Chapter Thirty-Three. Ingrid
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
INGRID
Three Days Before the Pageant
I brought the shoebox with the broken heel down from the attic and tucked it into the back seat of my car. The invitation still sits in my purse.
But I push all that from my mind now, because Dad and I are at Oak Hills to visit Mom and to meet with Dr. Patel, who thinks she’ll be able to come home soon.
She started her first round of chemo yesterday, and the doctors want to keep her for twenty-four hours to watch how her body handles it.
If all goes well, she’ll be discharged tomorrow.
Melanie is walking me through the post-op care, just like she promised. It’s actually her day off, which I discovered when her coworker, Tom, caught the three of us walking together in the hallway toward Mom’s room.
Melanie, are you serious? he said, hand on hip. What are you doing here?
It was only then I realized Melanie wasn’t wearing scrubs, just a plain cotton T-shirt and jeans.
Melanie, I started to admonish, you didn’t have to—
But she stopped me with a hand to my arm, that reassuring smile on her face. It’s fine.
You’re way too nice, I said.
Tom cocked his head and gave her a disapproving look. That’s what I’m always telling her.
We appreciate it, Dad said simply.
Melanie started with the easy stuff—paperwork, diet guidelines, when to call the doctor—all the things she could explain with a clipboard in hand.
But once she pulled on a pair of gloves to demonstrate Mom’s drain care, Dad found a reason to duck out.
Ostensibly, he’s gone to peruse the gift shop in the lobby, the one with CLIF bars and get well balloons, in search of face wash because Mom mentioned that she was nearly out at home.
In reality, he had understood the subtext: She didn’t want him in the room for this. Mom is the kind of woman who clips her toenails with the bathroom door locked.
When you’ve been married as long as they have, I suppose you really do become one unit.
I watched a BBC documentary once about schools of fish.
Hundreds, even thousands of individuals swim together as one body, swooping in a mass of shimmering scales, contracting, expanding, changing directions without ever needing words.
They understand and are understood, at least in the simplicity of motion.
Joel and I were together for most of my adult life, the last of my twenties, the entirety of my thirties, into my forties. But we never had that kind of unity. We just coexisted in the same space, our minds residing in separate worlds.
The only time I’ve ever been understood, when I’ve truly and deeply connected with another person, was when I had Izzy.
The flowers on Mom’s bedside table have begun to droop, a few sunflower petals scattered around the bottom of the vase.
Melanie invites me up beside her as she folds back the blankets on Mom’s bed.
From beneath the covers, she reveals a drainage bulb attached to a tube that snakes up Mom’s hospital gown.
Melanie undoes the safety pin clipping the bulb to Mom’s gown.
“It’s very simple once you get the hang of it,” she assures me. “You’ll empty each drain twice a day, measure the fluid, and record it here.” She points to a notebook atop the stack of papers and prescriptions and information pamphlets we’ve received.
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do this part. I can do it myself.”
The bulb is half full of a pale pinkish-yellow fluid. Mom’s lips are tight, and I feel a flush of secondhand embarrassment, like I’ve caught my mother on the toilet.
Melanie tsks softly. “Now you remember the Bible tells us to ‘Carry each other’s burdens.’ That’s what Iggy’s trying to do here.
Help carry your burden. Don’t you dare go stealing her blessing.
” She says this last part as a teasing admonishment that gets a smile out of Mom.
Mom touches the gold cross at her neck and gazes over at the window.
Melanie hands me a small, clear measuring cup and motions toward the bulb. I lift it, release the stopper, and let the fluid drip into the cup.
“See this tissue?” Melanie says, pointing to a string of bloody matter floating within the liquid. “That’s perfectly normal. But if you do notice bright red blood or white discharge with a foul smell, give us a call.”
“Good heavens,” Mom says. “It’s all so gross. I hate it.”
Melanie shows me how to record the numbers, how to flatten the bulb and replace the stopper, so the suction can keep doing its work. She watches me record the numbers, shows me how to wash the cup. “You’re a quick learner,” she says.
The kindness in her voice makes the shame come heavy, pulling me back to who I used to be.
I remember once, standing outside with Kennedy Claire in the after-school pickup line. The girl beside us adjusted her My Little Pony backpack.
Oh my God, Kennedy Claire said, loud enough to draw attention. Do you still watch cartoons?
The girl flushed, and I jumped in to ease the sting. I think it’s cute, I said.
She gave me a tiny, grateful smile.
But Kennedy Claire didn’t. She turned away, slid into the conversation with the girls on her other side, closing the circle so neatly that I was left standing alone on the curb.
I understood the rules then: you either met Kennedy Claire’s expectations, or she iced you out.
And I didn’t want to be left out in the cold.
So the next time she nudged me with her elbow and smirked at someone else’s expense, I forced a laugh.
After a while, I didn’t have to force it.
I was a part of it. A joke here, a whispered comment there, little cruelties that became second nature.
And by high school, there was no easier target than Melon-ball Melanie.
That day we skinny-dipped with her at The Hollow, Melanie dove beneath the water. Kennedy Claire looked at her pile of clothes, then looked at me, and I knew what she wanted me to do. So I did it. I grabbed her clothes, and we left her there.
I didn’t sleep well that night, wondering if or how Melanie even got home.
But she was at school the next day. I ran into her at the lockers, and she smiled sweetly at me.
The way she always did. Aside from the blush that stained her neck, she acted like it had never happened at all. And I had just moved on.
But now, the thought of it makes me physically ill, especially as I watch her care for my mother so gently. As she shows me a grace I don’t deserve. I want to apologize, but the words feel weak and out of place. Too little, too late.
“Thanks,” I say instead.
“Do you mind if I show Iggy your drainage site?” Melanie asks Mom.
Mom sits up so that Melanie can untie the hospital gown, which she then pulls forward to show me where the tube enters Mom’s body.
Just under her armpit is a hole, the skin puckered around the emerging tube.
I can’t remember the last time I saw my mother’s armpit, if ever.
Now I see it, see the naked side of her torso, watch the fluid from inside her body pump slowly along with bubbles and bits of tissue.
This moment is so intimate I want to look away, but I don’t.
I touch my mother gently with two fingertips like Melanie shows me, to test if the skin is hot.
I feel Mom flinch. I think of when Izzy and I had chicken pox when we were seven, how Mom drew us an oatmeal bath, pressed the paste to our itchy skin with her bare hands, how it felt natural, that closeness, that total lack of boundaries between the three of us, that oneness.
Now all I feel is loss. The loss of Izzy. The distance from everyone I’ve loved. The way the girl who once ran through the Sherman woods feels like a stranger to me now. It overwhelms me.
Beside me, Melanie pulls off her gloves with a snap and tosses them in the trash behind the bed. The sound breaks the moment.
I jerk my hand back fast, knocking my purse from the bedside table. The contents spill.
And there, beneath the harsh hospital fluorescence, lies the invitation, back side up. The scrawled words plainly visible for everyone to see.