The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [14]
It was Paisley, not John, who got Andrea through the nightmare that followed. Who warded off the gloom-and-doom neighbors. Who spread hopefulness like angel dust. During those first frantic days, when Paisley heard John make some comment about Courtney’s dire condition, she turned and snapped at him, “For heaven’s sake, John, don’t start burying her just yet!” Never before and never since has Andrea heard Paisley be short with anyone. It stopped John in midsentence.
Surgery, chemo, checkups—dreadful, but Courtney survived it. Losing John was terrible. The smooth, mannerly surface of the relationship they’ve maintained ever since is terrible, still—the emptiness of a marriage running on autopilot. Andrea doesn’t often dwell on this, but on the rare occasions when it opens like a draining wound, she decides that, on balance, keeping her daughter, and gaining Paisley, was worth it.
Andrea discovered later that Paisley had an instinct for knowing when people were in trouble. Andrea was only one of her projects, maybe the first. When Paisley saw Courtney sick and John paralyzed and Andrea cowering, there was nothing for her but to step in. It was not even a conscious decision. To cheer Andrea on her lowest days, Paisley would tell stories about herself she swore no one else knew, so unlikely, so funny that Andrea would find herself once more the self that could put on a happy face for her ailing daughter and anyone else who happened to be looking.
Their lasting friendship was a fallout no one expected. By the time Courtney had begun to recover, Andrea had discovered beneath Paisley’s sparkling surface a thoughtfulness, an innerness she wouldn’t have guessed at. And Paisley—though she wouldn’t have admitted this—had found Andrea easy. Easy to talk to. Easy to trust. “Lagniappe” Paisley liked to call their bond, a New Orleans term for something extra that you didn’t pay for, thrown in to sweeten the deal. It’s certainly been sweet for Andrea. She peels another potato. There are enough here to feed all of Brightwood Trace.
Until today, Paisley has been good about giving Andrea regular updates about the tests she’s undergoing. Their conversations haven’t been long, but they’ve been purposeful. “More liver-function studies. Big issues with the liver, but they’re not sure what.”
Or, “Another biopsy. I’ll call you later.”
Or simply, almost lightly, “Cancer. But no details until tomorrow.”
Tongue-tied into silence, Andrea was as shocked as if she herself had brought their story full circle, from Courtney’s illness to Paisley’s. When she bought a white ribbon and tied it around her maple tree out front, she knew the neighbors would do the same. It wasn’t much, but all of them knew Paisley would see them as she traveled through the neighborhood to her house. Andrea hoped their purity and festiveness would somehow temper the sharpness of the news.
Courtney is so quiet, so absorbed in painting her toenails, that the ticking of the kitchen clock sounds like something out of a suspense scene from a murder film. Maybe no news is good news.
Maybe not.
So when the phone rings just as she’s rehashing this in her mind, Andrea nearly drops the paring knife. Courtney looks over, polish brush dripping sticky liquid onto the counter, face frozen in expectation. Andrea picks up.
“Paisley?” But it’s Mason. “Paisley’s wiped out, so she asked me to call you,” he says.
Andrea is too stunned to breathe. She knows what this means. It means he’s reverting to a code that says, This is private. This is too painful. This is something we will never discuss. It dates from a time when Paisley had the last in a series of miscarriages