“Um . . . I’m sorry. I must have—”
“Were you trying to reach Darlene?”
“I— Yes.”
“This is her phone.”
“Oh.” My mind was still too muddled to engage in small talk. “Can I speak with her? This is Ceelie.”
I heard a sigh. “Ceelie. She’s been wanting to talk to you. This is Darlene’s son.”
“Is she okay?”
There was a pause. “I think it would be good for you to come over.”
“Right now?”
“When you can.”
Something in my body understood before my mind did. A jagged dread lodged in my veins. Clawed at my synapses. I could almost hear it pleading, “Please, no!” as if it knew I couldn’t take much more.
I glanced at myself in the full-length mirror next to the front door. Disheveled. Gaunt. Hunched over and pale. But Perky, bald, and cancer-free! still screamed from my red shirt. I borrowed—what had Darlene called it?—“cold-blooded courage” from the words and, with concern for my friend hastening my steps, headed for the bedroom.
Darlene’s house was a small Tudor on a quiet street in Geneva, just fifteen minutes from my home in Saint Charles. Her old, turquoise PT Cruiser sat in the driveway—a custom paint job, she’d proudly informed me—and icicle lights still framed the recessed front door. It opened before I reached it.
“You must be Ceelie,” Darlene’s son said. Concerned. Relieved. Though he was a few inches taller than his mother, there was no denying their resemblance. Same small frame. Same high cheekbones. Same direct gaze. His hair was dark blond, but just as unruly. He held out a hand. “I’m Justin.”
He stepped back to usher me inside. “What happened?” I asked, following him down the hall.
“She’s been feeling under the weather for a while—which was news to me, but you know how she is. She took a fall a couple days ago and injured her hip. When they did a CT scan . . .” He paused at the end of the long hall that led to the living room doorway and motioned me inside.
“Don’t hog the guest!” Darlene’s voice was loud, but more breathy than usual.
I stepped into the room, where an alarming number of garden gnomes perched on bookshelves, end tables, and an upright piano, and tried not to show my dismay when I saw my friend.
“But the hair looks good, right?” Darlene said with a small, weary smile, apparently spotting the shock I’d attempted to hide. She sat on the reclining portion of her couch, her legs covered by a crocheted blanket.
Justin’s voice came from behind me. “Things you don’t find in the model-son handbook: teasing mom’s pink hair while she recovers from a fall.”
Darlene laughed. Then she let her head fall back and inhaled a long, deep breath.
I took a step toward her, trying to school the emotions overwhelming my control. “Darlene . . .”
She patted the spot next to her on the couch. “Sit.”
I did as instructed and took a good look at her. Her face was pale under her pink and blue makeup. The lines seemed more deeply creased than usual and, though her trademark feistiness was in her eyes when she turned her head to look at me, there was weariness there too.
I remembered the texts and missed calls on my phone and guilt overcame me. “Darlene . . .”
She waved away my unspoken apology. “Hush now.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back or . . . or text. If I’d known . . .”
She sat up straighter and carefully adjusted her legs on the footrest in front of her. “Honey, that wasn’t me calling. Why would I expect you to get on the phone with me when you’re busy celebrating the end of Drip ’n’ Drain?” It’s what she called chemo—the IV treatment followed by the inevitable intestinal discomfort. Justin ducked out of the room just as she was saying, “I’m guessing my boy might have used my phone to summon the troops, when said troops should have been on a plane to . . . what was it? Sweden?”
“Switzerland.” I turned more fully toward her. “Tell me, Darlene. What’s going on?”
She pursed her lips and looked back at me. Then she reached out a hand to give mine a squeeze. “Turns out my version of the Drip ’n’ Drain didn’t take.”
I’d known as I drove from my place to hers that this was the news I’d receive. Still, my stomach dropped as I felt my breath catch. “It’s back?”
Darlene squeezed my hand again. “In the hip and femur.”
“Oh, Darlene . . .”
“No. Not ‘Oh, Darlene.’” She pushed herself up straighter and winced a little. “They’re going to start me on radiation—that oughta get rid of some of the pain—and a newfangled drug to slow the progress.”
I tried for a strong voice. “You’ll beat this again. I know you will.”
The smile she gave me somehow managed to be whimsical, strong, and grave. “Honey, I’ve beat this thing twice. It’s back to tell me my winning streak is over. But I’m fully planning on going out strong.”
I wasn’t sure what that would look like. I’d seen others die of the disease—my own mother from ovarian cancer—and couldn’t envision a “strong” exit under similar circumstances.
Justin materialized next to me with two cups of coffee. “Yours has the high octane stuff in it,” he said, handing one to his mother and the other to me.
“Of all my children, you’re my favorite,” she declared dramatically, then she winked at me. “A little Baileys is good for ailing bones, right?”
Justin left the room again.
“When did he get here?”
“The day I fell. The hospital called him—against my wishes, I might add—and he hopped in the car and made it here from Madison before they were done with all the poking and prodding.”
Though Darlene had talked about her only child before, I’d never met him until now. “Is he taking good care of you?”
