Goodbye, Miss February

by Sally O'Brien

  She ran her fingers through her hair. When had her beautiful auburn curls gotten so gray? The mean side of me noted we now looked more alike. “I guess we’ve been through this situation ourselves—only from the other side,” she said.

  I raised my chin. “Mom and Dad always knew where I was. They just didn’t like it.” I paused for a minute and then said, “No wonder Bob didn’t want to talk about his daughter. What about their son? What’s he like?”

  “Win? Oh, he’s a good kid. Kind of shy. Right now he’s going through that awkward stage where he looks like a newborn robin, but he’ll outgrow it. Fifteen’s a tough age. Elizabeth overshadows him.”

  “Big sisters are like that,” I said and we exchanged little smiles.

  “Sometimes,” Andy agreed. “Elizabeth’s pretty and popular. Boys pretend to be friends with Win just to be around her.” She gestured toward the wine bottle and I shook my head. “Sports aren’t Win’s thing. He’s more into music and drama. I’ve gone to some of his school plays and he’s really quite good. Not enough to ever be a professional but I can see him doing community theater someday. The school puts on a variety show every year and that’s when he really shines.”

  “Nice.”

  “Not as far as Bob’s concerned, it isn’t. He thinks real boys play football like he did. Win marches in the band.”

  Talk slowed, limping off to wherever conversations go when they die. We sat quietly, staring at the fire. The big flame in the middle leapt frantically up the chimney as though trying to escape, while off to the side a smaller trainee flame made short practice jumps. I tore my eyes away and looked around the room. “This house is everything you claimed it was,” I said. “The stained glass windows are beautiful. You’re smart not to cover them. And I’ve always liked French doors—where do these lead?”

  “The garden in the summer, right now into a snow bank.” I shivered and inched closer to the fire. Andy settled back against the pillows and told me about the way she’d heard the house was for sale and discovered how perfect it was for her. I’d heard the story before but knew she wanted to tell it again. The north light in the studio outweighed the inconvenience of operating a nationwide business from a small town, and she’d never regretted leaving her teaching position in Iowa City. Then her smile crumpled and she covered her face with her hands. “I don’t want to give up this place.”

  I stared at her. “Why would you have to? You’re getting cash rent from Bob and, besides, you could probably scrape by without the rent. What you get from one painting would cover your expenses for a year.” The look on Andy’s face made me add, “Or longer.”

  “It’s not the money. It’s . . . I could die.”

  Seven

  There it was, out in the open. Andy’s lips were trembling and I noticed new lines around her eyes. I’d never seen her afraid before. I squeezed her hand and said, “Someday, sure, but not soon. What does the doctor say?”

  Rigid on her corner of the couch, no longer smiling, Andy studied her hands. “He says thyroid cancer is self-contained and slow growing but its aggressiveness increases significantly in older patients and we should remove the thyroid. I could tell the way the ultrasound tech looked at me that it was bad. The doctor said there was nothing he could do and sent me to a surgeon.” A tear spilled onto her cheek. “I carried the X-ray with me and wanted to look at it to see if it had a big black spot and the word cancer. I kept thinking it was a mistake and they’d tell me to go home. They did a biopsy a few days later, and the surgeon himself called to say it looked like cancer and I should come in at three o’clock. That’s when he told me I needed surgery.” She rubbed the tear away with a fingertip. “They’ll remove half the thyroid and test it. Then if it’s malignant, they’ll take the rest. I said I’d let him know what I wanted to do.”

  I sat in stunned silence for a few seconds before managing, “But once the cancer’s out you’ll be all right.”

  Andy’s voice dropped. “It might be in the lymph nodes too.”

  “Oh. All the more reason to have the surgery right away. Why are you waiting?”

  Andy looked at the floor. “Well, there are risks. They could damage the larynx.”

  “But that won’t happen, will it? What am I saying? Of course it won’t.” I patted her hand and poured another glass of wine. The bottle was nearly empty. “How do you feel? Do you hurt anywhere?”

  Andy shook her head. “Not really. Went in for my physical just fine and came out possibly terminal.”

  I studied her in the firelight and cleared my throat. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

  “Easy for you to say, you’re not the one who’s sick. Just the word cancer is scary, and I’d rather not have it no matter how good the prognosis is. And if it’s spread to the lymph . . .”

  I closed my eyes and for a long time we just sat there. What could I say? Andy had called me for help and all I could do was make inane remarks. Some help. I realized I’d been waiting for her to say it was nothing, just another ghost in the closet. I wasn’t used to being the fixer. So much for Wonder Sister.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and tried to make my voice sound normal. “Oh, honey, everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Sure.” Andy raised her eyes to mine. “Hey, I haven’t told anyone but you, not even Bob. You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”

  A quick scan of the truck conversation reminded me I’d covered her first sixty years, which she didn’t need to know, but I’d stopped short of cancer. “Certainly not,” I said with an indignant shake of my head.

  She nodded. “Good. I’d appreciate your not mentioning it to anyone.”

  “Well . . . I did tell Thelma.”

