Minus Me

by Mameve Medwed

  “Thanks, but no. I have to get those sandwiches home. And steam some broccoli for Megan. Since she’s been interning at your shop, her nutrition has gone to ruin.”

  Annie smiles. “Pickles don’t count as a vegetable?”

  Rachel folds the afghan. “Your mother-in-law certainly chose unusual colors. How she must treasure you to have given you this. I envy you.”

  “Believe me, there’s nothing to envy.”

  “A decent mother-in-law a thousand miles away? A loyal and loving husband by your side …?”

  Annie keeps silent. She pictures Baby Girl Stevens-Strauss, her blue-veined eyelids, her fuzz of hair. She thinks of this fresh new hell she’s hiding from her dearest friend. She ducks her head. At least, she realizes, with a perverse relief, she’s not going to leave behind a motherless kid.

  Rachel reaches for her, pulls her into her arms. “I’m such an idiot. How could I have …?” She pauses, choosing her words. “You must realize there are specialists in complicated pregnancies. There might be something …”

  “I got pregnant. I managed to carry one baby to term.”

  “Why not at least try? Who can discount the miracles of modern medicine? According to that fount of wisdom, People magazine, women who’ve been told they can’t have children are having them all over the place. These days, thirty-seven is not too late.”

  But it is too late, Annie tells herself. After four miscarriages and a dead baby, wasn’t the universe telling her something? If you break your leg multiple times skiing, you give up skiing. A no-brainer. And even if it wasn’t too late, she knew she could never take a chance on another stillborn. “Enough!” she cautions Rachel. “I’m sure that you in the helping professions think I should have worked through my grief by now, should have moved on to acceptance—”

  “I think no such thing.”

  “—and yet if Sam and I accept what happened, achieve, as you say, closure, then we have really lost our baby, have broken our connection with her.”

  Rachel hugs her tighter. “I know, Annie. I know.” Rachel also knows not to mention, as she once did, that studies of childless couples show they are much happier than those with offspring underfoot.

  * * *

  As soon as Rachel leaves, Annie clears the tea things and dumps them in the sink. Without bothering to rinse the dishes or wrap the leftover lemon, she hurries upstairs to the computer. Should she Google metastatic lung disease? She remembers how the obstetrician, after her third miscarriage, warned her away from the Internet. “You don’t have the context for all the misleading information you’ll pick up,” the doctor cautioned. “You’ll just get upset.”

  The last thing she needs is to be more upset than she already is. She takes a deep breath. Is it shallow? Raspy? She can only imagine the other symptoms waiting online, in line, for her to discover and, Sam-style, claim as her own. How easy it would be to succumb to medical students’ disease. Not that the reality isn’t dire enough. Instead, she’ll take charge of her life. She’ll take charge of Sam’s life.

  She taps the keyboard. In seconds, hundreds of links appear. She scrolls through them. A Mourner’s Handbook tops Healing Steps for Gay Widowers, followed by A Short History of Grief, The Groom’s Instruction Manual, Sex Made Easy, A Dating Guide for Widows packaged with A Dating Guide for Widowers in a two-for-one deal, The March Toward Happiness, a zillion varieties of How to Lose Weight. She dismisses Tools for the End of Life in favor of The Right Way to Use a Meat Cleaver, a possible tax-deductible purchase for a person in the food-service industry.

  Her eyes glaze. She turns off the computer.

  Downstairs, she assumes her usual position on the sofa. During the one hour that Rachel occupied this same spot, Annie learned a few crucial things from her best friend: Sam can be trained. Rachel envies Annie’s marriage. Rachel is a woman in need of a man. There are guidebooks out there, guidebooks to everything.

  She decides to take a nap. Is fatigue one of the warning signs? Even under this sword of Damocles, she has to admit that there are still pleasures to be found—a good friend, hot tea, a snowy day, a cozy sofa—and comfort in having come up with a plan. She drifts off as titles clamber across her mind like so many counted sheep: Instructions for Sam, To My Husband, How to Do Everything I Did, In the Likely Event of …

  And then, at last, there it is: Life Minus Me: A User’s Guide.

