Catch a Falling Star

by Jessica Starre

  “You admire and care about Mrs. Curtin,” she said, “and I don’t see you giving her any Faberge egg necklaces.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want you to say that she means as much to you as she thinks she does.”

  A pause. “I’ve been dating her for two months,” he pointed out. “Neither one of us has poured out feelings of undying love. It’s a little too soon to be making plans about the future, don’t you think?”

  “Then why are you giving her Faberge egg necklaces?”

  He should have gotten one for Brianna, too; that would have made her shut up. No, it wouldn’t. She would have hurled it at his head and said, Do you know how many starving children the money you spent on this could feed?

  “Same reason I donated twenty thousand dollars to Heifer International in your name,” he said, which he hadn’t but he would to get her off his back. “Because it was something I liked giving her and she liked getting.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I’m not handwriting the invitations,” Brianna said, standing in Matthias’s living room and not matching the decor or the ambience. Not the way Natalie did. Natalie always looked like she belonged. Natalie wanted to belong, and that made all the difference.

  “Okay,” Matthias said. “I can hire a calligrapher. Or, actually, you can and just bill me.”

  “What is it with you people?” Brianna said. “There are computer programs that do this.”

  “That would cheat us of an opportunity to exploit the laboring classes,” he said, and Brianna just shook her head at him.

  “All right,” she said. “I still don’t understand why you want classical music when you could have a hip-hop group, but the ensemble will go here, right? You’re not expecting dancing, just atmosphere.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the bar and bartenders here. And another setup in the music room, for people who want to avoid the crush in here. Then the buffet will have to go over there.” She strode over to where she imagined it being placed and frowned, hands on hips. “Although we don’t want this spot to get too congested. Maybe it would be better to have three or four stations around the room. That’ll keep people moving.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  That seemed to make her scowl even more deeply. “It’s easier when I use a space I’ve used before. Hand me that clipboard.”

  He obeyed and she swiftly made a schematic of the main rooms on this floor, getting her measuring tape out of her bag and pacing off distances.

  “Will any of your household staff be available or will I have to hire everyone?”

  “You don’t want Beverly breathing down your back at a cocktail party.”

  “Hi, Beverly,” she said, which made him actually turn around. Beverly wasn’t there.

  “Ha, ha.”

  “Let’s also rent a carpet runner for that hallway. Spring means rain, and if someone breaks their neck on that slick tile, it will be an unfortunate start to the party.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Anything else we haven’t figured out yet? Jeannie’ll be here in a minute with the hors d’oeuvres selection for you to taste and you can make your final decision about that.”

  “Just make sure there’s plenty of champagne. Natalie loves champagne.”

  “You bet,” Brianna said.

  • • •

  “Hey.”

  Natalie looked up. The new semester had started earlier this week and she’d looked for Joe in her classes, but he hadn’t been in any. But at least he was here at lunch.

  “Hey,” she said. “Have a good Christmas?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Except for the part where Benjy threw up all over the presents.”

  Natalie smiled. “Poor kid.”

  “Poor people who had to wipe vomit off their gifts. How was yours?”

  “No vomiting involved,” she said. “It was good. Bree got me this sweater. Her dad was here for a couple of days. Stayed at a hotel, of course. Bree didn’t run him off as quickly as usual.”

  “That’s a pretty sweater. Sounds like a pain, about her dad.” He was digging in his book bag, distracted.

  “He’s not so bad. But Bree’s got to figure out if she wants him in her life and if she does, in what way.”

  “Maybe they can be friends,” he said. “I mean, he can hardly act like her dad at this point. But he’s also not nothing. And if she thought he was nothing, she wouldn’t have taken three days to run him off this time.”

  Natalie smiled. Joe had a way of getting right to the heart of things.

  He finally seemed to find what he wanted in his bag because he pulled out a tiny wrapped package. “I got this for you.”

  “Oh, geez, I’m sorry, Joe, I didn’t know we were exchanging gifts.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You’ve given me all those cookies.”

  “I’ll bring you more tomorrow.”

  “With the toffee bits in them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cool.”

  She unfolded the paper. (“You’re supposed to tear wrapping paper!” Brianna always said but Natalie never did.) Then she opened the small white box. Inside was a silver necklace with a star pendant, which twinkled with multicolored stones. Bits of colored glass, she guessed. “Oh, how pretty,” she said, taking it out of the box and not not not comparing it to a Faberge creation.

  “You know how you told me Brianna taught you how to wish on a star?” he asked.

  “I remember.” She was surprised he did. They had talked about all the minute details of their lives — though she had never told him about being sick when she was a kid. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it at first, because he treated her so normally, and she liked that, and then it felt like it was too late, like the time to share had passed. But they had talked about their families, and their plans and goals for the future. It was easy to talk to Joe.

