Sis follows me, still sweaty from my run, up the ladder of the remnants of the ancient tree house. Even as an older, albeit misfit teen, I’d often come in from school and climb the ladder, pretending I was Alan Ladd in Shane come to save the sodbusters and their helpless families from Jack Palance and the other evil cattlemen. I’d hold a hand over one eye, like John Wayne’s patch in True Grit, so I could never see what was coming from the left side of my face.
Although the evergreen paint has since peeled from the ladder steps and most of the walls have fallen victim to Gulf Coast weather, Garrett had the good sense to build the floor out of treated lumber, which is the only reason we could still go into the big, creaking room without taking our life in our hands.
Sis groans as she climbs the last two rungs. “If I break my neck on some rotten—”
“You’re not gonna break your neck on some rotten,” I say, pulling her into the house. With a pair of binoculars I’ve taken from Garrett’s gun cabinet, I take a gander across the creek where Joe hammers particle board in the kitchen area of the Tischman house. “Here,” I say, offering Sis the binoculars.
“What?” Sis swats the air around her, cursing an imaginary fly. “Shit.”
“Remember Joe Tischman?”
“Irondick?” Sis squints into the binoculars and gasps. “Is that him?”
Tina climbs into the house, taking in her surroundings like a kid. “Who are we spying on?”
Sis says his name like something good to eat. “Joe Tischman.”
“Two points, Jackson Bobcats,” Tina says under her breath, shrugging her shoulders at my look of surprise at her uncanny recall. She leans her chin on the decaying banister and points the binoculars at the house across the creek. “Now, where’d he go to college? Ole Miss, I think.”
I take the binoculars from Tina, offering up information like a first-time drunk. “He never went to college. He went to India. And everywhere else you can think of. Hitchhiking, climbing mountains. But eventually he came back here to build houses. He’s very much in demand. He was in a bunch of magazines.”
Sis gnaws a pine straw. “You heard, though, right?”
“What?” I say, following Joe’s movement as he measures another particle board for cutting.
Tina takes back the binoculars. “His parents are in Gulf Shores. That’s all I know.”
“Janie Wright told me he went crazy,” Sis says. “He lost it over there, went bonkers, whatever. Had to spend some time in Bryce or Searcy. One of those places.”
Janie Wright’s daddy, the Academy’s only crossing guard, used to shoo imaginary colonies of ants off his feet while he ushered us from one side of the street to the other. Anything Janie Wright says, I take with a grain of salt.
Tina sits on the floor, hands me the binoculars, and hoists herself over the hatch. “Well, I’m glad you’ll have somebody your own age to play with while you’re here,” she says, climbing back down the ladder.
Tina disappears down the hole, and Sis barks in pain from a splinter she’s picked up from the wall of the tree house. “Ow, fuckit,” she says, glancing in my direction.
I take her hand and find the splinter in her palm. It’s a big one, easy to see.
“She’s so happy you’re here,” Sis says.
“Well, I’m happy to be here.”
“You are, aren’t you? I mean, you don’t mind?”
“No,” I say, lifting the splinter. “It sort of worked out. It was a very good time to leave L.A.”
“How’s Caroline?” She takes her hand back. “Isn’t that her name?”
“That’s her name. And we’re pretty much done. Like you, I hear?”
“Justine decided she wasn’t gay. I was like, after seven years you need a label?” Sis drops to the floor and begins making her way back down the ladder. “People are crazy, aren’t they?”
“They sure are,” I say, glancing once more in the direction of Joe’s house.
* * *
Tina and I are seated in two identical overstuffed easy chairs. I am attempting to smile reassuringly, something I’m getting really good at.
A fleshy, sour-faced woman in her mid-fifties shuffles into the chemotherapy ward. Stooped and brittle, she barely acknowledges our presence. “My name’s Rose O’Sharon, and I’ll be your chemo nurse.” I remember the same expression on the face of a rain-soaked possum I’d surprised while taking the trash out late one night. Rose O’Sharon trundles past us to a drawer behind my chair. “Mizrez Stalworth, I’ll tell you what I tell all my stage four cancer patients. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
I take Tina’s hand as if the act of doing so erases the fog of cruelty descending over the room.
“How’s that grandbaby doin’, Wanda?” she hollers at some unseen presence down the hall.
“Growin’ like a weed,” invisible Wanda hollers back.
“I’ll swanee,” Rose O’Sharon says, putting an end to the exchange, shuffling behind Tina’s chair and holding up the bag hanging from an IV stand. “Now, I’ll bring pamphlets,” she says, “to answer anything I don’t.” She plows through her somber speech at lightning speed like she does it a thousand times a day. “This is carboplatin. This drug is particularly tough on the veins. It will eventually begin to eat them away.”
The tragic excuse for a nurse sits on a stool across from Tina and takes her arm, and the matter at hand is under way before we know it. “It’s also hard on the kidneys, so drink plenty of water. It kills the good blood cells with the bad blood cells, so if you come down with a fever or infection, get to a hospital immediately. It could prove fatal. Germs are now the number one enemy in your camp, so you must do everything in your power to keep them as far away from you as possible. Umph,” she says, rising with a grunt before heading off to Pamphletland.
The first slo-mo drip of liquid poison drops from the plastic bag, and I’m thinking how the physical reality of the chemo itself seems hardly the stuff of nightmares. Just clear liquid and a needle.
