Before I Go

by Colleen Oakley

  “Mom?” I say, my voice a little stronger. She immediately opens her eyes and is by my side.

  “I need my phone.”

  She squints at the watch on her wrist. “Daisy, it’s six in the morning.”

  “I don’t care,” I say. “I have to talk to him.”

  “OK,” she says, and walks over to the counter where my bag sits. She digs inside it, retrieves my cell, and gives it to me.

  “I’m going to get a coffee,” she says, stuffing her feet into her Keds.

  Jack picks up on the third ring.

  “Jack,” I breathe.

  “Daisy.” It’s a statement, and I search for an emotion in it, but I can’t find one.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” he says. “I couldn’t really sleep.”

  I hang on to the admission, allowing myself to believe his restlessness was over missing me, worrying about me, loving me.

  “That’s funny. All I’ve been doing is sleeping,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Brain surgery is hard work.”

  “I’ve heard that,” he says, and I think maybe I detect a smile in his voice. It’s all I need.

  “Jack, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I should’ve let you come. I should’ve asked you to come. I did need you and I was wrong to tell you I didn’t.”

  He doesn’t say anything so I keep talking.

  “God, I was so scared. They made me sign all these papers and kept talking about how I could die and all I could think about was—”

  He cuts me off.

  “Daisy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s OK,” he says, and I hear him exhaling. “Just . . . It’s OK.”

  I hold the phone to my ear, waiting for him to say something else, anything else. But he doesn’t.

  “OK,” I say. “So, do you—”

  I’m about to say forgive me, but I hear something on Jack’s end of the phone. It’s not Jack.

  Where do you keep your sugar? the voice that’s not Jack’s says.

  My heart stops beating and I wonder if this is what Sheila meant when she said cardiac death.

  “Daisy, are you there?” Jack’s voice is full of concern and I can’t decide what he’s more concerned about—if I heard her voice or the fact that I’m suddenly very much dying.

  My mom opens the door to my room holding a steaming Styrofoam cup and I look at her.

  She stops when she sees my face. “Should I leave?” she mouths.

  I shake my head no.

  “Jack, I gotta go,” I say.

  And I hang up the phone before he—or Pamela—can say another word.

  “LOOK TO THE left . . . Good . . . Now right . . . Good . . . Up.”

  I follow the occupational therapist’s instructions as she shines a penlight in my face. My entire morning has been a flow of doctors and nurses and specialists testing all of my basic functions: speech, movement, memory, ability to follow instructions, and now vision. So far I have passed all of the tests, which would typically fill me with pleasure, a sense of achievement. I am top of the class when it comes to recovering from brain surgery. But I don’t care.

  Jack is with Pamela. Or he was with her. For a night. Or a morning. And then I wonder if he was with her the night he didn’t come home, which is stupid to wonder because of course he was with her. And who could blame him? I told him I didn’t need him—didn’t want him. Worse, I told myself that I wanted him to be with Pamela. I plotted for it, planned for it, wished for it. Now my only wish is that I could click the button on my motorized bed and hold it down until it folds completely in half, swallowing me whole. What have I done?

  What have I done?

  The question has been running on a loop since I hung up the phone with Jack, going from a soft-spoken whisper to a full-on fist-pounding wail inside my head. I got Lots of Cancer, and instead of running directly into my husband’s long arms, I pushed him into someone else’s.

  And he went.

  In between my constant barrage of self-flagellation, this is the bare fact that keeps popping up like insistent puppets in a game of Whac-a-Mole.

  Jack went.

  And it’s this information that I can’t bring myself to accept. It’s like dropping a plate that you think is unbreakable plastic, only to have it shatter into a thousand pieces when it hits the ground. Has our relationship always been so fragile? I think back to my announcement to Jack on our third date—that love isn’t real. It’s a notion I quickly dismissed when I realized that science could point to the hormones and chemicals that made me feel tingly and reckless and safe, but it couldn’t explain why I felt tingly and reckless and safe with Jack. Science can’t explain why two specific people are magnetically drawn to each other instead of repelled. Only love can. And though I never believed in fairy tales or soul mates or any of those other purely romantic notions, I believed in Jack. I believed in Jack and me.

