Before I Go

by Colleen Oakley

  I open my mouth to say “Nothing,” but stop when I realize how crazy that would sound. Why else would I have pulled into the spot if not to order something? Then I chastise myself for caring what a fast-food waitress thinks about my mental health.

  The voice repeats itself, and I panic. The engine is still running and my hand is on the gearshift. All I have to do is move it to reverse and press the gas. But instead, I turn my head to the electronic box.

  “Burger,” I say. But the word comes out soft and broken and squeaking, as if I’ve just learned how to speak.

  “Naked? Glorified? Chili?” The rapid-fire questions unnerve me and I don’t remember what they mean, so I just go with the first one.

  “Naked,” I say, which is how I feel. Exposed.

  “Strings?”

  A neuron fires somewhere in my brain, recalling the knowledge that strings equals fries, and I picture Jack feeding them to me, one by one.

  “Please.”

  Minutes later a woman in a paper hat appears at my window. I hand her my credit card, which she runs through a handheld device, and she gives me a paper bag. I set it on my passenger seat and then move the gearshift into reverse.

  Driving home, I glance over at the bag, as if it’s a puppy I’ve adopted on a whim, and now what am I supposed to do with it? I try to remember the feel of the food in my mouth, that pleasing first bite that’s all steamy bun and fatty beef, but I resist opening the bag, my strange bout of spontaneity waning.

  And by the time I pull in my driveway, the odorous sack has morphed from appealing to utterly disgusting, so I pinch it between two fingers and carry it up the back steps, through the kitchen door, and deposit it directly in the trash can under the sink.

  IT’S JUST PAST eleven when I hear Jack’s car pull up that night. I’m lying in bed, forcing my eyes to stay open because I want to see him. Not to say anything or do anything. I just want to lay my eyes on his untamed, shaggy hair, and his asymmetric face, and his impossibly long arms. It will be the first time I’ve seen him since he left for Pamela’s farm yesterday morning, as he was called into the wildlife clinic on his way home and didn’t get in until long after I had fallen asleep, and he left for work before I got up this morning. Part of me wonders if he’s doing it on purpose, if it’s easier not to be around me. I roll my eyes. Of course it’s easier. I’ve not exactly made him want to be home with my loving gestures and kind words.

  When the back door creaks open, Benny jumps down from the bed to go greet him, and I sit up a little and run my fingers through my hair, smoothing it over one shoulder. Jack’s boot-clad feet clop down the hallway, and it feels like they’re keeping in time with my heartbeat.

  And then he’s there.

  “Hey,” he says, his eyes locking with mine.

  “Hey,” I say.

  He turns toward the dresser and deposits his keys and wallet, then starts peeling off his scrubs.

  The air feels thick and I know it’s still there. The tension. I search my mind for something to say, but every sentence sounds ridiculous, like a line from some after-school special, and I dismiss them one by one.

  Can we talk about this dying thing?

  What’s happening to us?

  Do you still love me?

  The questions themselves are juvenile, stemming from my own recently acquired insecurities and selfishness. Like bait on a fishing rod, I’ve cast Jack off, and now I feel the need to reel him in, tug on the line, make sure he’s still there.

  Of course he’s still there. He’s Jack. He’s my Jack. And I know all it would take for me to reach him is a couple of words.

  I’m sorry.

  I know I’ve been impossible.

  I love you.

  I open my mouth to speak and then close it.

  And then I ask him about Pamela’s horse.

  He looks up at me, as if he’d forgotten I was there and my voice reminded him. “I’ve been working on it all evening,” he says, and I can see the strain in his eyes as he walks, hangdog to the bed. “The good news is, artificial limbs for horses have come a long way since Midnight.”

  I stare at him, confused.

  As Jack pulls down the comforter and crawls in beside me, he looks up and notices my expression. “The miniature horse that was first fitted with a prosthetic a few years ago?”

