The Instant When Everything is Perfect

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  “What did he do?” Katherine says.

  “Who?”

  “The doctor. The one in the hall.”

  “How did you know that?” Mia feels her face burn, her throat tighten. Just the thought of Robert that day in the hall makes her want to weep. There he is, pushing his hair back, looking at her. There are her lips on his cheek, his skin soft and warm.

  “Mia, I’ve been single as long as you’ve been married.”

  Mia nods, begins to weep.

  “Meesh,” Katherine says, using her old nickname for Mia; Meesh, the way she pronounced her sister’s name when she could barely talk. “It’s okay.”

  “Ford left.”

  For a second, Katherine stops, and then she clears her throat. “That’s been coming for a while.”

  “How do you know that, too?” Mia stands up, walks around the living room. “How could you have possibly seen that?”

  “I know you think I’m the family loser relationship-wise, but Meesh, you and Ford, your staying together—it was about the kids, wasn’t it?”

  Mia wants to hang up on her sister, the doctor who seems to have known the truth about everything all along. How irritating! How annoying! Just like Katherine to come in with the facts when they won’t do any good at all, the same way she sailed in and then out of Sally’s illness, barging forward with pronouncements and ideas and then flying home before any of the real healing had even started. The way she left for med school and never came back to the Bay Area, leaving Mia to do it all. And now she says she could see what Mia couldn’t? Wouldn’t?

  But then Mia sits on a chair. She’s never told anyone except Kenzie about how she felt about Ford.

  “Yes,” she says. “The kids.”

  “Then this is good. It’s a new start.”

  “Once I start, where do I go?”

  “Look, who in the hell am I to say? I can’t even find the starting line, with either sex.”

  Mia hears Katherine’s breathing, the soft sound of music in the background. It’s a weekday, and Katherine is home from work, alone in her big house, preparing dinner, listening to jazz, talking with her cats. Then she’ll eat and watch a movie on the VCR and go to bed. Alone, at least tonight.

  Mia will be alone tonight, too.

  “I don’t know how to do it,” Mia says.

  “Who does? But what about the doctor? What was his name? Rosen something? No, Groszmann? Anyway, I saw that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with, well, such an expression.”

  “We were—we had an affair. But he ended it. Something freaked him out.”

  “You told Ford?”

  “Yes. And the boys.”

  “The boys? They know about this?”

  “They told me about Ford.”

  “Shit,” Katherine says. “The kids told you? Christ. How did they find out?”

  “Harper overheard Ford on the phone a couple of times, and then Lucien pieced it together.”

  “You damn writers. Always working on what makes people tick. He’ll probably write about that later in life.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, are you going to be okay? Do you want to come out here? Just come. Get on a plane tomorrow.”

  “I can’t,” Mia says, knowing that she literally can’t make it to her own front door right now, her body heavy and dull and immobile. Besides, she needs to be here for Harper and Lucien, staying put to make it seem that she is not destroyed by their choice to tell her. And really, she’s not destroyed by that truth. Or by Ford’s affair. What she’s destroyed by is Robert’s silence and her reaction to it.

  “Okay, but listen. Call me if you need me. I know—I know you think I’m a pain-in-the ass, but you know I care.”

  “I know,” Mia says, meaning it.

  “And before you go, tell me what in the hell is going on with Mom. This Celtic Adventure thing? And Dick Brantley? Now without her breasts, Mom feels free to start dating? What’s the symbolism in that?”

  Mia smiles through the ache in her face, the sound in her throat almost like laughter.

  Fourteen

  Sally

  Sally learns how to vomit, the arc of bile and food and liquid neatly plopping in the toilet just so. All she has to do then is reach over and flush. And then it’s a simple turn to the sink and the faucet, a whoosh of water, a quick rinse of her face, a quick brushing of her teeth. Then she goes to her bed and sits on the edge, waiting for the next wave of nausea to rumble and the pulse her stomach. Finally, after exactly three rounds, she will sleep, her face clammy, her body sore. If she’s lucky, she will sleep for hours; if not, she will awaken in an hour or two and start the process over.

  “Take the pills Dr. Gupta sent you,” Mia says on the phone. “Don’t be brave. Take the pills. Or we can get you the marijuana, Mom. Seriously.”

  “God dammit, Mom,” Katherine says, her voice a slim, stringent, long distance chord. “Why are you being so stubborn? Take the damn pills. But if you don’t like the pills, there are injections, too. They work better. What’s wrong with your doctor? Do you want me to call him?”

  Sally doesn’t tell Katherine this, but the pills make her woozy, sleepy, duller than usual. There’s no way she wants an injection because the pills alone give her dreams of David.

  In one dream, Sally sat up in bed to see her husband, her young, beautiful husband sitting on her bed, his legs crossed, his hands folded in his lap. Even in her dream, she gasps. Sally hasn’t seen him in so long, his face now only a memory, a photograph, a jumble of remembered traits.

