My Sister's Keeper (30 page)

“Popcorn.” She laughs. “And guy.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“I didn't. It just kind of happened. Like the way you play
hockey.”

This, finally, makes sense to Anna. “Well,” she says, “I do
feel pretty good when I'm doing that.”

“You have no idea,” Kate sighs. There is some movement; I imagine
her stripping off her clothes. I wonder if Taylor is imagining the same,
somewhere.

Pillow is punched, cover yanked back, sheets rustle as Kate gets into bed
and rolls onto her side. “Anna?”

“Hmm?”

“He has scars on his palms, from graft-versus-host,” Kate murmurs.
“I could feel them when we were holding hands.”

“Was it gross?”

“No,” she says. “It was like we matched.”

At first, I can't get Kate to agree to undergo the peripheral blood stem
cell transplant. She refuses because she doesn't want to be hospitalized for
chemo, doesn't want to have to sit in reverse isolation for the next six weeks
when she could be going out with Taylor Ambrose. “It's your life,” I
point out to her, and she looks at me as if I'm crazy.

“Exactly,” she says.

In the end, we compromise. The oncology team agrees to let Kate begin her
chemo as an outpatient, in preparation for a transplant from Anna. At home, she
agrees to wear a mask. At the first indication of her counts dropping, she'll
be hospitalized. They aren't happy; they worry it will affect the procedure,
but like me they also understand that Kate has reached the age where she can
bargain with her will.

As it turns out, this separation anxiety is all for naught, since Taylor
shows up for Kate's first outpatient chemo appointment. “What are you
doing here?”

“I can't seem to stay away,” he jokes. “Hey, Mrs.
Fitzgerald.” He sits down beside Kate in the empty adjoining chair.
“God, it feels good to be in one of these without an IV hookup.”

“Rub it in,” Kate mutters.

Taylor puts his hand on her arm. “How far into it are you?”

“Just started.”

He gets up and sits on the wide arm of Kate's chair, picks the emesis basin
up from Kate's lap. “A hundred bucks says you can't make it till three
without tossing your cookies.”

Kate glances at the clock. It is 2:50. “You're on.”

“What did you have for lunch?” He grins, wicked. “Or should I
guess based on the colors?”

“You're disgusting,” Kate says, but her smile is as wide as the
sea. Taylor puts his hand on her shoulder. She leans into the contact.

The first time Brian touched me, he saved my life. There had been
cataclysmic downpours in Providence, a nor'easter that swelled the tides and
put the parking lot at the courthouse entirely underwater. I was clerking then,
when we were evacuated. Brian's department was in charge; I walked onto the
stone steps of the building to see cars floating by, and abandoned purses, and
even a terrified paddling dog. While I had been filing briefs, the world I knew
had been submerged. “Need a hand?” Brian asked, dressed in his full
turnout gear, and he held out his arms. As he swam me to higher ground, rain
struck my face and pelted my back. I wondered how—in a deluge—I could feel like
I was being burned alive.

“What's the longest you've ever gone before throwing up?” Kate
asks Taylor.

“Two days.”

“Get out.”

The nurse glances up from her paperwork. “True,” she confirms.
“I saw it with my own eyes.”

Taylor grins at her. “I told you, I'm a master at this.” He looks
at the clock: 2:57.

“Don't you have anywhere else you'd rather be?” Kate says.

“Trying to weasel out of the bet?”

“Trying to spare you. Although—” Before she can finish, she goes
green. Both the nurse and I rise from ours seats, but Taylor reaches Kate
first. He holds the vomit basin beneath her chin and when she starts retching,
he rubs his hand in slow circles on her upper back.

“It's okay,” he soothes, close to her temple.

The nurse and I exchange glances. “Looks like she's in good
hands,” the nurse says, and she leaves to take care of another patient.

When Kate is finished, Taylor puts the basin aside and wipes her mouth with
a tissue. She looks up at him, glow-eyed and flushed, her nose still running.
“Sorry,” she mutters.

“For what?” Taylor says. “Tomorrow, it could be me.”

