Before I Go

by Colleen Oakley

  But now I think Jack’s in Denial, which after reading my grief brochure seems like a place you go to, like the beach or Target or the dentist, for an indefinite amount of time. I went there once, but because I’m an advanced griever, it was a short visit. It appears that Jack packed a bag before he left. The psych major in me wants to help him—ask him probing questions about what he’ll do when I’m gone, get him to ponder the future without me in it—but I’ve taken enough classes to know that he has to deal with it at his own pace.

  I pull my feet up and tuck them underneath my thighs in the uncomfortable bucket seat. The frayed hem of my favorite jeans is damp from my trudge through the wet parking lot. “How’s the possum?” I ask.

  He looks at me then, and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, or if it is relief that’s shining in his eyes. He smiles. “Good as new. A dog got him, nearly bit right through its leg . . .”

  Jack relives the details of the case, slipping into medical jargon, which is when I’d typically stop him with an “English, please,” or “What the hell’s a pectoral girdle?” but this time I just let him talk. My mind has already left the conversation and is pondering the pros and cons of turning my body into ashes.

  twelve

  WHEN WE WERE thirteen, Kayleigh convinced me that I should ask my three-year crush, Simon Wu, to the eighth-grade dance—even though he had shown no apparent interest in my puppy-dog-like presence at any point in our entire middle school career. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she reasoned. Emboldened by her confidence, I approached his table in the cafeteria, where he was involved in an intense pencil war with his friends, and stood beside him, waiting for him to acknowledge me. When he finally looked up, I whispered my query. “What?” he asked, bidding me to repeat myself, one eye still on his friend who was pulling back the wooden pencil and about to let it fly. “Do you want to go to the dance with me?” I said loudly, causing a ripple of snickers to flow outward through the adolescent boys. His eyes widened, and without preamble or explanation, he opened his mouth to release one word—“No”—before turning back to his game.

  When I returned to Kayleigh at our lunch table with slumped shoulders and tears threatening to spill down my cheeks, she assured me that Simon had bad breath and a funny cowlick that would have looked ridiculous in the pictures. She also promptly dumped her date, Ken Wiggins (“He has a stupid last name,” she said), and came over to my house the night of the dance to eat Oreos and watch The Bodyguard for the umpteenth time.

  Still, I’ve been wary of her advice ever since.

  But she did have one good suggestion regarding my wife hunt as we were leaving the coffee shop Saturday: “Try a bookstore. There are a ton of nerds there.”

  On Monday morning, as soon as Jack leaves for clinic, I pour my smoothie into a plastic to-go cup, turn the handle on the back door a few times before it finally unsticks, then walk down the stairs to my car. Out of habit, I glance at Sammy’s house and am surprised to be greeted by the two khaki-clad moons of her full derriere, staring up at me from the ground.

  I suck in my breath and begin tiptoeing, hoping she didn’t hear the creak of my back door shut. I had run into her the day my mom and I took a walk, and had no choice but to explain my orange appearance. Overrun with pity and embarrassment, she had launched into a lengthy discourse on everyone she had ever known with cancer, including her pet gerbil when she was a kid. I don’t want to get stuck in a never-ending conversation this morning, but realize that she’s going to hear me open the car door anyway. I could pretend that I didn’t see her until then, but either way, I’m going to end up having to speak with her.

  “Sammy!” I say as I step off the last stair and onto my driveway, but it comes out all wrong. Too cheerful. Too fake.

  From her kneeling position, she turns her head and looks at me with a smile, but the exact same expression of pity. I wonder if she’s been walking around with that countenance since the minute I told her, as if that mother’s threat to a child—“If you cross your eyes, they’ll stay that way!”—has actually come true.

  “Daisy,” she says, peeling off her gardening gloves as she struggles to shift her hefty frame upright. “How are you?” She emphasizes the “are,” which is another thing that people do when they know you have cancer. “How are you?” becomes a loaded question instead of a simple greeting.

  “Oh, you don’t have to get up,” I wave her back down. “I’m actually running late.”

