by Erica Boyce
Daniel huffs out through his nose a little but complies. I bounce in my seat as we pull up to the Mammoth Cave National Park entrance.
“Have you ever been here?”
“No.” Daniel scowls as he searches for a parking spot, but it’s a relief to hear his voice.
“It’s amazing. It’ll make all your problems seem much smaller. I promise.”
After the accident, I drove straight here from Georgia. While the tour carried on around me, I stood in the night-black cave and closed my eyes and breathed until I could no longer see the ambulance lights pulsing behind my eyelids.
Daniel doesn’t need to hear that story.
He looks skeptical when he takes in the splendor of the brown-carpeted visitor’s center, surrounded by retirees taking gray-haired selfies. Our tour guide ushers us down to the mouth of the cave, and the stream of cool air from inside hits our faces like an intake of breath. Inside, it’s all darkness, a huge, gaping hole carved into the earth with steps curving down into it. And I hear him say, “Wow.”
We step inside, and the stony walls arch over our heads, and my face aches from the grinning. We fall behind the pack of our tour group, stick our hands out over the guardrails, and run our fingers over the walls, wet like they’re perspiring from the dense, damp air. Our eyes adjust to the dim. The cave swallows everything the spotlights at our feet can throw at it. Our hushed voices vanish into the darkness.
The tour guide’s narration echoes weakly, explaining how the caves were first discovered. I step toward him, and Daniel’s hand is on my elbow.
“Wait,” he whispers. He leans his head back, face turned toward the stalactites dripping high above us. He closes his eyes. I can just see the fringe of his eyelashes, his throat moving under his stubbled skin. His neck is a road, his Adam’s apple a waypoint, and I want to run my finger over it. I turn my head, embarrassed.
When he looks at me, his eyes are bright. “You were right,” he says, and I tuck the words away. I duck my head and move first one foot, then the other, my shoes scraping along the uneven earth.
He lets us catch up with the group then and exclaims at all the right times, making thoughtful noises in response to the tour guide. Every so often, he touches my arm softly, brushing his fingers against my elbow as he points at a rock formation. I try to see what he is seeing. I try not to stare at his hands. When the tour guide turns off the spotlights so we can see what it was like for the discoverers, his hand trips down my arm. It lands, and his fingers are laced with my own.
I have no idea what the guide says for the rest of the tour. My thoughts are pulled to Daniel’s palm, big and warm on mine. The air feels wet on my face now, too heavy to breathe. I can’t remember the last time someone touched me for this long. I always pull away, worried about what it means, what it says, what I’ll have to do to clean up after it. He doesn’t seem to notice, down here in the dark. My hand is just something he’s carrying.
The tour ends, and we climb back into the unforgiving sun. He lets go to shield his eyes. I feel strange and weightless. I tell him I’m going to get some snacks. He sits on a bench outside the visitor’s center.
In the bathroom, I turn the sink faucet on as hot as it will go and let the water run through my fingers until the blood rises to just beneath my skin, like it’s a membrane I could burst with one fingernail. I stare at my face in the mirror, but there’s nothing new there, puffy eyes and sunburn.
Quietly, one at a time, I count. One. Two. Three. By the time I get to seven, I’ve almost returned to normal, my heartbeat slowed. A woman with gelled-up hair walks in the door, and I startle, spraying water all over her Grand Canyon sweatshirt.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry—” I pull stacks of paper towels from the dispenser.
“That’s all right, honey. Don’t worry about it.” I realize as she leans closer that she was on our tour. She kept asking the tour guide personal questions and making him second-guess his life choices. “First date jitters, I see,” she says, staring at my shaking hands. She smiles.
“No, no, we’re not—” I say to the stall door as it clamps shut behind her. My mind whirls, brushing over and over against what she must be thinking. What did it look like, down there in the cave, when I was too distracted to see other people noticing? I take a deep, shaky breath and close my eyes. It doesn’t matter what she thought, I tell myself sternly. There is nothing there to see.
