Jane's Melody

by Ryan Winfield

  “I’m dying, Jane.”

  The words had hardly pierced Jane’s ears before a shockwave of disbelief hit her in the chest. Dying? Grace? There was no way. She couldn’t be. Grace was her foundation, her baseline for living a balanced life. She had been a constant companion and the closest thing Jane had to a real family. Grace must have seen the denial on Jane’s face because she nodded and said:

  “It’s called a glioblastomamultiforme. It even has its own little acronym: GBM. They said it’s been growing in my brain for a very long time already.”

  Jane shook her head.

  “You’re not dying. There has to be a cure.”

  “There’s no cure. I have a few months at best.”

  Jane felt her heart race in her chest and her forehead break out in a sweat. It felt suddenly hard to breathe.

  “What about treatments? There must be treatments.”

  “All the available treatments only extend life. And even then not much. I’m not a good surgery candidate either because of the tumor’s location. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my last days getting my brain zapped with radiation. I’m just going to die, Jane. And that’s that.”

  Jane restarted the car.

  “What are you doing?” Grace asked.

  “I’m taking you to the cancer center in Seattle.”

  Grace reached over, turned the car off, and took the keys from the ignition.

  “I know this is hard, Jane. It’s hard for me to tell you.”

  “But they do great things over there,” Jane said. “New things.Experimental things.Treatments.”

  “I’ve been there already.”

  Jane felt foggy and confused, like she might faint. A quiet minute passed as what she had heard began to sink in.

  “How long have you known?”

  “For a while now. But we didn’t know how serious it was, how fast it was growing, until just recently.”

  “Grace. Oh, God, Grace. This can’t be right.”

  “It’s not right. But it’s true, Jane. The reason I’m telling you now is because I want you to do me a favor.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Jane, did you hear me? I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything. I’ll do anything. Just say it.”

  “I want you to go to Paris with me.”

  “Paris?”

  “Yes. Will you go?”

  “Of course, I’ll go. Of course.But why Paris?”

  “I’ve always wanted to see it. Ever since I was a little girl.”

  “What about Bob?”

  “We were planning to go together, but we’ve been fighting a lot lately, and with his drinking and everything I asked him not to come. But I don’t want to go alone, Jane. I can’t go alone.”

  “You don’t have to go alone, Grace. I’m here. Whatever you need. We can leave right now if you want to.”

  Grace’s eyes welled up, and she patted Jane’s knee, turned away, and looked out the window again. Jane reached out and took her hand in hers and held it. Grace’s hand was small and warm, the blue veins visible just beneath the surface of her paper-thin skin. Jane couldn’t bring herself to imagine that this hand would be lifeless and cold someday soon.

  She couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe it—

  But Grace had never lied to her about anything.

  “You know,” Grace said, breaking the silence, “it’s funny, but I’ve been saving for retirement all these years, and here we are. I won’t even need a penny of it. We’re flying first class, and I’m paying for everything, and I don’t want to hear a word about it. You got that? Not one word.”

  “Oh, Grace.”

  She didn’t know what else to say.

  Grace continued:

  “And you made sure we had that life insurance policy years ago, and I’ve kept it up, so Bob will be just fine after I’m gone. Hell, he can throw a huge party and drink himself to death and join me right then if he wants to.”

  Jane felt a tear break lose and slide down her cheek. When it hit her lip, she could taste the salt.

  She squeezed Grace’s hand in hers.

  “Grace?”

  “Yes, Jane.”

  “I know I’ve said it kind of lightly before, like we all do. But I want to really tell you so you know it.”

  “Tell me what, Jane?”

  “I love you, Grace. I really love you.”

  Grace was smiling at her through tears. She looked like she wanted to tell Jane that she loved her too, but she wiped her cheek with her sleeve and said:

  “Now don’t go getting all gushy on me already. I’m not dead yet. And besides, you might just change your mind after you’ve shared a hotel room with me.”

  Chapter 24

  GRACE SAID THAT THE RIVER SEINE looked more magical in person than it did in paintings she’d seen.

  Jane had to agree with her.

  They stayed at Hôtel Plaza Athénée, with its walls of ivy, and floors of polished marble, in a double room with a view of the Eiffel Tower. The first thing they did when they arrived was take pictures of each other jumping on the beds. Jane signed Grace up with an Instagram account and linked it to Facebook so they could share photos with the ladies from their Saturday meeting back home.

  To the strangers who saw them in the streets, they must have seemed little more than two carefree friends on a lavish spring vacation in Paris. Sometimes Jane felt that way too, until a subtle tremor would cause Grace to spill her coffee, or a fainting spell would send her searching for a bench. These little incidents always called up the reality of why they had come, but despite their increasing frequency, she and Grace managed to spend long days exploring the city, seeing and experiencing everything while taking turns making one another laugh.

