The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (25 page)

She’s stroking Garbo’s head with too much ardor and her leg is bouncing beneath the desk. Her hopped-up brain needs something to focus on other than working on her not-so-new-anymore To-Do List that isn’t dwindling the way she’d like it to.

I give her hand a quick pat and say, “We’ll go directly to the pet store first thing tomorrow to get Snakey Ten, I have a lot of faith in your sister, I can’t do much about Connie’s nether region, but believe me, you’ll be rid of your mother when the time is right.” Best to change the subject now. “In the meantime, how ‘bout we come up with something to take your mind offa things?”

She swipes at her tears with the sleeve of her cows-sipping-
café-au-lait
-on-the-
Champs-Élysées
nightie that needed washing a week ago, and points out the window into the clear night. The light of a three-quarters moon is illuminating her flock of snow angels. “Make more?”

I wrap my arms around myself and shiver.

“Empty my drain?”

“Sounds like a ball, but I’ve got another idea.” I stand, bow at the waist, and offer her my hand. “May I have this dance?”

The last thing she wants to do right now is trip the light fantastic, but she is far too polite to turn me down. “We need music,” she says.

I follow her into the den where she thumbs through the extensive vinyl record collection. When she finds what she wants, she drops the classic Muddy Waters album onto the turntable and lowers the volume so it doesn’t wake the boys. “You lead,” she says.

We’re waltzing to
The Thrill Is Gone
. I thought I’d succeeded in calming her some, but then she sighs, and says into my shoulder, “Will doesn’t want me anymore and I don’t blame him for going back to Connie.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion if I were you.” I stuck close to him last night. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to see with my own eyes what he and Connie have been up to. The two of them
did
have their bodies pressed together. “You don’t have any proof.”

“What about the long blond hairs?” When she gets up enough nerve to confront him, she’s planning to wave the ones she keeps in an envelope in the mud room cupboard triumphantly in his face so he can’t accuse her of making one of her erroneous assumptions. “And the perfume?”

“They work together in a busy restaurant,” I say as we move around the room. The heaviness that she’s feeling in her heart doesn’t reach her feet. She really is a lovely dancer. “They’re bound to brush up against one another.”

“Nice try. I work there too and I don’t come home with black hair on my blouse smelling like Juan and french fries. And Otto keeps track of
everything
that goes on in the diner and I heard him singing to himself, ‘Connie has a boyfriend…Connie has a boyfriend.’”

I come to an abrupt halt and hold her at arm’s length. “C’mon, Tessie. Really? Otto? The man who wears shingle kilts and believes we’re under attack from the Planet Argon?” The way a mother wishes to spare her child pain, I’d love to tell her what’s going on between Connie and Will, but it’s contrary to one of the most basic tenants of an imaginary’s life: “
There are no shortcuts
to your friend’s destination.
Do not interfere with their journey.”
(I’m aware this sounds like one of Birdie’s Hallmark cards, but that doesn’t make it any less true.)

“Our wedding anniversary is coming up in May,” Tess says. “If the cancer has spread…,” I take an extra-strong hold of her, but she resists and steps back, “I need to go to the sanctuary.”

The subterranean space is separated from the finished side of the basement that holds the big TV and beanbag chairs by a door to the past that she steps through often to worship the happy childhoods that are kept here. The overhead bulbs shine down too harshly upon what she holds precious, so she lights the three votive candles in red glass holders that she keeps at the ready on one of the storage shelves near the door.

Will was raised in the house, and sometimes on nights like these, when nothing else seems to work to take her out of herself, she comes down here and digs up souvenirs of his boyhood that his mother packed away in containers to keep time from nesting in them. If you don’t count Birdie, Louise’s ashes and her constant nagging, and the pictures Tess inherited upon her gammy’s passing, there is little left of her childhood except for the reruns that play in her head.

She lifts the top off the plastic box marked
William—1957-1960
. There’s a laminated school report that his mother was so proud of with a childish drawing of the diner below the title printed in Will’s little-boy hand—
My Daddy Makes the best Hamgers in the Hole World
. She digs down farther and buries her nose in his little baseball glove. Willie played shortstop.

