All These Lives

by Wylie, Sarah

  As the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch, Spencer says, “Dani, you should at least check it out. Text me if you want the address.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He winks at me before turning to go. “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  4

  I wish all days were extinct, but as of today, Wednesday tops my list.

  Jena is in the second week of a two-week block of radiation treatments. Wednesdays are Jena’s “long” days, which just means her appointment starts and ends later. Before radiation, Jena used to spend weeks at a time in the hospital getting chemo. So, really, this new arrangement—chemo pills and one block of radiation—where she gets to come home every day, is like winning the cancer treatment lottery.

  But this Wednesday afternoon finds me sitting on a cold hospital room floor pretending to do homework, as far from my sister’s bed as I can get without being absent altogether.

  Mom had me take the bus here after school today, because my dad is taking me to an audition this afternoon and picking me up from the hospital, which is closer to his work than home would be. My mother also thought it would be good for me and Jena to “spend some time together.” But, as I sit here, I can’t help straining my ears and counting the number of times Jena breathes in and out. In and out. Maybe, if I listen hard enough, I’ll hear a secret code, a message that will prepare me for whatever comes next, but there’s only the whirring of machines and her inhaling and exhaling.

  Mom has been gone for nearly half an hour. I imagine she’s off somewhere prodding Jena’s doctors and trying to force good news out of them.

  I hear the shuffle of sneakers coming down the hall, followed by the rolling wheels of the cart he delivers pitchers of water on. And by “he,” I mean Rufus, the volunteer boy my sister is in love with. Rufus is seventeen, with shaggy brown hair that always needs a trim. He isn’t bad-looking, and I’m learning to look past the name, even though I will always consider Rufus to be a dog’s name. Wednesdays just happen to be his volunteer days.

  Today, when he stops by her room, Jena puts her book down and says, “Are you, like, obsessed with water? I never see you without fifteen gallons of it.” Sadly, this is my sister’s best attempt at flirtation.

  Instead of hightailing it out of here, Rufus laughs and injects a lame barb of his own.

  I realize it must mean he’s in love with her, too. Oh, there have been signs all along. The way he used to call her “Viva La Jenavieva” until Jena told him to seriously, stop. That time he lent her one of his most-cherished Alice Cooper CDs. Of course. He has a thing for pasty sixteen-year-old girls in hospital beds. Why has it taken so long for me to figure this out?

  They flirt—if you can call it that—for a couple of minutes before Rufus leaves. Jena goes back to reading, and the room goes back to being silent. But silence is the sound of her breathing and I can’t stand the way it pokes at my ribs and makes it hard for me to breathe, too. Especially when I’m already being manhandled by chem homework I can’t do. I also know that Jena isn’t really reading—only pretending to—and I want to fill her head with something else, something other than what the doctors might be telling Mom right now.

  So I tell Jena about Rufus being in love with her. She tries to act dismissive, but I see her eyes light up just a little and I can’t hear her breathing, which is good. Then somehow I am ducking out of her room and chasing Rufus down the hall, while Jena calls me back and yells, “I’m never, ever going to forgive you if you say anything to him!”

  I spot him near the end of the hallway, his cart rickety as he gets ready to turn the corner. And then, suddenly, he stops. When he turns to face me, we stare at each other for an awkward moment. Maybe two.

  Then I stick out my hand. “I’m Dani, Jena’s sister.”

  “Yeah, I know…” He looks at me, waiting. Right now, I should be noticing how Rufus’s hair hangs over the collar of his shirt, and the fact that it looks a little greasy up close. It should occur to me that Jena can do better. A lot better.

  Instead, I am thinking about the fact that I just said I was Jena’s sister and that might not always be true. I am thinking of other things I could be instead—my mother’s daughter, my friend’s friend, my body’s inhabitant—and I can’t think of a single one that sounds okay. “Maybe you and Jena could go on a date sometime. She’d really like that,” I say.

  His eyes do a weird little dance. Rounder—no, narrower—no. Scared?

