Forbidden Sister (23 page)

He looked at her. I could see his whole demeanor change. There was going to be no sugarcoating as long as Roxy was there. He was back to being a scientist.

“I can’t give you an exact prognosis yet.”

“What stage is she in?” Roxy demanded.

He looked at me again and then back at her. “She’s stage four.”

“The worst,” Roxy muttered. He nodded. “Did she neglect herself, her symptoms?”

“I’m not her primary,” Dr. Hoffman said. “You’d have to speak to her gynecologist, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions. Everyone’s different.”

“Yes, everyone’s different,” Roxy said dryly.

“We’ll do the best we can. She’ll be here a while,” he told me. “Right now, she’s still in recovery. I’d say
give her a few hours before trying to visit. We’ll keep her there a few days before moving her.”

“How long do you give her?” Roxy asked.

His face hardened. I was sure he didn’t like Roxy’s tone. The children of most of his patients were nowhere as cold or as tough and surely didn’t ask such a question so quickly. For a few fleeting seconds, he was probably wondering about the relationships, but I could see he didn’t want to spend any of his time on that. It wasn’t the world he worked in. He looked at me again, obviously deciding whether to be evasive. Something told him that Roxy wouldn’t let him get away with it.

“Fifteen percent at stage four make it to five years,” he replied. “I can’t tell you much more than that.”

“That’s enough. Thank you,” Roxy said, rising.

Dr. Hoffman nodded. I looked up at Roxy. I was feeling a bit dizzy. All of these terrible things had been said so quickly. I think she saw it and reached down to take my arm to get me to my feet. None of it felt real to me. It was as if I were in a dream.

“C’mon, M,” she said.

I glanced at the doctor. I could see his eyes narrow, his face fill with disapproval.

Roxy didn’t speak again until we were almost back to the lobby. “If I didn’t push him, he’d have you believing in Santa Claus,” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

She stopped and spun me around. “What don’t
you understand, M? Mama might have been sick quite a while. Maybe if she had taken better medical care of herself, it would have made a difference. I don’t know, and neither does he. You see how quickly he came to the defense of another doctor. Everyone’s different, he said. What a catchall for everything.”

“But what was all that about five years?”

She softened. “Where are you going now?”

“Going? I don’t know. Where would I go?”

“Right. Where would you go?” she asked herself. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to see someone. Go home and take a shower or something. Fix yourself up a little. You look too drab. We’ll be back here in two hours and visit her, and then I’ll take you to dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“We’ve got to eat, M, and if you go in to visit her looking so overwhelmed and terrified . . .”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” I said sharply.

“Maybe you do. Maybe you’re smarter than I was at your age.” She looked at her watch and said, “I’ll meet you in the lobby again in exactly two hours.”

“Okay.”

She started away. Suddenly, she paused and turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been on my own so long that I forgot what it was like to have someone you cared about and who cared about you. I don’t mean to sound so insensitive.”

She walked on.

That was the nicest thing she had said to me since we had met again, I thought, and I walked after her, but she was going too fast for me to catch up.

When I stepped out of the hospital, she was getting into a cab.

And the flurries she had predicted had begun.

I knew the house would be empty when I returned, but despite the brave face I had put on for both Mama and Roxy, I was simply not prepared for the silence and the shadows. Out of habit, I almost shouted, “Mama, I’m home.” For a long moment, I simply stood in the entryway listening. If stillness could be loud, it was deafening there, I thought.

The overcast sky spread thick shadows over the walls and floors. It looked as if a large, solid black cover was being thrown over all of the furniture. It was as if our lives in this home were going to be placed in storage, shut up in vaults that would never be opened. With a vengeance, I began flipping on every possible light and lamp. I would not let the darkness have its way with me. Then I hurried up to my room.

When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I knew Roxy was right. The waiting, the stress of the day, and especially the things Dr. Hoffman had said had drained me of all hope and happiness. I looked like a refugee who had trekked across scene after scene
of death and destruction, a young girl without family whom misery had stunned and aged almost overnight.

Show this face to Mama, and you shut down all of her hope,
I thought.

I jumped into the shower and then did my hair and put on some makeup. I chose a bright blue dress and some earrings. When I went to put on my watch, I paused and thought of something. I opened my dresser drawer and took out the charm bracelet. It brought a smile to my face. It would surely please Mama to see me wearing it, especially with Roxy right there beside me. I got my nice evening coat from the entryway closet, turned off almost all of the lights, and headed back to the hospital.

I was there before Roxy, but when a good half hour went by, I began to fear that she wouldn’t come. I looked up every time someone entered the hospital. When it was more like an hour, I got up and went to the desk to find out where I should go to see Mama. Before I went into the elevator, I paused and watched the entrance. Roxy didn’t appear. Angry and disgusted, I started for the ICU. I quickly decided that I could not in any way indicate to Mama that Roxy had been there and then failed to show up to visit her. I thought it was better that she didn’t know anything about it.

As it turned out, it almost didn’t matter anyway. Mama was under so much pain medication that she barely realized I was there. I held her hand and talked to her anyway. She smiled at me but closed her eyes.

One of the nurses came over to me and told me not to be upset. “She’s doing fine and will be better company tomorrow,” she said.

I thanked her, but I stayed as long as I could. I was afraid Mama would wake up and not see me or even remember I had been there, even though the nurse assured me that she would tell her. The whole time I was there, I still expected Roxy would show up, but she never appeared. Finally, I kissed Mama and whispered, “I’ll be back in the morning, Mama. I love you.”