  At a small café Jane asked the waiter why they didn’t have French onion soup, and the look of genuine disgust on his face as he pointed out that it was simply called onion soup in France made them laugh until their sides ached. When they had finally recovered enough to order, Grace asked him if they didn’t have any French fries. In the mornings, when Grace would call to check in with her husband, she’d tease that she and Jane had to run because their handsome French masseurs were knocking on the room door. When she finally made good on her threats and actually scheduled them massages with the hotel, her masseuse turned out to be an Austrian woman.

  They were having so much fun, in fact, that Jane lost track of the days entirely, until she woke one morning and saw the date on their hotel newspaper and realized that it was Melody’s birthday. She did the best she could to hide her sadness over breakfast, but Grace picked up on it anyway.

  “What’s wrong, Jane?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s bothering you this morning. Wait. I know what it is. It’s the fifteenth, isn’t it? It’s Melody’s birthday.”

  Jane nodded.

  “It’s not fair for me to drag you down with me, though. Especially not now.”

  “Don’t you dare say that,” Grace said, looking genuinely offended. “You’re not the only one who misses her.”

  They picked at their breakfast for a while.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Grace said. “Let’s go and light a candle for her today.”

  Jane liked the idea of doing something, anything, to honor her daughter’s memory on her birthday.

  “Okay. Where?”

  “Notre Dame, of course. It’s not far, and it’s on my list of things to see anyway.”

  The concierge called them a taxi.

  They climbed in, and soon the towers of Notre Dame rose against the blue Parisian sky. The taxi dropped them out front, and they got in line behind a large group of Japanese tourists who were talking loudly and snapping photos of everything. Yet the lively chatter ceased as soon as they entered the church, as if the history of the place demanded respect even from those who didn’t know it.

  It was cool, dark, and mysterious. The worn stone
floors were washed in a faint rainbow of color from stained glass above. A choir was performing somewhere, unseen, and their soft voices echoed beautifully in the high gothic ceilings, as if angels were circling overhead signing—and for all Jane knew, they were.

  They passed sinners who bowed to saints, old believers seeking wisdom from the dead, and soon they came to a circular shrine of burning candles. Grace sat on a wooden pew. Jane paused there with her, but Grace waved her forward.

  “You don’t want to come up?”

  “You go on ahead,” Grace said. “I’d like to sit for a spell and just watch.”

  Jane approached the shrine alone.

  She dropped a euro into the offering bucket and took a candle from the box. She held it to one already burning and lit it, then set it with the others. She looked at it, the solitary flame coming into focus, the others around it fading into a blur of soft light. She said a silent prayer. The flame flickered and then stood still again. A tiny light amidst many, the flame was not alone. It would burn forever in Jane’s heart.

  She tossed another euro in and took another candle out. She lit this second offering from Melody’s flame, and then set them side by side. She wiped away a tear and bowed her head.

  When she returned to the bench, she noticed that Grace had been watching with a kind of distant smile in her eyes. They both knew who the second candle was for. Grace reached out and took Jane’s hand in hers and squeezed it. Then they sat together for a long time, just watching the candles burn.

  After they’d finished inside they paid to climb the towers. It was slow going for Grace up the steep spiral steps, and by the time they made it to the top, the group ahead had already descended. They stood alone with the gargoyles and gazed out over all of Paris, spreading beneath them. Grace clutched tight to Jane’s arm, as if to keep herself from falling, although there was a wire fence protecting them.

  “It’s just so beautiful,” she said. “Like a dream, really. It’s everything I imagined.”

  “Are you glad you came?”

  Grace closed her eyes and nodded.

  Jane watched as she tilted her head back to feel the sun on her face, her lips curling along the well-worn path of her smile lines. How would she carry on without her Grace?

  “Thank you, Jane. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”

  Jane swallowed her grief and forced a smile.

  When they had descended they decided it was a fine day to walk for a while before catching a cab back to the hotel. As they strolled the quiet streets, beneath the shade trees and past the river vendors selling old books and Paris snow globes, they encountered an old woman swaddled in tattered clothes and holding out a paper cup. Grace opened her purse and gave her a 20-euro note. The old woman’s smile gave her the appearance of a wrinkled and toothless baby.

  “Tebénisse,” she said, bowing. “Merci, mille fois.”

  Grace stopped at the next bank machine they passed and maxed out her daily withdrawal limit on two of her cards. For the rest of their walk, she gave a twenty to every beggar they passed, pausing just long enough to press the bill into their hands and say, “Bonne journee,” the only French she knew.

  She even stopped in old doorways to tuck bills into the hands of passed out drunks, their curled fingers still clutching empty bottles from the night before. She popped into a café and anonymously paid the check for two young honeymooners having a romantic lunch. She gave a hundred euros to a street-side ice cream vendor who hardly spoke any English, spending five minutes explaining to him that she wanted him to hand out as many scoops to passing children as it would buy. Jane had never seen Grace smile so much. Watching it all made her smile too, although she alone knew the sad news behind the good fortune of these strangers. She had no way to prove it, but she would have sworn that the spirit of Grace spread its golden light over the entire city that day, and somewhere in Paris someone might smile on occasion just to remember it.

  The next morning Grace had a seizure. She was smiling at Jane as they made plans to visit the Louvre, when her face got slack and her eyes grew distant.

