by Diana Palmer
She put her hand over his. “Don’t look so worried,” she said, her speech softly accented. “Lots of people get these things and live for years. I want to see my grandchildren...” His whole body froze and she stopped in midsentence. “I’m sorry.”
He turned away and looked pointedly around the room at all the machines. “Audrey will give you grandchildren one day.”
“Audrey!” She smiled, remembering that she’d named her little girl for her favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, but the girl had grown up not to be sweet-natured and kind like her namesake. She made a motion with her hand. “She’s too busy running companies and making money with that terrible man she married. What does she want with babies? It breaks my heart, that it will end with the three of you. I would be such a good grandmother to them, you know.” She turned and stared at his rigid back. “Yes, I know, you won’t discuss it. It was years ago and she didn’t want to get pregnant, and you won’t forgive yourself!”
His hands clasped even more firmly at his back while he tried not to hear her. “Mama, please,” he said tightly.
“It wasn’t your fault!”
He turned. His face was like stone. “It was my fault. Hell, yes, it was. And I won’t discuss it.”
He was implacable. She threw up her hands and lapsed into angry Spanish. “That’s it, that’s it, let the horse throw you and never get back on, walk instead of ride because it might throw you again!”
She was ill, and frightened. He had to remember that, and not take offense.
“You could get married again,” she muttered, falling into English again as she calmed down. “Girls flock around you. Not that it can be just any girl,” she added firmly. “Someone with a good background, it must be, a girl with a fine family name and money. I won’t have you married for your fortune by some poor, flighty gold digger!”
“If I marry again, Mama, I’ll marry whom I please,” he informed her.
“Bosh! Look how you messed it up before,” she said shortly. “I won’t let you make a mistake like that twice.”
He raised an eyebrow, but she stared back unafraid. Then the radiologist returned, and her proud arrogance went into eclipse behind obvious fear and foreboding.
“Well, what are you going to do to me?” she demanded. “They’ve already cut me up and said they couldn’t get it all, so are you going to make a miracle?”
The young man smiled sympathetically. “Not a miracle, exactly, but we’re going to try a combination of chemotherapy and radiation to see if we can’t prevent any more spread of the carcinoma. Today, we start the radiation treatment.”
“The cancer, you mean,” she said, nodding.
He was reading over her file. “Dr. Hayes wants you to have a high dosage for two weeks, then we can reduce the intensity and length...”
“My hair will fall out?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s something we can’t help.”
“Nausea? Headaches?” she persisted.
He grimaced. “Those, too. But we can prescribe medicine to help.” He grinned. “In fact, we can prescribe marijuana. It controls the nausea very nicely, and you won’t be arrested for using it.”
“I won’t use drugs,” she said haughtily. “None of my kids ever did, because I made sure they were raised right!”
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” the technician agreed.
“Mama, get off the soapbox,” Curry said.
She gave him a hard glare, but it bounced right off. She fixed the technician with cold eyes. “You’re going to burn me up with that stuff, I guess, and I’ll come out worse than I started.”
“It’s still better than dying,” he pointed out.
“Who knows if it is?” she shot right back. “Have you died yet?”
Curry laughed involuntarily. “Mama, Mama, hush and let the man explain things to you.”
She made a face at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, if you please.”
Curry stuck his hands in his pockets and exchanged a glance with the technician. “I wouldn’t dare.”
She turned her pocketbook over and smoothed it. “All right, young man, tell me what you’re going to do, step by step.”
He did, and while she listened to him, Curry watched his mother’s tired, heavily lined face and remembered his childhood. She’d worked at two jobs, in all sorts of weather, but there was always something nice for the kids to eat and a lady to stay with them when their mother wasn’t at home. They went to confession every Saturday, and to Mass every Sunday. There wasn’t much money, but there was so much love that it choked him up when he thought about it. No problem was belittled. No cry was ignored.
Before his father’s desertion, they had lived with some Hispanic relatives, two families sharing a big room in a small apartment house. Privacy was impossible. The wallpaper was peeling; there were chips in the linoleum floor. Water trickled from faucets, but it was only cold water. The steam heat never worked. Everybody slept on the floor under quilts in the winter and faded sheets from the Salvation Army in the summer. Roaches and rats infested the building, despite the health inspections, and the rent was exorbitant even so. Gangs of young boys roamed the streets. Rape and murder and theft were everyday occurrences. When his best friend was murdered, Curry swore vengeance and went after the boy who’d done it. He determined that one day he was going to escape the impossible living conditions and take his family out of there. So many other people hadn’t been able to escape the horrible cycle of poverty that killed self-esteem and ambition, but he had.
Mama took good care of her kids, but no battles were fought for them, at school or in the alleys. Only when Curry’s revenge on behalf of his dead friend landed him in trouble for almost killing the gang member responsible did his mother have to intervene. She was more eloquent than any lawyer as she pleaded for him before the judge. Ironically, it helped his defense that his eye was heavily bandaged and that a doctor testified that he’d never see with it again.
