by Dede Crane
“Ganglian,” Maggie repeated.
“If you purchase a lift ticket before February first you save twenty percent.” I’d been doing research.
“We’ll see, Gray.” She turned back to Maggie. “I had a ganglian cyst on the web between my thumb and forefinger once and it went away on its own after a few months.” She patted Maggie’s leg.
“We could stay at the — ”
“My doctor at the time,” laughed Mom, “told me there’s a tradition of taking Bibles to these cysts. Thumping the bump, he called it. Supposed to work.”
“Shall I get the hammer?” I said.
“Get away from me,” said Maggie.
“Get your sister the ice pack, please, Gray?” said Mom.
“If you say we’ll go skiing.”
She gave me her exasperated look. “Don’t push it, Gray. Now, Maggie, go put your feet up and ice your leg for ten. It’ll be fine.”
“Catch.” I tossed the ice pack across the kitchen. Maggie wasn’t ready for it and it smacked her on the shoulder.
“Ow! Thanks a lot, Graydumb.” My full name was Graydon.
“Gotta work on those reflexes.” The microwave beeped.
She picked the ice pack up off the floor. “Oh, my back hurts, too.”
Mom put her lips to Maggie’s forehead, then lifted her hair to do the same to the back of her neck.
“Are you drinking enough water? Go put your feet up and I’ll bring you a — ”
“But I need to cook rice for my science project,” huffed Maggie. “And sterilize three jars. I have to take observations for ten weeks.”
Maggie had decided on the water project. But because she didn’t have the conditions to study ice crystals, she was doing her experiment using cooked rice, which contained water. This was also in the Japanese guy’s book. You put the rice in three different jars. One jar you ignored, one you said nice things to and one you yelled at. Then you observed what happened to each over several weeks.
It sounded hokey to me but, hey, it wasn’t my project. Thank God.
“How do you cook rice?” Maggie was brainy at brainy things and a retard for ordinary everyday stuff.
“Read the package, why don’t you?” I escaped downstairs with my food to pound some music and see if Nat was online.
* * *
A week later, Maggie and I were making our lunches for school. She kept harping on about her right arm being asleep.
“It’s been almost an hour and it won’t wake up,” she whined. “It’s all tingly and numb.”
I leaned over and put my face next to her arm.
“Wake up!” I yelled, and she elbowed me in the face. I grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back.
“Is it awake now?”
She gasped and, instinctively, I let go. Tears sprang to her eyes as she grabbed her forearm.
Maggie never cried when I tortured her.
“You are turning into a wimp.”
She didn’t smile, didn’t hit me, just took deep breaths.
“Sorry,” I said, because I guess I actually hurt her. “You okay?”
She nodded and winced at the same time.
When I told Mom about it later, she lowered her voice and said, “I think your sister’s about to get her period.”
Oh, gawd. Too much information.
“Don’t look like that, Gray,” she said to my retreating back. “It’s part of the cycle of life and something to celebrate. I’m planning to take her downtown for lunch when it…”
I plugged my ears and hummed the national anthem.
* * *
By Sunday, Maggie’s arm still hadn’t woken up. The pain in her calf was back along with the limp. Her back still ached whenever she bent over, yet she showed no signs of a cold or flu or the big exclamation mark.
Dad thought she should be checked out. Being Sunday, he took her to a drop-in clinic. The doctor said there was a virus going around that affected the limbs and not to worry. He sent her home with some Tylenol.
Sunday nights we watched Lost together. It was the one show we all got into. Dad claimed the Lay-Z-boy, as always, and Maggie got my spot on the couch so Mom could massage her feet, which meant I got Maggie’s uncomfortable beanbag chair.
Watching Maggie’s foot in Mom’s hands, I was jealous as hell. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d given me one. Mom’s foot massages felt unbelievably dope. I was starting to think Maggie was probably faking.
“It might be growing pains, Magpie,” said Dad during a commercial — some cool car with a TV in it, speaker-phone and built-in iPod.
“Gray,” said Mom, “do you remember having growing pains when you were little? You’d have trouble getting to sleep. I’d rub your legs and — ”
“In my knees.” I remembered how they ached and kind of burned.
“It’s a question of mineralization,” explained Dad. “The bones are growing faster than the body can nourish them.”
“Dad would make you warm milk,” said Mom.
“With honey and butter.” I remembered loving the taste of that milk but that it didn’t seem to help.
“And you’d sleep with ice packs under your knees.”
“Ice doesn’t sound good but warm milk does,” said Maggie.
“Can’t hurt,” said Dad.
“Gray, pop a mug of milk in the micro,” Mom said.
“But the show’s going to — ”
“Gray, just takes a minute,” said Dad with that tone that instantly made me feel like a jerk.
“Honey but no butter, Gray,” said Maggie. “And a pinch of cinnamon.”
“Faker,” I whispered, getting up.
“Am not,” she hissed.
“You better be really sick.” I gave her a whap on the head.
* * *
Humans, like rats, Dad often said, could adapt to anything. The pins-and-needles feeling in Maggie’s arm didn’t go away, but she stopped talking about it. I watched her squat to pick things up. She sat whenever there was a chair nearby. Still limped a bit, though.
