Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Janice nodded. “I must say it’s refreshing to deal with one adult today who’s willing to put the child’s interests ahead of his own.”

  “So, now what?” Scott asked. “She just shows up at Logan at three o’clock, says, ‘Surprise!’ and takes him?”

  “She does,” Janice said, “though I’ve convinced her to let me go with her, so I can ensure Curtis hears some explanation about what’s happening. I’m hoping my presence there will help ease him into the sudden transition more effectively than if I weren’t there.”

  “What about his things?” Scott asked. “He’s got clothes at our place. Toys. Books.” He thought about Stuart Little and felt his throat close.

  “She asked me to take those to him later tonight. I considered telling her you’d deliver it all yourself, to give you a chance to see him. But I think that might make things harder on Curtis—to see you so soon, before he’s had a chance to adjust to the new . . . situation.”

  “So I don’t even get to say goodbye?” Scott whispered. He swallowed hard and struggled to fit air around the lump in his throat.

  “Like I said, I guessed you’d have some plan in mind for your last weekend,” Janice said. “And I asked her to consider allowing you to go ahead with at least some of that plan. She said she would.” Janice made a bitter sound then, and she scowled.

  “We were going to go see Monster Trucks on Sunday,” Scott said. “It’ll kill him to miss it. He’s been talking about it for months. He’s been marking the days off on his calendar. He—”

  He couldn’t go on. He walked slowly to Mrs. Bevel’s chair and sat. Leaning forward, he put his arms on the desk and let his head, which suddenly felt very heavy, fall on top of them. The tears he’d been holding in found their way out and he didn’t bother trying to stop them.

  An unrecognizable sound came from Janice, and seconds later he felt her beside him, her arms around him so tightly he had to gasp for his next breath. He started to pull away but he didn’t have the strength to move. Or so he told himself as he relaxed into her arms and let her press herself against him, her voice soft and comforting in his ear, murmuring, “There now.”

  After a time, she relaxed her grip slightly and he felt her hand making slow circles on his back, soothing. “When I see her at Logan later today, I’ll ask about Monster Trucks.” She patted him gently. “I’ll insist about Monster Trucks.”

  19.

  Mara

  Harry offered to put the pharmacy bags in the trunk, but Mara declined. As he drove, she reached a hand into one and carefully eased a “discreet female undergarment” out of its package and into her purse. Every crinkle of the plastic was a trumpet sounding in her head and she prepared herself for his curious gaze in the mirror, or over his shoulder. But he was focused on the road in front. Or pretending to be.

  The clothing store was one of the trendy, casual-chic places Steph had been urging her to shop at for ages. “You can’t dress like a high-powered attorney when you’re helping in art class,” Steph said. “And you can’t dress like that.” She indicated Mara’s yoga pants, her baggy T-shirt. “You’ve got to look . . .” She paused. “You know, hipper.”

  Steph would be so proud to learn she’d finally stepped inside the store, Mara thought. Though Steph wouldn’t be impressed to find out her friend had shopped online and put in a “store pickup” order rather than browsing the racks, comparing colors and cuts, trying things on for hours on end as Steph loved to do. They were holding three black cotton skirts for her at the cash register, along with three tops—all in different colors but the same brand and style.

  “If they fit,” Mara asked the salesclerk, “would you mind if I wore one outfit out today? I’m about to volunteer in my daughter’s class and my friend tells me I need to show up in something a little nicer than workout clothes.” She gave a self-deprecating smile as she gestured to the black Neiman Marcus yoga pants she was wearing, two times as expensive as the three skirts and blouses put together.

  “No problem. We get a lot of moms in here looking for these.” The clerk, no more than twenty, handed over one of each item. “You ordered three of the same thing, so you only need to try on one set.”

  Mara could hear the mild disapproval in the girl’s voice. Who spent two minutes looking online, then called the store and asked them to hold three of the exact same thing?

