“So do I.”
“There you go.”
“What?”
“He’s a smart kid. You have the flu, the girl you went out with last night has the flu. Germs pass with contact. Like maybe saliva?” His laugh is louder than it needs to be.
“What did you and Juliann end up doing?”
“She wouldn’t quit that stupid game.”
“Bummer.” What if Juliann is avoiding being alone with Mack because she’s pining away for Joe? Mack will never forgive me.
He’s on the same wavelength. “Did Meredith mention anything about Juliann being mad at me about something?”
“No, but getting high might have something to do with it. I don’t get the feeling Juliann’s into that kind of junk. Meredith sure isn’t.” I have to catch myself before I volunteer that I know about the cocaine. Or how Meredith and I were too busy to talk much about anyone. Or anything.
“Fuck you, Daniel. Everything’s not about you and your condition. Other people have problems too.”
“Like what? Your grades are too good. Your father’s sober and they let you drive already.”
“Don’t talk about my father.”
“Jeez, Mack. Are you tripping now? I didn’t say anything crummy about your dad.”
“Yeah, well, your father’s laid-back, you wouldn’t know what it’s like. Mine expects me to be a doctor or a lawyer. He’s on endless rewind. How the hell am I supposed to know what I want to do in ten years? I sure as hell don’t want to be schlepping to the same job every day for the rest of my life like he does, looking for VCR machines in the garbage.”
My head pounds like a marching band stamping on bleachers. I wish I knew how to get him off of this downer. I can’t ask Dad. He’ll see straight through the BS and realize what Mack’s gotten himself into. A little twang way back in my overheated brain is remembering something Dad said one time about drug-induced depression. I sit up, instantly sorry I did as the back of my head splits and the lightning crashes right behind my eyes.
“Mack, my man.” The words are like bubbles, popping just as I get the right sound, harder and harder to form with my muscles tightening like a vise on my head. “I see, I see. Life’s a bitch, and then you die. But at least you’re going to be around to make some changes. That’s gotta be worth something. Maybe you should stay away from the stuff for a couple of weeks. See if you can make peace with Juliann at least. I think she really likes you.”
“Great advice from the all-time fresh air junkie. Thanks for all your concern. I’ll catch you later.”
Well, I’m zero for zero on that one.
The storm burns itself out by late afternoon Sunday. About the time the flu is raging. Dad has banned me to the bunk room and banned Nick from coming in. Still distracted, Dad brings me a glass of ginger ale from an old can he found in the back of the icebox. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s flat. I’m not sure I could swallow it anyway. Through the sliding door their voices dribble, muffled and intermittent. A word here and there. My mind tries to fit them together like a hangman puzzle, shifting and shuffling, then falling into sleep so cottony and thick I can’t remember the words or the reason I’m trying to.
When Dad comes in to check on me the next time, he reports that Mom called to say she’s headed back, to go ahead and eat without her. The idea of eating catapults me back to the bathroom and a position on my knees more familiar than I like to admit. The dream follows me, an army of marching cancer cells, with AML emblazoned on their uniforms. Unwavering warrior lines crest the hill, and below them an army of flu cells marches through the valley. Trumpets sound, flags wave, and on the periphery of my field of vision, television cameras whir as they interview my parents standing with Mr. Walker, who’s dressed like a cheerleader, his thick hairy legs like stumps below a pleated pink skirt.
“Pizza?” Nick again with the pizza, his voice crashing from the front cabin into my dream. The nausea rises in my gut.
Dad’s getting quicker. “I’m not going anywhere except to get your mother in the Whaler.” With that little bit of reassurance, I fall back asleep.
Who knows when Mom gets home? I’m finally done with the heaves. Feverish and shivery, I sleep, in and out of dreams that beat anything my waking imagination could fabricate.