Tina glances behind her chair at the bag. Her cheeks are rosy, and I remember what Justin and Marsala said about this being a symptom of the lung cancer. But this time they look rosier than ever, which makes me think the cancer is even more pissed off because the chemo is already beginning to kick its ass.
“Are you okay?” I say, kneeling in front of her.
She nods.
“Does it hurt?”
Tina shakes her head no.
“Great.” I take a moment to chase out all the loathing I’m presently feeling for the way this business of living, loving, and dying is set up. “Do you mind if I lead us in a proactive spiritual exercise?” I say, citing one of Justin and Marsala’s New Ageisms.
I get a weak smile from Tina as I put my arm behind her, closing my eyes, unsure how to begin.
“God?” I say, opening my eyes, unsatisfied with my paltry beginning. Glancing back at the bag hanging over my mother’s head, feeling the weight of all that lies before us, I shut my eyes tight. This time I feel some indescribable endowment from the control freak deities. “GOD! We thank you for this beautiful waterfall of healing, heavenly light which is now making its way through Tina’s body like a blowtorch of living energy completely annihilating any signs of cancerous growth in its thunderous path.”
I search Tina’s face for some sign of approval. “Are you all right?”
She nods and smiles.
I move closer like a quarterback in huddle, this time carefully coaxing, using words from an affirmation collection I’d found on my bedside table at the Village. “We realize the sentence of death is within ourselves. Which is why, in this moment, we choose—” I catch myself. “No. We gratefully accept light and life. Amen.”
Glancing silently about the room, I notice what can only be a large puddle of pee in front of the easy chair by the door. Probably the last patient’s knee-jerk reaction to some life-altering news. I make a mental note to lead Rose O’Sharon right through it on our way out.
* * *
Although I came away from that day with a great deal more than I started out with, I had something taken away from me at the same time: my cavalier attitude towards germs.
The signs are instantaneous. It starts with doorknobs.
Tina and I exit the Lincoln and make our way through the carport. Pointing to the door, I make sure she understands the critical importance of Rose O’Sharon’s warning. “Now. The door to the Little House will always be opened with one’s shirttail.” I demonstrate before we head to the entrance. “The gate to the breezeway,” I say, “with the underside of the forearm.”
Proceeding to the sunroom, I sense a bit of playfulness is called for at the French doors since Tina is becoming more befuddled with every instruction. “French doorknob?” I say in my worst Parisian accent, “back of ze hand.” Turning around, I open the door backward. Tina laughs as we proceed up the three steps. “The last door to the mudroom?” I say in a high-pitched, crazy voice. “SHIRTTAIL AGAIN!”
Garrett pokes his head around the corner and makes a face full of vinegar.
“You think I’m kidding?” I say, spinning around.
Garrett narrows his eyes, and I grab Tina’s hand, pulling her quickly into the house.
* * *
Tina knocks and enters at the same time. “Anybody home?”
I close my laptop and motion her into my bedroom.
“What are you working on? Tap, tap, tap. Like a woodpecker.”
“Just emails and stuff.”
“You know, I feel frightfully good,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Isn’t that crazy? I think that extra dose of seaweed and miso Justin and Marsala prescribed did the trick. I mean, I think I’ll still take the nausea pills, but—” She looks at me with wide-eyed disbelief. “Boy, you sure came a long way just for me. Thank you for reading all those books. And for all those prayers today. If I’d been a cancer cell anywhere near you I would have tucked my tail and run.” She sits quietly for a moment, biting a nail.
“Hey, punkin. You know what?” Garrett stops just outside my bedroom door. He pushes the door open and leans into the jamb, holding up a powder blue invoice of some sort, squinting through his bifocals. “That chemo you’re gonna be taking will be costing upwards of three thousand dollars a month. ’Course it’s not gonna cost us a dime with that old insurance policy I still carry on you. In fact, like I said, they’ll be paying us a pretty penny on top of everything they reimburse, but still…crazy, right?” Garrett winks and goes back down the hall.
Tina glances up at the ceiling. “Well, I always wanted to be a financial contributor to this household. I just thought there were easier ways to go about it,” she says. “But look at me,” she says ironically, running a finger over the bandage from her chemo injection. “I’m a cash cow!” She giggles and shakes her head.
“Well, thank God somebody is,” I say, taking her hand.
“Oh, which reminds me, your father left a book of checks in your top desk drawer over there, so at the beginning of every month, you can just send whatever you need out to your bank in California.”
For a moment I’m sure I’ve heard her wrong. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Your father said since you’re not working, and you’re helping us out, he thought he’d help you out. So.” Tina looks at me like I have no reason to be surprised. And in truth, I don’t. My parents have helped me out financially many times before. But the last time I was home, they finally said it was time I go down a different path. In fact, Tina had said tearfully, “I’ve seen you go through so much rejection, I wonder how much more my body and soul can take.” It was one of the worst moments of my life, that time when those closest to you finally throw in the towel. Tina’s words came back to haunt me after her diagnosis. Did my life as a loser give my mother cancer?
The cell phone vibrates on my bedside table, and Tina pats me on the knee. “You go on and get your phone call. It may be Frances.” She walks over to the door. “See you in the funny papers.” I still laugh every time she says it, just like when I was four.