  And I realize that even though I was searching for a wife for Jack, that I wanted him to have somebody, to not be alone when I was gone, I never really believed he would love another woman. That he could love another woman. Not the way he loved me.

  But now, that belief is shattered.

  And simmering beneath my turmoil of emotions at this stunning revelation is anger.

  At Jack.

  For shattering it.

  How could he do this to me? To us? I know I haven’t been a perfect wife. OK, so I’ve been a terrible wife, shutting Jack out, pushing him away, pushing him toward Pamela, even. But still, I am his wife. Whatever happened to in sickness and health? I picture Jack repeating those words to me in front of the gin-soaked judge and it turns my stomach.

  “Great,” the occupational therapist says. “Your vision checks out perfectly.”

  Sheila chimes in. “That’s all the tests for today. If you’re feeling up to it tomorrow, we’ll get you out of that bed. Try taking a few steps.” She’s taken to speaking to me like I’m a child, and it sounds like she’s promising me chocolate cake if I’m a good girl. “Until then, get your rest. Buzz if you need anything.”

  I need you to go get my husband so I can strangle his lying, cheating neck. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, trying to defuse my anger. Be reasonable. Rational. This is my fault. It’s all my fault. But as much as I try to tell myself that, all I can picture is perfect Pamela in my kitchen, opening my cabinets, using my sugar, talking to my husband, and petting my goddamned dog. And I can’t for the life of me remember why I wanted Jack to be with her in the first place—or what he could possibly see in her.

  She wears animal sweaters, for Christ’s sake.

  LATER THAT EVENING, Mom says she’s going home to freshen up and feed Mixxy. A few minutes after she leaves, there’s a knock at my door.

  “Come in,” I say, expecting to see another nurse or therapist of some kind ready to poke and prod me, but it’s not.

  “Kayleigh.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her since I dropped her off at her car after the funeral home. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Your mom called,” she says, then walks over to the bed and swats me on the arm.

  “Ow!”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were having fucking brain surgery. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It all happened kind of fast.”

  “S’ok. I’m just glad you didn’t die or anything. I would never have forgiven you.”

  Despite the storm of pain still swirling through my heart and mind over Jack, I grin. Because she’s here and she’s Kayleigh and I know we’re OK.

  “So, any hot doctors?”

  I shake my head. “Not a one.”

  “Damn. Well, I guess I’ll go, then.”

  “No, you’re sitting down. I’m so bored I’m about to go crazy.” I don’t want to tell her what’s really driving me crazy. I’m not ready to hear I told you so.

  “I would have been here earlier but your precious Pamela r
ushed out the door at three today, leaving me to do four parent-teacher conferences by myself.”

  At this I sit up a little. “She did?”

  “Sorry, I know I’m not supposed to talk bad about her, but it was so last-minute and I stayed up really late with Greg and I was a tad hungover and was not prepared to stay late, much less talk to those annoying par—”

  “Do you know what for?”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Do you know why she left early?”

  Kayleigh squints her eyes as if she’s trying to remember. “I don’t know. Maybe it had something to do with her horse? Didn’t Jack fix its leg on Monday? I never pay attention to her. Anyway, apparently it’s got her all discombobulated, because she was late this morning, too. Just came in right when the kids started arriving as if I didn’t need her help getting the classroom ready—”

  Kayleigh keeps talking while my heart sinks as quickly as the Titanic. Because I know Pamela was with Jack this morning, not with Copper. And my heart squeezes tighter, because I know that’s what made her late. I know what it’s like to be with Jack in the morning. To wake up in bed with him and wish that we had been snowed in overnight or that a bomb threat had shut down the entire campus, just so I’d have an excuse to lay next to him for a little bit longer. But I never gave into my impulse, always dragging myself out of the warm covers, dutifully going to class. Now I wish I had. I wish I had woken up one of those mornings and never left the bed. Never left Jack. I wish I was still beside him now.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kayleigh cuts into my thoughts. “Your face is all screwy.” She scrunches her nose at me and then looks alarmed. “Are you going to cry?”