  I shake my head. “Never heard of him. Him?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, some vets even fitted a quarter horse up in Washington with a prosthetic last year, but it was her back leg, just like Midnight’s. Hind leg injuries are better suited for prosthetics because they bear less weight. Copper’s injury is in his front leg.”

  “Oh, well, that sucks,” I say, trying to be sympathetic.

  But Jack’s lip curls up on one side. “It’s exactly the type of case Ling has been having me research. And I found this vet named Redden in Kentucky who developed a pin-cast technique that Ling thinks we can replicate—”

  I don’t understand much of what he says after that, but his eyes have brightened and I know it means the news is good for Pamela. That Jack has figured out a way to save Copper.

  “Pamela won’t ever be able to ride him again, but if the amputation goes smoothly and we can get him to bear weight on his new prosthetic directly after surgery, I do think he’ll live.”

  “That’s really great,” I say. And then, because this may be the longest conversation we’ve had in a few weeks and I don’t want it to end, I ask: “What’s the farm like?”

  “Gorgeous,” he says, yawning. “Did you know that Pamela helped build most of it?”

  It’s a rhetorical question, as there’s no reason for me to know that. But it still grates. Or maybe it’s the admiration in Jack’s voice that strikes a nerve. “Really?” I say, concentrating on keeping my voice steady. Calm. Interested.

  He nods and reaches up to turn out his light. “Crazy, right? Her parents bought it about five years ago. Major fixer-upper. Pamela and her dad bought a bunch of books—Carpentry for Dummies, stuff like that—and the two of them did most of the work.”

  Pamela and her dad. Just one more thing to envy her for.

  As Jack burrows under the covers, I picture Pamela and her perfect family. I wonder if Jack met her parents yesterday. Would they be his in-laws one day? And then I think of Pamela meeting Jack’s parents. I wonder if they would like her. I wonder if they’d like her more than me. I wonder if Jack’s mom would teach her how to make her “famous” green Jell-O salad with celery and pineapple and marshmallow fluff and if Pamela would lie to her and tell her how delicious it looked.

  I turn to Jack to say something else. Keep the conversation going somehow, but his back is to me and his breathing is deep. I wonder if he said good night and I missed it.

  I pull the chain on my light and lay down in the dark, blinking up at the ceiling and trying to attach a word to the feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  I can only come up with one: empty.

  I picture the greasy Varsity burger and fries rotting away in the trash can in the kitchen and my stomach lurches. I close my eyes and try to clear my mind, but Pamela’s face is there, staring at me like a . . . like a . . . like a woman that my husband could fall in love with.

  I slide out of bed, taking care not to jostle the mattress, even though Jack’s a sound sleeper. I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall, where I open the cupboard under the sink and reach into the trash can, feeling for the paper bag in the darkness. Then I lower my butt to the floor, clutching my treasure.

  The tile is cold through my thin pajama pants, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but getting the wrapper off the dense layers of bread and meat in my hand. When the barrier is gone, I stuff the burger into my mouth as far as it will go and bite, and even through the cold rubberiness, I can taste the burst of flavors that I’ve denied myself for so long, but I don’t linger or savor or relish the moment.

  I just keep chewing, moving my mouth up and down, trying not to gag on th
e thick pieces of oily bread and fibrous meat. In between bites of the sandwich, I stuff cold hard strings of fries into my mouth by the handful.

  And then the burger is gone and the fries are gone and my stomach is full and slightly queasy. So I close my eyes and lean my head back against the cabinet door. It’s firm and unyielding. And this comforts me.

  OVER THE NEXT four days, Jack and I manage to have many real conversations, which at first feels like a breakthrough. That maybe we’re no longer tiptoeing on glass around each other. Until I realize they all seem to somehow revolve around Pamela. It started on Tuesday evening, after he returned from spending the afternoon with her and Ling and Copper at the farm. We were sitting on the couch stuffing ivory envelopes with Jack’s graduation announcements.

  “Pamela really has a way with animals,” he said. “Ling even noticed. He called her the horse whisperer.”

  “Kids, too,” I said, remembering the boy on open house night who was glued to her leg.

