“Do y’all play sports?” I ask when Mack doesn’t.
Meredith looks at Juliann, who looks at her feet. Regulation sandals, but pink toes, whoa. Meredith’s smile is still all apology. “Not football,” she jokes.
At the same time her sister says, “Just phys ed.”
Mack and I do a silent high five and he adds, “Dan’s brother is a superstar in the county soccer league. Team sports around here are a little, ah, overwhelming. Not a lot of other stuff to do…” His voice trails off. I can tell he’s thought better all of a sudden about pointing out Essex County’s weaknesses so early in the relationship.
The girls nod as if they know that lack of activities is not the real reason for our dismissal of team sports. They’re so eager not to offend, I bristle all over again at Mack’s breaking our pact not to mention The Disease.
Of course I miss the allotted slot at the barbershop. By the time I realize it, my mother’s probably steaming, but we’ve convinced the twins to meet us Friday night at the public pier under the bridge for a fishing lesson. Much better than the band concert with the whole town on the alert. Dating 101—Mack’s getting to be quite the expert. Without a car, it’s hard to find places you can be alone with a girl.
When I get back to the barbershop, my mother’s sitting outside in the Subaru. Too warm, I try to cover up the puffing. She holds out her open palm.
“Give me the ten-dollar bill.” She’s really ticked. “You can bike in tomorrow and get yourself a haircut.”
“How about Friday? Mack and I were going to teach his new neighbors how to fish. They’re from Charlottesville.”
She just looks at me—that wise tight smile that isn’t really a smile—but she doesn’t say no, even though it’s not likely she’ll let me bike. Since June she obsesses that I’ll faint and fall off while I’m riding.
“If I were you,” she says deadpan, “I’d rethink fishing. Not a lot of girls like to fish.”
I’m speechless, too busy wondering how she figured out the new neighbors are girls.
CHAPTER FOUR
When we get to the grocery store, the assistant store manager is pacing outside. Effie’s face, already pudgy from too many doughnuts, is blotchy and red. She used to be a client of Mom’s at the Food Pantry, the unofficial arm of the local welfare group that distributes free government food, mostly surplus cheese and recalled meat. Mom started the project in Tappahannock years ago. It’s your standard redistribution of wealth scheme on a very small scale. Sometimes Mack and I help them unwrap the boxes and divvy it up into bundles for individual households. With Effie’s job at the grocery store, she has graduated. One of Mom’s success stories.
“Effie.” Mom swerves away from the automatic doors to hug the plump woman in an apron decorated with a purple lion. “What’s the matter?”
“They’re cutting my hours.”
“Oh, Effie.”
Mom takes her hands and makes her sit on a bench in the shade. Effie’s been crying, but now that she has an audience, she rants, getting louder and louder. The tiny angel tattoo on her shoulder dances as she warms up.
“No health benefits if I work less than forty hours. No sick days. No vacation. It stinks.”
“Who told you this?”
“The district director from Raleigh.”
I’m backed up to the building with only my toes sticking out in the sun. It’s almost like being invisible, the two of them are so deeply entrenched in their outrage. A real break, ’cause Mom’s hardly been able to leave me alone for ten minutes all summer. As I stand there watching customers come and go, the back of Mom’s neck turns pink. She only planned on errands, so she didn’t load up like usual on SPF 50. All of a sudden this summer she’s ballistic about sunscreen when she’s been only mildly enthusiastic about it before. Although she doesn’t say her concern is related, it’s obvious it’s all about the lurking terror The Disease has injected into our lives.
I’m not the only one who’s suffering. It kills me that she and Dad tiptoe through their days trying to avoid the very thing that caught me. They’re afraid to talk about it in front of me. They try every way they know to keep things the same. It’s ass-backwards. The same is what got us here. Because our parents are so worried about upsetting me, Nick gets the raw end of every decision. When Joe came home one weekend, they unloaded on him the minute I left the room. He played his music the rest of the weekend and hardly talked to me. No jokes, no funny stories—he was definitely in shock. Not that he broke all the garage windows like Holden did when his brother Allie died, but it could still happen. If things go as expected.
Joe left early that Sunday without much of a goodbye. What none of them twig is that it’s the fear, not the cancer, that makes me feel so fucking bad.
After ten minutes of listening to Mom and Effie go back and forth about the unfairness of employment-at-will, Virginia’s conservative bent, and its long-standing hatred of unions and minorities, the sweat is running down my spine in a river.
“Mom.”
“In a minute, Daniel.”
“Mom, give me the list. You can meet me at the register.”
She looks at me and smiles—a real smile—for the first time since breakfast. Someone needs her and she can help without anticipating a burial. What a relief that must be.
“Thanks.” And she lets me go without asking the inevitable “are you sure you’re okay?”
The list includes six things with vitamin C—Mom read somewhere that it counteracts nausea and it’s all she’s been talking about since. Nature cures itself, a constant theme in our house. The thing is, honestly, why does nature just not create diseases in the first place? Then nature wouldn’t need to waste any energy on finding cures.
Trained well, I choose the cheapest kind of orange juice, the store-brand cans you mix with water. But I do check the back of the package for the list of vitamins. Daniel Vitamin Landon—maybe I’ll get a nickname out of all this attention. HC must be chuckling.
