For Better, for Worse, Forever

by Lurlene McDaniel

  The room was spinning. April lay on her bed clutching the sheets, feeling as if she were caught in a whirlwind. Stop! Stop! Her vertigo had come on gradually over the past few weeks, sometimes making her feel as if she were aboard the pitching hull of a sailboat, sometimes as if she were being sucked into a whirlpool. She knew better than to try and stand; she’d fall over and the thud would bring her mother running, and the questions would start: “How long have you been having dizzy spells?” “Do you have headaches too?” “Why didn’t you tell us?” “We’re calling your doctor.” “We’re going back to New York immediately!”

  April knew what would happen if they found out she was experiencing problems, and she didn’t want to leave. She loved it here. She was happy. She didn’t want to break her promises to Brandon. The loss of his mother had been devastating. How could she add to his unhappiness? The two of them were supposed to go sailing today. Brandon had told her, “I’ll pack a picnic lunch and take you to a special little island where we can snorkel. You’ll love it.”

  Her forehead broke into a sweat, and she felt nauseated. She swallowed a couple of pills, took deep breaths, and prayed for the vertigo to pass. She didn’t want to think about what might be causing it. Perhaps it was only the start of an inner-ear infection. Or maybe she was anemic again. Iron deficiency was common in girls her age. She’d been treated for it while she was still in high school. It couldn’t be something horrible … like the tumor … it couldn’t be. She wanted more time.

  Slowly the room stopped spinning, and she sat up shakily. As soon as she ate breakfast, she’d feel better. She wobbled to her private bathroom, where she showered and changed into a bathing suit. By the time she got to the breakfast table, she felt better. Her father was off playing golf, and her mother was reading the morning mail.

  “A letter from Caroline,” her mother said as April poured herself a glass of orange juice. “She says the things I shipped last month have really sold well in the store. She wants me to send more.”

  “Can you?”

  “Brandon’s father told me about an auction next week at one of the old sugar plantations on the west end of the island. I think I’ll go. Why don’t you come with me?”

  April had often attended auctions with her mother and found them exciting, with people bidding against one another for estate furniture—the once-prized belongings of generations past. And driving from one end of the island to the other took little time. But April didn’t want to commit to such a long day. What if she started feeling sick? “I’ve promised Brandon we’d do some things together.”

  “It’s only one day. And you spend most of your free time with him as it is.”

  “Mom—please don’t pressure me.”

  “I’m not pressuring you.” Her mother set down Caroline’s letter. “Honey, I’m glad you’ve got a friend like Brandon; he’s a nice young man. I just think it would be nice for us to do something special together.”

  “I’ll think about it,” April hedged.

  “Pity about his mother.” April had told her parents about Mrs. Benedict’s suicide.

  “He doesn’t talk about it much. I think he feels as if there was something he should have done to stop her.”

  “I knew a woman once whose mother committed suicide, and she really had a hard time getting over it. If a person ever really does get over such a thing. That’s one of the things that’s so pitiful about it. The victim’s family often feels somehow responsible, although psychiatrists say that’s not true.”

  “That’s what I told him. But he’s mad at his father, as if he might have somehow stopped her.”

  “My friend was angry for a long time too. Truth was, she was angry at her mother for killing herself, but she couldn’t tell her how she felt. She couldn’t do anything except suffer mentally.”

  April understood. She saw how much Brandon was suffering over his mother’s death. Even she felt angry at Brandon’s mother for making him hurt so badly. She hoped he would be able to find some path out of his pain and make peace with his father. There was nothing she could do to help him. Worst of all, she was only going to go away from him too.

  Brandon set sail with April to a tiny, isolated island called a cay, several nautical miles from St. Croix. “These cays are all over the place,” he told her. “They’re made up of sand and coral rock, and I’ll bet I’ve explored every one of them. Mom and I used to anchor off-shore and swim in to search for shells.” He’d borrowed a bigger boat than the first one he’d taught April to sail. She took the tiller under his direction, turning the mainsail into the stiff breeze, tacking and coming about until the boat approached the white-sand cay he’d chosen for their picnic.

