The Perfect Stranger

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Right. Because she doesn’t have time to waste.

  Why dwell on the past when you can focus on the future?

  That was the title of an optimistic blog post she wrote back when she was in treatment, still assuming she was going to beat this disease.

  The piece was met with a mixed reaction from her followers, depending on their stage of the disease. Those who were in remission shared her mind-­set. Those who were not—­those with very little future left—­didn’t want to think about what might lie ahead. They found comfort in reflecting upon happier times.

  Now I get it. Now I’m sorry, so sorry. I wish I could have told some of them . . .

  But it’s too late.

  Too late . . . too late . . .

  Meredith arches her back, stretching, trying to work out the kinks as a warm breeze flutters the peach and yellow paisley curtains at the window.

  Through the screen she can hear only crickets, a distant dog barking, and the occasional sound of traffic out on the main road. The houses in this neighborhood may be of the no frills, cookie-­cutter architectural style, but they’re set far apart on relatively large lots.

  It was the quiet, private location that drew Meredith and Hank here well over three decades ago, when they were living downtown in a one-­bedroom apartment with two toddlers and an oops baby on the way. This seventeen-­hundred-­square-­foot house—­with an eat-­in kitchen, three bedrooms, and one and a half baths—­seemed palatial by comparison.

  They felt like they’d be living in the lap of luxury and promised each other they were going to grow old here.

  But they’d outgrown it by the time the kids were teenagers with friends coming and going at all hours, and the house was showing wear and tear.

  With three college tuitions looming in the near future, they couldn’t afford to add on or buy anything bigger. Not on Hank’s salary and what little she made working at a local daycare.

  Somehow, they survived the old plumbing and wiring and constant repairs; the crowds of kids, the lack of privacy and closet space. Eventually their sons and daughter moved on, and although their finances aren’t terrific—­thanks to the economy and a series of bad investments—­at least Meredith and Hank grew back into their house.

  It may be shabby, but it’s home.

  Now, the mere idea of growing old anywhere at all . . . that in itself is a luxury.

  “Ouch,” she says aloud, wincing again as she rolls her shoulders.

  It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than stretching, a hot bath, or even lying down on the memory foam mattress they splurged on last September when Macy’s had a sale. That was when she was assuming their old, saggy mattress was causing the dull ache in her back. Hank’s back ached, too.

  “I think it’s from giving the grandkids piggyback rides,” he said, “not the mattress.”

  “Well, I haven’t given anyone piggyback rides. Trust me. It’s the mattress.”

  The pricey new one was their early Christmas present to each other, along with the bright, cheerful paisley bedding and curtains that at least made it look like springtime in here all winter long . . . even after she found out the memory foam wasn’t going to cure her hurting bones. Nothing was.

  She wishes now that she’d allowed her doctor to prescribe something for the pain during her last visit, but she was afraid she’d become dependent.

  “That’s crazy,” Hank said when she told him. “Why would you think that?”

  “You hear stories—­all those celebrities addicted to prescription pain medication . . . and some of my blogger friends have had issues, too.”

  Hank shook his head. “Next time you go, let them give you something. Why suffer?”

  Suffer—­such a strong word. Especially since she isn’t truly suffering. Not yet, anyway.

  There will be plenty of time down the road for Percocet or morphine or whatever it is that doctors prescribe in the final stages . . .

  Plenty of time—­please, God, let there be plenty of time.

  She’s not against pain medicine, but even now, while they still have insurance, their prescription plan isn’t the best. Her medications have already cost them a fortune out of pocket—­and a lot of good they did.

  Plain old ibuprofen might help, but Hank must have packed the Advil they keep in the master bathroom medicine cabinet. She just looked for it and it wasn’t there. She’s too tired to go hunt for another bottle.

  What she really needs right now, as much as, if not more than, medication, is a good, stiff shot of Kentucky Bourbon. There’s plenty of that downstairs, courtesy of living a stone’s throw from some of the world’s finest distilleries.

  In the old days—­well, in the few years’ window after the kids were grown but before Meredith got sick—­she and Hank spent some deliciously decadent weekend afternoons with fellow empty nester friends, sipping their way along the Bourbon trail that lies in the bluegrass hills south of Cincinnati.

  She was never a big drinker; just a social one. But that came to a complete halt after her breast cancer diagnosis, when she became hypervigilant about everything she put into her body. She lightened up a bit after five years in remission, but last year a routine test betrayed a resurgence of microscopic cancer cells in her remaining breast tissue, and she went right back on the wagon. Not a drop of liquor, no soy products, only organic fruits and vegetables . . .

  I don’t know about that, one of the other bloggers commented on a post where Meredith outlined her stringent habits. What good is being alive if you sacrifice all the fun stuff?

  I’m just trying to improve my odds. To each his own, Meredith wrote back.

  The blogger—­that’s right, now she remembers, it was Elena—­Elena wrote back: My mother was a health nut who did everything right, and she was hit by a train before her thirtieth birthday. I did everything right, and I was diagnosed with cancer right after mine. I have to admit: I’m sick of being good.

