Something Right Behind Her (17 page)

After last
period math, my Mom was waiting out in front of the main building. I waved
goodbye to Jill and hopped in the front seat. I had the iPod I’d loaded all
wrapped up and ready to give Eve. I took my scarf off and rewound it like three
times before my Mom drove into Eve’s driveway. It was windy and there were a
lot of dead leaves and sticks and stuff along the front walk of the O’Meara’s
house. That was the kind of thing that would drive my dad crazy until the
Saturday he finally roped me and Milly into Yard Duty. The O’Meara’s had either
stopped noticing or stopped caring about how the front of the house looked when
people drove by.

For some reason,
my heart was beating fast. I wasn’t sure exactly what had me so nervous.
Visiting Eve had a certain routine to it and I knew the ropes by now. I knew
it’d have to be a quick visit, since I had Randy right after, and we needed
time to get down there. Still, I was freaked out, I guess because of the holiday
gift thing, and how I’d tried to make Eve something meaningful, without getting
too sappy.

Mrs. O’Meara
wasn’t around so Mrs. Kenney took me into Eve’s room, which was fine with me. I
didn’t want to waste a lot of time on small talk.

Eve was lying
there with her machinery, the tubes up her nose and even an IV tube taped to
her wrist. Her covers were white and thick – she had a new blanket that
was so pillowy it made her frail body seem even smaller. To my surprise, she’d
had her hair cut. It was in a sort of bob up around her ears. The glossy,
chestnut strands fell across her sagging cheeks. It was odd that for all the
physical changes she had endured that a thing like a haircut would even be
something I’d notice. But it made her look dramatically different. I couldn’t
help but think she should’ve cut it sooner, cut it when she was healthy. I
never would have thought that sort of short style would flatter her, but it
did. Back when she was well, it would have shown off her eyes.

I sat down in
the chair at her bedside and leaned in close to her. She couldn’t move her head
at all now, and her face had less expression. I stayed on her good side, but
even her eye-movement on her left had gotten limited, so I moved my body up
higher onto the bed so she wouldn’t have to strain to look at me. She smiled
her faint crooked smile, her once-full lips now pale, and a little turned in on
themselves. It made me want to cry, seeing her once pouty mouth like that. Why?
I wanted to say. Why does this thing have to take every part of you?

I pulled myself
together, letting out a deep breath, so I wouldn’t choke. “I brought you
something,” I said, and I placed the package on her covers, as if she’d be able
to open it herself. She let out a little joyful noise when she saw the comic-book
wrapping paper I’d used.

“Cute, right?” I
said. “Betty and Veronica.” I peeled off the comic-book pages carefully, and
then showed them to her, so she could actually read them.

“Betty is still
my favorite.” She said in her raspy voice. Even with the oxygen coming through
her nose, it was hard for Eve to get enough air to talk above a small whisper.

“So boring,” I
said. Then I pulled the iPod out and I scrolled down the playlist I’d made and
showed her all the songs that I put on there for her. There was everything -
old corny songs from the seventies, some eighties stuff, pop stuff that you’re
a loser if you don’t know, and some really cool freak folk stuff I’d just
gotten into - really mellow, like Adeline. I made sure I chose songs that
weren’t too depressing. I made sure I didn’t choose anything that would really
get to her, like that song “I Will Survive,” that, otherwise, might make my
seventies list.

“Thanks,” she
said. Then she took a deep breath through the tubes in her nose. “Andy.... remember
how in the fall we went to the beach, and I went in the water with that guard?”

“Yeah,” I said,
smoothing her hair as she spoke. She seemed to like that I was touching her,
and it felt natural to me, the way you’d reach out to console someone who was just
having a bad day. She half shut her eyes, and I noticed her lips tighten
slightly at the corner of her mouth, as though she were trying not to cry.

“That was a
great day,” she said.

“We had fun at
the beach,” I said.

With that, to my
horror, I was the one who started to sob. My tears dropped onto her downy
covers. “I’m sorry,” I said, choking and sniffling.