Remnants of Haddie’s and Henry’s early years have been lovingly preserved as well. The blue blanket she brought her son home from the hospital in. Her daughter’s lacy baptismal dress, she was so chubby. Their tiny white baby socks. Henry’s
Go, Dog, Go
book. Haddie’s earliest photographs of her mother and father shot from such a low angle that Will and Tess look like beneficent giants.

She thought the memories would bring comfort the way they usually did, but tonight they’re having the opposite effect. She’s barely able to blow out the votive candles, and says raggedy, “I can’t catch my breath,” as she dodges around the boxes, shoots up the stairs, and straight out to the deck of the house.

It’s below zero and the sky is sprinkled with stars. Garbo is looking up at Tess, who is looking up at the northern sky. The cold air hitting her tight lungs opens up her breathing some, but she’s still struggling. She points at Orion the Hunter. “Like father, like son,” she gasps. “Henry doesn’t need me anymore either.”

“Now ya know that’s not true. Henry Orion adores you. He just ain’t showin’ it at the current time.” I’m gonna get in Dutch. I’m not supposed to do this sort of thing, but she’s feeling so forlorn and what are friends for? I spin her toward the house, point up to her son’s bedroom window, and say to the heavens above, “Please enlighten her.”

When the lamp pops on in Henry’s bedroom, she turns to me gap-mouthed. “Holy shit, Grace. How…how’d you do that?”

I give her a grin and point to the eastern sky. Dawn is dressed in vivid shades of peach and gold. “Lordy, how time do fly when a body is havin’ fun. We better get busy in the kitchen. The boy’ll be up soon lookin’ for his breakfast and ya know how cranky he gets when he’s hungry.”

Tess, Garbo, and I are heaped together a few hours later on the plaid den couch. Will is preparing cups of fortifying tea in the kitchen. The two rooms open into one other, so Tessie picks up the den phone and enables the speaker doohickey so he can hear the dread-filled call she’s about to make to Dr. Whaley’s office.

“Hey, Patience.” Her need for secrecy is utmost in her mind, so she considers giving the receptionist a fake name again, then she realizes that doesn’t make sense. “It’s Tess Blessing. I’m calling to get the results of the pathology report.”

“Oh, hey. Sure. Let me pull your chart.”

Kenny Rogers and The First Edition begin serenading her and Will with, “Up, up, and awaaay in my beautiful, my beautiful ballooon.”

“Got it,” Patience comes back and says, “lemme see.”

Flop sweat, the kind that Tess had experienced when she was performing her stand-up routine in front of a particularly tough crowd, has broken out on her forehead. She picks up my hand and squeezes.

“Congratulations!” the allergy-plagued receptionist trumpets. “Your lymph nodes are clean!”

Will sets their cups on the coffee table with a smile that’s just a few ticks away from a gloat. Hadn’t he told her all along that everything was going to be okay? Tessie isn’t that easy. It’s almost impossible for her to believe that she’s one of the lucky ones. Maybe Patience misheard her name because her ears are always clogged up. “That’s really great, but are you absolutely, positively sure that you’ve got the right report?”

“Yup, and…wait a sec.”

“What?” Tess asks.

“Looks like there’s another little problem.”

There…that’s better. More familiar territory. (Tess really doesn’t do all that well with joy.)

Patience says, “Looks like your margins aren’t wide enough.”

“My
margins
?” A fourth-grade book report comes to mind.

“Margins are the space between good tissue and bad. Yours aren’t what they should be, which means that you’re going to need to have them revised.”

“I thought Rob cut the tumor out.” Was he incompetent? Sure, everyone liked the guy. He was a great track coach with a cute behind, and a pillar of the church and the community, but she excelled at fooling people too. What did she
really
know about him? Should she drive over to the hospital and demand to see proof of the work he’d done? When Will repairs the Volvo, he always shows her the busted parts. “And what do you mean I have to have more tissue removed?” It registers then. “Wait a minute…are you telling me that I’m gonna have to have another surgery?” she asks. “Just like the last one?”

Patience says, “Not exactly like the last one, but yes, you’ll need another surgery.”

