My chest feels tight and my stomach has butterflies. The feeling is reminiscent of that time in fourth grade when Bette Lapalme pantsed me after gym class, even though we were alone packing up equipment and she was the only one who saw my underwear.
“And sometimes when you come to class you’ve got Jell-O coloring on your teeth.”
I snort.
“I look at you because I like to.”
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Sometimes,” she admits. “But you don’t bother me.” For some reason, I don’t doubt her. “I want to show you something. When you have time.”
“Alright.”
“Are you going to bed soon?”
“Maybe. Are you?” I don’t want to hang up yet, but if she’s tired…
“I’m in bed.” I smile at the thought of her curled up in that narrow bed I sat on a few weeks ago. The one with the soft sheets that smells like Willa. I could live in that bed—provided she was in it too, of course.
“Goodnight.” It is good, Willa.
“Sweet dreams.”
She hangs up first. I sit there with the phone to my ear until I hear the dead line tone, and then shut it off. I get up, set the phone on the shelf, and go back to Emily. She glances up when I enter but can’t hold her gaze.
“Maybe we should go to bed.”
“Okay,” she readily agrees. She throws in a fake yawn for my benefit. I walk her down the hall to the guest room and say goodnight.
I return to my bed and tally up how long I have to wait before I’ll see Willa again.
Sunday
Elise spends fifteen minutes looking for her Ritalin (lost the bottle again) when she wakes up. She’s going to need it today. Easter breakfast is generally sugar-heavy: scones, croissants, bacon, eggs, and muffins with jam. And then there’s the egg hunt Eric has planned. I saw him come home from the grocery store last week with two shopping bags full of chocolate eggs. I won’t be the only one with a sore stomach today if he plans on hiding all that.
The eggs are already hidden when we wake up in the morning. Elise finds three on her way downstairs—her genuine, innocent smile brightens my day tenfold—and tucks them away in her pajama pockets. She prowls around the house for more while the rest of the family puts breakfast together. Eric watches Elise hunt and calls out ‘warmer, colder’ to her as she crawls around, looking under the furniture for sweets.
“Aw, Eric!” she complains when she realizes he’s hidden six eggs on top of the blades of the ceiling fan. Eric never half-asses a game. Then she finds an egg in the sugar bowl, and four in Mom’s flowerpots. She’s got quite the haul by the time breakfast is served. She bounces in her seat when she sees the red and yellow M&Ms in her pancakes.
This is why Elise can never grow up. She brings so much sunshine to this house. If she wasn’t such a little girl, she couldn’t do that.
“Whose idea was the M&Ms?” she says around a full mouth of pancake.
“Mine,” I say.
“Will you do it for me on my birthday, too? I know you’re too cheap to get me a present,” she teases. She just had to remind me that she’s going to be seventeen soon—too old for such things. But it’s Elise, and I’m a complete sucker for her sweet requests, so I say yes.
“But this means I’m returning your gift.”
“No!”
“I wonder if Dollarama gives store credit…”
“Jem,” she complains, but she’s laughing too hard to pull it off. I mess up her bed head some more and she tells me to bugger off.
I get up, still chuckling, and go to the fridge to grab a cup of Jell-O. I catch Emily looking at me like she’s pleasantly surprised.
“What?”
She shrugs and smiles. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
*
The day goes by at a lazy pace. Everyone is a little bit food-drunk, except for Elise, who has apparently become immune to Ritalin’s effects. Dad practically forces her to play a game on the Wii to keep her focused and burn off her sugar high.
“Sorry,” I say to Emily. She smiles and shrugs.
“I like it.” She’s an only child, and lonely a lot, I guess. Emily is more than happy to get sucked up into the Harper family dynamic—so much so that I actually have time to slip away and call Willa after lunch. It goes to voicemail. This disappoints me far more than it should, given the circumstances. I wait all day for her to call me back, but she doesn’t. I thought she had some kind of sixth sense for when I need her, like Elise does—she’s always handing me mints for my stomach, and she called last night when I was feeling down.
You don’t need her right now, idiot.
You just want to hear her voice.
Monday
Mom drives Celeste and Emily back to Ottawa. Eric would have done it, but Mom found out that he hasn’t done any homework all weekend. He’s been banished to the library until it’s done. Emily and I part with a gentle hug, like her little arms might break me.
“Say hi to everyone for me.”
“I will.” She waves and slides into the backseat. When she drives away I don’t miss her.
I hate her a little bit. She made me feel visible, but not in a good way—not like Willa does. Emily made me feel visible for all the reasons I wish I could hide. I wasn’t Jem, the friend she’s known since preschool; I was a set of symptoms to be watched and scrutinized. It took her three days in my company to see me as just Jem.
I go back inside and shut the door behind me.
“Want to play?” Elise calls as I pass the living room, holding out a Wii controller.
“Not now, Lise.”
She drops the remote and scampers after me. She throws her arms around my waist from behind and damn it, she’s heavier than I remember.
“Elise.” I try to walk but she keeps her feet planted, dragging along behind me. “You’re such a child.”
“What’s wrong?” She pouts.
