Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [98]
The next thing I knew, Brian was gently nudging me awake. “You’d better get to bed.”
It took me a moment to remember why he was here, why we were on the porch.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nearly three.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“I’ll stay the weekend,” he assured me. “C’mon. You’re exhausted.”
I slipped into bed still dressed. The tears came easily. Not so much for Fay as for Zoë—and for shame that deep down, were I to admit it, my relief overwhelmed any sorrow. You played the odds in life. Statistically there were only so many bodies that succumbed to cancer a year. I wept in gratitude to God that my loved ones weren’t the victims of chance this time around.
In the morning, while Brian was in the shower, I took Robbins Pathology out of his bag and searched the index. I flipped to the given page and stared at the photograph of a single breast cancer cell. The cell comprised an irregular, spherical mass, its surface riddled with interlacing strings of light like those writhing on the surface of the sun. It was aware of its power, fecund, cunning arms reaching to embrace its host.
We sent our condolences by mail. Everett and I signed our names to a card Valerie had made. I called a Chicago flower shop and asked to have an arrangement of flowers delivered to the Walker house. The florist asked what I wanted on the card.
“There’s a card?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “We pin it to the center of the arrangement.”
“Can I skip the card?”
“We have balloons instead.”
“This is for a funeral, not a birthday party.”
“They’re very tasteful,” the clerk said.
“I don’t want balloons.”
“You can only order one balloon.”
“I don’t want any balloon.”
Zoë specifically asked that none of us make the trip for the funeral. I considered calling but didn’t want to be a burden. I tried to send an e-mail.The blank computer screen proved as insurmountable as the sympathy card. In the end I gave up trying to piece together my condolences. I wrote Zoë a brief message, asking if she would want company. She wrote back saying yes. I packed a book bag and a suitcase, the book bag for overnight clothes and a toothbrush, the suitcase to hold the essays I hadn’t yet graded.
The drive to Chicago was more tedious than I remembered. For hours, the Indiana fields stretched gray to the right and left. By the time the automated tolls appeared to signal the nearness of the city, my back and eyes had begun to ache. I called Zoë to say I was ten minutes away. Three wrong turns and two hours later I called to say I was ten minutes away again. When I finally arrived she stood waiting for me on the porch.
She was pale and too thin.
“Tired?” she asked.
“I’m exhausted.”
“Well,” she said, bending down to lift my overnight bag from the trunk. Her hair stood on end, spiked and coarse and smelling of sleep. “You’re in good company.”
The house was exactly as I remembered it from the one time I had visited: old, simply furnished. Books everywhere. The photographs on the mantel sat in purposefully slanted rows, Fay smiling happily in three of the five portraits. The sameness of the house surprised me. I wanted the drinking glasses on the tables and the plants on the windowsill to acknowledge what had happened, but they just sat there oblivious, safely mired in their thingness.
Zoë led me to the kitchen. The sun had begun to set, tipping the clouds in gold, casting neon slants of orange light from the row of tall windows to the floor.
“Are you hungry? There’s macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, lasagna, spaghetti, spaghetti.” She leaned over the open refrigerator door. “Anything that could possibly be casseroled, we have.”
I chose the dish that would cause the least amount of trouble.
“I’m glad you didn’t come to the funeral,” she said, spooning the spaghetti into a bowl. “The sanctuary was packed. They said we had over four hundred people at the visitation. The line to the cemetery was long enough for some political dignitary. I had to comfort people.”
She spoke matter-of-factly, a newscaster giving