  He looks back at his cart. “I … Yeah, maybe,” and I can tell he is lying, and if he does think about it, she’ll just be the sick girl that flirts with him when he delivers water and I’ll just be her weird sister.

  “Maybe?” I repeat, raising an eyebrow.

  “Maybe,” he says again, and then pushes his cart around the corner before I can say anything else.

  I stand there for a moment, hoping Mom will come so I won’t have to go back and tell Jena. Eventually, I drag my feet toward her room. Why did I ever think convincing her that a boy-who-wasn’t-good-enough-for-her liked her was better than hearing her breathe?

  This is why it’s easier not to say anything to Jena. I always say the wrong thing. Now I am afraid she is going to cry.

  But as soon as I walk into her room, she snaps her book shut, blinks away the hope in her eyes, and smirks. “Let me guess. He thinks I’m contagious?”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. I want to tell her it’s because he hasn’t seen her play soccer or heard her laugh yet—her real laugh, not the one she reserves for hospitals. It isn’t breathy or forced or hard to listen to.

  She shakes her head, smiles. “God. What a tool.” I want to remember this—the moment when, even though I’d been a complete fool, she wasn’t crying, she wasn’t breathing too loud, and I was still Jena’s sister. I am still Jena’s sister.

  I sit back down in my corner right below the window of her room, both of us ignoring the fact that she is secretly disappointed.

  “And I can’t believe,” she says, “you tried to set me up with someone named Rufus. I hate you.”

  And suddenly she is laughing, a loud, full sound that takes up the whole room, makes it feel like she’s right beside me. I want to bottle it up and save it for next time. I’ll play it over one of her hospital laughs, over the sound of her fighting to breathe.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, while Jena is fast asleep, Mom walks in and says Dad is waiting for me outside the hospital.

  She watches me, imparting all manner of “helpful” tips, while I close up my books and stuff them into my backpack. Mom’s particularly excited about this audition because the commercial is being directed by a former actor she used to work with, a Brody Richardson.

  “He’s really a fan of the postmodern, so subtlety is key,” Mom says right before I head outside. I have no idea what she is talking about and leave her sitting in the chair beside Jena, flipping through one of the medical journals she subscribes to.

  Three minutes later, I’m at the east entrance to the hospital atrium, and so is Dad.

  We pull out of the parking lot and get on the highway from Quentin to Robindale. Now, all of a sudden, Dad looks worried. This is his first time taking me to an audition. “Are you ready? You don’t need your lines or makeup or something?”

  In lieu of an answer, I say, “So, you’re just blowing off work to take me to some audition?”

  “Now,” Dad says, “it’s not just some audition. You know how much this means to your mother. Besides, I’ve arranged for my work schedule to be a little more flexible for the next few months. To accommodate.”

  My mother is determined to make sure that nothing else changes, but, in doing so, she’s implementing all sorts of changes. My father leaving work early? Taking me to auditions?

  “Personally,” I say, “I think we should put the whole acting thing on the back burner for now.” For now. To accommodate. We speak in half-finished sentences because we’re terrified to know how they truly end
. Maybe it’s not for now, but for ever. Maybe it’s not until. Or maybe it is.

  Dad glances at me and pats my knee. “There’s no reason for that.” He does a shoulder check and changes lanes. “Actually, I’m glad we have some time to talk.”

  I don’t want to know how this part ends either, so I lean against the window, duck my head, and pretend to sleep. Somewhere between Quentin and Robindale, it becomes real and I’m floating above myself, the car, everything, fast asleep, as my father’s voice reappears in interludes.

  At some point, I’m not sure when, he realizes I’m asleep and turns on the radio to drown out the silence.

  He alternates between singing and tapping along to James Brown. There’s a very good reason why we have a no-singing-along rule implemented for all family road trips, and this is it.

  I swear, I consider waking up and having that father-daughter conversation just to make him stop.

  Maybe I’m not asleep after all.

  5

  Dad and I are sitting in a conference room at Robindale’s Ramada, where the audition is being held, and the room is bleeding maroon. Loose purple-red fibers dangle from the curtain, like trickles from bursting capillaries. The worn burgundy carpet seems to be past its expiration date.

