Fatigue hit her like a train towards the end of class. She had been warned about this side effect of chemotherapy, unlike any normal tiredness. This must be it, she thought. Several people had already left the pool, sitting in the adjacent hot tub. Clair waved at them, as she left, feeling as though she had found a group of friends. As she walked down the long, darkened, empty hall towards the women’s locker room, that tiny flutter in her chest, a lightness to her step, a momentary feeling of happiness startled her. At first, pushing it away, then allowing the warmth to spread through her bones. As she entered the locker room, Clair felt herself hit the wall, sliding down, until the rough brown carpet met her cheek.
Time drifted past. She heard voices, like birds warbling in the morning dew, trilling and light. Hands were on her, lifting her up. Sitting her on the bench, telling her to take sips of orange juice the receptionist had brought down, after being alerted by one of the ladies.
‘Here, Clair, take this,’ Pat said. ‘You probably have low blood sugar. A collection of voices, all talking at once, brought her back.
‘Are you OK now? Do you need to go to the hospital?’ JoJo asked.
‘Oh no, not the hospital,’ Clair said, standing up. ‘I’m OK. I got really dizzy. Thanks for the juice. I didn’t eat before coming in this morning.’
‘You can’t do that, you know. Even just a bite of something, or keep some juice or candy with you. But do eat some protein and a carbohydrate, at least first thing. You know why it’s called breakfast don’t you? Because we break our fast. That means you are on empty, girl.’ Nell, the retired nurse in the group spoke with authority.
‘I know, I know. I promise, I will from now on. Ah, did any of you see a woman leaving just now? Or before?’
The women looked at each other, then back at Clair, shaking their collective heads, no.
On her walk back to the housing, Clair couldn’t forget the odd woman who reminded her of a selkie. Wondering if it had in fact happened or if it was all a hallucination brought on by low blood sugar. And there was the water; it had felt different to her, like a second skin. The lights illuminating the bottom of the pool had danced like strobes, like the rays of sunshine cutting through the dense darkness of the Pacific, that morning when she had walked into the ocean, the last time she had seen Devon.
The realization that she had seen him hit her like a thunderclap. She had forgotten that. The memory emerged like a diver coming up for air, too fast, leaving her dizzy and disoriented. The woman in the locker room. She hadn’t imagined that. Clair felt swallowed up by these images and feelings. She longed to be home, to lie in her bed, and sleep. Not the sleep of restoration, but the sleep of dreams. Lucid dreaming, she knew it was called, and she had found the way in. She would find Devon again, in her sleep, and through the uniting of their energies. The early morning mist was drifting down through the rising fog off the ocean, a wind picking up, mixing the two, creating sea smoke, a nearly impenetrable curtain of dense moisture, sky and cloud come to earth, as Clair hurried to her new, temporary home at the cancer center, using dead-reckoning as her compass.
Chapter 21
Clair
The black Mercedes was parked in front of the cancer center, adjacent to the apartment complex for residential patients. The sight of it caused her stomach to tighten, her throat to constrict. She felt dizzy again. Seeing Adam’s car parked so close to her home, this safe place where she could focus on healing, felt like an invasion. Breathing in, I am calm, she said to herself. Breathing out, I smile. Over and over, she practiced the techniques Naomi had taught her as ways to ride the waves of change her body, mind, and it seemed, spirit were passing through. Slowly lifting her head, she leaned against the outside of the building, eyes closed, waiting for the light-headedness to pass. Waiting for her heart rate to slow, and a normal beat to emerge. Not flight, not fight, not freeze she said to herself. Just ride it out. It will pass. Breathe in, breathe out. Eventually she was able to open her eyes, look through the rain, now falling hard, towards the door of the cancer center. He was probably in there, asking about her.
