Whatever Helen thought, Anna loved this chant. Layla had no doubts. However cringeworthy or boring Helen might think it was, the fact was that Anna asked to close every Friday Craft and Wine with that chant. In their years of singing together, the women had created intricate harmonies. It meant something. Actually, it made Layla’s blood boil. It should be enough to say, Helen, it was my kitchen or her kitchen pretty much every day for twenty years. I also know some things Anna wants. But why justify? The whole thing made Layla feel like she was back in seventh grade. And not quite in the right crowd.
“Hey, killer,” Layla called in response to Zeus’s incessant barking. She waited for him to race down the hallway to circle and yap at her feet.
But it was odd. No one shouting at Zeus to shut up. Nothing cooking. Not any of the food extravaganzas the friends had brought last week. None of Ming’s soup on the stove.
Maybe they hadn’t come? Couldn’t take it when it got really tough. Not for them if they couldn’t be big heroes swooping in with their self-congratulatory smiles when Anna rallied and told childhood stories.
Now, with Anna barely conscious, they’d chickened out of the tough stuff.
“Coming, killer.”
More likely a simple delay.
Layla could stay until they came. She’d take any time with Anna. Even when Anna slept. Her light, motoring snore was a comfort.
But in the bedroom there was only Zeus.
Zeus alert, up on all fours, barking on the hospital bed like his manic, teacup-poodle self.
“What’s going on?” Layla bent to let Zeus hop into her arms. “Where’s everybody, killer? Where’s Anna, Zeus?” She tried to strip any alarm from her voice. “Where’s our Anna?”
Anna’s clothes, the ones she refused to change out of—the purple sweatpants, green Billabong T-shirt, and blue ski socks, each a castoff belonging to her kids—were clumped on the bed.
Layla spun in a circle. Where was Anna?
She eased Zeus down. He raced to the pillow, grabbing it up with his teeth, gnashing and shaking it.
She spun again, as if she’d missed something. “Where’d she go, Zeus? Just tell me.” Layla didn’t want to be crying. She was crying.
She folded the sweatpants and T-shirt. She balled the socks. Piling them neatly on the armchair. When she looked back to the bed, she felt dizzy. Her saliva ran thin in her mouth. A flush of nausea. She might actually get sick. The bed was so empty.
“What’s the deal?” Layla forced a singsong lightness. “Where’s your crazy momma?”
Connie had stayed over last night. There was a schedule. Connie would know. If anything had gone wrong, Connie knew. And John. He’d know.
Zeus turned in agitated circles on the bed, the sheets making tangled whorls, finally catching his paws as he fell over. For days he’d stayed curled next to Anna, barking when anyone touched down on the bed.
“It’s fine, Zeus.”
But nothing felt fine. The house felt electric. Like there were frayed wires, trip mines everywhere. Through the open windows, the air piney and crisp. She felt the dangerous vacancy of the big timber house.
She needed to call Connie and John.
But even the phone seemed dangerous. She couldn’t touch it. Or pick it up. If she did, what would she hear?
She needed to get out. Get to Connie and John. Once she got to their house, it would be okay. She’d find Connie crouched in the garden. Connie would rise, pulling off her gloves. Want some tea? she’d ask, and they’d stand with cups of green tea, surveying the lettuce beds, the newly planted pear trees.
She was spooked, but it was probably fine.
Still, she had seen this. The room without Anna.
“Come on, killer.” Layla held out her arms. Zeus yapped and chased his Rasta tail. “Come on.” Layla leaned over the bed and tried to grab Zeus by his rhinestone collar. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the sheets. Something horrible would happen if she did. He growled, low, back-throated, like tumbling gravel. She reached with both hands. He snapped. It was fast. The bite sharp. She felt the clamp. Layla knocked him hard with her free hand. He skittered across the bed. The blood beaded up on her hand. She grabbed Anna’s sweatshirt, wrapped her hand with it. Zeus stood, wagging shaggily. She had to leave. She shouldn’t abandon him there on the bed. Anna wouldn’t want that. Wherever Anna was. But she couldn’t get herself to reach for him again.