Mom watched and waited for the red-letter day. Dad made lame jokes about fitting her out with fake limbs and bought Maggie’s favorite ice cream — cherry jubilee, which I couldn’t stand — “for the calcium and general cheering power.”
Basically, I ignored her. Besides, I was busy studying for exams (with snooty girl’s help), working at the Cineplex, hanging with my buds and Natalie’s breasts, taking dope photos, gaming, hanging with my buds and Natalie’s breasts…
I was, in short, on top of my game.
* * *
Having finished my last exam, namely trig, boo yeah, followed by a celebratory platter of nachos, I was in my sweet, music shaking the walls, logging on to MSN to see who wanted to partay the next night. I didn’t ace the exam or anything, but thanks to one jumbo-sized Caramilk bar, I was sure I’d passed. Parm wrote back that he was in and was going to try and get Chrissy to come.
got the hots 4 her, do ya?
pilot light’s lit.
Natalie came on line.
turning sweet sixteen and never been…
My entire body flushed with heat. Did she mean what I think she meant? I was about to write back, “me, too,” but then thought that sounded unmasculine.
i’m urs. I wrote instead.
my parents r going out of town in a few weeks. we’d have the house 2 ourselves to…celebrate.
I fell back in my chair, covered my crotch with both hands and just stared at the screen for a minute, then wrote, let’s hook up.
She sent me a smiley face.
I laughed out loud.
“We’re going in, self ol’ buddy.”
Mind racing, I tried to
recall pertinent sex info I’d picked up over the years. Namely from South Park and Family Guy. I knew the clitoris was super important. Finding it, for starters. I mean, I wanted it to be a decent first experience for her, too. I knew it was going to rock for me no matter what, and I hated to think that twenty years from now she’d be talking about her first time as some lame joke. And birth control was important. Like I’d have to get a condom somewhere. Two. In case the first one broke. Was buying condoms like buying cigarettes and you had to be nineteen? Did they come in sizes? If so, how did you know what size you were?
how about i take u out 2 dinner first. I thought I should be a little romantic about this and not just horny.
really? that’s so sweet.
Good move.
u pick the place. someplace nice.
The phone rang. Probably wasn’t for me but Mom was in her studio working. She purposely didn’t have a phone out there. Dad was out of town for some prosthetic conference. Maggie, I knew, was in the kitchen working on her science project. Like any good science nerd, she tuned out all distractions.
I turned down my music.
“Hello?”
“May I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Fallon, please.”
“This is Mr. Fallon,” I said, deepening my voice. Anyway, I wasn’t lying. My English teacher regularly called me Mr. Fallon.
talk later, I typed to Nat, who was signing off. love ya, I added, just because. I’d never ever said that to a girl before.
“This is Dr. Astley’s office. I’m calling with the results of Maggie’s X-rays.”
Just to be safe, Mom had taken Maggie to our family doctor, who’d ordered an X-ray of her sore leg.
“Uh, yes?” Mr. Fallon here is losing his V-card in a few weeks, I wanted to tell her. Got any helpful tips?
“Your daughter’s X-rays have come back positive with signs of rhabdomyosarcoma.”
What the… I grabbed a pen, rummaged for a scrap of paper.
“Dr. Astley wants Maggie to see an oncologist who can order further testing.” The woman spoke in a steady, driving voice that didn’t leave room for questions. I didn’t understand what she was saying, yet my mouth had gone dry. “It’ll be with Dr. Michael Bender, 1528 6th Avenue near Prince Street, tomorrow at 9:45 in the morning.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. 9:45. 1528 6th Avenue, which is near Prince.”
She gave a tiny pause as if I might have more questions.
“There’s amazing advances in therapies these days,” she blurted into the gap. She sounded nervous. “I’m sorry,” she added, and now I was nervous.
She was about to hang up when I stopped her.
“Can you spell that big word beginning with R?”
She spelled it.
I wanted to confess that I wasn’t Maggie’s father when she said good-bye and hung up.
I put down the phone, went on the net and typed in rhabdomyosarcoma.
5 Black Mold
Maggie was sitting at the kitchen table staring at her rice and carefully taking notes. Though I’d eaten a giant plate of cheese-slathered nachos with sour cream and salsa, my stomach felt weirdly hollow.
“Hey,” I said.
It was like I was seeing her for the first time. She looked young for twelve and, unlike some of her friends, still undeveloped. Needless to say, Mom had yet to have her little celebration. Maggie was lanky like me. Too gawky to be pretty, she had a cute thing going on with her round face and eyes.
Sitting there all erect posture and intense focus, she reminded me of Ciel.
“Wanna see something cool?” she said, waving me over.
“Okay.” I was hit with a rush of love for my little sister. But it may have been fear. I noticed she was writing with her left hand.
“Since when are you left-handed?”
“My right hand’s really sore.” She shook out her right hand as if, in thinking about it, she suddenly realized it hurt. “I bet my writing’s already better than yours.” She held up her notes.
