The Christmas List (13 page)

“Over my dead body,” she said coldly.

“That would be nice, Beth, but it's beside the point. I need to talk to Sara.”

“No, you can't.”

“You can't stop me. She's my wife.”

“Since I'm holding the phone, yes I can stop you, and no, she's not your wife. At least not anymore. You've been pretty clear about that.”

She had a point about the phone. “Come on, Beth, just let me talk to her.”

“Haven't you hurt her enough? You just leave her alone.” Beth slammed down the phone.

Kier flipped his cell phone shut.
Now what?

The first notable sign of Sara's cancer had surfaced in early March as a sudden, sharp pain in her lower abdomen. It wasn't the first symptom she'd experienced; for several months she had felt fatigued and lost weight but she didn't think much of it. Her husband had just left her. Stress does awful things to the body.

It wasn't until after three weeks of recurrent stomach pain that she went to her family doctor to find out what was wrong. He ran a series of tests, then called her three days later to tell her that he had scheduled more tests with a colleague of his who was an oncologist. It was still another week before she had a conclusive diagnosis—stage three pancreatic cancer. The prognosis wasn't good. Dr. Halestrom, the oncologist, explained to her that the cancer had spread beyond the pancreas to major blood vessels and lymph nodes, so surgery wasn't an option. Alone with a doctor she'd only met once before, Sara broke down. The doctor let her cry, then said, “There's always hope.”

Sara wiped her eyes. “Have you ever seen someone with cancer this advanced cured?”

From the doctor's hesitation she knew the answer before he spoke. “No. I'm sorry.”

After a few more minutes, her crying slowed then stopped. She looked up, calm. This had always been her way: when her mother died, when her husband left her. Get the crying out of the way, then get down to business. “How long do I have?”

“It's hard to say. I've seen people—”

“Your best guess.”

“If we aggressively treat the cancer with a combination of radiation and chemotherapy, six months to a year.”

“If I don't?”

“Maybe three.”

“That's not a lot of time,” she said, as if she were talking about a warranty on a washing machine instead of her life. “But, there's a chance I could make it to my son's wedding.” Something felt hopeful about that. Her son would be starting a new life and a new family, starting the cycle anew. Cancer or not, her role would diminish in his life. It would be like the changing of acts in a play. The timing, if not perfect, was at least appropriate.

“When is your son's wedding?”

“New Year's Day.”

“It's certainly possible.”

“Then let's do it. What do I do now?”

“We schedule your chemotherapy and radiation.”

“How soon can we start?”

“I can schedule the first radiation treatment next week. It
will help if you have someone to go through this with.” He looked at the ring on her hand. “Are you married?”

She tried to keep her voice steady. “He left me a couple months ago.”

“I'm sorry. Do you have any other family? Friends?”

“My son. But he's away at college.” She took a deep breath. “There's my sister.”

“You should give her a call.”

Sara's treatments began the following week. Her sister, Beth, drove her to her first radiation treatment. She went in at six in the morning and came home the same afternoon, weak and nauseated. As Beth helped her from her car, a silver Toyota Corolla pulled up in the driveway behind her. A young man with short red hair and wearing Weejuns, corduroy jeans, and an oxford button-down shirt climbed out.

“Mrs. Kier?” he said, his eyes darting back and forth between the two women.

Beth didn't know what the young man wanted but intuitively sensed it couldn't be good. “You stay away from her. Mrs. Kier is very sick.”

He walked up and handed Sara an envelope. “Sorry. You've been served.”

If Beth hadn't been supporting her sister she likely would have slapped the man. “You have some nerve, you wimpy little mouse, I hope—”

“Beth,” Sara said.

“You're a terrible person!” Beth yelled at him. “And you're ugly, you four-eyed carrot-top creep. How do you sleep at night?”

The young man ran wide-eyed back to his car and quickly drove away.

When Sara was in her bed she asked Beth to read the letter.

Beth resisted. “No, honey, it's not important. It can wait.”

“I need to know.”

Beth reluctantly opened the envelope and read the letter in silence.

“What is it?” Sara asked.

“Honey . . .”

“Jim's divorcing me.”

Beth exhaled. “The louse . . .”

Sara closed her eyes and for the first time that day she cried. “I thought he would come back,” she said. “I was sure he'd come back.”

“I told you, Sis, he's lost his soul.” Beth cradled her sister's head. “I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry.”

For the rest of the evening Sara lay in bed sick in body and heart. Though she never said it out loud, for the first time since her diagnosis she was glad she was dying.

