A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [131]
Melissa looked away. There would always be, Bridget knew, a fierce loyalty to the mother that Bridget would not interfere with. A quality one could only admire.
“Maybe,” Melissa said, leaving the door open but not committing herself.
It was enough, Bridget thought. It was quite a lot, actually.
Bridget asked questions then and Melissa politely answered them, once offering a question of her own, which astonished Bridget. “How are you feeling?” the girl asked.
Bridget thought a minute. She took a sip of coffee. She decided to tell Melissa the truth, unedited.
She worried about the tentacles of the star shape, she told the girl. She had a 50 percent chance of a recurrence, the correct term for the cancer’s return. If it did return, it would show up in the bones or the brain or the liver. She hoped to make it until Matt was Melissa’s age. This was the bargain she had more or less made with God: Let Matt get to twenty, and then you can do whatever you want with me. One could never really use the word “cure.” One had to think of oneself as “a work in progress.”
All this she told Melissa, who seemed startled at times by some of the revelations, but who appeared to take it in with concern. She was, Bridget thought, the perfect person in whom to confide. A woman who might want the information but who would remain essentially detached. The stranger on the plane to whom one confessed everything.
“That answer you gave last night at dinner,” Bridget said, “about the Arab men on the plane. I thought it was the best at the table.”
Melissa tilted her head. She would know, Bridget thought, that Bridget meant what she said, that she was not pandering, that a woman who had confessed being afraid of a recurrence in the bones might be expected to tell the truth.
The sun was hot on Bridget’s back as she packed the car, Matt and Brian ferrying suitcases and suit bags and presents to the back of the van. (Presents! Bridget hadn’t anticipated those.) Bridget had said to Bill when he’d found Bridget and Melissa in the dining room (quickly forestalling what she feared might be another collapse on Bill’s part, her new husband decidedly unhinged this weekend) that he should drive back with Melissa so that the girl wouldn’t have to make the journey alone. Bridget would take Matt and Brian. She had then gone in search of Nora to thank her but had no luck. She’d been reluctant to disturb the woman in her suite. Nora had to sleep sometime.
Bridget would write her a long letter when she got home.
“And then they lived happily ever after.”
Bridget turned to find Rob and Josh, identical suit bags hooked over their shoulders.
“Where’s the groom?” Rob asked.
“We’re separated,” Bridget said.
“So soon,” Rob lamented, smiling at the joke.
Bridget embraced him. “Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“A long and happy life,” Josh said, giving Bridget the quick hug of an acquaintance who might soon become a good friend.
“I’m calling you next week,” Rob said. “After a suitable period of marital bliss.”
“You’re in Boston for a while?”
“For twenty days. Count ’em.”
“And you’re going to London,” Bridget said, addressing Josh.
“In four days.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thank you.”
“So, we’re off,” Rob said. He turned to Matt. “You take care of your mom,” he said and shook the boy’s hand. “I’ll send you that CD we talked about,” he added, “and you keep working on your chords.”
Matt nodded, and Bridget knew her son would be immensely pleased to have had his own music acknowledged by such a gifted musician.
Rob turned, a wave beginning. But then he stopped. He walked to where Bridget stood by the van and embraced her again, this one lasting seconds. This one saying what he had not said all weekend, what he would not say in front of Bridget’s son.
I know you’ll beat it.
Rob stood back and hitched the strap of his suit bag a little higher on his shoulder.
“Me, too,” Josh said.
Bridget slammed the rear