She pops a piece of spearmint gum in her mouth to mask the industrial scent and takes the elevator to the third floor. When she exits, she is confused: The walls state she is in the oncology ward. She inquires at the nurses’ station, and is even more surprised when they point her down the hall to a private room.
There must be an explanation.
She hurries down the hall, pausing for a moment outside the room. She hears the television inside, but no voices. She knocks gently and sticks her head in.
Mindy lies on the bed, eyes glazed over, staring dully at the screen on the opposite wall. She is alone.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Mindy turns her head, then brightens and straightens a bit. “Aunt J! How are you?”
“How am I? How are you, kiddo?”
“Stuck here. Bored out of my skull. The blizzard finally let up?”
“Yes. They opened the pass about two hours ago, and I got here as fast as I could.”
“Mom will be glad. She needs you.”
Juliet doubts this will be the case. Lauren hasn’t needed her, ever. She is older. Accomplished. An artist. A mother. Successful, happy.
“What’s going on, sweetie? Your leg giving you problems?”
“Oh, Mom didn’t tell you? Apparently, I have cancer.”
Juliet’s stomach drops. “What?”
“They found it when they were doing blood work for the surgery. Leukemia. I have to do chemo. My hair’s going to fall out.”
Mindy sounds old, so old, worn and tired. Juliet sits on the edge of the bed and grabs her niece’s hand. It is freezing; she rubs it hard between hers.
“Where are your parents?”
“I kicked them out. Mom needed a good cry. Dad needed to comfort her. They couldn’t fall apart in front of me, so I begged for some soup, and sent them both down to get it. They’re in the cafeteria, or the chapel, somewhere where I won’t know they’re freaking out.”
“How did you get so cynical, child?”
“Gee, I wonder...”
“I am not a cynic.”
“No, but you’re a scientist. You are rational, cool, and effortlessly calm.”
“Kid, I think you’re a little stoned. They have you on the wacky juice for the leg, don’t they?”
It works. Mindy smiles. Juliet stuffs away the fear and pain.
“Now, tell me more. What kind of cancer? There are a lot of different kinds of leukemia.”
“AML. They’re doing more tests, but they ran the spinal fluid. Aunt J?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I don’t want to die.” The voice is so small, so quiet, Juliet’s heart breaks.
“You aren’t going to. I won’t allow it.”
“My hair is going to fall out. I have to have chemo, and other awful drugs and I have to come back to this godforsaken hospital constantly. How am I going to train? How am I going to make the rest of the season?”
Juliet gestures to Mindy’s leg. “Hate to break it to you, kid, but you’re going to be off your skis for the foreseeable future. I mean, look at that leg. You have rods screwed into the bone. You can’t put weight on that, I presume?”
“No, not for at least six weeks. But...” She shakes her head. “This is stupid. Who breaks their leg and finds out they have cancer?”
“You, apparently. You’ve always been precocious.”
Silence. Juliet lifts the mass of black hair off the pillow, stroking through its gorgeous thick length.
“You know, kiddo, I think you’d look adorable with a pixie cut. If it’s going to fall out anyway, maybe we should take you total punk rock for a few weeks instead of mourning it as it goes.”
“Mom will kill me.” But her eyes brighten, and she grins.
“Really? Word choice, child.”
Mindy giggles and a small weight lifts off Juliet’s chest.
“I hate to say it, but who the hell cares what your mom thinks? If you’re going to lose it anyway, let’s have some fun. I could cut it for you now.”
She moves the thick hair to and fro, arranging, and Mindy looks alive with the idea of doing something naughty.
“Oh, my God. I’ve always wanted short hair. It’s just too damn cold on the mountain. Go find some scissors before she comes back.”
“You’re serious?”
“Aren’t you?”
A dare. Juliet finds a pair of scissors at the nurses’ station but realizes there is no way she’ll be able to get them through Mindy’s thick hair. It is so unlike her own fuzzy blond, even Lauren’s sleekly perfect highlights. No, not highlights. Balayage. Even how she colors her hair must be unique and special.