  Andy smiled. “That’s okay. I think we can trust your cat to keep a secret.” The smile faded as she concentrated on drawing a square on her knee with her thumb. The sides weren’t even. “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “The doctor found a lump in my breast.”

  “When? Yesterday?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “Before the thyroid? Why didn’t you tell me?” I jumped up and began to pace.

  “I didn’t want to worry you. Would you have told me?”

  “Yes, of course.” And the mailman and the checkout clerk and strangers on the street.

  “It turned out to be nothing.”

  “That’s a relief.” I walked over to Dad’s illuminated floor globe and traced my finger along the continents. As children, Andy and I had spent hours spinning it to choose places we’d visit someday. Well, California must be on there.

  Andy made a face. “It was a scare, especially with Mother. You know what she died of?”

  I stared at Andy. Obviously I knew how my mother died. Didn’t I? I had a feeling she was going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. “Not the accident?” I asked, my voice wavering.

  “Sure, but she had breast cancer.”

  “No! How’d you find that out?”

  “Dr. Wilder told me. He said she was past the point where treatment would help and probably wouldn’t have lived a lot longer. So the wreck was kind of a blessing, wasn’t it?”

  “Blessing?” My breath came out in an angry rush. “You should have told me. How long have you known?”

  “Oh, a while.” Andy waggled her hand in the air.

  My knees buckled and I sank onto the chair beside me. “And you never said anything? She was my mother too. I had a right to know.”

  “Jane, she’d been dead for a long time when I found out, and there was nothing either one of us could do. What was the point of bringing it up? I didn’t want to upset you. See? You’re upset.”

  “Darn right I am. I’m not a little kid any more. You can’t keep treating me like your baby sister.”

  Andy pointed at my hands. “If y
ou squeeze that glass any harder, it’s going to break.”

  I looked down, surprised to be holding one of Mother’s fragile crystal wineglasses. The anger oozed out of me as I considered what Andy had said. A new thought occurred to me, an even more alarming one. Sitting very straight and still, I asked, “Did Dad know?”

  “I think so. They always shared everything.”

  “Yeah.” I gazed into the fire and saw my parents together, still in love after years of marriage, never passing each other without an affectionate pat or kiss, discussing every topic ranging from the Mideast crisis to ants in the kitchen. They seemed to read each other’s mind. He ordered for her in restaurants and she knew which nights he needed time to unwind before dinner.

  As the flames danced around the log, an idea wormed its way into my mind. “Andy,” I said slowly, “do you think . . .?” My voice broke and I waited until I could control it. “Well, do you think Dad deliberately drove into that tree?”

  Andy bit her lip and looked away. For a minute I didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she said, “I’ve wondered about it. He was such a good driver, you know that. It just seems strange that he would go off the road on the only hill in the entire county. On a clear day.”

  The room swirled around me. Letting out my breath slowly, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the beat of my heart. “I just can’t believe this. Breast cancer!” My head felt full of Bubble Wrap. This wasn’t the way I’d pictured tonight. My goal had been to arrive. Then Andy would say her slight case of thyroid cancer was easily treatable and we’d go shopping and play cards and talk about people and books and art and everything else. Instead, she’d added lymph nodes, breast cancer, and possible murder-suicide. My heart pounded. “And you think Daddy might have . . .”

  “You know he’d never have been happy living without her. Maybe he wanted to spare her the pain at the end.”

  I sat on the edge of my chair, thinking. Eventually, slowly, I began to shake my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. He didn’t kill himself and Mother. I know he didn’t. He wouldn’t. It makes no sense.”

  Andy recrossed her legs and said nothing.

  My entire body was quivering. “Oh God.” Andy put her arms around me and I collapsed against her, sobbing. By the time I’d located the tissue in my pocket, she was crying too.

  Her shoulders slumped and her face, for the first time, looked old to me. “It’s not fair,” she said. “I’m not ready. I have pictures I haven’t painted yet, places I haven’t gone. And this house. All my life I’ve wanted one like this and now I’ll have it—what? A year? Six months?” She studied the floor for several minutes, and for once I had sense enough to be quiet.

  “Some welcome,” Andy said at last with a shaky laugh.

  I gave her a watery grin. “Not exactly what we had in mind when we talked about visiting your new house, is it?”

  “Well, I got you on an airplane.”

  “Darned if you didn’t. Pretty clever.”

  We laughed and I breathed a sigh of relief. She could still make jokes. Everything would be all right.

  “I have one more question,” I said.

  “What?”

  “When’s dinner?”

  Andy burst out laughing. “Oh, fine, I’m dying and all you can think about is food?” Her voice was unsteady but she had a smile on her face as she led me down the hall to an oak and stainless steel kitchen with a cornflower-blue cooking island and skylights. The refrigerator was commercial size and nearly empty.

  “Guess you didn’t have time to get to the store,” I said.

  Andy was busy pulling lettuce and tomatoes out of the crisper. “Want a salad?”

  “Sure. It’ll taste good with the steak.”

  “Meat isn’t healthy for you.” She rummaged in a drawer. “How about a rice cake?”

  “Why not just eat Styrofoam? It’s cheaper.” I opened cupboard doors hopefully. “Isn’t this when you pull a frosted angel food cake out of the freezer—or maybe an apple pie? It could be ready to eat in an hour.”