Eight months later, Thanksgiving was Sara's last attempt at normality. With much effort and pain she created a simple Thanksgiving dinner for her, Jimmy, and Juliet. But after preparing the meal she was so exhausted and sick that she wasn't able to eat. She feared that Jimmy might finally be suspecting
the truth of her condition but she did her best to allay his fears. “It's just the side effect of the treatments,” she told him. “Dr. Halestrom said it would be this way.”

Jimmy didn't know that she had already made her funeral arrangements. To Sara it wasn't a question of
if
, only when. Could she live to see her son married? It was her will versus the cancer, and each day she lost a little ground. If she was strong enough, she could win the battle. But she already knew who would win the war.

It had been many years—he couldn't remember how many exactly, but more than a decade—since Kier had driven through Il Pascolo, Italian for “the pasture.” The name of the development was Estelle Wyss's idea. Estelle Zito Wyss was second-generation Italian, though she never actually set foot on
terra Italiana
until her late twenties when she was on her honeymoon. It was everything she had fantasized. She never wanted to leave the country and forever afterward referred to herself as a “displaced” Italian. From then on she and her husband, Karl, spent most of their summers in Genoa or near Lake Como or sometimes south along the Windex blue waters of the Amalfi coast.

The pretentious development was designed to evoke the Italian countryside; its entrance was marked by a gargantuan round stone from an authentic olive press (from California, not Italy) and an Italian fresco painted on the entrance's stucco wall, flanked on both sides by grapevine-covered trellises.

Under Kier's direction the homes had been marketed as villas—overpriced, stucco-slathered homes built on lots barely large enough to accommodate them. The streets all
had Italian names:
Via Masaccio, Santa Maria del Fiore, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Via Di Sera, Bagno a Ripoli
; names difficult to pronounce and even harder to spell, forevermore the bane of every homeowner who moved to the subdivision.

Three blocks from the entrance, at the furthest end of the development, was a house that didn't fit in with the others. It was a small red-brick ranch that looked more like it belonged in Tulsa than Tuscany. The only thing Italian about the home was the faded tricolor flag that hung from the garage and a sign in the driveway that read, PARKING FOR ITALIANS ONLY. It was ironic that the only house that didn't look indigenous to the development was the only one that was. It was the Wysses' original home and at one time all sixty-four acres of Il Pascolo had belonged to them.

The first time Kier saw the Wysses' property it was an operating dairy with more than a hundred black and white Holsteins contentedly roaming the grounds. Estelle Wyss had told Sara that she and Karl were getting too old to run the dairy and, unable to compete with the larger, more high-tech dairy operations, were looking at selling or developing the land. Unlike her husband, Karl, a Swiss immigrant, Estelle had never liked the dairy life (too many flies and cow pies, she told Sara) and looked forward to finally fulfilling her dream of retiring to the northern Italian countryside. It was because of Kier that her dream never came true.

Kier recognized the underdeveloped land in the middle of an established suburb as a rarity and, a gold mine. Kier convinced the trusting couple that rather than selling
their property outright, they would make money faster by leveraging their property against the development. Spurred by greed, Kier rushed the construction, wagering with the Wysses' property. Kier built more than two dozen spec homes and waited for them to sell; the venture couldn't have been more poorly timed. As the homes were nearing completion, the local real estate market took a sudden plunge and the homes sat, overpriced and unsold. When the construction loans came due, the Wysses lost everything except their own home and three quarter-acre lots they had excluded from the deal near the back of the development. Also lost was Sara and Estelle's friendship.

As Kier sat in his car rehearsing his speech, he glanced at himself in the car's rearview mirror. It had been a decade since he'd seen the Wysses and they were unlikely to recognize him even without his black eyes and bandage. He took a deep breath, climbed out of his car, and hobbled up to the house. Blue grains of ice melt had been scattered the length of the shoveled walk, like seeds sown into the packed ice. Above the door was a painted plaster sign:
La Vita è Bella
.

Kier knocked and a woman's voice sang out, “Just a minute.” A moment later an elderly woman dressed in a colorful knit sweater and blue jeans opened the door. Kier recognized her immediately. Estelle Wyss's hair had turned gray, and she had new wrinkles, but the bright eyes and smile were the same. She looked at the bandaged man suspiciously but still managed to smile warmly. “May I help you?”

“Mrs. Wyss, you probably don't recognize me with the bandage.”

She squinted. “I'm sorry, my eyesight is a little fuzzy today. Sometimes my diabetes will do that. Are you the new fellow from the congregation?”

“I'm James Kier.”

She repeated slowly, “James . . . Kier . . .” Her smile faltered. “Mr. Kier. What can I do for you?”