Before I Go (5 page)

three

O
N SATURDAY MORNING, I can see my breath when I run out the front door to get the newspaper that was thrown haphazardly in the dewy grass. It’s as if winter decided it wasn’t quite done yet and elbowed the brief respite of spring out of the way. I shiver in my cotton pajama pants and long-sleeve T-shirt and hurry back inside, even though it’s not much warmer in our house of slightly cracked windows.

I snuggle into the couch, tugging a crocheted afghan I bought from a thrift store around my shoulders. I put my slipper-clad feet up on the coffee table, making the legs on the right side touch the ground. A significant hump runs the length of the floor in the den, causing the coffee table to act like a seesaw—if one side touches the ground, the other side hovers about half an inch above it. When we first looked at the house, Jack was concerned it was water damage that had warped the wood, but the inspector assured us it was just normal settling of the foundation on a house this old.

I pull the paper out of its plastic sheath and unfold the front page. Jack made fun of me when I called to order the
Athens Banner-Herald
delivery service shortly after we moved in. “You do know all of those stories are online, don’t you? For free?” I tried to explain that curling up on the sofa with my computer didn’t quite have the same soothing
effect. That I enjoyed the gray smudge of newsprint on my fingers. That the slightly acidic, slightly musty smell of the pages reminded me of weekends in my childhood spent tracing the comics with a pencil on notebook paper while Mom read Dave Barry and hooted. If it was a really funny one, she would cut it out with the good scissors and affix it to the fridge door with a magnet, where it would stay until the paper turned yellow and the edges curled. Jack didn’t understand any of this. He just shook his head at my purchase. “Only you.”

“T minus forty-five minutes to departure,” Jack announces from the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” I say without taking my eyes off the headlines I’ve been scanning. Benny jumps up onto the cushion beside me and I scratch his ears. For Jack, forty-five minutes doesn’t really mean forty-five minutes, so there’s no urgent need to budge from the indent I’ve settled into on our worn couch.

“Daisy,” Jack says.

This time I look up at him. And find that he’s naked. Holding a mug full of steaming coffee. I burst out laughing. He leans against the door frame, nonplussed, crossing his right ankle over his left.

“Happy Cancerversary,” he says with a clever grin. I jolt at the C-word. I was asleep when he got home last night, so when we woke up this morning, Jack immediately grilled me about the doctor visit and my tests, as if he could somehow glean the unknown results from every minute detail (“Did Dr. Saunders sound hopeful or worried?” “How did the technician look at you after the scan?”). Finally, when he was out of questions, we agreed we wouldn’t discuss my tests or the possible results for the entire weekend so as not to put a damper on our time together. But the irony that the purpose of the trip was to celebrate me being cancer free wasn’t lost on either of us. He pulls the cup to his lips with his left hand and takes a sip of the breakfast blend. The hot vapor fogs up his glasses.

“Jack, it’s freezing in here!”

With his empty hand, he casually scratches the back of his shaggy scalp and I notice he’s overdue for a haircut. He yawns. “That’s why I was just about to take a hot shower. Thought I could use some help.”

“Did you?” Jack and I rarely shower together. It’s nice in theory, but someone is always left out of the water stream, standing like a wet dog in the freezing air. But I quickly dismiss the downside of the practice because Jack looks so devilishly cute. “You must be
really
dirty,” I say, playing into his charade.

His smile spreads wider. “You have no idea.” He casually crosses his arms, and in the process sloshes hot coffee onto his bare stomach. I swear I can hear it sizzle when it touches his flesh, but he doesn’t flinch.

I suppress a laugh. “That really hurt, didn’t it?”

“Immensely,” he says, still not giving in to the pain.

