My Sister's Keeper (23 page)

“Do you even know whether that's red or white?” I do not think, in
all these years, I have seen Brian drink anything but beer.

“I know it's got alcohol in it, and I know we're celebrating.” He
lifts his glass after the sommelier pours it. “To our family,” he
toasts.

We click glasses and take sips. “What are you getting?” I ask.

“What do you want me to get?”

“The filet. That way I can taste it if I get the sole.” I fold my
menu. “Did you hear the results of the last CBC?”

Brian looks down at the table. “I was sort of hoping that we could come
here to get away from all that. You know. Just talk.”

“I'd like to talk,” I admit. But when I look at Brian, the
information that leaps to my lips is about Kate, not us. I have no call to ask
him about his day—he has taken three weeks off from the station. We are
connected by and through sickness.

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Cafe and notice that chatter
happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples,
the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without
the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already
know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there
is simply nothing left to say?

When the waiter arrives to take our order, we both turn eagerly, grateful
for someone who keeps us from having to recognize the strangers we have become.

We leave the hospital with a child who is different from the one we brought
in. Kate moves cautiously, checking the drawers of the nightstand for anything
she might have left behind. She has lost so much weight that the jeans I
brought do not fit; we have to use two bandannas knotted together as a
makeshift belt.

Brian has gone down ahead of us to bring the car around. I zip the last
Tiger Beat and CD into Kate's duffel bag. She pulls a fleece cap on over her
smooth, bare scalp and winds a scarf tight around her neck. She puts on a mask
and gloves; now that we are venturing out of the hospital, she is the
one who will need protection.

We walk out the door to the applause of the nurses we have come to know so
well. “Whatever you do, don't come back and see us, all
right?” Willie jokes.

One by one, they walk up to say their good-byes. When they have all
dispersed, I smile at Kate. “Ready?”

Kate nods, but she doesn't step forward. She stands rigid, fully aware that
once she sets foot outside this doorway, everything changes. “Mom?”

I fold her hand into mine. “We'll do it together,” I promise, and
side by side, we take the first step.

The mail is full of hospital bills. We have learned that the insurance company
will not talk to the hospital billing department, and vice versa, but neither
one thinks that the charges are accurate—which leads them to charge us
for procedures we shouldn't have to cover, in the hopes that we are stupid
enough to pay them. Managing the monetary aspect of Kate's care is a full-time
job that neither Brian nor I can do.

I leaf through a grocery store flyer, an AAA magazine, and a long-distance
rate announcement before I open the letter from the mutual fund. It's not
something I really pay attention to; Brian usually manages finances that
require more than basic checkbook balancing. Besides, the three funds we have
are all earmarked for the kids' education. We are not the sort of family that
has enough spare change to play the stock market.

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

This is to confirm your recent redemption from fund #323456, Brian
D. Fitzgerald Custodian for Katherine S. Fitzgerald, in the amount of
$8,369.56. This disbursement effectively closes the account.

As banking errors go, this is a pretty major one. We've been off by pennies
in our checking account, but at least I've never lost eight thousand dollars. I
walk out of the kitchen and into the yard, where Brian is rolling an extra
garden hose. “Well, either someone at the mutual fund screwed up,” I
say, handing the letter to him, “or the second wife you're supporting is
no longer a secret.”

It takes him one moment too long to read it, the same moment that I realize
that this is not a mistake after all. Brian wipes his forehead with the back of
one wrist. “I took that money out,” he says.

“Without telling me?” I cannot imagine Brian doing such a thing.
There have been times, in the past, where we dipped into the children's
accounts, but only because we were having a month too tight to swing the cost
of groceries and the mortgage, or because we needed the down payment
for a new car when our old one had finally been put to rest. We'd lie awake in
bed feeling guilt press down like an extra quilt, promising each other that we
would put that money right back where it belonged as soon as humanly possible.

“The guys at the station, they tried to raise some money, like I told
you. They got ten thousand dollars. With this added to it, the hospital's
willing to work out some kind of payment plan for us.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said, Sara.”

