The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [13]
“Go somewhere else, Courtney,” Andrea says. “Did it ever occur to you that a kitchen is not an appropriate place for a manicure?”
“A pedicure,” Courtney corrects.
“A pedicure! Absolutely not! Take this project to your room.”
“I’ll clean the counter later. I’ll scrub it down with Clorox.” Courtney chooses a cuticle cutter from her collection. She braces her left foot on the newly scrubbed counter.
“Courtney.”
“What?” With muted savagery, the girl begins to pull pieces of skin from around her big toe. Andrea forgets what she was going to say. In any case, it no longer matters. She sees what’s going on. Courtney, a cancer survivor herself, a child about to go for the dreaded annual checkup that will determine if she’s still free of disease, needs the guise of this pedicure to steel herself for Paisley’s news. In Courtney’s mind, she is Paisley. She shares Paisley’s fate.
After waiting hours for Paisley’s call, Andrea is almost as unsettled as her daughter. Although the ribbons went up yesterday after Paisley’s firm diagnosis of cancer, there’s still no word on where it originated, how aggressive it is, or what kind of treatment she’ll need. Paisley is supposed to find out all that today. She has promised to phone Andrea as soon as she hears.
Shoving a handful of potato peels into the disposal, Andrea practices breathing exercises as she listens to them grind away. By the time the noise stops, Courtney has put down the cuticle cutter and is viciously scrubbing the bottom of her foot with the pumice stone. She sets the pumice stone back on the counter, seizes an emery board, and files her toenails. It’s like a film on fast-forward. Catching Andrea’s eye, she tosses the emery board away and lifts a bottle of polish for her mother’s approval. The color is a maroon so dark it could pass for black.
“No. Use a lighter shade. Didn’t we talk about this? Ultradark polish doesn’t allow your nails to breathe properly. You can get a fungus.”
“I’ll take my chances.” A flame of anger sparks under Courtney’s light tone.
Well, fine, every fourteen-year-old in town favors this color, what’s the harm? Andrea watches Courtney stroke polish onto the nail of her little toe, her tongue sticking out a bit, her face scrunched, a pose of concentration. Anxiety radiates from her like heat. Compared with previous precheckup outbursts, black polish is not so serious. Better than temper tantrums or cutting school. A countertop can be disinfected. A fungus can be treated. Paisley’s is a new cancer, not a recurrence, but to Courtney it’s all the same, a knifepoint of danger cutting through everything. If Paisley is incurable, so is all the world.
Andrea can no more talk to Courtney about this than she could bring herself to give a speech to an audience of thousands. She’s simply going to assume that, like Courtney, eventually Paisley is going to be all right.
Eleven years ago when Courtney was diagnosed with the Wilms’ tumor, everyone but Paisley thought the child was done for. While other people studied the ground and muttered platitudes about Courtney’s prognosis, Paisley looked Andrea straight in the eye and said, “She’s going to be fine,” with such fire of recovery in her voice that her certainty passed to Andrea like a torch.
It was a great gift, because Andrea’s husband, John, had gone stony. In his most rational, lawyerly tones, he went over the treatment options with Andrea a dozen times—surgery first and chemo later; it was the standard protocol. He did hours of research. But feelings? He wouldn’t admit to any. The most he’d do was pat Andrea awkwardly on the shoulder, as if she were a stranger he was obligated to touch.
The night before Courtney’s surgery, John’s mother flew in from Indianapolis and disappeared with him into the hospital waiting room to talk. When Andrea returned to get them so they could tell Courtney goodnight, she heard the sound of weeping drifting into the hall. Her mother-in-law? She hadn’t shown much emotion up to now. But no. It was John. John was weeping! “They’re going to cut open