The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (30 page)

Tess is so immersed that soft-spoken Irwin must resort to shouting her name before she takes her nose out of the book.

She says, “Sorry,” and follows him into a small room off the hallway.

“Our controls,” he sweeps his arm Vanna-like across the panel of dials, meters, and flashing lights. “And that’s our radiation machine.” He nods through a viewing window at the metal monster. “Let me introduce you.”

While Irwin is giving her the ten-cent tour around the radiation room, a muscular guy wearing tight blue jeans and Tony Lama boots joins them. He extends a calloused hand, and says, “I’m Cliff,” like he’s the boss around these here parts. (He’s wearing a wedding ring, but Tess would bet that’s not preventing Irwin from having a secret cowboy crush on him.)

As Cliff helps her onto the table below the machine, he warns, “It’s
extremely
important that you don’t move during the process,” and then he and Irwin pick up rulers and begin measuring her breast, which is what mapping is all about. They’re formulating a AAA TripTik for the radiation machine.

Irwin stomps his foot at one point during the process and tells Tess in a frustrated way, “I’m sorry this is taking me so long. Cliff is a lovely teacher, but…,” he shrugs, “I’m just learning the ropes.”

You got the new guy…ha…ha…ha
.

Tess feels the familiar fear bunch up in her gut, but she doesn’t have the heart to request someone more seasoned, she can tell Irwin’s feelings would be hurt. She focuses on the ceiling. Cumulus clouds are floating across a trompe l’oeil sky. She and Haddie used to lie in their backyard grass and search for animal shapes back when her daughter still thought she hung the moon. The memory solidifies into a tear that drips past her right temple and down onto the papered table with a
plop
.

Irwin stops whatever it is he’s doing to ask, “You okay?”

Cliff takes a tougher love approach. “Hang in there. We’ve completed the measuring and it’s time for your tattoos.”

While Irwin is creating the dots across her breast with a small branding iron under Cliff’s watchful eye, he repeats with every stab of the needle, “Ouch…I know that hurts, dear. Ouch…I know that hurts, dear.”

Upon completion, Cliff high-fives Irwin and says, “Not bad for your first time, buddy.”

It’s been a lot to take in.

Tess is half-naked, flat on her back, the tattoos are stinging, and strange men are paying an awful lot of attention to her breasts. She feels like she’s been kidnapped by two motorcycle gang members.

When she returns to the changing room, she bumps into me humming,
Born to Be Wild
.

“
Hardy har har
. Don’t quit your day job,” she tells me as she bangs the locker door open.

She’s in pain, worried about the treatments, but mostly, she’s fretting about Haddie, who would be home soon for her monthlong spring break. When her mother left for St. Joe’s each day, she would wonder where she was going. How would she react when Tess broke down and told her? Would the news send her into a tailspin? Force her to wedge her finger down her throat after she ate everything she could find in the pantry? Starve herself?

Tess is in tears when I take her into my arms and whisper, “Need something?”

“You can’t know,” she says as she rests her cheek against my shoulder.

“Oh, but I can, darlin’.” I run my hand down her rumpled red hair. “Trust me. I know
exactly
what you’re hankerin’ for.”

A life-size wooden cross juts out of St. Lucy’s front lawn reminding all that the time for atonement and resurrection will soon be upon us. I tell Tessie from the confines of the Volvo that she’s parked on the street out front of the church, “Let’s go inside and say hi.”

“I gave Him up for Lent.” This is not at all what she had in mind when I told her I knew what she needed. She was hoping for a hot-fudge sundae with extra whipped cream.

“Please?” I ask.

“Uh-uh.”

“Quit playin’ hard to get.”

After I pled with her for a few more minutes, she gives in, she has to. She’s got business to take care of.

As we walk up the path to the church doors together, she’s gazing up at the cross and the body of Jesus Christ. “How does seein’ Him make you feel?” I ask her.

“Defeated. I never noticed how skinny He is. If his mother couldn’t protect and nourish
her
kid, what are my chances?”

I open the heavy double doors and slowly proceed down the main aisle with her in tow. The church is not ostentatious, the way some of them can be. Not too small, not too large, it reflects the character of Ruby Falls. It’s old the way the most of the town is, and resonates with the sounds of the beginnings, the middles, and the ends of life—squalling baptized babies, brides and grooms exchanging I do’s, and farewell funeral wails.

