Something Right Behind Her (11 page)

I told Eve I’d
come back Thursday late afternoon to continue with the book. It felt good and
natural to have a reason to keep coming to see her, and I was glad I got the
brilliant idea of reading something with her, otherwise I’d get stressed all
over again about trying to keep up a conversation that avoided all the obvious
pitfalls. Wednesday I had a literary magazine meeting, and I was going shopping
with my Mom for clothes for the holidays Thursday right after school. Eve
looked a little disappointed that I couldn’t come back sooner, but then some
other emotion crossed her face – she looked kind of sly and miserable at
the same time. “Doug is going to be here, so I guess you’re going to have to
face him, after all. He’s coming home early for the weekend,” she said. I had
thought he’d lay low until Thanksgiving, which was just a couple weeks away, so
I was caught off guard.

“I don’t care,”
I said. “Eve, you know it was just one of those things.” I turned my head away.
“It’ll be cool with Doug,” I finally said. “Don’t worry. She looked satisfied
with that. “Good,” she said. By that time the nurse was standing behind me,
waiting patiently for me to leave. Eve just lay there with her head propped up
on the pillow, her hair still perfectly braided. On her good side, she looked
almost doll-like.

It actually felt
almost like the truth - I wanted to be over Doug, and to keep my promise to
Eve. The thing was, she was staying where she was, up in that room, tended to
by her nurse and her mom, and I was going back out into the world. I wasn’t
sure whether my promise to her made as much sense back where I was going,
especially since I was going there without her. Or maybe that was just an
excuse. Maybe I just sucked as a best friend. Or could it be that I just
couldn’t admit to myself that what had happened with Doug had meant something
to me, even if it didn’t mean the same thing to him? Maybe it was about the
dream, how he and I were somehow connected - but was it through some bond -
wanting the best for Eve, not wanting to see her suffer, or was it that we were
both running away?

After seeing
Eve, I remained nightmare-free for the next couple of nights. That seemed to be
the pattern. I’d have a string of these things, and then they’d lift. It made
me realize how much all that lack of sleep - the waking up in a state of total
panic - had taken out of me. I even looked halfway decent! Thursday after
school I went down to White Plains with my Mom to go shopping. I needed to get
a couple outfits for Thanksgiving. I was pretty into going shopping, especially
since I had gone down a size.

When we got to
the department store, we went right for my favorite section - the contemporary
section. That’s where all the cute jeans are and the pricey T-shirts. I am not
really into labels like some girls, but I don’t like cheap stuff that fits all
nasty either. I got three pairs of jeans and some cute colored Ts, and then I
picked out a dress for Thanksgiving - it was plaid and short. I got really
excited about this purple V-neck I got, too, which I planned to wear to Eve’s
the next day. I liked to dress cute when I went to see her. There was also the
Douglas factor, and if I had to run into him, I wasn’t going to make him wonder
what he’d been thinking.

After the
clothes shopping, Mom and I headed down to the first floor because she needed
some make up. There were all these really made-up women grabbing at my arm
trying to spray perfume on me. Then Mom and I went to one of the counters, and
she started saying what she wanted. The lady there offered to give us both a
make-over. She looked pretty nice compared to the other make-up counter ladies.
She had a more natural look, so I said I would do it. Mom said she’d skip it
and leave me there for fifteen minutes while she went to get some stuff for
Milly.

I started to
feel sort of nervous as my Mom walked away. I didn’t like the way this woman
started scrutinizing my face. “What do you wear?” she asked. I ticked off some
of the kinds of cosmetics I used. She started pulling out products. I was wearing
all the wrong colors for my complexion. My tint, she said, was much too dark
and the way I applied my eye-liner was making my eyes look small. She went to
work on me with these new colors and then she gave me the mirror. I was pretty
amazed. She did a really nice job. I have the kind of wild hair and big
features that can make me look really Jappy with too much make-up, but I didn’t
look that way. My favorite was this kind of greenish eye shadow. She also
showed me a really fun sparkly eye shadow for night. Then she took my hair clip
out and started playing with my hair. “I don’t wear it down much,” I told her.
It gets in my way. “That, young lady, is a mistake,“ she told me. “This is your
crown of glory.” I laughed because it was so much like the cheesy book Eve and
I were reading. She showed me this cool way of twisting one side back with a
glittery little clip, so it stayed off my face, but there was still a lot of
curl happening – which she scrunched up super big with some spray she
had. The clip was more girly-girl than I usually wear, but I thought it was
pretty.