  She gets up anyway and starts walking toward me, while nodding her head knowingly. “Doctor’s appointment?”

  “No,” I say, but then I can’t think of anything else I’d be running late for. I glance around, searching for a lie, and my eyes fall on the plastic pots of flowers surrounding the ground where Sammy had been digging. I give up trying to find an excuse and opt for a change of subject. “What are you planting?”

  “Oh, whatever the guy at the Home Depot talked me into. I got a couple of azaleas and some sweet alyssa? Or something like that. Said it’s for ground cover. A few pansies. My thumb is not green.” She holds up the thick digit on her left hand and wiggles it as if to prove its beige color. “You’d think with an onion farmer for a granddaddy, it’d be in my genes or something.” She makes a clicking sound with the side of her mouth. “I can’t even keep cactuses alive.”

  I smile and resist the urge to tell her that the plural of cactus is cacti. Then I make a commiserating, I-know-what-you-mean comment about my mess of a flower bed, gesturing to the weeds overtaking the patch of yard in front of my porch.

  Her eyes brighten. “I could do it for you,” she says. “I’ve got the whole day off, and I should be done with this by lunch. I’m happy to help.”

  It’s sweet of her to offer, but I can’t help but feel like the charity case I know she now views me as. “Oh, no, that’s not necessary,” I counter. “I have a big plan for it. Hydrangeas, some verbena, a stone edging. I’m excited to tackle it.” I’m not, actually. It’s just become one more thing on my never-ending list that I don’t have time for now that I need to find Jack a wife, but she’s like a dog who’s picked up a scent and I’m hoping this will call her off.

  “Wow. Sounds like you should be doing mine, Miss Gardening Guru.” She laughs her big round laugh.

  I muster a canned chuckle. “Yours will look great. Can’t wait to see it when I get back.” I say, cueing my exit as I take a step toward the car and open the door.

  “Yes, sorry,” she waves me on. “Didn’t mean to hold you up.” But she doesn’t move from her spot where the edge of her yard meets my driveway, and I see the hesitation in her eyes before she calls out: “Maybe I could buy the hydrangeas at least.” She frowns. “I don’t really know what verbenas are, but I could ask for them. Or I could bring you guys dinner one night or watch Benny if—”

  I slam the car door shut and wave at her through the window. “No, thank you,” I say, loud enough for her to hear me through the glass. Then, through my gritted smile, I whisper: “Everything is under control.”

  THE BARNES & NOBLE near the mall is nearly void of people, barring the few navy-polo-shirted employees who are restocking shelves and manning cash registers. I suppose I should have realized that Monday morning isn’t a prime shopping time for book buyers.

  “Can I help you?” asks an eager salesman with a head of curls that are burnt orange—one of those hair colors that just look unfortunate on a man but that women spend years trying to reproduce with the help of a box.

  “Just looking,” I say. I don’t tell him what for.

  With one eye on the door, I scan the tables at the front of the store. New releases by John Grisham, Danielle Steel, Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King. It seems like the names on display never change, just the covers. And I wonder if these prolific authors will ever run out of stories to tell. If one day they’ll just turn off the computer and say, “That’s it. I’ve told them all.”

  A cowboy on the cover of a Nora Roberts catches my eye.
I pick it up and stare at his bare, plastic-looking chest. When I was growing up, my mom had a stack of these types of books on her nightstand. It seemed like such an adult thing to have, like a travel coffee mug or a checking account, that when I pictured myself twenty years in the future, as an adult, I invariably knew that my nightstand would also be covered with my own stack of lusty books. But when I got older, romance novels never interested me. I eschewed them for psychology textbooks and Jodi Picoult dramas and the latest New York Times best-sellers that everyone buzzed about. Now, holding it, I realize reading romance novels was something I always assumed I’d pick up, like crocheting or flower arranging, when my hair grayed and my skin wrinkled.

  But my hair won’t gray. And my skin won’t wrinkle. And I may die without having ever read a romance novel. Without ever knowing what the fuss is about. And this—this!—is what causes water to spring up and fill my lower lashes, blurring my vision.