  Chapter Six

  Annie’s in the Samwich kitchen chopping onions when the phone rings. Megan, whose job it is to write down the takeout orders, shouts from the front counter, loud enough to be heard over the gabbing customers and the regulars who monopolize the same three tables every day. “Annie, it’s for you. Dr. Buckley’s office calling.”

  Of course Sam’s heard this. The whole town has heard this. Why not blare it over the loudspeaker at the high school football field? Annie picks up the extension next to the refrigerator. “I’m at work,” she hisses into the receiver, her eyes streaming from the onions.

  “Duh,” says Carolyn Connelly, Dr. Buckley’s receptionist. “I left a ton of messages on your voice mail at home.”

  Annie is all too aware of those messages. She’s been hurrying back early or stopping by her house midafternoon to erase every single one of them before Sam notices the blinking red light and presses play. Not that he usually notices. “I can’t talk now,” Annie says.

  “Doc made me promise to keep you on the line until he can speak to you himself. If I don’t, my job will be toast.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” Annie scoops the mound of onion peels into the garbage bin. “I’ve got work to do. Customers waiting. Really.”

  “Hold on a sec. He’s just finishing with some drug company dude.”

  “Whoops, smoke’s pouring out of the oven. Sorry,” Annie says, and hangs up the phone.

  Sam walks back into the kitchen. He’s wearing one of the white aprons left by the Pillsbury Doughboys tied twice around his un-doughboy waist. Slashes of special Paul Bunyan sauce crisscross his heart.

  She points. “That’s got to go.”

  He looks down. “Gee, I hadn’t even noticed this mess.”

  She hands him a clean starched and ironed apron from the freshly laundered pile. “Someone might post a photo on our fan page. For the sake of our public, we have to make a good impression.”

  He laughs. “Let’s face it, our particular public could not care less.”

  “Then the health inspectors.” She helps him into the new apron, double-looping the strings and fashioning them into a natty bow.

  He undoes the bow, leaving knotted streamers. “Too metrosexual,” he protests. “So?” he asks. “Dr. Buckley’s office called? Here at work?”

  “Probably figured that’s the best place to find me.” She pinches her nostrils. “It’s about my sinuses.”

  “That’s a relief,” he says. “A relief it’s not allergies. Remember when I thought I was allergic to tree nuts?” He studies her. “Everything all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Your nose is red; your eyes are watering.”

  “I’ve been chopping onions.”

  “Maybe that’s a chore we should farm out to Megan.”

  “Great idea.” She finds a Kleenex and blows her nose. “Can you spare me for half an hour? I want to get to the dry cleaners before noon.”

  “Sure,” he says. “I left my jacket on the bathroom mat. I’m afraid I dipped the cuff in a puddle of olive oil.” He pats her shoulder with the reflexive fondness he must have bestowed on Binky, the still-mourned spaniel who shared his childhood bed and could tap his paws, so Sam claimed, up to the number ten. “That dog was my best friend,” Sam would say, then add, sheepishly, “Next to you.” Though they discussed adopting a puppy from the ASPCA after they’d given up on babies, they agreed it was too soon and too sad a stopgap.

  But now …? What a good prospect for … well … after. To keep him company when … Get a dog is a suggestion she must add to the manual.
>
  On the way out, she spots Ralphie Michaud, who is third in line. Thumbs jabbing, he’s playing a game on his cell phone and doesn’t notice her. “Hi, Ralphie,” she says.

  He looks up. He grins at her; a dimple punctuates his left cheek. Even nearing forty, he’s still cute, with a snaggletooth that only enhances his bad-boy looks. At least he’s removed the piercing he used to flaunt senior year, though she notices a tattooed wing—part of an eagle? an angel?—peeking out from his collar underneath a crosshatch of black hair. Too bad Annie was such a prude back in high school, too timid to smoke pot with him in the hummock of pine trees behind the school.

  “How’s it going, Annie?” he asks now.

  “Okay,” she says. “You?”

  “Hanging in there. Did you catch the Bruins last night?”

  “Afraid not.” She stares at his dimple.

  “They won four to two.”

  “Great.”

