She didn’t wait long.
PART II: BEAUTY AND THE BREAST
4. Poison
During C.C.’s first weeks of chemotherapy, when she wasn’t asleep or sick, she watched birds: robins, a blue jay, blackbirds, a sparrow. But it wasn’t the cardinal at his bath, vivid against a sky-blue bowl, or the titmouse clutching beanpoles or the wren gathering moss from her hanging baskets – these didn’t really catch her. Flight, however, did. The aerial choreography of barn swallows, the long glide of an occasional gull come inland, the ominous heavy flap of crow’s lift-off, the cardinal’s bright dart. She took to watching flight at inopportune moments, say, during a phone call, after which she’d have the devil’s own time remembering with whom she’d just spoken.
Quiola didn’t worry about the birdwatching, until C.C. became unreasonably exasperated when a pair of cardinals built a nest in an azalea at the shed’s front window.
“It’s too low,” she said one morning, peering out. “Some cat will get them.”
“What’s too low?” asked Quiola. She’d driven over from her own place, supplied with Tupperware full of soups, and microwaveable meals, and was storing them in fridge and freezer, labeled, ready to heat.
“That foolish bird,” C.C. said, pointing. “I can see right down into the nest. And if I can, so can some cat.”
That was bad enough, but the next week when Quiola made her Tupperware run, C.C. started ranting about DDT.
“Yes I know DDT’s been banned for years,” she said, looking up from her book, “but how can we be sure? It’s poison. You know what it did to the peregrines, don’t you? And the bald eagle,” she added, pushing her chair back from the kitchen table. “Ha! We kill our own.”
“America has been a slaughterhouse since Europeans started mapping. We’ve a talent for killing each other, always for good reasons. But we’re not really talking about DDT, are we?”
“No, we’re not. Chemo is poison, and I fail to see how poison is a good thing. I don’t think I’ll mind the radiation so much. It leaves a little burn mark, which heals up fast. Or so I’m told. But chemo is just poison – it’s murdering me slow, from nerve to nail. I feel like the goddamned peregrine, doomed to extinction.”
“Radiation isn’t benign either. And a poison depends on the dose. People used to take arsenic for their health, after all.”
“Fools.”
“Chemotherapy is –”
“– a crude poison,” interrupted C.C. “It just blasts through, killing willy-nilly and you hope it takes out the cancer, before it, or the chemo, takes out the species.”
“You do not, by yourself, constitute a species.”
“How do you know? Maybe I am the last of my kind – the Last of the Mohicans.”
“Not funny.”
“Well? Second wave feminists are a dying breed – literally. We’re soooooo over, we’re soooo old, if you talk to anyone under thirty. I hear there’s a third, even a fourth wave, but I don’t see it. What wave are you riding on? I mean, you were still teething when we all started raising our consciousness, and protesting the war.”
“I was ten or so. Hardly teething.”
“Too young.”
“Well,” said Quiola as she leaned against the sink near the pile of dishes C.C. had left, “we now have the War on Terror to keep us all busy.”
“God help the young. I remember the day the Vietnam War ended. I thought I’d see peace forever.”
“Peace never lasts long.”
“What are you, a prophetess?”
“No. But I can read history – or maybe I’m the one who’s a witch, after all.”
“Boo,” said C.C. sourly. “Anyway, what am I going to do about it?”
“About what?”
“Those idiot cardinals. Late-nesting in my azalea.”
“Oh, not them again.”
“Well? They’ve put themselves in harm’s way. I’m sure that orange tom down the block has the chicks staked out already.”
But the orange tom had other fish to fry. As one week moved into the next, and C.C.’s treatments dragged on, baby cardinals took flight.