When I returned to the lobby, I saw that the flurries had become a real snowfall. I stood there for a while just looking at it. The flakes were tiny jeweled butterflies surprised by car headlights. They seemed to flee into whatever pockets of darkness they could find, afraid that the light would melt them quicker and their short lives would be that much shorter.

When we are children, everything around us seems alive. We imagine trees and rocks, grass and flowers all have feelings and emotions. Precious possessions certainly do. My charm bracelet looked sad, even a little embarrassed, on my wrist now. I unclipped it quickly and put it in my purse. Whatever feeling my sister had for me when she gave it to me years ago and whatever feelings I had whenever I looked at it afterward were as brittle and dead as an old leaf decomposing between the pages of a book.

Where do memories go when we forget them? I wondered. Do they evaporate and disappear like smoke or crumble into dust and scatter in the wind? Where had Roxy put all her memories? Was she able
to crush them or set them on fire with her anger? Was that why she didn’t come back? Were her memories resurrected, haunting her and punishing her for forgetting them?

Who was really stronger now, she or I? I recalled how quickly she had left me and hailed a taxicab. Maybe she was the one fleeing; maybe she was the one who wasn’t tough enough to face all of this despite the hard persona she had presented to the doctor. If I ever saw her again, I would tell her that, too.

I buttoned up my coat. An elderly man with hair the color of unpolished silverware stepped up beside me and made a clicking sound with his lips. He was about my height and wore a heavy winter jacket.

“We’re in for it now,” he muttered. “Look at it come down. It’s the kind that sticks.”

I didn’t say anything.

He glanced at me and nodded. “Better button up,” he said. He started out, paused, and then walked as quickly as he could, his hands up around his neck as if he didn’t want a single flake to touch his skin.

I followed him out.

It was almost impossible to hail a cab in this weather. Every one I saw had passengers in it. There was nothing to do but put my head down and walk. In my eagerness to look nice for Mama, I had put on the wrong shoes for this kind of weather. My feet were freezing by the time I had walked two blocks. I gazed into the windows of restaurants along the way. The people I saw talking and laughing looked completely oblivious to the weather outside. It was as if I were looking through a magic
window into a world where there were no sick loved ones, no inclement weather, no fear of what the future might bring, simply no unhappiness.

These people would enjoy one another’s company, sit down to a wonderful dinner seasoned with laughter and affection, and afterward, contented and high on their pleasure, step out looking surprised that there was a storm of any sort. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Their happiness would keep them warm and safe.

How could I be one of them? Wasn’t I supposed to be? Wasn’t that what Roxy had said? We would go to dinner, surely at a fancy restaurant? Maybe at that dinner, I would have learned a great deal more about her and about what had happened. Maybe we would have grown closer and been well on our way to being sisters again.

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” I chanted, like someone who had gone mad on the streets of the city. I looked up defiantly into the snow and walked on. I crossed avenues and made turns casually, as if the sun were shining. All of the bad news, the tension, and the disappointment made me giddy. I felt like Gene Kelly in
Singin’ in the Rain
. I heard myself laughing and caught the curious, even frightened, looks of some people hurrying by me. By the time I reached our street, my hair was soaked, but I was still oblivious to the cold. When I entered the house, I shook myself off like a dog, threw my wet coat on the floor, and sat right there in the entryway. For a moment, I was dazed, and then I just began to cry. I sobbed hard, so hard that my ribs hurt, until I was exhausted.

I struggled to my feet and made my way up the stairs, using the banister to pull myself along. When I got to my bedroom, I peeled off my clothes, leaving them all in a pile at my feet, and then I went into the shower and ran the water as hot as I could stand. My skin was sunburn red when I stepped out and began to dry myself.

Now truly exhausted, I fell onto my bed and tucked my blanket in around me. In minutes, I was asleep. In a dream, I heard the doorbell ringing and ringing. Finally, I rose and went downstairs. When I opened the door, Papa was standing there.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “I leave for a little while, and the place falls apart?”

I quickly embraced him, and he closed the door. I kept my head against his chest and held on to him so tightly that he couldn’t move.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m here. Everything will be all right. The cavalry has arrived.”

I laughed and looked up at him. That was just what he would say.

But then he popped like a bubble and was gone.

“Papa!” I screamed. “Papa, where are you?”

I ran through all of the downstairs rooms and then hurried back upstairs. When I looked into his and Mama’s bedroom, I saw him lying there just as he was in the funeral parlor. I put my hands on my temples and screamed and screamed until . . . I woke up, gasping.

It was nearly midnight. After a few moments, I was calm again, realizing I had been dreaming. I fell
back onto my pillow and looked up at the dark ceiling. I vaguely thought about not having eaten anything, but I really didn’t have any appetite. The best thing to do, I told myself, was try to get back to sleep, get up as early as I could, and hurry back to the hospital.

It was something easier thought of than done. Everything came rushing back at me, but I was too tired to cry anymore. Reliving the day finally tired me out again, and I did fall asleep. I woke up with a start, having slept longer than I intended, and then I rushed about, picking up my clothes, dressing, having a glass of juice and a piece of toast with jam because I knew Mama would be upset if I didn’t eat anything first. It was probably going to be her first question when she saw me, I thought. I washed and dried my glass and dish, then I started for the front door.

Before I reached it, the buzzer sounded, and I stopped like someone instantly frozen. My dream returned. Was Papa out there? The buzzer went off again and again. With my legs trembling, I stepped forward and opened the door. Roxy was standing there in a jacket and hood. She was in jeans and a pair of nearly knee-high black boots.