A Watershed Year (32 page)

LOUIS WALKED HER to the door after dinner. She stood on the small porch, feeling her second glass of merlot in an unpleasant tightening of her forehead. It was a warm night, the air slightly humid. The stars looked dim and unfocused, as though some gauzy material floated between earth and sky. “That was wonderful. Really wonderful,” she said. “Thanks for being so patient with me.”

Louis said nothing, then kissed her with an urgency that told her he wanted something more. Slowly, he backed her up against the door and kissed her again.
More. More. More.
She could hear it in his breathing. Did it always have to be more? Was she the only one who sometimes wanted less, so she could hold what she had with two hands and examine it from all sides?

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“My mother’s in there. And Mat. I think you should go.”

She felt a little feverish now, weakened, her skin overly sensitive. She needed to sleep for at least two and a half days. He pushed her hair off her face and kissed her cheek, but it was a dismissive gesture, without kindness or affection.

“Bye, Lucy.”

As Louis turned and walked down the steps, she noticed in the glare of the porch light that the jacket he was wearing still had a transparent size sticker on the back. She went inside, past the couch where her mother was snoring with her mouth open. She climbed the stairs. As she passed Mat’s door, she peeked in and saw him sprawled across his bed, one arm thrown over his head.

Inside her bedroom, with the door tightly closed, she unbuttoned her blouse and slipped out of her skirt, putting on a nightgown. She threw herself on the bed, without getting under the covers, and fell instantly asleep. She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt a tug on the comforter. Mat stood on her side of the bed, staring at her without saying anything. It was as if he was checking on her, making sure she was still there. She didn’t know what to make of it.

She brought him back to his bed, returned to her room, blew her nose, rubbed her itchy eyes, and fell back into a restless sleep until Mat woke her up—again—at six thirty. She threw on a robe in a sleepy daze, followed him to the kitchen, and burned two slices of toast before she remembered to turn down the dial on the toaster. Her first sip of coffee brought her back into consciousness, and she thought of Louis and the sticker on his jacket, which made her sad. As Rosalee came into the kitchen, all showered and dressed for church, Lucy sneezed violently four times in a row.

“That’s it. I’m taking the cat,” Rosalee said. “Mat can visit Bill at our house. You’ll have nothing left of your nose if he stays here.”

When her mother left with Bill and his bag of supplies—a transition about which Mat said nothing—Lucy made a mental apology to Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, the seventh-century abbess who was the patron saint of cats. Gertrude, she suddenly recalled, had died at the age of thirty-three, which made her think of Harlan, and
she found herself wondering what he would have thought of Louis. If she could ask him now, would he encourage their relationship as part of her mission to find joy? Or would he say that Louis was too young, or too impulsive, or too needy. She felt sure he would have an opinion.

Mat yelled from the living room, but she couldn’t understand him. She walked in and found him trying to reach one of his small cars—a little black pickup with red-flame detailing—which had disappeared under the couch. She reached under the couch, pulled the truck out, and handed it to him, but he barely glanced at her.

“We say ‘thank you,’ Mat, when someone helps us,” she said in a firm voice. The coffee had succeeded in waking her up but also in defining a headache of such intensity that she pictured it as a thick rubber band tightening around her skull every time she moved.

Mat looked up with an expression of slight surprise.

“My car,” he said, holding it up for her.

Lucy noticed that his fingernails needed clipping. No one had told her how many small tasks would fall under the heading of “basic grooming,” for which a child had no awareness and took no responsibility. Bathing, hair combing, nose wiping, rear wiping, finger- and toe–nail clipping, earwax removing, eye-crust cleaning, tooth brushing… the list was endless. She felt a tiny pinch of resentment.

“I know it’s your car, but I helped you get it from under the couch. So you should say thank you. Just two small words: ‘thank you.’”

She could tell he understood the gist of what she was saying but hadn’t yet decided whether to cooperate. He stood there, the tops of his ears getting red, then fired the miniature pickup at the wall, where it left a black mark and small dent. Lucy grabbed his upper arm and marched him up the stairs to his room. She shut the door and spoke through it.

