“What about Maura?” I asked. “Does she know anything?”
Maura was the type of kid who preferred her mother’s arms to television and toys, her mother’s mouth on her booboo boo over a cartoon Band-Aid, her mother’s whisper at night over a CD lullaby.
At the sound of her daughter’s name, Claire slumped into the pillows on the bed like bread dough that had been punched down. “No, not yet.”
I lifted Sam higher on my shoulder, wrapped both arms around her. I looked at Claire and tried to convey with my eyes that I knew she was scared to death at the thought of leaving Maura, but for God’s sake, I needed her, too.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. This was Claire. There was always a plan.
Claire sat up with her back straight and folded her hands in her lap. “The plan is that I’ll be busy for a while with surgeries and appointments, probably chemo, then radiation. That’s why I need you. I’d like for Maura to spend more time with you and Sam, to create a routine that she begins to count on. She loves you and Tim so much. And she adores being a ‘big cousin’ to Sam. I know it’s a lot to ask, Helen, with you just getting home with Sam. But it would help if Maura spent more time with your family. I don’t know how much Ross will be able to do. Yes, he’ll tend to all of her needs. But she’ll need someone to fill in as mom. You know how much affection she requires.”
“I’ll do anything. I swear to you, Claire. I will do anything you need.”
“If we’re lucky, I’ll be through the worst part by summer and we can all get on with our lives.”
Six months, good. Claire had already defined her goal and set a timeline. With her day planner, a colorful pack of highlighters, and ironclad determination, Claire would set records with her recovery. This was my big sister, after all. The one who stayed when both Mom and Dad left.
After a while, I handed Sam off to Claire and went downstairs into the kitchen and made a batch of peanut butter–chocolate chip cookies. At a time like this, Claire’s favorite cookie with a giant glass of milk was all I could think to do. We ate and ate until we were nearly sick.
“Claire,” I said carefully. “I know this isn’t the right time to bring this up, but then again, maybe it’s the perfect time.”
“What, Helen?”
“I don’t know. It’s just…When I was in China and Sam was sick, I saw everything so clearly. We lost Mom because we didn’t have a choice, but we lost Dad, too, and we kind of did have a choice. When I was there, I just felt really strongly about trying to get our family back together.”
“So this is about Larry?”
“With you being sick…I think that he’d really like to see you, meet his granddaughters. I know he did us wrong. I know he wasn’t there. But still—”
“You do what you need to do, Helen,” Claire said wearily. “I’ve got my own battle to fight. If you want to take that—him—on, that’s going to be up to you.”
That night, I lay folded over on Tim’s lap while he stroked my hair. The tears streamed down my face and I cried without making a sound. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Claire and I loved each other so much but never had the chance to be together. For one reason or another, we were always just missing each other. When I was in high school, Claire had to be my caregiver rather than my sister: paying the bills, grocery shopping, helping me with my homework. Then I went away to Europe, and when I got back, we were both new brides, ready to start families. But it only worked for Claire, and once again, our paths took different forks. And now finally, finally, we were mothers with daughters, with the time, energy, and desire to spend our days together, and Claire turns up with cancer. It was just a minute ago when I had Claire but not Sam, and now I had Sam, and there was a threat of losing Claire. It wasn’t fair. I wanted time with her. I wanted picnics at the zoo, family vacations, cousins growing up close. I wanted Claire to squeeze my hand on Sam’s first day of kindergarten; I wanted to be the one who steadied Claire as she watched Maura graduate from high school.
“You mentioned that Claire gets checked,” Tim said. “When was the last time you got checked?”
“Years ago.”
“Why so long?”
“Because the only thing I thought about for the last five years was getting pregnant and having a baby,” I admitted. “I mean, sure, the thought would occasionally hover over me, but I was so obsessed with infertility I never paid too much attention.”
“Now, though. You need to get tested.”
“I will. I just went online. It said that over eighty percent of victims—victims, like somebody put a fucking gun to their heads—find out in the late stages. By then, it’s pretty advanced. That’s what happened with Mom.”
“If Claire’s been getting regular checkups, then she probably will beat the odds,” Tim said. “She probably caught it early.”
“I’m betting on it,” I said. “The smart money has always bet on Claire. If anyone can beat it, she can.”
“You need to get checked, Helen,” Tim said. “Even if it’s mostly useless. Get checked so that you can stay on top of the latest technology. There’s bound to be advances in this type of cancer, right?” Tim pulled me into him. “It runs in your family, Helen. We’ve got to take that seriously.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I will.” I got up and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. What I had just told Tim wasn’t entirely true. The thought of cancer sometimes more than hovered. Once, I even had made the appointment to have blood drawn to check my predisposition to it, but at the last minute canceled. If I learned that I was predisposed to ovarian cancer, that would confirm my suspicions that Mom’s genes and my infertility were connected. I was more afraid of losing hope in my fertility than I’d been anxious to find out about the cancer mutation.
While Tim was locking up the house, I slipped into the family room and picked up the phone. I held it in my hand, leaned over at the waist, and exhaled. With trembling hands, I dialed Larry’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“It’s Helen,” I said.
