Julia asked, despite knowing the answer, what she might do to make him feel better. “I guess yoga and green tea are out of the question?” she teased. David answered: “I need a walk in the woods and some hot chocolate.”
She shivered at the thought. It was early February, and the temperature outside was just above thirty. But his wish was her command, and so, without another word, she went into the kitchen, melted a chocolate bar in a pan of milk, and poured it into a thermos. She put two foldable plastic recliners and a blanket into the back of her car. They couldn’t go tromping up to Sleeping Giant; he was, after all, still recovering from the biopsy. The compromise destination was a popular Christmas tree farm in Shelton, owned by an old friend of his. They set the lawn chairs up at the top of a hill, at the center of a neat grid of blue spruces. They were able to build a campfire in a pit that was set up for shoppers during the Christmas tree season. Even though it was cold, the sun was bright and cheerful. They stared out to the misty, pine-covered hills and into the warm heart of the campfire. They glimpsed a few deer as they sipped their hot chocolate out of robin-egg speckled tin cups. The wind stirred a little bit and David began to talk about the great blight of Christmas pines many years ago. Julia read the newspaper to him aloud. They let themselves be transported by the local politics, the war in Iraq, by the rising fuel prices, the fall in the stock market. They argued with the vigor of people trying to avoid talking about something else. Julia told him about the little girl who imitated her at school, and the boys whose Little League team had made it to the national championships. The fire was mesmerizing and warm and they dozed off a bit. The cancer too, dozed off. There were just the trees and the clear blue sky and the fire and the sweet taste of chocolate in their mouths.
David actually fell asleep. When he woke up, his eyes had a new light behind them. The depression she’d seen in his face earlier was gone. He scooted over in his foldable chair. He opened up his blanket, creating a narrow space next to him. She just stared at the spot.
“I won’t try anything,” he said. “C’mon. You look cold.”
She hopped in, curling up against his warmth. Although she let him lock an arm over her shoulder, she remained guarded and hyper-aware of his every movement. David cleared his throat and said, “Thank you. For bringing me here.” He pushed away a strand of hair that was blowing across her face.
“I want to do so many things, see so many places,” David said. “Now I have an excuse.”
“Focus on your treatment,” Julia said. “Now’s not the time to go wandering the jungles of Africa, if that’s what you mean.”
“I mean after. Like once I’m done with surgery, chemo, radiation, and all that business. I have lots of adventures planned.”
She smiled. “Adventures? Like?”
He told her what he had experienced on Sleeping Giant Mountain, about the remembered woman, how his dad had set out to prove that they were fragments of recall, not hallucinations. “It’s an invitation, Julia.”
“An invitation to what?” She sat up. “David O’Farrell,” her voice trailed off and she opened her eyes wide in an exaggerated look of amazement. “Are you going to start believing in God?”
He gave her a weary look. “Believe me, faith would be a lovely thing right now. But you can’t start believing in the tooth fairy just because you lost a tooth. Too convenient. I can’t trick myself like that. But I know for sure that cancer isn’t intelligent, it’s a thing, just a kind of flesh rot. So who is controlling the outflow of information from my subconscious, then, if it’s not the cancer? It’s not my consciousness; I didn’t will it. And Julia, nobody has access to such vivid memories of their infancy. Nobody. Even people like you who know their full history, who have tons of photos and movie footage and people to tell you stories about yourself. You can’t really remember much before what, age three? I’m being summoned by the source of that control.”
She shook her head. “And who would that be?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always thought of it as nature with a capital ‘N.’ ” His eyes opened wide and they seemed to sparkle all of a sudden. “It’s like catching the glimpse of a creature in the woods. You hear a rustling. The sound of hooves, or maybe antlers being rubbed against a tree. You freeze and wait. It’s usually only a few seconds, but it feels like forever. And then suddenly, some low branches tremble and part and there it is! It’s magnificent . . . an animal with wild eyes that stare back, and well . . . it’s an honor.” Julia laughed out loud because his idea of a spiritual encounter involved a beast with horns, sharp claws, and a hide full of ticks; a beast that could rip you to shreds for coming too close.