I shake my head, stunned. “You lied to me?”

“I didn't—”

“Zanne offered—”

“I won't let your sister take care of Kate,” Brian says. “I'm
supposed to take care of Kate.” The hose falls to the ground, dribbles and
spits at our feet. “Sara, she's not going to live long enough to use that
money for college.”

The sun is bright; the sprinkler twitches on the grass, spraying rainbows.
It is far too beautiful a day for words like these. I turn and run into the
house. I lock myself in the bathroom.

A moment later, Brian bangs on the door. “Sara? Sara, I'm sorry.”

I pretend I can't hear him. I pretend I haven't heard anything he's said.

At home, we all wear masks so that Kate doesn't have to. I find myself
checking her fingernails while she brushes her teeth or pours cereal, to see if
the dark ridges made by the chemo have disappeared—a sure sign of the bone
marrow transplant's success. Twice a day I give Kate growth factor shots in the
thigh, a necessity until her neutrophil count tops one thousand. At that point,
the marrow will be reseeding itself.

She can't go back to school yet, so we get her lessons sent home. Once or
twice she has come with me to pick Anna up from kindergarten, but refuses to
get out of the car. She will troop to the hospital for her routine CBC, but if
I suggest a side trip to the video store or Dunkin' Donuts afterward, she begs
off.

One Saturday morning, the door to the girls' bedroom is ajar; I knock
gently. “Want to go to the mall?” Kate shrugs. “Not now.”

I lean against the doorframe. “It'll be good to get out of the
house.”

“I don't want to.” Although I am sure she does not even realize
she is doing it, she skims her palm over her head before tucking her hand into
her back pocket.

“Kate,” I begin.

“Don't say it. Don't tell me that nobody’s going to stare at me,
because they will. Don't tell me it doesn’t matter, because it does. And don't
tell me I look fine because that's a lie.” Her eyes, lash-bare, fill with
tears. “I'm a freak, Mom, Look at me.”

I do, and I see the spots where her brows have gone missing, and the slope
of her endless brow and the small divots and bumps that are usually hidden
under the cover of hair. “Well,” I say evenly. “We can fix
this.”

Without another word, l walk out of her room, knowing Kate will follow. I
pass Anna, who abandons her coloring book to trail behind her sister. In the
basement I pull out a pair of ancient electric grooming clippers we found when
we bought the house, and plug them in. Then I cut a swath right down the middle
of my scalp.

“Mom!” Kate gasps.

“What?” A tumble of brown waves falls onto Anna's shoulder; she
picks them up delicately “It’s only hair.”

With another swipe of the razor, Kate starts to smile. She points out a spot
that I’ve missed, where a small thatch stands like a forest. I sit down on an
overturned milk crate and let her shave the other side of my head herself. Anna
crawls onto my lap. “Me next,” she begs.

An hour later, we walk through the mall holding hands, a trio of bald girls.
We stay for hours. Everywhere we go, heads turn and voices whisper. We are
beautiful, times three.

THE WEEKEND

There is no fire without some smoke

.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs

JESSE

DON'T DENY IT—you've driven by a bulldozer or front-end loader on the side
of a highway, after hours, and wondered why the road crews leave the equipment
out there where anyone, meaning me, could steal it. My first truck jacking was
years ago; I put a cement mixer out of gear on a slope and watched it roll into
a construction company's base trailer. Right now there's a dump truck a mile
away from my house; I've seen it sleeping like a baby elephant next to a pile
of Jersey barriers on 1-195. Not my first choice of wheels, but beggars can't
be choosers; in the wake of my little run-in with the law, my father's taken my
car into custody, and is keeping it at the fire station.

Driving a dump truck turns out to be a hell of a lot different than driving
my car. First, you fill up the whole freaking road. Second, it handles like a
tank, or at least like what I suppose a tank would handle like if you didn't
have to join an army full of uptight, power-crazy assholes to drive one.
Third—and least palatable—people see you coming. When I roll up to the
underpass where Duracell Dan makes his cardboard home, he cowers behind his
line of thirty-three-gallon drums. “Hey,” I say, swinging out of the
cab of the truck. “It's just me.”