“Wow,” Mom said
when she got back. “You look fabulous.” She smiled and looked me over side to
side. Mom gets into this girly stuff - “Love it!” I knew I wouldn’t have to do
much convincing to get her to buy me the make-up. I could see that she was
going to go with the moment.

I went straight
upstairs when I got home, to look my new purchases over, and get ready to go to
Eve’s. I’d done all my homework in study hall, and the plan was that I’d get
over to Eve’s around five, and stay about an hour. Any longer than that and Eve
started to get tired. I felt braver about going to see Eve when I was wearing
something nice. If I just dragged myself over there in some lame outfit, it’d
be like I was just showing up, and there was nothing special to it. When I got
dressed-up, it was like there was some of the old Andy-and-Eve thing going on.

I pulled out of
our driveway at dusk, and Mom had all the outdoor lights on and it was kind of
foggy. Our house is modern, with two big windows in front that I’ve always
thought looked like eyes, but, still, the place looked pretty in the dim light,
since the wood of the house blended in with the trees all around it. It was so
foggy over by Eve’s side of town, I almost missed the turn to her road, and
then, for a second, I couldn’t tell, in that yellowish darkness, which house
was hers. It was pretty nondescript, and if you asked me what color the
O’Meara’s house was, I’m not sure I could describe it, but they had one big
pine tree right in front, almost blocking the front porch entirely. It was the
one place a tree shouldn’t be, and that’s how I could always tell I was in the
right place. I parked out on the street, even though there were no cars in the
driveway. I didn’t want Doug to drive in and block my car, so I’d have to go
around the house looking for him at some point to move it.

When I went
inside, no one was around, not even the nurse, but I let myself in and went
upstairs since Eve was expecting me, and in the old days, before she was sick,
that would have been the normal thing to do.

Eve was propped
up in bed with her head on the pillow, clearly waiting for me, which was a
relief. Instead of the little plastic oxygen mask on the pole, Eve had plastic
tubes up her nose that were attached to an oxygen tank on a metal rolling cart,
like they have in hospitals. As scary as Eve looked with the tubes coming out
of her nose, it was an improvement over the mask, because at least she could
carry on a conversation without losing her breath, and her voice sounded less
wispy than it had.

“Hey, you look
awesome,” she said. “I got dressed up, too. It’s the best I could do, but I
like these tunic things - they tie on the side.” Her tunic-top was white and
loose-fitting, and not unlike the things I had pictured her in in my more
disturbing dreams. Her Mom, or one of the nurses, had curled her hair for her
and she was wearing a light pink lip gloss. Her hair spread out over the pillow
in a lot of tiny waves. If she had done that to her hair on a normal night,
when we were going somewhere together, it probably would have put me in a bad
mood. I’d have felt upstaged by her in the big-hair department, which was, in
all fairness, my particular strength area. Given the situation, though, I felt
a little choked up seeing her like that. You could almost see the curly
hairstyle as part of her Junior Year List, the things she had to cover before
time ran out.

“Oh, you’re like
the lovely Layla in the book,” I said and we both laughed. “I have to fill up
my day somehow,” she said. “These little waves took forever to get right.
Anyway, I’m kind of bummed I never got a perm. My hair has always been exactly
the same. I was looking at old movies and my hair is always so flat. Like at
that eighth grade formal? I thought I looked so good, but my hair is a disaster
in that video. Someone should have told me!”