A nurse sees Juliet rummaging, approaches with a raised brow. “Excuse me. Can I help you?”
Juliet jerks away from the desk. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for scissors. My niece—”
“Oh. You want these,” the nurse says, reaching into her desk drawer. Out comes a pair of professional offset hair shears.
“I can’t believe you have them,” Juliet says, then it hits her. “Oh, wow, of course you do. Sorry about this. I just found out. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around it.”
“You’re...?”
“Mindy’s aunt. Juliet.”
“Ah. I’m Hazel. Nice to meet you. Mindy’s a doll. She’ll look adorable with short hair. Do you have a ponytail holder? It’s a lot easier to cut if you put it in a pony on top of her head first.”
At the direction, a wellspring of sorrow bubbles inside her. How many little girls’ hair has Hazel cut off for them? Juliet shuts her heart against it. Later, she can be upset later. She has to be strong and cool for Mindy now.
“Bring them back when you’re done,” Hazel calls after her. “They’re expensive.”
Mindy has raised the head of her bed. She is still in an awkward position because of her leg, and Juliet feels badly when she sees her niece wincing at the movement.
“Hurts?”
“Yes, sometimes the pain breaks through the meds. I don’t know if it’s the cancer, or the surgery. I feel weird. I’ve felt weird for a while, but I figured it was just overtraining.”
“The drugs aren’t helping your weirdness, kiddo. You’re on some pretty hefty painkillers.” She brandishes the shears. “I mean you’re under the influence and can’t make a rational decision.”
Mindy laughs. “I’m plenty rational. Cut it.”
“As you wish.” Juliet gathers her niece’s hair into a ponytail on top of her head, then brutally slices through the hair. She tosses the pony on the table, and Mindy shakes her head. The hair falls around her ears. She looks like a pixie.
“Holy cow. You look different.”
“Cut the rest. I want the bangs longer on the right side, okay? So they sweep over my eye. Gotta say, Aunt J. Grandma K was right, you have the touch. How did you end up a scientist instead of a hairdresser?”
“Your grandma insisted I learn a skill. I wanted to go to Space Camp because I was harboring ideas of going into astrophysics. I wanted to work at NASA, to be an astronaut. Your grandma thought my plans were ridiculous, and gave me a choice—slinging pizza for the summer, or beauty school. She said, ‘Learn a skill, Juliet. Space Camp might be fun, but you need a contingency plan if things go south.’”
Juliet gets to work, shaping and shearing, for once mentally thanking her mother, gone five years now, for forcing her into the summer beautician program when she was seventeen.
“I was so furious at the time. I mean, I understand why she made me do it, but I didn’t speak to her for weeks. I ended up studying genetics instead of astrophysics, and I applied to the astronaut program at NASA to be a payload specialist. Made it to the final round before I got cut, too. I had a bunch of job offers, though, and I took the position with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensics la
b.”
“Was she proud of you? I mean, the CBI lab is a big deal.”
Juliet laughed. “She said how nice it was that I’d have a steady paycheck, but to always keep my beautician license up to date because you never knew when I’d need a fallback position.”
“Ouch.”
“No kidding.”
Juliet snipped some more. She hadn’t been close to her mother. Kathleen Ryder had raised two girls on her own with no help from their biological father, who Kathleen divorced when Juliet was a baby. Juliet had looked him up once. He lived in Oregon, was married to a dental hygienist who’d produced three strapping sons, and seemed to have conveniently forgotten his first family existed.
When Juliet was two and Lauren thirteen, Kathleen remarried, but their stepfather was killed in a mugging a couple of years later. From then on, Kathleen remained a staunch, strict, outspoken single mother, always on the edge of bitter. Juliet always felt like Kathleen blamed her for their life, somehow.
