Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [94]
With those words, Kathleen felt a black cloak wrap itself around her body, tight. She wanted to cry into his sweater as she had often done over the years when life got too hard, but she knew that she needed to be the strong one now.
“I understand if you don’t want radiation,” she said softly, remembering her sponsor, Eleanor, at the end—too weak and sick to walk, her hair falling out. “But there are natural approaches too. Homeopathic medicine has made big strides.”
He grunted. “No thank you. I plan to start smoking cigars and eating raw hamburger rolled in salt like my mother used to. Steak tartare, that’s called. I’ll pass on the chanting and all that, kiddo.”
She laughed, in spite of the situation. She had given him an Irish chant CD a few years back, and he had mocked it mercilessly every chance he had gotten since.
“Not chanting,” she said. “There’s real science behind it. I’ll do some reading. At the very least, it might make you feel more comfortable.”
Then she did start to cry, and the tears were fat and fast.
He hugged her close. “I’m going to tell your brother and sister now.”
She nodded.
“There’s one last thing,” he said. “Kathleen, your mother has been through hell in her life, in all sorts of ways. I only ever wanted to make that better for her, not add to it. I’m worried about how she’ll fare on her own. You, too, sweetheart. In my fantasy I picture the two of you helping each other through. That’s how I’d like it, anyway.”
It was typical of her father to be worried about Alice, even as he stood before Kathleen to say he was dying. She had a vision of the future without him in it and felt like she needed to sit down.
For as long as Kathleen could remember, he had wanted her to understand Alice. He had confided in Kathleen about the aunt she never knew who died young in a fire, a fact that Alice always blamed herself for. He had been angry when, in the throes of a teenage brawl with Alice, Kathleen had brought it up just to hurt her mother. She had felt terrible for doing it—still did, even all these years later. But she had never told anyone the story, not even Maggie or Clare.
“I’ll look after her,” Kathleen said weakly. “Even though all we have in common is loving you and being bad drunks.”
He smiled, shook his head. “You’ll both be surprised.”
That scared her. Already she had seen too much of Alice in herself—how small she felt on occasion; the way she was quick to judge or to argue or to bully. (How many times had Kathleen pushed Ann Marie to do her bidding? And she was proud of it, which was even worse.) There were certain words she was incapable of uttering without sounding like her mother. Even the earthy, almost sour smell of her skin when she woke each morning was like Alice’s, no matter what soap or lotion Kathleen applied before bed. And the drinking. If they had more than that in common, she would rather not find out.
After he told her the news, Kathleen stayed up late every night, doing research. None of it made sense to her. When she read “Your pancreas is about six inches long and looks like a pear lying on its side,” she was filled with rage. This little nothing, this sideways pear, would be enough to kill her father, who was everything? It seemed impossible.
Her dining room table, already piled high with magazines and newspapers and stray socks and Lean Cuisine trays, was now covered in computer printouts about cancer and a dozen library books on natural remedies.
Over the phone, Kathleen cried to Maggie, who was newly in New York and constantly worried that she ought to come home. Kathleen told her to stay put, though she secretly wished Maggie would return, and many weekends she did, always leaving the overage art dealer she was dating behind, thank the universe.
Kathleen wanted a drink more than she ever had in her life. She wondered if Alice felt this way too. She could remember the way one glass of wine would dull the edges, how two would make her cheeks grow warm, her thoughts turn rosier, more hopeful. But she also