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” she repeated and if I didn’t know what I knew, I would have slapped her.
“Look at my rice.”
A month ago, she’d put her cooked rice in three different jars. On one jar she pasted the word LOVE in hot-pink letters, on another the word HATE in black letters. The third jar had nothing on it. Each day she said kind words to the Love jar, verbally abused the Hate jar and deliberately ignored the third jar.
“See the mold spot in the Hate jar?”
I saw one black spot glowing gray under the white surface of rice.
“Well, check this out.” She picked up the unlabeled jar. “The ignored jar has three mold spots. See? Which proves that negative attention is better than no attention at all.” The proud scientist smiled.
Normally I would have said something cynical.
“And,” she picked up the third jar, “the Love jar hasn’t any mold yet. Neat, huh?”
I nodded. This was the sort of thing she’d normally share with Dad, assuming rightly that I could care less.
“That is cool,” I said.
“Yeah it is.” She looked at me to see if she could continue. I stood there staring at her. She picked up her book. “Dr. Emoto says there’s ancient power in words because words come from natural vibrations in the environment.”
I thought of the word rhabdomyosarcoma written on the scrap of paper in my hand. What sort of vibrations did that word came from? I knew what it meant now. Soft tissue sarcomas — meaning cancerous tumors — found in muscles used for motion, and affecting young children and teens.
“And all matter,” she continued excitedly, “including us, is made up of rapid vibrations of particles. There’s nothing actually solid about matter. It’s just constant motion. Which means all things, including us, are in a continual state of change.” She looked at me, eyes wide. “That’s wild, huh?”
“Wild,” I agreed, thinking of that bump in her calf. It wasn’t a ganglian cyst you could Bible thump away. It was a cancerous tumor.
“Which is why the vibrations of words can affect things. Dr. Emoto says even our intentions create energy fields that affect matter.”
I remembered saying that she’d better be really sick, and my stomach did some slow flip.
“I have to take a message out to Mom,” I said.
Maggie didn’t respond. She was too busy carefully writing with her left hand.
Nervous, I knocked on Mom’s studio door. The door was the color of an eggplant. The former shed now had a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, a skylight, plumbing, a dark room added on. Its shingle siding was painted. She called it her sanctuary.
“Come in,” she said.
The place, as usual, had the smoky smell of inks and dyes. Today there was the tang of turpentine.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“I’m great because I finally came up with the design for the last banner. I’m going Oriental, putting mahogany brown Japanese characters along the border which I’ll box in so they could also pass for Celtic.” She was talking more to herself than me.
“And look at the pillowcases Maggie’s done. Beautiful, huh? Birthday gift for her friend Sasha.” Two pillowcases were hanging on a clothesline in the corner in shades of plum and blue.
“Nice.” I took a breath.
“She does it all herself now. From coming up with the design to applying the ink — everything. Even does her own wash-ups, which I’m very thankful for. Did you ever see the ties she did for her teachers?”
“No.” Okay, just say it. “We got a call from Dr. Astley’s office. Maggie has an appointment with another doctor tomorrow at 9:45.”
“Oh? What kind of doctor?” Eyes on her drawing, sh
e wasn’t fully listening.
“Well… an oncologist.” I’d looked that up, too. It meant cancer doctor.
Mom’s head jerked up. She was off her stool and moving toward me, her body suddenly rigid.
“Who called? Are they still on the phone? Why didn’t you come and get me?”
“I… I… some receptionist just gave me the information. Thought I was Dad, I think.”
She was a pacing animal now, back and forth along her cutting table, breathing through an open mouth.
The spacious, light-filled room was feeling real small.
“Bring me the phone.”
I left, bounding across the lawn to the house and crumpling the note in my fist. Maggie was drawing a picture of her moldy rice and didn’t even look up as I grabbed the cordless.
When I got back, Mom’s face was flushed.
“Where’s Maggie?” she asked.
“In the kitchen.”
“Okay.” She caught my eye, hanging on, as if she was expecting me to give her some kind of reassurance.
“They don’t know anything yet,” I lied and moved toward the door. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Yeah,” said Mom, starting to dial the number. She turned her back to me and I was free to go, back to my music and organizing tomorrow’s party.
Once I got downstairs I felt weird, like I’d abandoned Mom or something, and immediately went back up to watch through the sliding glass doors.
Framed in the studio windows, she paced as she spoke on the phone. I watched her stop, run a hand through her hair. Then she picked up a pen and wrote something down. A big word maybe.
Behind me Maggie said to her Hate jar, “You’re stupid and ugly. And I hate you.”
* * *
Maggie not only met with the oncologist the next day but also had an MRI. She lay on a table and got shoved into a metal capsule, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine. She got to put headphones on and pick out music. The music choices were either classical or old bands she’d never heard of. She didn’t know what to choose so Mom chose for her — the Beach Boys. But it was so loud in the machine, she couldn’t really hear it anyway.
I know all this because Mom insisted I be tested, too. So I was inside the same roaring, thumping white tunnel, squinting to try to hear the guitar lines from the Grateful Dead.