The Milestone Tapes

by Ashley Mackler-Paternostro

  Jenna had always scoffed at the women who swore they knew the minute they had conceived. She was a realist in so much as that she knew the difference between not pregnant and pregnant wasn’t an instantaneous thing. Until that one evening, as she lay beside her dozing husband on the cool expanses of the wood floors, marveling over the idea that any day they could at any time be plus one, she felt something shift. It would be weeks before the confirmation, before the double lines and the congratulatory smile of her Ob-gyn, but Jenna could no longer scoff in disbelief, for she knew then exactly what they meant.

  For the first year after Mia joined them, life was bliss. Jenna doted on her baby, loving the changes motherhood had brought her more than she ever dreamed possible. Even the sleepless nights and long stretches of days never displeased her. Parenthood had realigned Gabe’s focus in equal measure. He commuted to Seattle for a few months after Mia was born before tiring of the grind, but more so, he tired of missing time with his daughter and wife. He left his firm and opened a local custom home construction company to meet the booming demands of the area. It flourished slowly, but soon became steady and dependable work.

  Four years in Port Angeles flowed by, lost in sippy cups, new friends and home cooked meals. Jenna published, Gabe built, Mia grew. They had a full life and it came to feel as if it had always been that way. There was no room to miss the before; the present was so rewarding and enveloped them so entirely.

  Then the clouds rolled in.

  When Mia was a jubilant three-year-old, speaking and walking and engaging the world around her with opinions and imaginative play and friends, Jenna first found the lump. It was backwards really, unfair and cruel and so entirely unkind, how she first found out.

  Mia had been playing with an unleashed hose in the back yard on a warm summer’s day, leaping over the green rubber snake that flipped and twisted haphazardly under the force of water spurting across the yard. Jenna watched her, listening to her scream with laugher and delight, flashing a huge toothy grin when she got splashed with an errant flood of reckless water. That was all it took, watching Mia enjoying her life so completely, sitting on the cushioned furniture on the back patio, her khaki pants rolled up to her knees, a tall glass of pineapple tea sweating in her hand; it had dawned on her, she needed to do this again, wanted it so bad it took her breath away. The pregnancy and the baby and the toddler. She wanted Mia to have a sibling, and she wanted another child. She was older now, hedging on forty four. But to have another one, it would be worth anything it took, even adoption she reasoned if all else failed. Her family grew before her eyes then and she could see it so clearly.

  But this time would be different, there would be no chirpy smiles and blue lines and toasts of apple cider in chilled champagne flutes. They had found it then, the irregular mass in her left breast, over her heart, deep within the tissue. It felt like a golf ball beneath her fingers, pitted and pebbly and surprisingly hard. Her doctor made no more mention of trying to have a baby once her fingers fell upon it, she only pushed Jenna towards an oncologist for further testing with a regretful smile, watery eyes and best wishes.

  “Hello, this message is for Mrs. Chamberland. Mrs. Chamberland, hi, this is Lisa from Doctor Vaughn’s office. We received the results of your test this morning, and the doctor would like to speak with you, in person, at your earliest opportunity. Please call us back so we can make arrangements. Thank you.”

  That was it, all that it took. The long. The short. The message that effectively changed her whole life. Took the axis the Chamberland world had so effectively spun on for years and reduced it to dust.

  Jenna had stood in her kitchen, doubled over at the waist, feeling light headed, pressing her hands against the cool expanse of her countertops knowing her world just exploded. Mia squealed with the delight in the family room as something on the television amused her to bits. It was so normal, and so not normal, Jenna crumbled to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on her kneecaps. Jenna had been down this road at 18 with her own mother, with the same lump and the same phone call and the same heartbreak.

  And now, three years from that message, the phone call, that visit, the same outcome. She was dying.