“You can stay in there, mister, until you decide to cooperate. We do not throw cars against the wall.”

She ran back down the stairs, her heart pounding, and poured herself another cup of coffee with a shaking hand. Then she called Angela and cried.

“Honey, you did what you’re supposed to do,” Angela said. “You’re the parent, not his friend. You can’t worry so much about him liking you. Eventually, if you do your job and teach him how to survive in this world, he will love you for it. ‘Please and thank you’ are non-negotiable. Don’t you think you deserve that much?”

Lucy saw, in that moment, what Harlan had been trying to say to her. It wasn’t just a matter of capitulating to the whims of a four-year-old for some momentary peace, but a decision to focus on eventual outcomes. She needed to move ahead of the obstacles, to see them for the temporary roadblocks they were, instead of letting them knock her off her feet. It required a toughness and a sureness of foot that she wasn’t sure she had. But then Mat came downstairs from his room. He stood in front of her, his face streaked with tears. The receiver fell out of her hand as he spoke in the direction of her knees.

“Thanks… you.”

seventeen

M
y Lucy,

It’s June now, when all teachers remember why they became teachers: to have the summer off. Ending an academic year has a way of resetting the clock, and I’m hoping you’ve reset yours, Lucy. I hope you’re barreling along now, full steam, because everything is ahead of you. You get to fill in the blank squares on your calendar, and it doesn’t matter if it’s jury duty or a root canal or bunion surgery; it’s life, and you get to live it.

If you can bear with me, I have the need to get philosophical.

What’s your average life span now? Seventy-five, eighty years? In your thirties, you’re still riding up that arc, reaching for something you hope to achieve. A few people manage to buck expectations and stay productive on the other side. Frank Lloyd Wright, if I remember correctly, designed some of his most impressive buildings in his seventies and eighties.

The sad part of my way-below-average life span—other than the obvious—is knowing that everyone will look at what came before my illness and view it through that lens. Why did the poor guy bother with all that education? It’s too bad he didn’t get married and have kids early, leave something of himself behind. If he had known when his life would end, he never would have fill-in-the-blank.

Why am I telling you this, other than to grovel in self-pity? It’s to make sure you know that you can’t take the arc for granted. And to tell someone—or maybe just to remind myself—that my shortened arc doesn’t erase or even alter what came before. I refuse to believe that.

I often think about the time earlier this year, after my second brush with death, when I had a short remission and even allowed myself to imagine being well again. I truly enjoyed that trip we took to Hershey Park, when we rode that embarrassing little factory ride and ate chocolate and watched the kids on the roller coasters, and I pretended I was a normal person who had my calendar filled all the way through Christmas. It was a nice fantasy, and it’s those kinds of memories that sustain me now. I want you to have more memories like that, even if they’re with someone else.

That little interlude almost made it more difficult when the tumors began to grow again. I never told you this, but Dr. Singh gave me the number of a hospice a few months ago, when I was at my lowest point. A week later, he called me to say I was eligible for the phase 1 trial. But it was always a long shot just to get me ready for a bone-marrow transplant, which was another long shot. I agreed to the experimental stuff in part because all these doctors wanted so badly to give me another chance and in part because of you. I didn’t want to let you down. We have one of those rare connections, Lucy. I’m my best and most comfortable self in your presence, and you’ve made it clear how much you want me to stick around. But after they chemo’d me into the ground for the umpteenth time, the color just drained away. I couldn’t do it anymore. As hackneyed as it may sound, there’s no point in fighting the battle when you don’t think you can win the war.

I regret, sometimes, that we didn’t spend a lot of time together before my illness. If we had, if Sylvie had never been in the picture, I’m sure you would have better memories of me. Back in the day, I was a lot of fun. If I thought I could become that person again, I would force myself to wait, to see if medical science might catch up to my disease, as you so strongly advocate. But that person is gone, Lucy. I don’t know if he was suctioned out the first time they tested my bone marrow, or if
he was blasted with toxic chemicals during my last chemo treatment, but he’s not coming back.

