On a Night Like This (25 page)

She looked at him and smiled. “You will,” she said. “I know that.” She looked away, followed the ground in front of her with her eyes. “But I’m scared. Really scared. And loving you gives me more to lose.”

Luke drove back into the city again. This time Blair said he could stay at her cottage for the night. He would gather some of their things to bring back to the mountains. “Beat the crap out of Casey if you run into him,” Blair had suggested. But Casey was nowhere in sight. Luke parked at Blair’s cottage, but couldn’t go inside.

He walked through the Haight, stopping to buy things for the cabin. Flowers for Blair.
What flowers does she love?
he thought. Would he have enough time to find out, to develop the habits of couples? He chose blue irises.

He bought food for the cabin, CDs for Amanda, a warmer blanket for their bed. He walked through the streets of the city, his arms weighed down by so many packages. He saw a young couple standing in a doorway, making out. He wanted to be sixteen, in high school, with Blair Clemens in his arms. He wanted years that he wouldn’t have.

When he reached Blair’s cottage, he felt the pain of her absence. He went right to the phone and dialed his number at the cabin. On the first ring Blair picked up.

“Hello?”

“I woke you.”

“No. Yes. You can wake me every day for the rest of my life and I won’t care.”

“I can’t spend the night away from you,” Luke said. “I’ve missed too much time already.”

“Then come home,” she told him.

Chapter Thirteen

A
manda and Blair headed out on the Ridge Trail, Sweetpea in the lead. The trail wiggled across the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains, sometimes descending into the thick forest on the Pacific side, sometimes roaming through meadows on the valley side. Along the peak they could see the Pacific licking the edge of Half Moon Bay, and to the east they could see the sprawl of Silicon Valley and the wide expanse of San Francisco Bay. The day was surprisingly warm, though fog was threatening to move in from the ocean.

Amanda had taken a leave for her last half semester of school, doing all the work on her own at the cabin, heading into the city for major tests. She had told the school her mother was dying, that she wanted these last couple of months with her, and they had agreed. She was disciplined enough, and smart enough, to pull it off. She moved into the workshop, setting up a cot, hanging sheets from the windows so she’d have some privacy. Sweetpea slept in there with her. During the days she studied, read in the sun, hiked with Luke. Blair could manage a short, slow walk every few days, though on her return she’d sleep for hours.

This time Blair and Amanda had headed off together while Luke fixed a broken sink in the cabin. Amanda had told Blair that she had something to show her.

“Mom?” Amanda called out when they neared a turn on the path. Ahead was a cluster of redwoods.

Blair was struggling to keep pace with her daughter—she didn’t seem to have enough air in her chest.

“Up ahead,” Amanda said. “I want to show you my favorite spot. My hiding place.”

Blair nodded and headed off the path behind her daughter. Amanda squeezed through two of the trees and reached back to take her mother’s hand and guide her through. Inside, they were encircled by the redwoods, tucked inside a space just large enough for one person to sprawl on the soft ground. Light filtered through the trees, shimmering down on them.

“But now that I know this place,” Blair said, “you won’t be able to hide here anymore.” She felt the need to whisper. The sounds of the outside world seemed muffled now, and the enclosed space was filled with a kind of hush.

“I’m not hiding from you,” Amanda said.

Blair flinched. Luke. But Amanda and Luke had been doing well. For the first days at the cabin, they had been cautious, circling around each other, talking to Blair but not to each other. Luke would give it time, let Amanda come to him. And she did—each day Blair noticed that Amanda trusted him more. She asked for his help in hanging curtains in the workshop. She helped him set up a picnic table in the backyard. She showed him her essay on American film directors. And he had liked the essay, told her she was smarter about film than most of the directors he knew.

“Who are you hiding from?” Blair finally asked.

“The world,” Amanda said. “When I finish studying every day, I feel crazy. I can’t figure out what I want. Why I’m reading all these books, learning all this stuff. My mind gets too crowded. So I come here. My escape from the world. Then I sit here a few minutes and I figure out: This is the world. I see the trunks of the trees and the insects and the leaves, and if I lie down, I see the sky and the clouds through the branches above me, and I’ve forgotten about all the stuff of books. I can just rest.”

Blair smiled.

“You think I’m crazy,” Amanda said.

“I think you’re incredibly smart,” Blair said. “That’s what living in the cabin with you and Luke makes me feel. Like nothing else matters—the past or the future. I can just rest.”

“This is called a cathedral,” Amanda said. She leaned back and looked up.

“I can see why,” Blair told her. The branches of the redwoods stretched like vaulted arches toward the sky.

“I love how cozy it feels,” Amanda said. “The trees wrap me up inside them.”

“It’s a very cool hiding place,” Blair told her.

Amanda squeezed back through two of the trees, and Blair followed her.

“Should we head back?” Amanda asked.

“I think we better,” Blair said. “I’m beat.”

They started back along the trail, Sweetpea racing ahead, then circling back. Amanda started to pull too far ahead.

“Slow down,” Blair finally called out, and Amanda turned back, peered at her, worried.

“You OK?”

“Yes. Tired. That’s all.”

Amanda waited for Blair to catch up.

“Should we rest?” Amanda asked.

“I don’t know,” Blair told her. She felt a knot of pain behind her eyes, and the feeling was oddly familiar—had she felt that before she fainted the other times? Maybe she shouldn’t be so far from the cabin.

“Is Luke coming back soon?” she asked. She couldn’t remember where he had gone: To the store? Back to San Francisco? Why was it so cold in the beginning of May?

