Local Girls (14 page)

No one but the nurse would ever eat the split pea soup, but that didn't matter. Sometimes things happened for which there was no rational explanation and the best anyone could do was record and remember.

“Did you have the flood?” Franny asked when Margot came to lie down beside her in bed.

Margot crawled under the covers and took Franny's hand. “It was hail. It came through the roof, then melted.”

Franny laughed. “That was tricky.” Her laughter was sweet and thin, like a blade of grass found in the backyard. “That was a good one.”

“So what do you think?” Margot said. She was crying, but she tilted her head so that Franny wouldn't see.

“You know what I think,” Franny said. “It all adds up.”

They held hands until Franny fell asleep. By the time Margot walked home, the sky was already darkening. Dusk fell onto the asphalt like a curtain or a dream, then spread over hedges and lawns. All the same, as soon as Margot turned the corner she could see Mike up on her roof, and try as she might, she couldn't think of a single reason not to run home.

Devotion

That year the month of July was so beautiful people became lazy and stopped going to work. They sat out in their backyards, amazed by the heat and the blue sky; they wept at the sight of sunflowers and hollyhocks. It was a time when even the greediest and most self-centered felt lucky to be alive, and paused to appreciate the sheen of the poplar trees at twilight or the call of the crickets, which lulled small children to sleep. People ate their suppers set out on picnic tables, dreamily passing around cups of lemonade and fresh corn on the cob; they napped on front lawns, dizzy with sunlight and the sound of bees.

There were some people, however, who experienced July not in their own backyards but from behind a wall of glass. Yet even from the vantage point of the hospital windows, Frances Samuelson could see that the clouds resembled sheep and the roses had enjoyed an especially good growing season. Three years earlier, the doctors had advised Franny to get her affairs in order and had given her six months to live. She had lost her breasts and her hair, she had lost both a husband and a son, but she had proven the doctors wrong, until now. Her oncologist, Jack Lerner, felt it wouldn't be long—the cancer had spread to her spine and her brain and she had begun to collapse, her back riddled with pain. Franny, however, knew she was approaching the end of her life because her connection with the world had somehow altered. Objects were not as defined or as singular as they once had been. An apple was as beautiful as a kiss. Her daughter's face was no different from the moon. There were times when Franny could peer right through the present and see layers of the past: She could drink a glass of cool water fetched from her own kitchen sink and at the very same time be a baby rocked in her carriage. She could cry out in pain and still be a young woman choosing her wedding dress or a mother whose child has taken a first step.

She stayed at home for as long as she could, but when her strength was gone, when she was too weak even to worry if her sweet daughter Gretel would inherit her fate or if her beloved cousin Margot would have to continue to sleep on the floor beside her bed, Dr. Lerner suggested she come to the hospital, and Franny agreed. She had always been a woman who took care of details; she wouldn't think of going out of town without leaving an itemized note for the paperboy. Now, she didn't even collect her toothbrush and nightgown; she let them take her by wheelchair, relieved that she could close her eyes and rest. She had become too weak to get to the bathroom on her own or speak a full sentence, but she had been taking care of other people for so long it was difficult to give it all up. How odd to be drifting into this realm where she had no control, where a sob was not so very different from a smile. She had never in her life believed in medication and had rarely taken an aspirin, but now she was attached to a morphine pump, as was the woman in the bed next to hers. But that was a bit of good fortune: at least they were in this together.

“She thinks there's another patient in this room,” she heard Margot tell the oncologist, clearly convinced that levelheaded Franny had taken to hallucinating.

“She deserves to see whatever she wants to see,” Lerner said. He was the sort of doctor who held his patient's hand when he had to deliver bad news, and wept in his car while he drove home. After all these years, he still wasn't certain whether the forces above were working with or against him, but he'd seen enough miracles and agony to convince him that anything was possible.

The patient in the bed next to Franny's was beautiful, although she barely moved and spoke only when there were no visitors or nurses in the room. She had no hair and her eyes were cloudy; she gave off the scent of roses and grass.

Breathe in,
she'd whisper to Franny late at night, when the lights in the hospital parking lot filtered through the windows and everything seemed shiny, as though thousands of fireflies clung to the glass.
Breathe out,
she'd remind her.

Gretel and Margot took turns staying with Franny. They opened the curtains so that the shadows shifted; they brought flowers in a vase. They loved her so much Franny could feel it; their love was as palpable as a table or a chair, it was as real as a bandage or a piece of pie. But although Franny loved them in return, she could also feel their grief, and such things were a burden to her now, tying her not only to those who loved her but to her own pain. What she longed for most were the hours when she and the woman in the next bed were alone.

Look at what you have,
the woman would tell her, and sure enough, Franny could see the stars, not through the window but there in the palm of her own hand.

When the levels of morphine rose to keep pace with the level of her pain, Franny began to dream that she was a little girl on a perfect July day. The scent of fresh grass was delicious. The roses were bigger than cabbages. Everything was out in front of her, the world stretched on and on. Sometimes Margot would be with her in her dreams, just as she had always been when they were girls. Frick and Frack, people would call them. Me and Too, the inseparable pair. They'd run down hill after hill until they were breathless, convulsed with giggles. Margot was always the fastest, but even when she was first, she'd wait for her cousin.

“Go on,” Franny told her. She opened her eyes and there was Margot, beside her in a hard-backed chair, sobbing. “You don't have to wait for me.” Her voice was so distant that Margot had to bend close; still it was difficult to hear. “Go and don't feel guilty.”