  Meredith understood how Elena felt. But she hoped Elena understood why she herself wasn’t—­isn’t—­taking any chances.

  Certainly not now that the cancer has metastasized to her bones. But of course, Elena doesn’t know about that.

  “How long do I have?” Meredith asked the oncologist matter-­of-­factly when she first got the news.

  “Don’t jump the gun, there,” said the doctor, a straight shooter. “It’s a relatively small spot, and we’re going to treat it. Radiation, chemotherapy . . .”

  Yes. She knows the drill.

  They treat it until everything stops working, and it continues to spread.

  That, she suspects, is where they’re headed now. A few weeks ago, the morning after an idyllic Mother’s Day spent cooking outside with Hank and the kids and grandkids, the doctor gave her some discouraging test results, then told her they’re going to try this current treatment—­which she knows is basically her last hope—­a little longer and take some more tests to see whether it’s working.

  She has a feeling it isn’t.

  All those needles—­God, how she hated needles, even when they were lifelines—­endlessly poking into her, delivering medication, drawing blood . . . all for what?

  There are no more lifelines.

  She’s been doing her best to prepare herself for what lies ahead—­if not in the immediate future, then at some point down the road.

  Sooner or later she’ll be told to call hospice and get her affairs in order.

  Even then, she knows, many doctors aren’t able—­or perhaps aren’t willing—­to provide a time frame.

  She’s seen it happen to her online friends time and again, and now it’s going to happen to her. Maybe not this year, maybe not even next, but eventually this damned disease is going to get her.

  She’s privately told one or two of her online friends of her situation, but not everyone. E
ventually she’ll have to write an official blog post about it. The moment it goes live, she’ll become that person—­the doomed friend everyone rallies around.

  I’m not ready. I don’t want to be her. Not yet. I want to be me for as long as I can.

  There’s only one way to do that: pretend this isn’t really happening.

  The lyrics to an old Styx song—­one she and Hank used to listen to on vinyl back in their dating days—­keep running through her head.

  You’re fooling yourself . . . you don’t believe it . . .

  She’ll get through her days staying busy so that she won’t have to dwell on the future—­and get through her nights the best she can.

  Right now she’ll have to settle for over-­the-­counter pain relievers without the courtesy of Bourbon to numb the pain in her back—­or the disquieting, morbid thoughts that sometimes strike at night, especially when she’s here alone.

  With a sigh, she leaves the lamplit bedroom and flicks on the hallway light. As she makes her way to the stairs, she hears a whisper of movement below.

  “Hank?” she calls.

  No answer.

  Of course not. He’s in Cleveland. She spoke to him a half hour ago on the phone, although . . .

  He could very well have just said he was in Cleveland. Maybe he was really on the road, headed home early to surprise her.

  “Hank! Is that you?”

  Absolutely still, poised mid-­flight with her hand on the banister, Meredith is enveloped in complete silence.

  “Is someone there?”

  No.

  And yet—­she did hear something before. Or perhaps it’s more just a sensation of not being alone in the house . . .

  Or did you just imagine it altogether?

  For a long time she stands there, listening—­one moment certain she can feel someone there, the next, certain she’s losing it.

  Just last week she blogged about this very scenario. Not about things that go bump in the night, per se, but about getting older and potentially senile.

  That entry stemmed from Hank’s report that his mother suspected her neighbor—­a distinguished widowed professor—­of sneaking into her condo in the wee hours, trying on her clothes and taking perfumed bubble baths in her tub.

  Her blog entry was written entirely tongue in cheek, as so many of them are. Even during the darkest days of her cancer treatment, she’s always managed to find a humorous angle.

  She’d started the blog at the suggestion of her therapist, who knew she’d dreamed of graduating college and becoming a writer before marriage and motherhood set her on a different path. Even the title of the blog page—­Pink Stinks—­is meant to be an irreverent poke at the breast cancer awareness movement.

  Determined to keep her latest diagnosis to herself, she wrote a blog post last week about the inevitability of aging and the many signs—­now that she’s past her sixtieth birthday—­that the process is well under way.

  That post was greeted by a barrage of positive, amusing comments from her regular followers and a ­couple of newcomers who have since stuck around. Someone—­who was it?—­said that she was wise and had a tough outer shell, like a turtle, and turtles are known for their longevity—­So I’m sure you’re going to live a good long time!

  From your lips—­rather, fingertips—­to God’s ears, Meredith wanted to respond to whoever wrote that, but of course, she didn’t.

  Standing on the stairway, listening for movement below and wondering if she should go back to the bedroom for the baseball bat Hank keeps under his side of the bed, she mentally composes the opening of a new blog post she’ll write tomorrow.

  So there I was, armed and dangerous in my granny nightgown . . .

  Oh, geez. She really is losing it, isn’t she?

  And her taut posture as she stands clenched from head to toe, clutching the railing, isn’t helping her back pain.

