Blue

by Lou Aronica

  Becky didn’t move around much anymore, and she needed help getting in the car to go back and forth between houses. Shuttling her took its toll and it might have been best to leave her in one place, but Becky insisted on continuing to alternate houses. Polly protested vehemently, but she stopped short whenever Becky made her desires clear. Chris didn’t understand many things about Polly, but he understood that Becky was and had always been as essential in her life as Becky was in his. She wouldn’t make this issue a battleground with her daughter now.

  However, she gladly did battle on many other fronts. The transitions from his home to hers were always difficult, punctuated by strained exchanges about Tamarisk. Polly steadfastly refused to believe Tamarisk existed and rejected any offer to see the proof for herself, instead vehemently imploring Chris to get into therapy. Not even Becky could get through to her. Polly just continued to perpetuate a real fantasy: that the Gleevec would suddenly have an impact on Becky’s disease. Chris knew the experimental drug worked in an encouraging number of cases. He also knew, as Polly would have if she’d paid attention to the research, that if it were going to work, it would have shown some sign by now.

  “Babe, if you can make it over there tonight, just stay,” Chris had said last night. He hadn’t been to Tamarisk himself in weeks because he needed to monitor Becky’s ability to make the transit from this side.

  “No, Dad, I won’t,” Becky said with as much emphasis as she could put on anything these days.

  “Becky, you have to. How can you put the personal feelings of your mother or me or anyone else above your own life?”

  “Dad, stop. Please.”

  Ultimately, it didn’t matter. For the first time since he’d been watching, Becky couldn’t make the crossing. She hadn’t fallen asleep this time; this was something else.

  Her eyes fluttered and then she looked at him sadly. “I can’t darken,” she said. “I can’t get my mind to do it.” Then she wept as he held her, only stopping when she fell asleep. If Becky wasn’t even strong enough to control her thoughts—something she’d mastered brilliantly in the last months—there was the very real chance she’d never get to Tamarisk again.

  Was it too late for him to participate in Polly’s fantasy at this point?

  They were due back at Polly’s at 10:00. As usual, Chris awoke at 6:00, checked in on his sleeping daughter, and then tried to stay busy. As was also usual, though, he ended up on the couch in the ersatz form of meditation that he’d started practicing; head back, eyes to the ceiling, his mantra the continuous loop of thoughts about Becky. At 9:15, he rose out of this trance to realize that Becky was still asleep. He hated waking her, but understood the discomfort of jostling her out of bed was preferable to any additional tension she might feel if he brought her to Polly’s late.

  When he went into Becky’s room, she was lying on her back in the precise position she had been when he awoke that morning. He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair.

  “Babe, we need to get going soon.”

  Becky didn’t move. Her skin was warm and he could see that she was breathing shallowly, but his words had failed to rouse her in any way.

  “Beck? Beck, we need to go.”

  Chris had read a great deal about Becky’s illness, and he knew how the stages progressed at the end. Sometimes the patient lapsed into a coma and then the body failed. Sometimes it happened all at once.

  “Beck? Babe?”

  Her eyes opened narrowly and fixed on him.

  “Do you think you can get up?”

  Becky closed her eyes again, seemed lost for a few moments, and then opened her eyes a little wider. “I don’t think so.”

  He could carry her to the car to take her to Polly’s, but he thought the ride might be horrible for her in a sitting position. He could call an ambulance to take her to the hospital, but he knew Becky didn’t really want that. She didn’t want to spend her last days in such an impersonal place.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said and went to the phone in his bedroom.

  It took a long moment before he could press the speed dial. He knew what it was like to receive a call like this, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. At last, he pressed the button and waited for his ex-wife to answer.

  “Polly, you need to come over.”

  “What’s wrong?” Polly said, the two words expressing every emotion he already felt.

  “I can’t get her up. You need to come see her and then we’ll decide what to do.”

  An accident had shut traffic on the bridge down to one lane. Polly sat in the car, suspended between Moorewood and Standridge wondering if some driver’s mistake was going to cost her the ability to share her child’s last waking moments.

  Her conversation with Chris had lasted less than a minute, but his message was unmistakable. Becky was entering the final stages of her disease. She might hold on a little while longer, might even rally a little, but it was no longer possible to believe that any attempt at fighting this horrible illness would be successful.

  Polly had considered so many times in the past few months what life would be like without Becky, and now realized that she wasn’t ready in any way to face it. As she passed the bottleneck on the bridge and headed toward Chris’s apartment, she knew she’d underestimated everything: the heartache, the pain, the desperate desire to stop time to prevent this from happening. As these feelings surrounded and threatened to smother her, she fought back the desperate urge to pull the car over and succumb to them. Only the need to speak to her daughter again—to hold her while Becky could still feel her—prevented Polly from allowing the grief to win. That could happen later. She wouldn’t fight it then.

  Still, as she rode the elevator up to Chris’s floor, she felt a moment’s hesitation. One last thread of blind hope suggested to her that if she didn’t go into the apartment, nothing would happen. Then the elevator doors opened, the thread broke, and she walked toward the inevitable.

