Me too,” I said.
“You’re dying, Jenny, that’s true; but you’re also still living.”
* * *
As I lay in bed, a strange buzz zipped past me. I looked around and saw no movement except flecks of dust hovering on a sunbeam. I shut my eyes. Not a minute later, there it was again.
I pushed myself onto my elbows and looked around my bedroom. Isabella’s stuffed koala sat on the dresser. I squinted at him and he stared back with coal eyes. Suddenly one of the eyes took flight. The buzzing sound grew louder as the eye barreled through the air toward me like a kamikaze pilot. Before I had time to make sense of it or react, it crashed into the side of my face and dropped to the bed. I rubbed at my cheek and looked down, thankful to find not a koala eye but a way more logical stinkbug. He lay upside down atop my cover, his threadlike legs squirming in the air.
I gently flicked him upright and he flashed across the room again. I laid my head back down and was almost asleep when I heard,
Zzt, zzt, zzzzzzzt
. I let out a frustrated groan and sat up. The noise continued. Looking up, I spotted a blur of black slamming around the inside cover of the overhead light.
“How in the world did you get in there?”
David used to make fun of me because I wouldn’t let him kill flies. Instead, I insisted he catch them and release them outside. He would mumble to himself as he obliged. After watching my mother die, I just couldn’t stand to see anything suffer . . . not even an insect. I pushed myself off the bed as the bug grew more and more frantic inside his light-fixture prison. “Calm down. I’m coming to let you out.”
An armchair sat by the window. I tried to lift it, but it was too heavy, and I was too weak. Giving up, I dragged it to the center of the room, just under the light. Cautiously, I climbed up on the cushion, reached over my head, twisted the tiny screws holding the cover in place, and removed it. The moment he tasted freedom, the ungrateful bug rocketed into my face again.
As I batted him away, I felt the chair cushion slip under my foot. I threw my hands up just in time to protect my face from colliding with the floor. Though my shoulder took the brunt of the blow, it was my foot that exploded in pain. I grabbed it and groaned.
Mama Peg called up, “Jenny! You okay?”
It took me a minute before I could even answer. She called again, this time panicked. “Jenny, answer me!”
“I’m okay,” I called back, afraid that if I didn’t answer right away, she’d try to come up after me, huffing and puffing, dragging that tank of hers. “I’m getting up.” I pushed myself off the floor, cringing at the soreness in my wrists.
Lately, I hurt everywhere, all the time, but this was worse than usual. Slowly I made my way onto my knees and stood. The moment I put my full weight on my feet, a fresh jolt of pain shot up my toes to my ankle and knocked me back to the ground. This fall wasn’t nearly as bad as the first, but when I tried to get back up, the room twisted and whirled, blood rushed to my head . . . and everything faded.
* * *
I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but when I opened my eyes, two gluey-white pools blinked back at me. Labored breaths that smelled of syrup puffed on my face. Disoriented, I pulled my head back and squinted. Mama Peg lay on the floor beside me, her oxygen tank flat on its side. Wiry hairs sprung out from her off-center bun like coils through an old mattress. “Jenny?”
I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. “Why are we on the floor?”
“You fell,” she said. “Twice, I think, by the sound of it.”
My body lay at a strange angle with my leg bent behind me as though I were preparing to kick a ball. I straightened it out, cringing at the pain. My right foot was double the size of my left. It took me a second to remember why. “If I’m the one who fell, then why are you on the floor?”
“Misery loves company.” She wheezed through strained breaths.
“You sound horrible.”
She coughed. “Thanks.”
I motioned to her tank. “You made it all the way up here dragging that?”
“The things we do for love,” she said.
I tried to push myself up, but my head pulsated with pain. I laid it back down.
“I quit trying too,” Mama Peg said with a frown. “Looks like we might be here awhile.”
“When’s the last time you were up here?” I asked.
“I stopped doing stairs about five years ago.” She turned her head and eyed the room. “I like what you’ve done with this place.”
I followed her gaze. It did look cute. I tilted my head back and glanced at the striped blue valances I’d hung. “I found those curtains in the attic.”
She studied them. “They look a lot better in here than they ever did in the den.”
“Thanks,” I said.
We lay there awhile just staring at each other until I finally said, “I’m afraid if I try to get up again, I’ll pass out.”
Her bushy eyebrows looked even more unruly than usual. “I might need a forklift to get me off this floor.”
“We should probably call someone to help us,” I said.
She twisted her mouth thoughtfully. “I hate to be a bother.”
I laughed at that.
“Glad you can find humor,” she said.
“It is pretty funny.”
She smiled a toothless smile. She must have removed her dentures to take a nap. “I imagine it would be, to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You always did find humor in strange places,” she said.
“Wonder who I get that from.” If I had inherited anything from Mama Peg, it was her sense of humor, and she knew it.
I leaned on my elbow and propped my head on my palm. My head throbbed, but a little less than the first time I had tried to raise it. I figured if I lay like that for a minute or two, it might settle down. “Hey, why were you crying earlier?”
She focused on the ceiling instead of me.
I regretted the question. “It’s okay; you don’t have to answer.”
“No,” she said, “it’s okay. It just struck me that you were really dying.” She traced her finger over a spot on the oxygen tank where the green paint had flecked off. “And that I was dying too.”
I felt as if I should say something insightful or comforting, but what was there to say? We really were both dying. It probably needed to strike her sooner or later.
Her naked gums looked more gray than pink. I couldn’t help but focus on them as she spoke. “What time does Bella get off the bus?”
Alarm and adrenaline filled me. “Shoot. How long have we been lying here?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. We both were out for a while.”
I looked at the alarm clock on my dresser. The dread I felt at missing Isabella’s bus was far worse than the pain in my temples. “Twenty minutes ago.”