  I bite my lip because I do feel like I’m going to cry. And then I take a deep breath and tell her about the phone call and the sugar and the vows that Jack has broken.

  Kayleigh listens and then furrows her brow. “I’m confused. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “I thought so, too,” I say. “I was wrong.”

  Kayleigh nods slowly, thoughtfully. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  I look up at her. “What do you mean? What can I do about it?” It’s so apparent in her question that Kayleigh’s never been in love. Not really. And my heart breaks for her at the same time that I long to be in her shoes. To not know the irreversible rush of emotions that overtakes everything when you first are falling in love. It’s like trying to stop a flood with a chain-link fence. Impossible.

  “You could fight for him,” she says, shrugging, as if it is the easiest thing in the world.

  “What, like challenge Pamela to a duel?” Even though I’m joking, I instantly picture facing Pamela with a saber in hand. I would skewer her without hesitation.

  “Yeah, if this was 1874. Or, you could just tell him how you feel. Jack loves you, Daisy. This doesn’t sound like him.”

  “I know, but he’s different now. I just kept pushing him away. And we just—everything just fell apart. And now . . .” I shake my head, searching for words to explain how Jack is now. But I can’t find any, and I know it’s because I don’t know how Jack is now. That’s how much we’ve fallen apart. My eyes sting and I take another deep breath. “You know, maybe I should just let it go. I do want Jack to be happy. But . . . but—” I’m not sure what the but is, what has exactly changed to make me abandon my plan to let Jack move on with Pamela. With his life. Except I just know that I don’t want him to. Move on. Not yet.

  “But you want to be happy, too.” Kayleigh finishes for me.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice tiny.

  “You should be,” she says. “You’re not fuckin’ dead yet.”

  JACK CALLS AROUND seven forty-five while I’m watching Jeopardy, but I ignore it. I don’t want to hear him lie about how he spent his day or pretend to be the obligatory caring husband—not while he cares for someone else. I put my phone on silent and push a button on my mechanical bed to turn out the light. Kayleigh is gone and I told my mom to stay home so she could get a good night’s sleep in her own bed, but now I wish I hadn’t because I feel impossibly alone. I pump an extra shot of Vicodin through my IV and close my eyes, letting Alex Trebek’s familiar voice lull me to sleep.

  The next day I traverse the nine steps to the bathroom door and back to the bed by myself, impressing the physical therapist who’s come to screen me. “Beautiful!” he says. “Think you’re up for stairs this afternoon?”

  I agree that I am, and ace those, too, and when Dr. Braunstein visits me just before the hospital dinner service he says I’m well enough to be discharged the next morning. “But you still need plenty of bed rest,” he adds. “And no strenuous activity for at least two weeks. That’s when I’ll see you for a follow-up, unless there are any issues between now and then.”

  He pats my leg and I thank him for removing the tumor, which feels like a silly thing to say once it’s out of my mouth. “Happy to do it,” he says.

  Then I call my mom to tell her the news, and when I hang up with her I just stare at my phone. I know I should call my husband to tell him I can come home. That’s what wives do, right? Let their husbands know when they’re coming home from the hospital? But then, husbands don’t go falling in love with people who aren’t their wives. Or they’re not supposed to, anyway.

  I dial his number.

  He picks up on the first ring.

  “Daisy,” he says. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

  This, at least, is true. When I picked up my phone this morning to turn the ringer back on, I had three missed calls from him and ignored two more during the day.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’ve been meeting with a lot of therapists and stuff.”

