Fourteen
My eyes flicked in his direction when he sat down next to me, then quickly returned to some unfocused middle distance as I attempted to show disinterest. I held in my stomach but it had its own life to live. He smiled—a wonderful, crooked smile—and held out his hand. “Hi, Tim Stone, Bob’s father.”
My hand disappeared in his. “Of course you are. You look like the Marlboro Man—an older one.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I’m Jane Emerling. Esther’s sister didn’t mention my name when we came in. Whichever one she was.”
“Chastity or Charity.” We looked at each other and choked back laughter. “They’re twins and there’s another sister named Faith. Esther’s lucky she wasn’t called Humility.”
“Millie for short,” I said. We laughed, and Andy frowned at us. I realized Tim still held my hand and it was the only warm part of me.
“I hear Bob’s gone to Rockford,” I said, reluctantly reclaiming my fingers.
Tim’s smile vanished. “Yeah. Poor little Elizabeth.”
“Isn’t there a boy too?”
Tim motioned to a framed photograph on the wall. “Winston. He’s over at the school practicing for the speech contest. It’s this week, Thursday I think. I wish . . .” He swallowed hard and then said, “I saw you at the church supper.”
“You did? I saw you too.” My skin tingled. Maybe frostbite.
“I’m glad you came today. I’ve been standing outside waiting for this seat to open up.”
“Oh? There was a vacant chair over by the window.”
“I wanted to sit here.” His knee rested against my leg, possibly an accident but he didn’t shift it. I surprised myself by not moving away.
I nodded. “It’s a comfortable couch, isn’t it?” He flashed another smile and I gave up hoping my face wasn’t red. “Are you from around here?”
He shook his head. “No, just came to be with Bob and Esther till things get back to normal. I’m from a little town in North Carolina, a tobacco farmer, retired.” Wow! The Marlboro Man’s father raised tobacco!
“Really? I have a daughter in Raleigh.”
He grinned. “Then we have something in common. I’m just a short hop from there.” It turned out we had many things in common. His wife had died five years earlier and his only child lived halfway across the country from him. We enjoyed the same books and movies. All that in ten minutes.
A gust of wind rattled the windows as a middle-aged couple dressed in matching brown cardigan sweaters came into the room. Once they’d patted Esther and located places to sit, the man said, “I hear it’s supposed to get cold tomorrow.” I waited for the laugh. It wasn’t a joke.
Just then Andy made a little sound and switched from staring out the window to watching the door. A tall, slender man entered the room, eyes so blue you noticed them despite his salmon-colored sport coat. Everyone sat up straighter. “Leland Goetzmann,” Tim whispered. “Came here from Alabama a few months ago. Works for the Chamber of Commerce, public relations or something.”
“Nice coat,” I murmured back.
Another big grin. “His trademark. Wears it everywhere.”
Starting with Esther, Leland circled the room, shaking hands and speaking in a syrup-thick Southern accent. He had the knack of making each person feel special with inquiries about recent illnesses or vacations in addition to the usual comments about weather and sports. When he got to me, he asked about my flight and praised modern de-icing equipment. I hadn’t thought of ice on the wings and pictured little men with picks. June might be a good time to return home.
He saved Andy for last. She beamed as he took her hand in both of his and gazed down, his smile as broad as hers. “Miss Andy mah deah,” he said. “Y’all look uttahly cha’min’.” Did Leland have a vision problem? Andy’s nose was still red from the cold and the wool stocking cap had smashed her hair flat. She giggled. Andy? My self-confident sister simpering? Leland settled down in the chair beside her and the two of them carried on their own conversation. I frowned. After all, we were there to offer sympathy and support to the Stones.
“It isn’t her.” Every head turned toward Esther. “It isn’t her,” There was a moment of silence. Nobody said it. “That girl they’re bringing back. It’s not my Elizabeth.”
Andy and I exchanged glances as Chastity said, “Esther, I know how you must feel but you have to accept . . .”