  Either turn around and go to bed, or go downstairs, get what you need, and then go to bed.

  Meredith opts for the latter. She flips a wall switch at the foot of the stairs, then another in the living room, and the one in the dining room, reassured as she makes her way through familiar rooms bathed in light. As always, she notices not just the threadbare area rug, the worn spots on the furniture, the chipped paint on the baseboards, but also the clay bowl Beck had made in Girl Scouts, the bookshelf lined with Hardy Boys titles Hank had handed down to his sons and newer picture books Meredith had collected for the grandchildren, the faint pencil marks on the doorjamb where they marked their growing kids’ height over the years . . .

  It’s a good house. It’s been a good life here.

  Whenever Hank talks about selling it now, she shakes her head. “This is home. I don’t ever want to leave.”

  In the kitchen cabinet where she keeps her daily vitamins and the medications prescribed to keep cancer at bay for as long as possible, she finds a bottle of drugstore brand painkillers.

  Having left her glasses upstairs on the nightstand, she can’t quite make out the label. It looks to her like they expired last year, but they’re probably fine. Fine, as in safe to swallow, if not as effective as they might have been.

  She takes three, just in case they’re less potent. Washing them down with tap water, she wonders how long it will take before the pills ease the tension in her muscles.

  It really is too bad she can’t take something stronger.

  Not medicine. Just a nip of something that will warm her from the inside out, and let her sleep.

  She glances longingly at the high cupboard above the fridge where they’ve kept the booze since their firstborn, Teddy, reached high school.

  Ha. As if keeping the stash out of arm’s reach would deter him and his friends from getting into it. It didn’t work, they discovered belatedly, when Hank realized that one of their offspring—­by then, all three were in college—­had replaced the contents of a bottle of Woodford Reserve with iced tea.

  Still, they were good kids, Meredith remembers as she sets the empty water glass into the sink. Spirited, but good. She’s blessed to have watched them grow up and give her grandchildren—­three grandsons so far between Teddy and Neal and their wives, with another little stinkerdoodle on the way this fall.

  That’s what Meredith calls her grandchildren, just as she always called her own children: a nice batch of stinkerdoodles.

  Everyone is hoping for a girl this time.

  Everyone but her. Secretly, she worries about passing the cancer gene to a new generation.

  Men get breast cancer, too, one of her blogger friends pointed out when she wrote about that concern.

  True. But it’s not nearly as common.

  She can’t help but worry about the health of her daughter and future granddaughters. She’s been warning Rebecca that she needs to do self-­exams and start her yearly mammogram screening in another ­couple of years.

  Beck, of course, waves her mother off. She’s too young and full of life to worry about illness.

  So was I at her age. I never thought something like this could happen. No family history . . .

  You just never know.

  It’s been over a year now since Beck married Keith. They’ll probably be starting a family, too, soon.

  Meredith has so much to live for. If only . . .

  Shaking her head, she turns off the light and leaves the kitchen, never noticing the cut screen on the window facing the newly planted garden out back, or the shadow of a human figure lurking in the far corner.

  Tragic News

  This is Meredith’s daughter, Rebecca, writing. I don’t know how to say this. There’s no easy way. I’m still in shock. But you all meant a lot to my mom, and she would want our family to let you all know that she passed away this weekend.

  —­Excerpt from Meredith’s blog, Pink Stinks


  Chapter 2

  The news reaches Landry Wells on the sort of picture-­perfect summer morning when it feels as though nothing can possibly go wrong.

  It’s warm—­southern Alabama in June is always warm—­but not yet too steamy for sipping hot coffee on the second-­story porch swing. A gentle breeze stirs Spanish moss draped in the live oaks framing her view of Mobile Bay, and the world is hushed but for chirping birds and the staccato spritzing of the lawn sprinklers below.

  Still unshowered, wearing the shorts and T-­shirt she threw on to walk the dog after rolling out of bed, Landry sits with her bare feet propped on the rail, laptop open to the Web page that bears the shocking news.

  News that struck out of nowhere on what promised to be another precious, precious ordinary day.

  Years ago—­after a routine mammogram gave way to the sonogram that led to the biopsy that resulted in a cancer diagnosis—­she couldn’t imagine ever living another ordinary day. But the women to whom she turned for support—­an online group of breast cancer patients and survivors she now counts among her closest friends—­assured her that normality would return, sooner or later. They were right.

  Every night, when she climbs into bed, she thanks God for the gift of a day in which she carted her teenagers around and did loads of laundry and sat sipping coffee with her husband; a day filled with reading and writing, weeding the garden, feeding a family, watching good television and decadently bad television, grumbling about crumbs and clutter and mosquito bites but never really minding any of it.

  She watches a monarch butterfly alight on a pink rose blossom in her sunlit flower bed below and thinks of Meredith.

  She had been doing so well. Yes, Meredith had reported a recurrence well over a year ago. Her oncologist found some suspicious cells in her breast, and after a radical mastectomy and radiation, pronounced her clear again.