  Then on Wednesday, while Jack was cleaning out Gertie’s cage in the kitchen, it was: “Did I tell you Pamela’s brother is a total hippie? He lives in Arizona. In a yurt commune.”

  “Interesting,” I responded, stroking Gertie’s swirls of black and white fur with one hand and feeding her a carrot with the other. “Does she ever visit him?” I try to picture Jack learning to whittle around a campfire and sleeping on the ground.

  Thursday, I grilled salmon steaks and made Jack’s favorite yogurt dill sauce to go with them. But when he came home a little after eight, he wasn’t hungry. “Sorry,” he said. “Pamela brought dinner up to the clinic for me and Ling as a thank-you.” He patted his belly. “I’m stuffed.”

  I covered his plate with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge.

  “Thoughtful,” I murmured, but my heart wasn’t in the compliment. Something was bothering me.

  That Jack didn’t call to say he didn’t need dinner? No, he had missed plenty of meals over the course of our years together. But he always ate the food, either late when he got home, or for lunch the next day. Was it that Pamela took him a meal at work and I was feeling territorial? OK, yes, but I was also glad that she was proving to be the caretaker I had pegged her for, the caretaker Jack would need when I was gone.

  It’s not until I’m driving to Emory on Friday that what’s bothering me becomes clear. It’s something Kayleigh said to me when Jack and I were first dating. I had just told her that Jack played the trumpet when he was in elementary school and that he could still play part of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

  “Oh my God. Would you please stop?” she said.

  I looked at her. “Stop what?”

  “Talking about Jack. You say his name every two seconds.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it.

  But now, Jack is doing the same thing. With Pamela.

  And maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just because he always tells me about his days at work, and this week, his days have involved Pamela and her horse whispering and her considerate cooking.

  And if it’s something, well, then, isn’t that what I wanted? I mentally repeat the Martha Stewart–ish mantra that I’ve been rolling over in my head this week every time I think about Jack-and-Pamela, Pamela-and-Jack: it’s a good thing.

  But if it really is a good thing, then why do I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe?

  Goddamn it.

  Not again.

  I grip the steering wheel with white knuckles and glance in the rearview mirror before swerving across three lanes of traffic to pull my car to a screeching stop in the emergency lane. I gasp for air, but it has nowhere to go. My lungs are blocked off like a street under construction, and they burn like someone just coated them with hot tar. My heart thumps wildly, panicking of its own accord, even as I try to convince myself to remain calm. Sweat dribbles from my forehead into my eye, and only then do I notice how uncomfortably hot I am. And light-headed. Yet somehow I still manage to open the car door in time to deposit my half-digested breakfast smoothie on the asphalt.

  When my body stops heaving, I lean back and gratefully breathe in through my now-acidic mouth. My heartbeat slows. Tension drains from my shoulders and I inexplicably feel weepy. I look at the clock on the dashboard and urge myself to pull it together. I don’t want to be late for my trial workup. But I know there’s something I must do first. I reach over to my purse on the passenger seat and pull out a white business card and my cell phone. And with trembling hands, I dial Patrick, the respiratory therapist, to make an appointment.

  “YOU’VE LOST WEIGHT.” Dr. Rankoff frowns as she looks at my chart. “Have you been eating?”

  I immediately think of the cold, greasy Varsity burger and French fries and feel guilty that I was so reckless with my diet. I picture the cancer as a cartoon monster, greedily feeding on my irresponsibility, growing exponentially in just a few days’ time, causing my body to shut down, shedding pounds like a tourist sheds layers of clothing when they reach their balmy destination.

  When I don’t answer, she peers at me, studying my face more intently. “Are you feeling OK today?”

  There’s that word again. OK.

  I know I don’t look OK. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the automatic glass doors on my way in. My hair is disheveled. My face sallow from my “episode” in the car. I only had time to smooth a few errant locks behind my ears before my name was called in the waiting room.

  “I’m all right,” I say.

