The Ada Decades

by Paula Martinac

  “Hook me up, Bettina. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  It was a small room, and Twig had to wait elsewhere for Cam for the five hours of treatment. “Don’t you have too much fun,” Cam said, “or I’ll be jealous.”

  “I’ll just find me a coffee shop.”

  After the initial dose of Benadryl slithered into her system, Cam fell into a blissful grogginess in which the other voices in the room were just background noise that carried her off to sleep. She had always been an easy sleeper, and she particularly welcomed it during chemo. The matrons in the room weren’t much for talking, except about husbands and children. Often, they swapped recipes of easy meals they could make their families in the months they were undergoing treatment. “My husband’s pretty tired of getting takeout from Bojangles!” one woman laughed.

  “Why doesn’t he cook for you, then?” Cam had asked aloud, making all heads turn to her in speechless surprise. Only Bettina let a faint smile cross her lips.

  After her peaceful snooze, the final round was over and Cam was the only patient left in the room. Bettina disengaged the IV from her port with her usual skill.

  “I’ll miss seeing you, Bettina,” Cam said. “You are something special, truly. One damn fine nurse.”

  “Well, you might . . .” Bettina began but bit off the end of her thought. Be back, was what shot through Cam’s mind.

  “. . . stop in the next time you’re seeing Dr. Tartt,” Bettina concluded. “I love getting a report on all my ladies.”

  “You watch out. I just might do that.”

  Twig had observed the exchange from the doorway. “Honey, I’ve seen everything now,” he said. “Were you just flirting with the chemo nurse? I might have to tell Ada.”

  “You think she doesn’t know me by now?”

  Twig was supposed to bring her directly home, but the sky was such a deep shade of blue it felt like high summer, and Cam wheedled and cajoled until he took a side excursion to Pike’s Soda Shop. “You can’t deny a dying woman’s wish for a chocolate shake on a beautiful day, now can you?”

  “Ah, you ain’t dying.”

  They perched on stools at the counter, even though she felt almost too tired to hold herself up straight. She loved to see the fountain ware lined up so neat and precise, to watch the soda jerks assemble sundaes and banana splits right in front of her.

  “My one and only job in high school was at the Soda Shop in Davidson,” she said. “I ever tell you that?”

  “You may have. Don’t recall.”

  “My mama didn’t think girls should work, but Daddy was proud that I was making my own spending money. The shop opened that year and I got hired for the summer, before going off to Greensboro. I came home smelling like sugar every damn day. Just about ruined my love of treats. I didn’t touch ice cream or Coke all through college.”

  She stopped the soda jerk as he was reaching over to serve her shake. “Do me a favor, hon, and top it off with a little whipped cream, would you?”

  Twig picked at his hot fudge sundae like he was on a diet, while she sucked her shake with appreciation.

  “God, girl, you are making a racket.”

  “I won’t feel like eating again for days,” she said. “Have to savor it while I can. What’s with you and that sundae?”

  “I’m worried Ada’s gonna have my hide,” Twig said, pushing the dish away. “We should go soon.”

  “We’ll tell her we stopped for green tea.” But the joke tasted sour, even to Cam, and her old friend’s face clouded with discomfort. He brushed a shock of white hair out of his eyes. She cherished just looking at him, loved how they’d grown old knowing each other and that he’d stuck around even for the bad parts. Cam had come to expect that loyalty from her tight group of friends, to count on it and give it in return like the comfort it was. “Gay folks need each other” were the words she lived by.

  So it smarted that her friend Lu had made herself scarce.

  Lu had been faithful at first; she was with Cam the day she

  collapsed, with so much internal bleeding she almost died. Lu called 911 and stayed at the hospital for hours with Ada, waiting for word. And she stuck around through surgery and the first treatments, even paying for a woman to clean their house on a regular basis.

  When the cancer recurred, though, Lu vanished like Cam was already in the ground and the job of friend was done. “I am just so busy,” she said, when Cam invited her to supper during a good week. “I’ll have to take a rain check.” But she never followed up, and messages left on her answering machine went unreturned until Cam simply stopped calling.

