Chapter 9 #3
Charlie made a gagging noise. Too soon post-Hank for that to be funny. “I knew it!” he crowed. “I knew he was your boyfriend.”
“Charlie—” I started to say, but Luke took my hand.
“Yep, I am,” he told Charlie. “Maybe next we should fly out to the Fox Islands.” He put an arm around Charlie’s shoulders, and pulled me into him with the other arm. “Have you two ever been out there?”
We had such a nice day together. We went to lunch with Luke in Glen Arbor, then went back to his house and talked about plans to renovate it, while Charlie ran on the beach and skipped stones. Luke and I sat on his deck, his arm around me, watching Charlie play. It was perfect.
“Why did you sigh like that?” he asked, his fingers winding through my hair.
“I didn’t mean to. I was thinking that I don’t want this day to end. It was so much fun. Thank you, Luke.”
He tightened his arm around me. “Coffee.”
“Huh?”
“What you just said reminded me of how excited you were when I brought you coffee on the way to the meet. Also there was your reaction to the coffee this morning…” I tucked my chin and blushed. “It doesn’t take much to make you happy.” He kissed my head.
We had spent the whole day relaxing—no work, no cleaning, no cooking, no fighting.
No worrying about transportation, or people pinching my ass.
Well, people who were not Luke pinching my ass.
What was not to like about this day? But the biggest part for me had been the company.
“You make me happy,” I told Luke, and bit my lip.
He turned my face to his, and rested his forehead on mine. “You make me happy, too.”
Charlie was asleep when Luke dropped us off at home after a late dinner that night.
Apparently he and Frankie had stayed up for quite a while past their usual bedtimes.
I was trying to push back a feeling of suffocating guilt for having left Cassie for so long, for having a fun day, for being healthy instead of sick.
“Cassie has chemo tomorrow,” I said.
Luke nodded. “How is that going?”
“She won’t tell me anything.” I picked at a thread in my jeans.
“She won’t let me come to her doctor appointments, and then won’t say what the doctor tells her.
I’ve read everything I could, called my old professors to ask them questions.
The prognosis isn’t great for her under the best of circumstances, but I don’t really know. ”
“Maybe she should go downstate to a bigger hospital.”
That made me angry. “Maybe. Maybe we should drive there in our Rolls Royce.”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
I shook my head. “No, I know. I’m sorry. I’m worried and I’m taking it out on you. It will be fine. We’ll be fine.” I nodded now, reassuring myself. “It will be fine. I have this.”
“I’ll call you when I land—no, I can’t. How am I going to get in touch with you?”
I shrugged. “Carrier pigeon? Call me at the NGS, I guess.”
Luke pursed his lips. “I’ll figure something out.” He got out of the car, and walked to the passenger side. Checking to see that Charlie was still asleep, he bent and kissed me, then looked at me, and kissed me again. “I wish you were coming home with me.”
I shivered. “Me too.” Luke nuzzled me.
“I love your neck.”
“Uh huh….”
He took my butt in both hands, kneading it. “I love your ass.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, gasping into it. I loved that he loved it.
Luke’s hands moved up to my back, stroking gently. He kissed back up my jaw to my mouth, then pecked my nose. “I don’t want to leave you here.”
“It will be fine. I’ll take care of everybody,” I said.
“Take care of yourself too, all right?”
“I will.”
Luke nodded slowly, then kissed me again.
∞
Mike was in the living room drinking a beer when Charlie and I came in. There were three or four empties on the floor at his feet and an overflowing ashtray. “The TV is still broken,” he announced, waving his bottle at it.
Yes. And it would remain so, until the Money Fairy arrived, or we found a pot of gold.
“Hi Daddy,” Charlie yawned. “We went in an airplane and saw so much stuff.”
Mike nodded, looking at the fuzzy picture of a baseball diamond on the TV.
“Head up to bed,” I told Charlie. “Brush your teeth, don’t just wet the toothbrush. Use toothpaste!” He shot me a wounded look, but I was on to his tricks. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I got your groceries,” Mike announced.
“Really? I mean, thanks!” Maybe we were turning a corner. “How was Cassie today?”
Mike shook his head and took a long swig of beer. “She’s a fucking mess.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I started to go to the stairs.
“Don’t bother,” he called to me. “She’s just the same, lying around.”
I walked slowly over to him. “She’s really sick, Mike.” He made a face. “Don’t you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe. She says she’s fine, you come storming up here from Ann Arbor, taking over, saying she’s so sick. She has the surgery, I guess it doesn’t work. She tells me she’s getting better, so I come back and find out she’s a fucking mess. A fucking mess,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to belabor this, but she is your wife. Right? In sickness and in health?”
