Chapter 29 #2
I shift in the polyester seat of my chair. “Well, anything that was happening is done now,” I admit. “It’s for the best. It probably wouldn’t have worked out. This way, I didn’t get my hopes up for too long.”
Louise scoffs at me. A true scoff, like she’s Donald Duck. “Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us, Gem.” Louise’s hand finds mine, gently wrapping around it. “Don’t waste it.”
Her words are a tranquilizer dart, lodging any other sarcastic comments about Eitan in my throat. “It just wasn’t in the cards.” I turn back to the sky.
“There are some things we have control over, and some things we don’t have control over.
Getting cancer is random—out of our control.
No matter what the organic food industry would have you believe.
But being honest about your feelings? Leaving it all on the table?
That’s in your control. In fact, it’s all we can control. ”
“I’ll remember that,” I say slowly, “for the next person I meet.” If that ever happens.
Louise squints at me. “It’s tough, Gem, when the magic fades away and all that’s left is love.
Bedrock. When all’s said and done, you’re going to remember the times you stuck by each other.
The moments when something really bad was happening, and you found solace in each other. When you didn’t turn away.”
I pick at my nail, trying to ignore the gaping wound of only ever being turned away from someone, or turning away, when something really bad was happening. “I’ve managed just fine on my own,” I say, the words sour.
“You think I don’t see you, but I do,” Louise says, uncharacteristically somber. “You think the world can’t lose faith in you if you lose faith in the world first.”
It’s abstract, but the proximity of her comment to the gaping hole in my chest is enough to make me shift in my seat, unable to find a comfortable position.
“But when you close yourself off to the world like that, you let the fear take over.”
Instantly, my hand wants to feel the lump again, to try to catalogue reasons I am right to be scared by it. Fear is all I feel. It consumes me like wildfire, razing everything.
“How am I supposed to be not scared?” I whisper.
Louise adjusts in her wheelchair to take a good look at me. “Tell me, Gem, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“My cancer metastasizes and I don’t make it to 40,” I say softly, hesitantly. It feels like bad luck saying that out loud, given my ultrasound. Like if I say Beetlejuice three times, a bone lesion will appear.
“Well, I can tell you, I’m dealing with the metastatic part, and it’s a pain in the ass, but life goes on just as it always has. Always will. One day I won’t be here anymore, and that’s the way it is.”
“That’s the scary part,” I clarify.
“I don’t think it’s that scary. Death is a part of everyone’s journey.”
“You’re not scared of not being here anymore?” I ask, my voice small.
Louise is quiet for a moment. “Being sick gets really old. I can’t travel anymore.
I’m hooked up to a machine half the week.
The second I break a single drop of sweat we have to take my temperature.
I want to feel like a human being. And I think death is maybe the last human milestone I have on the horizon. ”
“I—I’ve never thought about it that way.”
“And you shouldn’t have to,” Louise says gruffly.
“You have a long life ahead of you, Gem. The only point I’m trying to make is that the end isn’t the thing you should be scared of.
Life has too much joy and awe in store for you.
” At this, she seeks out my eyes beneath the radioactive green light in the sky, and I can’t bear to look at her.
“You know? Those things us geezers like to call blessings?”
I make a show of looking around the Racine cornfield. “This is a blessing?” I joke.
“Yes,” she harrumphs. “You are blessed by my presence. The point is, I’d be more scared of missing out on that. It’s impossible to regret dying, but it’s real easy to regret the way you live.”
“Do you have any regrets?” I ask.
Louise sighs. “Plenty.” She waves a hand glittering with colorful jewelry.
“But most of all, I wish I had known that Alfie would be leaving first. I miss him—so much. We always thought I would be the first to go. I wouldn’t have gotten so caught up in treatment, in feeling sorry for myself.
I would have soaked in every single day we had together. ”
Green and purple slash through the sky, rivers of liquid color.
It’s a sight you could wait an entire lifetime to see.
For some reason, beneath the majesty of the Northern Lights, all I can feel is lucky. Which is especially cruel, because my luck may have run out.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I got lucky, and others didn’t. Like I don’t know what to do with” —I wave my hands around helplessly, my voice splintering down the middle— “this time I’ve been given.”
The complicated guilt tints every day that I wake up with a life to live, knowing that others weren’t so fortunate.
How do you make your life worthwhile for the Universe to have spared?
Is there some complex equation that is always being calculated, determining if you’re living your life properly, keeping a recurrence at bay?
“Listen, Gem, you never need to ask that question.” Louise pulls my hands out of the air and holds them between her cracked palms. The green and purple sky is reflected in her eyes.
“What happens to us is random, not controlled or inflicted by God. No force decides to mutate our cells, it just happens. The Universe, God, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t deal in reward and punishment. ”
It’s hard not to feel punished. “That’s not very Catholic of you,” I say through a sniffle.
Louise waves a hand. “I stopped believing in heaven and hell a while ago. The big guy in the sky and I have made peace. I don’t question cancer, and He doesn’t expect me to forsake this life I have now. If all we have is now, that’s eternal, in its own way.”
I nod, blinking back tears, and roll my lips between my teeth.
“Did I miss anything?” Alma ambles back from the gas station, sucking on the dregs of an XL slushie.
“Nope.” I smile, subtly wiping my eyes. “Just enjoying the moment.”
The three of us sit in a cornfield in Racine for another hour, until the last light has moved on from the sky.
“I didn’t think I would ever see those,” Louise says when we finally start packing up, her voice trembling with sincerity.
“Well, apparently, this is a good year for the Northern Lights.” I fold our blankets and put them back in the trunk. “There might be another night next week we can see them again, if the weather is clear enough.”
Louise just smiles, and lets Alma transfer her back to the car seat.
Once the car is packed up and we’re back on the empty, midnight road, Louise announces, “If nothing else comes out of this wedding but the Northern Lights, then I’ll still be happy.”
“Come on, the wedding will be fun,” I say to her. And to myself.
“I thought paying for the wedding would bring us closer together, but I’m starting to think Penelope would respond better to tough love.” Louise sighs. “She’s awful, isn’t she?” Louise asks Alma and I.
“She was actually the only friend who came to visit me after my surgery,” I defend.
Louise cranes her neck in the front seat to give me a dark look. “That says more about your friends as a whole than Penelope as an individual.”
We finish the drive in silence, listening to Rumors one more time, back to front. (“My favorite way,” Louise says. “Who doesn’t want to start with ‘Silver Springs’?”)
Alma pulls into Louise’s carport, and I help Louise out of her seat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, for the rehearsal dinner,” I say. “Today? I think it’s after midnight.” Louise smiles. “And don’t worry too much about Pen. She’s just busy, things will be better once the stress of the wedding is done.”
Louise squeezes my hand twice. “I’m not complaining. I like you much better.” She turns, taking slow steps into the house, holding onto a railing.
I hide my smile behind my sleeve. “You’re not supposed to pick favorites,” I call at her retreating form, loud enough for a neighbor’s dog to begin barking.
“Can’t help it.” Louise turns around once, waves a hand, and—if my eyes are to be believed—winks at me. “I’m a betting woman.”