♦
“Poison,” said Quiola to a sleeping C.C. one evening in the “shed” after supper, “is a woman’s means of murder. Hard to diagnose. Sly. Bella Donna.” But C.C., wan and wasted, slept on. Quiola left the bedroom to sit down at the kitchen table, which was covered with insurance, doctor and clinic bills, sorted into piles – all of which said C.C. owed someone, somewhere, and eternally, it seemed, for the privilege of being poisoned. Quiola stared at the papers for a few minutes, then got up and fixed herself a drink – and soon started drinking with an earnest drive to pass out, which she did, on the couch beside the fireplace.
Sometime later, in the dark, C.C. shook her shoulder.
“Wake up.”
“Go ’way.”
“Quiola, wake up – its past midnight. What about Amelia? Doesn’t she need to be fed?”
That brought her up from the bottom of Gin Lake. She pushed herself to a half-sitting position and waited while the spinning room settled. Cotton-mouthed, unable to focus properly, she stared at the worsted couch fabric in the faint light.
“Might puke,” she said.
“What? Are you all right? What’ve you been doing?”
Quiola laughed and hauling herself into a sit, lugged her legs off the couch and looked up at C.C., luminous, bald and thin in her flannel nightgown, a blue blur, her face framed by concern.
“Quiola –”
“Leave me alone.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Whoopee. Don’t worry. I’m going.”
“Are you sure you should drive? Maybe I –”
“Doan’ be dumb. Look at you. Can’t drive. Sheesh. Move over. I’m goin’ home, ha-ha, home. To condo heaven.” Squinting malevolently at C.C.’s several faces she said, “I’m never going back to Paris. Neve’.” She pushed herself to her feet and although C.C. tried to stop her, she left the “shed”, banging the door behind her, then, in the car, she wove along pitch-black back country roads with the intense concentration of a very, but not entirely, drunken drunk. With care she rolled quietly into the condo’s lot, shut the headlights, and staggered up the walk. Insects hummed in the July night. She dropped the keys, picked them up and fell down. Giggling, she got back on her feet and inside to find the poor cat beside herself with kitten joy. Quiola cried a little as she spooned out cat food, then made herself stop.
“Self-indulgent brat,” she said, dropping the used spoon in the sink and putting Amelia’s dish on the floor. She watched the kitten devour it, and then lay down on the linoleum and fell asleep.
Some hours later, a ringing, ringing, ringing brought her around. Fumbling up from the floor, she answered the phone – “Hello?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Hello? Who is this?”
“You know damn well who it is. And I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Liz?”
“Oh, Christ, what – are you still piss-ass drunk?”
“Well, hello Minnesota. I gather C.C. told you about last night.”
“Damn right she did. Weeping into the phone at five a.m., of course she knew I’d be up but what can I do? I thought you were looking after her –”
“I am –”
“How? By getting pie-eyed?“
“No, I –”
“– and just what kind of half-ass excuse do you have?”
Silence.
“None,” said Liz. “Thought so.”
“I’m tired,” said Quiola.
“You’re tired?”
“Yes me, I’m tired. Besides, I don’t see you here, filling Tupperware with soup or making the chemo pilgrimage to New Haven.”
“Oh, please. Just what kind of help would I be? If you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly young.”
“Neither am I.”
“Please,
save me the pity-party. Just wait till you hit my age.”
“If I should be so lucky.”
“Oh, you’ll be around,” said Lizzie, sounding grim and sure. “Long, and I mean long after C.C. and I are dust, so you might do a little better at taking care of her while you can.”
“Look, Liz, I don’t need a scolding. I feel bad enough as it is. Okay? I don’t have an excuse. I know it was wrong – but you try sitting around for hours watching other, sick bald, people get chemotherapy. It’s worn me down. C.C. hates the treatments, of course, but she’s a trooper, she’s built up a rapport with the nurses, she swaps stories with Snow-White the Vampire –”
“Snow White the Vampire?”
“Another patient. Anyway, I’m just there. Like furniture, like I was for Luke, sitting there, watching AIDS eat him to nothing, it – hurts. It hurts, to just watch, helpless, as C.C.’s pumped full of poison. I can’t explain – I know I’m being selfish. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Quiola.”