Tess moans. Any relief she was feeling about the rest of her body being free of cancer is being snuffed out by the thought of another operation. She can’t picture having the strength to go through that again.

“But first things first,” Patience says. “How are you doing with your drain?”

Preoccupied with the thought that she could die during this new surgery, Tess mumbles, “Just peachy.”

“Good. Then let’s schedule you on March eighth at seven in the morning for the margin surgery.” She sneezes. “And can you come by this Thursday at two to get the drain removed?”

“Ah…let me get back to you.”

Something is going on with Will. He’s gasping for air. Assuming the tea had gone down the wrong way, Tess whacks him hard on the back, but when he turns to face her, she can see that he’s not choking. He’s sobbing. She’s only seen him cry this hard a few times over the past twenty-nine years—their wedding night, the afternoon his mother departed to the other side of the veil, and following the births of their children.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I’m just so relieved that you’re gonna be okay…and I feel bad that…I’m so sorry…but I’ve been going through something really hard of my own.”

Tess sinks deeper into the couch cushions. This has got to be about the affair. All this time he’d been keeping it under his hat because he thought she was about to meet her Maker, but now that they’ve gotten the news that her death no longer appears to be imminent, looks like her husband is about to profess his undying love for Connie.

“I’m having…,” Will takes in another shuddering breath, “a midlife crisis.”

“A…a
what
?” She was so sure he was about to tell her—I’m having
an affair
, that she doesn’t think she heard him right. “What did you say?”

“I’m having a midlife crisis. That’s why I…I haven’t been here for you the way I shoulda been.”

Tess doesn’t believe she could be struck any dumber. She needs a moment to consider what he’d gotten off his chest and put onto hers. Is he telling her the truth, or is this some elaborate ruse he’s devised to further cover up the affair? She’d very much like to buy into this, it’d be so much better than him cheating on her. If only she wasn’t having such a hard time believing that he even knows what a midlife crisis
is
. He doesn’t watch daytime TV. Won’t read books. He sticks to magazines, and not
Psychology Today
. His bathroom library is comprised of issues of
Golf Digest
,
Hospitality Today,
and
Classic Cars
.

On the other hand, Tess is very familiar with the condition. It’s fodder for many comediennes’ stand-up routines, and a hot-button topic on daytime television talk shows. She mentally ticks off the midlife-crisis bullet points and addresses them:

• A sudden improvement in appearance.
  

She says, “I noticed that you’ve been working out more and….” She touches his hair. “You’re coloring it.”

• Foolish purchases.
  

“Did you buy a little red sports car?” she asks him.

His tears turn into self-deprecating laughter. “Almost bought a ’64 Triumph a few weekends ago.”

It had been what he was driving the night they’d first met at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. It’d been a warm spring, and instructor Tess had propped open the front door to allow a lake breeze in. The muffler on the sports car was hanging by a wire, so when her last client of the night roared up, there was no mistaking he’d arrived. Cupid’s arrows found their mark the moment they laid eyes on one another. They could barely make it through the first tango lesson, that’s how weak in the knees they went in each other’s arms. They made no-holds-barred love later that night, and were married on May 16, a month and a half after Will had tripped across the studio’s threshold into her teaching arms.

She proceeds with caution. “Are you sure about this?” The shoe’s on the other foot now. Maybe he’s made an erroneous assumption of his own.

“I had an appointment with Scottie.” If Tess started having unusual symptoms her first thought would be to show up at a psychiatrist’s office, but it makes total sense that if he sensed something was off, he’d head straight to his former classmate, and now their family doctor, Dr. Johannson. “He gave me a clean bill of health, and then he explained what a midlife crisis is all about.” Will looks down at his family jewels. “And…there’s something else I need to tell you.”

• Affairs.
  

Tess re-tenses, sure now that everything he’s revealed up to this point was just foreplay. He’s about to confess that he’s been making love to Connie every Wednesday night after all. Was it only a few minutes ago that she was feeling grateful that her life wasn’t drawing to an end?

With a flush racing up his neck, Will murmurs, “
Monsieur Pierre
…he’s…out of order. That’s why I haven’t been, ya know…eager.”