The Lavender Hour (12 page)

“Yes,”he said. “Yes.”

He laid his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes.

I felt that he had told the story deliberately, to shock or test me.

He opened his eyes and looked at me for another moment or two, then picked up the remote and flicked on the tube, my signal to leave.

“I understand, you know,” I said.

“Yeah? Understand what?”

“About being sick. Having cancer. I know how you feel.”

He gave me a hard, dismissive look. “I don't think you know the first goddamned thing about it.”

I crossed to his chair, knelt on the floor, bent my head forward until my hair fell forward over my face, revealing the bald circle and smile-shaped scar. After several minutes, I got up, flipped my hair back.

He was staring out the window, his face set. “What happened?” he said.

“A tumor.”

“When?”

“Five, nearly six years ago.”

“Malignant?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“So you had chemo?”

“Radiation,” I said. I had refused chemo. Lily and I had fought for hours over this decision, but I wouldn't cave. I wanted a future that held the possibility of children. I didn't tell Luke this. “Did you have chemo?” I asked.

“No. What was the point? To go through that to gain what? Another month or two? Forget it. So your cancer, did they get it all?”

“Yes.”

“What do they call it? Clean edges?”

“Yes.”

He turned away again. “Then you can't possibly understand how I feel.”

“No,” I said. “You're right. That was presumptuous of me.” Still, something had changed between us.

“So is that why they sent you here?” he said. “Because you're a survivor?”

“No,” I said. “They don't know.”

“Who?”

“Anyone here. At hospice.”

He stared at me, studying my face. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes.”

“So do me a favor?” he said, his voice neutral.

“What's that?” I said.

“A friend of mine is supposed to be stopping by to pick up the garbage.”

“Rich,” I said. “Nona mentioned it.”

“If you're still here when he comes, tell him I'm asleep, will you?”

“Company might be good for you.” The words escaped before I could contain them.

He snorted. “What would be good for me is to be back out fishing, earning a living. Having a life.”

His eyes told me everything. Would you want your friend to see you looking like this? “Please,”he said. Just that. He needs me, I thought, and with that knowledge came the end of any good sense I ever had. Up until then, I'd had no idea of the mighty seductiveness of being needed, feeling essential. I reached out then and circled his wrist with my fingers, startling myself as much as him. It was the first time I had touched him.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll tell him you're asleep.”

I
WANDERED
back to the living room, my hand still remembering the bones of his wrist, the grainy coolness of his skin, the beat of his pulse beneath my fingers. I cupped my palm to my face, inhaled, but smelled only the familiar almond scent of hand lotion. I didn't completely understand the impulse that took me then, but it drew me upward, up the stairs and straight to his bedroom, to the closet in his room. I opened the door and pulled one of the flannel shirts from its hanger. It was green plaid—the kind of moss green that flattered Irish black hair, dark eyes—and was soft with wear and washings. When I slipped it on, it hung nearly to my knees, the cuffs concealed my hands, suggesting the man Luke once had been. When I took it off, I didn't return it to the hanger but folded it carefully and rolled it into a tight cylinder, the way Lily had taught
me to pack for a trip so that clothes would not wrinkle. I brought it back to the kitchen, and, in one more action I would later have cause to regret, I put it in my tote. I didn't stop to question why I was taking his shirt. (Stealing his shirt, I would later hear.) I knew only that I had this irrational urge to take something of his. I wanted some part of him for my own.

L
ATER
I heard a car pull into the drive. Expecting Jim's green Jeep, I was surprised to see Paige's rusted Volvo.

“Hi,” I said, determined to be cordial. Paige looked tired and like she was returning from a night spent hard. That long blond hair could have used a decent brushing. She tracked in mud.

“Hi,” Paige said.

“Look,” I began, “about last time—”

“Forget it.” The girl's voice was sullen but not openly hostile, as if she had decided on a workable truce. She looked toward the closed door. “Is he awake?”

“I don't think so.” I'd heard the television switch off a half hour before, then nothing but silence from Luke's room.

“Damn,” Paige said, peeling off a tattered sweatshirt to reveal a cropped T “How do you stand the heat in here?” Without waiting for an answer, she began rummaging through a cupboard, shoving aside cans of Ensure. I wondered if she behaved this way with everyone or just with me. Twenty-two going on sixteen.