I stand up and walk toward him, holding his gaze. When we’re parallel, I reach my hand out to the now-red skin on his stomach and gently wipe the dripping mocha liquid off his abdomen. Then I lean close to his face, so close that I can see the soft downy fuzz on his cheeks, and whisper in one quick burst, “First one to the bathroom gets to stand under the showerhead.” I take off like a shot and can hear Jack lumbering behind me. Just as I get to the bathroom door, his arm encircles my waist, throwing me off balance, and I shriek. We stumble to the ground, both laughing, Jack’s naked hindquarters landing with a smack against the hardwood floor. Out of breath and still laughing, he leans over to kiss me. My T-shirt disappears over my head and Jack cups my left breast with his hand. He rubs the pad of his thumb over the small scar.

And though I don’t believe in ESP, I know we’re both thinking the same thought: Somewhere in there is another tumor. Olly olly oxen free. Come out, come out wherever you are.

Then Jack’s thumb moves slowly to my nipple and I sharply inhale, grateful for the distraction.

Later, when I’m in the bathroom alone, pulling my hair up into a ponytail elastic to create a messy bun, I hear Jack in our bedroom next door, cursing. “Have you seen my jeans?” He owns three pairs, but I know he’s referring to the only ones he wears in public, a dark blue wash from American Eagle. A purchase he made when I finally dragged him to the mall after trying to explain to him for months that holey, ripped-up jeans might have been a good look in high school when he was listening to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on cassette single, but now it just makes him look homeless.

“In the dryer,” I call back. I cringe thinking of the drawers that I’m sure he’s rifled through and left looking like a half-off bin at Ross. It amazes me that as smart as Jack is, it never occurs to him to check various places in the house when he’s searching for something. Isn’t laundry the next logical step if you can’t find an article of clothing in the dresser?

Jack passes the bathroom in his boxers and thunders down the rickety wooden steps to our dungeon of a basement in search of his pants. I take one last glance in the mirror and then walk into our room to start refolding all the clothing that’s askew. A few minutes later, Jack returns wearing his freshly laundered jeans. “Babe, stop it,” he says when he sees me. “I’ll do that. You go relax.” He takes the T-shirt out of my hands, and I have to physically stop myself from snatching it back from him. Jack doesn’t fold shirts. He kind of rolls them up like individual sleeping bags and stuffs them haphazardly into the dresser.

I turn and perch myself on our king bed, trying to ignore Jack’s imprecise method. “Did you pack your razor?” I ask.

“Yep.”

“Boxers?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What about your—”

“Daisy,” he cuts me off. “I got everything. You worry too much.”

After he pulls his socks on and stuffs his feet into a pair of scuffed brown boots that he’s owned for as long as I’ve known him, he leans over to kiss my cheek.

“I’m gonna take our stuff to the car,” he says. “You ready to go? Meet me out there?”

He leans over to zip the suitcase and hefts it out of the room.

As soon as I hear the back door creak open and slam shut, I hop off the bed and open the drawer where his shirts are smushed together like bulging Tootsie Rolls. One by one, I quickly pick them up and crease them in the exact center, then make a series of near-origami folds until each shirt is a perfectly rectangular cotton parcel. Satisfied, I close the drawer and grab my shoulder bag from the hook on the closet door. In the hallway I pause at the bathroom, then duck inside and pull back the shower curtain. I scan the tub, the vanity, and then open the medicine cabinet. And that’s where I spot it. Jack did remember his toothbrush and razor, but his contact solution stands like a lone soldier left on the battlefield. I tuck it into the side pocket of my sack and yell “Coming!” when Jack calls to me from the back door.

“ARE YOU GOING to tell me where we’re going?” I ask from the passenger seat of the Ford Explorer Jack has been driving since he got his license thirteen years ago. The air coming out of the vents hasn’t warmed yet, so I tuck my cold hands under my thighs.

“It’s a surprise,” he says.

“Did you get a cabin in Ellijay?”

He laughs. “OK. Maybe it’s not a surprise.”

“You left the Web page up a few weeks ago.” And then, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t ask, that I would trust Jack to plan everything out, I say, “What are we doing for food?”

