I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) (10 page)

“What's Funny Bucks?” Lindsey asked. Last year Keri had whispered things about Lindsey's mama to some of the other girls:
She does drugs. Had a fight with her boyfriend.

“It's fake money,” Keri said. “You get to buy candy at the end of the year.”

The boy grabbed a yellow foam noodle off the deck and tucked it under his arms. He floated around in front of Lindsey and raised his goggles. “You're that girl with the mom who got shot in the neck.” He swam closer. His eyes were huge, surrounded by dented red circles. “Did an ambulance come and get her?”

“Helicopter.”

“Cooool. Did it just, like, land in your backyard?”

“It was an apartment.”

“Leave her alone, Brendan,” Madeline said.

Brendan started to push the surface with his palm, making ripples and waves, never taking his eyes off Lindsey. “Did you see her, after? I mean, when she was, you know. All bloody?” Madeline and Keri hung from the side, goggles fixed on Lindsey's face.

“I was asleep.”

“But didn't you, like, hear it?”

Lindsey didn't answer.

“So can her wheelchair stand up?” Brendan asked. “I saw this guy at the store once, he just pushed a button and he could get stuff off the top shelf.”

“She can't get stuff off a shelf,” Lindsey said. “She's a
quadriplegic
.”

“Want to go off the diving board?” Madeline said.

“Yeah, let's go.” Keri was now on her side. They swam to the ladder in the deep end and climbed out. Keri had on the two-piece swimsuit Lindsey had wanted at Old Navy, with a palm tree and setting sun and the word
Malibu
on the butt. Nona made her buy a one-piece. It was plain blue and the only cute thing about it was a row of rainbow-colored beads strung onto the left shoulder tie.

“Hey, Keri—what's your dad doing down there?” Made­line was leaning over the marble rail, pointing down into the courtyard. Keri's father was standing with Mr. Seyler next to Mama's wheelchair. Other dads were down there too—they were talking with Mr. Seyler and gesturing. Lindsey saw her mother's cowboy hat bob.

“My mom can't get up the stairs,” Lindsey said.

“Do you still want to dive with us?”

“I'm just going to get a tube,” Lindsey said. She headed toward a blow-up ring near the shallow end; when the girls weren't looking, she grabbed her towel and ran down the steps.

“. . . God's mighty arms,” she heard Nona say when she reached the mesquite tree. “His people do for the weak what they can't do for themselves.” Lindsey came up and took Nona's hand, and Nona leaned down and whispered, “Didn't I tell you? It starts today!” From where she stood Lindsey couldn't see her mother's face; her head was bowed beneath her hat.

“I think four of us,” Mr. Seyler said, “two to a side, should do it. Let's give it a try.”

They lifted. Nona hid her eyes, but Lindsey watched, motionless. She knew the wheelchair was heavy—three hundred pounds, with Mama in it. But they got it up off the grass, a good two feet. She could see the muscles ripple in Mr. Seyler's back, faces turning red, veins popping. When they set her back down Mama's body shimmied with the impact.

“All right, let's push her to the staircase.”

“Let me go on ahead,” Nona said. “I can't bear to watch.” She put a hand on Mama's shoulder. “Jesus, lift this child up. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.” Lindsey watched her hurry away across the grass, light as air, lovely, her Keds flashing white beneath her long skirt.

Lindsey stayed next to the chair as the men pushed it toward the stairs. “Mama?” she whispered. “Are you sure this is safe? What if they drop you?”

“Yeah, might break my neck, wind up paralyzed,” Mama whispered back. She paused to breathe. “Go up with Nona.”

Lindsey stayed where she was. Who else would catch Mama if she fell? She watched the men lift, watched the chair tilt with every step, the round bag of urine in its black zippered case swinging like a pendulum. The dads set Mama down on the landing and rolled their shoulders. On the second flight, a front wheel bumped one of the steps. The jolt knocked Mama's cowboy hat off, leaving the roots of her hair exposed, dark and flecked with dandruff.