  He listened so well, but he also shared, and it made her feel better that his mother drove him crazy in the exact same way Brianna drove Natalie crazy, and that he didn’t have a very clear idea what the future held, except he needed to get a job and stop depending on his parents. He wasn’t guarded and private like Matthias, he was pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

  She looked at the star and thought it was so like Joe to have remembered an offhand comment she made, to know that it meant something to her, all the times she and Brianna would lie on the grass and look up at the heavens and make their wishes. I wish Daddy would come back. Brianna had said that for years and years. I wish the cancer would go away. Natalie had said that for years and years. Joe didn’t know that; he didn’t have to know that. She wasn’t ready for him to know it.

  “So I saw that and thought of you,” he said. “Now you’ll always have a star to wish on, even when there aren’t any in the sky.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brianna was dressed and ready to head out the door when she realized Natalie wasn’t up yet. She had an eight o’clock class that she never missed.

  Brianna knocked on her bedroom door, then opened it and looked in. Natalie was still in bed, and she turned restlessly at the noise Brianna made.

  “Natalie, what’s up?”

  “Just overslept,” Natalie said, yawning hugely. Brianna frowned and came into the room. Natalie looked pale. Brianna touched her forehead.

  “You feel like you’ve got a fever.”

  Natalie pushed the bed covers off. “I’m fine.”

  “Doc Henderson right now,” Brianna said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Brianna — ”

  “Get dressed.”

  Natalie reluctantly showered and dressed while Brianna called Heidi and asked her to pass along a message to Mrs. Curtin. Then she called Doc Henderson’s office and let them know Natalie was coming.

  Maybe it was mono. That was probably what it was. Lots of college kids got mono.

  • • •

  Natalie gripp
ed Brianna’s arm. Her knuckles were white. Brianna was sure she’d left bruises but she didn’t complain. By the time they’d gotten to the doctor’s office, Natalie had said she wanted Brianna in the consulting room with her, which made Brianna’s stomach turn over because if Natalie were really sure it was just a virus, she would have left Brianna in the waiting room.

  Doc Henderson had listened to Natalie’s halting explanation with a grave face, and when Brianna said, “We thought it might be mono,” he didn’t respond to that but said, “Blood workup first. You know what we’re looking for. I’ll have it run on a stat basis. It’ll take about an hour.”

  So Natalie was gripping Brianna’s arm while the hour ticked by. They didn’t say anything. There was never anything to say.

  Then Doc Henderson came back in, a faxed report clenched in his hand. He was wearing his glasses, and he looked graver than he had when Natalie had started describing her symptoms.

  “It’s back,” he said, just like that, no warning, as he rattled the stool away from the desk and sat down. All the air seemed to go out of the room. Brianna did not know how to take the next breath.

  “We’ll have to do a bone marrow test,” he said. “I’ll order that right away. And your oncologist will almost certainly want to start induction therapy immediately. You had a pediatric oncologist last time, so if I may make a recommendation, I’d like to suggest Dr. Abher Singh. Mary is making arrangements with the hospital right now.”

  Natalie had not relaxed her grip on Brianna’s arm.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Brianna said, and Natalie pressed her head against Brianna’s neck and began to cry.

  “It was perfect,” she said. “It was just … perfect.”

  “I know, honey,” Brianna said. “I know.”

  • • •

  “I’m not taking the necklace off,” Natalie said, clutching Joe’s star. “It stays.”

  “That’s fine, sweetie,” Brianna said, when the nurse started to make a comment. Placating, the way Brianna always did when the news was bad, knowing Natalie could not handle being thwarted over something that pointless and that important. “It’s fine. I’ll hold it if I have to, okay? Like if they do an MRI or something.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said, and started to get out of her clothes. “You promise.” She sounded like a stupid ten-year-old. But that was how she felt. The nurse backed out of the room. Natalie had started crying again, which was so damned frustrating. It was all she seemed capable of doing, crying and crying, and it didn’t solve anything or even make her feel better. It was just exhausting and pointless and she couldn’t make herself stop.

  “I can’t do this again, Bree,” she said, and she sounded hysterical even to herself.

  “I know,” Brianna said. “I wish — ”

  “Five years,” Natalie said. “I was halfway there.”

  “I know,” Brianna said. “It’s not like I haven’t been counting, too. You want me to call Matthias?”

  Natalie had the damned awful gown on now. She wanted to shred it to pieces with her fingernails. She slumped against the bed. “No,” she said. “I’m not ready for Matthias. He expects me to be brave and beautiful. He’s not going to find me so brave and beautiful when all my hair falls out and I’m cursing everyone in sight.”

  “Day at a time, Natalie,” Brianna said and she could just go to hell. “You’ve still got all your hair.”

  “I want you to call Joe,” Natalie said, ignoring her.

  Brianna looked a little surprised but she said, “His number’s in your phone?”

  Natalie nodded. “I kinda thought it’d be nice if he never had to know. But I’m going to need his help to get through school.”

  “You’re going to be doing induction therapy,” Brianna said. “And then consolidation therapy. I don’t think you’re going back to class this semester.”

  Don’t say that! Natalie wanted to scream. She wanted it back, every annoying part of that stupid normal life, she wanted it back right now.

  “There are going to be bills, Bree,” she said. “Christ. How are we going to pay the bills if I don’t finish college and get a job?”