He looked up at me, squinting his eyes. “There you go again. Always have to be the smartest one in the room, don’t you. Be-fucking-labor. You think because you wasted some money at the University of fucking Michigan, you’re a hot piece of shit.”
I breathed in and out. “I don’t want to fight.” This was an old, old argument. “Are you coming tomorrow to her chemo?”
He took another sip of beer, and didn’t answer.
“If you don’t come, I’ll need the car. Maybe you could come, help her out a little.” He still didn’t answer. “Where are you sleeping tonight? With Cassie?”
“I can’t touch her. She’s a bag of bones.”
I was struggling to keep my composure. “I’ll sleep with Charlie. Good night.”
I walked slowly up the stairs, and got my pjs and clothes for the next day out of my room, which looked like a tornado had been through it. I pushed Mike’s dirty clothes into a pile in the corner with my foot, but that was all I was willing to do.
Charlie was already in bed. “Scoot over,” I told him, squeezing into the twin bed next to him.
“Let’s see who can kick the least, ok? Goodnight, pal.
” He cuddled up to me and sighed sleepily.
I thought about Luke, alone in the big bed, with the soft sheets.
I tried to hold onto good thoughts of him to get to sleep.
I didn’t need an alarm the next morning. I was already awake and thinking about the day, with Charlie draped all over me. I had definitely won the “who can kick the least” contest the night before. I crept out of bed and went to Cassie’s room.
She was awake too, sitting on the side of the bed. “Good morning,” I said softly.
Cassie looked up at me, her eyes sunken. “I’m not going today,” she said flatly. “I’m not doing it.”
I took a breath. “I know how hard it—”
“You don’t know. You don’t know at all.”
“You’re right. You’re right, I don’t know. But, Cass, you have to do it. This is what the doctor says to do, to help you to get better.
She rested her face in her hands. “I’m not doing it.”
“Let me get you some crackers to settle your stomach, and maybe you’ll feel up to it.”
I went to my bedroom door. “Mike! Mike, get up!” I knocked, then knocked louder. “Mike!”
He opened the door, scratching his stomach. I averted my eyes.
“Cassie doesn’t want to go to her chemo.”
“Yeah?”
“She has to! She has to if she wants to get well.” I waited. “I know you want her to get well, right?” Nothing. “So can you talk to her? Maybe she’ll feel better about going if you’re there.”
He nodded, scratching lower. Oh, good gracious. “I’ll talk to her.”
I nodded too, and hopped off to get into the shower first.
By the time I got out and got dressed, Charlie was making toast, and Cassie and Mike were also downstairs at the table. I walked in warily, wondering what it all meant.
“I’ll go to my appointment,” Cassie announced. “Mike wants to come and help me, so you don’t need to.”
“Oh, ok.” Thank goodness. She was going.
“Well, Mike, can you drive Charlie and me, then come back to get Cassie? She needs to be there at ten. And then can you pick up Charlie and me at the Aquatic Center at five?” He looked very put-upon.
I quickly continued. “Thanks so much, Mike, it’s so nice to have you back here to depend on.
” I smiled at him, hoping I hadn’t left him an out.
So Mike dropped off Charlie, then drove me into town to the store.
“Don’t forget to bring the basin,” I told him.
“And here—” I handed him a handful of hard ginger candies.
“She can suck on these. Make sure she drinks water too, because she gets really dehydrated. And when she’s feeling up to it, start with some crackers—”
“God damn it!” Mike yelled. “Will you just shut up? I’ll drive her to the fucking appointment, if you shut your bossy mouth!”
I got out of the Jeep. I had just managed to pull my bike out of the back and slam the door when Mike pulled away, squealing the tires and leaving me coughing up dust.
Martha was surprised to see me at work instead of at the hospital with my sister. “Mike took her,” I explained.
“Michael Finn?” she asked disapprovingly, as if there was another Mike that might be involved.
“The one and only.” I waited on pins and needles all morning for some word of how Cassie was doing.
I tried to imagine only the best: Mike holding her hand, charming the nurses (he did have that side to him), giving Cassie ice chips to suck until she felt good enough for the drive home.
Then, out of nowhere I would have vivid thoughts of Luke: smiling, pushing my hair back, kissing my stomach, and then his dark head moving lower—I needed an ice bath after that one.
At around noon, a delivery driver came into the store. “I’m looking for Emily Brennan?”