The final new purchase was a box of tissues with hearts all around and, on the center of each of the four side panels, a picture of an owl holding a tissue that read, “Be Mine.”
“I got this for your daddy,” Mama said, tearing up a little. “To take with him to treatment.”
The box of tissues was suddenly sad and important, as if it was—to Abi’s mama—a truly precious cure for cancer. It caused a stirring of something Abi hadn’t felt since she was a little girl. She’d mostly assumed Mama and Daddy didn’t love each other. She thought they just stayed together as a habit, one that neither had the will to break.
“Let’s go outside for a smoke,” Abi said.
“Good idea,” Mama said.
They leaned against Abi’s Volvo. Abi examined her mother’s boots. They weren’t so bad.
“I want to come see you at work sometime, Mama. Maybe you can show me some boots I might get, and we could have lunch.”
“You’d wear a bra, wouldn’t you?” Mama asked, glancing at Abi’s braless chest.
“There’s really not much there, you know, that needs support.”
“You’ve starved yourself trying to be skinny like a model. And this giving up meat, I’ll never understand. I bet you don’t have any red blood cells left after going these years without a steak or even a burger.”
“That’s not how it works, Mama.”
Her mother took a long drag. “Abigail, what’s going to happen to all of us?”
Abi kicked at the gravel. “He might respond well to the chemo,” she said. “We gotta keep our spirits up.”
“He is so handsome,” Mama said. “He’ll lose all those fine curls. You got to make sure he eats. Real food, not just salads.”
Aunt Sister’s voice rang out, “Don’t you get in that canoe, you hear?” Abi heard her nieces and nephews in the distance, no doubt getting into trouble. It was February, but the daffodils and crocuses were already budding, and the big tulip tree down by the water was blooming. It was always the first sign of spring—those big buds opening.
Abi and Mama finished their cigarettes without talking. Abi lit another cigarette and handed it to her mother, then lit one for herself. A small act of love, like her mother’s agreeing to her plan. Love so strong it overpowered Mama’s need for control.
“Please, can you two try to call me, Abi? It would mean so much to me.”
“Okay, Mama.”
Daddy appeared at the door, toting his suitcase, which must have been nearly as old as he was, and barely used.
“Abi will take good care of you, hon. You know she’s good at that.” Mama turned to Abi. “You are good at that. Now, wait right there, you two.”
Mama hurried inside to fetch his going-away present, the box of tissues that read, “Be Mine.”
When Daddy accepted it, he hugged Mama and said, “I’ve always been yours.”
Abi was again reminded that they were a family in crisis. She was so glad that she had Landon downstairs, someone who could and would handle any kind of mental or emotional issues that might come up during this first round. She told Daddy this as they headed toward I-59. Abi’s old Volvo station wagon was beginning to have problems. If she went over fifty-five miles an hour, it started shaking badly. She kept it at fifty and hoped her daddy wouldn’t notice how slowly they were going.
When she got on I-65, the city rose to their left, and she saw him gazing at it. She realized he hadn’t been to Birmingham in years, and so much had changed.
“Feels like I’m in New York,” he said.
“Not quite, Daddy. But close enough.”
“I don’t remember this many buildings downtown.”
“That’s the medical center all sprawled out over Southside. You’ll be in one of those buildings.”
He rolled down his window and hung an arm out to the wind.
“I’m gonna take the Fourth Avenue exit, rather than the Green Springs exit I generally take, so you can see the university.”
She showed him the building where she attended most of her classes. They drove by the hospital. He had been referred to an oncologist at the university, rather than the hospital in Bessemer, which was closer to the family compound. Abi turned onto Eleventh Street and paused at St. Andrew’s Episcopal.
“That’s where Landon goes,” Abi said. “Well, she went once, on Christmas Eve. I helped her dress that night. She was stunning.”
They passed the corner market. Abi pointed it out.
“That’s where most people buy their food, just so you know. I don’t really shop there. You won’t find much fresh fruit or veggies, but the cigarettes are cheap, and they have good popsicles. I never outgrew them, you know.”
He patted her leg.
“And there,” she said, “is where I do my laundry. Right by the store.”
“I wish I could get you a washer and dryer.”
She waved the suggestion away. “I don’t even have hookups. Landon does, but I don’t.”
She turned right on Cullom Street. “Here we are,” she said.
As she pulled up to the curb, Abi spotted Landon on their porch.
“Will!” Landon called, waving.
“Come on up with us,” Abi said as they approached the front steps.
Abi had moved all of her workout equipment to one side in her extra bedroom. She and Mr. Kasir had assembled a twin-sized bedframe he had found in the basement of one of his properties. Mr. Kasir’s basements were not for the tenants’ use. Rather, they were places where he stored things that people left behind. Abi and Landon still marveled that he had come up with the frame only hours after Abi asked him to be on the lookout. As for the mattress, it was new, still in its wrapping. Abi knew Mr. Kasir had bought this for her, even though he pretended to have salvaged it. He brought along Jason, who had grown quite a lot since Abi last saw him, to help get the mattress up the stairs. They also had a set of sheets and pillows, which Mr. Kasir told her were from Mrs. Kasir’s linen closet. The Kasirs had been so good to Abi since they found out about her daddy’s cancer. A few days after bringing the bed, Mr. Kasir arrived with a bedside table.