Sometime later—evening again, who knows what day—I wake up, drenched, and can actually open my eyes. I’m surprised to find myself in the bottom bunk. It’s logical. As out of it as I was—am still, maybe; I’m not awake enough to be sure—the ladder would have been tricky. Impossible actually, because when I look more closely, it’s not even there. Dad. One of those parent things they do: anticipate and eliminate even the possibility you might make a mistake and do harm to yourself. Does he blame himself for the leukemia because he didn’t take some parental precaution last spring?
With my palm on the cabin wall, I trudge to the head to pee. The ghost in the mirror vaguely resembles Daniel Solstice Landon. It’s scary enough to send me slinking back to bed without looking again. The next time I wake up, it’s dark outside and the light is on over the desk Nick and I share. Mom’s there, her head on her arms. Maybe asleep. I wriggle a little, way too warm, and slide my legs across the mattress to find a cold stretch of sheet. When the covers catch at my feet, I have to fight the urge to fling off everything and get free.
“Daniel.” Mom shoots up and takes my elbow. “Feeling better?”
“How long have you been here?”
“It’s Tuesday morning. Two-something last time I checked.” She watches me struggle out and up. When I shuffle in the direction of the head, she relaxes, like I might have been preparing to jump instead.
She whispers, “I thought I would read in here, in case you needed something when you woke up.”
I hum in agreement. My skull drags down like a bowling ball. I don’t even know if I can carry it all the way to the john and back to the bunk.
“You turned sixteen just now,” she says, slightly louder, as if even she is having trouble believing it.
More humming from me. I don’t understand what she’s talking about.
“Did you know you were born in the middle of the night like this?”
“Born?” I mumble through the closed door.
“Yes, your father woke up Joe so he could see you. He was about five. We had this wonderful midwife, Mary Stewart Elliott. Sixty-two or sixty-three, maybe. She had delivered hundreds of babies.”
“Like in the movies, when the midwife is giving the woman a stick to bite and the husband has his head in his hands at the foot of the stairs, sick over what he’s done to the woman he loves.” It’s the clearest thought I’ve had in days.
Whoa, I must be getting better. Although this could be my subconscious talking. Even more clearly than the midwife movie scene, I see what I’ve done to Meredith. I change her life forever and then disappear into a haze of fever and night sweats. Even in her own flu-induced haze, she’s probably wondering what the hell kind of guy I am to not have called in two days.
Although Mom holds my arm to keep me upright, I’m stalled midway across the room, sicker over how I treated Meredith than the flu could ever make me.
“You’ve got it all wrong, sweetie. The husband is worried about what can go wrong. Having babies is a complicated thing, scary. I mean, the birth part is less scary today, but…but still…”
She is definitely lost in that memory.
“So, was I everything you expected?” Scrambling to think how I can ask for the phone without clueing her in to my dilemma with Meredith.
“Well, we’d already had Joe. We knew what to expect. You were a different baby, though. Less greedy, more patient. But curious right from the start. You climbed as soon as you could boost yourself up. Joe never did that. All he had to do was squawk and we would come running.”
“No wonder I’m so messed up.”
When she laughs, I know she appreciates my joking. Her eyes stay on my face, her hand at my elbow. S
he’s doesn’t have to think very hard about the possibilities of what can go wrong.
At breakfast the whole family sings “Happy Birthday” to me through the wall to maintain the quarantine. Nick’s tenor-breaking-to-bass solos the standard extra line, “And many more.” Followed by the cabin door banging open and Nick, tears jammed in the corners of his eyes. He stands on one foot and then the other.
“Sorry. Sorry, Dan, I’m so sorry. It just came out. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Forget it, dude.” Which, if you think about it, is as stupid as people saying “no problem” after you ask for help or complain about something.
He fumbles around at the desk, changes his sweatpants for jeans, and looks back at me where I’m lying on top of the blanket on the lower bunk, too tired to get under the covers.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask.
“Back in their cabin. She and Dad are arguing about whether to call the doctor or the Undertaker. I mean, Misty Underwood.”
It’s still a good joke, makes us both laugh.