* * *
Daniel is still sitting on that bench, staring off into space. I’ve forgotten the snacks, but he doesn’t mention it as I sit down next to him.
I’m about to go back to the car and press my head between my knees when he says, “Claire was a lot more than an alcoholic.”
He runs a bracelet between his fingers, something old and worn, something straight out of arts and crafts hour. “She was smart and hard on herself. She taught me everything I know. She would get so mad at you over nothing, and then, an hour later, she’d be writing you a five-page love letter.”
I pull a chunk of hair out from behind my ear and start twisting.
He stares off into the parking lot again.
I say, “It sounds like you really loved her.”
He shrugs, but a smile creeps in, wringing out my chest as it goes. “People used to ask us when we were getting married. But the one time I got close to it, she asked if that was what I wanted, a wife and a house, someone to write holiday cards while I wrestled with the Christmas tree. And I said no.” His mouth sets in a line, underlining the lie.
Two boys, brown-haired brothers, are outside the door to the visitor’s center, waiting for their parents. They’ve found two sticks the size of their arms and are, naturally, using them as swords. Splinters of bark fly off them as they clack and jab, shrapnel that hits the occasional passing adult. Their mom finally emerges, stuffing change into her purse, and growls “Boys” without looking up. The two giggle, drop their weapons, and start poking each other instead.
“And you really haven’t heard anything from her since you left?” I say, sticking my own finger into the wound.
“No.” His voice is so final that I turn to face him again. This time, he’s looking at me, only at me. “She’s gone. She died.”
Chapter Seventeen
Molly
The first time we went to see Dr. Cooper, I couldn’t sleep the night before. My eyes grew drier each time the red numbers on our alarm clock changed. I had lists of questions to ask, notes to take, miracle cures to research, and I added to them with every turn Sam took in his sleep. I imagined him wrestling with the great black web of the tumor, and I needed something that would allow me to reach inside him and pluck it all out, every last sticky thread.
I had laid out everything we needed right by the front door: Sam’s good shoes, a handful of the granola bars he liked with the chocolate chips in them, a fresh notepad, and several pens. In the waiting room, we sat with our hands balled tightly in our laps. Sam’s foot tapped a manic, looping rhythm on the scuffed linoleum.
This morning, we slept through the alarm, set before sunrise so we could make the first appointment at the clinic an hour away. I offered to drive so Sam could nap, and after he climbed into the passenger’s seat, he frowned and reached down at his feet. When he straightened, he held the envelope, pinched between his pointer finger and thumb as though it held an odor. I felt my pulse all the way in my temples. He flipped the envelope over and peered at the return address. My thumbnails dug into the vinyl flesh of the gearshift. I would, I decided, explain it all, how I’d only been curious, how I knew he’d want to support me even though we couldn’t afford it, how I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told him, except that I couldn’t pile this on top of his doctor’s appointments and treatment plans, the pills he’d had to take every day for the past few weeks to strip out the tumor.
He tossed the envelope over his shoulder into the back seat. “Tho
se junk mailers are relentless,” he said.
I kept my exhale measured, but I couldn’t reply, and Sam stayed awake the whole drive, gazing out the window.
Now, he snores softly in the hard-edged chair next to mine in the waiting room. With him safely asleep, I flip blindly through a magazine about celebrities I don’t recognize, its pages faded at the seams. I smile at the woman in the chair opposite us who’s trying very hard not to cry, but I’m afraid it comes out as more of a grimace. At any moment, that’s who we could become. And so, the envelope remains unopened.
Sam has already had his response scan this morning, and we’re waiting for Dr. Cooper to give us the results. At our last scan, the one where they found the tumor, Dr. Cooper laid his sterile-gloved hand over mine and told me he was cautiously optimistic. For now, my fear is nothing but a kernel lodged in my throat. I can speak around it.
“Sam?” The nurse, Irene, appears in the doorway.