  Jenna knew from experience that doctors didn’t see you to tell you that you were perfect and that nothing was wrong and that your life would continue down the same tried and true path. No. Doctors made time for you, squeezed you and spoke with you over their lunch hour when something was gravely wrong. This was what Jenna knew, but what she didn’t understand in that moment was why not just tell her and be done with it? Wasn’t it better to just know facts and fill in the details later, rather than be left with a cryptic message on an answering machine? Something was wrong and this was her life, and yet, until she had the opportunity to make the drive or flight or ferry to Seattle and meet with Dr. Vaughn, she would remain effectively in the dark.

  Jenna had righted herself and grabbed the phone, punching in a series of familiar numbers that she could detect both by touch and by the harmony the numbers created when hit in their particular sequence.

  “Gabe?” She brushed her husband’s shoulder lightly. “Honey, are you up?”

  “Yeah, I’m up.” he sounded horse, exhausted and beaten. This man, the man she’d love for more than half her life.

  “We should get moving. Ginny will be here in an hour and our flight leaves in two ... ” Jenna let her voice trail off. She didn’t want to get moving, she didn’t want to face the nanny or board the flight or see the doctor or give up. What she wanted was to sink back into sleep, back into her memories of three years ago when life was no more complicated than juggling a baby, a book and an impending grocery store visit.

  “Jenna,” his voice was full of the pleas he’d imposed on her over the past few days since she leveled her decision. He didn’t make them now, he just let the weight of what was left unsaid hang in the air.

  “No, Gabe. Just don’t, please. Okay? The decision has been made, stop pretending as though there is still room for discussion because it just makes it harder for me.” She snuggled into his back, her body responding to his unspoken words, begging him to solve this with something, anything. Moments like this were being numbered starting today. The long goodbye.

  Gabe threw the covers off and slipped out of bed, padding towards the bathroom without another word, anger and despair radiating off him like steam. It was thick and suddenly she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t wish herself back to three years ago, back to the memories that were so sweet and good. Rolling onto her back, Jenna looked up into the sky, tears of frustration, desperation and disappointment slipping from her eyes, wetting the pillow below her. The early morning clouds rolling in from the sea slugged by overhead, and she remembered this was exactly why she had championed the glass ceiling. Why waste time painting something in a likeness when you could have the real thing, she had said. Gabe had worried about the moon being too bright, the room being too hot, but Jenna had known this would be perfect.

  This was killing them all. It had killed them over the years by inches, little by little with each moment it stole and each day it progressed. Her cancer had been their cancer, each of them sick with it in their own way. It hung over their lives, heavy like rain soaked clouds pouring down on them. If the first three years had been a practiced bliss, the last three years had been learned heartbreak.

  After the doctors had found, and subsequently confirmed, the lump, she had rallied. She saw the right doctors, she sipped the right tea, she lay perfectly still while the medical tattoo artist marked her breast for radiation. She swallowed the pills dutifully with bottles of entirely pure water, she willingly removed her breasts, nipples, lymph nodes, glands and muscles praying to get it all. Take everything, she had bargained. Leave me with my life.

  When it spread, she smiled blithely and bravely as the nurse slipped the needle into her shunt and opened the trickle of healing poison through her veins. She endured and prayed and
hoped hard. Time slipped and faded into scenes of Jenna crumbled on the cool stone floor of the bathroom, retching hollowly into the toilet, brushing her hair out in patches when the chemotherapy stole that from her too, nursing her radiation burns with specific ointment, braving it all stoically.

  There was never a moment that wasn’t subject to the precursor of treatment or disease. Birthday parties postponed or canceled entirely because Jenna was sick or was feeling better. God forbid one of Mia’s friends had a cold and attended. Holidays thrown together last minute for the sake of Mia because Jenna couldn’t muster more than that. And her marriage, what didn’t she sacrifice from that as well? The intimacy, spontaneity, and humor all slipped and changed. It felt like a tally of losses without a single win.

  The home, once full of prosperity and well-being, was a hallow shell of its former self. Everything that had been a source of pride for the Chamberlands had shifted under the weight of reality. Landscapers now tended the gardens, a full time nanny was hired to care for Mia in shifts so that Gabe was free to meet Jenna’s ever pressing needs. Casseroles arrived on the doorstep like clockwork to feed the family during the bleakest moments when the treatment crushed Jenna to nothing.