With what looked like great difficulty, Mama Peg pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Kid, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can stand by myself.”
My cell phone rang downstairs and I knew I’d never make it in time. It was probably the school. They had a policy of not letting a child off the bus unless an authorized adult was there to walk them home. This meant she was probably sitting in the office right then, wondering where her mother was and feeling abandoned. That would be the best-case scenario. I couldn’t bring myself to entertain the worst.
Slowly I stood and looked down at my grandmother. Not knowing what else to do, I offered a hand to her.
She batted it away. “You try to help my fat butt up and you’ll be down here again with me. Go call Craig to pick up Bella. I can wait.”
It took what felt like more energy than I had to hop my way down the steps. When I finally made it to my phone to call Craig, it just rang and rang. I left a message and sighed. My father didn’t carry a cell phone, so that left only David. If it hadn’t been my daughter at stake, I would never have considered contacting him.
He’d been on his best behavior lately, waiting patiently for me to die so he could claim his daughter. Still, he managed to sneak in a jab every now and then when Lindsey wasn’t around to chide him for it. And this was just the sort of thing he would rub in my face . . . discreetly, of course.
As I dialed, a frantic pounding bellowed from the front door. I didn’t need to open it to know who was there. The school must have called David when they couldn’t reach me. By the time I dragged myself over, I was so exhausted that I almost collapsed into his arms.
The doctor told me that my foot was broken and needed to be set and cast. I told her, “Yeah . . . no.”
Crossing her arms, she lectured me on what could happen down the road if it didn’t heal properly. Did I really want to have my foot rebroken in six months? I told her that I’d take my chances. Her disapproving scowl made me laugh. Though I was third-world thin and as pale as her lab coat, the joke was apparently lost on her.
No way was I going to spend my final weeks in a hard, itchy cast. Once I explained that I was about to knock on heaven’s door, pity replaced irritation. She wrapped my foot in Ace bandages and sent me home with her blessing and a pair of crutches.
And so I sat on my front porch, occupying two rocking chairs—one for me and one for my foot. The night air felt unmistakably autumn—crisp, but not cold. Gone were the floral fragrances of summer. In their place, the scent of cinnamon and apples drifted through the cracked-open window as Mama Peg baked a pie with the first batch of apples ever harvested from Mom’s tree. My sweet grandmother was constantly baking and cooking my favorite things in an attempt to get me to eat more. Even so, I never managed more than a few bites before my stomach revolted.
Dressed in the only pair of flannel pajamas I owned that didn’t slip down my meatless hips the moment I stood, I leaned my head back against the wood spokes of the rocking chair and surveyed the night. Under the light of the moon, I watched Craig’s shadow move across the yard toward me. When I looked up, my gaze met his, and my heart fluttered right on cue.
I combed through the ends of my hair with my fingers. Even without undergoing chemo, it was beginning to thin. “Hey, stranger, where’ve you been all day?”
He took a seat in the empty chair beside me. “Working.”
“I thought you gave up working weekends?”
“I was working on something else.” His Cheshire grin told me it was something involving me.
“Oh?”
“Do you need me to drop Isabella off at David’s?”
The window behind me clicked shut. I turned to see Mama Peg walking back to the kitchen. “My dad already did.”
Craig slipped his hand under mine and I rubbed at his familiar calluses.
“You think she’ll make it through the night this time?” he asked.
I sighed, keeping at bay the anxiety that rose every time I thought of how Isabella would adjust when I was gone. “I hope so. We’re running out of time.”
He nodded solemnly, brought my hand to his lips, and kissed it. “Even if she freaks out again, maybe this time it’ll be 2 a.m. instead of midnight, and the sobs will just be whimpers.”
I laughed. “You’re as sick as Mama Peg.”
Sweet Pea emerged out of nowhere and rubbed his side against Craig’s pant leg. When Craig reached out to pet him, the cat predictably swiped. Craig jerked his hand back just in time. Sweet Pea hissed and sauntered to the other side of the porch.
Craig watched the cat disappear into shadows, then turned to me. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
A smile played on my lips as I rubbed the hem of his sweater between my fingers. “Please tell me it doesn’t involve steps.”
“Maybe a few.”
I peered at him through my lashes. “Or a blindfold.”
He looked up at the roof as if considering it, then shook his head. “I guess we’d better not, with your broken foot.”
When he turned his head toward the yard, I noticed a streak of white running down his cheek. I wiped the coarse substance off him and brought my fingertips to my nose to investigate. It smelled like cleanser. “Have you been cleaning?”
He looked like a man caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Maybe.”
I wiped the powder from my fingers onto his jeans, earning a raised eyebrow from him. “What’s my surprise?”
He brushed off his pants and stood. “It’s at the saddle barn.”
“You’re going to make a lame woman hobble all the way over there for her trinket?”
“It’s not a trinket, thank you very much, and there’s no way to bring the surprise to you. You have to go to it.”
I tried to feign a frown, but my smile won out. “Well, if there’s no other way . . . You mind grabbing those for me?” I gestured to the crutches leaning against the house.
Craig glanced over but made no move to retrieve them. “I have a better idea.”
He bent over me, slid one hand under my thighs, the other around my back, and lifted me into his arms. A year ago, I would have felt embarrassment, wondering if I was too heavy to pick up. Now I worried about being too light. A hint of what must have been shock glinted in his eyes, but if he was bothered by my featherweight, he was kind enough not to say so.
His chivalry soon made me forget my insecurities. I clung to him, glad for the peace and warmth his embrace brought. My visits with him were among the few times when I could abandon my worries about Isabella, Dad, and Mama Peg. I never felt I had to worry about him. He seemed to be strong enough for the both of us.