Abi watched her daddy take it all in. First, he surveyed the big room, which held Abi’s TV, shelves, books, CDs, DVDs, and aquarium. Cinderella and Grits were asleep on the couch. There was a desk for Abi’s computer. The screensaver echoed the nearby aquarium; yellow, turquoise, and red fish swam across it. The room was a bit dark, but Abi figured her daddy might want it that way when he came home every day following his chemo. Everything would be geared to his comfort.
“Daddy likes to sleep on the couch, or at least rest there,” Abi told Landon.
A big, old, comfortable chair was next to the sofa.
“You can sit there when you’re watching him,” Abi instructed.
Daddy walked into Abi’s kitchen, and she and Landon followed. Her cabinets were free of clutter, as were all the surfaces. No knickknacks for Abi. No sprucing up necessary. A table for two sat by the window. Abi kept the window open to let in fresh air. It was the only room in the place that got adequate sunlight.
Right before Abi left for work, after getting Daddy settled on the couch, she took Landon to the kitchen and opened the fridge, pointing out the food inside.
“I stole all this from work last night, once my boss was too coked to notice or care.” She gestured to a big bowl covered with aluminum foil. “There’s a big salad and two kinds of dressing, and pasta with different kinds of cheese. You can see the big Ziplocs there with the best yeast rolls you’ll ever eat. Henry, our bread maker, is the greatest. Call the pasta mac and cheese. He’ll like that. And if he doesn’t, there’s some shrimp scampi, which I’m sure he’s never had. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ve made a pitcher of sweet tea. And there’s ice in the freezer. He likes cold tea over ice, even in winter. He doesn’t drink anything hot—tea or coffee or hot chocolate, nothing. He believes all liquids should be cold. I know it’s weird, but it’s just a family thing
.”
“I’ll do it right,” Landon reassured her.
Abi gave her a big hug. “I know you will, Landon. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I won’t be home till midnight, so don’t think you have to wait up for me. He’ll probably fall asleep on the couch around nine. Maybe if he does, you can throw a quilt over him. You know where my quilt stand is?”
“I think I’ve got it,” Landon told her.
“Tomorrow’s his first day of treatment. He might be anxious. I know I am.”
Abi led Landon back into the living room, kissed Daddy on the cheek, then headed to her bedroom to get dressed for work.
LANDON
“Thank you for being so good to my Abi,” Will said. Sitting across from him in Abi’s living room, Landon tried not to study any particular part of his body. But she didn’t want to stare too hard into his eyes either. In another life, she would have told him that the first thing she noticed about a man was his eyes. They were either flat as buttons or alive, had depth, sparkled. She would have told him that his were the latter.
She was having trouble making small talk, not usually a problem for her.
Landon knew from Abi that Will had worked in construction. She could have guessed that from his physique—the broad forearms, warm brown from years of working outdoors, the spread of his shoulders under his flannel shirt. He looked healthy—too healthy to be sick. She wanted to tell Will that he looked ready for the fight. She wanted to tell him how lonely she had been. She wanted to be off her medicine, but she knew it was there to keep her from indulging in short-term hedonism over long-term happiness. She wouldn’t hesitate to say all these things if she were manic.
Instead, she asked him if he needed anything from the kitchen.
“I’m fine, but thank you,” he replied.
“So,” she said, choosing to skip over small talk altogether, “tell me the story of your life.”
He laughed. “How long have you got?”
“As long as you want.”
Will coughed a few times, dry and sharp, and it took Landon aback. It was the first time that he seemed sick. Landon went to the kitchen to get them each a glass of water. When she returned, she saw that Grits had crawled into Will’s lap.
“Abi tell you the story of how she got this cat?” he asked her. “Ever since she was a child, she’s loved God’s creatures.”
Oh, Landon remembered, the God thing.
“So tell me about yourself, Will.”
And he did. He told her that he had grown up just a few miles from where he was living now. Both of his parents were killed in a car accident, so he was raised by an uncle.
Landon told him about her brother.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” he said.
“It was bad,” Landon said, nodding. “But keep going with your story.”
“After I came back from Vietnam,” Will continued, “I went to work construction for my uncle. I met my wife when I was doing the carpentry on a place for her family. She was still in high school. We married, and then Abi came along a few years later. We tried to give her whatever she needed, but I never made enough money to give her what she deserved.”
Landon waited to see if he’d continue without a prompt from her. When it was clear that he was looking for direction, she asked him, “How are you feeling about your diagnosis?”
He retrieved the tiny Testament from his pocket. “It’s not just the New Testament, this little book. It’s got the Psalms in it, too.”
He carefully turned the pages; to Landon, they looked especially thin and vulnerable between his fingers.
“Like this one,” he said, landing on the page he was looking for. “‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities; Who heals all your diseases; Who redeems your life from destruction; Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies; Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.’”