  “She’s more alert than when I called you,” Chris said when he let her into the apartment, “but she keeps going in and out.”

  “It took me so long to get here. I was worried . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Chris stepped out of her way. “Go see her.”

  Becky was lying with her head propped against two pillows when Polly entered the room. She looked sunken and pale, but her eyes still had some of their old brightness, even if it was just a glint. Becky raised one hand to her slowly and Polly rushed to her side, gathering her up and holding her to her chest. She’d managed not to cry since Chris’s call, but now she couldn’t hold back any longer. She buried her head in her daughter’s hair and allowed the tears to fall.

  “Come with me, Mom,” Becky said softly.

  Polly lay Becky back against the pillows and took her hand. “Come with you where, honey.”

  “To Tamarisk.”

  Polly closed her eyes and felt tears stream down both cheeks. “You know we can’t really go there.”

  “We can, Mom. Let me take you.”

  Polly hadn’t noticed that Chris had walked back into the room until she saw him standing beside them. “Polly, please.”

  She’d fought this moment so hard. She didn’t want to prove to her daughter that Tamarisk was nothing more than a flight of the imagination. Somehow, Becky and Chris shared this delusion—in some ways they always had—but Polly wouldn’t be able to pretend the way they did. She’d never been able to do that.

  “Becky, Tamarisk is a fantasy. It’s a wonderful fantasy that you created with your father, but it isn’t real.”

  Becky closed her eyes and a tear rolled toward her temple. “You need to believe me. You need to know that I’ll be okay there.”

  Polly laid her head over Becky’s heart and wept. What could she do to comfort her daughter? How much time was left? There were so many difficult decisions to make, and she had no power to make any of this even a little bit better.

  Chris laid a hand on her arm. “C
an I see you outside for a second?”

  Polly didn’t want to let go of Becky for even a minute. “Not now, Chris.”

  “It needs to be now.”

  Polly desperately wanted to stay in his place, but she rose up slowly and kissed Becky on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a minute, honey.”

  Becky seemed confused and helpless. Polly could only begin to imagine what was going on in her mind. Turning away from her required Herculean effort.

  Polly glanced through her tears at Chris. He seemed surprisingly composed under the circumstances. How was that possible? She knew Chris too well to believe that this wasn’t killing him. She broke eye contact and walked into the living room. She heard the door to Becky’s room close. When she turned around, Chris was no more than a couple of feet behind her.

  “You have to let her go,” he said firmly.

  Polly laughed bitterly. “I didn’t realize I had any other choice.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I think you know that. What I mean is that you have to let her go to Tamarisk.”

  Polly held a hand to her head and closed her eyes. She tried to breathe normally, but couldn’t suppress a sob. “Chris, our child is dying in there. These might be her last waking moments. If you have any compassion at all, you won’t compromise those moments with another one of these deluded arguments.”

  Chris took her shoulders. The gesture surprised her enough to make her drop her hand and open her eyes. “Polly, this is not about you and me. This isn’t about anything that’s happened to us in the past or anything that will happen in the future. This is exclusively about Becky. You can say that I’m deluded. You can say that I need professional help. But you know in your heart that Becky believes in Tamarisk. It doesn’t matter whether you believe she can go there or not, just as it doesn’t matter whether you believe she can live a healthy life there. The only thing that matters is that Becky wants and needs your blessing. She needs to believe that you won’t think of her as dead.”

  “How can I possibly do that?”

  “By summoning whatever you need to summon to convince her.”

  Polly looked down at the floor. She felt as though the very air around her was forcing her to the ground.

  “I can’t play pretend, Chris. That’s your specialty.”

  “You have to try. You have to do it for Becky. She needs to know that you’re okay with her making the crossing. If you let her go—assuming it’s not too late already—she will have an extraordinary future.”

  Polly’s body shook when she thought about how little future Becky had left. “I can’t believe that. I’ll never believe that.”

  “Make yourself believe it,” Chris said sharply. “Look, Polly, maybe you’re right. Maybe Becky and I are caught up in the middle of some gigantic joint hallucination. I know that isn’t the case, but even if it is—even if we’re completely crazy—your blessing will allow Becky some peace and hope at the end. What could possibly be wrong with that?”

  Polly looked up into Chris’s eyes. There was resolve there she hadn’t noticed before. He knew he was right. Definitively.

  And for the first time, Polly understood that, in some very real way, he was. Polly had been so concerned with not proving to Becky that Tamarisk was a dream that she hadn’t considered the possibility that Becky would gain comfort from believing that her mother bought into the dream. What Chris said was true. It didn’t matter if Tamarisk was real to her. If it offered Becky some kind of solace, that was a gift.

  “Would she ever believe me?”

  Chris’s expression softened. “She’ll believe you if you let her believe you.”

  Polly closed her eyes yet again and then clasped her hands together. Then she looked at Chris one more time and walked past him into Becky’s room.