I elbow Sam in the ribs, and he wakes with a start. Irene smiles a smile as tight as her raked-back hair and leads us down the hallway. I take my usual seat, the extra chair for mothers and spouses, while Sam climbs up onto the examining table. The pages of my notepad now ripple with scribbled notes, and I’d nearly forgotten to bring it this morning.
The paper on the table rustles as Sam shifts from one leg to the other. I lay my hand on his knee. “I’m sure it will be okay,” I say. “Remember what he said last time: optimistic.”
He stills. “Hmm? Oh, right. I was just wondering where the hell I’m going to find those parts to fix the combine.” He sighs. “Just wish the harvest would hurry up and get here. Maybe the Cadburys will let me help out with the haying.” His eyes light up, and I know he’s itching to put his tractor to good use.
I am about to tell him I’m sure they’d love to have him when the door eases open and Dr. Cooper’s head pops around it. “All ready in here?” he says.
“You bet,” Sam says and tries to look comfortable as he leans back on his elbows.
Dr. Cooper walks over to his desk, pulling at the cuffs of his shirt under his white jacket. He perches on his little stool, a bird waiting to take flight, and I wonder why he hasn’t met our eyes yet. The kernel grows.
He takes a deep breath, the button at his throat straining with it. “There’s no easy way to say this.” Don’t say it, I beg him silently. “The treatments don’t seem to be working this time around.” He finally looks at Sam, and I can almost read the prognosis in his frown lines.
Still, I must ask, so I pose my pen above a blank sheet of paper. “What do we try next?”
He looks at me, and I wish he hadn’t. “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do. The tumor appears to be very aggressive. It’s not responding to our usual treatment. In fact, it’s metastasized. Surgical removal would be extremely dangerous at this point, and I wouldn’t recommend it.”
For a moment, I feel sorry for this man. What his days must be like, telling people over and over the one thing they cannot hear.
He keeps talking, starting in on what we can expect and what our new life will be like. I turn to Sam, but he is a plastic version of himself, immobile.
When Dr. Cooper at last stops talking, I look at my notepad and find the only words I’ve written are palliative care. An odd word, palliative. As if the letters themselves could smooth over those things that infect you. Round things out and carry you home.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Dr. Cooper is saying. He takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. It makes him look smaller. How could I have ever trusted so small a man to shoulder Sam?
“You two should go home and discuss this together. When you’re ready to talk, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.”
Without a word, Sam walks out the door. The squeak of his church shoes against the tile is enough to break me. Instead, I get up to follow, scrabbling around for a polite goodbye.
Before I come up with anything, Dr. Cooper says, his voice lowered, “You should know, with how extensively this has spread, Sam’s likely in a lot of pain. He’ll probably want to go back to his farm like everything is normal, but he really should go easy on himself.”
I nod. I don’t know how I could even begin to enforce such a thing. “How long does he have?” I ask, more fragile than I’d like.
I can tell from the downturn of his mouth that he’s already told us this. Perhaps he thinks this information should’ve been more than a faint echo against the walls. “It’s hard to say. Certainly less than six months. I would hope more than one month.”
He’s staring at me, but I can’t muster a response. I let the door slam shut behind me. I scurry down the hallway after my husband.
* * *
There is no one else in the elevator with us, and I’m grateful for that one small dignity as the green-lit numbers tick down. I reach for Sam’s hand, and he threads his fingers through mine automatically. I can feel his pulse in his thumb, strong and true, and he squeezes tightly.
“We’ll get a second opinion,” I say, staring at our fuzzy reflection in the metal doors. The smudge that is Sam’s face doesn’t move, so I clear my throat. “Maybe we can go down to Boston. Or I bet Charlie knows someone who can help. He did that rotation in onc—”
“No.” His voice is bitten and firm.
In an instant, I can see him, his thin-skinned head sunk into the pillow I just purchased for him last week. Wasting away in our bed. I squeeze my eyes closed tight against the image.