  And it occurs to me if I were to write a “Coping with Terminal Cancer” pamphlet, this is what I would cover. Not the obvious stuff about anger and bargaining, but the ridiculous moments like crying over bodice rippers in a suburban strip mall at 10 A.M. on a Monday morning.

  I wipe my eyes and glance around to make sure no one has noticed my silly tears, and then tuck the book into the crook of my arm, realizing that I’m equally concerned to be spotted buying such drivel. But its weight on my elbow—and the knowledge that it will be on my nightstand tonight—is absurdly comforting.

  I straighten my spine and lift my head, trying my best to emulate a normal shopper and not a blubbering, dying woman who is looking for a wife for her husband. The bell at the entrance chimes and I look up and see a short woman struggling to push a baby stroller through the glass door. I close the gap between us and grab the edge of the door, holding it open for her.

  She smiles at me, revealing two deep dimples just below her cheekbones. It instantly reminds me of the time I tried to draw dimples on my face with my mom’s Maybelline eyeliner in the third grade because I so desperately wanted to look like Heather Lindley, a fifth-grader with long blond ringlets who wore white tights and large bows in her hair and brought Lunchables to school every day, which is how I knew that her family had money because my mom always said they were too expensive.

  “Thanks,” says the woman. “I’m convinced the people who design doors like these are men who have never had children.”

  I smile back at her but can’t think of anything to say in response other than “I like your dimples,” which would be ridiculous.

  She points her stroller in the direction of the children’s section and I walk back the way that I had come in my best fake shopping mode, while I’m secretly marrying this woman—Heather Lindley’s grown-up doppelgänger—and Jack in my mind. I picture them with a pack of dimply, blond children following them like waddling baby ducks. And then I let the image disintegrate.

  She has a baby, which means she’s probably already married.

  I slowly stroll past the bargain books, the racks of magazines, and the self-help section, where imperatives yell at me from the covers:

  Get Rich Now!

  Stop Panicking!

  Lose Your Baggage, Lose the Weight!

  And then I stop short. Eight words jump out at me from a book jacket, and my hand is reaching for it before my brain has given it permission.

  Preparing for the Death of a Loved One, by Dr. Eli Goldstein.

  A sticker on the cover declares: WORLD-RENOWNED PSYCHIATRIST AS SEEN ON DR. PHIL.

  I flip through the pages without really reading the words; I know that I’m buying it for Jack on the title alone, as casually as I would pick up the latest Michael Crichton or a pair of Dockers on sale at Macy’s.

  Saw this.

  Thought of you.

  Then I hesitate. What happened to letting Jack deal with his grief at his own pace? My hand moves to put the book back on its shelf.

  But he’s not dealing with it.

  He will! At his own pace.

  But maybe he just needs a little push, a little help. Maybe he needs to be forced to confront it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid instead of waiting for it to become grimy and useless, falling off on its own from days of wear.

  In the end, I add it to the Nora Roberts under my arm and decide I’ll just leave it on his nightstand the way my mom left Our Bodies, Ourselves on my nightstand when I was twelve. Wordlessly, and without preamble.

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  As I turn to leave the aisle and pay for my new books, I notice the stroller woman standing at the opposite end of the self-help section. I chuckle—a little bitterly—to myself. What could she and her perfectly towheaded son need assistance with? Help! My life is too ideal.

  I stop my silent, callous sarcasm when I notice that she, too, is looking at the grief books. Sad. I wonder if she’s looking for something to help a friend deal with the loss of a grandmother, or an aunt or a brother. That’s something Heather Lindley would have done. She was the girl who had a smile for everyone—even Darrel Finch, who nobody liked because he wore the same pair of Levi’s every day and smelled like sour milk—and she brought extra number two pencils on test day in case anyone forgot, and when she sold the most World’s Finest Caramel Bites and Mint Meltaways for the annual chorus trip to Disney World and won a hundred dollars for her efforts, she decided to donate it to a family at her church whose trailer had burned down. Which is why I couldn’t hate her, even though her hair bows always matched her socks and she could afford Lunchables and I couldn’t.