  “I never keep things like that in the house. Esther cooks when I have people here.”

  “Is she coming soon? Or does Pizza Hut deliver?” I tried to remember whether we’d passed a Burger King this side of Des Moines. I settled for a rice cake. It wasn’t that bad dunked in wine.

  Eight

  The quiet woke me the next morning. Since I couldn’t see my breath, I got out of bed and showered in the mirror-paneled bathroom. A round, wet woman with curly gray hair tried not to look at me but there were too many mirrors to cover them all with towels.

  I put the warm-up suit back on—could have left the rest of my clothes home—and headed downstairs for coffee. I was right about the back steps, more properly called the Double Diamond slope, leading to the kitchen. Last night we’d eaten our food (meal was an exaggeration) in front of the fireplace, but in the daylight I could see the breakfast nook tucked in the far corner of the kitchen. A round white wood table and six matching chairs with seat pads the same blue as the cooking island sat in front of a French door.

  I leaned back and stared outside. In California gulls would swing past but the Iowa sky was empty. I could see fresh snow accenting the bare, brown branches of the trees lining the patio and two deer bounding across the lawn. The local radio station provided school lunch menus, sports scores, and the livestock report. Feeder cattle were twenty cents to a dollar-sixty lower with light to moderate demand and Iowa-Minnesota hogs were down seven cents. At the break, a whiny soybean plant demanded the same rights as corn, undoubtedly prompting every farmer in the area, concerned about his soybeans’ hurt feelings, to abandon his pancakes and drive to the nearest weed-and-feed store for the sponsor’s herbicide.

  I found Andy on the top floor painting in her studio, a sunny room with bare windows. “Morning,” she said. “Sleep well?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I looked out the window at the view, which was beautiful if you liked flat and white. “Can I see what you’re doing?” I didn’t expect an answer. Andy never let anyone look at her uncompleted work. It was most likely something colorful—scarlet tulips or golden sunflowers. Or she could be pouring white paint on the canvas for an Iowa landscape. While she brushed and I watched little animals, probably rabbits and squirrels, we made small talk about the weather and wildlife (did you know cat food made a skunk’s coat shine?). I waited for Andy to tell me the plan for the day. We needed to get moving on curing cancer.

  But Andy surprised me by asking, “What do you want to do today?”

  I stepped away from the window. Despite the double panes of glass, a breeze managed to sneak through. “Well, I need to buy some sweatshirts.”

  “Okay. Take the Explorer into town. Keys are on the hook by the back door.”

  “By myself? What about you? Don’t you have to see the doctor or schedule surgery or something?”

  “No.” She turned back to her easel. “I have to finish this.”

  “What?” My voice was one notch below a shriek. “Andy, that’s not fair. I dropped everything and left poor Thelma alone to fly out here and now you want me to just sit around doing nothing while you work on some stupid thing that could wait?”

  Andy’s back stiffened. “This painting has to be done now. I made a commitment.”

  I nearly stamped my foot. “Well, I can’t drive your car. I haven’t shifted gears since I was eighteen.” No sense mentioning my driving experience consisted of occasional trips to the neighborhood grocery store, circling through side streets to avoid the freeway. Merging was beyond me. JoAnn was good about hauling me around, claimed it reduced stress for both of us. “Besides, I don’t know where to go.”

  “It has an automatic transmission, and you won’t have any trouble finding town. Go west to the highway, then north till you get there.” Her eyes had that big-sister glint in th
em as she added, “Traffic should be a snap after the 101.” She knew.

  I shook my head. “I’ll wait until you can go.”

  “Suit yourself.” She concentrated on her painting again.

  On my way downstairs, I realized she hadn’t mentioned touring the house. Another thing that could wait.

  I tried to follow Andy’s routine but by the next day I was tired of admiring nature and wondered why she’d asked me to come. Thelma must be missing me. I began to dream about Big Macs and chocolate shakes. Chewing on a Styrofoam cup, I decided there actually was a difference between it and a rice cake—but not enough. Finally, I reached the end of my patience and rummaged through the desk drawer for an Iowa map. Yes, there was Cherry Glen and there was the highway. How hard could finding the town be?

  I went upstairs to interrupt the famous artist. “You win,” I said. “Anything you need from the general store?”

  “Figured you’d go,” she said with what I considered a smug look. “Better wear one of my parkas. You’ll freeze in that skinny little jacket of yours. To tell the truth, I was surprised you owned a winter coat at all.”

  “I bought it for Lake Tahoe a few years ago. Marvin had a convention there. Coat’s been in the storeroom ever since.”

  Andy dipped her brush in the paint. “Snow gear’s in the front closet. Help yourself.”

  Half an hour later, decked out in a red hooded parka accessorized with black Angora mittens, hat, and scarf plus fur-lined boots and heavy socks, I eased the car keys off the hook and trudged through the snow to the garage. I felt snug—and cute—but the sides of the hood extended beyond my face, which limited my vision to straight ahead, and it was hard to handle the keys with mittens on, too cold with them off. I solved that by wearing only the left one. The natives made it look so easy.