The candy aisle catches my attention. Girls like candy. Unfortunately, I have no idea what to pick for girls from Charlottesville or girls period since candy has always been a huge NO at home. I’m lingering in front of the Hershey Kisses. Too obvious, too dorky. I’m debating whether I should bring snacks at all to Friday’s date with the twins and wondering what else besides candy would work, when my stomach lifts and slams itself into a bottomless hole. Doubled over, I’m looking for a place to sit as Mom comes around the corner.
Shoving past another customer, she grabs my arm. “Effie,” she screams.
It hurts my eardrums. “It’s all right, Mom. It’ll pass in a minute.”
At either end of the aisle people stop and stare. Which doesn’t faze my mother. She sweeps the cereal boxes off a stack of cardboard cartons and steers me to it. Effie and the produce clerk crash around the end display. Bags of Fritos fly everywhere.
“Should we call an ambulance, Miz Landon?”
“No,” I croak. “Don’t, Mom. It’ll pass.”
“No, no, he’s okay.” She could be talking to herself. “I’m sorry, Effie. I just panicked.”
The produce clerk, who looks like a kid in my Spanish class last semester—except taller and with more acne—hands me a towel from his back pocket. “Water?” he asks.
“That’d be great.” I roll my eyes and he rolls his back at me. Mothers.
Back on the boat I offer to unload groceries, but Mom insists I go and lie down. In the galley the cell phone beeps, so I know she’s calling the herbalist to report this latest incident. I’m not the best patient they’ve ever had, but I do keep them busy.
“Here, sweetie, drink this.” Mom hands me a mug with steam curls floating above it. The outside temperature has to be one hundred degrees and she’s smothering me with hot liquids.
I sniff. “Ugh.”
“Misty says tincture of lavender helps with cramps.”
“My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“S
he means it deters recurrence.”
“Does she know what causes it? That might be a better place to start.”
“Daniel, don’t be like that. Misty’s had lots of cancer patients.”
“Yeah, but are any of them alive to give an endorsement?”
Later I hear her weeping into the phone. Misty Underwood, whom Leonard Yowell nicknamed Miss T. Undertaker in one of his more clever moments, is Mom’s best audience for this kind of meltdown. She tends to fall apart when she’s alone, although I never noticed it much until this summer. Dad’s at the Richmond airport, on his way to a conference for his biggest client, a Chicago textbook publisher.
Nick stands by the door to our room, the ever-present soccer ball on his hip.
He glares. “Nice going. Mom’s a mess.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it on purpose, you turd.”
“Whatever. Why do you always do this when Dad’s away?”
“I don’t do it. It does it.” I throw the book I’m reading at him. He ducks and it slides along the deck, hits the gunwale, and catapults into the river.
“It’s a library book,” I yell as I try to stand, but my stomach won’t let me.
Nick kicks off his shoes, climbs over the rope railing, and cannonballs a perfect ten, water everywhere. When he resurfaces, he holds the book above his head. “And the winner is…”
It’s impossible not to laugh. HC gets an unexpected bath. He’d get a kick out of that. If the library won’t take the book back, I’ll have to pay for it, but at least I’ll have my own copy. And it’s already been underlined.
Mom had her first meltdown in July, when she found out the nurse at the family doctor’s office spilled the beans to Mack’s mother about the leukemia. Mrs. Petriano is a talker, which made it worse. The Essex County grapevine at its finest. I could hear my parents’ argument through the wall. Houseboats are not built for privacy.
“Sylvie”—Dad’s patience lubricated the words—“you can’t keep it a secret forever.”
“They could at least let us adjust before we have to listen to everyone else commiserating.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Carla Petriano is the biggest gossip in town.”
“She’s the mother of Daniel’s best friend. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.”
“Why should he have to be treated differently by strangers?”
“Be fair. Carla’s hardly a stranger.”
Something indistinguishable followed, punctuated by the sound of my father’s hand slapping the wall. “Damn it, Sylvie. This affects all of us, not just you.”
“Don’t you think I know that, Red? Look at Joe. He stays away. And Nick. He’s so focused on not talking about it, he’s stopped talking altogether.”
“Unless it’s related to soccer.” Only my father laughs, weak and short-lived.
Mom leaps in. “It’s just as well. He’s too young to understand how serious this is.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think he understands too well.” Dad’s dead serious now. “Nick sees Daniel wasting away. He sees the middle-of-the-night trips to the head. The endless laundry. Daniel couldn’t even swim all the way around the boat yesterday without resting on the mooring line. He used to be able to swim across the river, for God’s sake.” Dad’s anger came across loud and clear.
Mom interrupted. “You think Nick should be talking to a counselor?”
“Probably.”
“But we can’t afford that and Mexico. We agreed, Daniel first. That’s why Judy’s interference is so irritating.”
“She’s only trying to be supportive. She’s well-meaning.”
“If I had a dollar for every well-meaning word from these people.”
“‘These people’? These people were your friends five weeks ago.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t understand what this is like. With their platitudes and their casseroles and pound cake. What medical books do they read?”
