Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [77]
“Who’s going to be with you through this? You need somebody.”
“I was hoping you would stick around.”
Stephanie slipped her arms under my shirt, her bare hands hot against my flesh. “I’ll stick around as long as you want me to.”
“Just till I’m eating mush. After that I won’t know who’s here and who’s not.”
“I’ll be here.”
When we went back inside, arm in arm, the girls gave each other knowing looks. They’d set the table as formally as a wedding banquet, had come up with the idea of cooking breakfast, dollar pancakes, Allyson’s favorite. Stephanie and I added juice and scrambled eggs to the menu.
I surrounded more than my fair portion of pancakes, feeling invincible the way Bill Murray felt invincible in Groundhog Day. Clog up my arteries? That would take years.
“So?” Britney asked at the conclusion of our breakfast. “Are you two getting engaged?”
“Brit!” Allyson shouted. “I told you not to say that.”
Stephanie could see as painfully as I could the irony of my daughters trying to plot out the rest of our lives at a time when our family was on a countdown timer.
“What makes you think we might get married?” I asked.
“She stayed overnight,” Allyson said.
“That was only to save her from a long drive. Honey, we’re working on a project.”
“You don’t like her?” Britney asked. “Isn’t she pretty?”
“Of course I like her. And she’s very pretty. But there are other considerations.”
“Like what?” Allyson asked.
“Ally,” Britney said. “You’re going to spoil everything.”
“You started it.”
Filled with emotion, Britney looked around the table and said, “Daddy never lets anybody stay over. This is a millstone.”
“A milestone,” said Stephanie softly. “I think you mean it’s a milestone.”
“Yeah, right, whatever. The second Suzanne never stayed over once, and he really liked her. Mrs. LeMonde never even came in the house. Holly was nice, but . . .”
“What about Holly?” Stephanie asked.
“Morgan saw them kissing in the car.”
“I’m sure your father’s kissed a lot of women in the car.”
“No, he hasn’t really,” Britney said. “Just Holly, and the second Suzanne, and maybe Mrs. LeMonde.”
The breakfast was sitting foully in my stomach, but I didn’t heed the warning.
I barely made it to the bathroom, dropping to my knees in front of the commode and retching until there was no more to bring up. I couldn’t remember ever vomiting so violently, or feeling my stomach walls actually connect with my spine. For a few moments in the middle of it, I thought I was going to choke to death, or die of heart failure.
From the doorway behind me, Stephanie said, “You all right?”
“I don’t know why I don’t read the symptoms for the next day before I go to bed.” I’d barely gotten the words out when another round shook me. And then a minute later, as I was washing up, the wave of nausea vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
Day 4: Headache goes away, cannot keep food down.
Stan Beebe had been through this. So had Holly, Newcastle, Joel McCain, Jackie, and those three in Tennessee. I was joining a select brotherhood.
I must have looked ashen when I came out of the bathroom, because Allyson took my hand and said, “You all right, Daddy?”
“Fine.”
“Did we leave eggshells in the pancakes? You get shell shock?” It was a longtime family joke.
“No. Everything was wonderful. I just have a bug in my stomach, that’s all.” I found myself kneeling in the living room, clutching my eldest.
Britney, who had been obsessed with death and abandonment issues since her mother left, rushed over and said, “You’re not going to die, are you?”
“No, of course not.” I caught Stephanie’s eye from the other room. “We all die eventually. You know that.”
“I know that. I’m not a baby,” Britney said. “But I want Ally and me to be at least twenty-one before you die.”
“I’ll be twenty-three. You’ll be twenty-one,” Allyson said. “I’m