She nodded and sipped her coffee, rolling her eyes a little in approval. “Too good. He has firm instructions to move me into a darling little nursing home I’ve found so he can go back to his life in Wisconsin.”
From what she’d mentioned before, I knew that life included a second wife Darlene didn’t particularly appreciate—a feeling that was apparently mutual—and a career in the insurance industry.
“Darlene . . . isn’t it a bit too soon to be looking for a nursing home?” I couldn’t picture this woman with the vitality of a twenty-year-old confined to such a diminishing place.
She set her cup on the console behind the couch and smiled for a moment before speaking. “This isn’t a rash decision, honey. I’ve been looking for a place with a good Zumba class for months. This—what do the French call it?—this contretemps didn’t exactly come as a surprise.” She hunched a shoulder. “The pain’s been there for a while. I knew what it was. Doesn’t take a genius, right? I just opted to live around it for as long as I could before . . .”
She took a deep breath and smiled. “I’ve been ready for it. And now it’s time for me to take a bow. However—” She smiled in an enigmatic way and wiggled an eyebrow. “There’s one more thing I need to do before I fly off to the land of milk and honey. And by milk and honey, I mean Milk Duds and honey-glazed donuts. I’ve got an order pending with whatever angel’s guarding those pearly gates.”
Her willingness—her readiness—to die stood in stark contrast to everything I knew about this feisty, fearless fighter. “This doesn’t sound like you, Darlene.”
“The Milk Duds or . . . ?”
I sighed and shot her my I’m-serious look. She countered it with one of hers. Then I saw her expression soften as she scrutinized my face. “We can talk about me later,” she said after a moment. “Tell me.”
I felt a flutter of resistance. “Oh, there’s nothing much to—”
She interrupted with a laugh. Some of the old Darlene was in it. “Honey, you have a lot of really impressive skills, but putting on an act does not figure among them.”
“Darlene . . . ,” I tr
ied again. My mind still hadn’t fully recovered from its two-day pause.
“Tell me.” Her tone was firmer this time.
I wrestled with myself, desperately needing to tell someone about Nate, but determined to protect my friend from worrying about me too. “It’s nothing,” I murmured. “Nothing for you to be concerned about anyway.”
She gave me the look that always preceded a pseudo-magical reading of my mind. “Nate?”
I looked around the room, inventorying the garden gnomes that lurked on every surface. There was one that seemed strategically placed under a lamp. He stood there, smiling as if he was enjoying the spotlight, a giant brick clutched to his chest.
Delaying the inevitable, I said, “What’s with the gnomes?”
She laughed. “That’s a skillful dodge, my friend.” Her eyes on me were loving and compassionate. “I’m going to answer your question, but don’t you think we’re not circling back to mine.” She waved around the room at the collection of brightly painted, pointy-hatted figurines. “Angus and I started collecting them—what—twenty years ago? Maybe more. We saw them in gardens over in Germany when we took a Rhine cruise and liked them so much we brought a bunch back with us. And of course, because I’m such a restrained person, we just kept on collecting these little guys and little ladies who tickle my funny bone.”
“Clearly.”
“They were all over the yard for years, to my neighbors’ displeasure,” she went on. “Right around the time Angus—bless his heart—passed on, I decided that a little bit of cheer might do me some good, so I brought them all inside. The neighbors considered throwing a parade. It was just for a little while . . . That’s what I told myself. But the longer they lived in here with me, the more accustomed I got to their company, and the thought of banishing them back out to the yard again was just unbearable.”
From the kitchen, Justin said, “Only to her. I’ve been plotting their banishment for years.”
She caught me looking at the brick-holding gnome. “My plastic surgeon’s assistant got him for me when she found out I had this collection. Construction Gnome is what they officially call him, but we named him Masto-Gnome on account of how my post-surgery chest felt.”
I shook my head. Oh, to be able to find the giggle in the grim, as Darlene always did.
“He’s also a reminder to build something on the rubble of all of this.” She glanced down at her chest and winked. “The surgeons did it, right? Built these jaunty B cups on what was left of saggy me. I vowed to do the same with my future—right there in my pre-op room.” Darlene reached for my hand again. “And you, my dear, are a bright and shining star in my reconstructed life.”
I blinked back tears. Tears of gratitude. Tears of confusion and devastation.
“Now.” Darlene gave my hand a firm squeeze and held the pressure, drawing my eyes to hers with the intensity of her stare. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I didn’t know how to put words—out-loud words—to the unthinkable. Not when the first person I was going to share them with had just declared that her life was drawing to a close. But with her hand still pressing mine, I articulated the reality that had paralyzed me for days. Looking down—away, anywhere—I said, “Nate left me.”
A sob bubbled from my lungs to my throat and I swallowed hard to hold it down.
Darlene released my hand and said nothing. She said nothing for so long that I glanced up, wondering if she’d heard me. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were pinched. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white.
I let the silence stretch a little longer, listening to the slow, deep breaths entering and exiting my friend’s lungs, and was about to say her name when her eyes opened again.