I prop myself up on my elbow. “Can you get me the phone, bud? I really need to talk to Meredith.”
“That’s for sure. She’s called like eight times. Didn’t leave a message. Actually, she could hardly put two words together. Flu.” His grin is wider than the houseboat. He’s so proud of himself.
“Yeah, okay. My brilliant little brother. Listen, Sherlock, I need the phone now. Not next Easter.”
He’s as good as his word. And even though it’s a Tuesday and free minutes don’t start until seven o’clock, I call Meredith. She’s still sick too, home from school. Her mom’s at work. After she makes me promise to call back, I hang up and count to 120 so it’s after seven. We talk for half an hour and then Mom the warden comes in and makes me say goodbye.
After she settles me back in Nick’s bunk with covers and all, she tests my forehead with the back of her hand. “I guess Meredith’s more than a friend?”
I can’t help the grin.
“Her mother and I bumped into each other at the library. She said the girls might go to their father’s house for Thanksgiving this year. Apparently they switch on and off.”
“Meredith hasn’t even mentioned her father.”
“That’s sad.”
Truly. How much is there I don’t know about her? It’s even more sad than Holden holed up in Phoebe’s room, whispering because he hopes his parents don’t come up and give him grief about being kicked out of Pencey. He doesn’t even realize that having a father to give you grief is way better than not having one at all.
Mom rearranges the covers and shuts the blinds. “One more nap and you may feel like some dinner tonight.”
I wait until she’s gone, then I bring out the phone from under the covers—she’s forgotten all about it—and call Meredith.
She answers. “Daniel.”
“I forgot to tell you something.”
She doesn’t ask what or even giggle. This girl is so awesome.
“I hope this doesn’t spoil it, the phone and all, and not being able to see your eyes, but I just can’t wait any longer.”
At her end I can hear her breathing, maybe a little gasp, maybe holding her breath for whatever the surprise is. My imagination has her in cream-colored pajamas with cobalt blue piping, the kind of pajama top that looks like a man’s shirt and buttons down the front. Straight out of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. A couple of buttons are undone and those bones—the bones on either side of her neck—are showing. I know those bones. I like those bones.
Now, with the hesitation, the buildup is huge. I don’t want to choke on this. How can she not know I’m serious?
“I love you.” And when she only breathes, I add, “I guess you already knew that.”
“I did,” she says.
So, it’s official. I can go back to sleep.
Without even arguing, Mom concedes visits from Meredith and Mack are important for my mental health. Sometimes they come together and we play Hearts or Risk or watch a movie. And sometimes Mack rows Meredith over and leaves us alone. Not alone, alone. Dad’s there editing in the back cabin. I know he remembers what it was like being sixteen and in love because he always makes a huge amount of noise on the deck before he comes in the front cabin. I’m not allowed to take Meredith into the bunk room—that’s one of Mom’s rules. Too late, I want to say, but it’s a secret I enjoy hoarding. Meredith does too.
Her visits are random. She likes to surprise me. Since my swallowing problem makes it hurt to talk, she brings things to read to me. No mushy poetry. I didn’t even have to say anything. She’s so incredibly awesome she wouldn’t like it either. Newsweek articles or the school newspaper. She reads some from a book about Africa by a woman pilot named Beryl Markham. A woman pioneer: that’s one of the attractions for Meredith. The more she reads, the clearer it is why she picked this story. Markham went where no other woman had gone, where not many other pilots had gone. It’s the future of the world Meredith’s reading to me from way back then. Too cool.
While she reads, I usually close my eyes. I can hear better. I hear her hand smoothing the page, that light brush of skin to paper, and it takes me back to our one perfect night.
“What are you doing?” she asks, like about the second time she’s reading from West with the Night.
I open my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Your right hand. You’re rubbing your blue jeans, there on your leg.”