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their
daughters are growing up—as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I
once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy
pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was
only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one
that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might
stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she
wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion—never quite as solid or strong
as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming.
But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn.

“I'm some fun date,” Kate murmurs.

Taylor smiles at her. “Fries,” he says. “For lunch.”

Kate smacks his shoulder. “You are disgusting.”

He raises one brow. “You lost the bet, you know.”

“I seem to have left my trust fund at home.”

Taylor pretends to study her. “OK, I know what you can give me
instead.”

“Sexual favors?” Kate says, forgetting I am here.

“Gee, I don't know,” Taylor laughs. “Should we ask your
mom?”

She goes plum-red. “Oops.”

“Keep this up,” I warn, “and your next date will be during a
bone marrow aspiration.”

“You know the hospital has this dance, right?” Suddenly, Taylor is
jittery; his knee bobs up and down. “It's for kids who are sick. There are
doctors and nurses there, in case, and it's held in one of the conference rooms
at the hospital, but for the most part it's just like a regular prom. You know,
lame band, ugly tuxes, punch spiked with platelets.” He swallows.
“I'm just kidding about that last part. Well, I went last year, stag, and
it was pretty dumb, but I figure since you're a patient and I'm a patient maybe
this year we could, like, go together.”

Kate, with an aplomb I never would have guessed she possesses, considers the
offer. “When is it?”

“Saturday.”

“As it turns out, I don't have plans to kick the bucket that day.”
She beams at him. “I'd love to.”

“Cool,” Taylor says, smiling. “Very cool.” He reaches
for a fresh basin, careful of Kate's IV line, which snakes down between them. I
wonder if her heart is pumping faster, if it will affect the medication. If
she'll be sicker, sooner rather than later.

Taylor settles Kate into the crook of his arm. Together, they wait for what
comes next.

“It's too low,” I say, as Kate holds a pale yellow dress up below
her neck. From the spot on the boutique floor where she is sitting, Anna offers
up her opinion, too: “You'd look like a banana.”

We have been shopping for a prom dress for hours. Kate has only two days to
prepare for this dance, and it has become an obsession: what she will wear, how
she will do her makeup, if the band is going to play anything remotely decent.
Her hair, of course, is not an issue; after chemo she lost it all. She hates
wigs—they feel like bugs on her scalp, she says—but she's too self-conscious to
go commando. Today, she has wrapped a batik scarf around her head, like a
proud, pale African queen.

The reality of this outing hasn't matched Kate's dreams. Dresses that normal
girls wear to proms bare the midriff or shoulders, where Kate's skin is riddled
and thickened with scarring. They cling in all the wrong places. They are cut
to showcase a healthy, hale body, not to hide the lack of it.

The saleswoman who hovers like a hummingbird takes the dress from Kate.
“It's actually quite modest,” she pushes. “It really does cover
up a fair amount of cleavage.”

“Will it cover this?” Kate snaps, popping open the buttons of her
peasant blouse to reveal her recently replaced Hickman catheter, which sprouts
from the center of her chest.

The saleswoman gasps before she can remember to stop herself.
“Oh,” she says faintly.

“Kate!” I scold.

She shakes her head. “Let's just get out of here.”

As soon as we are on the street in front of the boutique I lace into her.
“Just because you're angry, you don't have to take it out on the rest of
the world.”

“Well, she's a bitch,” Kate retorts. “Did you see her looking
at my scarf?”

“Maybe she just liked the pattern,” I say dryly.

“Yeah, and maybe I'm going to wake up tomorrow and not be sick.”
Her words fall like boulders between us, cracking the sidewalk. “I'm not
going to find a stupid dress. I don't know why I even told Taylor I'd go in the
first place.”

“Don't you think every other girl who's going to that dance is in the
same boat? Trying to find gowns that cover up tubes and bruises and wires and
colostomy bags and God knows what?”

“I don't care about anyone else,” Kate says. “I wanted to
look good. Really good, you know, for one night.”

“Taylor already thinks you're beautiful.”

“Well I don't!” Kate cries. “I don't, Mom, and maybe I want
to just once.”