Esther’s face tightened. She sat on the edge of her chair biting her lip. Eventually, slowly, she began to shake her head. “No,” she said, her voice low and rasping as if she’d been screaming. “I don’t think so. You don’t know how I feel, and I don’t have to accept anything.”
Silence filled the room as everyone stared at her, stricken. I tried to think of appropriate words, something more comforting than “Your husband’s bringing your daughter’s body back and the minister will be here to plan her funeral but call if you need me,” which was the best I could do at the moment.
No one spoke until Charity herded an elderly couple still wearing their coats into the room. “Esther, look who’s here.” The new arrivals fussed over her and sat down. Smiles all around as Charity disappeared with their foil-wrapped dish.
We stayed about thirty minutes, long enough for the sisters to add our names and what we’d brought to the growing list of visitors. Esther didn’t look as though she’d remember--or care. We hugged her and urged her to let us know if we could do anything. Tim cradled my hand in his and said he’d call me if that was all right. I told him I’d look forward to it. More tingling. Maybe not frostbite.
Leland walked out with us, and he and Andy stood close together in the snow, talking, while I picked my way across the ice to the car.. I heard him say, “Y’all ah so sweet,” before he released her arm and strode to a whale-sized yellow box on wheels.
Andy practically skipped along the slick sidewalk. Did I hear her singing?
“What’s that Leland’s driving?” I asked. “Looks like a lemon tank.”
Andy stared at me in amazement. “It’s a Hummer H3,” she said with the proper tone of awe. “Surely you have them in California.”
“Not yellow. I’d have noticed.”
“It’s the civilian version of the army’s Humvee that replaced the jeep. They quit making them so Leland was lucky to find this one, especially in yellow.”
“Hmm,” I said, hoping she’d quit marveling at the urban assault vehicle and unlock our car so we could get out of the wind.
“You were right,” Andy said as she fastened her seatbelt. “I do feel better for going.” She started down the lane with a little wave toward Leland and turned onto the gravel road.
The snowplow had made a path wide enough for two cars, which was good because Bob’s pickup was headed toward us, traveling too fast for road conditions.
Fifteen
By eight-thirty Monday morning, we were headed for the doctor’s office. The trip to Des Moines was blindingly white. A thin coating of ice on the road was transparent, allowing black asphalt to be seen through it, and yellow school buses slid down side roads like pats of butter on warm bread. We saw four raccoons and a skunk lying along the edge of the highway, covered to their chins with light blankets of snow, graceful tails waving in the wind. Andy told me they were asleep.
The medical suite took up the entire top floor of a four-story, sleek glass office building on the western edge of the city. After hanging our coats on the rack in the waiting room, which was easier once Andy pointed out the hangers were non-removable, we sat on purple chairs next to a table covered with dog-eared throwaways. Plastic jackets from Wells Eastside Pharmacy protected GQ, Art in America, and Vogue, but the more mundane Field and Stream and Country Living were naked. A TV set bolted to the wall gave the weather report: cold, chance of snow. The only other patient was a man with wrinkles and Reebo
ks who sat reading comics in the Des Moines Register, following the words with his finger and moving his lips.
I leafed through the November issue of Vogue and wondered where a person would wear the pictured clothes. I’d never seen anything remotely similar at the mall or library, definitely not at the Cherry Pit. Just as well I wasn’t interested. The outfits probably didn’t come super-sized.
Eventually, a young nurse wearing baggy white slacks and a navy blue smock top called my sister’s name. Andy stood up and touched my shoulder. “Come with me,” she whispered.
“You want me there?” I asked, surprised. Andy nodded. I returned the magazine to the rack, and we followed the nurse to a little room where we sat quietly, Andy on the end of the examination table, me on a chair in the corner. I studied the doctor’s diploma from Stanford Medical School and his Iowa medical license and stared at jars of cotton balls and flat wooden sticks on the counter by the sink. The room smelled of alcohol and something else, fear maybe.
