by Leslie Gould
Biopsy. Jill’s having a biopsy. She walked back into the kitchen and picked up the phone and then followed Simon as he crawled down the hall to Audrey’s room. She sat on the floor by the bathroom door where she could keep an eye on the baby and dialed. The dog nuzzled against her free hand. On the fourth ring her mother picked up.
“Jill might have cancer,” Caye said without a hello.
“Oh, honey,” her mother said. “Oh, dear.”
At the end of their two-minute conversation, Caye’s mother said, “I’ll pray for Jill,” right before she pointed out that it was the middle of the day, the rates were high, and they shouldn’t stay on the phone.
Caye felt frustrated as she scooped up Simon and plopped him down in the living room next to the laundry basket full of little boys’ T-shirts, onesies, sleepers, and miniature sweatpants. She dug in and started to fold. The cotton—Jill only bought natural fabrics for her children, not a thread of synthetic material ever touched their skin—was soft and comforting: Hanna Andersson, Baby Gap, Old Navy.
Caye thought about the conversation with her mother. What had she expected? That there was some right thing her mother could say to make everything better?
Part of the corporate ranch Caye grew up on had belonged to her great-grandparents. Her dad had grown up on his family’s ranch, running cattle through Harney County with his dad and grandpa. But the family sold the spread to a corporation in 1950, when Caye’s father was twenty-two. He started as a cowhand for the conglomerate that same year.
“It was sell it or lose it,” her father said. “We were good ranchers, just didn’t have the cash or luck to make it last.”
But ranching was what he knew. Fifty years later he had an artificial knee and a hip replacement. He’d broken his collarbone twice and his back once. He’d retired, but the corporation kept him on to look after the old farmhouse he’d been born in. Caye’s mother had retired at the same time from her job in the housekeeping department of the Burns Hospital. Together, they raised a few cows and chickens and tended their vegetable garden.
Leather gloves, the smell of burning hair, the sight of a branding iron, and scuffed boots all made Caye think of her dad. As a child, she watched his every move. She’d stand on the green poles of the corral and stare as he strode across the dirt, his brown boots kicking up the dust, his felt cowboy hat scraping the sky. When he swung her up onto a horse, she felt as if the whole world was in balance and nothing could harm her.
In his prime, he could wrestle a calf to the ground in a second or two and hold it while one of his crew branded the beast. When he herded the cattle through the high desert, he knew the best grazing, the best routes, the best watering holes. He knew how to pull a breech calf, how to calm the cow, when to walk away from a water dispute, when to call the sheriff.
His own daddy used to ride his herds to Boise to the slaughter yards, but Caye’s dad loaded the steers onto trucks.
“The last of a dying breed,” he’d say. “That’s me.”
Caye was the third child. Her older brothers, five and six years her senior, left Burns after high school. One sold insurance in Twin Falls, Idaho; the other joined the navy and made a career of it. Caye was the first in her family to go to college.
Her parents were poor; they’d always been poor. No thoughts of wintering in Arizona or taking the grandkids to Disneyland.
They’d only come to Ashland twice: when Caye and Nathan married and after Andrew was born.
Not many people could say their father was a cowboy. “You’re kidding,” Jill had said when Caye first talked about what her parents did. “A real-life cowboy?” Caye imagined Jill stepping back in time, putting a pinafore on Caye, tying her bonnet under her chin.
“This is Oregon,” Caye answered with a laugh.
Caye went to Burns twice a year—at the end of summer and then at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Caye and her mother were close, although they never went shopping as other mothers and daughters did, nor did they take trips together. Caye had never told her mother everything, and she seldom asked for her mom’s advice. On the other hand, her mother rejoiced when Caye graduated from college. She was thrilled with what a nice young man Nathan was, and beside herself when Andrew was born. She was moved to tears the first time she held Audrey in her arms.
Caye’s mother had taken her to church every Christmas and Easter. “We really should go more often,” her mother sometimes said. But they didn’t.
“Why doesn’t Daddy go to church?” Caye asked one Christmas.
“Daddy’s church is the open range,” her mother explained. Her brothers never went with them either.
“Women’s stuff,” Caye’s dad would mutter.
In reaction to her parents’ poverty, she’d been determined to control her life. Not that she strove for wealth—she and Nathan would never be rich. But Caye was determined that they would be comfortable. She insisted they wait a year after she’d graduated before they married so that she was established in her job. She wouldn’t agree to start a family until they’d gotten into a house and had a savings account. She waited to get pregnant the second time until they’d saved enough money for her to stay home for at least a year. She didn’t want to be shuttling two little kids to day care; it was hard enough with one. Her original plan was to have another child when Audrey was three, and the fourth two years later.
After Audrey was born, that one year stretched into four. Caye pinched pennies to make it work, tried to make their money stretch. Now she either needed to go back to work or start dipping into savings.
The phone rang, interrupting Caye’s thoughts. She dropped the pale blue onesie back into the laundry basket and snatched the phone off the end table, willing it to be Rob with good news, even though she knew it was too early for any news at all.
It was Joya.
“Jill is going to be okay,” she said. “I’m sure of it. I’ve been praying all morning. God’s given me a vision.”