She knew they wouldn’t tell him anything, patient privacy laws protecting her. She hadn’t signed a release for any information to be shared, not with Adam. She had allowed Ben and Jodie to receive information, in case she died or got sicker, and couldn’t speak for herself. They were her health care representatives. Adam, he was nothing to her now. And her earlier hope for some form of reconciliation or new beginning felt like an adolescent daydream.
Rain was coming down now, a soft blanket. Its sound drumming on the parking lot transfixed her, freeing thoughts back to the water. Like a tidal surge, the desire to return pulled her out further and further, before sounds, a door slamming, voices, laughter, a dog barking, cast her upon the beach of now, here. Deep fatigue settling in again, she knew she had to get into her apartment and lay down. She had another chemotherapy treatment and then support group later that morning, and she needed to be rested for that. Clair fought against the urge to keep moving, like a shark, or fear dying, surrendering. She knew in her every cell that for her, death wouldn’t be the end, but a beginning, a reuniting with Devon. Still, she wasn’t ready for it yet. She had first to find him, the world of spirit was so vast, she wanted to be able to pinpoint his location. She had to beat this cancer, get stronger, and connect with him across the light years of space and time. The woman at the club was one of her guides, she knew that now. There would be others out there. But first, Adam.
Clair stood at the car, arms crossed, jacket hood pulled up to protect her head. She didn’t want him knowing which of the small apartments in the housing unit was hers. Anger filling her chest, causing breaths to come in short, staccato puffs, she stared at the double doors leading into and out of the cancer center. As she watched people coming and going, some walking on their own two feet, others with walkers or wheelchairs, and one arriving in an ambulance, she marveled at the sheer number of men, women, children, walking, dying, living with cancer.
When she saw him, her breath stopped, catching in her throat. He was so beautiful, still capturing her senses the way he had that first night she had met him. More stooped now, weary lines around his eyes and down his cheeks, giving him a hero’s persona. His eyes turned towards his car as he opened his large, black umbrella. When he saw her standing there, rain falling down on her, eyes large and fearless beneath the jacket’s hood, he smiled, large and bright. He hurried to her, holding the umbrella over them both with one hand, wrapping the other arm around her, pulling her to him. She leaned into him, his heat the sedative she needed. He felt like a warm blanket, easing her stiffness. She wanted so much to give up, let him reel her back in but she knew deeply in her heart, it would be a mistake. That past was gone. There was no going back. The future was unknown, not even a suspicion of possibility. Live or die? There was only now, and this now, she had to do alone. She pulled back and looked up at him, his head bumping the metal braces at the top of the umbrella. She felt a smile break her face.
‘You’re going to get your hair tangled in that thing,’ she said. ‘Come on, you can come in out of the rain.’
She took his hand, running towards the main doors leading into the apartment building. She was grateful that the shared communal room was empty. She decided she would rather talk with him out here, keeping her own space inviolate.
‘Sit. I’ll make us some tea. Or would you rather have coffee? We have one of those pod things,’ she said, startled at her nervousness, her uncertainty.
Adam shrugged off his coat, turning it outside in, and laying it across the back of the couch. He sat, his long legs almost touching his chest as he sank down into the soft, fabric chair, designed for comfort, not style. She could feel his eyes following her movements. She consciously stood straighter, pulling her shoulders back, still feeling the tug on nerve and muscle fibers severed, searching for some memory of wholeness
. At times, she felt phantom pleasure, as though her breasts recalled their purpose. Making love, feeding Devon, the first buds when she was a girl, proud and embarrassed, wearing tight sport bras to cover and hold them back. Always small, her breasts never defined her as with so many women. Yet, through giving of her love, to Adam and Devon, she had come to love them, as an extension of her nurturing nature. Now, they were killing her. Even gone, their power of giving life and taking life remained. The language of cancer was the language of war. Remembering the woman’s words, there is no peaceful war. There is no friendly fire. Cancer was a battleground and she couldn’t weaken. This was war, not peace; this was fire, and it was raging. She turned to Adam.