She ignored me.

“I like being
tan,” she said. “I like flip flops, walking on the wet sand...” She trailed
off. The way she spoke I could tell something wasn’t right. She was using the
present tense, skipping from one topic to the next. I wondered what drugs she’d
been given, how much she even knew what she was saying. Would she even remember
that I’d come?

“I can’t
believe,” she said after a long pause, filled only by my sniffling, “that I
won’t ever get married. Can you believe that? Do you remember how we used to
talk? I was always so sure I’d marry young. I even thought it might be Jacob.”

She suddenly
seemed lucid. It was true, after all. There I was a budding young slut, as
things turned out, and there was Eve, once lovely, and now, as far as I knew, a
permanent virgin.

“It’s OK,
sweetie,” I said. I brushed her hair away from her eyes. “They all wanted you.”

She ignored my
attempt to get her off the Jacob topic. “I was really into him,” she said. “I
know you hate him, but you never even gave him a chance.”

“I don’t hate
him,” I lied. “We just don’t connect.”

“You know what
he told me?” She asked. A strange look passed over her, her cheeks going pale,
her good eye hard. She reminded me of her old self, how she didn’t pull her
punches.

“What?” I asked.
I was afraid to hear it.

“He said maybe
we’d be together in another life.”

I let out a deep
breath and lay back on the pillow next to her. I didn’t try to hold anything
back at that point, just let the tears come. She was crying hard by then too,
and I knew I had to stop, had to get her to stop, that this couldn’t be good
for her. My teeth began to chatter, a thing that happens sometimes when I get
really upset. I counted to ten in my head, trying to get control over my voice.

“Maybe it’s
true,” I said finally. “Maybe it’s all true,” I whispered to her over again.

I could see she
was trying to nod her head.

Either I’d said
the right thing, or just being there saying anything was somehow right. After
that, I put one earbud in her ear, and one in mine, and we listened to song
after song on that old iPod. We hardly spoke another word.

I let myself out
of the house. There was no sign of anyone. The nurse, Ms. Kenney, must’ve been
lurking around somewhere, waiting for me to leave. Douglas, I was relieved to
see, wasn’t back from Princeton yet. If he had been, his car would’ve been in
the driveway, or some nasty old Douglas shoes would’ve been sitting by the door.

Randy’s office
had a weird burnt toast smell to it when I arrived that evening. At first, I
was too exhausted to say much of anything to him. He and my Mom had a quick
little adults-only chat before I went in, so I figured Mom had let him know
that I’d just come from Eve’s house and maybe I wasn’t in the best shape. Randy
wasn’t pushing me to speak, so I figured this had to be the case, because
ordinarily he’d start coughing and tapping his foot if I sat silent that long.

The smell of
toast in his office really annoyed me for some reason. I just couldn’t shake
the idea of him sitting there, having his little snack, a cup of tea with it
maybe, just waiting for me to show up.

Finally, Randy
let out a little whistley breath. “Rough visit with Eve?” he asked
matter-of-factly.

“Actually, no,”
I said. “Eve was great.” Because Eve was great. What had she said or done that
wasn’t brave, that wasn’t strong? I didn’t want Randy to pity her, or, even, to
pity me. I wanted to get out of that cramped little office where Randy sat
eating his toast between patients.

“Why the hell
does it always smell like food in here?” I asked, hardly recognizing the sound
of my own voice. I had decided Randy was one of the things in my life that I
didn’t need, and decided, in that moment, that I wanted to get rid of him. He’d
helped me through a few rough patches, but compared to what I’d gotten myself
through all fall, including that afternoon with Eve, it was nothing. It’s not
like I told him much that really mattered. What he knew about me was a broad
outline. It was frustrating to stay within what he could understand, but at the
same time, there was no way I was going to tell him or anyone else what had
gone on with Doug and now George. I couldn’t imagine telling him about my dreams
about Eve, how he’d make a big deal of these nocturnal fears. What did the
dreams matter, if I could visit her in the daytime and more or less hold it
together? Who wouldn’t lose a little sleep once in a while if their best friend
was dying?