  “Yeah, that’s what your mom told me. But everything is going well, right?”

  “Yeah. They said I can go home tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I hear the surprise in his voice, but it’s more of horror than of delight, and it drives the knife deeper into my chest and brings my bitterness directly to the surface.

  Sorry to break up your little love nest.

  But then, I’m not sure I will break up his love nest, because I’m not sure I’m ready to see him just yet. “I think I might just stay at my mom’s, though. Rest up there.”

  “For how long?” he asks, and I wonder if he’s calculating how many more nights he’ll have with Pamela.

  “I don’t know. When do you want me home?” It comes out more heated than I anticipate, but, well, I am heated.

  “I want you home now,” he says, and it sounds so sincere I almost believe it. And for a second I have a flash of sympathy for Jack. It must be hard to have a dying wife and a healthy lover waiting in the wings. But at the word “lover,” the bubble of sympathy bursts, and my anger flares again.

  Jack keeps speaking, oblivious to my warring emotions. “But you probably should get your rest. How about I drive down and get you on Sunday? We’ll just leave your car at your mom’s. Figure out how to get it later.”

  “That’s fine,” I say. And even though we haven’t been fighting, haven’t really been talking about much of anything, the conversation is exhausting me.

  “OK,” he says. “And, Daisy?”

  “Yeah?” I ask, but the only sound on the other end of the line is Jack’s steady breathing.

  And then he speaks. “G’night.”

  “ ’Night, Jack.” And for a split second I’m back home in our bed and there’s nothing between us—no miles of road or Lots of Cancer or Pamela—but the sheets.

  twenty-four

  I AM SIX YEARS old.

  Well, I feel six anyway, tucked into my twin bed, watching my nineteen-inch TV while Mom fiddles with the rabbit-ear antennas. “How’s that?” she asks after she has made the squiggly lines slightly less squiggly with her expert maneuvering.

  “Good enough,” I say. “I think I can still grasp what’s happening on The Price Is Right.”

  She smiles. “I’ll go get you someth
ing to eat.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and turn back to Drew Carey and his pencil-thin microphone.

  I fall asleep at some point during the Showcase Showdown and wake later to find a tray on my nightstand with a plate of sliced oranges and a bowl of cold chicken noodle soup. It immediately reminds me of Jack and the night that I yelled at him. I should have just eaten the damn soup. And then curled up on him and looked him in his imperfectly perfect face and told him I was lucky to have him.

  But now Pamela is lucky to have him.

  No. I shake my head, determined to stay angry with Jack. He lied to me. He betrayed me.

  But as hard as I try, I can’t muster the energy to be mad at him. And I know it’s because I love him. And because I betrayed him first.

  I turned away from him when I should have turned toward him. I spent the last three months looking for a wife for him, telling myself I was doing it because I loved him, because I didn’t want to leave him alone. But all I was doing was leaving him alone.

  And then I remember what Kayleigh said to me at the funeral home. That I was the one wasting my time. And I know for once she was right. I’ve been wasting my time. I think of all the hours, minutes, seconds that I could have spent petting his fingers, tracing his face, kissing his crooked smile. All the days that I should have spent with him, just talking to him about algae and hip pins and how I was terrified to die, to go somewhere without him.

  A sound erupts from the pit of my stomach and out through my mouth that sounds like a cat being tortured.

  The thought of being away from Jack for one second longer is more than I can bear. And I can only hope that Kayleigh is right again. That it’s not too late.

  “Daisy?” I hear my mom call from somewhere in the house and then the sound of her footfall in the hallway as she comes rushing to my room.

  “Are you OK?”

  “No,” I say. “I need Jack. I have to go get Jack.” If I started it, maybe there’s a chance I can end it. Maybe Kayleigh’s right and it’s not too late.

  “Honey, he’ll be here on Sunday.”

  “Now!” I say, putting one sock-clad foot on my bedroom floor.