9
Jill opened her eyes as they passed under the train trestle. The sun was shining; she pulled her sunglasses out of the pocket of her fleece.
“Caye will bring the boys over after we call,” Rob reported, turning up the hill by the school. “She said to take our time, to get you settled.”
Jill nodded her head so Rob would know she heard him.
When they got home, he tucked her in, pulling the sheet and comforter up to her chin. Her throat was sore from the tube. Her belly felt as if she were weighted down, as if gravity had just increased it’s pull on her. She hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner the night before. The cranberry juice she tried to drink in the hospital after the sedative wore off was too hard to swallow. The acid burned her throat.
The tears started slowly. I have faith, God, faith that it’s not cancer. I do. I really do, she prayed, wiggling her feet out of her socks.
After the doctor’s appointment in L.A. almost five years before, Jill returned to the duplex they were living in, one of Marion’s. Their crates of boxes were stacked in the garage until they made a decision on where they were going to move. Rob, she knew, was hoping to go back to Argentina, maybe Spain. Jill was looking away from California—but not that far away.
She knew which crate her art supplies were in—Rob had pulled it out the week before and suggested she try some sublimation to get out of the funk she’d fallen into. “It’s so unlike you,” he’d said. “What’s happened to my cheerful Jill?’
She pulled out the roll of canvas, slats for frames, the jar of white gesso, her wooden box of brushes, and her plastic container of acrylics. Rob had taken Hudson to the park, and she had just enough time to get started. She found a hammer hanging on the garage wall—Marion’s hammer—and found nails in a Baggie in her brush box. She hammered the frame and stretched the canvas.
She had no idea what she would paint, only that she had to.
What do I want out of life? She took up her pencil, ready to sketch out the beginning of the piece. The painting that emerged over the next couple of days was of a Victorian house surrounded by a garden. Wisteria grew over an arbor. Red and pink tulips bloomed in the front. A rope swing hung from an oak tree. Two women, friends, sat on the porch; children played in the yard. Hills covered with trees framed the background.
“It’s Ashland,” Rob said when she’d nearly finished.
She remembered their stop on their way south after their wedding.
“You’re right,” she marveled. “That’s where I want to live.”
She felt stronger, more herself, each step of the way as she painted. And then even more so after they moved, as she lived out the painting. She found the friend, found the house, planted the tulips, restored the garden. Step by step she’d built her life.
She was so sure this was what God had for her. That’s why it couldn’t be cancer. Why would you bring me this far? she prayed. And then she stopped. Not wanting to finish the thought. Refusing to think about her boys without a mother.
I have faith, she prayed, that it’s not cancer.
Still the tears, hot like the sting of the jellyfish she’d touched on the Argentine beach, kept coming. One after the other, fiercely, down her face. She pulled a tissue from the box on the nightstand and wadded it in her hand.
She didn’t think she was afraid, no, not really, because she did have faith, faith that it wasn’t cancer. No reason to think past that until the biopsy results came back.
So why the tears? Was it the tension with Rob? She knew they needed to talk things through, knew they were stuck in the mud, knew he was upset she hadn’t been clear about her medical history.
That was it. They were stuck in the mud until the biopsy came back. No reason to hash through things yet.
She could hear Rob talking on the phone, walking down the hall toward their room. The door creaked. Jill opened her eyes. “I’m awake.”
“Caye’s going to bring the boys in half an hour. And the dog.” “Okay.”
He softly shut the door.
Caye filled so many roles in Jill’s life—friend, colleague in parenting, chief resource, role model as a mom and wife. What Caye would never guess was that she also filled Jill’s need to be mothered. Caye remembered every birthday with a gift. And not only did she bake birthday cakes for the kids, but she also baked one each year for Jill. Jill had had birthdays, many of them, when she hadn’t heard from Marion at all. Others when Marion would go overboard, sending as much as a thousand dollars.
So many times Jill wished that Marion were someone else, some other kind of mother.
Before Jill miscarried, Marion came to visit. Jill hadn’t told her mother she was pregnant—no need to do that until it was necessary. Rob was away on business in Chicago for two weeks, and Marion had wanted to come up to Ashland. It was her first visit.
Jill stood at the gate of the airport, holding squirmy Hudson, waiting for Marion. What stuck in her memory was the heavyset woman, wearing a wrinkled white cotton skirt and a royal blue polyester blouse, who came off right before Marion. The woman was greeted by, Jill assumed, her daughter and newborn grandbaby. The two women hugged, tightly, the infant between them. The older woman quickly wiped away tears. “Oh, honey,” she gushed, dropping her bags, taking the baby, and tucking the little one between her arm and ample breast, “she’s so beautiful.”
Jill forced her eyes away from the threesome as Marion, wearing her trademark beige suit, white blouse, and quality brown shoes, walked toward her. “How are you, Jill?” she asked, as she pecked her daughter’s cheek, her right arm loosely on Jill’s shoulder.
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Hi, hi,” Hudson said.
“We had turbulence,” Marion said, her craggy, deeply lined face turned down toward her jutting chin. “Hi, hi,” Hudson called out again. “Mother, he’s talking to you,” Jill interjected.