Lotion
The car aimed down I-91, swung west below Springfield onto 90.
Toward Stockbridge.
Toward Otter Brook Inn and Spa.
Key word: “spa.”
They loved that word: “spa.” The open-throated vowel. Just saying it, they felt refreshed. None of them had been to Otter Brook before, but they’d heard that it was fancy-schmancy. They didn’t bother calling ahead to see if there were day passes or if they needed to book in advance.
They were on vacation. Who would dare turn them away?
Plus, they were too busy. Each woman envisioned her health-spa dream—steam room, sauna, deep tissue work, mud masks, massages, body scrubs, pedicures, an endless supply of luscious body creams.
“I want to use lots of Egyptian cotton towels and drop them for someone else to pick up,” Caroline said, twisting her wrists flamenco style.
“Sebastian’s heard the restaurant is phenomenal but phenomenally expensive.” They laughed at how hard it was for Ming to ever cast off fiscal caution.
Anna pulled out her credit card. “That’s why God invented plastic. What bill collector dares follow where I’m heading?” Not at all garbled, Anna’s voice was so strong, the joke so on point that even Helen laughed as if just the word “spa” had already had a group tonic effect.
“I’m a beauty mess.” Anna pulled at her forearm. She’d thrown off the thin blanket. “Forget topical applications, I’m drinking all those gorgeous little bottles of body lotion while I’m there.”
Molly turned in at the spa entrance. They allowed a last group peek at their phones (Ming: three messages from Mr. Hyde’s lawyer; Asa: Tell Anna you’ll buy her a front-row seat in heaven with all your Google moolah; Tessa: nothing, not even SHUT UP. MOM). Then they switched to airplane mode and drove slowly down the long wooded driveway.
They drove past the gentle slope of lawns, trimmed paths, arbors, and gardens recently pruned back in preparation of summer splendor. And there, of course, loomed the mansion. They’d pictured exactly this—a vast structure, multiwinged, brick and locally quarried marble. Why accept anything less on their spa vacation than a mansion restored to its original gilded glamour? And it was here at a spa that Anna would begin to get well, get back on path. Everything felt possible. The Old Friends would work their magic and bring her home with rosy cheeks.
As soon as Molly put the car in park, there were men opening car doors.
“Welcome, ladies.” They fluttered and greeted the women as if they’d been eagerly waiting all day to serve them.
Ming wedged in front of a valet to take hold of Anna while Helen slid behind, an intricate ballet, partnering her up and out and past the men. They practically lifted her an inch, wafting her through the front doors, all the time keeping up a sprightly chitchat with Caroline.
Molly winked at the handsome valet as she slowly stretched one long leg, then the other, from the car. “No, no baggage. No worries.” She winked again and tossed over the keys.
Five Minutes
“Helen? Ming?” He felt like an idiot calling out. It was immediately clear that nobody was in the house. Unless he counted the dog, who’d slipped through his legs and zoomed out the back door as soon as Reuben pulled it open. Obvious as it was that the house was empty, that Anna wasn’t in her bed, why was he rushing two steps at a time upstairs to yank open the kids’ bedroom doors?
What did he fear he’d find?
He’d parked next to Helen’s car. Ming’s and Caroline’s were there, too. Their overnight bags lined up in the front vestibule.
So what was going on?
He looked for a note on the kitchen counter, the dining-room table. The obvious places. Simple courtesy. A note. Could it be that hard? But it was typical, wasn’t it? The way they swooped in, as if nothing had been happening the whole week while they were back in their lives. Amazing, actually, the way they thought they were above all this, all the massive everyday effort.
Each day there had been some alarm. Five times in the last three days, he’d gotten a call—“Reuben, you got to get here”—or a text—Come now, need help. If there’s not an actual crisis for Reuben to address, there’s a forest fire of the soul he’s being asked to manage. And it’s not a metaphor. The kids are ablaze. Her brothers again challenging hospice. And then calls about the goddamn dog. One day Zeus was picked up five miles away. The next day he’d tried to bite the nurse when she was turning Anna.