Forty minutes later a super-sized doctor with a white beard and rosy cheeks walked in. Santa Claus in a lab jacket. He pulled up a stool and I wondered why it didn’t give way under him.
No time for preliminaries. “What have you decided?” he asked as he flipped through Andy’s medical record.
She sighed. “I guess I’d better have the surgery.” Her voice was barely audible and she sat with her hands between her knees, hunched forward as though she hurt. I’d never seen her so timid. Where was the real Andy?
The doctor nodded once. “Good. Set it up with LaVerne. Questions?” He made a quick notation in the chart and snapped it shut. Andy shook her head slightly as he stood up.
“Excuse me.” I almost raised my hand. “I have a question.” He turned toward me, apparently surprised to find someone else in the room. “I’m Andy’s sister, Jane Emerling. Are you sure this is cancer? Could there be a mistake?” Oh boy, did I really say that? I cringed. It was like asking God if He were sure about the Ten Commandments.
The doctor cleared his throat. Removing his glasses, he polished them with a crisp white handkerchief before saying in a cheerful voice, “Well, it’s certainly possible the tumor could be benign but the cells from Cassandra’s biopsy clearly appear to be cancerous. However, we have good luck with these things, even when they’ve spread to the lymph nodes. Her age is against her but we should be able to give her another ten years. We need to act soon, though, don’t we, my dear?” He put on his glasses again, briefly fiddling with the stems, and with a pat on Andy’s shoulder, left.
The door closed behind him and we looked at each other. Ten years. When you’re a kid, ten years is forever. We weren’t kids.
We found our way through the maze to the counter that separated the waiting from the working and found LaVerne in the scheduling station. An engraved sign informed us firmly that payment was expected when services were rendered unless other arrangements had been made in advance. LaVerne and Andy settled on two weeks from tomorrow as the best day for surgery. That would give Andy time to “make arrangements” (oh dear!) and have the requisite blood work and EKG.
We were standing in the parking lot, squinting in the sunlight, well before noon. The warmth from indoors slid off me as the biting cold seeped down my collar and settled against the exposed skin of my face. I waited for Andy to tell me the day’s plan but she slogged around mounds of plowed snow as though crossing the parking lot were her only goal in life. Mission accomplished, she stood motionless in front of the car, hands in her pockets.
“Andy?” She didn’t seem to hear me and I raised my voice. “Are you going to unlock the door?” When she didn’t respond, I fished the keys out of her purse and clicked the opener. “Want to go to the art center?” I asked as we got in. “Shopping? Movie? Lunch?” Deciding the best cure for an upset Andy was paint on canvas, I said, “Okay, tell you what, let’s start with the art center.”
Andy sat quietly, her hands on the steering wheel, frowning at the dashboard and tilting her head as though listening to something inside herself. Despite being swathed in wool, I could feel my bones becoming frostbitten. If I could get Andy to start the car, how long would it take them to thaw? I tried again. “Andy?”
She seemed startled by the sound of her name. “What? Oh, I’m sorry. I was just . . .” She managed a little smile, a brief one. “Let’s do something fun. I know—how about the art center?”
“Sounds like a great idea.” I held my mitten-encased hands in front of the heat vents as she turned on the ignition and backed out of the parking space.
The Des Moines Art Center was only a short distance away and, having been there many times, Andy could handle the drive on auto-pilot. The museum exhibited high-quality art, paintings by people so famous even I recognized several of their names—Monet, Cassatt, and, of course, Grant Wood (we were in Iowa, after all). Andy found the contemporary collection moving and kept pointing out colors and brushstrokes I would have missed on my way to the gift shop.
By the time we left there, her spirits had revived enough for shopping. We went to Valley West Mall where Andy bought two sets of pajamas patterned with tiny pink flowers, a lavender satin robe, and a pair of matching scuff slippers—called them her vacation wardrobe.
When I threatened to faint from hunger, Andy agreed to stop for lunch at a nearby Village Inn. Artificial greenery and shiny wood, cheery waitresses with uniforms and name badges. Andy said she was getting potato pancakes.