“I’m tired and I feel like shit, that’s what’s wrong. Now let me go.” She releases me, but continues to follow me upstairs in complete violation of my personal space. “Will you lay off?”
She grabs the cordless phone off the side table. “I’ll call Willa.”
Like Willa is supposed to fix everything?
“I’ll do it.” I reach for the phone and Elise scurries away, dialing madly. I grab the back of her shirt before she can descend the stairs and she curls into a ball, playing keep-away with the phone.
“Willa?”
“Give me the phone.”
“It’s Elise—aah!” She shrieks as I pick her up under the arms and try to set her on her feet. She goes limp from the waist down.
“Can you—”
“Give me the friggin’ phone!” I try to grab it and Elise elbows me in the chest. We’re both so boney that it hurts like hell.
“Can you come over this afternoon?” she asks Willa calmly as I cough next to her. I make another half-hearted grab for the phone and Elise stomps on my foot. I swear, I’ll snap her wand in half.
“Okay, great. See you then.” She hangs up and hands me the phone.
“You bitch,” I growl at her.
Elise isn’t perturbed by my tone. “She’s coming over in an hour, but she can only stay till four. She has to volunteer tonight.”
“Next time, just give me the phone.”
Elise rolls her eyes. “I did you a favor. If you had called, it would have taken you an hour just to work up the guts to ask her over.”
Maybe I’ll burn her wand instead. Just try scotch-taping that back together.
“Love you,” she says sweetly, and skips down the stairs.
*
I have about forty-five minutes before Willa is due to arrive. Time enough for a power-nap. The doorbell will wake me up if Willa’s crappy muffler doesn’t.
The depth of my desire to see her surprises me. It’s been a rough weekend, and she knows how to make me feel better—when she isn’t making me feel like an as
shole.
I don’t know what I want to do with her today. Maybe we’ll go for a walk. Maybe we’ll fumble through Bach again at the piano. Maybe we’ll cook one of her recipes and her face will light up like it does when food just comes together exactly as planned.
The thought of that smile comforts me to sleep.
*
The need to use the bathroom wakes me up. I push the pillow away groggily and sit up. My joints ache and my limbs feel like lead. I hope this is just from sleeping in one position too long and not the early signs of muscle fatigue.
Then I notice that it’s dim in my room. The sun has shifted away from my bedroom window, around the corner of the house. I look at the clock and realize it’s almost four.
“Shit.”
Elise laughs downstairs, and I’m fairly sure that’s Willa, not another of my sister’s friends, laughing along with her. I get out of bed, wobbling slightly on sore joints, and use the bathroom as quickly as possible before heading downstairs.
I have to take the stairs slowly. My knees and ankles protest every step, but gradually loosen with more motion. I follow the sounds of life to the kitchen, where Elise and Willa are bent over a magazine, chatting happily. I brace my forearms on the doorframe as Willa looks up.
“When did you get here?”
“About two hours ago.” I’ve slept away practically all the time I had with her today.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You need your rest,” Elise says, and I shoot her the look. She knows the kind: the I-will-torch-your-Hogwarts-robes one. I hate her even more right now because she’s right. I can feel fatigue creeping up the muscles in my back and legs, even though I just had a nap.
“I’ve gotta get going,” Willa says. She grabs her purse from under the table and her jacket off the back of the chair. Watching her do it makes me angry. I haven’t had my time with her yet. She was supposed to come visit with me, not Elise.
“Sorry we didn’t get time to talk,” Willa says as we walk to the front door. “If you’re up for it, give me a call tonight. Or we’ll talk tomorrow.”
I want to ask her to blow off volunteer work to stay with me, but she’d never do it. Willa takes her commitments seriously.
“What time do you get off?”
“Eight.”
“Maybe you could come back here after?”
“It’s a school night.”
“One of your brother’s rules?”
“No, one of mine.”
“Oh.” Personal principle or not, it stings that she doesn’t want to spend time with me. And after the weekend I’ve had, any small rejection feels particularly wounding.
“She got you good, didn’t she?” Willa says with a casual study of my face. “Can’t let her do that, man. It gives the demons too much power.” She claps me on the shoulder—ow—and turns away. She gets into her car and I’m walking as fast as I can to catch her before she leaves. My growing fatigue makes my feet feel heavier than they ought.
Willa’s eyebrows go up as I climb into the passenger seat beside her.
“How?”
“Uh…”
“Tell me. I honestly want to know how you do it.”
She smiles like she’s not sure if I’m joking. “You serious?”
“Yes.”
“Are you high?” My eyes must be bloodshot, if she’s asking.
“No.”
“Let’s go inside.” She looks concerned. I probably look like shit. I certainly feel like it.
She gets out of her car and I follow. These doors are really heavy. I lean a bit on her hood as I walk back to the house, and Willa graciously offers her arm. I don’t want to take it, but I need it. When cancer-fatigue (which is different from regular fatigue, by the bye) sets in, it’s swift and feels like walking through semi-set cement. The three steps up to the porch might as well be Mount Everest.
Eric appears in the front door. “Aw, jeez,” he mutters. He probably thinks that Willa’s departure has been thwarted by my inability to get back inside unassisted.