“I like that,” Landon said.
“Abi is having a hard time with all this.”
Landon nodded and looked at him to see where he wanted to go with this. She worried momentarily that Will would try to save her. But he must have sensed her discomfort.
“So, tell me about your life.”
He smiled, and those eyes of his went straight through her. She didn’t want to talk about her life. It was only other people’s lives she wanted to hear about.
“I don’t think I can tell you my story tonight; there will be plenty of time for that later.”
“I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”
This was, she knew, a good place to leave it. “Well, I’m going to head downstairs to my place,” she told him. “I need to walk my dog.” She fetched a piece of paper and a pen from Abi’s desk. She wrote her phone number on it and put it inside Will’s blue Testament on the table by the couch. “Call me if you need anything, okay? Abi left food for you in the fridge. There’s some top-notch mac and cheese in there. And sweet tea, of course. And there’s ice in the freezer. Feel free to come knock on my door if I can do anything for you. The porch swing is a comfort, too. I sit out there a lot and just listen to the night. I’ll come check on you in a little while, just to make sure you’re all right.”
“Let me give you a hug,” he said, standing. “Thank you for being so good to Abi. And to me, too.”
Landon left feeling high. Their goodbye hug had lingered. But as she descended the stairs, she wondered if she was misinterpreting everything. She wasn’t going to fall in love with Abi’s father. She wasn’t going to attempt to seduce him. She would keep an intimate distance, like she had with her patients when she was practicing.
Back in her apartment, she turned on the TV, flipped the channels until she found election coverage. She tried to get into the spirit of the campaign, but she found herself thinking of her daughters.
A few minutes before nine, Landon went upstairs to see if Will needed anything. He was stretched out on the couch, asleep. Per Abi’s instructions, Landon spread the quilt over him. She checked on the cats. Though Abi had told her they usually slept curled in the folds of her comforter, Landon found them wide-eyed under the bed. She whispered their names, tapping her fingers gently on the floor, but they made no effort to move. She guessed they were freaked by all the changes in the apartment. But they would be fine once Abi got home.
SAM
In deciding when he’d head to the Laundromat, Sam tried to choose a time when there wouldn’t be a crowd. That way, he could use one of the three chairs and the one folding table—the place was tiny—to review for his engineering test tomorrow. He could use Landon’s washer and dryer, he knew, but he liked the Laundromat. It helped him focus.
It was eight o’clock in the morning, and the place was empty. Sam divided his lights from his darks and put four quarters into two machines. Once they got going, Sam pulled a chair up to the folding table, opened his backpack, and retrieved his textbook, notebook, and highlighter. Engineering. Not Sam’s first choice for a field of study, but he’d received a scholarship as part of a minority recruitment program. He took the scholarship money, hoping for the best. Poppy had been so excited. He told Sam that an engineering degree meant a good job with good pay. Sam hoped Poppy was right about this. Jet, with her history degree, was working in a bookstore for minimum wage. He hadn’t seen her for several days. It worried him, knowing she had a habit of disappearing, then reemerging a week later in some kind of crisis.
Until recently, he hadn’t cared much about where Jet was, but his feelings for her had gone from resistance to something like brotherly affection. And the campaign, of course, had brought all the neighbors closer.
He always started his studying by rereading the quote at the front of his book: “Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been.” This was starting to resonate more and more with Sam. He had always been cautious and reserved.
He was active in high-school sports but never believed his coaches during the pep talks before games; the assumption by the coach that they’d win—that they had to win—always made him uncomfortable. A loss didn’t make him mad or sad; it made him embarrassed, which was worse.
That dread, that fear of embarrassment, was why he initially rejected Obama’s campaign. He was so dead sure he would never get involved in the seeming impossibility of electing a black man president. He was afraid of his neighbors’ embarrassment when Obama lost, of how it might reflect on him. But now that he had been drawn into the campaign—against his will, almost, as if something mysterious were leading him forward—he had to put these fears away.
After he moved his clothes into the dryers, he called Poppy. At first, there was no answer, so Sam waited a few minutes and then tried back.
“Poppy!”
“Sam. I couldn’t make it to the phone in time. So glad you called again, son.”
He pictured Poppy sitting at the old-fashioned telephone table with the rotary dial phone, fully dressed but also wearing his bathrobe and house shoes. He thought of his brown eyes, less defined because of the cataracts.
“Where are you?” Poppy asked.
“I’m in a Laundromat doing my wash. And I’m studying in here, too.”
“I didn’t know a place like that was conducive to studying.” Poppy chuckled. “It’s so good to hear your voice, boy. You get that girlfriend of yours to bring you down here like you said during your break in school. I wish I had the money to get you your own car. Maybe we’d see you more.”
“I’m fine,” Sam said. “Remember, I can walk to school and the Laundromat and the corner store. And Tanya likes coming to see y’all.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Poppy said.
“I’m still worried about Obama,” Sam said. He leaned forward. He also talked a little louder than usual because Poppy’s hearing was going, just like his sight.
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