Between Friends

by Kiernan, Kristy

  “Nothing for you to worry about. Cora is going to have a small medical procedure. It’s not a big deal, but I want to take her and be there if she needs anything.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong with her?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just a small, personal thing.”

  That meant woman stuff. Or cosmetic stuff. She was probably going to have Botox or something. Letty was disappointed. She’d thought Aunt Cora would be one of those women who refused to do stuff like that.

  “I’m not going to tell your dad about any of this tonight, so you just act like you went to school today and everything is fine, understood? I’ll talk to him about it when things have calmed down a little.”

  Letty stared up at her. “I—won’t he be mad that I pretended nothing happened?”

  Her father had always been big on a lie of omission still being a big, fat lie.

  “I imagine he will, but I’ll take care of that. He won’t be mad at you.”

  That was a first. They were always, always, together against her.

  She got under the covers, and her mother bent down and kissed her on the forehead before she turned out the light and left, leaving the door cracked a little bit. Aunt Cora’s guest bed was bigger than hers at home, and the pillow was soft. Her hair was still a little damp from the shower, and it felt cool against her cheek. She closed her eyes, realizing how happy she was to be here, falling safely asleep, rather than in Venice, fighting off Jimmy’s roommate.

  She was fine being fifteen that night.

  CORA

  I was out of the shower and waiting on the sofa when Ali finally came out of Letty’s room. She looked shell-shocked, and I poured her a glass of wine; she drank half of it in a couple of quick swallows, placing it back on the coffee table hard enough to make us both jump.

  “Sorry,” she said, checking the glass and the table for damage.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Everything okay in there?”

  She looked at me, her eyes wide, disbelief stamped on her face.

  “Cora,” she said, speaking slowly, “I have no idea who that person is. Who is that kid? Because I barely recognize her. When did this happen?”

  “I guess around the same time we grew up? Fifteen? Sound familiar?”

  She leaned back into the sofa. “Oh, Cora, were we that young at fifteen, though? We were more mature, weren’t we? Tell me we were.”

  “If you say so.”

  Ali sipped on her wine. “So, I need to call Benny, I’ll have him pick her up for school, we’ll get you checked in and settled, and then I guess I’m going to have to talk to him about all of this.”

  “What about Letty? What do you want to tell her about me?” I asked. I understood the need to figure out the best way to tell her not only what was happening, but what her interest in it might be. I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to do it so quickly, but here it was, upon us.

  Ali held her glass of wine against her forehead for a moment, rolling it back and forth, cooling herself. “I guess Benny and I will talk to her after school,” she said. “I think I’d just like to tell her about you first, okay?”

  “What will you tell her about getting blood drawn for the tests?”

  “I’ll think about that. From what you said, if she has it, she has it and there’s nothing that knowing any sooner will gain us?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. Of course if she does carry it, she’ll want to know for her own children—”

  Ali laughed. “Oh, God, tell me that’s a long way off. This is as much as I can stand for ten years or so.”

  “Well, that could be one way.”

  “What?”

  “If she’s sexually active, you need to get her to the doctor.”

  “Cora, I am not ready for this,” she said.

  “I know, but apparently she is. Or, I guess it doesn’t matter if she is or not, she’s there. So you take her to the doctor for her first exam, get to have all the talks, birth control, STD prevention, all the fun stuff. Maybe they could draw blood and order the tests. She’ll never know what she’s being tested for, and if she’s negative, she’ll never have to worry about it.”

  Ali was nodding. “It might work. What about Benny, though? I don’t see any reason to tell him that she’s no longer a virgin, do you? I don’t think that’s need-to-know information—God, this is so weird.”

  “Which part?” I asked. It had all been weird for me for months, though with my access surgery in less than ten hours it was becoming more real every moment.

  “You spend the first part of their lives as a unit, you know? I never kept anything from Benny about Letty, and I know he never kept anything from me. Even if we told her it was a secret, we told each other. But now, it’s like I’m moving a little more toward Letty being allowed to keep some things from Benny, for everyone’s good. Does he really need to know that she’s had sex? I wouldn’t have wanted my father to know, and I don’t see any reason why he should have.”

  I hardly knew what to say. After all, I’d never had a father to know whether I’d had sex. And Barbara had never had to deal with a co-parent of any kind. Who knows what my biological mother would have thought? If I hadn’t been having sex by fifteen, she probably would have wondered what was wrong with me. It wasn’t a dilemma I’d ever had to consider, or even thought I might have to consider. And so I hadn’t.

  “I don’t know, Ali,” I said, but she gave a sharp laugh, and I realized she wasn’t finished.

  “And Letty,” she continued. “I’ve spent most of her life being so open with her. I thought it was the right thing. She knows more than she should about her conception. I burdened her with that knowledge, and I never even knew it. And now I’m not telling her about this . . . this thing that might affect her more than how she was conceived ever would. I’m keeping things from Benny, I’m keeping things from Letty. I don’t know what to do.”

  Ali was shaking her head.

