I brought books. Lots and lots of books.” I speak carefully and purposefully in what my father calls my brogue, the clipped Standard American English one learns in speech class the first semester of college to keep prospective employers north of the Mason-Dixon Line from branding you a halfwit. The blades of the overhead fans keep a lazy downbeat for the cicadas outside the sunroom. I recorded the sound on my first trip home from L.A., something to drown out the din of my apartment complex neighbors fucking and fighting in languages I’d never heard.
“Tina,” I say from the white birch love seat in the corner. Tina snaps to attention, her tiptoes halting the basket swing, a decorating fiasco from the seventies. I grab You Can Heal Yourself from the carry-on by my side and hold it next to my face.
“The theory is we cause our disease through our thinking,” I tell her, feeling my heartbeat in my ears. “Lung cancer can actually be caused by holding in our true feelings.”
Garrett and Sis, perched on identical rockers, are looking anywhere but at me. Tina stares blankly at the book. “Good God, has it always been this hot down here?” I say, mopping the flop sweat from the back of my neck with a tissue. Tina takes the book. Sis rolls her eyes. Garrett pushes an unruly lock of silvery mane from his face, the result of too many three-dollar haircuts from Frank Whitman, an elderly barber who should have been forcefully retired from service years ago.
“You know what, punkin?” Garrett says to Tina. “I’ve had a cancer policy on you since we were married. If a medicine or a procedure costs whatever, the policy’ll pay that amount, plus they’ll pay us again the same amount for our trouble.” He shoves another fistful of white hair over his ear with a prideful glance at Tina, who smiles and lightly touches Garrett’s knee in silent thanks.
“Well,” I say, grabbing another book from the carry-on, trying to retain control of the situation, “that’s good to know. But it would be really great if we could rely on Western medicine as little as possible. I mean, I know you’ve decided on having the chemo, Tina, but still…” I stall for a moment before finally stepping into the wobbly abyss. “Sis, read this—Recovery—about a woman with lung cancer who heals herself with macrobiotics.”
Sis, now the size of a twig and looking so much like her mother, takes the book and fans herself with it. “This isn’t one of those California things, is it?”
“No,” I say, like she’d asked if it was a treatise on devil worshipping. “It is not.”
“Good. ’Cause if it is—”
“It is not one of those California things. Now.” I wave another book through the thick, sultry air, this one a tome of almost eight hundred pages, perhaps not the best choice. “Macrobiotic philosophy teaches cancer is caused by an imbalance in the body brought on by unbalanced eating.”
Swatting an invisible mosquito, I check their reactions. Sis picks a broken nail, Garrett yawns, and Tina chews her bottom lip in concentration. “This diet requires a great deal of study and preparation. It yields best results under a completely controlled organic environment.” I turn to a glass-eyed Garrett and proceed with caution. “Garrett. I’m g-g-going to have to teach you how to cook.” I pray my father doesn’t notice I actually stuttered like I did for a short time when I was five.
Garrett rolls his eyes at Sis, then sets his sights back on me. “Are you sure this isn’t one of those California things, Skeeter?”
“It is NOT one of those California things!” I say, standing, unconsciously caving in to my need to feel bigger than them at this moment. “It is Japanese. Way, waaaaay across the Pacific far, far away from anything California. Okay?” The mosquito truck backfires, heading up the hill in front of the house. Everyone jumps like a bomb went off. For a split second, I think how much easier it would be if I were instead attempting to soothe a roomful of egomaniacal Hollywood hotheads.
I check my list on a nearby end table and sit back down. “Now. In the next couple of days, I’m going to completely rid the whole place of all household chemicals. No pesticides, polishes, or cleaners. We can make our own soaps and shampoos.”
Garrett says “Ha.” Sis snorts. Tina masks a smile of mortified intrigue, stealthily watching Garrett and Sis’s reactions.
“Tina,” I say, “there’s a couple who teach at a place in Tennessee. It’s a community of people, not really a commune.”
“Commune?” Tina says. “In Tennessee?”
“Well, it’s a ten-hour drive. It’s a weekend thing. If you’re up for it.”
“Commune,” Garrett says. “Isn’t that—”
“It is not—” I snap, slapping the same mosquito hard on the back of my neck. “Shit!”
Tina winces.
“Watch your mouth,” Garrett says.
“Sorry.”
“Commune,” Garrett says to Sis, and they both snort. Tina has pulled her blouse up around her throat, attempting to disappear.
“Some sort of sex camp,” Sis says, trying to catch her breath from a deadly case of the giggles.
Snatching a moment to clear the air, I glance around the room at nothing in particular. But all eyes are still on me, everyone waiting for another punch line. Garrett and Sis exchange another look before breaking into hysterical laughter.
“Well,” I say, my voice cracking. “I think it could be a good thing,” I say, trying to keep Tina’s focus.
“Commune,” Sis says.
Rattled, my face flushed with heat, I scooch down on the Mexican tiled floor and quietly ask for a cold, damp cloth for my face.
Later that night, as I’m finally drifting off in my room at the end of the hall, I feel my father’s hand tousle my hair. It isn’t the only time I’ve felt it since my childhood, as it has become a practice reserved solely for the first night of my visits.
I know the day will come when I’ll miss it.