‘Earl Gray or herbal? I have some green too,’ she said, waving her arm over the collection of tea boxes on the cluttered counter.
‘Earl is good. Thank you, Clair, what’s wrong? I’ve never seen you on the defensive. You don’t have to fuss, you know. I just wanted to see you to explain.’
Adam had begun to stand, and she shushed him, waving him back into his seat.
Bringing the tea over in two chipped mugs, one with a picture of Santa on it, she sat opposite him, on the edge of a rocking chair, careful not to set it moving. Her hands trembled. She tucked them between her legs, pressed together.
Adam, picking up the Santa mug, blowing on the steam rising from the cup, asked, ‘Clair, why are you here? Why won’t you come home?’
Looking around, seeing the room through his eyes, she saw its lived-in shabbiness. The old brown sofa, tattered, worn in places by grieving hands. Crocheted Afghans, needlepoint framed affirmations of hope, courage, tenacity. She noticed the many different body smells. Like a college dormitory, except instead of jubilant youth, this home was filled with terrified adults, fighting for time and comfort.
‘I like it here. I have a small apartment. I don’t have to share. I’m close to treatment, my group, others going through this. I feel safe.’
She wasn’t sure why she said that but, for some reason, thought it was important that he know.
‘I see. And you would rather be here than at home? I don’t understand that, Clair. I need to explain…’ he began to say, but she interrupted him.
Pulling her hands out from between her legs, unzipping her jacket. It was warm and she felt a surge of hormone heat rising up through her core. She ripped her head wrap off, tossing it onto the table. Picking up a pamphlet laying on the table, she began vigorously fanning herself. She could feel her face and neck turning red.
‘I really don’t want to hear any explanations, Adam. I saw what I saw,’ she said shrugging. ‘And, you know, it’s OK. I don’t care. I realize you and Claudia have been together all along. Thinking back to the very first night, it was she that was looking for you. My eyes had followed hers, and found you. My God, no wonder she’s hated me all these years, but acted like she was my friend. What a fool I have been.’
As she spoke, she looked first at Adam then away, out the window, into the woods beyond the parking lot. Birdsong broke through, and she marveled at this, at how birds could sing in the rain. Their simple faith in the end of storm and the return of sun and worm was abiding. She found strength and comfort in this, enough to face Adam again. Her face had cooled. She felt more in control. She glanced at the pamphlet still in her hand. Living Beyond Breast Cancer Support Group. Her group, her new family.
‘Tell me I’m wrong.’
‘You are wrong, Clair, completely,’ Adam said, softly, without force. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together.
‘What you saw was a final goodbye. I had told Claudia I was taking a leave of absence, so I could take care of you. She finally got it that I would never be with her, not in that way.’
Adam stood, walked around the couch, too distraught to sit. He hadn’t slept the night before, missing her, afraid for her, and for himself now that he had imagined a life for them together again. Everything was happening too fast. He had to find a way back.
‘I have never, not once, been intimate with Claudia since you and I have been together. She’s a colleague, friend, and yes, I do admit, she made it clear that she has been infatuated with me, but that’s all it ever was. Maybe I encouraged it, especially in the later years when you were so wrapped up with Devon. And before, it was a silly game. A flirtation. I could always count on her to be my date for faculty events and yes, occasionally sex. But once I met you, and we married, had Devon, all that changed. At least, in my world. Not to her, I realize now. I should have been more honest, forthright with her. But I didn’t want to hurt her and then, she became department chair and things got even more complicated. So, I let it all slide. When you saw us together, in my office, I had told her. She was saying goodbye to me, to her fantasy of me.’