  He jumped off into waist-high water and guided the boat ashore, then jammed the keel, the part of the boat that balanced it underwater, into the soft sand bottom. The sun seared through the shallow depths. She could see every ripple in the sand below. A crab scurried out of the way.

  April helped Brandon carry their gear ashore. He pitched a small dome-shaped tent to shield them from the brutal heat of the sun. They spread out large towels and set down a cooler and a picnic basket. Brandon raised side flaps to catch the tropical breeze. “This is great,” she told him, stretching out on her stomach so that she could gaze at the water lapping the shoreline and the boat.

  “Well, don’t get comfortable yet. We’re going snorkeling.” From a mesh bag he dragged out two sets of flippers, two face masks, and two bright orange snorkel tubes.

  She held up the flippers. “You must be kidding. I’ll look like a giant frog.”

  “With red hair,” he joked. “Don’t scare the fish.” He pulled out a large bottle of sunscreen.

  “I’ve already put some on me.”

  “You’ll need more.”

  She turned her back and lifted her mass of hair, quickly twisting it into a knot and fastening it with a scrunchie. He drizzled the cool lotion on her warm skin, making her shiver involuntarily. His big hands smoothed it along her back and down her arms. He didn’t hurry.

  “Now what?” she asked, not meeting his gaze, her flesh tingling from his touch.

  “Now we hit the water.”

  She followed him to the water’s edge, where she put on the flippers and the mask. After a few minutes of instruction, he led her out deeper and helped her to float facedown. Below the surface, she clearly saw the white-sand bottom and Brandon’s flippered feet. He towed her farther out to a coral reef shelf, and the undersea world changed dramatically. Fish, in shades of yellow, green, and even purple and silver, darted through a forest of living vivid-red coral. Starfish clustered around coral branches, their arms hugging the surfaces for dear life.

  Once she got the hang of it, April easily sucked air through her snorkeling tube. Brandon never let go of her hand, and together they floated like voyagers from another planet. He tapped her shoulder and pointed to their left. She stared, awed, as a giant manta ray swam past, flapping its wings like a quiet bird of prey, its undersides flashing white in the blue water. Shafts of sunlight streamed downward, lighting beds of coral like spotlights that faded as the coral shelf dropped off and the ocean grew deeper, darker.

  A curious parrot fish swam up to her mask, its bright blue lips making silent statements no human could understand. Startled, she flapped an arm, and the fish zipped away to the safety of the reef below. Brandon tapped her shoulder again, and she turned in time to spot a sea turtle, large as a rock but as buoyant in the water as Styrofoam, swimming downward. The world beneath the sea captivated April, and when Brandon pointed toward the shore, she didn’t want to go.

  “I loved it!” she squealed once they were back under the tent. “I had no idea it was so beautiful down there.”

  “Scuba diving’s even more fun. But you need a tank and some lessons first,” he said with a laugh. Bringing her pleasure, seeing her happy, made his heart swell. The girls who’d grown up on St. Croix were unimpressed by such sights, but showing it to April wa
s like seeing it for the first time himself.

  “Will you take me scuba diving?”

  He laughed at her childlike enthusiasm. “I told you, this is your summer to do anything you want—” He stopped in midsentence. Suddenly April had lain back on the towel, her eyes squeezed shut, her face pale and pinched. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. The towel was wadded in her fists, as if she were trying to hold herself in place on the ground. “April! What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”

  10

  Fear ripped through Brandon.

  “Dizzy …,” April mumbled. “Very dizzy.”

  He tore the lid off the cooler, grabbed a handful of ice, and pressed it to her temples and throat. “Sit up. Maybe you’re hyperventilating.”

  He helped her sit, but a wave of nausea made her groan.

  “Take deep breaths,” he said, pressing more ice against the back of her neck.

  Nothing was helping. April couldn’t stop the world from spinning. She sagged, folded against him, clung for dear life. He stroked her hair, held her in his lap, soothed her skin with a damp towel. “Breathing through your mouth for so long probably made you dizzy,” he said, trying to comfort both of them.