When they reached the top, a few people applauded. The men smiled at one another, shaking out their arms. Madeline's dad patted Mama's lower arm while Lindsey trudged up the steps, stopping to pick up the hat. “Let's get you into the shade, hon,” Nona said. “Let's get your water bottle refilled. We can't have a dry throat today.” Nona put Mama's hand on the control stick so she could drive, then led the way.

“Wait,” Lindsey said, following them. “She needs her hat.”

Everybody started filing through the pool house, loading plates with food: hot dogs, hamburgers; salads topped with candied walnuts, dried currants, strawberries, and feta cheese. A row of “Fat-Free!” and “Light!” and “No Oil!” salad dressings, pot stickers, fruit trays, risotto, deviled eggs sprinkled with parsley, organic blue corn chips, homemade guacamole. Nona's carrot-and-celery tray with its plastic tub of Hidden Valley ranch dip sat untouched.

When Lindsey came out of the pool house, she saw that Nona had parked Mama under a covered portico at the far end of the pool and surrounded her with a circle of chairs. The chairs were empty.

Lindsey felt her cheeks grow hot. It was one thing to ignore Mama when she was down in the courtyard; it was another thing to ignore her now. She found Nona sitting with a group of women in jeweled flip-flops and Capri pants. “The first time I truly identified with Mary the mother of Christ,” Nona was saying, “was looking at those crumpled hands. It was like I wanted to throw my mantle over my face and go hide in a cave. Now where did that vision come from?” The women listened politely, placing small forkfuls of salad in their mouths. Among these women Nona looked even younger. She could have been one of them, mother of a fourth-grader.

Lindsey tugged on Nona's sleeve. “No one is sitting with Mama.”

Nona wrapped her arm around Lindsey's waist and pulled her close. She went on talking, plate balanced on her lap. “I asked the doctor that day,” she said, “‘Doctor, is she going to be this way for the rest of her life?' and the doctor said”—Nona paused, looking around the circle—“he said, ‘Yes. And for the rest of yours.'”

“Bless your heart,” said Mrs. Seyler. “I can't imagine what it must be like for you.”

“Nona,” Lindsey said. “Mama is alone.”

Nona gave her a squeeze. “Why don't you go sit with her,” she said. “I'll be over in a minute.” She picked up her fork and Lindsey saw Nona's hand was shaking. When she tried to take a bite of her salad, she knocked the plate off her lap.

Nona hardly ever left the house. Now she was the one coming uncorked.

“Let me get that,” one of the mothers said.

“It's fine,” Nona said, bending over to pick up the plate; when she sat up her eyes were wet.

Mrs. Seyler looked at Lindsey. “That's a cute swimsuit,” she said. “I like the beads.”

“I'll tell you what, though,” Nona said. “I'll take Valerie this way over the way she was before. The drugs and alcohol, boys, constant parties. Thank God Lindsey was asleep when Marcus—”

“Nona,” Lindsey said. She stepped away from the circle. “Let's go sit with Mama now.”

Nona stood up. “There's that verse,” she said, setting her plate on the chair, “and it's the truth: ‘Better to lose an eye than to have the whole body thrown into Hell.'”

Lindsey couldn't stand it any longer. “That's
bullshit
!” She heard her own voice explode above her head somewhere. “It's not her eye, it's her
whole fucking body
!”

Nona covered her mouth with her hand.

The mothers looked down at their plates; some of them looked away. Mrs. Seyler stood and tried to put an arm around Lindsey, but she ran before anyone could touch her. She ran past the pool, past Madeline and Keri. She ran past Brendan and some other boys who sat on their towels eating. She ran to the portico, to the empty chairs, to Mama. She loved her, loved her desperately; she would sit with her, facing her, her back to the party, to the world. She would hold Mama's crumpled hands, she would kiss them, she didn't care who saw. They would sit there together, the two of them, with only the blue sky and clouds drifting overhead. They would sit there until God had mercy and turned them both to stone.