Clair leaned back in the rocker, flashbacks to those early morning feedings with Devon, gently rocking him while he nursed, feeling the tingle of nerves under the taught skin, the erotic pull of milk as it let down, and filled his rosebud mouth with warmth and succor. When she looked at Adam, she could see Devon in his broad forehead, ears that slightly stood out, giving him a perpetual schoolboy appearance. His eyes, so clear and bright, luminous in the rain-shadowed darkness of this retreat, bore into hers, seeking answers to his pain, his fear. She felt her anger release in a flood of compassion. For the first time, she could connect with his suffering. Like quantum entanglement, they had been opposites of each other for so long, his death, her life, his joy, her sorrow. And now, she had to shift again, focus on her path to survival.
‘It may be true, what you say,’ she said, smiling gently at him. ‘It may not. I can’t care about that now, Adam. My life is on the line here. I can’t handle the distraction. All bullshit aside, this is the fucking reality.’
She held out her hands for him to see. Her third round of chemotherapy had been tortuous. The skin was bright red, like a third-degree sunburn.
‘And it’s on the inside too. The cancer is spreading, like a wildfire. I have to work on this every moment of every day, and I have to do it alone.’
‘I knew you were different,’ he said, standing and walking over to the window, hands deep in his pockets.
He turned to look at her, his smile crinkling his eyes for a moment, then the sadness returned. He turned, leaning back against the window ledge.
‘I wanted, needed that difference. I had always been chosen by women, fitting myself into their lives. They needed me to complete them. You, so fearless and believing, in your science, the truth of mathematics. It resonated with you and made you whole. I chose you. And you had my baby. You took it to the limit. You completed me. Old ways and habits, those well-worn neuropathways default our best intentions. But Clair, I never once cheated on you. I felt left, diminished, and I acted poorly. I was weak. I’m sorry.’
Adam’s eyes filled with tears. He dropped his head into his hands. She wanted to go to him, to hold him, to smell his hair, feel the roughness of his face, trace the paths of his tears with her lips.
He looked up, ran his hands across his face, through his hair, started to speak again. She waved him to silence.
‘Quiet now. You will endure, and so will I. Go and live well. If we are meant to be together, we’ll find each other again, after all of this.’
She walked to him, took hold of his hands where they hung limply by his side. He bent his head down, lifting her hands and cupping his face, kissing her palms. She shuddered. Then she stood, sliding her hands from his, folding her arms across her chest.
‘Now?’ he asked, tears forming in his eyes.
‘Yes, please. I need to lie down. I’ll see you on the other side, or, if we’re among the favored few, somewhere along this life’s sojourn, sometime in the future.’
Clair sat for a while, feeling the absence of his energy. His largeness. If he was acting, he did it well. If he was being trut
hful, well, she couldn’t think about that now. Looking around, deciding what to do, she saw his coat laying across the couch, where he had left it. Forgotten in his rush to escape before he fell apart. She sighed, knowing how much the coat meant to him, and realizing that his leaving it was a sign of how upset he had been. That black wool coat that had been the focus of an argument, the last winter the three of them had been together. It had been a fissure in the tender veneer of their life as a family.
She walked to the couch, picked it up, and wrapped herself in it. His smell emanated from the damp wool. She sat in the rocker, and let her mind drift. One year ago, could it be. Last November.
Devon had been agitated all day. Winter break parties at his school, shopping with her after school, and coming home, his favorite TV show changed for a holiday special. Clair had tried all of her techniques for calming. A bath with favorite toys, toast, with butter, honey, and cinnamon. Stories told from memory, so he could see her eyes throughout the telling. They had practiced Mommy and Me yoga. It was raining but he wanted to go out, having been cooped up all day. She had let him. He had put on his Superman cape and ran around the yard, rain falling down like spirit from the sky in the evening dusk. When he had finally worn himself out, she dried him off, helping him put on his pajamas. Still wearing the kind with feet in them, he had waddled around the kitchen, calmer now, wanting to help her prepare dinner. They had been baking bread, he rolling the dough between his fingers, creating shapes, and getting flour all over himself and the counter top. Adam had come in, wet, tired, wearing his new black wool coat.
The Wave Page 14