And then nights, Reuben falling half comatose into bed, certain he’d conk in less than a second, yet two hours later he’s adrift, recalling Anna’s sunburned face on a family vacation in Belize. They’re on the motorboat returning from their first scuba dive. He’s counting all the shades of blue he sees in the ocean and sky. “There’s a whole world down there,” Anna’s practically singing, her face exalted and splattered with new freckles. “You told me, but I didn’t believe you. It’s as beautiful as this one.” Or he’s jolted awake, pinned by nightmare panic, and she’s on a hospital bed, shrunken to a newborn, pleading, “Promise me. Just promise me.”
He walked back into the bedroom. Maybe he’d missed a note. Ming was usually conscientious. A goddamn lawyer, for God’s sake. But no. Nothing. No note on the pillow. No FYI. No simple acknowledgment that he might actually walk into the house, find Anna gone, and freak out.
The only clue was that Anna’s throw blanket wasn’t on the bed. The one she always wants around her shoulders or over her legs.
Instead Reuben noted bits of blood staining the sheet. That looked fresh.
He knew there was no reason to freak. They would have called him. Even the blood was obviously from something minor. Her skin was so thin that sometimes her cotton clothes abraded it. Still.
Reuben began to straighten the covers, untangling the sheet that had knotted at the bottom of the bed. He pressed the bed control and watched the mattress unhinge and flatten. Reuben lay down on the hospital bed. He fiddled with the control knobs. Like a kid riding it up, then back down. He jammed on the button, making the ride fast, then slow. Then faster. It was something he’d wanted to do since he first set up the bed in the room. No hospital bed, she’d insisted. That was always Anna’s first tack. Her go-to was a quick, dismissive, “Don’t want it. I don’t need it.”
“Okay, you’re right.” She smirked at him when she first pushed the controls and the bed levered her up to a seated position. “But don’t get cocky about being right.”
He jiggled and hoisted the rails up. Like a crib. What if someone came in and found him? Who cares? This had been his room, too, though with all the extra furniture dragged in, it hardly looked like their bedroom at all, the room their children padded into from nightmares, the room he tried to hold it together that first year of her illness, the room where they fought and fastened to their separate, stubborn ground.
Reuben rolled to his side, pulling the comforter over him. He didn’t have that much stubbornness left. Five minutes. He’d give himself five minutes. More than a ton to do. Still, he was going to give himself these five minutes. Everyone else seemed to take time to get their heads straight. Shit, Anna’s brother Michael had signed up for yet another marathon and spent most of his last visit on training runs rather than hanging with Anna. Reuben needed five just to get over how pissed off he was. Fair or not, mostly he was pissed at Helen. And Anna. There it was. That anger. This room empty. How could she do this? There had been so many years of sickness it was hard to remember his life, their life, before sickness. It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember, but it hurt more remembering. The first years, her fierce prettiness. He’d wanted her all the time. For years, that. Their private play. Her sweet, drowsy smile after sex. It was terrible to watch what sickness and medicine had done to her. To her face. Her perfect copper skin, etched, blued, crepey. Her tiny ears bulbed wide, the lobes droopy. She never wanted to be this. He bunched the comforter in closer and squeezed shut his eyes.
Glow
“I’m Mindy.” An adorable young woman glided up. “May I be of help?”
Mindy radiated easy health, a smooth outdoor glow. Even her smile seemed limber and toned. The promise of everything offered. The room behind Mindy was large and light-filled. A table centerpiece of green apples in a wide glass bowl, an immediate offering of health.
“Oh, Mindy, we’d love treatments,” Anna chirped before anyone else. “Just skip the wellness program.”
“Do you ladies have reservations?”
“Be here now, baby,” Anna sang out with full-on hippie exuberance. “That’s our mantra.”
“We’d like the day passes.” Caroline stepped in, primed after her week with Elise to take quick control of any potential situation.
“I’m sorry, we have a two-night minimum.” Mindy kept her smile professionally supple.
“I don’t have two nights.” Anna waved her credit card in one hand. “I’m the poster child for don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today.”