Georgia the Whole Time

Dying, I tell Neil, is like driving south up a mountain.

“58 South,” I say as we start the ascent on the way home from the clinic in Chattanooga. “We're going
south
and driving
up
.”

“Sandwich walks into a bar,” Neil says. His hands open and close around the steering wheel.

But the metaphor is too good to let go. “Like me. Uphill climb, body heading south all the while.”

“And the bartender says, ‘I'm sorry, we don't serve food here.'”

Thirty seconds later Neil says, “And by the way. You're not going to die.” His timing is off—it sounds like the punch line.

We moved from Phoenix to Lookout Mountain, Georgia, eight months ago, so Neil could teach economics at Westminster College. You can see the tower on the north end of Carter Hall from anywhere on the mountain. Most people think the tower is some kind of theological statement: aspiration toward God, beacon-on-the-hill. But back during Prohibition, Carter Hall was a luxury hotel and speakeasy. The tower was built to keep a lookout for the authorities.

Unless there's a truck in front of you, it takes seven minutes to drive up from Chattanooga to the top of Lookout. When you cross the Tennessee/Georgia line, the trees open up so you can see the view beyond the rusted guardrail.
welcome—we're glad georgia's on your mind
,
the sign says. But Georgia isn't on my mind. What's on my mind is the cliff on my left and the sheer limestone wall on my right.

At the top is the town of Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Turn right, drive four blocks, and you're in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Two states, one town. Population, just over five thousand. The two-state thing was a selling point with the kids. “You can trick-or-treat in Georgia
and
Tennessee,” we told them.

Some houses span the border. In these cases, state of residence depends on the master bedroom: if it's in Georgia, then you live in Georgia, even if the rest of the house is in Tennessee. The story goes that one man spent a year converting his garage into a master suite because he wanted to live in Tennessee, where there's no state income tax. After he'd changed his address and moved his furniture, he found his property taxes had doubled.

It doesn't matter which side you choose, our realtor said. It all evens out.

Our realtor also said the master bedroom rule isn't accurate in the
scientific
sense, since statistics show that, assuming an average life span, when you die you will have spent only a third of your time asleep. State of residence, he said, should depend on the room with the television.

A third of the time asleep. So what I'm losing is only two-thirds.

* * *

We decided to move to Georgia last March, before I found out that my melanoma had recurred. By June—when I found out—the house in Phoenix had sold and the car was packed. The contractor had installed French doors in the new house; Myra had picked petal pink for her walls.

I had surgery the day after the diagnosis. What I was hoping to hear, what I'd heard the first time, was
in situ
. This time, Dr. Planer didn't say
in situ
. She said
stage
four
. It was Neil's last day at work, and the day before the first leg of our drive, and the last day on our current insurance. How could I help thinking the timing was perfect?

While the surgeon scooped out tissue in my lower arm, he talked about increased family risk. “You need to contact your siblings. Do you have siblings?” Right, siblings. There are four of us. Of whom I am the eldest. The one who is supposed to take care of the elderly parents—when they become elderly. My parents are in their late fifties.

“And we're not just talking sunscreen with the kids,” the surgeon said. “We're talking indoors.”

I said, “We're moving to a mountain near Chattanooga. It's shady there.”

“You're lucky,” the nurse said. “I'd give anything to get my boys out of this sun.”

I closed my eyes against the smoke from the cauterizer. “I know,” I said. “The whole thing is really providential.”

Acknowledging you are dying is the first step toward living the rest of your life
.

I have not acknowledged anything to anyone but Neil. Moving was hard enough. I wear long sleeves, and I've been lucky with the hair. Hyperthermic isolated limb perfusion—where they cut off the circulation in my arm with a tourniquet and inject the warmed chemo—does not involve hair loss.

But at the clinic today, they implied it might be time to start acknowledging. There are, they said, satellite tumors.