  There are twenty of us in total—eleven parents, nine kids. Dozens of covert glances are shot across the room, everyone trying to hide the fact that they’re sizing up the competition.

  So far, no sign of Brody Richardson.

  “What do we do now?” Dad asks.

  “Well.” I lean back in my chair, the piece of paper the receptionist gave me rustling in my lap. “This is usually the part where Mom flirts with the casting director or the occasional stage dad.”

  My father’s eyes widen.

  I pat his shoulder. “It’s only your first day. It’s not like I expect you to jump right into Mom’s role. Baby steps, okay?”

  “Very funny,” he says with a shake of his head. I go back to eyeballing the other kids here, each of them accompanied by a version of my mother—a parent whose own hopes of superstardom rest squarely on the shoulders of her wimpy child.

  My father’s too oblivious to be pushy.

  I’ve never quite figured out how to play the whole acting thing. I’ve been in school plays and had a role in Quentin Community Theatre’s production of Oklahoma! two years ago. It was only about a year ago that Mom had me start trying out for commercials. The truth is, I can tolerate acting just enough to keep doing auditions and make my mother happy, and I dislike it just enough to maintain my street cred. But it’s also a distraction, for me and for my parents. Which is simultaneously good and bad.

  Mom always went with me to auditions, partly because she wanted to make sure I did it right and partly because we had an unspoken understanding that this was more about her than me.

  “I was trying to talk to you in the car, before you fell asleep,” Dad says now.

  “Oh, right. Yeah. I do that a lot, actually. I’m starting to think I have narcolepsy.”

  Dad doesn’t react. “I wanted to talk to you about … Jena. And how you’re dealing with the situation.”

  He leaves some dot-dot-dots for me to fill in, but continues when my lips don’t part. “This is hard on all of us. Your mother and I are worried about the toll it’s taken on you. The last thing we want is for you to feel left out or like you’re taking a backseat to your sister.”

  I let out a small laugh. “Trust me, I don’t feel that way at all.” And I really don’t. If this were a movie, maybe I would. I’d be the kid that gets shipped from extended family member to extended family member, tanking at school, seeking attention, a lost little girl. Instead, I’m sitting at an audition for a toothpaste commercial with my father. If my mother had her way, she’d be here instead. In a heartbeat, she’d be here. But we can’t always have what we want. So no, I’m not feeling left out.

  “Well, I’m glad,” Dad says with a smile. I’m glad to be able to make him feel a little less guilty. Everybody needs that once in a while. “You know that if you ever need anything, even if it’s something small—it doesn’t even matter—your mother and I are never too busy. You and Jena are the most precious things in the world to us.” Precious stones. “Precious stones.”

  “I know.”

  “Good.”

  My father calls Jena and me his “precious stones” because we went through this phase in second grade when we were weirdly fascinated by rocks. At the time, Dad thought it would be cute and very Mike Brady to point out that we loved our stones, but he loved us more than we loved them. We were his special stones. Precious stones.

  While Dad flips open a newspaper, I say, “I’ll keep an eye out for hot stage parents. I assume you prefer moms?”

  He chuckles, shakes his head, and starts reading.

  I lean back in my chair and stare up at the light blue ceiling. There’s a window right above our seats, and sunshine streams through it.

  Just then someone sits with a thud in the chair beside me. A tall redhead with a regrettable perm and a blue dress much too fancy for this place. She rests her head against the wall and sniffs, and I note that her eyes are red, angry, and liquid.

  The girl’s mother sits down beside her, and begins to do what one can only describe as hissing. Pageant Girl tries to argue back, but clearly the taps behind her eyes are broken and they rush open and spill all over her face. Everyone in the room stares at them, and some people whisper. In fact, the only person who doesn’t seem to notice is her mother.