  “Dad says you stopped by the store the other day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hear you started smoking again.”

  Would a purchase of tampons get reported too? “Not really,” she protests.

  “Trying to keep healthy?”

  “You could say that.”

  He shrugs. From his back jeans pocket, he pulls out his own pack of Marlboros. “Anyhow, too bad I missed you.”

  “Oh, well …”

  “Next time …”

  “We’ll do that.” She points to her wristwatch. “Errands …”

  “See ya,” he says.

  * * *

  She drives to Dr. Buckley’s office without calling ahead. She’d just as soon bide her time in the waiting room than schedule an appointment far enough in advance to allow her the leeway to cancel it. Also, she doesn’t want to give Carolyn the satisfaction.

  She gives Carolyn the satisfaction. The minute Annie arrives, she can see the receptionist gloat. “I knew I’d talk you into it.”

  Lucky for Annie, there are only two people in the waiting room, neither of whom she knows. She opens Down East and reads about road repair, vanity license plates, the latest lobster shack, and a Manhattan hedge fund manager’s three-million-dollar log cabin renovation at Hancock Point. She turns to the column on tourism. Phew. The Paul Bunyan is still listed as Passamaquoddy’s number-one culinary attraction, ahead of Moody’s meat loaf, Osborn & Daughters’ fried clams, and Geraldine Pritchard’s homemade saltwater taffy. She must remember to order the saltwater taffy for the shop; they could branch out, enlarge the menu, add Maine staples like blueberry pie and strawberry shortcake and maple syrup brownies. Thanks to her mother-in-law, she makes a mean blueberry pie, a sellout at school fairs and bake sales.

  Maybe they should also consider a real espresso machine despite the old-timers’ inevitable complaints and resistance to change. Maybe not. Don’t mess with perfection, Sam would say. She sighs. It’s amazing the way life goes on, the way one continues to make plans. It’s mind-boggling how a person can sit in a doctor’s waiting room expecting a death sentence and still clip recipes, ponder menus, and obsess over the choice between the lobster license plate and Robert Indiana’s LOVE.

  Dr. Buckley opens his office door and steps into the hall, clipboard in hand, stethoscope dangling over his red necktie patterned with blue caducei. He looks up. “Annie?” he says.

  “Excuse me.” A woman seated across from her struggles to rise out of her chair. She has wispy gray hair and Ben Franklin spectacles and is leaning on a no-frills aluminum cane. “I believe I’m next.”

  “So sorry, Florence,” Dr. Buckley says, “but we have a bit of an emergency here. I promise to be quick.”

  Annie follows him into the examining room. Dr. Buckley’s “emergency” sounds so much more loaded than those same syllables enunciated by the bored voice of Dr. O’Brien’s nurse. Annie is embarrassed that she, thirty-seven, with a quick stride and a mass of young-person’s hair, is considered an emergency to be triaged ahead of an impaired senior citizen so clearly accustomed to measuring out her days in places like this.

  “Well, Annie, we’ve been trying to contact you.”

  “So I gather.”

  Dr. Buckley clears his throat. He picks up his letter opener, a talisman that, Annie concludes, must serve as his Linus blanket in times of stress. She does not envy his job. She does not envy his command of the medical facts he’s about to lay out for her. “For the record, I don’t approve of your plan not to persevere in telling Sam.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.”

  His forehead wrinkles in dismay. “You’re as stubborn as your mother,” he says, “though I could always convince her …”

  “I am no way like my mother,” Annie huffs.

  “Hmmm,” he replies. He opens a folder on the desk in front of him. “I’m so glad you called the oncologist. The thoracic surgeon’s reports suggest you may need a biopsy.”

  “It all seems so hopeless. Why subject myself to … when it’s so clear that …?”

  He sighs. In agreement? In frustration? He goes on. “Nothing is clear. You’re young. There are new treatments all the time. Targeted procedures …”

  Annie is having a hard time paying attention; what did Dr. Buckley try to convince her mother of? she wonders. She focuses on the caducei. If she gave Sam a tie printed with sandwiches, would he wear it? She lowers her gaze. Now she can read the whole inscription on the letter opener: in grateful appreciation of saving my life. Just as she thought. She filled in the blank correctly the last time she was here. Does she earn an A plus? While she’s not sure whose life Dr. Buckley saved, she is sure he won’t be saving hers.