And they gave us—Neil and me—the helpful booklet.
Even before you show signs of serious illness, people may have a different look in their eyes when they talk to you.
And,
Don't be afraid to ask to be alone.

We pick up the kids from school on our way home. Grady throws his backpack into the car before he climbs in. “TGI
Thur
,” he says. Tuesdays he says TGI
T
. This is what happens when you teach a four-year-old his days of the week and his consonants at the same time.

Myra keeps her backpack on. “How come you're driving us?”

“Hey, you two,” Neil says. “I forget. What's the guy's name with no arms and no legs, hanging on the wall?”

“Art!” Grady yells.

“No arms, no legs, swimming in a lake?”

“Bob!” he yells again.

“Don't you have classes?” Myra asks.

“Canceled,” Neil says. “On account of ice cream.”

Our realtor did not tell us about the leash laws. The Tennessee side has a leash law; the first walk I took on the Georgia side, three dogs followed me home. The Georgia dogs have stamina.

Every time I hear that another dog has been hit by a car, I know which side it lived on.

Last week, a big mixed breed scratched at my back door. His tag said
Bo, 5874 Cinderella Circle,
a cul-de-sac twelve blocks from our street. Twelve blocks used to be a warm-up. I looked for my car keys.

Bo's tail slapped the insides of my thighs when I rang the doorbell. A lady I recognized from church opened the door. I said, “Your dog came to my house and I thought I'd bring him home.”

“Oh, he runs everywhere,” she said. “But thanks for bringing him. Call next time—I'll come to you!”

Dogs are the kind of worry I can manage.

My kids worry about a tiny white terrier who crosses the street to meet us on the walk home from school. Yesterday, Myra screamed when a passing truck brushed the dog's tail. His fur is matted and he has a shrill, rapid-fire bark. He won't let me pick him up. The kids want to adopt him, but I tell them he already has a home. “Yah! Go home!” we shout, and stamp our feet at him, but this doesn't work. We decide our best bet is to ignore him. “Don't pet him, Grady,” Myra says. “If you do, he'll follow us.”

Yesterday, with the terrier barking at their shins, Myra took Grady's hand. “I bet you can't walk as fast as me. Come on, try to walk fast.” She pulled him along and his mitten came off in her hand. Grady took off the other mitten and pitched it back across the street into the dog's front yard. “Get it, doggy!”

“Go pick up your mitten,” Myra said. “Your fingers will freeze.”

But I said to leave it. I said, “Grady, that was brilliant. Trying to save the doggy like that. You are a brilliant little boy.”

When we get home, Neil runs the helpful booklet through the shredder and goes online. The NCI website keeps an updated list of clinical trials by state and region. There's a new study in Birmingham the oncologist thinks I'll qualify for. The drug is Interferon Alpha. Primary interference? Is this what I want to do, interfere primarily? It's something I'd say to a teenaged daughter: I have a right to interfere! I don't like the sound of it. Interfering is only rifling around in someone else's business. Interfering is not ending.

“We'd have to drive down three times a week,” Neil says. “We could ask Sandra to walk the kids home from school.”
Be grateful, and accept help, from whatever source, graciously
. But would Sandra let Grady pet the terrier? Would she make him go back for his mitten?

In bed, Neil wants to stroke my skin. He tells me it's soft as butter. Like feathers. Like fluffy clouds.

And I say things I never used to say. Why don't I dance naked for you. Why don't I lick you, suck you, sit on you. Why don't we do it on the dresser. In the rocking chair. Why don't you have your way with me.

You won't hurt me, I say.

Our next-door neighbor is a widow from Savannah. Her name is Anita, and she calls me
darlin'
. From my bedroom window, I always see her putting out leftovers on aluminum pie plates for the squirrels. Sometimes I go out back and we chat over the cedar fence that separates our side yards while she walks back and forth with her metal detector. She puts the things she finds in a cake pan on her deck, then sells them to the Point Park Museum. Since I've known her, she's found half a rusted canteen and three broken Confederate belt buckles.