“Are you home from China?” he asked. “I got the photo you sent of Sam. She’s a cutie.”
“I’m home, and Sam’s great. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
My eyes filled with tears—exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I wanted and needed to be strong, like Claire. I took a deep breath and let the tears free-fall onto my thighs.
“I’m calling because Claire’s sick. She has cancer. Ovarian, just like Mom.”
“Oh,” he groaned. It was the guttural moan of an animal caught in a trap.
My chest grew heavy and I felt a sadness that turned me inside out because I knew how this worked: He would never be able to un-hear my words.
“You and I, we blew it with Mom,” I continued. “We weren’t there for her when she needed us. I’m not planning on repeating that mistake.” I steadied my voice and took another breath. “I know our family didn’t survive Mom’s death. I was just thinking—hoping, really—that maybe we could come together for Claire.”
He cleared his throat and blew his nose. Without seeing, I knew that he was using a handkerchief.
“I’m calling to say this,” I continued. “If you want to try to work your way back into this family, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
“I do,” he said, his voice buckling midword. “I do.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
That night, tightly nestled around the curve of Tim’s back, I fell asleep and dreamed of Claire and me when we were little. We had built a fort out of sofa cushions and sheets. It was summer, and the fabric felt cool against our skin as we parachuted them high above our heads and hooked them under the pillows. Then we lay on our backs on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, the sun casting shadows through the thin fabric. Claire rolled onto me, straddled me, and pinned my hands above my head. She tickled my arms, my stomach, my neck. “You’re so mine! You’re so mine!” she said in an evil voice, alm
ost a witch’s cackle. I laughed and then I cried and then I laughed again. I begged her to stop; I begged her for more. Finally, she rolled onto her back; I could see the rise and fall of her belly out of the corner of my eye. I rolled onto her, tummy to tummy, and this time she wrapped her arms around me. Tightly. She looked into my eyes and said, in the sweetest voice, “You’re so mine. You’re so mine. You’re my little Helen.” And she kissed me all over my face. I woke up startled, looked around. I closed my eyes again because I wanted to feel Claire’s arms around little girl me for just one more second, but the moment was gone. That’s when I realized that I might never feel Claire’s arms again. The thought choked me. I sat up straight, grabbed for my throat, and gasped for air.
“It’s okay,” Tim was saying. “Slow down. Take a nice, slow breath.”
I tried, but my throat was clogged. The tears were choking me. My chest burned.
“Let me get a paper bag,” Tim said.
“Don’t leave!” I gasped, grasping onto his shirt, pulling him to me, burrowing into his chest.
“Slowly, slowly.” Tim rubbed my back as he spoke.
Finally, I found some air. I folded into Tim and cried, in free-flowing, jolting sobs. “Oh my God, Tim. What if I lose her? What would I do?” I cried until my chest burned and my throat was raw. Tim held me tightly, and then even tighter. But even his tightest wasn’t enough to tame my greatest fear: one way or another, everyone was going to leave me.
Chapter Seventeen
Perspective. That’s what I got, and fast, the second my sister—my lifeline—told me she had cancer, the same cancer that killed our mother. That’s how fast the earth shifted beneath my feet. Claire was sick, and it was now my turn to stand up for her like she’d always stood up for me.
But worrying about Claire would need to wait—at least for a few hours. Knocking at my door was Dr. Elle Reese, at nine o’clock on the dot, here to conduct our post-adoption visit. This would count as the first of three such visits. Claire’s news had left me shaky all weekend, waking disoriented in the night, crying in the supermarket, sitting in my car staring into space while Sam slept in her car seat. And when I wasn’t worried about Claire, I was worrying about this visit. What if Elle found a deficiency in my mothering, something obvious that I had overlooked, like the fact that I had slathered Sam’s bread with honey before Claire told me it was sometimes dangerous to babies?
Get it together, I told myself. Sam’s doing great and you can worry about Claire later. Being a mom now meant that my grief had to be scheduled, like a dental appointment. So I woke early, baked a batch of scones, arranged a fruit platter, and brewed coffee. I straightened the family room and cleaned the kitchen. When Sam stirred, I warmed a bottle, which she drank in her crib, still groggy with sleep, gulping with her eyes shut. Then I changed her diaper and dressed her in a cute pair of overalls with a pink-flowered shirt.
I led Elle to the family room. She sat in the upholstered chair across from the sofa. Today she was wearing a dress that resembled an Indian sari, a drape of orange silk fabric splashed with burnt yellows and reds and heavily embroidered with beads and sequins. Her nest of hair was twisted into a knot and secured with a jeweled clip. Her toenails were painted black with gold flecks and she wore thin gold sandals.
“It’s good to see you again,” Elle said, settling into the chair and crossing her legs. A gold bracelet circled her ankle.
I went to the kitchen and retrieved the tray of coffee, fruit, and pastries. I set it on the ottoman for Elle to help herself. Then I unbuckled Sam from her high chair and brought her in with us, placing her on the Oriental carpet with a basket of educational toys.