  Because of (or, in spite of) that, Jenna tired harder. Jenna cultivated a world that would make sense of the senseless for Mia. On not so good days, Jenna would encourage Mia to crawl into bed with her, and snuggling together, they would read stories, talk about school, or play with Mia’s menagerie of stuffed animals, Barbies or My Little Ponies, giving them voices and characters. On good days, Jenna would rise from bed and help Mia with her homework, encouraging the budding creativity, tuck her into bed at night and say their prayers together. If it had been a really good day, they would skip the heavy stuff all together and play hooky from real life and school. Hand in hand they would stroll the main street, burden free and normal, snacking on hand churned ice cream, splurging on impractical clothes, catching a movie and gorging themselves on buttery, salty popcorn.

  But more often than not, there were really bad days. It was then that Jenna she was physically pained more so by the limitation imposed by her disease than the disease itself. Any common bug, flu or cold could kill her. In her weakened state, her immune system couldn’t handle any more outside stressors, her doctors had pleaded with reason; it wasn’t unheard of for the common cold to destroy someone, so naturally Mia became off limits.

  Jenna would sit by the bedroom door, her ear pressed against the solid panes listening to her little girl play with the Nanny so freely; running through the halls as a princess or ballerina or magical pony, telling about her day at school, her friends and teachers, or engaging the nanny for help with homework. Jenna would break and shatter under the disappointment. That should have been her, she’d obsess, her hands balled at her sides and tears running uninterrupted down her sallow cheeks. She should be huddled over homework, or knee deep in Barbie clothes, or chasing after Mia cackling like a wicked witch enthralled by the game of make believe. She shouldn’t be sidelined while hired help raised her baby. Her daughter. But she was, and the further the tentacles of the disease spread, grabbing the remaining bits and pieces of her life and swallowing them whole, the more removed she had to become.

  But always at night, Jenna would sneak into Mia’s room. She would gather her sweet daughter’s plump pink hands, and then Jenna would sink beside the bed on her knees and pray her own prayers.

  She had spent those nights silently talking to God. Promising and pleading, appealing and eventually bartering, offering anything for more time and restored health— if not both, then please just one. She’d stare at her daughter’s shell pink lips, parted and slack with sleep, dreams running wild in her head, and Jenna would sweep Mia’s curly brown hair from her slightly sweaty forward, pressing her hand against it, trying to feel those dreams with the palm of her hand. Sometimes she would walk the room she had obsessed over. Every detail had been planned so perfectly, creating the nest that Mia would find her comfort in: the oyster pink walls, the crisp white bead board, the thick crown molding, the soft cream carpeting. She mused over the new big-girl-bed, remembering the crib Mia had since outgrown with its billowing taffeta drapery. Jenna had replaced it with a wrought iron double, roses reaching up the posts, right before she was diagnosed. She had loved the fact that the bed resembled a garden. Jenna had believed during those days, before nothing was more important, that a bed like this would bring about good dreams.

  God had answered Jenna. Jenna was visiting her primary Seattle oncologist alone when he had leveled the blow. The cancer, at this stage, was no longer something they could fight and beat. Breast, brain, bone, blood, he had said morosely. They could fight, he explained compassionately, but they wouldn’t win. Winning was lost to them now.

  Jenna had sobbed, screamed and begged. She couldn’t believe that, not after they had come so far in the past three years. There was no way she could simply roll over in defeat. But, as Jenna had learned, tears didn’t change anything.

  She had boarded the air shuttle for home feeling nothing and everything in the exact moment. Exhausted from the emotional overload, she leaned her head against the Plexiglas window of the plane and let her eyes slip shut.

  “Jenna, honey, you in there? You okay?” The knock and calling voice at the door was so sweet, soft and nurturing that it made Jenna’s heart seize up. Ginny.

