The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [32]
Beyond the confines of the den, life goes on in the house as if nothing unusual has happened. Paisley’s mother, Rita, moves through the rooms with such calm efficiency, such an air of serenity, that this is almost possible to believe. The girls are encouraged to wander in and out as usual with their friends. Mason arrives home from work at his normal hour, meals are served on schedule, records are kept of gifts and cards, the fluffed pillow or glass of ice water brought in exactly when Paisley might need it. Soccer practices, piano lessons, a birthday party—no one misses a beat. Homework schedules are posted on the refrigerator. If, as Julianne suspects, Rita’s show of tranquility is the result of a gargantuan act of will, she’s not letting anyone know.
Julianne also suspects much of this effort has gone toward sheltering Melody and Brynne, and she’s not sure this is such a good idea. Ten to one they haven’t been told much beyond Mom’s sick. That’s why her skin is so yellow. Grandma is here until she feels better. Julianne feels like a fraud, participating in this show of “business as usual.” It’s all she can do to make it through ten minutes of chitchat before she hurries out.
Today a hand touches her arm just as she reaches the door. “Mrs. Havelock?” It’s Brynne, standing stock-still beside her and nearly as tall, a straight line of arms and legs and a sheet of light-brown hair like a silk cloth against her back. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, honey. What?” Brynne glides around Julianne to open the front door and usher her out onto the porch, apparently for privacy. Although long limbed and still a bit gawky, not quite finished growing, Brynne has an air of serenity that makes her seem older than fourteen, in a sad sort of way. She isn’t going to be as pretty as her mother, Julianne thinks, but she has a quality of substance Paisley lacks—an observation that makes her feel slightly disloyal.
“It’s about Mom,” the girl says. “She doesn’t like to let on, but I think her back hurts even though she takes a bunch of Tylenol. Do you think it’s because she sits in that recliner so much? I thought since you work in a doctor’s office you might know.”
“Her back, not her stomach?”
“Her stomach hurt even before, but now I think it’s her back—from the way she touches it when she thinks no one’s looking. From the way she fidgets. Do you think it’s the recliner? Or is it part of the cancer?”
She says cancer with the same inflection she might use for flu or cold. The guilelessness of the question takes Julianne’s breath. Brynne’s aura of calm fills the space around them with a kind of peaceful willingness to listen to whatever Julianne has to say, no matter how long it takes her to say it. Purposefulness radiates from Brynne exactly as it does when she’s retrieving the family’s mail from the overstuffed box at the curb or reasoning with her volatile little sister. It’s unnerving.
“I think it’s fine for your mother to be in the recliner,” Julianne says, deliberately not answering the question. “But she ought to mention it to her doctor. Tylenol might not be the ideal painkiller for a backache. He can probably prescribe something better.”
“He can prescribe something better,” Brynne says—part statement, part soothing chant. Julianne can’t tell if she’s really as tranquil as she seems or just impenetrable. Never having raised daughters, Julianne isn’t intuitive about them. Before she can censor herself, she thinks that Brynne will be a fine hostess someday, but no one will ever call her a party girl, as they sometimes term Paisley.
Mason pulls onto the other side of the driveway just as Julianne begins to back out. They’re far enough apart that they don’t have to talk, just wave. Back when Paisley and Mason lived near Julianne on Dogwood Terrace, before Melody was born, Mason had always seemed delighted but a little bewildered by the fact of fathering a daughter like Brynne. He’d been raised in a family of raucous boys and seemed unsure what to do with