“I mean it, Julia, it’s the closest I’ve come to believing. I swear it’s a glimpse of something holy. And you know what? For some reason, the experience is even more powerful and spiritual if you’re alone.” His eyes glassed over with the memory of past encounters in the wild.
Julia maintained a more traditional view of God, but she understood what he meant. She had once sailed a boat, alone, cutting across a turquoise sea in the company of a flock of jumping dolphins. She had experienced the quick elation—her heart had swollen with amazement, and then grown solemn and weightless. David was right; you have to be silent in order to hear the footsteps of the mysterious walking across the surface of your soul.
Later that night, she thought about the idea of an invitation—that David’s brain had burped out this little hint about his past. How David chose to react to that was a complete surprise. His declaration that he suspected intention behind the revelation of his baby name was profoundly out of character.
Chapter 7
David
My resection was delayed by one week. As the date of the surgery approached, I stayed up all night and slept most of the day because it was hard to get continuous sleep. I peed every two hours because of the damn meds. By the early morning, my bladder would wake me up for a measly drop or two; like a dog marking territory. I stood at the toilet, bleary-eyed, holding myself up against the wall with one hand, and said, into the yawning mouth of the toilet, “Now was that worth it?” Then I wondered, who was I talking to anyway? The toilet? My bladder? The medication? Cancer? Who?
I got up at noon, grouchy and annoyed. I had a liver tolerance test in a few hours and it had to be done at Sloan-Kettering. I had just enough time to get dressed, eat, and go. So much for the plans for a morning walk, catching up on the news, and making phone calls. I opened the medicine cabinet and looked for the box of floss. I had never been a flosser, until now. Now that I had decided to live past seventy, I had begun to take long-term bodily maintenance seriously. I dabbed sun block on my face, and rubbed it into the tips of my ears. I poured myself a tall glass of water and drained it, along with my multivitamin and my prescription meds. I took fish oil capsules for my heart, a muscle that would have to go on pumping for decades, despite the daily frights it was suffering. I put on a striped polo shirt and a pair of jeans. They felt unbearably tight. I ended up choosing sweats, feeling disgusted with myself. Julia arrived to take me to my appointment. She put her purse, phone, and a plate of blueberry muffins covered with plastic wrap on the kitchen table. She fed me berries of every variety every chance she could, hoping that maybe the antioxidants could cure me.
Sitting on a side table was the ID card I had been issued at work the week before I was hospitalized. It was likely the best photo I’ve ever taken in my life. Julia picked it up and stared at it a long time. “You look hot,” she whispered, oscillating from my steroid-bloated face to the card and back. Then she caught herself and made a lame effort to conceal the obvious by giving me a peck on the forehead and saying, “And you look pretty cute in this ID card too.” But her reaction to that stark contrast was so plain that it inspired the first vanity crisis in my entire life. I went to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, and looked in the mirror and back at the ID photo and back and forth. I needed a haircut and a shave. My hand went up to the cut on th
e side of my head where the prickly stitches still poked out. I had managed to convince myself that I resembled a vintage G.I. Joe action figure, but the truth was, I looked like a mental patient. The mirror reflected the image of a guy in distress; someone who was about to get his ass kicked by cancer, a guy who wasn’t sleeping, a guy who was facing the scariest surgery of his life with his chin up and his fists clenched. But, I reminded myself, the clean-shaven guy in the photo was in the worst possible place—deep in the bliss of ignorance, with the shock still ahead.
We were both in the kitchen when a postal truck appeared in the window. Julia, who still had her coat on, said, “I’ll get the mail,” and she ran back out. Our driveway is rather long, so I let the screen close and turned back to whatever I was doing. When she was halfway to the mailbox, the cell phone she had placed on the kitchen table rang. I peeked at the display. The caller ID read “Jonathan Miller.” I picked it up, clicked on the green button and said, “Yeah?”