“You wouldn’t wish this on their children.”
There was a silence and I found myself sitting up to listen, as if the solution to world peace would be forthcoming.
My mother’s voice was slower, less sure, as if she were losing steam, the debate a kind of verbal enema that had cleaned her out. “I do. Oh, God, Red, I do wish this was someone else’s child. In a heartbeat. I’d be the first one baking brownies.”
“This isn’t part of some grand master plan to punish the Landons. It’s like drawing the queen of spades in crazy eights. It just happens to be us this time. Some other boy in some other town will be the next one. Diseases like leukemia just happen.”
“I don’t believe that. It can’t be totally random. There are biological reasons, medical things that happen to certain people and not to other people.”
More mumbling, their voices flatter, exhausted, winding down into defeat. Dad opened the door, his rubber-soled shoes squeaked along the deck. “Sylvie, you have to let that go. You can’t help the boys deal with this if you’re angry all the time. It’s not your fault that Daniel is sick.”
“He’s not just sick. I wish he was just sick. He’s dying.” She choked on her own words and I missed his answer. She continued. “If it is random, if there’s no medical explanation, then how can there be a cure?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. You’re taking what I said out of context. I meant you have to stop blaming yourself for something that’s out of your control.”
Her words were whispers. I couldn’t hear them and neither could he because he stopped talking and walked back down the deck to where she must have been standing, still inside their cabin. And then the words that have come back to me over and over since that day: first thing in the morning, on rainy afternoons, in the middle of the night. In a flat tone—no anger, no despair, no frustration—Mom hung the words in the air one by one like the heaviest Christmas tree ornaments, the kind that drag down the other branches.
“But I gave him those genes.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Friday night’s supposed to be a full moon. Pure luck. On the phone Mack assures me he has confirmed the time and place with Juliann and Meredith. My backpack is stuffed with tortilla chips and red licorice. The salsa jar weighs down the bag. Dad’s back from his turnaround Chicago trip and agrees to drop me off at Mack’s on his way to the AA meeting in Warsaw.
I probably should have mentioned this sooner. In my father’s case Alcoholics Anonymous is a misnomer. His drug of choice is—was—marijuana; at least that’s what he’s told us. But apparently there are not enough recovering drug addicts in Essex County to justify a separate Narcotics Anonymous group. He still goes to the meetings once or twice a month, though he’s been drug-free for almost sixteen years, my whole life. One day when I was little and didn’t know it was a problem for him, I asked him why he didn’t drink beer like the other kids’ fathers. Even with the dumbed-down explanation, I could see it was really important to him.
Usually he makes light of things about himself. Not AA. Although he may not talk about it much, he never jokes about it. His promise to stay clean—a pretty hefty promise if you’re talking about not doing something ever again—was made in the delivery room the night I was born.
Not too long after the beer-and-AA conversation when he told me about the delivery room, but still years ago, my parents had an argument where Mom accused him of making the promise to me, not to her. That made me feel lousy at first, but after I got to thinking about it, I felt kind of good, too. When I’m really ticked at him about something, I remind myself about the promise and it helps.
The other truly significant thing about having a father who goes to AA is that drugs have no attraction for me. Zilch. Mack says he’s tried marijuana. Like every other kid in Essex County tries it because it’s such a nothing-ever-happens place otherwise. You can’t say stuff like that around Joe. When anyone uses boredom as an excuse, he gets really steamed. He says that’s a cop-out. Out of the blue he quoted some famous
writer who basically said embrace a thing because you choose to embrace it, for positive reasons. Sounds hokey, but I can see Joe’s point. He’s the smartest person I know.
Plus he says girls dig guys who are enthusiastic and have ideas, not dopeheads. He should know: he’s had a hundred girlfriends. More than Mack, who’s only had the one, and then only for a night. But not for lack of trying.
From everything Mack says he doesn’t smoke much. His version, though I’m not sure he’s being straight. He said it makes him giggly, which has to be truly embarrassing for a guy. And he almost got arrested. Coming home from a party where they were smoking, he crashed his bike into a telephone pole, just as Officer Brewer, the fat dude who works for the town, cruised down the street. Part of the nightly drill for the Essex County blues before they roll up the streets. Mack said Brewer sniffed around a lot while he helped bend the bike wheel back so Mack could ride home.
I tend to stay away from parties where the potheads will be. Out of respect for Dad and all. Being arrested would be too much of a mess with parents like mine who are already so antiestablishment. For all I know they’re hiding out in this backwater to avoid being identified from the FBI’s photos of war protesters, Weathermen or worse. Dad has said more than once that everyone’s parents have secrets.
AA is like a religion to him. If he hears TV reporters allege stuff about a celebrity with a drug or alcohol problem, Dad snaps his head around and goes off on the right to privacy and how they ought to leave people alone who are trying to beat that kind of thing, what do they know about it, all that kind of emotional spewing that shows it’s still a soft spot for him. I wonder sometimes if Mom takes his rejection of that part of their early life together as a personal rejection. She gave it up too, but still, I know how I’d feel if Mack started telling everyone he thought Apocalypse Now was a lame movie. It would feel like a personal slur.
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