It still takes Dan a minute to peek between his hands, make sure I'm telling
him the truth. “Like my rig?” I ask.

He gets up gingerly and touches the streaked side of the truck. Then he
laughs. “Your Jeep been taking steroids, boy.”

I load up the rear of the cab with the materials I need. How cool would it
be if I just backed the truck up to a window, dumped in several bottles of my
Arsonist's Special, and drove away with the place bursting into flames? Dan
stands by the driver's-side door. Wash Me, he writes across the grit.

“Hey,” I say, and for no reason except the fact that I've never
done it before, I ask him if he wants to come.

“For real?”

“Yeah. But there's a rule. Whatever you see and whatever we do, you
can't tell anyone about it.”

He pretends to lock up his lips and toss the key. Five minutes later, we're
on our way to an old shed that used to be a boathouse for one of the colleges.
Dan fiddles with the controls, raising and lowering the truck bed while we're
tooling along. I tell myself that I've invited him along to add to the
thrill—one more person who knows only makes it more exciting. But it's really
because there are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else
besides you in this wide world.

When I was eleven years old I got a skateboard. I never asked for one; it
was a guilt gift. Over the years I got quite a few of these big ticket items,
usually in conjunction with one of Kate's episodes. My parents would shower her
with all kinds of cool shit whenever she had to have something done to her; and
since Anna was usually involved, she got some amazing presents, too, and then a
week later my parents would feel bad about the inequality and would buy me some
toy to make sure I didn't feel left out.

Anyway, I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing that skateboard was. It
had a skull on the bottom that glowed in the dark, and from the teeth dripped
green blood. The wheels were neon yellow and the gritty surface, when you
stepped on it in your sneakers, made the sound of a rock star clearing his
throat. I skimmed it up and down the driveway, around the sidewalks, learning
how to pop wheelies and kickflips and ollies. There was only one rule: I wasn't
supposed to take it into the street, because cars could come around at any
minute; kids could get hit in an instant.

Well, I don't need to tell you that eleven-year-old budding derelicts and
house rules are like oil and water. By the end of my first week with this board
I thought I'd rather slide down a razor blade into alcohol than tool up and
down the sidewalk yet one more time with all the toddlers on their Big Wheels.

I begged my father to take me to the Kmart parking lot, or the school
basketball court, or anywhere, really, where I could play around a little. He
promised me that on Friday, after Kate had a routine bone marrow aspiration, we
could all go out to the school. I could bring my skateboard, Anna could bring
her bike, and if Kate felt up to it, she could Rollerblade.

God, was I looking forward to that. I greased the wheels and polished up the
bottom of the skateboard and practiced a double helix on the driveway ramp I'd
made of old scrap plywood and a fat log. The minute I saw the car—my mom and
Kate returning from the hematologist—I ran out to the porch so we wouldn't
waste any time.

My mother, it turned out, was in a huge hurry, too. Because the door to the
van slid open and there was Kate, covered with blood. “Get your
father,” my mother ordered, holding a wad of tissues up to Kate's face.

It wasn't like she hadn't had nosebleeds before. And my mom was always
telling me, when it freaked me out, that the bleeding looked way worse than it
actually was. But I got my father, and the two of them hustled Kate into the
bathroom and tried to keep her from crying, because it only made everything
harder.

“Dad,” I said. “When are we going?”

But he was busy wadding up toilet paper, bunching it up under Kate's nose.

“Dad?” I repeated.

My father looked right at me, but he didn't answer. And his eyes were dazed
and staring through me, like I was made out of smoke.

That was the first time I thought that maybe I was.

The thing about flame is that it's insidious—it sneaks, it licks, it looks
over its shoulder and laughs. And fuck, it's beautiful. Like a sunset eating
everything in its path. For the first time, I have someone to admire my
handiwork. Beside me, Dan makes a small sound at the back of his throat—respect,
no doubt. But when I look at him, proud, I see that he's got his head ducked
into the greasy collar of his army-surplus coat. He's got tears running down
his face.