“Hi . . .” a deep but surprised voice said. “May I speak with Julia?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m a . . . friend of hers. Who’s this?”
“Her husband,” I said. “You wanna leave a message?”
There was silence. “Oh. No message. Thanks.” I hung up before he did.
Julia appeared a few seconds later with my parents’ mail.
“Thanks,” I said. “Who’s Jonathan Miller?”
She turned and looked at the phone, still sitting on the table; gave it a hard and disapproving look, as if it had misbehaved, then she picked it up and dropped it in her purse. “Just someone I met on the cruise. He lives in New York,” she said lightly, as if that was the end of it.
“Someone you’re going to see again?”
“Don’t know. Someone I’d like to talk to again. That’s all I can say at this point.”
And then I did it. I played the cancer card. I said, “Julia, when I go into surgery, I need to know that you’re waiting for me on the other side.” I put one arm around her waist, the other around her neck and I pressed my mouth into hers. Taken off guard, she allowed herself to be kissed. Then she put her hands on my shoulders and shoved me away.
“Cut it out.” She folded her arms in front of her. “Listen to me. Our breakup was a huge blow.” She put a hand over her heart. “You, we, everyone who loves you, is in crisis mode until you come out of that surgery. After that, we’ll let out a big sigh of relief. And then we have an even bigger hill to climb when you start chemo. I’ll be here,” she said, pointing at the floor. “I’ll be here for you but only if you respect my boundaries. I don’t have the emotional energy to keep fighting you every time you want to start your groping, and neither do you. Just stay cool, stay close, and let’s keep our eyes on the road. Do we have a deal, yes or no?”
“Will this Jonathan character be taking his eyes off the road too?”
She looked away and shook her head. “He’s just a friend. I met him on the ship.”
“Did you make any other ‘friends’ on vacation?”
She put a finger to her cheekbone and then pointed at me. “Eyes on the road. Take it or leave it.” She offered her hand. I shook it, but reluctantly.
“I’m not kidding about needing all of you, Julia. I want you to be the one to make medical decisions if I can’t. I want you to have durable power of attorney.”
Julia blinked. “What about your parents?”
“It’s too much for them. It would kill my mother.”
Her forehead wrinkled up with worry. She pulled away from me and looked me in the eye. “Just one question, David.”
I stared and waited.
“Do you have siblings?”
I smiled a bit and looked away. “Yes, I have siblings.”
“Then they’re your next of kin.”
“Not if you marry me.”
She ignored that last comment. “Which one? Which one would you trust with your life?”
I shrugged. “Adrian.”
“Okay, then, we just made an important decision here, David.” Her entire face relaxed and she hugged me. She looked utterly relieved and proud that she had shoved responsibility back at me, as in, if Adrian and I are going to talk the talk, we’ve also got to walk the walk.
“Let’s put it in writing,” she said. “This will mean the world to him.” She smiled and pointed upward to indicate that she had had a great idea. “Let’s put a LoJack on him. We can’t afford to lose track of him again.”
Chapter 8
While David was inside the doctor’s office, Julia’s phone rang. She felt a thread of electricity zip across her stomach when she saw the name displayed. Jonathan Miller, a name that invoked sweet-oak and citrus-scented cologne, pressed linen shirts, and the festive, twinkling lights of a cruise ship. An invitation back to vacationland. She let it ring and eventually, it stopped. She was in David’s world now. She would call Jon later.
She hadn’t been entirely truthful with David about Jon. She had given Jon her phone number and agreed to have dinner with him after their ship docked. They had sunbathed and danced for days on end and kissed a little bit on that last night. They had not been romantic so much as they had spent five days flirting with each other. He seemed like a nice guy: good-looking, smart, funny. Like Julia, he sailed, kayaked, and enjoyed fishing, history, politics, music, and dancing. Two things she appreciated in men were gregariousness and style, the exact qualities David lacked. She should have been bowled over by Jon. But her heart wasn’t in it. Dating felt foreign, but she accepted it as part of the adjustment period, and had decided to march forward despite her awkwardness.