Her breezy song had decibeled up.
Gone screechy.
For the first time since they’d taken off on their vacation, since they’d hightailed it out of town, Jack Kerouac–ed it across the state, it became evident to Ming and Caroline and Helen and Molly that all of Anna’s enthusiasm—all that bubbliness they’d been taking girl-power credit for—was something else. Maybe the morphine restlessness Reuben reported often looked like an energy surge.
No maybe about it. Watching Anna in the lobby of Otter Brook Inn and Spa, both spindly arms swaying like tentacles above her head, her credit card dangling between two fingers, it was obvious that she was wasted.
They watched Mindy take a quick defensive lobby scan.
She wasn’t okay. She was higher than a box kite with tails. They’d been such idiots.
At the front door, a band of hikers—trekking poles in one hand, hot chocolate lofted in the other—stopped yodeling “This Land Is Your Land.” They stared at Anna. Horrified.
Two women in matching yoga outfits stood in the center of the lobby, palms raised to hearts. They stared at Anna. Horrified.
Of course everyone was horrified. What had they done dragging her anywhere? What was Anna—all of seventy or eighty pounds? She looked like a tiny, shrunken, teetering child.
Too late.
And too late for Mindy. This situation was not in any hospitality handbook. Give us your anxious, your depressed, your anorexic, your bulimic or fatty. Give us your fitness-fearful, your fitness maniac, your high-strung or strung out.
But here was Anna—her narrow face a glazy, eggy blue, her emaciated arms waggling in the air, her whole shriveled body moving like spongy underwater seaweed, and—compassionate reception be damned—who was anyone kidding?—this hallucinating, wobbling creature was definitely not in any handbook.
And just forget liability.
This was way beyond a wellness-center buzzkill.
The yoga ladies gawked in mountain pose.
Mindy was visibly trembling when two hulking men shouldered close. Clearly a silent wacko alarm had been triggered. The terrified nod Mindy gave said, We’re way beyond wacko. We’re at 911 level. But before Mindy or her freaked-out trainer henchmen had a chance to lead the women into a back room where everything might be efficiently taken care of outside the view of guests amply paying for tranquillity, Anna reached ou
t, lowering both her arms, the credit card dropping from her fingers.
“Maybe we’ll come back another time,” Caroline said and put out her hands to steady Anna. Anna slipped out of Caroline’s grasp and lunged precipitously forward.
“How thrilling.” She flattened her hands across Mindy’s stomach. “I’ve just noticed. What are you, six months? My little babies are all grown up.”
In an instant Mindy’s trembling shifted. She was gulping. Stuck, trapped, she tried to push back, to wedge Anna’s hands off her body.
“Oh, it is so, so beautiful, Mindy.” Anna’s voice was soft and otherworldly. Her hands clinging on Mindy’s belly.
“You’re pregnant, and suddenly, Mindy, women tell you their pregnancy stories. Then birth stories. Then the baby has colic and there’s a woman in the checkout line, a stranger, telling you to put a warm towel on the baby’s belly. Each step of the way, there’s women opening the next gate.” Anna closed her eyes, her hands orbed on Mindy’s stomach.
“Dearest One,” she said, and began whispering. Like an incantation under her breath. A blessing?
Dearest One? Ming mouthed, and looked from Helen to Molly to Caroline. Eyebrows raised, they didn’t know what “Dearest One” meant, but they’d all heard her mumbling the phrase. Even back at the house when they’d thought she was asleep, they’d leaned over the bed and heard her murmuring, “Dearest One.”
They had to get her out of here.
Mindy was gasping, a frozen cry. Should they wait for Anna to lift her hands off Mindy? Or intervene? Of course Mindy was skeeved. It seemed time for a swoop-out rescue. Exit stage left.
Then, all sparkly and confident, Anna’s eyes shivered open. “It’s a roller coaster, Mindy, but get ready for some massive joy.”
“She’s actually right,” Helen said. “Don’t worry, Mindy, we’ll get out of here.” Helen continued quietly, “We just wanted to take her on a nice vacation.”
Before Everything Page 17