  “Are you okay?” Jane asked.

  She didn’t respond or even appear to have heard her.

  “Grace? What is it, Grace?”

  She raised her arm from the table, as if she wanted to point to something on the wall, then she went stiff and fell off her chair onto the floor. Jane jumped to her side and held her.

  “Grace? What’s happening, Grace?”

  Grace lay there, jerking and snorting on the floor. Jane ran for the phone and dialed the front desk.

  “Help! Please. She’s having a seizure. Call an ambulance. Yes, right now. In the room. That’s why I’m calling. Help me!”

  Security arrived first, and Jane let them into the room.

  Grace was no longer shaking, and she looked at the man kneeling over her with a confused expression.

  “Avez-vousmal,” the man said.

  Grace looked over his shoulder to Jane.

  “Is this man hitting on me? Because if he is, please tell him I’m flattered, but I’m married.”

  Jane smiled, happy to see that her friend was back.

  Despite Jane’s pleading Grace refused medical attention, telling hotel security that she had fainted but that everything was fine now. But it wasn’t fine, and it never would be. When they were alone again in the room, Jane begged her to take the anti-seizure medication Grace’s doctor had prescribed.

  “It makes me feel weak and tired,” Grace said. “I hate it.”

  “Please, Grace. Just take it for me.”

  “Okay fine,” she said, relenting. “But you’re the one who’s going to be hauling my sorry ass all around the Louvre. And I’ll warn you now, I intend to see everything.”

  Jane handed her the pill and a glass of water.

  “Maybe we can go tomorrow,” she said. “Today we stay in and rest.”

  It was two days before Grace had the energy to make it to the Louvre. Even then Jane had to check out a wheelchair from visitor services. When they got to the Mona Lisa, it was surrounded by a mob of people, and Grace couldn’t even see it from her chair. Jane set the chair’s brakes and helped her up. Grace leaned against her and looked at the famous painting.

  “It looks like a postage stamp,” she said. “I always thought it would be bigger.”

  As much as she was disappointed by the Mona Lisa, she was impressed by the sculptures, and she made Jane wheel her around to see every one until the museum closed. Then they returned to the hotel and sat on the room’s terrace with a bottle of champagne, watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle against the darkening Paris skyline.

  “It really is the city of lights, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Grace said, nodding, “it really is.”

  “Are you warm enough?” Jane asked.

  “This champagne has me feeling great. I don’t know why I didn’t drink it more often back home. Damn alcoholics ruin everything for everyone.”

  “Is Bob still drinking?”

  “He was drunk when I called from the Louvre at five this afternoon. I could hardly understand a word he said. And it was only eight in the morning there.”

  “He’s not flying like that, is he?”

  “Lord, no,” Grace said. “He took a leave of absence for this trip, so he’s at home with nothing to do. I think half the reason we were fighting so much is because he didn’t really want to come. He’s not handling the news very well, Jane. I told him he could join us if he could manage not to drink.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me that he missed me and to hurry home.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I won’t come home to him being drunk. He gets it together, or I’ll just stay in Paris and die. Hell, he can fly here and help you spread my ashes in the Seine.”

  They sat for a while, watching the city lights brighten as night came on. Birds called from the trees,
and an occasional car sped by on the street below.

  “I do love that old bastard, though,” Grace added. “And I know it’s hard for him to think about me dying.”

  “Is it hard for you?”

  “Thinking about dying?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t.”

  “Does it scare you?”

  Grace didn’t answer the question for several minutes, and Jane began to feel bad for having asked it.

  “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “No,” Grace said, “I want to. I was just thinking.”

  “Well, you don’t have to answer it.”

  “The truth is it does scare me. But it’s somehow helped me coming here. Not just having fun with you. And it’s been a blast. It really has. But the history here. I look out over this city, and I think about all the people who have come and gone. Even at Notre Dame. Eight hundred years that thing has stood. Think of the generations of people who’ve said prayers there. The ones who laid the stones even. I don’t know. Somehow knowing that all those people have gone to meet death ahead of me, that they’re waiting, somehow it makes it all right.”

  “Do you pray?” Jane asked.

  “I pray, but I don’t know exactly what it is I’m praying to. I don’t know what I really believe, Jane. And I don’t know that it matters that I believe anything.”

  “I believe in love,” Jane said.

  “I guess I believe in love too. And I believe in you.”

  Jane sat thinking about what Grace had said. She sipped her champagne, but she didn’t really want to feel intoxicated. The terrace they sat on was ringed with beautiful red flowers, and a breeze brought their smell to Jane’s nose. The scent reminded her of the flowers Caleb had planted for her around her fountain.

  “You miss him, don’t you?” Grace asked.

  “I’m not sure what’s happening in your brain,” Jane said, “but apparently you now have mind-reading abilities.”

  Grace laughed.

  “I sure as hell hope not. The voices I’ve already got rattling around in my head are quite enough. I just happen to know you well enough to see that look on your face. You miss him, and you should. He was one of the good ones, Jane.”