  “Busy my behind,” Twig had snapped, but even his fierce devotion couldn’t take away the sting of Lu’s rejection. Cam hadn’t known anyone as long as Lu, not even Ada. Lu had been a pain in the ass more than once, with her diva ways and a jealousy of Ada that still flared. And yet, Cam had taken it for granted she would always be there.

  Cam finished her shake and reached for a spoonful of Twig’s hot fudge. After, she left a chocolatey imprint of her mouth on her thin paper napkin and then let out a deep, satisfied sigh. “Thank you for this, my friend. I feel almost normal.”

  “I do miss us being normal,” Twig sighed.

  She knew he meant more than just the two of them eating ice cream. Twig had nursed his lover Jimmy through AIDS and still lived with the scar tissue and survivor guilt. When he visited Cam for the first time after her diagnosis, he had tried to joke casually, but later told Ada he got into a fender-bender on his drive home.

  His eyes were wet now, so Cam jumped in to make him laugh again. She had never done well with weepy, and less so now that the tears were about her. “Oh, honey, normal is one thing we will never be.”

  Ada

  On the front porch, a plump pumpkin sat surrounded by an assortment of much smaller gourds, like a mother hen overseeing her chicks. A wreath crafted from artificial sunflowers, autumn leaves, berries, and miniature pumpkins hung on the door, with a pair of felt Pilgrim dolls affixed to the top like a bow.

  The fall colors complemented the forest green trim of the townhouse to perfection, and at any other time, Ada would have commended Lu on her seasonal decorations, which she likely had crafted herself. But all Ada could think as she pressed the doorbell twice, then once more for emphasis, was: How dare she even think about decorating!

  Lu was at home, that much was clear; her smart little Kia was parked at the curb. It was too late in the morning to be taking a shower, even for Lu. Ada poked at the bell another three times, then stepped off the porch and glared up at the second-floor windows. There was no sign of movement within. Ada had just turned back to her car, unkind thoughts crowding her mind, when the front door opened.

  “You don’t give a lady much of a chance to get to the door, Ada Jane,” Lu said. “I was all the way upstairs in the bathroom, and you just kept ringing and ringing. I don’t get around as well as I used to, you know. I thought it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to harass me.”

  The word harass, with its slight emphasis, wounded her, but Ada didn’t let on. Though Cam’s college roommate had grown on her over the years, Ada could still be cowed by the woman’s barbs. Not today, though. “I don’t know any such thing. Shirley Ann said she ran into you last week coming back from playing nine holes. Sounds to me like you get around just fine.”

  “Oh, Shirley Ann,” Lu said, as if her ex were the biggest liar she’d ever known.

  Ada raised an eyebrow. “May I come in?”

  The living room looked as pristine as always, as if no one ever used it. Lu still had the resources to have a woman come in every other week. “The place is a mess,” she said, “so promise you won’t tell. It’s Maribel’s week off.”

  “Who would I tell?” Ada snapped. A look of shock crossed Lu’s face, as if she feared the worst—that Cam had passed and Ada had come to inform her. “You know Cam doesn’t care about such things, and I rarely see anyone else these days but Twig.”


  “Twig comes around?”

  “At least once a week, sometimes twice. To visit with Cam or take her out. He took her to her last chemo today.”

  “So she’s . . . all right, I take it,” Lu said. “If chemo’s over.”

  “No, she’s not ‘all right,’ Lu. The doctor hasn’t given us much hope this time around.” Ada felt her eyes welling up, but she hadn’t come for Lu’s pity. They were standing in the middle of the room, as immobile as pieces of furniture, and Lu was curling and releasing her fingers in an anxious way.

  “Well, I didn’t mean that she’s cured or anything, of course,” Lu backtracked. “I just meant . . .”

  “Do you mind if I sit?” When Lu motioned toward the sofa, Ada sank into it, her jacket still on, pocketbook in her lap. “The thing is, how would you know if she’s ‘cured or anything’? You never call. You never come ’round.” Her anger at Lu exhausted her, but she pushed on just the same. “You abandoned her when she needed you most. Like you dropped off the face of the earth. She would never have done that to you.”