Two days before their ship returned to Puerto Vallarta, the steward had brought the urgent messages from Julia’s brothers. Julia had immediately called the O’Farrells and talked to Marcia. When she heard the words “brain tumor” Julia began to shiver. Not as one who is cold might shiver, but with a bristling inner quake, like someone who has just crawled out of a car wreck. She went to the bathroom, and her stomach yielded its contents quickly and without labor.
Now Jonathan Miller was calling for a date, and it felt a bit like a vacation hangover. But at the same time, she knew that things would never be the same with David either, that his blow to their relationship had been fatal. And even though she returned to the same port after the cruise—then to the same airport, then to the O’Farrells’—she had come back with something less, or perhaps something more, depending how one looked at it. What had changed was that her future was in her own custody again, and she wasn’t going to be so careless with it this time.
Across the room, the little frosted-glass doors opened and Julia heard someone call her name. “Me?” she looked around. Then David repeated her name from somewhere inside and the receptionist smiled and waved her in. Her first reaction was to think: Me? Why? I’m just his chauffeur. But she nodded at the receptionist and went inside.
In the nurse’s station, there were several people standing around holding clear cups filled with yellow fluid. Again Julia felt a sense of disorientation. Then she saw the grocery store chocolate cake on a table, and two black-and-orange bottles of Veuve Cliquot champagne. Dr. Levine himself greeted Julia and handed her a glass, then addressed the group, which included his staff and a middle-aged couple. “To Frank Lorens,” he raised his cup to a bearded man next to him and turned to his staff. “Ten years ago we diagnosed Frank with a glioblastoma. And here he is, despite the odds.”
“Still a pain-in-the-neck,” the wife said, then laughed, and gave her husband a little shove. A portly woman in her late forties, Sue Lorens looked ten years younger than her husband. Everyone clapped and cheered and toasted him. A few minutes later, Dr. Levine introduced Julia to the Lorenses as “David’s lovely wife.”
“Julia Griswold,” she said, shaking their hands. “David and I are just friends.” There was an awkward moment when Dr. Levine looked utterly baffled, so Julia turned the subject back to Frank Lorens’s victory. �
��Your success here is encouraging, doc. Congratulations to all of you.”
“I’m honored to mark this day with you,” David chimed in.
“You’ll have to invite us to your decade party,” Frank said, tipping his plastic cup to David’s. David pointed at the champagne bottles. “Put one of those babies in your wine cellar for me now, will ya, doc? Actually make that four bottles for four more decades. I plan to see my seventieth birthday.” There was polite laughter after Dr. Levine pretended to balk at the high cost of all that champagne. The staff scattered and the three men drew into a huddle: they folded their arms and drew their heads closer. “You’re a biological lottery winner,” David said to Frank. “You’re the two percent. How the hell did you do it, man?”
The wife, Sue, locked her eyes on Julia. “Are you really just his friend?” She tipped her head toward David, with one eyebrow drawn up. Julia didn’t get a chance to answer, just let out a sigh. “I didn’t think so,” Sue said.
The women turned away and faced the window, speaking in low, calm voices, as if they were discussing something they had observed in the street below. Julia explained the state of affairs. “Oh, honey,” Sue said. “You can’t stay with him out of guilt. This is a long, hard road if things go well,” she paused, turned her head, and looked off to the distance for a moment. “I’m sure you’re well aware of the statistics. It’s not a matter of if it comes back, it’s when. And after the when there will be thirty or forty years of your life still to be lived,” she put her hand upon Julia’s, “without him. It’s what I think about every night when I put my head down on my pillow, Julia. It’s coming. I just don’t know when. So I live my life in a kind of limbo.” She squinted, put a hand up to shield her eyes as a large cloud slid past the sun. “David and Frank, on the other hand, need to live in denial. But you shouldn’t, not deep down.”
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