“What.”
“Call Ted.”
“Don’t you think I have? I call his wife every week. She’s been very polite. I have no idea if she passes this information on, but I keep the Mrs. informed. She thanks me. That’s about it.”
“Ted was such a good boy. Nancy would be unhappy, if she knew.”
“Thank God, then, that she doesn’t.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Nancy? Yes, although C.C. was in an agony of distress about being bald. Her mother didn’t even notice, which made it worse.”
“Quiola.”
“What.”
“You can’t take care of someone else if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, right. I know.”
“Do you? C.C. told me her chemo is almost over, isn’t it? Good. Take a break. I told her you needed one. She’s too focused on the present misery to notice, and you can’t blame her, but you have your own life, too. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, everyone needs a mother now and then,” said Lizzie sharply. “I’m not much of one, still, when C.C. tells me you’ve been drinking rot-gut, I think: poor child. I love C.C. but she’s demanding. Remember, I’ve lived with her.”
“I remember.”
“So – are you all right now?”
Quiola chuckled. “I’ve a sledgehammer of a hangover, if that’s what you mean.”
“Take care of yourself, then.”
“I will. I promise. Goodbye, Liz. Call you in a few –” and she hung up.
♦
Dead calm, the Sound barely sounded, a murmur like a hem of silk, as a brisk breeze offered no hint of winter’s coming. The sun hid behind a scrim of summer cloud, which dulled the July heat. Quiola trudged across the grainy sand, each step jarring. Aspirin, coffee and a soft-boiled egg on dry toast had done little to cut the pain ringing her eye-sockets. She carried a water bottle and drank at it half-heartedly, walking out toward Meig’s Point until she found a secluded niche, a driftwood log, nothing special unless you’d been there again and again, which she had. Swinging the backpack off her shoulders, she unzipped it and unfurled a striped beach towel, which she laid out flat then planted herself on it before the wind had other ideas. She sighed and drank little sips out of the water left in her bottle.
“Must rehydrate,” she admonished herself and then closed her eyes, shaking her head, muttering something about old ladies who natter to no one.
Her cell-phone rang. She stared at the back-pack, hoping the cheery little Mozart air would stop, but it didn’t, so she unzipped the pocket, flipped open the phone and said,
“Hello.”
“Where are you?” asked C.C.
“On the beach.”
“What beach?”
“Meig’s Point.”
“Fuck that –”
“Charlotte Calliope! I’m shocked.”
“Where are you, really? I’ve called the condo twice.”
“I told you. I’m at the beach, out on Meig’s Point. Really. It’s lovely this morning.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes and no.”
“Just how much did you have last night?”
“Why? It was mine, I paid for it.”
“You can drink me out of house and home, for all I care.”
“I’m paying for it now, if you prefer.”
“I see. Call me back, when you’re ready to talk,” she said, and hung up.
Quiola snapped the phone shut. Then, she opened it, and shut it off. She watched a dog attached to a family, vainly chase one seagull after another, unfazed by failure, while kids tossed a ball between them in the water. Getting to her feet, she walked away from her niche, off toward the breaker, down to the sea. Lemony late sunshine sat like custard between puffs of gray-blue rain clouds soon to burst over Meig’s Point.
♦
Luke O’Connor, thin and gaunt, sat in the front seat of the rental car with an alpaca throw across his knees and an old ski-hat tucked over his ears. “Where are we going?” he asked as Quiola pulled off the brake and eased onto the street.
“To the beach. For the weekend. I’ve packed for both of us.”
“Packed? The weekend? You know we can’t afford it.”
“We don’t have to afford it.”
“What do you mean?” He turned to eye her. “What have you done now?”
“Don’t sound so suspicious! I haven’t done anything except ask a favor.”
“Oh, no. Not from C.C.”