Above the main altar, a crucified Christ looks down upon his flock. On one of the two smaller side altars, votive candles are flickering beneath the feet of St. Lucy, the patron saint of the blind. The altar on the right is guarded over by St. Theresa, the Little Flower. (I arranged that years ago. Good for her self-esteem.) Morning sun streams through three lovely stained-glass windows on the east side of the church. In a few minutes, the middle window will grab Tessie’s attention. It always does.

I chose a pew up front. When I go straight to my knees, Tess doesn’t join me. She fidgets on the dark-blond bench behind me, pages through the hymn book, and beats out a rhythm on the wood, until she can’t stand the suspense anymore.

Sidling up to me, she whispers, “What are you praying for?”

“Not what. Who.”

“Okay. Who?”

“You.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you, and I’m not the only one. I want you to remember that when I’m gone.”

She slams back in the pew like I’d slapped her. “No! You can’t go away, Grace. I won’t let you. I need you! I know I crossed number eight off my list, but I did it in pencil because I…I still might die! That…that radiation machine could shrink me the way it did Marty the receptionist at the center who I’m sure was average-sized at one time. Or…or cowboy Cliff could stop by during a treatment and Irwin could get distracted and set the machine too high.”

“Yeah, that’s probably what’ll happen,” I say solemnly. “And after flustered Irwin reduced you to snack size, maybe he’d offer you a Coca-Cola spiked with curare to wet your teeny whistle.”

After she gives me a disgusted look, one she absorbed from her mother, her attention wanders to the stained-glass window. When she’s in church for the life and death holidays, art lover Tess can’t help but be captivated by the magnificent blues and greens, the umber oranges and brilliant reds, but the remarkable craftsmanship is not what draws her to this particular window. It’s the subject matter. St. Joan of Arc swaddled in fire up to her neck is wearing a peaceful smile that has always annoyed the hell out of Tess.

She mutters to herself, “I don’t know what she’s so damn happy about. She’s a freaking shish kebob.”

I laugh. “True, but she’s also the patron saint of all those fighting against impossible odds.” I hope she makes the connection. “Joan is smiling because she did herself proud and is looking forward to her reward. Her return to the kingdom of all that is and will ever be.”

Tess has given up on traditional religion, which is fine, because all of ’em are just different means to the same end—think of spokes on a wagon wheel leading to the center that holds them altogether—but try as she might, she can’t deny that edging her toes into the
forever
the way she had during her surgery had given her a completely different spiritual take on things.

Less ticked, she says, “When I do…ya know…do you think I’ll go back to the place I visited when I was under the anesthesia?”

“Doubtful,” I say woefully as I ease back in the pew. “Wish that for you with all my heart baby, but….” I shake my head low and slow. “If only you didn’t have that Mike Nelson wiener sin hangin’ over your head.”

Her laugh echoes through the church.

I don’t have time for anymore tomfoolery. We need to get to work. I put on my reading glasses—don’t need ’em, of course—but they’ll add weight to what I’m about to teach her. I speak to her in a calm, slow voice to let her know how serious I am. “May I see your list?”

She removes it from the zipped side compartment of her lucky purse and hands it over.

1. Buy broccoli.
   
2. Make sure that Haddie gets the help she needs from a better therapist.
   
3. Set up vocational counseling appointment for Henry.
   
4. Convince Will to love me again.
   
5. Get Birdie to talk to me.
   
6. Bury Louise once and for all.
   
7. Have a religious epiphany so #8 is going to be okay with me.
   
8. Die.
   

Wanting to praise and reassure before I get down to brass tacks, I point to numbers one, three, and five. “You’re excellent at picking out broccoli, and I’m proud, and you should be too, of the mothering job you’re doing with Henry.” I place my hand atop one of hers. “Don’t worry about him so much.” I’m not supposed to tell her this, but what the hell. “That boy is gonna rock the world someday.” I go back to the list. “And with regards to Birdie, the perseverance you’ve shown in rekindling your relationship is nothin’ short of remarkable. And since it’s not on your list, I’m not even gonna mention what a fantastic job you did coping with all those surgeries.” I give her this special love look I have that is enormously penetrating. “But…I’m a little concerned about number two.”