“You don’t like pancakes.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you ordering them?”
“Doesn’t hurt to try something different.”
“You won’t eat them.”
“I might.” She ordered the pancakes. I picked the sensible all-American omelet with a choice of hash browns or muffin. I chose both.
I tried to make Andy laugh by asking our waitress, a girl so young she still smelled of diploma ink, if it was cold enough for her. Her expression fell short of friendly but she answered politely. “There seems to be more winter than we need this year.” No argument from me, and Andy allowed herself a slight chuckle.
We sipped our coffee and stared around the room. Other booths held laughing people whose biggest concern seemed to be which movie to see or whether to buy the brown shoes or the black ones. Weather conversations were hard to avoid. I overheard a man in the next booth telling his friends he was moving back to Canada—it was cooler there.
Our food arrived and Andy spent several minutes doctoring the pancakes with syrup before abandoning them.
“How are they?” I asked.
“How are what? Oh. Fine.”
I set down my fork. Her hands were motionless on the tabletop and I put mine over them. We looked at each other without saying anything until Andy pulled away. She started slowly turning her water glass in a circle on the table in front of her.
“The doctor didn’t claim you definitely have cancer.” I said. “He told you it looked like cancer.”
My sister gave me a long, level look, her lip lightly raised on one side. “And we both know he’s just holding out a carrot of hope. The nodules were ‘probably nothing’ and then the biopsy would show ‘probably nothing.’ The record isn’t too good.”
She was right. It could be bad.
Sixteen
Back at the house, I phoned JoAnn with the surgery time and checked on Thelma—sulking, not eating. I remembered I hadn’t told Chris about Andy and left a message on her answering machine. It was good to hear her voice. Chores finished, I went to my bedroom for another application of dry-skin-relief moisture lotion. I was busy slathering when Andy yelled that Tim Stone was on the phone.
“I had to call,” he said. “Did you hear the news?”
“What news?” I asked, crossing my fingers and hoping for good.
“Elizabeth isn’t dead! The body wasn’t hers!”
>
My breath came out in a whoosh. “You’re kidding! Are they sure?”
“Positive. Elizabeth has a birthmark, looks like a little brown football, on the bottom of her left foot and this girl didn’t have one. It’s not Elizabeth.”
“Oh, Tim, that’s wonderful! Wait until Andy hears. I’m going downstairs and tell her right now.”
“Jane, wait a minute. Before you go, um, I was wondering, uh, do you like basketball?”
“Sure. Love it.” I didn’t mention that I hadn’t seen a game since high school.
“Well, I thought, now that I’ll be here a while longer, well, perhaps we could catch a Duke game sometime. I think they’re on ESPN a week from Saturday. And after the game maybe get something to eat?” He paused, then hurried on. “Bob and Esther could use some time to themselves and I, well, I’d like to see you again. Will you still be here?”
“Um, I’m not really sure.” Was he asking me for a date? My last one was over forty years ago. I hoped the panic didn’t show in my voice.
“Maybe we shouldn’t wait that long. How about this weekend? Duke’s off but the Hawks might be playing.”
“No, the next Saturday’s okay. Let’s wait,” I said, Gloria’s reunion tickling the back of my mind.
We agreed that of course we’d have to see what was going on then. He meant with Elizabeth; I meant with Andy.
He said he’d call me later in the week and I ran downstairs to tell Andy the news. She was standing by the front door. “Bob was just here,” she said. “Guess what! Elizabeth’s alive!”
“That’s what Tim told me. He was almost too excited to speak.”
“Bob too. He practically jumped up and down.”
We burst into laughter at the picture of someone Bob’s size hopping around and then stood there beaming at each other, happy for Elizabeth and her parents, at least one of us happy for her grandfather. “It’s great it wasn’t her body,” I said, “but we still don’t know what happened to her.”
Goodbye, Miss February Page 8