  She waits. Allows the silence to grow.

  “I . . . uh. I guess I’ve been having panic attacks?”

  She nods. “Dr. Saunders mentioned something about that.”

  I pause. They talk about me?

  “Have you made an appointment with the respiratory therapist?”

  I tell her I have. And then I steel myself for her news, which isn’t really news.

  The tumors are still growing. “Slowly,” she adds, but her voice is not filled with hope.

  I now picture my Lots of Cancer as the tortoise in the fable race with the hare. Slow and steady. And I know Dr. Rankoff doesn’t sound hopeful because, in the end, the tortoise always wins.

  “DID YOU KNOW Pamela’s brother lives in a yurt?” I ask Kayleigh as we’re sprawled on her couch half watching a weekend marathon of The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo.

  “What’s a yurt?” Kayleigh asks. She’s been furiously texting on her phone for most of the morning, so I know she’s not really paying attention to me.

  “I don’t know. Some kind of teepee, I think.”

  “Huh,” she says.

  “Did you know she makes her own jam?”

  I only know this because I spent most of my free time last week poring over her Facebook page and Pinterest board and LinkedIn profile. Other things I learned:

  She has 684 friends.

  She attended college in Florida.

  She went skydiving on her thirtieth birthday.

  She watches Grey’s Anatomy.

  “Huh,” says Kayleigh.

  “And I think Jack likes her,” I say. “I mean, really likes her. He’s mentioned her a lot this week. Of course, they have spent a lot of time together, because he’s trying to save her horse. But still. It feels like he’s a little fixated. You know, like a kid with a new toy.”

  I’m just rambling now, giving voice to my thoughts, more to sort them out than to get Kayleigh’s opinion, because I know she’s not really invested in the conversation. So I keep talking. About how Pamela’s ex-boyfriend looks a little like the football player with the Mohawk from Glee. Except he didn’t have a Mohawk. And how she sometimes reposts those Facebook statuses that promise good luck if you share them within ten seconds of reading them. And how she ate at the new Wildberry Café downtown for dinner on Tuesday night. Herb-crusted chicken and prosciutto-wrapped green beans.

  She had posted a picture and the food looked really good. So good that I started to regret turning down Jack’s suggestion a few weeks
earlier that we go check it out.

  I glance at the TV where a Ford Motors commercial is touting some spring sale. It reminds me of something else I learned about Pamela.

  “Oh, and did you know she drives a pickup truck? A gray one with an extended cab. She got it a few months ago.”

  I pictured her as a Honda Civic kind of girl, so it caught me off guard. But even I had to admit, there was something sexy about a woman behind the wheel of a big rig. I know Jack thinks so. When we visited his parents for Christmas last year, I offered to run out for eggs for his mom and I had to drive his dad’s old Bronco to the corner store because Jack’s car was blocked in. He came with me.

  “You look so hot,” he said, and reached over and squeezed my thigh from the passenger seat.

  I smiled at him.

  “You know there’s an abandoned parking lot up here on the right,” he said, with a naughty grin.

  “Jack! We’re not doing it in the backseat of your dad’s car,” I said, keeping my hands at a very responsible ten and two on the wheel, even as Jack’s began wandering up my blouse.

  “Who said anything about the backseat?” He leaned over and nuzzled my neck.

  “Behave,” I said, cocking an eyebrow and gently pushing him away.

  Now I wish I had pulled him closer.

  “Anyway, I guess it comes in handy when she’s working on her parents’—”

  “Daisy!” Kayleigh interrupts me. I tear my eyes away from Rachel Zoe’s brittle frame on the television where she’s fingering a red silk gown that’s “bananas” and look at my best friend.

  “What?”

  She shakes her head and scoffs. “Do you even hear yourself? Pamela this. Pamela that.”

  “So?” I raise my eyebrows, challenging her. Doesn’t she get it? She could be Jack’s wife.

  “I’m just saying,” she says, her voice softer. “I don’t think it’s Jack that’s obsessed with her.”