He was put on probation for aggravated assault, and turned loose. He kept his nose clean from then on because the money to pay the bail bondsman had cleaned out Mama’s hard-earned savings account. Vengeance was expensive in many ways, he thought. He was fortunate enough to have been given first-offender status, or he would have had a record for the felony assault, which he would have carried with him all his life. It was the one and only time he had broken the law.
“You are not listening!” Teresa Kells muttered. “¡Escucha! Pay attention.”
“Yes, Mama.” He settled back into his chair and listened to the radiologist.
The cancer, which had started in the lower lobe of her left lung, had been surgically removed. But the surgeon wasn’t sure that he’d excised every trace of it, so he’d recommended an intensive program of radiation treatment and chemotherapy, just to make sure.
She wasn’t optimistic about her recovery, and it had taken Curry and his sister days to persuade her of the need for the auxiliary treatments. She’d rewritten her will and given all her prized possessions to the relatives she wanted to have them. She’d also signed a living will to make sure that she would not be kept alive by artificial means “to be a burden” on her children. It was like her, Curry thought, to be unselfish even at the end. It made her condition so much harder to accept. He’d always thought his mother would live forever. But she had cancer, and he had learned far too much about the statistics of survival among cancer patients from a friend who was a doctor. That was why he’d insisted on the treatments.
“I still don’t think this is necessary,” Teresa Kells was telling the radiologist.
“And I think it is,” Curry replied with a smile. “Now be good and do what you’re told. You can’t leave us alone after all the years you’ve invested in us. You’ve a lot of spoiling still coming to you. How about that trip back to Puerto Rico to see our cousins, and the summer house in th
e Adirondacks that I promised to buy for you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and for a moment her black eyes were young again. “Yes, I remember once your daddy and I rode up there on the bus for a weekend, before you were born. I did love it so.”
He watched her smile with pleasure. She’d never said one harsh word against their father in all the years he’d been gone. She made excuses for him, apologized for him, but she was never censorious. He’d done the best he could, and it had been a hard life for him. He was uneducated, illiterate, a dockworker. They’d learned from one of his coworkers that he’d hopped a freighter one day after he knew that his youngest child was mentally challenged. Mama had always said that he felt responsible and that was why he ran away. She felt just as responsible, but she wasn’t the type to run from responsibility. Neither was her son.
“Your father was a good man,” she added, pointing a finger at him as if he’d contradicted her. ‘‘He couldn’t bear not being able to support us, and it was all so much worse when Andy was born so badly challenged. He felt guilty.”
“Yes, I know, Mama,” he agreed quietly.
“These treatments,” she said, turning back to the patient radiologist, “how long must I have them?”
“Six weeks,” he said.
She toyed with the handle on her purse. A long sigh passed her lips. “Very well, then.” She looked at her son. “If you think I should.”
“What a question!” he said with mild surprise. “You think I want to risk losing you?”
“My dear boy,” she whispered, fighting tears as she reached out and took his hand in hers.
“Mamacita, yo te quiero muy mucho,” he said in his elegant, perfect Spanish, and he smiled.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SAMPLE ROOM buzzed when Ivory presented her improved design for the evening dress she had created for the summer line. Only Virginia Raines was less than enthusiastic about it. She deliberately absented herself from the sample room while Ivory was finishing her nips and tucks to adapt the dress to the model who would be showing it.
“It’s just dreamy,” one of the girls sighed, staring at it. “I wish I could afford one, but with a Kells-Meredith label, it will be out of my price range.”
“Mine, too,” Ivory confided, and laughed.
“Yes, but you can sew yourself one anytime you like.”
She frowned. “I don’t know that I can,” she said. “Actually, since I’ve sold the design to the company, I think I’ve restricted my right to duplicate it.”
“That’s probably true,” Dee said. “You could always ask Mr. Kells, of course.”
Ivory felt herself going warm at the mention of his name. “Oh, he wouldn’t bother with me,” she replied. “I’m grateful to him for giving me a chance to design something. I wouldn’t presume to ask for special favors.”
Dee refrained from saying that she could probably get them anyway. Curry Kells had taken Ivory home from the party when Dee knew for a fact that he didn’t ordinarily put himself out for minor employees. Ivory was young and pretty and she had a kind heart. She might very well appeal to someone with a palate as jaded and cynical as Curry’s.
Dee worried about Ivory. She was unworldly and could be badly hurt by someone like Curry Kells. On the other hand, she was an independent sort who wouldn’t take kindly to even the most well-meant interference in her private life. Dee turned her attention back to her own work. At times one had to trust that things would organize themselves for the best.
Ivory finished pinning the dress and gave it over to the seamstresses. She had one or two other ideas that she wanted to sketch, although she wasn’t really expecting anything to come of them. Miss Raines might have no choice about giving the white satin gown of Ivory’s a showing on Mr. Kells’s say-so, but she could effectively halt any others if she liked. Ivory’s career might hinge on this one design, and heaven help her if anything went wrong before the showing.