  “You worry about getting well, Nat,” Brianna said. She sat down on the bed and took Natalie’s hands in hers. “You need to listen to me, Nat. You can’t spend your energy on worrying about money, okay? You have got to get well. You do that and I’ll deal with the money, right? Same as always.”

  Natalie leaned into her, like the way Jasmine leaned into Natalie. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

  “I don’t blame you,” Brianna said, stroking her hair.

  “I really thought if I just wanted it bad enough … ”

  “We all do that, Nat. Magical thinking.”

  “You don’t do it. You never do it.”

  Brianna was silent. Then she said, “The cost was always too high,” she said. “To want what was out of my reach? Someone would have to pay. I couldn’t take the risk.”

  “You mean me,” Natalie said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I used up all of your dreams,” Natalie said. “I am so sorry, Brianna.”

  • • •

  What Joe wanted to know was why she hadn’t told him in the first place that she’d been so sick as a kid. They’d talked about everything on earth, including their favorite bands and their most embarrassing moments, you’d think she might have mentioned it.

  “She wanted to be normal with you, Joe,” Brianna said, and that made him feel like crap, and he said, “Can I come see her?”

  “Sure,” Brianna said. “Bring her a teddy bear.”

  “A what?”

  “She doesn’t like being alone at night.”

  “I would stay there all night if they’d let me,” Joe said fiercely, and Brianna said, “They won’t, so bring the teddy bear.”

  • • •

  “She’s not ready to see you, Matthias,” Brianna said and Matthias felt his stomach turn over.

  “Why?” he said, gripping the receiver tight. What had he done, or not done? She was his girlfriend —

  “It’s really hard, and she has to handle it her own way, okay? Send her some flowers, and call her. And I’ll talk to her.”

  Matthias asked for the room number and phone number of Natalie’s hospital room in order to follow directions.

  “The induction phase lasts about a month,” Brianna said, someone who had been through it all before and hadn’t found it getting any easier. “It’s intense, and we just hope like hell it works. Then consolidation lasts a couple months. Then maintenance lasts a couple of years. No one’s talking about a bone marrow transplant at this point, but they may. So you will have plenty of time to hold her hand when she’s ready, okay?”

  “She’s an adult with acute lymphoblastic leukemia,” Matthias said tensely. “So, no, I may not have plenty of time to hold her hand.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Brianna, I know you have responsibilities, but your work has suffered so significantly over these last few weeks that I have no choice but to let you go.”

  The first shock of the statement made Brianna freeze. Then she felt her face flush as emotion surged through her: embarrassment, anger, fear, she wasn’t sure what, maybe all of them. She gripped the arms of the chair she was sitting in to ground herself.

  Brianna had known that Mrs. Curtin was frustrated with the amount of time she needed to take off, but she’d hoped that her boss would be a little more patient under the circumstances. Mrs. Curtin had always been a damned cold-blooded dragon, though, so once the initial impact was over, Brianna realized she’d been expecting it for a while. It was just — the timing couldn’t be more awful.

  She didn’t really have anything to say, and anyway her mouth wasn’t working right, so she just made a jerky nod and Mrs. Curtin opened the folder in front of her and placed Brianna’s last paycheck in front of her. “That includes payment through today,” Mrs. Curtin said, glancing at the clock on her des
k. “Even though it’s only ten A.M.” Like she was doing Brianna a big damned favor.

  Brianna took the check with fingers that felt fat and clumsy. Mrs. Curtin asked her to sign something but she just shook her head and got to her feet, her movements stiff and mechanical. She went to her cubicle and picked up her purse, and looked around to see if there was anything she wanted to take home with her. There was nothing but a photo of her and Natalie at the county fair a couple of years ago, and she put that in her bag.

  Then she collected her coat and walked over to the reception desk where Heidi was trying to pretend she didn’t know what had just happened.

  “Mr. G’s on line one,” she said, like she didn’t know quite what to do. That was so not Brianna’s problem anymore. She nodded and kept going out the door.

  • • •

  “I’m sorry?” Matthias said, shifting his attention from the brief he was supposed to be working on to the phone in his hand. Heidi’s voice had dropped to a whisper, and he couldn’t have heard correctly.

  “I said Ms. Daniels has been let go,” Heidi said, sounding agonized.

  “Let me talk to Mrs. Curtin,” Matthias said crisply, and a moment later Mrs. Curtin was on the phone, her cultured tones warm.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gustafson,” she said. “How may I help you? You should have received the tax paperwork from our accountant — ”

  “I have, thank you,” Matthias said. “Am I to understand that you just fired Brianna Daniels?”

  There was a moment’s pause as apparently this was not what she’d been expecting to hear from him.

  “You do know her sister is undergoing a grueling chemotherapy regime to combat the recurrence of her leukemia? It seems to me that a temporary period of compassion and understanding might be in order.”

  Mrs. Curtin found her voice, sounding less warm now. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss human resources issues.”

  “Ah. You have fired her. I’m surprised you’d treat someone who has worked for you for so long and so hard in such a cavalier fashion. You do understand that it makes me question your priorities and your judgment in decision-making.”