  He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Where have you been?”

  “Here, David. I’ve been here.”

  “Hardly,” he said, stretching out his legs.

  Before he could say anymore, nausea shook her awake, and she ran to the bathroom, clutching her chest, her incisions pounding as she moved.

  In the next dream, she pushed a baby carriage, but she didn’t know whose baby was crying inside it. Dahlia’s? Mia’s?

  “Can I see?” David asked, bending over the carriage, his face hidden by the hood.

  After a moment, he looked up, his face drawn. “Have you seen this? Have you been paying any attention at all?”

  Then he was running down the hill, his unfurled umbrella behind him.

  That dream, Sally didn’t wake up right away, but some time in the early morning hours, she found herself asleep on the bathroom floor, her face pressed onto the cool tile floor.

  Pushing herself up and off the floor, she took Dr. Gupta’s pills down stairs and hid them behind the Morton salt so that Mia won’t find them, knowing that nausea wasn’t any worse than David’s young, confused face.

  This morning, though, Sally feels better, day three and four passing into day five, her body strung out, wired, exhausted. She’s been on the couch for about an hour, Dick in the kitchen making soup. Mitzie sits next to Sally, looking up at her expectantly, as if any minute Sally will morph into Ellen.

  The shadows remain, she thinks, knowing that David is still here, as is Ellen. And in a way, Ford must still be in the house with Mia, even though he’s packed up all his belongings and moved in with his girlfriend. She can hear his ghost in Mia’s voice; she heard Ford’s absence when Mia called and said, “I’ve got some bad news,” the day that Ford left the house.

  How can all of us ghosts and humans live together on this plane, she wonders, all of us packed together, stuck to each other by memory?

  Dick carries in a bowl of soup and places it on a tray next to Sally, unfolding a napkin and smoothing it in her lap. She watches his long, slender hands, notices as she looks at his face how his ears have grown large and flappy, like all ears seem too as people get older. Like noses, ears keep growing when everything else stops, the rest of the body shrinking. Sally smiles, imagining them both at ninety, Dumbos with huge ears and no body.

  “What?” Dick blinks, sits down, smiles back.

  “Nothing,” she says, picking up the spoon. Then sh
e puts the spoon down and places her hand on Dick’s knee.

  “I’m going to stop the chemo,” she says.

  Dick jerks, sits back against the couch. “No, Sally. You can’t.”

  “Yes, I can. I’m not going to do this to myself. That 2% Dr. Gupta kept talking about? Well, it’s mine. My 2%.”

  Dick shakes his head, sighs. “But it could mean—“

  She interrupts. “It could mean I live a little bit longer, or it could mean I’m suffering all this pain for nothing. Even without the chemo, the chances are in my favor that even in ten years, I won’t get it again. Ten years, Dick! Think! That’s a long time. That’s a lot of trips.”

  He watches her, his eyes swimmy, and she hopes he won’t cry. He’s seeing Ellen, Sally knows, in her wheelchair at the home, no good news for miles around. He’s seeing everyone he’s ever given encouragement to, wanting all of them to take his quiet advice: be careful. Live.

  “Look, it’s not going to happen to me like that,” she says quietly. “It’s a different story.”

  Dick puts his face in his hands, and Sally hears the sadness in his throat. Slowly, she moves toward him, leaning against his back, feeling his fear under her cheek.

  “Think of Scotland,” she says. “Think of Ireland. Green hills, blue sky. Think of the Celts battling back the Saxons. Think of a language we don’t understand.”

  He nods, and Sally closes her eyes. They sit unmoving on the couch for so long, Sally slips into a dream of sunshine, a village, people in thick wool clothes. In her dream, the villagers speak to her in Gaelic for so long she almost learns to understand their message. It’s so clear, so obvious, but then Dick shifts, sits up, moves her gently into a sleeping position.

  “Rest,” he says, pulling the afghan up over her body.

  Sally thinks she nods, but then she’s not sure if she does. It doesn’t matter. Dick will be here when she wakes up, she knows that, and he will reheat the soup and they will eat together. Mitzie will wag her tail and yap. The day will turn to night, the night into day, and Sally will no longer be a chemotherapy patient.

  She breathes in, hears the kitchen tap run, and then falls asleep.

  

  Sally and Dick are in Target looking at bath mats. After the time Sally has spent close to her bathroom floor, she knows she needs a new one. Dick picked her up early so they could beat the Saturday crowd, but even so, the store is busy, especially the bathroom aisles.

  “Excuse me,” a woman says, brushing by them, clearly irritated, probably because both Sally and Dick have big red carts blocking the aisle.

  “Blue is nice,” Dick says, not noticing the woman.

  “Dick,” Sally says. “My bathroom is green. I think I might get a migraine if I saw the two colors in close proximity.”