  Becky’s eyes caught her the moment she turned the corner. As sick as the girl was, she still carried a trace of hope. Seeing that, Polly realized that Becky would of course believe her. Becky desperately wanted to believe her.

  Polly knelt at the side of the bed, grasped her daughter’s hand, and said, “Tell me something about Tamarisk.”

  Becky smiled with effort. “It sounds like music.”

  “Good music?”

  “Magical music.”

  Polly kissed Becky’s hand. “And it’s pretty there?”

  Becky’s eyes managed to shine a little. “Gorgeous. They have colors you’ve never seen before.”

  Polly smiled as encouragingly as she could. “It sounds wonderful.”

  Becky offered the lightest squeeze of her hand. “It’s real, Mom.”

  Again, Polly laid her head over her daughter’s heart. “I know it is, honey. It took me a long time to believe it, but I believe it now. I know you can go there and be well.”

  Polly felt Becky’s chest rise. “I should go soon.”

  “I know you should. Let’s just stay like this for a little while, though. Okay?”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  Becky reached up and laid her hand on Polly’s hair. When she did, Polly felt stronger.

  “Is it the kind of music I would like, or the kind of music that you and your father like?”

  “It’s the kind of music everyone likes.”

  Polly squeezed Becky a little tighter. She’d done what she could do. Maybe that would mean something in the end.

  24

  Becky slept for several hours after her conversation with Polly. Chris and Polly sat wordlessly by the bed for most of that time. Chris explained to Polly that when Becky awoke, he’d help her make the journey to Tama-risk. His ex-wife didn’t argue. She did ask what would happen if Becky couldn’t “make the journey”—which he interpreted as code for “when she finds out she’s been imagining this”—but she didn’t give him a hard time when he responded by saying they didn’t have to worry about that.

  A few minutes ago, Al had come to the apartment. He and Polly went into the living room. Chris could hear them speaking with each other, but he couldn’t distinguish what they were saying. Chris was glad they had each other for this; Polly was going to need support much more than Chris would.

  It dawned on Chris that, with every minute she slept, Becky got another minute weaker. Would she still be strong enough to make the transit? Would she awaken at all?

  At 2:00, he decided he would try to awaken her. For the past few years, he’d been applying the brake to time, hoping to slow Becky’s evolution to adulthood. Now, ironically, he was in a rush to get on with things. Not, of course, because he wanted her to go, but because he knew she had to go before it was too late.

  He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. She didn’t respond immediately, but then she shifted a little and opened her eyes about half way.

  “Hey, babe. How are you doing in there?”

  Becky groaned and shifted a little more. Chris helped her to a sitting position and placed several pillows against her back.

  “Mom is really okay with this?”

  “She is, babe. She told me so.”

  “So she believes in Tamarisk now?”

  Chris kissed her forehead again. “I think she’s horribly jealous that she didn’t take you up on that offer to go for a visit.”

  New concern came to Becky’s expression. “I can still take her there.”

  “We can’t take that chance, babe. We don’t want to wait until tomorrow for you to go there by yourself.”

  Becky looked down at the bedspread and then around the room. “I know. You’re right.”

  Chris went into the living room to get Polly and Al and the three of them returned to stand by the side of Becky’s bed. For several moments, no one said anything. Chris felt suspended, as though time had somehow stopped while they were here. Suddenly, he found it difficult to move forward.

  Finally, Al leaned toward Becky and patted her on the leg. “From what I hear, you have a little magic trick to perform.”

  Becky grinned. “You didn’t know I was a magician, did you?”
r />   “Not true. I always knew you had something up your sleeve.”

  Becky smiled at Al and her eyes seemed bright. Chris felt conflicted over his daughter’s relative alertness. Maybe they had another day or two like this. Maybe he could have just a little more time with her. He knew it was wrong to think this way, though. It could become too late at any moment.

  “I think it might be a good idea to get started,” he said.

  Becky nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Do you want to lean against me the way we did it yesterday?”

  Becky tried to sit up a little straighter. “That would be good.”

  Chris helped Becky sit at the edge of the bed. She wasn’t steady enough to hold herself up and as they looked into each other’s eyes, he understood how much this distressed her. “It’s okay, babe. You’ll be wrestling a chestatee again really soon. Maybe right after the huge state dinner they have to welcome you to your new home.”

  He sat next to her and she leaned into him. Polly sat down on the other side and rubbed Becky’s arm. Until that moment, Chris wasn’t sure how Polly planned to participate in this or if she would even participate at all. He was glad she was there for her daughter.

  Al came over and hugged Becky. “I think this is Mom and Dad time,” he said with a catch in his throat.

  Becky looked at him affectionately.

  “Thanks for being a great roommate,” he said.

  Becky leaned toward him and he hugged her again. “Keep Mom smiling.”

  “I will, Beck. I promise.” He squeezed her again, kissed Polly on the top of the head, and exited.

  Becky leaned against Chris, then turned to her mother and leaned against her. Polly pulled her close and then turned Becky’s face to put their foreheads together. Chris wondered for a moment if he should give Polly and Becky some time alone together, but didn’t want to interrupt them now.