The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [45]
“What an international combination. I think I’ll stick with England,” Ginger says, and orders the fish ’n’ chips.
“What a cholesterol buster!” Julianne retorts.
“Ah. What difference does it make? A little saturated fat every once in a while? How much can it matter?”
Andrea arrives seconds later, as dry from head to toe as Ginger had been wet. She touches Ginger’s slicker on the spare chair—“What did you do, take a bath?”
“Tried to run for it between cloudbursts and didn’t make it.”
Andrea sets her umbrella next to the dripping coat and takes the seat as far as possible from the rain gear. “I don’t think anyone else is coming. Too nasty outside.” She picks up a menu. “Did you order already? I’m about starved.”
When Andrea makes comments like this, Julianne usually thinks it might do Andrea good to starve a little more. Anyone who knew her back when Courtney was sick remembers her painful, twitchy scrawniness during that time. She’d looked like she needed a good meal. Now she looks like she’s had it. Ever since Courtney got better, Andrea has been gaining weight, not so much that she’s exactly fat, just chubby and lethargic. She dresses in unflattering styles and refuses to get a good haircut or put highlights in her mouse-colored hair. She speaks in flat, beige monotones that don’t quite suppress an undercurrent of fear. Like the superstitious old wives who hide from the evil eye, Andrea seems to believe that if she doesn’t make too much of herself, the evil spirits won’t notice her or take aim. As long as she tries to erase herself, Courtney will stay healthy. She doesn’t say this out loud, but everybody knows. Her life is dwarfed by the illness of a child who’s been well for ten years.
But today Andrea seems perkier than usual. Decidedly perkier.
“How’s Paisley?” Ginger asks. “My kids see you going in and out of her house all the time. They say you’re the only one brave enough to visit her every day.”
“Brave has nothing to do with it,” Andrea says, sounding like someone coming awake after a long sleep. “She’s my friend. Eleven years ago she got me through Courtney’s surgery and chemo.”
“Courtney’s doing okay?” Julianne asks.
“She just had all her tests. We’re waiting for the rest of the results. So far, so good.”
“I’m glad.” Julianne is glad, though Courtney has turned into such an unappealing creature that some of the younger kids call her “growly-face” because she looks like a dog who’d bite the first chance she got. Julianne has advised the children not to take this notion public. “Every year’s a milestone,” she tells Andrea.
“We were talking about Paisley just before,” says Ginger, doggedly returning to the subject Julianne had thought they were moving away from, after meeting early to have this private discussion. “We were wondering—well, I was wondering—if Paisley’s drinking could have something to do with her being sick.”
Andrea goes expressionless. “Paisley’s drinking?”
“You know what I mean. She always has a glass in her hand.”
Andrea gives a short bark of a laugh. “Oh, that. Paisley hasn’t had a drink for years.”
“Be serious,” Ginger says.
“I am. She doesn’t drink at all. Not even wine. Paisley would just as soon no one knew about it, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
Julianne isn’t buying this. She tries to remember the pre-op patient history sheet Paisley filled out. On the multiple-choice question about alcohol consumption, hadn’t she marked “one or more drinks per day”? Julianne isn’t sure she noticed.
“She stopped drinking six or seven years ago,” Andrea says. “Brynne was in third or fourth grade. One day she came home from school and accused her mother of being an alcoholic. They’d been studying it in school, and the teacher had defined an alcoholic as someone who took a drink every day.
“It was really awful for Paisley. She was completely shocked. Completely taken aback.” There’s a brisk defensiveness in Andrea’s tone. “It had never occurred to Paisley that