Eric comes down the steps and puts an arm under my shoulder. He gets me up the steps and into the house.
“When did you last eat?”
“I’m not going to pass out,” I tell him. “Just sore.” He helps me up to the second floor and into my room. I’m lucky to have a brother like him; Eric knows how to be discreet when it counts. He takes my shoes off, knowing I don’t have the energy to lift my feet up to do it myself, and gets a pair of pajamas out of the drawer.
“He’ll be all right,” Eric says to Willa in a dismissive sort of way. He’s giving her permission to leave. She’s hanging back in the threshold. “He’ll sleep it off.” He pats my head roughly. The noogies are going to start again as soon as my hair grows back.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she promises me.
“Wait. We can still talk—I’m just…sluggish.” That’s one of the worst things about cancer-fatigue: I can be completely physically drained and still be mentally wide-awake.
“Get comfy,” she says, and closes the bedroom door. Eric helps me change and tucks me into bed.
“Don’t tell Mom.” She’ll worry, and I’ll probably feel better by the time she gets back from Ottawa.
“Sure, bro.” I’m certain he’s lying to me.
Eric leaves and shuts the door behind him. Willa doesn’t immediately come back, and I wonder if she changed her mind. Or maybe I misinterpreted her words, and she never meant to stay. Maybe she’ll come back after volunteering, only it’s a school night… I’m waiting for the sound of her tires on the gravel driveway when the door opens a crack and she peeks in.
“Are you sure you want to talk? This can wait.”
“Come in. I’m sure.”
Willa steps into my room and closes the door behind her. Tucked up in bed like this I feel like such a…such a….cancer patient. It’s stupid, but I like to appear healthier than I am, especially in front of her. I don’t want to be disgusting and fragile.
Willa puts down her bag, toes off her shoes, and crawls across my bed towards me. I could get used to the look of that. She sits cross-legged beside me and sets a spare pillow across her lap.
“You still want to talk about demons?” Maybe she is willing to blow off her shift.
“Yeah, I do.”
If it’ll make her stay.
Willa reaches over me and grabs the container of medicinal cream off the nightstand. She pulls off her right glove—the hand doesn’t fall apart—and takes my scarred, dry hand into her lap. She rubs lotion into my palm while she talks. These personal liberties she’s wont to take are at once endearing and frightening.
“It depends what you do with your pain,” she says thoughtfully. “I ignored mine until it broke me.”
“You said your sister told you not to mourn.”
“I didn’t. I missed her like she had gone on vacation, until about six months later when the reality of it hit me like a transport truck and her absence became real. And even if you don’t really mourn, there’s other shit to deal with.”
“You seem to have dealt with it ok.”
Willa gives me a hard look. “You don’t know how I dealt with it.” The words hang there for a beat, and then she seems to sense that they’re cryptic and changes tack. “Emotional pain is a sensation that your body can’t sustain forever—you start to break down; it becomes a physical problem. Eventually, if you’re determined to resolve that feeling, it becomes something less haunting. You become thankful for what happened and how bad it sucked by refusing to weigh the negatives and only focusing on the positives.”
“You sound like one of those self-help charlatans.”
“That’ll be five hundred bucks, please.”
She spreads the cream right down my wrist, massaging it into the skin with her thumbs.
“When it hit me all at once like that, I snapped and threw a brick through the kitchen window. It didn’t make me feel any better.” Her mouth
twitches into a fleeting grimace. “But seriously, yeah, my sister is gone, and in some ways it’s a good thing. She isn’t hurting anymore. Her disease made us closer than we would have been otherwise. If I hadn’t been there through her illness, I wouldn’t have been able to give you that soup recipe.” She smiles at me and then goes back to being serious. “I might have been skittish around you, like Emily is.”
I would have been happy to keep this conversation all about her.
“I don’t blame Emily.”
“What was the demon this weekend?” Willa sets down my right hand and reaches out to take my left.
“Were you being serious when you said you liked my hands? Or were you telling me what you thought I wanted to hear?” The skin on my hands is perpetually dry and cracking around the knuckles. Willa runs her thumb around the edge of the white scar on my palm from graft-versus-host disease. These aren’t pretty hands.
“When do I ever just tell you what you want to hear?”
“Fair point.”
Willa laces her fingers with mine, spreading lotion between my knuckles. Her hands are so small.
“The demon?”
“There are a few.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Misery shared is misery halved.”
“Another time, ok?”
“I already know one,” Willa says. “You feel self-conscious that she couldn’t look at you.”
“Kind of.” Emily did look, eventually. She just saw everything that isn’t me.
“Did she ask uncomfortable questions about your illness, like I do?” Willa smirks at that.
“Yes. More than you do, actually. She’s known me longer, I guess. She thought she was entitled to answers.”
“Is that a positive or a negative?”
“It doesn’t matter. I only told her what I wanted to tell.”
“What’s the worst thing about having cancer?”
I don’t even think to stop her when she pushes my sleeve up and massages the lotion into my forearms. I should. There’s a reason why I wear long sleeves all the time.
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