Randy looked pretty
surprised at my accusation, glancing around the room, as if there might be some
random plate of food somewhere, distracting me. “It does?” He asked. “I’d never
noticed.” Then he cocked his head to one side, thoughtfully, and waited for me
to say something more.

I paused, let
out a sigh, then decided to let him have it. “Why do you always assume I have
something to say? Maybe my mind is a big fucking blank right now. Maybe I have
nothing to say about Eve because talking about it changes nothing! That’s the
thing no one can admit. There is nothing anyone can do.” I spoke slowly, making
myself sound even more definite than I felt.

“No,” Randy,
said, “there isn’t. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help to process things.”

“What does that
even mean?” I asked, “to process something? These are events, real things,
someone’s life, not something you dump in a mix-master.” Surprisingly, Randy
laughed at that. When he laughed, he showed his small, pointed teeth.

“You’re right.
That makes it sound complicated, and maybe it’s simple. Maybe you need to say
what you just said. You can’t change it, or really cope with it, or make it
better, and it is difficult to say those things in public. People don’t want to
consider the inevitable.” Randy doesn’t usually make statements like that, or
give me a lot to go on, but I guess he realized I wasn’t going to cough up a
hell of a lot more.

“Well,” I
finally said, “I feel bad that she doesn’t really understand it any better than
I do. You’d think someone who was dying would sort of know how to do it.”

“No, “ Randy
disagreed, “I wouldn’t think that. If that were the case, there’d be no
religion, and I’d be out of a job.”

“True,” I said.
“You’re basically in the tragedy-business.” Randy nodded his head, and smiled
again, as if he didn’t mind this job description in the slightest. I couldn’t
figure out if that made him cooler than I’d thought, or kind of an asshole.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Milly takes
after my Mom in that she is a very organized little girl. She had her whole
suitcase all neatly packed for the trip to the Dominican Republic the morning
before we were ready to go. I, on the other hand, didn’t start packing until we
were about an hour away from the time the limo was coming to take us to the
airport. My Dad and I were both running around the house looking for our
bathing suits and flip-flops.

When Mom and Dad
first mentioned the family trip with Grandma and Grandpa, I was like ‘lord save
me.’ The last thing I needed was four pairs of adult eyes looking down their
noses at me, wondering what to do with
poor-Andy-who’s-having-such-a-tough-time.

Now that I had
seen Eve again though, I felt like I had to get some things straight, and the
time away might help me. It was obvious that Eve was not doing well at all. I
knew going to see Randy was doing about nothing to smooth this reality over for
me. Having George to hang with, sweet as he was, didn’t make me feel any less
alone either. I needed to get myself under control. I knew the inevitable was
happening now, just as Randy had intimated. It was time for me to get my act
together, so I could handle what was happening to Eve.

In the week
since I’d seen Eve, I’d woken up every night in the middle of the night
drenched in sweat, with my heart practically beating out of my chest. I could only
remember the tiniest fragments of the dream, though. Eve and I were somewhere,
like the beach, with the same weird white background I’d had in my other
dreams, and she was leaning toward me, whispering, the way she had the other
day when I’d visited. There was something more she wanted to tell me, some
secret. But that was all I could remember. I couldn’t recall what about the
dream had made it so frightening.

I tried to be
rational about it all. I had to admit I couldn’t see how Eve could last much longer
the way she was. It was time for me to admit to myself how much of her was
already gone. I had to admit that she had already started to say goodbye.

I decided that
to get my life in order, I‘d create these two mental categories of “stuff I
like” and “crap I don’t” in order to get some clarity. I’d thought of this
clean-up strategy all on my own, and I thought it’d work a lot more efficiently
than Randy’s mind games of being
thankful
and being
invested
. Maybe I was
being stubborn, refusing the professional help, or maybe it was just my nature.
I am a DIY kind of girl.