  Annie points to a drooping schefflera on the windowsill. “That needs watering.”

  Ignoring her horticultural advice, he continues. “I’m sure Dr. O’Brien will have a lot of tricks up her sleeve …”

  “Like a magic wand? Tricks that might mean a cure?” she asks.

  “Alas, medicine doesn’t work like that. But it is always wise to choose the optimistic path.”

  “Even if …”

  “The optimistic path,” he repeats. “We’ll follow you with scans until your appointment.”

  “And the side effects of these tricks?” she persists.

  “Nothing we can’t manage. Though—in all honesty—you will likely lose your hair.” He runs his fingers through his own silver locks. His eyes are so sad that she feels terrible for being the cause of his pain.

  She touches the top of her head. Your crowning glory was one of the few compliments Ursula granted her. Her crowning glory has stayed glossy and thick through thick and thin—the roller coaster of ten pounds up, ten pounds down, adolescent acne and adolescent angst, pregnancy failures, and one unfortunate perm. On a medical spreadsheet of debit and credit, the loss of her hair would result in little gain.

  “I feel fine now,” she protests.

  “Glad to hear it. Though that dry cough of yours is worrisome.”

  “It’s February. In Maine!”

  Exasperated, he frowns. “You’ve got an answer for everything. Did you ever consider law school?”

  “And deprive Passamaquoddy of Paul Bunyans?”

  “Oh, Annie,” he sighs. “Well, at the very least, please stay away from researching symptoms on the Internet. Even my most stalwart patients tend to overidentify. Not to mention all the misinformation out there.”

  She remembers her obstetrician’s moratorium on Googling stillborn babies and multiple miscarriages. “Okay,” she agrees. “See how I’m taking your advice,” she adds. She thrusts out her forehead as if she expects him to stick a star on it.

  Despite himself, he smiles. “And if you won’t talk to Sam, then talk to your mother.”

  “My mother!”

  “She is your mother, Annie.”

  A mother missing the maternal gene. Annie can just picture Ursula’s reaction. How can you do this to me? How can I lose a child? She’ll wail and prostrate herself on her fringed chaise
longue and then order a wardrobe of black mourning clothes from Saks.

  “If you were my daughter …” Dr. Buckley begins.

  “With all due respect, Dr. Buckley, I’m not.”

  She offers him a concession, vowing to schedule a visit a week from now.

  In return, he promises to water his schefflera plant. “And don’t wait too long to tell Sam” is his parting command.

  * * *

  Of course she won’t tell Sam.

  Not yet. She’s got three weeks until her appointment, three weeks until an official diagnosis.

  First, she has to make sure he’s going to be okay. First, she has to write the manual. And when it’s finished, as soon as it’s finished, then she can begin to train him according to its rules.

  Chapter Seven

  Annie sits at her desk. She’s taken the day off. Earlier this morning, she stopped by the shop, where Megan was scrubbing out the large industrial coffee urn. Sam was at the bakery picking up rolls, Megan explained.

  “Do you need me to help?” Annie asked.

  “No, I’ve got everything under control. It’s fun being in charge. By the way, I’ve been discussing updates with Sam,” Megan went on. “Like a cappuccino machine. Make the place more hip.”

  “Hip won’t sell in Passamaquoddy, I’m afraid,” Annie said, despite having entertained similar thoughts of improvement herself.

  “Why not try? I’ve got tons of ideas. Scrabble tournaments. Karaoke nights. We could run poetry readings. How cool would that be?”

  The only poet in town Annie knows is the self-named Longfellow Clark, who peddles his “oeuvre” door to door, each stanza written in a cursive so spidery and dense you can’t even read it. Though she owns twelve volumes, they could all be the same poem—how would she tell? “Let’s not shake the boat,” Annie insisted. “The Paul Bunyan is perfect as it is.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. But”—Annie recognized the familiar set of her goddaughter’s jaw, just like Rachel’s when protesting an injustice—“there’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead.”