He drums his thumb against the steering wheel to the beat of the song coming through the speakers. Something by the Lumineers.

“Daaaaa-isy,” he says, drawing out the “a” like he does when he teases me. “It’s under control.”

His BlackBerry sitting in the cup holder between us starts buzzing. He turns down the volume knob on the CD player in the dashboard.

“This is Jack,” he says, holding the phone up to his ear.

My shoulders immediately tense as I recognize the formality of Jack’s professional voice.
Please don’t let this be an emergency
, I silently plead. This is the first time I’ve had Jack all to myself for a weekend in months and I don’t want anything to ruin it.

“Do you have her on her stomach? OK, clamp your hand on her muzzle . . . Now start rubbing her back. Is she sucking?”

He exhales a breath. “Good. Now, if she sneezes, you’ll need to clear the formula out of her nose. It means she’s eating too fast . . . OK, call me if you need anything else.”

He hangs up and runs his hand through his in-need-of-a-haircut mop.

“Is everything OK?” I ask.

“Yeah, that was Charlene. I literally
just
explained to her step-by-step how to feed Roxanne yesterday afternoon. I don’t understand how she’s made it this far in the program.”

Jack belongs to the Wildlife Treatment Crew, a volunteer group for vet students at the university. When he was on call last weekend, someone brought in a baby raccoon after they had accidentally killed its mother with their car. Jack immediately dubbed it Roxanne and has been nursing it back to health at the vet hospital—feeding it every three hours, weighing it daily, and keeping it warm with heating pads. I had stopped in to bring him dinner one night and seeing him with the bottle, cradling the little creature, made my ovaries hurt.

“Well, it was sweet of her to take over for you while we’re gone,” I say, aiming a vent, now full of hot air, so that it blows directly on me.

“I just hope she doesn’t screw up.”

After driving for a few hours, Jack turns the car into the cracked parking lot of a strip mall desperately in need of renovations. He pulls into a parking spot in front of a glass door with a sign that reads: Sky Blue Cabin Rentals
.
The parking brake screeches as he sets it with his foot, then he turns to me and nods his head in the direction of the Ingles next door. “Do you want to run in and stock up while I check in and get the keys to the cabin?”

“Ah!” I say, vindicated. “I should have known that ‘under control’ meant I was going to be getting the food.”

He smiles and leans toward me, pecking me on the nose. “That’s just because you’re so good at it.”

I sigh, because I can’t deny the truth.

While pushing my squeaky-wheeled cart full of questionable chicken breasts, half-wilted vegetables, and a four-pack of toilet paper—who knows what the cabin stocks and doesn’t?—I’m cursing Jack under my breath for not giving me a heads-up so I could have properly prepared and packed a cooler full of my organic, healthy foods. In the spirits aisle, I pick up a dusty bottle of pinot noir. It appears that the locals don’t drink too much fine wine in these parts. I wipe it with my sleeve and place it into the cart next to the only three zucchini I could find that weren’t rubbery to the touch.

“Daisy!”

I start and am grateful that I had just put down the wine or I would’ve dropped it.

“What, Jack?” I say, irritably.

“Don’t be mad.”

“Oh, Jesus. What is it?”

“Promise you won’t be mad.”

“Fine.” I put my hand on my hip to wordlessly convey that my promise actually means nothing.

“They can’t find our reservation.”

“
What?
” I roar. “Why not?”

“Well”—he drops his head and averts his eyes from my direct gaze—“I may have kind of forgotten to make one.”

I open my mouth to speak and then close it. I’m not mad. I’m furious. That’s two years in a row he’s forgotten to make a reservation on my Cancerversary, but now we’re two and a half hours from home, in a backwoods mountain town without organic vegetables, oiled shopping carts, and—most important—a place to sleep. I look at Jack and silently wonder if he can see the steam coming from my nostrils.

And that’s when I realize that he’s laughing.

“What. Is. So. Funny.” My teeth are clenched so tight I can almost feel the enamel wearing off them.