Eve wasn’t just
running down the Junior Year List anymore, she was dipping back in time,
thinking how the past could have been different, if only in these small ways. I
thought of Eve lying there in bed contemplating hairstyles she would never
have. It seemed a funny sort of regret. Dying, it seemed was for Eve, like the
rest of her life. It was, essentially, the same life she had always had, only
certain pieces of it had already ended. “You wouldn’t be you with curls,” I
said. “I have the wrong nose for straight, and you have the wrong cheeks for
curls.”

“Are you saying
I have fat cheeks?” Eve said, and she sort of puffed her cheeks. I was glad she
was in a good mood, and not worried about me and Doug.

“Anyway,” I
said, “You’re a natural beauty, remember? No chemical treatments.”

“No,” she said.
“I always thought that stuff might give me cancer.”

We laughed at
that one and then we both just looked at each other for a minute. I felt myself
getting choked up, but I knew I had to fight it. I took a deep breath, and
opened the book I had sitting on my lap. Eve really did look like the girl on
the cover, whose hair was golden and fell to the middle of her back. I was glad
I went out and got the real book. I liked looking at that lame picture, of this
beautiful girl in her red, backless dress. She had this look on her face, so
you could tell her whole life was about winning this guy. If anyone died in that
novel, you knew it’d be someone who deserved it. Or someone old, who was ready
for it.

I read to Eve
for about a half an hour when her Mom came in and said Carol was downstairs and
wanted to come up. I was glad Mrs. O’Meara had appeared in time to give us the
warning. Carol is one of those girls you don’t bother hating. She’s a
cheerleader type and kind of simple, but couldn’t be nicer. “Gayle is with her
too “ Mrs. O’Meara added, and raised her eyebrows. That was a surprise. Gayle
was best friends with Carol, but Eve and I didn’t hang with her that much
anymore. She had a real mean streak, and had been super jealous of Eve freshman
year. Gayle had liked Jacob before he fell madly in love with Eve, and Gayle
held the grudge, even after all that had happened with Eve - even though Jacob
didn’t seem to even be in the picture anymore.

They came in
walking really quietly, obviously in awe of the sickroom stuff in there. Carol
had on her yellow and blue cheerleading uniform. They had some sort of night
game they were going to. They were just stopping in, they said, and I could see
it was all Carol’s idea. Carol had a bunch of pink roses with some tacky baby’s
breath mixed in, and a paper bag filled with books on disc she’d brought over.
Surely, her Mom had gotten those things and told Carol and Gayle to bring them
by, even though it was stupid.

Gayle sat down
on one of the cushiony chairs that were pulled up close to Eve’s bed. She took
a chocolate Eve offered from a box on the night-table. The whole mood of the room
changed with their arrival. I got a knot in my stomach.

Gayle leaned
toward Eve, looking down at her, with an odd expression on her face and I
regretted taking a seat further away from the bed. You could tell Gayle was
trying not to look like she pitied Eve, or like Eve’s tubes disgusted her, but
you could see she was real uncomfortable.

“You two look
all dressed up,” Gayle said. “Who did your hair? I’ve never seen it all curly
like that.” You could see just the smallest glint of humor in Gayle’s eyes, a
hint she thought it was bizarre that Eve would have her hair done, while she
lay there sick. Eve’s face had started to lose some of its shape recently, so
even on her “good” side now, she looked a little more crumpled, her nose more
prominent. You could see that she’d been beautiful, but even a stranger who
knew nothing of ALS could see she had lost something that was beyond retrieval.
Gayle was taking it all in, smiling, but with the eyes betraying just that
slight amusement.

It was that look
that made me start to freak out. I was afraid it was something Eve would see,
and then...who knew what? I’d been so careful to never let Eve know that it
took courage for me to come see her. How could it take courage just to look at
her, when every day she had to
be
her?

Then, Gayle
picked up a curl from Eve’s pillow, inspected its bottle-shaped perfection, and
let it drop. I could see in Eve’s good eye, a flicker of something - fear
maybe? She moved her head ever so slightly, in what remained of the reflex to
recoil.