  I look back at the woman, who’s now intently reading the back of the book she’s holding and gently rocking the stroller back and forth with her free hand.

  Maybe it’s not for a friend. Maybe she’s lost a friend. Or a grandmother. Or an aunt. Or a brother.

  Then I notice that the hand she’s moving the stroller with is her left hand. And there’s no wedding band on it. And that’s when my heart starts racing, as I begin to piece together that she’s obviously a widow who lost her husband in a tragic car accident when she was eight months pregnant and her therapist suggested a few books that could help guide her though the pain of losing him so suddenly and leaving her with just the memory of him every time she looks at her son’s chocolate eyes and tiny ears.

  And then, even though I never pictured Jack’s wife already having a kid, or being a widow, or having dimples like Heather Lindley, it strikes me all at once that maybe all of the above should also be added to my list.

  I inch closer to her, trying to think of an opening line, something that could engage her in conversation so she can open up to me about her dead husband and how hard being a single mom is and then I can tell her my sob story and we’ll bond over chai tea in the tiny coffee shop while we hatch a plan to introduce her to Jack.

  I’m so close now I can see the raw skin around her fingernails, where she has chewed and bitten them down to the quick, and I nod, understanding that her grief has driven her to that. She looks up at me and there are tears in her eyes. I clutch my chest with sympathy for her.

  “Are you OK?” I say, my voice filled with concern.

  “Yes,” she says, her voice squeaky in return. She runs the back of her hand across her dripping nostrils and sniffs. “I’m sorry.”

  I smile gently at her, wanting to share that I was just crying in the bookstore, too. That we can bond over this embarrassing display of overemotion. That I get it. But I just wait, allowing her to take her time in unburdening her grief.

  “It’s just—” She takes a deep breath, and I think maybe she’s pulling it together, but a few more sobs tumble out. “Oh, Max,” she breathes.

  I nod. Her husband’s name was Max. It’s a good name. A strong name. I instantly imagine a man with equally deep dimples and straight teeth, his dark locks contrasting with her blond. And then I realize I’m picturing the man on the Nora Roberts book I’m holding.

  A high-pitched wail startles me, an
d the adult Heather Lindley wipes her eyes and leans down to pick up her squawking baby. “Shh,” she croons. “It’s OK.” Like magic, the crying stops and the boy snuggles his downy head into his mother’s neck.

  “Was Max your husband?” I prompt, not wanting to break the moment we seemed to be having.

  Her eyes grow large as she looks at me. “Oh, no. No,” she says, and she stops jiggling the baby for a second so she can dig into her jeans pocket for a ratty Kleenex. “Not my . . . he’s my”—she dabs at her nose—“well, was my . . .” The tears start flowing again and I wait expectantly. So Max wasn’t her husband, but still, she doesn’t have a wedding ring and she’s good with kids, and those dimples—

  “My cat,” she says, then blows her nose into the tissue. Her son briefly opens his eyes at the commotion and then closes them again.

  “Your cat?”

  She nods. “He was sixteen. I got him in middle school, and when he was a kitten he would suck on my hair and knead his little paws onto my chest while I slept. And then . . .”

  The woman continues delivering the eulogy for her beloved feline while I peer more closely at the book she’s holding: Losing a Pet, Losing a Friend: Coping with the Death of Your Animal Companion.

  My first thought: That is a really long title.

  I voice my second thought. “So are you married?”

  She stops midsentence and I realize I’ve interrupted her.

  “Um, no,” she says, assessing me and my strange line of questioning. I chide myself for not being more patient, for not trying to glean the information I’m seeking in a more subtle way. But really, time isn’t something I’ve got in spades right now. “Not really,” she continues, still sniffling. “Tristan’s father and I don’t believe in marriage. You know, just a piece of paper and all that. We’re like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.”

  I nod, more irritated at myself than at her for jumping the gun. But I’m irritated at her, too. At her perfect dimples and magic baby-calming powers and her son who will probably never be the kid in the cafeteria who can’t afford a Lunchable.