She grasps onto her lucky purse. “You don’t think Dr. Chandler is helping Haddie?”

“I didn’t say that, did I? The doc is doing an outstanding job treating her disorder, what I meant when I said I was concerned is…well, the time is drawing nigh for you to tell her about the cancer.”

Tess doesn’t realize it, but she’s just made the sign of the cross. Old habits die hard.

“She’ll be scared when you tell her, but when it hits her that you kept it from her, you gotta prepare yourself for all sorts of mad.”

Tess whines, “How was I supposed to know I was going to live?”

“Keeping it a secret from Haddie when you weren’t sure of your prognosis and she was struggling with the worst of her problem was a good idea, but now that you’re not gonna die, and she appears to be making progress, you gotta step up.”

“But what if I still—”

“No buts or what ifs about it.” I cross out number eight again.
Die.
This time in pen. “You’re gonna live.” Much, much longer.

Tess takes a moment to reflect. There are so many repercussions if she accepts once and for all that the cancer isn’t going to kill her. One of them being that she summoned me and framed our time together on the premise that she was about to kick the bucket and needed someone by her side.

Before she can strengthen her argument by bringing up a recurrence, I say, “How ’bout we discuss number seven for a minute?” I take in a deep breath; I’ll need it. “It and number eight are not dependent upon one another. In other words, you don’t have to be drugged up, die, or come close to it, to recapture some of the profound feelings you experienced during your brief visit to the sweet bye and bye, the afterworld, Heaven, the happy hunting ground, or whatever you want to call it.”

My friend can’t help herself, she’s intrigued. No one could resist reexperiencing those divine feelings, least of all her. “How?”

“Well, that brings me to…,” I place my finger next to number six: Bury Louise once and for all.

“You gotta let go of her in more ways than just scattering her ashes. You need to say goodbye to what remains of her here.” I tap her forehead. “And here.” I tap her heart.

She kitten mewls.

“I know you don’t think you are, but you’re well on your way. Haven’t you noticed that she hasn’t been bugging you as much lately?”

She gives me a begrudging nod.

“Well, then, the next step is,” she’s not going to like what I’m about to tell her, but it’s gotta be said, “forgiving her.”

Tess goes as hard as the church pew beneath my behind. “That’s not gonna happen.”

I take on my sermon voice. “In the words of Buddha, ‘Holding onto anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.’”

“I don’t care.”

“Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that you absolve them of the harm they’ve inflicted.” If I’m not careful, she’ll start singing the
Brownie Smile Song
to drown me out. “All you gotta do is acknowledge that Louise did what she did and you feel about it the way you do, and go on with your life the best your can.”

An harrumph.

I point down to the list again: number four.

The resounding church bells make further conversation impossible, which is how I planned it. I don’t want her posing any more belligerent questions that I’m not allowed to answer. She has to figure out how to do the last item on her list on her own—convince Will to love her again—and deep down she knows that, or she wouldn’t be unconsciously releasing me from my duties.

When only the echo remains of the final bell, the twelfth, I ask her, “You know what that means?”

“That you’re about to tell me some dumb-ass parable about the Disciples?”

Lord, this girl can get attitudinal.

“Actually,” I say as I pass the list back, “I was gonna tell you that the time has come to say our goodbyes.”

“Nooo!” She whips my way. “I’m sorry for being snotty…I’m not ready! You can’t leave me. Please!”

I set my hand on her shoulder and say with powerful conviction, “Trust me, you know all you need to know for now, but there
are
a couple of things I want you to focus on.” I’m going to frame the advice as a list because I know that’ll appeal to her. “Number one, just like Dr. Drake told you, humor is the best tool you got to get you through tough times. Number two, you are an eternal soul who is loved now and forever. Number three, remember that surrendering is not the same as giving up. And, last but not least….” I reach under the pew, remove a pink orchid lei, and place it around her neck. She understands the implications. She’s a little expert on Hawaii. “If you could show yourself an ounce of the compassion that you show others that’d be a good start.”