  “Oh, don’t go on like that!” Lu laughed, a nervous little twitter. “You’ve known exactly where I am. Why, here you are, sitting in my living room.”

  Ada had never slapped anybody in her life, but now she imagined herself leaving a red handprint on Lu’s powdered cheek. She could almost hear the satisfying crack of it. As if she could read Ada’s thoughts, Lu’s eyes opened wide.

  “That was unkind of me,” Lu said. “I apologize.”

  “It was a mistake to come,” Ada said, standing up.

  “No, it wasn’t. Please. I have some pastries. I’ll make tea.”

  “I don’t want anything.” Ada took her seat again, but she couldn’t look directly at Lu. Instead, her eyes fell on the coffee table, on the latest issues of Ladies Home Journal and Martha Stewart Living.

  “Well, I feel like I should give you something. It’s an occasion. You have never visited me without Cam before, not in forty-odd years. Why, we won’t even be friends anymore if . . .” The words quivered out of her and landed in the space between them.

  Ada looked up and scanned Lu’s face. With her carefully styled bob and violet eye shadow, she was still attractive but a bit too much. Only Lu would make herself up like that—and at home, no less—or have her hair dyed raven black, as if she fancied herself forty instead of seventy.

  Her sudden vulnerability was hard to ignore, though. Ada had seen it before. Twenty-some years back, Lu’s mother had succumbed to breast cancer after what her obituary called “a brief but valiant struggle.” Ada’s own mother had died of breast cancer a few years before Lu’s, in a whoosh of a death that left her daughter breathless and unmoored. “There’s nothing so wrenching as the death of your mama,” Ada had said at the time to comfort her, and Lu had yielded to her hug—the only occasion on which they’d ever really touched.

  Remembering that exchange made something soften inside Ada. She felt a pinch of sadness for Lu, all alone in her pristine house. “Oh, we’ll still be friends, Lu,” she offered, though she couldn’t say the words if Cam passes. “Cam would want that. But what I want is for you to be a friend to her right now.”

  Her anger came sputtering back with Lu’s next words. “I don’t need pity, thank you, Ada Jane. And I don’t need you telling me how to be friends with Cam. I’ve known her longer than you. But maybe you begrudge me that. Or maybe you can’t stand it I had that one time with her. I mean, honestly—she did choose you.”

  Ada’s mouth popped open, and Lu’s hand flew up to her cheek. “Oh, Lord, honey, I just assumed you knew. I mean, all those years you’ve been together . . .”

  Recovering her composure as quickly as she could, Ada tensed her lips so they wouldn’t open again on their own. “Of course I knew. There’s nothing I don’t know about Camellia Lively, believe you me.”

  Even as she said it, she felt a stitch in her heart, like a splinter had settled in and wouldn’t work loose. Not because Cam had lied about Lu so long ago, but because she couldn’t help speculating about what other lies and omissions there had been over the years.

  Ada stood again to go, this time for sure, wanting nothing more than to be on the other side of the door. She took her time getting there, though, even letting a few rote civilities pass her lips: “You take care” and “Give Cam a call some time.” She had intended to tell Lu about the tentative plans for an eclipse get-together, but she knew now she would never invite Lu to her house again.

  She meant to go home or to the grocery store, but the car took her instead to the boulevard where Cam had lived when they met, where Ada had moved in and they’d lived together for almost thirty years. Tall potted plants obscured the balcony of their former second-floor apartment, but other than that, the place still looked remarkably the same. It was not a part of town she frequented anymore, and Ada sat for a few minutes with the motor running.

  The lipstick, she thought. All those years ago, before they were lovers, Cam had held a book club at her apartment and, despite everything Ada had ever learned about good manners, she had snooped in the medicine cabinet. Sitting alone on a glass shelf was a tube of lipstick, a shade of coral she could picture Lu wearing. Later, Ada asked Cam if she had been involved with Lu romantically, but she denied it, and the tube was gone by the time Ada spent her first night there.