“Doesn't Nona have any Tylenol around here?”

“In the cupboard next to the sink,” I said. Even standing three feet away, I could smell the stale, sour-skin smell of a hangover.

Paige found the bottle, shook out three capsules.

“Long night?” I asked.

Paige flashed a quick, surly glance in my direction, checking for condemnation. Whatever she saw reassured her. “Wicked,” she said.

I retrieved a can of ginger ale from the refrigerator. “Hydrate,” I said. “Most hangovers are caused by dehydration.”

Paige reached for the soda. “What are you, a nurse or something?”

I laughed. “Just the sorry voice of experience.”

“So you're what? An alcoholic?” Her voice rose. “Great. They sent an alcoholic to take care of Luke.”

“Relax, will you? I'm not an alcoholic, just have my own history of hangovers.”

Paige held the can against her left temple, then her right, and then she flipped the tab and took a swallow. After that, she downed the capsules. Too many, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

“Where's Nona?”

“Jim took her to the Stop & Shop. She should be back soon.”

“Jesus,” Paige said suddenly. “What's all that doing there?”

For one frozen moment, I thought Paige was looking over at the counter where my tote sat, flashing neon with the bulk of Luke's shirt inside. Then I saw the girl was staring at the pile of black garbage bags stacked by the back door.

“Trash,” I said. “Rich is supposed to come by today and pick it up.”

“Ah, Rich,” Paige said, and took another swallow of soda. “Rich the Wonder Man. Have you met him?”

“Not yet. Why?”

Paige whistled and then pantomimed blowing on her fingers, extinguishing a flame.

“Hot?” I said.

“Torrid.”

I recalled the sound of his voice the one time I'd heard it.

“We're talking off the scale,” Paige said. “Posi-fuckin'—tively radioactive.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Or good, depending on how you look at it. George Clooney before he went gray. I don't go for older men, but I'd seriously consider jumping his bones.”

“Really?”

“Like that's going to happen.”

“Why not? He's what? Twenty years older. That's not impossible.”

“He's Luke's^friend,” Paige said. “It's too creepy to think about getting it on with my father's friend. Ya know?”

I nodded, thinking, this child wears her id right on the surface.

“You might be tempted, though,” Paige continued.

“He isn't married?”

“Rich doesn't marry. His women live with him until he moves on. So, are you interested?”

“I don't think so.” Gorgeous cowboys who hadn't grown up were the last thing I wanted. God knows, I'd had my share of those in Richmond.

“What? Are you married or something?”

“No. Just not interested. Let's just say I've already had more than my quotient of bad boys.”

Paige laughed out loud and raised the can in a mock toast. For a moment, things were fine between us, almost as if I were sitting here with Ashley or a younger friend talking about the age-old, ageless topic of men, but then, wanting, for Luke's sake, to forge a real connection, I spoiled it.

“I know what you're going through,” I said. “With Luke.”

“What do you mean?” Paige narrowed her eyes, distrustful.

“I lost my own daddy. He died when I was fourteen.”

Paige made a soft sound that I misunderstood for sympathy. “Heart attack,” I said. My daddy slumped over the steering wheel. Daddy? Daddy? What's wrong? “I never got to say good-bye or tell him that I loved him. So in that way, you're fortunate to have this time with Luke.”

Paige jumped up so violently, the soda sloshed on the table, splattered my jeans.

“Well, shit,” I said. I crossed to get a sponge and wipe at my pants, and then began mopping up the mess.

“You people don't know the first goddamned thing you're talking about,” Paige yelled.

“I only—”

She grabbed the sponge from my hand. “Forget that, for Christ's sake.”

“Listen, I didn't mean—”

“Luke's not dying. You got that? He's not dying.”

I heard Faye's voice in my head: Know and understand your response to anger. Keep your inner calm. “I'm sorry—”

“Just get out, okay. Just go.”

I wouldn't take this behavior from a high school student, and I sure as shit didn't want to take it from Paige, but again I heard Faye: Accept the person's right to be angry. My anger cooled and grew a skin, like set pudding. I picked up my tote. It weighed heavy in my hand. “Tell Nona I'll call later,” I said.

“What Ever.” She wouldn't look at me. Of course, she was right to distrust me.