  “Oh,” he says, smiling. “You’re a little artistic, huh?”

  “No, just not color blind. Are you color blind?”

  “I most certainly am not. A true color connoisseur.”

  “Well, then, use your discriminating tastes.”

  “Fine,” he says. “What about beige. Goes with everything.”

  “A very safe call,” Sally says. Another woman pushes past them, mumbling, and Sally takes the beige mat from Dick.

  “What about new towels to match? Then let’s go to the nursery.” Sally nods, and they walk down the aisle, their carts bumping, and turn the corner to linens.

  

  “I told you,” Katherine says to Sally as they talk on the phone. “You didn’t need it. That doctor of yours is not progressive. But you need to talk to him about tamoxifin. Or for one of the new aromatase inhibitors. Anastozole is one of them.”

  Sally is on her back patio potting three new red geraniums she and Dick bought that morning at Target. She holds the phone between her cheek and shoulder as she pulls the plants out of their plastic containers.

  “This is the color I see when I look at you,” Dick said, holding up a pot. “But when you’re in a mood . . .” He picked up a dark purple pansy. “Watch out.”

  “Pansies, that’s for thoughts,” Sally said.

  “Hamlet,” Dick answered. “Don’t show off to me, missy. I was the English major here.”

  “But all those years at Voyager Insurance knocked it out of you!”

  “You don’t even want to know what’s inside of me,” Dick said, raising his eyebrows up and down.

  Sally smiles at the memory, digs in a terracotta pot with her spade, tries to focus on what Katherine is saying.

  “Mom,” Katherine says. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, of course dear,” she says. “And don’t you worry. Dr. Gupta has already sent the prescription to the pharmacy. Dick is going to pick it up this afternoon.”

  Katherine is silent for a moment, but Sally knows what’s coming.

  “Mom,” Katherine says. “Are you—I mean, how is it going with Dick?”

  Sally shakes her head, pats down the soil on top of the first geranium. “After not dating anyone for over thirty years, I think it’s going very well.”

  “And he’s . . . .” Katherine stops, and Sally wants to laugh. Her daughter, the ball buster, can’t find her words?

  “Look, Katie, it’s fine. It’s nice. He’s a good friend, and we’re figuring things out. It’s what we all have to do with each other if we want to go further. I just never found someone I wanted to be with until Dick. It’s what—“ Sally feels her next sentence in her mouth and then holds it against her tongue, its bite pushing on the roof of her mouth. “It’s what you have to do if you want to go further unless, of course, you don’t have a choice. Sometimes, like with your father, it’s there. In front of you, knocking you on the head. There’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes, though, you have to choose to move closer. It’s what you could do, with someone. A man . . . or a woman.”

  Now Katherine is truly silent, and for a quick second, Sally wishes she hadn’t said the words, the truth. But then, she’s glad. She wants Katherine to know she’s always known—and Sally wants her daughter to know she loves her, no matter whom she chooses.

  “Mom.”

  “It’s all right, dear. Truly. I know why you didn’t tell me. I seem very old-fashioned. But after all, I’ve lived in the Bay Area for a lot of years now. We have a lot of gay couples at the bridge center.”

  “Mom.”

  “Katherine.”

  Katherine sighs. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s who you are.”

  “It is who I am. I just didn’t know . . . .”

  “Didn’t know if I could take it.”

  There’s silence on the line, and then a slight rustle, as if Katherine is nodding. “Well, maybe. Or I was just scared. In a way, I knew that if you were okay with me and who I was, that meant I would have to do something. I could actually bring someone home. That I’d have to commit.”

  Sally understands. Saying words aloud like I’m unhappy makes things happen. Look at Mia and Ford. One day they are in a marriage that wasn’t working despite all the signs to the contrary, and then the words are out and things changed. One sentence, and poof! Life is different.

  “I’d love to meet someone you were committed to,” Sally says.

  “Well, first I have to actually find someone. Most of the people I work with don’t say much,” Katherine says, and both she and Sally laugh a little. Sally puts her hand to her chest, liking the feel of her amusement, the vibration in her body.

  “Listen, come home for a visit,” Sally says. “Visit your sister. I don’t think she’s doing well. Visit your old, chemo-free mother before she heads off to the United Kingdom. Come see how I kept most of my hair.”

  “Okay,” Katherine says. “I will. Soon.”

  After a few more words, they hang up and Sally puts down the phone. For a moment, she’s engrossed with her plants, tamping down the dirt, soaking them with water from the watering can. Then she hears her own
words to Katherine.

  It’s what you have to do if you want to go farther.

  Good advice, she thinks, knowing that she hasn’t truly followed it herself. Sure there was that strange, surreal moment of Dick touching her incisions. And they are good friends, constant companions. A couple in many ways. But also there has simply been her recovery and then her chemo. Now, her body almost hers again, Sally knows that there are things she needs to do, wants to do.