“Well, hello, cutie pie,” Elle said, reaching for a maraca and shaking it in front of Sam. Elle looked up at me. “How is little Sam?”
I took a deep breath, steadied myself to say all of the right things, worried that one wrong step would have me deemed unfit as a mother and Sam put in the custody of child services. “She’s doing really well,” I said. “She’s learned to sit and walk; she plays competently with all of her age-appropriate educational toys. She gravitates toward the manipulatives. She likes to put squares in squares, circles in circles. Maybe a future engineer? She’s very detailed. She likes small objects—well, not too small!” I corrected. “Not so small that they’re choking hazards.”
Elle smiled. “Relax, Helen,” she said. “It looks like Sam is doing great. No need to be so worried.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What else?” Elle asked. “How’s her schedule?”
“Let’s see, she takes two naps per day. Eats with me on a regular schedule—three meals, plus snacks in between. She has gained three pounds in the month we’ve had her. She’s grown an inch. She’s been checked out by the pediatrician, who has begun repeating all of her immunizations, just in case. She’s friendly and smiles a lot. She loves her big cousin, Maura—”
“That’s wonderful,” Elle interrupted. “I’m sure you’re taking wonderful care of her. How is she doing developmentally? Have you noticed any delays or behavior that struck you as odd?”
“Well, sure…” I stammered, wondering whether it was better to say or better to gloss over. “There’s some. I mean, she seems to know that I’m Mom and Tim’s Dad, but she’s not very choosy about who she goes to. It’s kind of the ‘highest bidder’ type of thing. She’ll go to the person who has what she wants. Her eye contact is still a little sketchy, but really, no big problems.”
“Do any of these issues concern you?”
“Not really,” I said honestly. “I chat frequently with one of the moms who we traveled with. She has two girls from China and she has assured me that most of this behavior is fairly normal—well, typical, anyway.”
“And how are you doing?” Elle asked, locking her X-ray eyes on mine.
“Good!” I said, nodding my head enthusiastically. “Really good.”
Elle continued to look at me as if she didn’t believe me. “Being a new mother is tough,” she said. “Are you faring okay?”
I nodded, stretched my eyes open as wide as I could, and tried to slide the tears back into place.
“Are you okay?” Elle asked, leaning forward.
“My sister has cancer,” I blurted, releasing my restrained tears like a slingshot. “We just found out. The same kind of cancer that killed our mother.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Elle said.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” I said, wiping at my face with my sleeve. “But still, I just got home and it’s such a happy time. It’s just really unfortunate that…”
“That what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s selfish on my part.”
“Go for it.”
“It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t have it all,” I admitted. “That I couldn’t have Sam and Claire, just like I couldn’t have my mother and father. Or my mother and Claire. It just seems like a pattern. Something good always balanced by something bad.”
“Yes, the circle of life is an often cruel reality.”
I nodded, wiped my eyes.
“You’re scared,” Elle said. “The cancer means that you might lose your sister, that your niece might lose her mother.”
“That’s not an option,” I said. “I can’t live without Claire.”
“You love her a lot.”
“It’s beyond love,” I said. “We’re sisters.”
“That Claire’s sick,” Elle went on, “what does it mean to you as Sam’s mother?”
I thought of Sam, how sure I was in promising her forever, when in truth I hadn’t a bit of control over what the future would bring.
“It means that I’m no more immune from it than Claire was,” I admitted. “The ironic thing is, in the months leading up to the adoption, I worried that an adoptive daughter might someday leave me. It never occurred to me how devastating it could be to her if I were the one to leave. So, yeah, Claire’s cancer makes it real. That I could get it
, too. And the thought of leaving Sam too early scares me terribly.”
“Being left is a terrible thing,” Elle said.
“I want to give Sam the childhood I never had, one that doesn’t end at age twelve when a father leaves, or age thirteen when a mother gets sick. I want to be her rock. I never want her to feel scared or alone or uncertain.”
“Your father left,” Elle said. “What was that like?”
“It was a crazy time. My mother was sick, and she and my father were separated. Then he left during it all.”
Elle paused, twisted her ring. “That must have made matters worse that he left at such a difficult time, with your mother being ill.”
“It seems like that would have made a big difference,” I said, remembering how chaotic it was back then, “but you know how those things go. Life doesn’t stop for illness. Mom was working. Larry traveled a lot. Claire was in college. I was just starting high school. Normal life, except that Larry had become an outsider. Following his affair, he moved out for a while. During that time, Mom and Claire and I banded together. When Larry came back home, it couldn’t have been too much fun for him.”
“What was that like?”
“When I saw him recently,” I said, “he told me that he used to sit in the driveway and think, ‘Who the hell even cares if I come in?’ I can totally understand why he felt that way. Our house couldn’t have been too inviting to him. Claire, especially, was as cold as ice. That’s Claire. If she’s on your side, you’ve got yourself a strong ally. But if you cross her, look out. She considered Larry’s infidelity as pure treason. And Mom just kind of moved around him. Her Catholic sensibilities, she’d rather stay married in some awkward limbo than get a divorce.
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