Point Park is on the Tennessee side, where the east and west brows of the mountain come together. Billboards along 58 South have photographs of actors dressed in Civil War uniform:
come visit point park, where the battle begins every 30 minutes!
This is false advertising. You think you're going to watch a live reenactment, but it turns out to be an electronic battle map presentation.

We took Myra and Grady to see the battle map our second week here. We sat in theater chairs in front of a room-sized model of Chattanooga, with lines of toy blue and gray soldiers in formations around the city. I thought the soldiers would move, but once the presentation started a series of tiny lights underneath them—red for Confederate, blue for Union—blinked on and off in synch with the narration. We watched the rows of lights ascend and descend Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Grady fell asleep until the Rebel yell woke him up and made him cry.

After the presentation, you have to exit through the gift shop, which is divided the same way the mountain is: Tennessee souvenirs, Georgia souvenirs. We bought strictly Tennessee, since that was the state we were
visiting
. Grady picked a bag of cast-iron soldiers; Myra chose a mug that said
American by birth, Southern by the grace of God
. Neil bought a tall shot glass with three fill-lines. Fill it to the top, you're a Rebel; fill to the middle, you're a Southern Belle; fill only to the bottom line, you're a Yellow-Bellied Yank.

The Georgia side of the gift shop was all garden gnomes, birdhouses, snow globes with forest animals posed in front of cottages, handmade quilts, and fudge. Walker County has chosen to highlight the natural beauty of the mountain. The only tourist attraction on the Georgia side is a fairy tale–themed park called Rock City Gardens. Our subdivision is called Fairyland Farms; Myra and Grady go to Fairyland School. They pronounce it “
feh
-re-lind.” Even the streets have fairy tale names: Robin Hood Trail, Tinkerbell Lane, Mother Goose Avenue. My favorite is a nod to Shakespeare—Puck Circle. You can imagine the graffiti.

On the Tennessee side, the streets are named after Confederate generals.

Friday morning, Grady wants to take his plastic infield rifle for show-and-tell. I am certain I read
No toy weapons
in the pre-K handbook.

“Ned brought in a broken gun from the war,” Myra says. “His dad dug it up in his backyard.”

“I don't think you'll have show-and-tell,” I say. “Today's the Valentine's party.”

On the way to school, Grady picks up a cone-shaped magnolia seedpod and shoves it into his backpack. “Grenade,” he says.

In the '70s, back in Phoenix, our parents put zinc oxide on our noses so we wouldn't freckle. In the '80s, when people started worrying about ozone, we were teenagers. Our mothers said
skin cancer;
we turned up the radio.

When my parents call to ask how the treatment is going, I want to tell them it's not their fault: You tried to make me wear sunscreen and I refused. But the type of melanoma I've developed is genetic, with no proven link to sun exposure. So the truth is, it's my parents' fault after all.

What I do blame my parents for? Burying my cat before I came home from school so I never saw the body. Lying about the boy down the street who put a desk chair through his bedroom window and opened his wrists on the broken pane. Presenting me with a world devoid of suffering and calling the cover-up
love
. How am I supposed to talk about loss with Myra and Grady, when my own childhood experience is only half the story?

My first boss out of college, a woman twice-divorced and living with a younger man, once told me
You lead a charmed life
. I thought:
But where can I go from here?

Tonight Neil is taking me out to dinner for Valentine's Day. He always has students lined up to babysit; some of these girls are graduate students, only a few years younger than I am. Watching them lean their elbows on our kitchen counter to read the instructions I've written, or coming home to find them asleep on our couch, I analyze their hips, the skin on the backs of their arms, the angles of their shoulder blades. I am sizing them up for Neil. Which one could have children that would look the most like Myra and Grady?

My favorite, the one who's coming tonight, is a senior named Meg. She has a wide-open face, large breasts, and thighs that are too big for her calves and ankles. I am small-chested and have great legs. Meg is desirable in a way that won't remind Neil of me.