As Close as Sisters (2 page)

I put one foot up on the next step. I leaned heavily on the rail. I told myself I was almost there. A lie. I kept going.

There were three bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. My intention, halfway up the stairs, had been to open all the rooms. But as I struggled to reach the landing I thought that maybe I’d wait until morning when I was more rested. I still had to get the food and booze and my nebulizer bag out of the car. And I was badly in need of a glass of pinot grigio. I’m not supposed to be drinking with my medication, but I have a glass of wine when I feel like it. Why not? What’s it going to do? Kill me?

I was really sucking wind by the time I reached the top of the staircase. It was so damned hot. Hotter upstairs than down. The whole heat rises thing, I guess.

I bent over, hands on my knees, as if I’d run a seven-minute mile.

The thought made me laugh. Or I would have laughed if I could have gotten enough air. Never in my life, even when I was at my fittest and considered myself a runner, could I have run a seven-minute mile. I leaned against the big, square, white newel post. My hand hit the carved cap on the top, and I knocked it off. It rolled across the hardwood floor and came to rest against the wall near the first bedroom door. I stared at the cap. It seemed so far away.

It’s been unattached for as long as I’ve been coming here. I’d knocked it down the hall, down the steps. I wondered why none of us ever got some wood glue and reattached it.

I caught my breath, which seemed to take forever, then walked over to the newel cap and slowly leaned over to pick it up off the floor. I returned it to its rightful place, slipping the stripped threads of the post over the screw. How many times had I touched this cap? How many times more would I do it?

It was weird to constantly see things in finite terms where I had once seen them in infinite ones.

As I went down the hall, I thought I heard a sound downstairs. I stopped. Listened. I didn’t hear anything. The wind, maybe? Had I left the back door ajar?

I pushed open the door of the first bedroom. Janine’s room. I flipped the switch on the wall, and the overhead light and two bedside lamps came on. For a second, I didn’t see the pale blue walls and white trim or the blond wood floor. I saw the room as it was that night. Pink walls, beige carpet. I saw the bed against the wall to my right, not where it was now.

My gaze fell to the place on the floor where Janine’s father had lain dead. I remembered what his blood smelled like. (Who knew blood had a smell?) How thick the puddle of blood seemed, the way it sat on top of the carpet rather than being absorbed. It had looked fake, like from a B movie.

It wasn’t.

I swallowed hard. Fought the nausea. I had taken my medication two hours ago. Sometimes it made me nauseated. But it wasn’t the cancer medication making me sick to my stomach right now; it was Buddy McCollister. Sergeant Buddy McCollister, Albany Beach Police Department.

I wasn’t ready for this. I leaned against the doorframe. I thought I was, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t clean or make Janine’s bed. I wondered if I should start with my own room downstairs.

I backed out the door, turning off the lights. But instead of going downstairs, I headed for the bedroom Lilly and I used to sleep in. I reached the bathroom. The door was open, the starfish shower curtain pulled back to expose the claw-foot bathtub and shower combination. I walked past the bathroom, past the next closed door. My hand was on the doorknob of our bedroom when I stopped. Something wasn’t right. I retraced my steps. I went back to the bathroom and reached around to turn on the light. Nothing was amiss, except that there was a towel hanging on the towel rack. We never left towels out when we closed up. Dust. Mildew. I didn’t know how long it had been since Janine or one of the others had been here, but we never left towels out or beds made. Maybe Janine had used the towel when she’d stopped by earlier in the week to turn on the hot water heater and the water. I fingered the turquoise towel. Was it damp? It couldn’t be. It had to just be the humidity.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the old oval mirror over the sink. I barely recognized the woman looking back at me. I’d aged ten years in the last eighteen months. I was wearing a blue and green paisley head scarf—hippie style, not charwoman, mind you. I was wearing the silver starfish earrings my girls had given me and a green malachite pendant that hung beneath my thyroidectomy scar. Kind of classy.