  “I know,” Mara said. “I should have my ‘woman’ badge taken away. My friend tells me that all the time. But I confess I hate to shop. At least the tops are different colors, though, right?”

  The girl eyed Mara as though she were a rare animal and shook her head in an exaggerated fashion. “We get your kind in here from time to time,” she joked. “I don’t understand it myself. I live to shop.” Leaning closer, she dropped her voice. “The trying-on part, I do not live for. So, your strategy of getting the same brand and size for everything makes a little sense to me. Anything to spend less time in the dressing room. All those floor-length mirrors, right? And those lights! They’re the enemy.”

  “Exactly,” Mara agreed, pretending that had been the reason she ordered everything the same. As she headed for the dressing room, the skirt and top over her arm, she turned to smile at the clerk and found the girl watching her, a puzzled look on her face. Caught, the girl gave an embarrassed smile and turned quickly to the front of the store as if she’d just heard someone walk in. Mara frowned, but told herself to cut the girl some slack. It was odd of Mara to have ordered all the same things, and the salesgirl had been far less judgmental about it than others her age would likely have been. There was nothing to be upset about.

  In the cramped cubicle, she wrestled out of her yoga pants and removed her expensive silk bikini-fit underwear. Holding the “adult undergarment” up for inspection, she saw with relief that it was a lot slimmer than the ungainly product she had been expecting. But when she slid it on and felt its cold, rough bulk against her skin, the bridge of her nose stung and her throat thickened. Slimmer material and curlicue stitching or not, she was wearing a diaper.

  She stood under the unflattering glare of the dressing room light and gawked in the mirror at the rectangle of disposable fabric and the two pale, toneless legs that reached gracelessly from the white cloth to her flip-flops. She ran her eyes up and down the mirror and praised herself for never having a full-length one installed at home. She had always been so proud of her body. Years of dedicated exercise and healthy eating had given her the perfect blend of lean muscle and feminine curve. Tom had murmured his appreciation a million times while Mara’s friends had confessed their envy.

  But over the past four years, the caloric demands of a disease that came with ever-moving limbs had robbed her of every spare ounce of muscle, every last hint of feminine curve. She had pretended not to notice when her hands grazed over protruding hip bones in the shower, or when an inadvertent glance at herself in a windowpane or mirror showed bony shoulders jutting under her T-shirt, a too-prominent clavicle stealing attention from her necklace. Slowly, her body had gone from bronze and muscular to . . . this.

  The dressing room mirror delivered a harsh message: the fact that Mara had refused to watch her body morph from healthy-looking into anorexic-looking hadn’t stopped it from happening. She never changed in front of Tom anymore but, God, even in the dark, even under the sheets . . .

  She lifted her head and found her dark eyes staring back at her from the glass, tiny pools of liquid forming in the corners, betraying her. Pressing the tips of her fingers into her eyelids, Mara counted to five slowly while she told herself to get it together. She didn’t want the salesgirl to see her crying when she walked out—or Harry, for that matter.

  It took her until a count of thirty, but she managed to calm herself down. She pulled on the skirt, smoothed it flat and turned slowly from side to side, inspecting herself from every angle to ensure no one would be able to detect the secret undernea
th. Satisfied, she put on the top. It wasn’t a bad look, and she could see why the young moms at the school favored this over yoga pants and T-shirts.

  “Nice!” the girl said when Mara walked out of the dressing room, and Mara was glad she’d stopped herself from being upset about the staring episode earlier. “Do a spin for me!”

  Mara held her breath as she spun in a slow, nervous circle, waiting for the quick intake of breath when the salesclerk saw the outline of the diaper. Or, given her similar age to the pharmacy cashier, squealed, “Ewww, you’re wearing paper panties, like my granny!”

  But the mirror hadn’t lied. “Fantastic!” the girl said, clapping her hands. Quieter, she added, “If you don’t mind my saying, this makes you look a little younger.”