That night, I slept in Luke's flannel shirt.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
I phoned Faye and related the details of the confrontation with Paige. I was afraid she might already have received a call from Nona and planned to remove me from Luke's case, but Faye said all the right things to comfort me.

“But what about what Paige said about Luke?” I asked. “Doesn't she know her father's dying?”

“Of course she knows,” Faye said. “But knowing and accepting are two entirely separate things.”

“She was furious with me,” I said into the phone. I looked beyond the window out toward the horizon, where the blue sky blended into the sound so seamlessly, the line of demarcation was impossible to discern. I thought of young John Kennedy and how he had flown his plane straight into the sea, then deliberately willed the thoughts away.

“She's furious, period,” Faye was saying. “And she has every right to be. Remember, anger is often the first reaction of family members.”

Of course we had been told this during the training sessions, but nonetheless, I hadn't been prepared to have the rage turned on me. “I kept hearing your voice,” I told Faye. “All the things you told us about dealing with anger.”

“Good work,” she said. “That girl's a handful, but you're up to the task.”

A handful. That was what our daddy used to call Ashley when she was sixteen and stirring up trouble. But he had made it sound cute, which Paige most surely wasn't.

“You asked me the other day why I didn't put one of the older volunteers with Luke,” Faye was saying. “Well, Paige is the reason I assigned you to this family.”

“She is?” I twisted the phone cord around my wrist.

Faye laughed. “Can you imagine Beth trying to deal with her?” she said. “Or Muriel?”

I had to smile.

“Right now, Paige is hurting. Four months is not a long time to come to terms with what she's facing.”

Four months. Sometimes I forgot that Luke had only been diagnosed in January. According to Nona, that was when he finally went to a doctor with a digestive problem drugstore remedies weren't touching. Nona said it had taken six weeks of tests (CAT scan, blood work, MRI, endoscopies), of infuriating misdiagnoses (Crohn's disease, depression, celiac disease), before they were told he had pancreatic cancer. His doctor said that he had probably had it for months even though he hadn't experienced pain, explaining that the pancreas was deep in the abdomen, which made it difficult to detect and treat. He said the organ didn't have nerves of its own to carry messages of pain and that Luke's pain signaled that the cancer was spreading, pressing on nerves. An operation wasn't an option.

“One reason Paige is angry is because her father's not fulfilling his contract,” Faye said.

“What contract? I don't understand.”

“He's her father. He's supposed to be there for her, to care for her.”

Like Lily, I thought, my mind suddenly flashing to my mama. Okay, it was ridiculous, I suppose, but I felt abandoned. Lily had taken care of Ashley and me after my daddy died, and she'd been there for me all through the period of my illness and recuperation, and then she just disappeared. Off on a new life with the dentist.

“And Paige is probably feeling guilty, too,” Faye was saying.

I pulled my mind back. “Why should she feel guilty? You mean because of the drinking?”

“Because Luke's dying.”

“But why would she feel guilty about that? It isn't her fault he's sick.”

“No. Any more than it was your fault that Lowell had a heart attack.”

I tightened the phone cord around my wrist, breathed against the tightness in my chest.

“After Luke dies,” Faye continued, “Paige will need someone to talk to. I think she'll turn to you then.”

After Luke dies. The words stung. I pushed them away.

“How are things going other than that?” Faye said.

“Okay, I guess.” What would Faye say if she knew about the shirt I'd taken?

“Well, cheer up,” Faye said before she hung up. “You're doing fine.”

D
URING THE
next weeks, neither Luke nor Nona mentioned Paige to me. When she stopped by to see her father, the visits never coincided with mine, though I didn't know if this was by accident or deliberate design. I would have liked to have seen her. After the conversation with Faye, I felt softer toward Paige.

Over the days, I gathered and hoarded the details of Luke's life, as if preparing for famine. I learned that it was he who completed the crossword in the daily papers and that he had majored in literature at a small independent college in Vermont but had left before getting a degree. “Too much sand in my shoes,” he told me. “I had to come back to the Cape.” Nona's version was that Luke treasured his independence too much to work for anyone but himself. “Just like his father,” she said. Nona had been divorced for years. Luke's father was currently living in Santa Fe with his third wife. “So far away from the ocean,” Nona said in disbelief. She didn't know how he could stand it.