But anyone who looked at me could see the big
C
on my face. My reddish brown eyebrows are penciled in. My eyelashes are barely existent—just a few stubbles. But my freckles are still there, and I could still see my old self in my green eyes. My red hair was always my best feature; I’d worn it long my whole life. Until it started falling out, in clumps. Now I think my eyes are my best feature. The greens and blues in the scarf played them up nicely. Somehow, I found a smile for myself.

I shut off the light and went back up the hall, passing Aurora’s room, to reach the one Lilly and I always shared, at the end of the hall. I pushed it open tentatively. I flipped on the light switch. No lights came on, which was weird. I walked to the nightstand and turned the switch on the lamp, which was draped with a pretty scarf. The light came on. I grabbed the scarf, gave it a shake, and returned it to the shade. The walls were pale teal. I painted them three summers ago. My single bed, next to Lilly’s, was new . . . new to me. Bought at a secondhand store and repainted the same summer. I loved my beach bed. It had a high headboard, and at the top was a carved, fluted seashell. I wished I could sleep in it tonight. Maybe I’d be the rebel for once and insist on sleeping here. But that wouldn’t be fair to Lilly, to make her listen to me wheeze all night. And it wouldn’t be fair to make one of the others sleep downstairs. In
his
room.

I yanked the white chenille bedspread off my bed, revealing the bare mattress, and tossed it out the door. I’d wash tonight . . . or maybe in the morning. As I turned back, my toe hit something under the bed. Something soft, but with form.

I lifted the dust ruffle and pulled out a navy rucksack. It looked like it had seen better days. It wasn’t mine. I opened the bag: T-shirts, jeans, a wide-toothed comb, a toothbrush. I dropped the bag on the floor, suddenly afraid. Was someone staying in the house? A vagrant maybe? It happened. People know most of the houses along this beach are only occupied during the summer.

I listened carefully, wondering if I just heard something downstairs again. Water running?

I was suddenly dry-mouthed. My heart was pounding. Where was my cell phone? Did I leave it on the car seat? In my handbag? Did I lay it down somewhere downstairs? I couldn’t remember. I always kept my cell phone with me . . . in case one of my daughters needed me. In case I needed to call 911. Because I’m dying.

I patted the front pockets of my jeans that hung on my hips. No phone. My back pockets. No phone in the left . . . but in the right, a lump. I almost sighed I was so relieved. I stepped quietly into the hall. Listened.

I didn’t hear a thing . . . except for my own labored breathing.

I walked down the hall. Still nothing. I stopped at the top of the steps and listened, my iPhone poised. I was ready to dial 911.

I heard nothing. I was beginning to wonder if I imagined the sounds. There was probably an explanation for the rucksack under my bed. I crept down the staircase. Down was easier than up.

There was no one there. There was no homeless guy camping in the house, I told myself. That was silly. I’d just go out to the car, get the rest of the things, and lock up for the night.

The final step at the bottom of the staircase squeaked. I froze. Nothing.

I walked through the living room, past the downstairs bathroom, into the kitchen. My gaze went first to the back door in the laundry room. It was closed. I was so relieved that it took me a split second to realize I wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

The dark figure, backlit by the sunlight filtering through the kitchen window, turned toward me. I almost dropped my phone as I started to thumb the numbers on the keypad. Then I saw her face. “Aurora!” I gasped. My hand went to my chest. My heart was pounding.

She held open her arms, an amber bottle of beer in one hand. “Expecting someone else?”

I laughed, but I wanted to cry. I hadn’t seen Aurora since April; she’d been out of the country. We talked on the phone, we Face-Timed occasionally, but it wasn’t the same thing. I’d missed her so much. Missed her strength, the enormous presence she brought to a room. I hurled myself into her arms.

Everything would be all right now. I knew it in my heart’s core, “
ay, in my heart of heart
” (Shakespeare’s words, not mine). I could do anything if I had Aurora at my side. I could even die.

She hugged me, and I held on to her tightly. I didn’t care that she was still wet from her swim. Her body was cool against my skin.

“How are you, babe?” she murmured against my temple. Aurora was tall. Taller than me, taller than any of us. She was a six-foot blond Amazon. “You’re wasting away.”