  The suspicion had collected dust in Ada’s mind just the same. Now, Cam was sick; it would be cruel to have it out with her. Ada would have to force herself to stay buttoned up, to try not to stare at Cam and wonder.

  Cam

  Ada’s Buick wasn’t in the carport when Twig pulled up to the bungalow. Cam was not one to worry, but panic tugged at her just the same. Ada had invited Twig to supper, and it was just after four, so where was she?

  “She doesn’t have a cell phone, does she?”

  “Doesn’t believe in them,” Cam said. “Maybe she got out of the house later than she expected. I guess I won’t worry yet. She probably left us a note.”

  There was no note, but the phone was ringing as Cam unlocked the door. Twig hovered anxiously next to her as she answered it. The voice on the other end was a shock, but Cam greeted the caller with equal parts forgiveness and glee. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Lu Pardue! Where have you been, girl?”

  But after a quick apology for jumping ship on her, Lu steered right to the point.

  “Oh, hell, Lu,” Cam said. “Why’d you go and do that? I mean, we were never going to be anything, you and me. If you still think after all these years that Ada came between us, well, that’s flat-out wrong.” Lu sputtered some apologies that Cam couldn’t hear through a drumming in her ears. “Look, just don’t bother calling here again.”

  “Shit,” Twig said when she hung up and told him. “I can’t believe you never told her about you and Lu.”

  “I didn’t see the point. It was just that one night. I was drunk and out of my mind about Viv breaking up with me. Lu wanted something more, she pressured me about it, but then I met Ada and that was that. And I thought Ada would be uncomfortable with me and Lu being friends if she knew.”

  “Should I drive around and look for her?”

  “She’s mad, that’s all. She’s cooling off.”

  Twig opted to go home so they could have private time when Ada did return. Cam waited for her at the kitchen table, trying to read the paper but actually listening for the sound of her steps on the front porch. Maybe the wait was her punishment for everything—drinking too much all those years ago, keeping an ex-lover as a friend, getting cancer, not once but twice.

  The sun had faded when she finally heard Ada’s key in the lock, but Cam didn’t get up to turn on the light. From the front room, there was no “Hon, I’m back,” just the sounds of Ada hanging up her coat in the closet and a big sigh. Cam watched Ada move across the room, in and out of her line of vision, then finally turn toward the kitchen with two bags of groceries from Food Lion.

  “Why are you sitting
in the dark?” Ada asked, flipping on the bright overhead.

  “Too lazy to get up.”

  Ada eyed Cam with suspicion, then began opening and closing cabinet doors noisily as she put her purchases away. “Did chemo go okay?” When there was no response, she moved to the refrigerator and chucked the fresh vegetables into the crispers, as if they had been bothering her. “And where’s Twig? Didn’t he want supper after all?”

  “He wanted to give us some time alone. Guess who called just a little while ago.”

  Ada stopped what she was doing but didn’t turn around. “Who?”

  “I think you might be able to guess.”

  Ada ran a hand through her hair and slowly faced her. “I went there to see why she left you high and dry,” she explained. “I’ve been seething at her, and I thought I’d just have it out. So imagine my surprise when she springs that on me. I was mortified, completely humiliated. I could hardly see straight to drive. I didn’t deserve that, Cam.”

  “Lu’s the one who should be mortified,” Cam said. “It’s just sick that she would tell you such a thing after all these years.”

  “She must still love you.”

  Cam waved off the suggestion, not caring if it was true or not. “That’s her problem,” Cam said. “I chose you.”

  Ada moved to the table and sat down, her forehead lined with worry. “I know you did, and I would have never even brought the thing with Lu up, not now. But I do wonder what else you haven’t told me. Or if this lie about Lu . . .”

  “More an omission, I’d say.”

  “. . . this omission about Lu is . . . well, I wonder if you’re keeping more from me.”

  “This is the honest-to-God truth, Ada. It was just one time with Lu. She was furious with me for a while, but we got past it and mended our friendship. There were good memories with her worth saving, I thought. And I didn’t want to dig it up again by telling you.”