“It is a very difficult thing for a spontaneous person to keep from blurting out obscenities when something this unjust happens to a friend.” I thought I heard a tremor in her voice. Her eyes were shiny with emotion. “So forgive me for choosing my words very carefully, my dear. I know you love that husband of yours and wouldn’t want me to speak ill of him, but he’s an—”
The word she used to describe Nate had the dual effect of making me feel loved and making me smile in spite of the agony of his abandonment. Yes, I loved my husband—but the person who had left me so suddenly seemed to have earned Darlene’s epithet.
“He just . . . walked out,” I said.
“When?”
“Monday. After I rang the bell at the Cancer Center.” I told her about the Shake Shack, Nate’s almost casual statement that he was done, the way he’d packed up a few basics like he’d thought it all through in advance.
“No explanation?” I could see the skin of her throat turning redder, as if her disbelief was a physical ache.
I shook my head. “He needs out,” I said. I heard the acid in my voice. “And he said he’s been wanting to leave for a while. He just . . .”
“Wanted to bless you with his two-faced presence while you were going through cancer-hell?” Darlene suggested.
“I guess.”
“Coward.”
“I think he views his staying in a different light—a heroic gesture for his ailing wife. And leaving . . . Maybe he sees cutting himself loose as his just reward.”
“Ceelie.” There was such kindness and sadness in the word that it brought tears to my eyes. I blinked them away. Crying felt too much like surrender. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.” She paused. “What do you need?”
Her question prompted me to consider the future again. It felt bleak.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It’s hard to think any further ahead than right now.”
“Not surprising, given what your ‘right now’ looks like. Did he say he wanted a divorce?”
“Not in so many words. But he made it pretty clear that’s where we’re headed.” Panic gripped my lungs. “I just . . . I keep trying to figure out what I need to do next. About the house. About our finances. Telling our friends. Everything. I felt like I was finally getting my life back and now . . .”
“The ignominy of it all.”
I nearly smiled at the word. Nearly. But there were too many dark and weighty unknowns spinning in my mind. “I was supposed to go back to work after our celebration trip.” The memory of my dream vacation wounded me. “Joe told me I didn’t have to right away, but I planned on it as soon as I felt physically able.”
“Work” was a bit of a misnomer. The Saint Charles Sentinel had always been much more than that for me. I’d walked in off the street looking for a summer job between college graduation and what I thought was going to be a stellar career in Pulitzer-level writing. After three weeks temping in the classifieds department and just as many conflicts with the managing editor—two of which I’d won—he’d called me into his office for what I’d assumed would be a peremptory firing. Instead he’d said, “Listen, the pay isn’t great and we might not be around a year from now, but you’ve got something, kid. Not sure what it is, but I’m pretty sure we need it.”
He was probably still scratching his head all these years later. With a degree in literature and criminology—which I’d naively thought would fuel that Pulitzer—I’d gone from the classifieds to marketing to associate editor and on to the position I now held, which nobody—Joe included—could accurately define. The plaque on my door said Editor in Chief, and though I spent my days overseeing the smooth operation of the paper, brainstorming articles with our stalwart journalists, holding interns’ feet to the fire, and shielding Joe from the minor and major frustrations of running a publication, my role still felt nebulous to me.
“Ceelie?” Darlene brought me back to the present. “You were saying . . . about your job.”
“Right.” I felt hesitation tugging at my consciousness. As much as I craved going back to my career, envisioning the workload felt draining. “Joe told me I’m welcome to return anytime, and I know I need to get back in the saddle, workwise. I was planning on it—excited about it even. But with N
ate leaving . . .” They were bruising words. “I just can’t think straight right now. If I have to pack up the house and move out . . .”
It was just one of the scenarios I’d tried not to contemplate as I’d sat virtually motionless for two days.
Darlene was plotting something. I’d seen the look before. Squinty eyes and a far-off stare. The occasional bob of her pink-tipped head.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Here’s what you’re going to do.”
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have let anyone dictate my next step. But on this day, having a drill sergeant bark orders felt like a healing thing.
“First, you go back to work when you’re ready, but you tell Joe that it’s going to have to be part time for a while until things settle. I met the man on one of my visits after your surgery, and I can tell he cares about you. That he can’t say ‘breast’ or ‘cancer’ without twitching isn’t something we’ll hold against him, right?” She winked. “Honestly, sometimes getting back in the saddle lifts us just enough to get a better perspective on things.”
“You’re right,” I said, realizing at that moment how much I missed the feeling of satisfaction at the end of a long day. I craved the rhythm of working again. And a part-time arrangement felt less daunting than launching back into the usual twelve-hour shifts.
“I need routines,” I said, desperately trying to bolster my resolve. “I need to feel productive. I need—” I caught myself. Those were the needs I’d inventoried when life had been regimented by medical appointments, but what I really wanted—needed—in that moment, was a husband who hadn’t been run off by my cancer. And apparently, by me.
Darlene sat in silence. I could see the emotions playing over her face. Sympathy. Frustration. Anger.
“Maybe there really was something wrong with our marriage.” I hated saying the words. “Even before cancer.”
“Ceelie—”
“I was so caught up in other things. Nate mentioned it sometimes. Even when I was home. The calls from Joe, the deadlines. Maybe I just didn’t see it.”
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