I didn’t tell her that weight loss was the one thing I secretly liked about having cancer. It was too embarrassing to admit, even to my best friends. “I’m okay.”

She smelled of the ocean, briny and clean. “Yeah?” she asked, still hugging me against her wet body. She was wearing a red one-piece swimsuit she’d had since she was a lifeguard when we were in college. I couldn’t believe she could still fit in the suit. Almost more unbelievable was that she still had it, twenty-some years later. I didn’t get it. She could afford to buy a new swimsuit for every day of the year. She could buy a suit, wear it once, and toss it. Aurora is what my mother calls
filthy rich;
Mom speaks the phrase as if it’s something deplorable. I wouldn’t mind trying it. Especially now, with my timer about to go off.

Aurora stepped back and tugged off her faded blue swim cap; long, shiny blond hair fell down her back. She tossed the cap on the counter. Her movements were graceful; everything was art with Aurora. She could have been a dancer.

She cocked her head and pointed with the beer bottle. “What’s with the scarf?”

My hand went to my head. It seemed like a silly question. I whispered, “I’m bald.” My gaze locked with hers. She had big, brown, expressive eyes. You didn’t expect brown eyes from a blonde.

“Let me see.”

I shook my head, feeling the contours of my skull beneath my fingertips. “No.”

“Oh, come on. It’s me. You have to show
me
. You have to show
us
.” She pursed her perfectly pink, full lips. Natural. No Juvé-derm injections. “It’s not like you’re going to go around wearing a scarf day and night for the next month.”

Honestly, I had considered it.

For me, my baldness was the ultimate substantiation of my vulnerability. I didn’t want to be vulnerable anymore. I didn’t want to feel scared anymore. I wanted to feel like Aurora must feel every day of her life. Invincible.

Aurora held my gaze for a long moment, then took a step toward me again. “Come on,” she whispered, covering the hand on my head with hers.

I looked down at the floor.

“Just a peek,” she cajoled, putting pressure on my hand. “I’ll tell you if it’s awful. You know I will.”

True story,
as my daughters would say. Aurora was the one who told me not to marry Jared; she said he’d be unfaithful. She told me not to major in literature in college because I would never become a writer that way. She also told me when it was time to start dyeing the gray in my red hair. And when to call it quits on the marriage she’d warned me against years before. And she never said, “I told you so.” Never once. I trusted Aurora. Above all things, she was honest. Even when it hurt.

I let her push the scarf off the back of my head. I balled it in my fist and dropped my hand to my side. I felt like I was standing naked, with my C-section belly scar and deflated breasts in front of a stranger.

Aurora looked at me, smiling. She rubbed her palm over my almost-shiny pate. “It’s already growing back in.”

I tried to smile. I tried to be thankful.
Whoopee.
I may not be bald by the time I’m laid in my coffin.

“I like it.” Aurora gave my head a final rub as if it were a genie lamp. “You have a nicely shaped head,” she added.

I rolled my eyes. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

She shrugged. Sipped her beer. The brown bottle was sweaty in her hand. I bet that if I opened the refrigerator, there would be half a case of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA inside. There wouldn’t be any food, beyond a hunk of aged cheese and some expensive bubbly water, but there would be plenty of microbrewed beer.

“It’s coming in red. You know I’d give anything to naturally have hair the color of yours,” she said.

She and I have had this discussion a million times over the years. She says she always wished she had a curvy body and auburn hair like me. I find that hard to believe. Who wouldn’t die to have her natural thinness and gorgeous blond hair? Okay . . . maybe not . . . die.

Funny how your perspective changes.

“What are you doing here already?” I slipped the scarf back on and adjusted it. I still had to go out to the car and get my things. I certainly wasn’t going to let the neighbors see my bald head. “You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t have time to myself now. When you’re dying, people tend to gang up on you. I feel like I’m never alone. My girls, my mom and dad, my neighbors, my colleagues, they want to surround me day and night. They don’t want me to be alone in my last hours, I suppose. And maybe I don’t either, but I would like to catch my breath once in a while. Maybe pee without someone knocking on the bathroom door and asking if I’m okay.