Juliet didn’t remember either father figure, and her mother told her time and again that she hadn’t missed anything. Juliet didn’t fully believe that. Having a father would have been nice.
Lauren, though, had always been their mother’s favorite. The two were thick as thieves, and Juliet had always felt left out. It was Lauren who complied with their mother’s wishes, kept her heart tethered to home. Juliet, the outsider, always dreamed of more and got out the first chance she had.
When a stroke took Kathleen, Juliet was filled with grief, but a part of her, the dark part she didn’t like to acknowledge, was relieved. She would never live down to her mother’s expectations. Her mom wanted her to have a small life. Like hers ended up being.
No reason to share all that with Mindy, though.
Besides, the CBI has been good to her. She is a star in her field. She’s been developing new DNA sequencing methods that are changing how the CBI investigates crimes and increasing their success rates, and that is good enough for her, for the time being. Not that she doesn’t stand on her deck at night with a glass of wine and her telescope, staring at what might have been... But on the bright side, she has the forever bonus of being able to cut her own hair, saving her money in the lean times.
And she’s just whacked off a foot of her niece’s hair on a whim. Mindy is sliding her hands over her head, utterly delighted. Even Juliet has to admit, it looks cute. She pulls one last strand into place, then hands Mindy the mirror from her purse.
“Oh, Aunt J, it’s perfect!”
And of course, at that moment, Lauren comes back to the room.
“What in the name of God are you doing?”
Juliet tries not to tuck her imaginary tail between her legs at Lauren’s disapproving voice. It’s hard; the shock and outrage have slipped past her sister’s perfectly cool veneer, making her sound almost exactly like their mother.
Instead, Juliet squares her shoulders. “Styling your daughter’s new haircut.”
Lauren looks exactly like hell. She hasn’t properly bathed, her eyeliner is smudged and her lipstick chewed off. Her clothes are rumpled and her cheekbones stand out like she’s been starving herself. Juliet hasn’t seen her in a few months, but she’s lost weight before the events of the past day. Lauren is as focused on Mindy winning as Mindy is, to the detriment of all those around her. Juliet almost feels sorry for her. She pushes herself to smile, to open her arms for a hug.
“Hi, Lauren.”
Lauren casts her one last vicious glance and makes a beeline for the bed. “Melinda Eliza Wright. What on earth have you let her do to you?”
Mindy is grinning, puts a hand behind her head to show it off. “Don’t you like it, Mom?”
“No, I do not like it one bit. What in the world were you thinking?” She rounds on Juliet. “What were you thinking? You’re the adult here. Or so we’re supposed to believe. I leave you alone for five minutes and—”
“Relax, sis. This is what aunties are for, totally corrupting our nieces.”
“You...you...”
Mindy sputters out a laugh. The sound makes Lauren whirl back to the bed, a finger raised, getting ready to scold. But the sight of her newly shorn daughter giggling her head off is enough to defuse things.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“I told Aunt J you’d be furious.” She holds out a hand, the smile on her wan face warm. “Thank you for losing it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
But Juliet knows exactly what is going on. Mindy, clever girl, didn’t give a hang about her hair. She’d wanted to get her mother to treat her like a human being again, like her little girl, instead of like a possibly dying patient.
Mindy offers an olive branch. She swipes the hair off her face.
“Aunt J could cut the bangs so it isn’t so punk rock.”
Lauren brushes the hair back down over Mindy’s right eye. “No. It’s cute. You look cute.”
The my daughter is about to die tone is back, and Mindy pulls away.
Juliet winks at her niece. “Hey, Lauren, let’s get some coffee. I haven’t seen you forever, and I think Miss MEW here needs a nap.”
“I do not.” But her eyes are drooping. While they argued, the morphine pump gave her a shot, and she isn’t long for the world.
Lauren fluffs her pillows and kisses her on the forehead. “We’re going to have a talk about your wild ways, young lady, but for now, take a little snooze while I go beat up your aunt.”