“You can’t seriously be giving up,” I say. “Dr. Cooper’s only been practicing five years, and I know we used to say that was a good thing because he’d know all about the latest medical treatments, but I was reading about this new thing called immunotherapy, and he didn’t even mention that, so—”
“Molly.” Sam looks me in the eye, and there’s a crack in his voice. “We’ve known for a long time that this thing was going to take me. I’ll keep fighting if you want me to”—he squeezes my fingers again—“but please don’t make me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I repeat. The jaws of the elevator open onto the hospital lobby, and Sam drops my hand and walks toward the parking lot. I start to follow him, but then I pause, watching him get smaller and farther away. From a distance, I can see he walks with a small limp now, listing toward his right side. I wonder how long I hadn’t noticed it.
Chapter Eighteen
Daniel
That last night, everything seemed fine at first. Claire and I lay in bed together. We had just finished the plans for our tenth circle, and the farmer had approved them, clapping me on the shoulder. I ran my fingers over Claire’s arm and the ridge of the scar she’d gotten as a kid falling off a horse. She giggled a little and pressed her face into my chest.
“Oh! I almost forgot,” she said, sitting up. “I got us something to celebrate.”
I felt a little queasy as she leaned over and rustled through a plastic bag under the nightstand. Sure enough, she resurfaced with a sweating bottle of cheap white wine hoisted over her head.
“Claire,” I began.
“What?” she said. “Ten crop circles is a big deal. In circler terms, we’re practically common-law married. We have to commemorate it.” She waggled the bottle back and forth. The liquid swished.
“Maybe we should consummate instead of commemorate,” I tried, a cheesy last resort. I raised one eyebrow and ran my hand up her arm.
She pulled away. “Maybe later. I spent good money on this, so let’s drink it.” Her smile looked dangerous, on the edge.
“Are you sure that’s such a great idea?”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “A sip or two won’t hurt. If it makes you feel better, I’ll let you drink most of it.” She reached back into the bag and pulled out a corkscrew, glinting in the moonlight.
“Claire,” I said. “You can’t.”
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She stood up. “I’m not a kid. Maybe you should find something better to do than babysit me. It gives me the creeps, you watching me.”
The words burrowed in and found their target. “Maybe I should.” She paused at that, as surprised as I was. I couldn’t stop. “If you’re so dead set on becoming a disaster all over again, be my guest.”
She turned on her heel, shoved the door open with her shoulder, and was gone. I was supposed to follow her and bring her back, the way I always did. I knew she wanted me to hold her by the shoulders and remind her of everything she’d accomplished.
But I was tired. I was done. She had her exact specifications plotted out, and they didn’t include me. So I lay back down and tried to sleep.
* * *
A couple of weeks later, I’d given up on finding her, stopped driving miles and miles every day, every night. I lay in bed, staring at nothing. I inhaled deep, picked up my phone from the floor next to my bed. I pulled up the websites for the local newspapers for all ten jobs we’d worked, her hometown in Oregon. And I started searching for her name.
I did this every morning for months, only letting my head drop back to the pillow when the results came up empty. The plans for that tenth circle collected dust and hair in their folds under the bed. I kept avoiding the farmer who’d wanted the circle, skirting around him in town until he finally got the message and gave up. When Lionel didn’t call to check in, I wondered what he knew. I kept dialing his number, hanging up before it started to ring.
And then, one cold morning, there she was. Claire Marie Phillips. Twenty-four. Survived by her parents, Kathleen and Roger, and her sister, Elaine. Services to be held the following Friday at the family church in Oregon. The one Claire used to tell me about, with the priest who glared down at her when she squirmed.
I spent the next few days rolling these words around in my mind, stark against the glow of my phone screen. Every night, when I got into bed, I had no idea where I’d been or what I’d done that day. All I could think about were those words. They said she died suddenly and peacefully, like it was even possible for both to be true at once. An ideal death.