  With all her heart, she wanted to believe him, but she knew it wasn’t so. She was sick and experiencing vertigo and there was only one explanation. “It’ll pass,” she said weakly, all the while praying, Please make it go away. Don’t let me be sick in front of him.

  “I’m really sorry, April. I wanted today to be fun.”

  She should have known her medical problem would catch up with her sooner or later. Why, why couldn’t it have done so later? Tears squeezed from behind her closed eyelids. “It isn’t your fault.” She knew she should tell him the truth about herself, but all she remembered in the darkness behind her closed eyes was the expression on his face when he’d told her about his mother’s suicide. How could she wound him again? Wouldn’t it be better to simply let him think she was sick from some other cause? Anything—except the truth? “I—I think I ate some bad fish at supper last night. I wasn’t feeling all that great when I got up this morning, but I wanted to come so badly that I made myself feel better. I guess it’s finally caught up with me. So much for the power of positive thinking.”

  “Let me pack up and get you home,” he said. “Lying out here in the heat isn’t helping you any.”

  She agreed, but she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay on this sandy strip of island and be with him. She wanted to feel the warmth of the sun. She wanted to hear the gentle sloshing of the sea against the shoreline. She wanted to remain in paradise. A headache crept up the back of her neck and settled around her head like a vise. The pain turned her skin clammy.

  She heard him moving around and concentrated on the sounds he made, trying not to think about the mounting pain of the headache. He took the tent down last, after gently carrying her to the boat. The swaying of the boat caused her to totally lose her equilibrium. She felt like a matchstick tossed on a sea of waves, unable to get her bearings.

  “I wish this thing had a motor,” he grumbled. “Our boat has a motor. But my father won’t take our boat out of dry dock.”

  Brandon was talking to no one but the wind. Every time he looked down at the pale, motionless April, his heart lurched. She’d got sick so quickly. He’d been taken completely by surprise. His mother’s moods had been mercurial—one minute she was happy, the next depressed—but eventually depression had won her over to its dark ways. That was his only experience with sickness, and even though her sickness had been in her mind, it had affected her physically.

  He recalled days when she couldn’t pull herself out of bed. He recalled nights when she drank and walked the floors, crying inconsolably. He’d felt helpless. And he felt helpless now. April’s skin looked pale as paste, and she’d put a damp towel over her eyes. He didn’t want anything to happen to her. He loved her. Of course, he couldn’t tell her because he doubted she would believe him. And she loved the mysterious Mark. How did a guy compete with a dead person?

  Fortunately, a stiff breeze allowed Brandon to make good time, and as soon as he arrived at the Buccaneer, he tossed his friend Billy the lines and shouted that he’d be back later for the gear. He got April into his car and drove as fast as he dared to her house.

  He screeched into her driveway, leaped out, and ran to the front door. When her mother opened the door, he told her that April was sick.

  Janice’s eyes went wide, and the color left her face. “Help me get her into her room.”

  Again, Brandon carried her. Janice had thrown back the covers, and he laid April on the bed and stepped aside while her mother hovered over her. “Should you call a doctor?” Brandon asked. “You could call the one my mother—we use.” He corrected himself.

  “I’ll call her doctor back home,” Janice said, grabbing the phone.

  “All the way in New York? We have doctors here.”

  “It’s all right. He knows April.”

  “Whatever.” He surveyed the room, April’s room, filled with signs of April’s life. Perfume bottles on the dresser. Bathing suits, a whole collection, piled in a heap near the closet door. A framed photo on her bedside table of a grinning guy in an auto racing uniform. Mark. He knew it instinctively. A knot formed in his stomach, seeing the image of his dead rival. So this was the guy she’d planned to marry. Brandon had wondered about him, about why she’d fallen in love with someone with cystic fibrosis. Why would she consider devoting herself to caring for a sick person? What magic power had Mark held over her?

  Brandon heard April’s mother talking softly into the phone, using words he didn’t understand and phrases he couldn’t quite catch.