It might seem a little contradictory for me to advise you to move on when I’m inserting myself into your monthly chores with these e-mails. I only want to remind you that you have a long, long story that’s yet to be told. I need to think that you’ll propel yourself ahead instead of dwelling on the past.

Love, as always,

Harlan

Mat was calling her from the other room, but Lucy stayed in her chair, holding the words in front of her, letting them float in and out of focus.

She had no idea that Harlan’s doctor had given him the number of a hospice before he started the experimental treatments. She couldn’t imagine what he did with that information or which part of his brain had tried to cope with the idea that no one could help him anymore. And yet, when the chance came for the phase 1 trial, he had agreed, not because he thought it would help, but because his doctors weren’t ready to give up and because Lucy had wanted to prolong his life. Maybe they had all just pushed him too far with their positive reinforcement and their desperate hope. He was the one living it, and they couldn’t have known—not even his doctors—what he was feeling inside.

She went back to the top of the e-mail, to the arc. So that’s what happened when you knew you were dying; you sought patterns to make sense of it, to give it some shape that could be replicated, described by a mathematical equation. And that might explain the e-mails, too, the need to pass along something learned, something others could put to use, like those parents who started organizations against drunk driving or to prevent choking hazards or to require fences around swimming pools, so that their child wouldn’t have died in vain.

She read the e-mail again, still lost in the words, which she could hear being spoken as though Harlan himself was standing by her side. His voice had been fading, but this note brought it back with all its resonance.

Just as she closed her eyes, Mat came in on all fours, pushing his Tonka truck until he was close enough to tug on her leg.

“Cokie,” he said.

“Just a minute, Mat.” She could let him wait now, had finally realized that her constant ministrations and availability only diminished her in his eyes. She had grown more opaque, holding her need to be loved like a hand of cards, close to her chest. And it was working. More and more often now, Mat came to her.

She turned back to the computer as Mat ran the Tonka truck under her chair. When he stood up next to her and stared at the computer screen, she felt somehow that he was reading Harlan’s e-mail, though she knew it wasn’t possible. She closed it quickly, as though she were hiding a love letter.

“One more minute,” she said, glancing back at the e-mail directory. A new e-mail had arrived, apparently while she had been communing with Harlan’s ghost. This one was from Dean Humphrey.

Lucy,

While I appreciate your work on this piece—and it’s a good one—I don’t remember discussing a joint effort with you. Please call me as soon as possible to explain Louis Beauchamp’s role.

Dean

She read it again.
A joint effort?
She had hoped to scrape by with the article, just buy herself another year so she could settle in with Mat and get her academic life back on track. What did Louis have to do with it?

Mat tugged on her sleeve, and she got up, following him downstairs to the kitchen. She handed him a cookie and spread some peanut butter—he never seemed to get enough—on a slice of bread.
She had to call Louis. She opened the refrigerator for some milk and saw that she would have to go shopping again: bread, eggs, orange juice, cheese, apples, more peanut butter. What did it mean?
A joint effort.
Louis was supposed to walk the article from her desk to the dean’s office. Was Dean Humphrey upset that she hadn’t delivered it personally? She bent down to get a new sponge from under the sink. She needed dishwashing detergent, too. And more cookies. How could such a small boy consume so much?

“Kotka?”
Mat said, which surprised her, because she hadn’t heard him use a Russian word in at least a week. She picked up her Russian-English dictionary, which was on the counter near the kitchen phone, but she didn’t have to look it up because she noticed that Mat was pointing at the cat clock, its tail incessantly swinging.

“Cat? Are you looking for the cat?” She wondered if he had just noticed it was gone. “The cat is with Nana.”

“Nana?” he said.

“Nana has
kotka
,” Lucy said, picking up a piece of paper and a blue crayon to draw a primitive sketch of her mother’s living room. She drew the cat, placing him on the floor near her mother’s couch. She had started to add some exaggerated whiskers when the phone rang.