  This scene with Pageant Girl and her mother reminds me of the time Jena dyed her hair blond in seventh grade, the day after I got the part of Glinda in the school play. Her hair turned out awful. She called me from the top of the stairs, her voice shaky and horrified and scared. There wasn’t much we could do but go to Mom. And Mom yelled for hours, cried, and called Aunt Tish to ask where’d she gone wrong as a mother, please God can somebody tell me. The thing is, Mom should have been grateful. She should have wrapped Jena up in her long, Pilates-did-this arms and squeezed her. Jena could easily have dyed her hair lime or orange. Lime and orange were blatant, glow-in-the-dark acts of rebellion, guaranteed to bring Mom weeks of public humiliation, and they’d probably have suited Jena better. Going blond wasn’t a ploy to hurt Mom; it was the closest Jena ever came to doing something so Mom would see her.

  I snap back to reality, and my ears ring from all the not-quite-yelling.

  “Unacceptable ought to be ashamed foolish irresponsible Andrea angry disappointed whatyoudid unacceptable ought to be ashamed … Andrea,” Pageant Girl’s mother whispers, only occasionally stopping for breaths.

  During one of those breaks, against my better judgment, I turn toward Andrea and speak. “Is your mom married?”

  She looks at me for a second, like she can’t quite understand me, and her mother’s head has snapped in my direction now, too.

  Andrea wipes her wet cheek with the back of her hand and shakes her head.

  “Dad,” I stage-whisper, and give him a nudge. A did-you-hear-that nudge.

  This time it’s his head that snaps up. “What?”

  “You know,” I say, nudging him again as Andrea, her mom, and the whole room look on. So much for inconspicuous nudging.

  My father’s face flushes and he mutters, “Cut it out, Dani.”

  Except, maybe Andrea’s mom hears him, too, because she also cuts it out. And we can all sit in peace. You’d think someone planned it.

  Andrea owes my father a snazzy thank-you note. She might also want to consider dyeing her hair something glow-in-the-dark, to fix her mom issues. Or getting cancer.

  Dad folds his arms across his chest and sits there, embarrassed, until someone comes to take me to the other conference room across the hall, so I can repeat lines about how this brand of toothpaste has changed my life.

  Dad is allowed to come in and watch me. He stands at the back and gives me a thumbs-up, but by the fourth time they’ve made
me repeat the lines, he is looking around the room, taking in the cameras and all the bigwigs that sell toothpaste and plastic smiles for a living. When he asks, they tell him that Brody Richardson is finishing up an off-Broadway producing gig and will be here for later rounds. I’m not sure whether Mom will be impressed, or disappointed he’s not here.

  After it’s over and after their promise of “we’ll be in touch,” we leave. Dad is so pleased with both of us that he pulls into a McDonald’s drive-through, and asks me to pick anything I want. Apparently, he has not noticed that we’ve eaten nothing but tofu and organic food for the past seven months. But I don’t say anything. I order a double Big Mac, and we make a big show of acting like everything is the way it always was. Until we have to go home, and we can’t pretend anymore.

  6

  The best thing about my parents right now is how willing they are to overcompensate.

  “Lauren’s here!” I jump up and button my sweater.

  They also trust me, which helps.

  “When does this movie marathon finish? Are you sure you don’t want me to come and pick you up from the theater?”

  “Dad, please,” I groan, heading toward the front door. He stops me to plant a kiss on my forehead and I yell goodbye to Mom in the kitchen. “Where’s Jena?” I ask.

  “Resting,” he answers. “She’s had a rough day.” Mom’s spent the whole day at attention because Jena has been running a fever, and if it gets up to 102, they have to go to the emergency room.

  I think he’s waiting for me to go upstairs and say goodbye, but I know my sister would be totally onto me. Plus, I might talk myself out of going if I have to see her. “Tell her I say bye.”

  I hurry out the front door and get into Lauren’s car. She and her sister are going to the cineplex in the mall. I’m going to Spencer’s cousin’s party.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I tell her as I slip in. Her older sister, Nicole, sits in the front seat beside her and gives me a tight smile. She’s a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and I can tell she doesn’t approve of sixteen-year-olds who lie to their parents and wear pink cardigans and sensible jeans to parties.