  “Hey Gin, I’m here and I’m okay. Just getting going, you know. We’ll be leaving in a few.” Jenna rolled from bed, planting her feet on the floor. Time, more time, had slipped past her.

  “Okay, sugar, I’ll fix you and Gabe something to eat for the road,” and with that, the heavy footfalls retreated down the hallway towards the kitchen.

  Jenna tapped lightly on the door of the bathroom and turned the handle in the same moment. Gabe sat on the rim of the tub. His hands shielded his face and his shoulders hunched over, elbows planted squarely on his thighs. He wasn’t moving and showed no signs of doing so any time soon.

  “Gabe ... ” Jenna sunk down beside in him of the lip of the tub. She put her arm around his waist and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Please.”

  “I’m just, just not ready. I wish I could be, you know--for you. But I’m just not there and I’m just fucking angry,” he looked up his eyes looked raw and red.

  “You think I’m ready, Gabe? Seriously? No, I’m not ready either. I’ll never be ready. I’m scared and I’m fucking furious too. I’m also all sorts of things, the least of which is not hopeful.” She looked at him then without blinking, willing him to believe her; it was a look of sheer honesty, one they had traded so many times in their marriage.

  She wasn’t quitting on him, or them or their responsibilities. She was giving everyone a chance. An ending come much too soon, but she’d be damned if it’d be anything short of happy or the closest to okay that she could make it. By stopping her treatments, they’d have time. God had given her that much, answered that prayer in a way it seemed. Would that time be six months or a year? No one knew and no one could tell her. But whatever it was, they’d have that, and it would count, this time would matter.

  Mia could have friends over and if one of them had a cold, Jenna could just hand them a tissue. Gabe could take his wife to dinner and they could share a bottle of wine without worrying about the drug interactions. They could take a proper family vacation to somewhere warm and far away. Jenna could obsess over homework like a normal mother and cook hearty meals herself; they could trash all the take-out menus. Mia and Jenna could spend the summer planting flowers in the garden or go shelling on Hollywood Beach. They could take the ferry to Victoria or spend the day whale watching at Ocra Islands just off the Sound. Jenna could even, maybe, write just one more book and read a few cover to cover. They would have a snippet of life back, and if that were all she could offer them, then she would do just that and accept the consequences, which were coming regardless.

  When Jenna had closed her eyes on the plane a
s it lifted off back to Port Angeles last week, a wash of calm had swallowed her. The decision that she had fought against for the past three years now was her harbor of peace. She had found it, finally. Stop fighting, Jenna, just stop. She’d enter into acceptance now and find a home in there.

  Jenna stood up beside Gabe, taking his hand in her own and gently tugged him, urging him to stand up. She rose up on her toes and kissed him hard on the lips. Sighing deeply into his mouth. He felt so good. He had always felt so good to her. The passion of their relationship and ebbed and flowed over the years and dipped significantly when she had gotten sick, but she still loved him like crazy and that had never, ever changed. Never would. She lifted his shirt over his head, pressing herself against his bare chest, rippled with taut muscles and a soft smattering of hair. She backed away lifting her own shirt over her head. Once, not so long ago, she had shied away from these moments of raw exposure, her chest a plate of slashes and scars that wrapped around her back and upward into the crook of her arm pit. After her radical mastectomy, she had never felt less womanly; the breasts that filled her sexy dresses and feed her baby had been removed, leaving behind a complex circuit of drains and staples, which eventually healed to a web of violent scars. But in that moment, she lost the ability to care or feel even the slightest hitch of modesty. She felt him move away from her, twisting the handle of the shower on, and as steam filled the stall, they stepped inside together, lost to the outside world entirely.

  “Ginny?” Jenna called as she made her way down the long hall towards the kitchen dressed in a soft cashmere sweater dress and black leggings with casual leather flats. The smell of warm sugar toast and coffee wafted around the bright, large space. Ginny never failed to make the house feel good just by walking through the door and made it feel even better when she set herself in the kitchen whipping her way around a meal. She was a naturally bright, warm, kind woman.