* * *
THANKSGIVING DAY DAWNED gray and rainy and cold. Ivory fixed herself a small baked turkey and some dressing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. She’d invited Tim and his family to come and share it with her, but they were getting a nice turkey dinner, courtesy of a group of people dedicated to helping the homeless. Because the weather was already cold and wet, Ivory had given Tim a new jacket early instead of waiting for Christmas, so that he could stay well when flu season began.
“For me, Ivory?” he’d asked, as if he couldn’t believe that anyone would buy him such a nice coat.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s your Christmas present, but I thought you might like it early. It’s very cold.” She didn’t add that with HIV, his immune system would start breaking down. A cold could go so quickly into pneumonia, and Miriam couldn’t afford doctors or medicine unless she could go through a government agency to get them.
“Wow! Thanks!” He’d paraded around in it, his dark eyes beaming with delight.
Miriam had thanked Ivory for her kindness. “But someone will steal it, you know,” she said sadly. “All that generosity will only go to waste.”
Ivory hadn’t considered that. In the small town where she came from, few people were mean enough to steal a jacket from a small boy with winter coming on. But this was a city where most people were strangers to one another. Hopeless poverty made thieves of some.
“Mrs. Payne can sew,” Ivory said. “Let her stitch Tim’s first name all over the jacket, with heavy thread, in some bright color. That will discourage some people, at least locally. Even if the thread is taken out, the holes will still spell out Tim’s name!”
Miriam grinned. “Ivory, you have a devious mind.”
“Well, sometimes you have to be devious,” she replied. “As long as it’s for a good cause.” She smiled at Miriam, who smiled back.
The one hopeful fact was that Tim was still robust and healthy. Every day, medical science came up with new ways to combat AIDS. She could only pray that there would be time to find a cure before the disease kindled in Tim’s small body.
Ivory ate her dinner and put part of the turkey in the freezer. If she ate it sparingly, it would last a long time.
She sat down on the sofa and balanced her checkbook, also totaling the amount she’d sent home. Her mother would certainly complain about the measly amount, even though it was half of Ivory’s salary. When she’d started sending the money to Texas, she hadn’t enclosed a note. It would only have been thrown away, unread. The money was all that mattered to Marlene.
As she fingered her ballpoint pen, she thought back to happier times, when her grandparents were still alive. She had always spent summers and holidays, including Thanksgiving and Christmas, with Grandmother and Grandfather Howard. They were sharecroppers, in their midfifties when she was a little girl and finding life harder and harder as big corporations took over family farms all over the area. They hardly eked out a living.
Ivory hadn’t realized until she was in school that they were very poor. The old, ramshackle house was so full of love that money never seemed to matter. There was plenty of food, because they grew their own; and if there was no running water and no indoor plumbing, that hardly concerned a little girl who adored them. It was so much better than being at home.
Her mind drifted to the rose garden that her grandmother had tended so lovingly. One renegade chicken liked to lay eggs under the thick branches, and Ivory had to crawl under to fetch them. In a mock orange tree in the backyard a family of mockingbirds nested every spring. The wild garden near the back steps bloomed with bachelor’s buttons and sunflowers, zinnias, verbena and black-eyed Susans in glorious profusion every spring and summer. And there was the kitchen garden, where she and her grandparents spent long, lazy hours weeding and tending, and then harvesting the fruits of their labors.
Grandma always had homemade fried apple pies in the cupboard to nibble on. Sometimes Ivory would
sit on the back stoop and share one with her dog, while she watched the seasons pass over the fields and waited for life to come and get her. On lazy summer evenings, she would sit in the porch swing with her grandparents and listen to the crickets sing. Sometimes a thunderstorm would threaten, and from far away would come the deep bass sound of thunder amid hashes of magical-looking light in the dark clouds. Grandpa would smile as he smoked his pipe, grateful for the rain that would make his crops grow, ever hopeful of making a profit just one year. But he never had. He was eternally in debt to the landlord and always one season behind.
He was happy, though, working on the land and not being confined to an office and a time clock. Being poor, he told Ivory once, was worth a lot, because at least a man had time to see the world around him in the way he was meant to see it. The glory of nature was much more vivid close up. Captive now in concrete streets and the steel skeletons of high-rise buildings, Ivory remembered the smell of rain coming across the parched fields and the scent of pink roses climbing the oak tree at her grandparents’ house. She remembered the security of their love most of all.
Those memories had nourished her, fed her soul, in some of the worst times of her life. She could close her eyes even now and see the house, and them, safe and eternal in the cocoon of her thoughts. If her grandparents hadn’t died tragically in a house fire when she was in the second grade, how much different her life might have been!
The clock struck eleven and she went to bed, but not to sleep. The nightmares had come back lately. They did, sometimes, when she was under a lot of stress.
She had to make a lot of money, to protect herself from any charges that might one day be leveled by her mercurial mother. Ambition had lifted Ivory from hopelessness. Now she had to trust that it would take her to the top and free her from the threat of her money-mad mother.