“Give it to her good, Mom,” Mindy says as she drifts off, one hand in her short hair, a smile still on her face.
Lauren crooks her finger in a follow me gesture. It’s time for Juliet to take her lumps. Hazel isn’t at her desk, so Juliet puts the scissors in her top drawer as they walk past.
Lauren leads her to a small room at the end of the hall. Juliet looks around and realizes it’s soundproofed. A place for parents to scream their agonies to the universe, perhaps?
When the door closes with a meaty click, Lauren rounds on Juliet.
“I disappear for five minutes and you’re already causing trouble.” But there is no heat in the recrimination. Instead, she sags against the wall, puts her face in her hands, and grinds her fists into her eyes.
Juliet touches her on the shoulder, but Lauren hunches and brushes her off.
“I’m so sorry.”
“For messing up her hair or for the fact that she’s dying?”
“She’s not dying. Not yet, anyway. They’ve just diagnosed her. You have to give it some time. The advances they’ve made are incredible. The—”
“All well and good for you to say. She’s not your daughter.”
Juliet flinches. “No need to attack me, Lauren. I’m here to offer support. Mindy needs you to be a human being now, not an overbearing mother. You’re going to drown her in your sorrow.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She wanted me to cut her hair because it’s going to fall out anyway.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Mindy does. She’s putting on a brave face for you, and you’re acting like she’s already in the grave.”
“You have no idea—”
“Yes, I do. I saw the look on your face when you came through the door. You were doe-eyed, tiptoeing around. She needs you to be brave and to treat her like the competitor she is. Nothing will stop Mindy, not even cancer. Quit acting like she’s been given a death sentence.”
And with that, she starts for the door.
“Wait,” Lauren commands. Juliet stops.
“I’m sorry. I’m stressed out. I know you were only trying to help.”
“That’s better,” Juliet says. “It’s nice to see you, too.”
Juliet accepts the contrite hug. Lauren’s bones feel hollow and insubstantial beneath her turtleneck like she’s em
pty inside her clothes.
“Work going well?” Lauren asks.
“As well as can be expected. I’m happy, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Do you have a fellow yet?”
“A fellow? Are you from the ’40s? Are we going to wash our hair and put it up in pin curls now?”
The look Lauren gives is so patently big sister that Juliet starts to laugh. “No, I don’t have a fellow. I’ve been much too busy. I don’t have time to meet anyone.”
“You should think about it. You’re not getting any younger, and...”
“No. We are not doing this. I took enough judgment from Mom. How’s Jasper holding up?”
Lauren’s face lights up. Juliet loves Jasper like a brother; seeing Lauren still happy with him after all these years is a balm to her soul.
“He’s fine. We’re struggling, trying to figure out how to balance his work with the hospital. They’re letting him take time off as he needs, but he has so much on his plate he can’t be away indefinitely. He’s heading there now, giving away some cases to the junior associates.”
“I meant, how is he? Really?”
“Terrified,” Lauren whispers, sinking down into the brown leather couch. “How else could he be?”
“I understand. Mindy seems to be handling things well.”
“She was fascinated by the details of the surgery, by the incisions, by the halo, for exactly five minutes. She made me take pictures of it from every angle and show her. She said, ‘Wow, that’s gnarly.’”
“Sounds like her.”
“And then she said, ‘Tell me the truth. I can see something’s wrong. Am I crippled for life or something?’”
Lauren sniffs. “We told her the truth. God, Juliet, she is so strong. Such a champion. ‘I’m going to fight, I’m going to win, I’m going to be back on the slopes in time for the Olympics.’ We didn’t tell her she couldn’t—”
“Good, because you don’t know that. She is a champion, Lauren. She has the heart of ten kids, and the strength of a thousand. She might beat this in one blow.”
Lauren’s eyes close. A tear leaks out.
“I hope you’re right.”
Tear Me Apart Page 4