It’s hard to describe how it feels to have the person you love so close, her voice all around you in this warm enclosed space, and not be able to lie next to her and let her skin melt into yours. I haven’t forgotten one second of that night. I dream it all the time. But it comes back to me most clearly when she’s here, talking, her voice tunneling into my subconscious or whatever. Thank you, Doc Freud. I’m agonizing over how to explain to her how I feel without sounding truly ridiculous, one big teenage cliché. But it’s not.
The worry lines collect around her eyes. “Why are you doing that? Does it hurt?”
I hear that same hint of panic that is a constant when my mother talks.
“No. I’m just remembering. That night.”
It’s only a second that she hesitates, her eyes widening, and then she looks back at the book and begins to read again. She’s blushing.
I can’t lie. We do spend a lot of time kissing. Once I’m over the flu and I’m mobile again. All of a sudden on her visits she wears loose T-shirts and never a bra so we don’t have to waste time with all that fumbling. I’d love to know how those guys in the movies do it so smoothly. It wasn’t my idea about no underwear, but it helps.
Mom explains in laborious detail to Meredith that I may be contagious with things they don’t even know about. After that warning, I tell Meredith we can’t kiss anymore. She has seventy years ahead of her. But when she threatens not to come back, I know I can’t live with that.
She argues. “Fine, then. I’ll have to date Leonard. Maybe he was right about you.”
“Why, what did the creep say?”
“It was a joke. God, Daniel, lighten up.”
“Please don’t be mad. This is new to me, too. Can’t we talk about it?”
“Talk is cheap. I don’t want a boyfriend who doesn’t want to kiss me.”
“I never said I didn’t want to.”
“Well, then. That’s settled. Shut up.” She sits on my lap and convinces me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After the flu episode, when I discover that I still can’t swallow, Dad panics and insists on taking me back to the doctor. Although Mom tries to argue with him that Miss T. can handle this, he won’t back down, so I spend two nights at MCV. It’s a zoo.
MCV is supposedly a clinic. Associated with a medical school—heck, named for the school—and smack in the middle of downtown Richmond, the hospital has a constant stream of patients funneled in from its emergency room. A kid with leukemia might be in line behind a two-year-old with third-degree
burns from being held in scalding bathwater or behind a husband whose wife just escaped by hitting him over the head with a frying pan. It’s a city. And they say it’s the city with the highest murder rate in the U.S.
But MCV is a hospital even Mom can live with. Like the Statue of Liberty it takes anyone and everyone. Very democratic, she says. The docs in training—they’re called residents because they live there around the clock—treat the patients. They tell the docs what’s what and not the other way around. Okay by me since I’ve read the Internet articles on AML and it’s obvious no one really knows a damn thing about the stuff. I’m not holding out much hope anyway.
Once they release me, we wait for the results. And we wait. Incredible that with a life-threatening illness, the test results from the lab can take a week or longer. I still can’t swallow, which means I can’t eat, which means I’m not getting all those vitamins and minerals that make strong bones and feed brain cells. Mom’s livid and leaves nasty messages for the doctor every day. I dream about the food pyramid from kindergarten, solid food in all the food groups. Red meat, oranges, cheese, even Brussels sprouts. Just the thought of another milk shake is starting to make me woozy.
After a too-blustery Thanksgiving on the houseboat, where we rock so hard no one can eat, my parents move us to an apartment across from the post office, a two-bedroom sublet from a Rappahannock Community College professor who’s on sabbatical in Nairobi. Kenya, I look it up. It’s an oxymoron, a stable African country.
Dad’s trying to finish an edit for a deadline that has passed. Even I notice he’s moving more slowly than usual.
“Shouldn’t they put him on an IV?” Mom asks Dad when she thinks I’ve fallen asleep watching Scrooged. Bill Murray is such a funny, ugly guy.
It used to be when I watched Murray, he gave me hope that someday a really nice girl-woman would fall in love with me, like his Claire who runs the homeless shelter in that movie. Now that I know Meredith, I’m thinking Murray doesn’t deserve Claire, but where does that leave me?
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