  “I—I don’t know, either, Al,” I said, desperate to say something helpful. “I guess I can see both sides of it. I suppose if I had to make the decision, I probably wouldn’t tell Benny about Letty, I mean, about the sex part. But I don’t want to tell you to lie to your husband, either. And Letty, you know, that’s your decision, and I—I just, I don’t know—”

  I stopped babbling when she turned to me and cocked her head to the side.

  “You don’t know?” she asked. “You don’t know? Well, hell, Cora, if you don’t know, who am I supposed to ask?”

  I looked at her uncertainly. But then she put her wine down and scooted close to me, taking my hand in hers and peering intently at me.

  “Hey, listen, you don’t need to fix anything here, okay? I’m just talking out loud, trying to get a feel of this new thing. I’ll figure it out. But all you need to do is think about how to get well. We’re going to figure that one out together. And I have a feeling, a good feeling, that one of my wine-soaked kidneys is going to clean its act up and find a new home with you. I think Letty’s fine. So stop worrying about it, all right?”

  They were less the words of optimism than of worry deferred, but if she was going to give me permission to not think about it for a day or two, then I was going to take her up on it. Maybe she was right. Maybe Letty was fine.

  And maybe when I went in tomorrow they’d discover that it had all been a big mistake, and Keith and I would go back to the airport and fly for the rest of the day. But I wasn’t counting on it.

  As Ali went to the patio to call Benny, I crawled into bed and stared into the dark for an hour, lightly caressing my still unscarred arm, tracing my fingers over the veins, feeling for my pulse, the steady current inside my body finally lulling me to sleep, where I dreamed of the winds in Africa, the turbines in New York, and the feel of the air beneath my plane.

  In my dreams, I controlled them all.

  11

  ALI

  “I thought you were going to call me,” Benny
said, sounding petulant.

  I knew that he had no idea of everything I’d been through in the past eight hours, but it still irritated me. What had been so hard about his night? He probably sat on the sofa, ordered Chinese food, and watched TV all night. While I’d had to drive to Venice to pick up our errant daughter and found out she might be carrying a ticking time bomb and was sleeping with a possible pot dealer who was in custody. Not to mention the fact that my best friend had a life-threatening disease.

  “What do you call this? Here I am, calling you, right now.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “Everything all right?”

  “No, nothing is all right. Cora is ill, Benny.”

  In trying to explain Cora’s kidney disease I realized how little about it I truly knew, and vowed to begin educating myself so that not only could I help Cora more efficiently, but I’d be prepared . . . just in case.

  “She’ll be going in to get the access point for the dialysis put in place in the morning, so could you please pick Letty up here and take her to school?”

  “Of course,” he said, sounding apalled. “Ali, I’m so sorry. Cora always seemed so . . . healthy. Annoyingly healthy, you know? Vibrant, I guess, always there.”

  “She’s still here, she’s still vibrant, but she needs a little help.”

  “I just—I don’t know what to say. Do you want me to take the day off tomorrow? I can drop Letty at school and come to the hospital to wait with you.”

  “No, you need to go to work, Benny. We’ll be okay. I’ll pick Letty up from school and we’ll go back to the hospital,” I said.

  “Ali. I love you so much; you do know that, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Are we . . . okay?”

  “We’re going to be fine.”

  We both sat quietly for a moment, listening to each other breathe, relaxing back into our together space, the place where we were one, a unit.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he finally said. “Both of you try to get some sleep, and tell Cora I’m thinking about her, and we’ll be there for her.”

  “Thank you, Benny. Good night.”

  “Good night, sweet dreams,” he said, the same thing he said to me every night before I fell asleep.

  I checked on Letty, cracking the door wider to make sure she was there, to make sure she was sleeping and not lying awake, worrying. She was curled on her side, her hair slipping over her face, only the tip of her nose and chin visible. The sound of her regular breathing made me aware of how tired I was, and I quickly got ready for bed.

  Cora was already asleep when I finally slipped under the comforter. Or if she was awake she didn’t want me to know. As exhausted as I was, there was no sleep for me that night, and I watched the clock, aware of what kind of day I was facing, unable to slow my mind down.

  I was up first in the morning, taking my shower before I woke Letty for hers. I sat on the edge of her bed, my hair wrapped in a towel, and laid my hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “Come on, sweetie, time for school.”

  She woke slowly but didn’t give me any trouble getting up, and I woke Cora before heading to the kitchen to make breakfast. Cora couldn’t eat before her surgery, but I wanted to make sure Letty had a good meal in her. It was going to be a long day for everyone.

  When Benny arrived, we hugged for a long moment in the driveway before he came in and ate while we waited for Letty.

  “How’s Cora?” he asked. “Should I . . . talk to her?”

  “She’s in the shower,” I said. “Don’t worry. I think she’s fine with being left alone for now. I’ll let her know you’re thinking about her. I just told Letty I had things to take care of with Cora today. So just talk about light things on the way to school, okay? Or better yet, don’t talk at all, just let her pick the radio station and listen to her sing the whole way.”