By now, Franny had lost her vision; she could only see shadows. She heard pieces of conversation, but could not recognize certain words: darling, dusk, ashes, pear, they had all become one, a single band of light. Things of this world fell away from her: she could no longer sense the pressure of an IV needle in her tired vein, but the coo of a dove a hundred miles away reverberated inside her ear. She knew that Dr. Lerner sometimes came into her room and cried when he thought she was sleeping. She knew that Gretel sat beside her for hours, watching her breathe, refusing to go home, as if pure will and devotion could keep her mother alive.

But in fact, Franny no longer minded when her visitors left her. After the nurses had gone down the hall to fill out their daily charts and those who loved her had journeyed to the cafeteria to gulp mugs of black coffee, the air in the room became lighter, as though the clouds had drifted in through the windows. The bed of the woman next to her had been pushed closer. They could hold hands now, palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip. Intertwined, their hands were equally beautiful and pale.

Franny was happy to gaze into the woman's cloudy eyes; she was grateful for the scent of roses. In the midst of her terrible pain, she was reminded of all she had to be thankful for, but there were times when that only served to make her hold on more tightly. Her fingers ached from holding on that way; her breath rattled, hard, nearly cracking her ribs with the strain.

All we have to do is let go,
the woman told Franny.

Right in front of them Franny could spy a lake where little fish swam in the shallows. There was a park beyond the lake, in which a maze had been fashioned out of hedges. Franny was afraid of thorns; still, she went closer. The other woman was already there, reaching out her hand, fearless as always. But as it happened, there were no thorns to draw blood, only green leaves and the red roses Franny's very own daughter had planted beside their house. Franny could hear women crying, but there was no difference between that sound and the echo of the wind, so she went a little farther. Now she saw there was a door in the hedge, one that was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Franny turned to gaze at the beautiful woman beside her. She could hear the ticking of the clock in her hospital room and the beat of her own heart, slow as deep water. No one who had come this far needed to hesitate or look backward, and because she had always known this to be true, she stepped through the gate.

Still Among the Living

Margot Molinaro Sutton was the only person waiting at the arrivals gate at the Fort Lauderdale airport who didn't have white hair. She was there to meet her cousin Gretel, whom she loved like a daughter. True, there were only fifteen years between them, but those years were enough to mark a generation, and now that Gretel's mother was gone Margot had taken it upon herself to watch over her cousin, especially during vacations. Not that Gretel was the sort of person who might actually enjoy herself, on vacation or otherwise. It was ninety-two degrees in South Florida, but when Gretel walked off the plane she was wearing the same black wool dress she'd worn to her mother's funeral.

“You've got to be kidding,” Margot said after she hugged Gretel. “Wool? In this climate?”

She grabbed Gretel's overnight case, but Gretel snatched it right back. “I've got it,” Gretel insisted.

You had to be that way with Margot, or she'd just take over. She was good-hearted in the worst way. Let down your guard for a minute, and kaboom, she'd have your whole life rearranged. Gretel's life was running exactly the way she wanted it to, thank you very much. She had just finished her first year at NYU and had come down to visit Margot before summer school started. Gretel was always in a hurry to finish things, and now that she'd arrived in Fort Lauderdale, she was ready to turn around and go back to school.

“It's so hot,” she said when they walked out of the terminal and the temperature slapped her in the face. She could practically feel the little black wool dress shrinking on her body.

“It's Florida,” Margot reminded her. “What did you expect? Igloos? Don't tell me you're actually wearing panty hose. Are you nuts? Have you ever heard of shorts?”

Gretel laughed as she got into her cousin's car. Margot had driven her first husband's Mustang until it died of terminal engine seizure, and now her new husband, Mike Sutton, who had opened a chain of hardware stores all across South Florida, had bought her the car of her dreams. A Corvette.

“Amazing,” Gretel said. “You really did it.”

“Did what? Married a man who can make money with his eyes closed? What an accomplishment.” Margot flipped open the glove compartment, where she kept her chiffon scarves. “Take one. You'll need it.”

“Admit it,” Gretel said. “You found happiness.”

They drove the scenic route, along 1A. The ocean was pale green and turquoise. Pelicans glided over the water. All the houses were white and pink and red. Margot could see why someone would believe she'd gotten everything she'd ever wanted. She slipped on her sunglasses. Heat waves rose from the asphalt and the air smelled like orange blossoms.

It was so hot in Florida at this time of year the mosquitoes were too scorched to fly, and landed with thumps on car windshields. As soon as she could, Gretel peeled off her panty hose. Her legs were as white as icicles.

“Holy moly,” Margot said. “We're going to have to work on your tan.”

Neither of them mentioned Gretel's mother, Frances, although they both missed her like crazy. Instead of discussing cancer or sorrow or the possibility of an afterlife, they went to Margot's favorite junk shop in Delray Beach and bought Gretel a pair of flip-flops, some wraparound sunglasses, suntan lotion, a straw purse, and a bathing suit.

When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bag. “What is this?”

She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases.

“Don't be mad,” Margot pleaded.

“I'm not wearing this.” Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn't help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss.

That night, dinner was served out by the pool. They flopped into lounge chairs with glasses of chilled white wine, and watched Mike barbecue. He was fixing skewers of halibut, red pepper, and shrimp with a red wine and tarragon marinade he'd invented himself.

“Don't tell me I have everything,” Margot said.

“Okay.” Gretel closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the jasmine growing along the fence. “I won't tell you.”

“But that doesn't mean I won't sometime real soon,” Margot informed her cousin.

Gretel opened one eye and smiled. This sounded like one of Margot's plans. She came up with them all the time. She was the one to decide she and Gretel's mother should go into the catering business together, which had kept them both afloat for years. She had told Mike that the wave of the future was a chain of stores, rather than just one, and look at the success he had made. When Margot had something in mind, look out; she wasn't about to sit still.