It is a warm day, one where the ground beneath our feet seems to be
breathing. The sun beats down on my head, on the back of my neck. What do I say
to that? I have never been Kate. I have prayed and begged and wanted to be the
one who's sick in lieu of her, some devil's Faustian bargain, but that is not
the way it's happened.

“We'll sew something,” I suggest. “You can design it.”

“You don't know how to sew,” Kate sighs.

“I'll learn.”

“In a day?” She shakes her head. “You can't fix it every
time, Mom. How come I know that, and you don't?”

She leaves me on the sidewalk and storms off. Anna runs after her, loops her
arm through Kate's elbow, and drags her into a storefront a few feet away from
the boutique, while I hurry to catch up.

It is a salon, filled with gum-cracking hairstylists. Kate is struggling to
get away from Anna, but Anna, she can be strong when she wants to be.
“Hey,” Anna says, getting the attention of the receptionist. “Do
you work here?”

“When I'm forced to.”

“You guys do prom hairstyles?”

“Sure,” the stylist says. “Like an updo?”

“Yeah. For my sister.” Anna looks at Kate, who has stopped
fighting. A smile glows slowly across her face, like a firefly caught in a
jelly jar.

“That's right. For me,” Kate says mischievously, and she unwinds
the scarf from her bald head.

Everyone in the salon stops speaking. Kate stands regally straight. “We
were thinking of French braids,” Anna continues.

“A perm,” Kate adds.

Anna giggles. “Maybe a nice chignon.”

The stylist swallows, caught between shock and sympathy and political
correctness. “Well, um, we might be able to do something for you.”
She clears her throat. “There's always, you know, extensions.”

“Extensions,” Anna repeats, and Kate bursts out laughing.

The stylist begins to look behind the girls, toward the ceiling. “Is
this like a Candid Camera thing?”

At that, my daughters collapse into each other's arms, hysterical. They
laugh until they cannot catch their breath. They laugh until they cry.

As a chaperone at the Providence Hospital Prom, I am in charge of the punch.
Like every other food item provided for the celebrants, it's neutropenic. The
nurses—fairy godmothers for the night—have converted a conference room into a
fantasy dance hall, complete with streamers and a disco ball and mood lighting.

Kate is a vine twined around Taylor. They sway to completely different music
than the song that is playing. Kate wears her obligatory blue mask. Taylor has
given her a corsage made of silk flowers, because real ones can carry diseases
that immunocompromised patients can't fight off. In the end, I did not wind up
sewing a dress; I found one online at Bluefly.com: a gold sheath, cut in a V
for Kate's catheter. But over this is a long-sleeved, sheer shirt, one that
wraps at the waist and glimmers when she turns this way and that so when you
notice the strange triple tubing coming out by her breastbone, you wonder if it
was only a trick of the light.

We took a thousand photos before leaving the house. When Kate and Taylor had
escaped and were waiting for me in the car, I went to put the camera away and
found Brian in the kitchen with his back to me. “Hey,” I said.
“You going to wave us off? Throw rice?”

It was only when he turned around that I realized he'd come in here to cry.
“I didn't expect to see this,” he said. “I didn't think I'd get
to have this memory.”

I fitted myself against him, working our bodies so tight it felt as if we'd
been carved from the same smooth stone. “Wait up for us,” I
whispered, and then I left.

Now, I hand a cup of punch to a boy whose hair is just starting to fall out
in small tufts. It sheds on the black lapel of his tuxedo. “Thanks,”
he says, and I see he has the most beautiful eyes, dark and still as a
panther's. I glance away and realize that Kate and Taylor are gone.

What if she's sick? What if he's sick? I have promised myself I wouldn't be
overprotective, but there are too many children here for the staff to really
keep track of. I ask another parent to take over my punch station and then I
search out the ladies' room. I check the supply closet. I walk through empty
hallways and dark corridors and even the chapel.

Finally I hear Kate's voice through a cracked doorway. She and Taylor stand
under a spotlight moon, holding hands. The courtyard they've found is a
favorite for the residents during the daytime; many doctors who wouldn't
otherwise see the light of the sun take their lunches out here.

I am about to ask if they're all right when Kate speaks. “Are you
afraid of dying?”