  He laughed. “It’s not really one of her talents, is it?”

  “I’m sure she has others,” I said, grinning at him. “They’ll show up . . . one day.”

  When Letty came out of the guest room, shining and young and ready for school, she ran as soon as she saw Benny, throwing her arms around him. They left for school with Benny carrying her backpack and her chattering about possibly taking flying lessons over the summer. I didn’t know why I’d been worried about her confessing what had happened the day before.

  Keith, who had taught Cora how to fly so long ago, arrived soon after they left, and I gave him coffee while we waited for Cora to emerge from the bedroom, explaining that I would follow behind them to the hospital, and that I would pick Cora up the next day. In the nature of a particular type of kind man everywhere, he seemed relieved to have someone to share in this responsibility, as if afraid he was going to say or do the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment.

  When Cora appeared with a small overnight bag, I was amazed at how collected she appeared. You’d have thought she was just heading out for a little road trip, and maybe she’d stay the night if her destination held enough interest for her. She kissed Keith on the cheek, and he blushed, his cheeks turning pink above his beard.

  “Can you even have coffee?” I asked, my hand already on a mug for her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never been much of a coffee fan anyway. Would you mind braiding my hair for me?”

  “Of course,” I said, already on my way around the counter.

  “We’ll just be a minute,” Cora said to Keith, laying a hand on his arm briefly, before following me. She sat on the stool and let me comb her hair. “You don’t have to be so gentle,” she murmured as I delicately drew her hair back from her face.

  “Well, I want to be,” I said. “How did you sleep?”

  “Surprisingly well,” she said. “I don’t want you to worry, Ali. This is a very simple operation. They’re just opening up my arm, not my chest.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “But I can’t help thinking about why you’re doing it in the first place.”

  She shrugged. “Can’t be helped,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.” I tugged a little more insistently on her hair.

  She smiled a little and opened up one eye to peek at me, then closed it again. “I suppose not.”

  “I’m going to get as much information on transplants as I can today,” I said. “If there’s anything I can get done while I’m there, like blood tests or anything, I’m going to go ahead. Benny, too.”

  “You might want to check with him first. He’s liable to run screaming if you just set upon him with needles and a scalpel.”

  “Benny will happily sit in one spot and let them do anything they want to him for you.”

  She was quiet for a second, and I could feel her head wanting to tilt forward, to cast her gaze down. I tugged gently and made her meet my eyes in the mirror.

  “He’ll do anything he can for you, Cora, he’s already said so.”

  “That’s because you haven’t told him about Letty yet,” she said.

  As I followed Keith and Cora in my car I could see Cora through the back window, waving her hands in the air. She was telling stories, passionate about her life, as she always was. The only thing I’d ever been passionate about was becoming a mother. There was no question that becoming pregnant through in vitro had been difficult. In fact, difficult did not do it justice; there was no one word complex enough to describe it.

  But it served as a focus for me. All that had once been out of my control became fixable, with schedules, and shots, and tests, and for the first time, I was passing tests. Maybe they weren’t pregnancy tests, but they were tests indicating I was ready for pregnancy, and I was passing. I had a plan.

  I grieved the loss of the plan as much as I grieved the loss of the embryos. The time between a miscarriage and the start of the next series of procedures to get my uterus ready for transfer was lost time, crazy-making time. My schedule was gone, my plan gone. But then it woul
d start again, and I could feed the hope again.

  I always imagined that the way Cora felt about her job, traveling around, trying to get people to put wind turbines on their land, was the way I felt during those hopeful, scheduled, planned times. Once she found her calling, she was always fertile, always up and excited about her life, creating energy. She had things scheduled for years in advance, and most of her plans came to fruition.

  If any big things fell through for her, if she had any heartbreaks, like my miscarriages, she kept them to herself, and despite what I knew of her early years, I considered her charmed. There were times, I was ashamed to admit, that I’d resented her for it.

  There were times, despite my desperate love for my husband and my child and my home, and even for Florida itself, that I resented her for being able to travel all over the world. I’d never even had a passport. And not only had she traveled all over the world, she could do so on her own. She wasn’t just taken places, she could fly there herself.

  And there she was, being driven to have an operation designed to eventually marry her to a machine for the rest of her life, completely changing everything about her life that she was passionate about. I could still see her through the back window, acting as if she were on her way to the airport to jet off to Kuala Lumpur. Cora could make anything sound exciting.

  It was very difficult to realize that your friend was a better person than you, and to know that you’d been suspicious of that fact for most of your life. I wanted to believe that I brought something to the table, and I thought I’d gotten the opportunity. The only person in the world who could have stopped me from lying right down on the table and insisting they take my kidney now was Letty.

  Though they weren’t close, Benny had a brother, and if I were down to one kidney and Benny needed one, I thought he would likely step up. But this was Letty. Everything of mine was for her, as was everything of Benny’s. The fact that Cora had gone through everything she had in order to provide me with the very thing that might keep her from getting a transplant made me feel drenched in panicked selfishness.