“Well? Look we both need a break, and the beach is only a few miles from her little house. Besides, she’s not really living there right now, she’s moved in with her mother until she can find a good nursing home.”
Luke turned his paling face away, to look out the window at the passing city. “You should’ve asked. You should’ve asked me first. You know how I feel about – that. C.C. And it isn’t as if she has much regard for me, either.”
“Oh, Luke.”
“Well? It’s true.”
“But I care for you both.”
He closed his eyes, and rested his temple against the car window. “Do you? Must I share you, always, with her?”
“What do you mean by share, Luke?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“Listen,” she said, although she’d said it before. “I am in love with you. In love. With you. I love C.C. I am not in love with her.”
“You were once, weren’t you?”
“Maybe,” she said, biting her lip. “We had sex. We lived together. You know this. You knew this when you married me. But I was a kid! Just out of college, green as corn. I didn’t know what I wanted and besides it was a long time ago.”
Luke ran his index finger slowly along the window edge. “It’s hard,” he said after a few minutes. “Maybe if I weren’t sick, I wouldn’t care so much, I don’t know. I didn’t care when I proposed to you. I swear I didn’t. So what? I thought because by the time you get to be our age, if you haven’t fallen once or twice for the wrong one, well, that’s not a surprise. But now, when there’s no future –”
Quiola caught her breath. “Honey, none of knows if we have a future.”
“Oh, sure, we could both get hit by the next crazy on this highway. Right. I know. Hey, let’s stop at the beach first. I mean before we get to the house. It’s a beautiful day. I’d like to sit by the water.”
“I’m there before you,” she said, smiling. “I packed us a lunch.”
The sun seemed desirous of shining hard as if just for Luke, who soon fell into a doze and only woke again when Quiola swung off the ramp, through the stoplight and into the park. Off-season, no guard was on duty; the winding road of marsh and tide was empty; dry, burst cattails shook in the light, chill wind. The parking lot, too, was empty and the winter beach entirely theirs. Draping his alpaca throw across his shoulders, Luke let Quiola help him out of the passenger seat, and to
gether, with their lunch in a red cooler and a heavy woolen Pendleton blanket, made their way across the weathered boardwalk, to the sand.
The grayish Sound, so much calmer than its cousin the Atlantic, rippled quietly a few yards from their picnic. They didn’t speak as Quiola unpacked lunch, but when she handed Luke his wax-papered egg-salad sandwich and bag of chips, he said, “I will die soon, you know. I feel it in me, Qui. I feel… different. Lighter.”
She could not take his gaze with her own, so kept her eyes on the sandwich they both held. “I don’t want you to leave me,” she said. “Don’t.”
“Oh, no,” he said, his voice suddenly Luke’s old voice, real, firm, and warm. “Are you kidding me? Not when there’s egg salad and chips!”
♦
At Liz’s suggestion – her insistence, really – when C.C.’s chemo treatment ended, Quiola took a break: a week in New York, talking to gallery people about a possible show for C.C.; two weeks in Paris, closing up the studio cleaning it out, making it buyer-ready.
“By the time you get back, I’ll be well,” said C.C., watching Quiola haul a black nylon suitcase out the back of the closet; she put it on the bed, unzipped it. Amelia leapt up from the floor to investigate.
“Promise?” asked Quiola as she rummaged in the bag.
“Yes. By then, the radiation will be done – hey, what have you found in there?”
“An old postcard.”
“What does it say?”
“Nothing. It’s blank. But it’s – here, look,” and she handed it over to C.C.
“It this a joke?”
The lurid red, green and beige card was titled INDIAN SYMBOLS in bright red, bold capital letters; it was subtitled And Their Meanings in lower-case brown type. An illustration of a Hollywood-type Native American in red-feathered war-bonnet was super-imposed on what seemed to be a dried buffalo hide. Written on that hide were tiny black symbols followed by English interpretations:
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