  Of all the responses Mara feared she might hear, that one was more than fine.

  “I don’t mind one bit,” she said.

  Harry raised a brow in the rearview mirror. “Can’t help but notice the outfit change. Looks real nice. We goin’ somewhere special next?”

  “Actually, these were my only errands for today. But would you mind taking a quick detour on the way home? My daughter’s class should be out for afternoon recess about now, and I thought maybe we’d catch a glimpse of them.”

  “She forget somethin’?”

  “No. I just . . .” Mara paused for a second. “I just wanted to see her. It’s close by—only a few blocks out of the way. But if you’re in a hurry—”

  “All the time in the world.”

  She gave him directions to the school and as they drove, she noticed, not for the first time, how much newer and more colorful Plano was compared to the northern world of gray in which she and Tom had grown up. The manicured lawns flying past her window seemed artificial, they were so green and flawless. The houses were cartoonishly large, each one looking newer and grander than the last. Even the public spaces were beautiful here, the medians along the road a cheerful spray of colorful gardens.

  It was a Disney movie set, Tom had said the first time they drove through. They were house-hunting in the northern Dallas suburbs, his offer letter from the dermatology practice folded neatly on the console between them. Mara was a third-year lawyer then, and in twenty-four hours her husband had gone from underpaid chief resident to princely paid dermatologist, outearning her a few times over.

  “I feel as though any second now all the store owners are going to burst onto the sidewalk and break into song,” he laughed. “And is it me, or is the sun a little brighter here, the sky a little bluer? I think the city of Plano has big fans that blow all the clouds south to Dallas.”

  Harry and Mara arrived at the school as a crowd of children poured out the doors in a shrieking wave, spilling onto the playground.

  “See her?” Harry slowed the cab to a crawl and they both turned to scan the schoolyard.

  “Not yet . . . Oh! There! The one with the dark black hair? With the pink shorts and the pink-and-white shirt? Climbing up the slide? Third rung from the top.”

  “Ah. Looks exactly like ya.”

  She smiled. He wasn’t the first to say it. All Indians look the same, after all. No matter that she and Laks shared no DNA whatsoever, the same way it hadn’t mattered that she and her parents shared none. Everyone thought she was the spitting image of them, too. Tom was the only genetically unrelated one of the group, in the minds (and comments) of strangers who saw them all together—the handsome American tour guide leading around the elderly Indian couple, their daughter and granddaughter.

  “Ya wanna park here and watch for a while,” Harry asked, “or do ya need ta be home?”

  “I don’t really need to be anywhere anymore,” Mara said.

  Harry nodded, put the cab into park and turned off the engine. Shifting in his seat, he turned toward the playground and watched, a look of contentment on his face as though he, too, had nowhere else to be. Must be nice to be so relaxed, Mara thought, as reflexively she reached into her purse and pulled out her phone to check her work e-mails.

  There were none. Of course there were none. In fact, the small “KL” icon she used to click to show her work in-box was gone from the phone’s screen, as it had been for weeks now. The firm had let her keep the phone but it removed her from the Katon Locke network immediately, as a matter of policy. She cursed under her breath for having forgotten. Her personal account was still there, but she wasn’t in the mood to check it now.

  Mara leaned her head against the tinted black car window and closed her eyes against the realization, still new to her, that she was no longer a high-powered lawyer with an ever-filling e-mail in-box. She was no more pressed for time than Harry—and likely less so than he was, since he still had a job.

  Her head still against the window, she opened her eyes and clicked open her text messaging program. It was separate from the e-mail system, so her long string of texts hadn’t been wiped clean when the firm removed her from the network. She scrolled through several inconsequential exchanges with Gina about the logistics of packing up her files and cleaning out her office, while she searched for something substantial. A message that would restore her fractured ego, even for a minute, by reminding her that she was, not so long ago, someone who had important places to be, urgent things to do.