“Oh.”
“Hi, hi,” Hudson said again.
“Well, hello,” Marion said. “Hello, Hudson.”
It was during that visit that Jill miscarried, on the last day of three that Marion stayed with her in the split-level house south of town. She called the doctor the day before when she started to spot. “Put your feet up, rest,” the nurse had said.
She told her mother she was having a hard period. “I can call a cab,” Marion offered.
Jill said she thought that would be a good idea. She could tell Marion was offended.
She felt the bleeding increase and went into the bathroom. There it was, the little fetus. She reached over and put it on a tissue on the counter.
She couldn’t tell Marion.
She opened the medicine cabinet and took out the Band-Aid box, pulled out the three remaining bandage strips and put them on the shelf. She picked up the fetus again, ran her finger down it’s bony back, focused on its fishlike head. It was only an inch and a half long.
So much in so little.
She slipped it into the box and washed her hands.
The taxi honked. Jill walked into the living room. Hudson was down for a nap. There was Marion standing by the door, leather satchel in one hand, briefcase in the other.
“Good-bye,” she said.
Jill put one arm around her mother and gave a gentle squeeze. “Thanks for coming.”
When the taxi had turned the corner, Jill called Caye. “Can you come over?” she asked. “I need you.”
Caye hurried in the door, carrying sleeping Audrey in her car seat, herding Andrew along.
“What’s the matter?” Caye asked softly.
“The baby. I lost the baby.”
“Oh, Jill,” Caye whispered, putting Audrey’s seat on the floor of the living room and reaching for her friend.
“I put it in a Band-Aid box. I didn’t know what to do.” Jill began to cry.
“What?”
“The little baby. It’s in the bathroom.”
“Really?” Caye asked.
“Is that gross?”
Caye shook her head. “What do you want to do with it?”
“Bury it.”
“Where?”
Jill decided on the little space along the parking strip. Volunteer cosmos were blooming among the garden roses. “Not in the yard,” she said. “I don’t plan to live in this house much longer. I want it where I can drive by and look at the flowers.”
Caye found a cardboard jewelry box, with the cotton wadding still in it, in the hall closet where Jill kept the wrapping paper. Caye opened the Band-Aid box and slid the fetus onto the cotton.
“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Caye said.
Jill started to cry. Caye hugged her, patting her back, saying, “It’ll be okay; it’ll be okay.”
Caye went through the garage and picked up Jill’s green-handled trowel off the gardening bench and then triggered the garage-door opener.
Jill watched from the picture window as Caye dug in the dirt beside a blooming yellow rosebush.
The hot July sun turned Caye’s face red. She came back into the house with the trowel. Jill sat down on the couch and ran her fingers down Audrey’s spine.
“Where’s Andrew?” Caye asked.
“Waking up Hudson. I told him he could.”
“How do you feel?”
“Empty.”
They sat at the kitchen table while the boys played in the backyard. Audrey practiced rolling over on a blanket on the floor.
“I keep thinking about the abortion I had in college,” Jill said.
“Really?” Caye asked. Just that one word: Really? No judgment. No sickening fall to her voice. No questions about how Jill could have done such a thing.
“Yeah. Now I have two little babies who didn’t make it.”
She’d been nineteen. In college. Lonelier than she’d ever been in her life.
Finally, thirteen years after his death, she began to grieve for her father. She lost her balance, forgot who she was to her heavenly Father, never acknowledged who the baby was in God’s eyes. That one time she trusted her mother—a decision she immediately regretted. A mistake she immediately vowed never to repeat.
Caye poured Jill another cup of tea.
How many years ago was that now? Jill drifted toward sleep. Almost four? She heard the stampede coming down the hall. Her door flew open.
“Mommy!” Hudson yelled. Scout barked. “Be gentle,” Caye said, hurrying in after the big boys, carrying Simon.
The room was dark. Simon began to whimper. Jill sat up, bracing herself for the force of the boys. “Hey, all,” she whispered hoarsely.
In an instant, Liam and Hudson were on the bed, hugging her with warm arms and sticky hands. She sucked in their sweaty, loamy scent that made her think of endless, sunny days, working in the garden while they played.
“Ma-ma-ma,” Simon chirped.
“Come here, baby,” she said, as he leaned out of Caye’s arms and into Jill’s.
Caye sat down on the end of the bed and smiled. Audrey and Andrew stood at the door.
“Come on, Audrey,” Jill said. “Let me look at our four-year-old girl. Hey, you,” she said to Andrew. “Turn on the light, would you?”
In another minute they were all on the bed, all seven of them.
“Don’t jump,” Caye commanded as Liam started to gear up. He looked at his mother.
“Auntie Caye is right,” Jill said with a wince. “Don’t jump. Mommy might get sick.”
Liam began to cry. “They’re tired,” Caye said. “If they melt down now it’s because they were so good for me. I’ll stay and get dinner started—help get them settled.”
“It’s okay. You’ve done enough,” Jill said.
“No,” Caye responded. “I insist.”
The only thing that counts is faith
expressing itself through love.