  She turned toward him. “Brandon, will you do me a favor? My husband is playing golf at the country club today. Would you go find him and tell him what’s happened?”

  “Sure.” Brandon was glad to have something to do. “She will be all right, won’t she? I mean, maybe you should take her to the emergency room. Maybe it’s more than eating bad fish. Maybe it’s food poisoning.”

  “Bad fish? Is that what she told you?”

  “Yes.”

  Janice nodded. “As soon as her father gets here, we’ll check it out.”

  “I’m on my way.” Brandon strode to the door.

  “Thank you,” April’s mother called. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  He glanced back to see that her face was still pale but her expression was calm, almost serene. And incredibly sad. It startled him, but he didn’t have time to think about it. Brandon jumped into his car and drove like a madman toward the country club golf course.

  “Why didn’t you say something, April? Why didn’t you tell us what was going on?” The tremor in her father’s voice betrayed his attempt to be stern with her.

  “I didn’t say anything because I knew how you’d panic.” She felt fuzzy, still floating from the effects of the shot of morphine the doctor at the hospital had given her. The headache had subsided for now.

  “Panic?” her mother said. “You pass out from pain and you think we might panic? Over such a small, ordinary thing like that?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t say something to you, but I just didn’t want everything to end. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

  Her father stroked her arm. “We don’t know for sure what’s happening. We have an appointment to see Dr. Sorenson in New York the day after tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “He wants to run tests.”

  “I’m sick of tests. We all know what the tests are going to tell him. They’re going to say that the tumor’s growing again. And he’s going to say the same thing he told us last year. There’s nothing else medical science can do for me!” Her voice had risen, and in spite of the calming effects of the morphine, she began to cry.

  Her mother scooped her into her arms, rocked her, and cooed, �
��Oh, baby. Oh, my sweet little girl.”

  “I’m not giving up,” her father insisted. “You’re our daughter, April. You mean everything to us. I won’t let them tell us there’s nothing else that they can do. I don’t believe it.”

  April wept silently into her mother’s shoulder, missing Mark, then Brandon. Life was being sucked away from her, snatched like a purse stolen by a thief. She’d known her prognosis all along. No one had ever hidden the truth from her. Maybe it would have been better if they had hidden it. The knowledge was overwhelming. Goodbye to paradise.

  “I’m going to make arrangements now,” her father said. “We’ll pack what we need. And what we don’t take we can get at home. We have a house full of stuff on Long Island.”

  “Will we come back?” April’s voice sounded dull and thick.

  “Probably not.”

  She winced as if he’d struck her.

  Her mother smoothed her hair. “Do you want to call Brandon? Would you like me to call and talk to him?”

  “No. I’ll call him from New York.”

  “Are you sure?”

  April pictured his face. He would pity her. Or worse, he’d withdraw the way her old boyfriend Chris had when she’d told him about her tumor. Better to go away and call Brandon and tell him over the phone. The miles between them would act as a cushion to soften his reaction. “I’m sure,” she said finally. “When he calls later”—as she knew he would—“just tell him I’m resting and that I’ll talk to him when I’m able.”

  “If that’s what you want,” her mother said in a tone that told April she didn’t agree with her plan.

  “That’s what I want.”

  The island of St. Croix slipped away under a blanket of clouds below the airplane’s window. The water turned into a rippled piece of blue taffeta, and April could scarcely bear to look down at it. Like spoils from an old corsage, a few hand-picked hibiscuses lay on her lap, the red and pink petals’ edges wilting, the yellow pollen clinging to her fingers. She felt terrible. The pills the doctor had prescribed made her feel groggy and out of sync, but at least there was no headache. She imagined Brandon coming to the house, knocking on the door, seeing the note. Hastily she’d scribbled: WE HAD TO LEAVE. FAMILY PROBLEMS BACK HOME. I’LL CALL YOU IN A FEW DAYS. Of course, it was all lies. She hoped she’d have the courage to talk to him soon. Tears wet her face as the plane climbed higher and the sea slipped away under more clouds. She closed her eyes and allowed the medication to lull her into a drugged sleep.