  And there it was, finally. A text from Steph: “Need to talk to u re: Baker appeal—research on evidentiary argument.” Mara closed her eyes again and smiled, allowing herself to ignore, for a second, how long ago it was that she had worked on the Baker appeal, and how it had all ended.

  It had started out as the Baker case. Mara’s client, Mara’s case. Four and a half weeks in the courtroom. Twenty-two witnesses, 209 exhibits. An associate and paralegal had lugged the trial notebooks to the defense table every morning and kept all the documents straight. But it was Mara who examined all the witnesses, offered all the exhibits into evidence, argued all the evidentiary motions. Won the case.

  That was almost five years ago, when all was right with the world. When Tom thought his wife was working too hard but didn’t suspect anything more. When the only reason they ever said the word “Huntington” was because it was the name of an avenue five blocks away and they sometimes turned there if traffic was backed up on the main street.

  The plaintiff had appealed, and the case worked its way through the appellate system over the following few years—first briefing, then oral argument, then a retrial of the damages issue, then more briefing—at almost the same rate the disease worked its way through Mara, first obliterating her short-term memory, then wreaking havoc on her concentration and judgment.

  It crushed her to have to do it, but she brought Steph in on the case before the retrial. “Just as a backup,” Steph assured her friend. But by the end of the retrial, the backup had become lead counsel as Mara found herself increasingly unable to keep straight which exhibits went with which witness, which legal argument applied to which motion.

  Typical Gina, she had come in on a weekend to spare Mara from watching as an entire file drawer in her office was emptied of its contents. Over time, as knowledge of Mara’s condition became public at the firm, the rest of her file drawers would eventually be relieved of their bulging case folders, too, as they were distributed to the other litigation partners—all under Gina’s watchful eye at times she knew Mara wouldn’t be there to witness it. Seventeen years of her life hauled away in a mail cart. Not having to watch it happen hadn’t made it any easier.

  Gina. If not for her, Mara’s retirement would have come far earlier. Gina had run interference for Mara since the beginning, working overtime to lessen the effects of each symptom as it appeared, delaying the inevitable day when Mara finally had to concede she could no longer effectively represent her clients. Gina became Mara’s external memory when her internal one was at its worst—a walking sticky note, reminding her not only about briefing deadlines and hearings, but also Neerja and Pori’s
anniversary, Steph’s children’s birthdays.

  Later, after the disease shifted its assault from Mara’s memory to her emotions, turning her from unflappable to erratic almost overnight, Gina vigilantly kept watch over Mara’s office door. Drawing from a litany of excuses, she managed to keep everyone away but Steph, so that no one else would witness what was happening to the once-brilliant lawyer who could no longer control her cases, or her temper.

  Mara thought about the hundreds of sticky notes and to-do lists Gina painstakingly maintained for her, frequently skipping lunch to keep the files in up-to-the-minute order, now that her boss was incapable of remembering the status or next steps for any case unless it had been written down. The extra workload must have almost killed the woman, Mara told Tom and Steph much later.

  As Mara got sicker and routine tasks started to take her five times as long, Gina spent more and more time in Mara’s office helping, and less and less time at her own desk. As a result, she had to stay later and later, to finish the regular administrative tasks she was responsible for but no longer had time for during the day. Mara’s pleas that Gina enlist help from the temp pool went unheeded; Gina didn’t want to tip people off that she was falling behind because her boss could no longer think straight.

  This time last year, at Dr. Thiry’s insistence that she must fit more rest days into her schedule, Mara had dropped down to four days a week at the firm. It killed her to do it. It killed her to admit the reason to Kent, the managing partner, too. And she almost hadn’t. It was so tempting, and it would have been so easy, to claim working-mother guilt as the reason for the request and hide the truth from him for as long as possible. But she hadn’t felt right about it, so she’d let him in on her condition, and the fact that her doctor had advised she would be more productive if she reduced her schedule to four days and allowed her body and brain to recharge on the fifth.