“Mom, sit down,” Amanda urged. “You look awful.”

Blair sat in the middle of the path. Sweetpea bounded back across the field to her side.

“Where’s Luke?” Blair asked. She could see glittering points of light at the edge of her vision, as if an electrical storm were brewing on the horizon.

“He went to the hardware store,” Amanda said. “Rest a bit and we’ll head home.”

Blair remembered. Something about the plumbing—a leak under the kitchen sink. But when she tried to picture it, she could only remember the kitchen sink in her cottage, not this one in Luke’s cabin. The thought of Luke’s cabin calmed her somehow. They had been living there for a few weeks, and she had thought of these weeks as Amanda’s healing, while she knew she herself was failing fast. Luke. She needed Luke.

Her body was trembling.

“Mom? Mom? What should I do?”

“Wait. It’ll pass.”

Amanda took off her fleece jacket and wrapped it around Blair’s shoulders. Blair breathed easier in the warmth and thought:
My daughter will take care of me. She can do that. My wonderful girl.

She kept her eyes closed and still the light seemed to dart around the inside of her eyes, sending little jolts of pain.

She felt Amanda’s hand on her back, rubbing it, creating a warm bath down her spine.
I used to rub her back to put her to sleep, my baby.

“Should I run back to the cabin?” Amanda asked. “I’ll see if Luke’s back yet?”

Blair shook her head.
Don’t leave me.

“Can you walk?”

Again Blair shook her head. “I can’t open my eyes,” she said finally.

She felt Amanda’s hand on her back, moving in slow, warm circles. She heard Sweetpea’s labored breath in her ear.
Poor sweet dog,
she thought.
Scared. They’re both scared. I’m not scared. I just want to lie down.

But someone was lifting her, easily it seemed, until she was standing again.

“Lean on me,” Amanda said. “We’ll take it slow. We can’t sit here.”

She felt Amanda’s arm wrap around her back and tuck under her arm. When Amanda moved, somehow Blair moved with her, her feet shuffling along the path.
My daughter’s so big,
Blair thought,
and I’ve become so small.

They walked like that for a long time. Blair kept her eyes closed and still her eyes hurt from the light. There was a noise in her head, a kind of humming, like a lawn mower somewhere in the distance.

She could hear her daughter’s voice as they walked. Amanda was telling her something about the mountains, how beautiful it was here and that they would stay here and take care of her. Luke. Amanda kept saying his name. Luke would be home when they got back. They were making their way home.

Amanda, her baby, carried her home.
I’ve done well,
Blair told her guardian angel, the bartender from the Haight. She imagined his face, smiling at her, the glint of a lip ring shining in her eye. “I told you,” he said. “You’ve done enough. She can take care of you now. Just keep watching.”

I’m watching,
she told him silently now.
I’m not going to miss a minute of her sweet life.

Blair pulled herself out of a nightmare. Sweetpea was whimpering—was that the dream or was the dog really crying?—and someone was hurting the poor dog, except Blair felt the pain. When she woke, she still felt the pain. She opened her eyes and saw Sweetpea, watching her, whimpering.

“You were crying in your sleep,” Luke explained. He was sitting on the bed, his hand stroking her hair. “Sweetpea got upset.”

“It was in my dream,” Blair said. Her mouth was terribly dry, and Luke lifted a glass of water with a straw to her lips. She smiled, thanking him. She hadn’t even asked for it.

She had not imagined the disease would spread so quickly, would take over her body and transform her so completely into a dying person. Since her seizure on the Ridge Trail, she had been bedridden, and the shape of their days had changed. On most days Luke wrote, sitting at the little table in the cabin, typing away at his laptop. He said it was going well. He wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t share any of it with her. But he thanked her every day for being his muse.

Amanda studied in the morning, then hiked with Luke every afternoon, Sweetpea at their side. Blair slept. She seemed to sleep for hours at a stretch, even in the middle of the day. At night Amanda read stories from her contemporary short story class to her mother and Luke. Afterward, she and Luke would argue about the stories or the characters, and Blair would doze off, would end up dreaming new endings for the stories. Happy endings. No one died.

“Did I sleep long?” she asked Luke, and let her head fall back against the pillow.

“No. Only a few minutes.”

She shook her head. “I wake up to be with you.”

“Do you want your morphine?”

“No. Not yet. Where’s Amanda?”

“Outside studying. I have to take her into the city for her math exam soon.”

“I’ll sleep when you leave.”

She closed her eyes and felt Luke’s hand on her forehead, then his lips on her dry mouth.

“Climb in bed with me,” she whispered.

He did.

“Not with your clothes on, dummy.”

“I have to leave soon. I’ll hold you all night.”

“Hold me now.”

She felt him pull her into his arms, felt herself give something up, as if he could carry her pain away. She was sleeping again, easily now, floating in his arms.

She was in her bedroom, her childhood room, lying on her bed. Her mother walked in. Blair felt a rush of happiness at seeing her mother after so long.

“I’m here to take care of you,” her mother said.

“You can’t take care of me,” Blair told her. “You died a long time ago.”

“You need me,” her mother said.

Blair felt terrified for a moment and wrestled to lift herself from the dream. In her half consciousness she heard a door open and close. Amanda.

“Mom,” Blair said, her mother still lurking in the back of her dream, in the shadows of her girlhood room.

“I’m here,” her mother said impatiently. “I don’t have all day.”

Blair peered at her mother and could see that she was wearing her apron, ready to get to work in the kitchen.
I forgot about that apron,
Blair thought, both in the dream and out of the dream. A white apron with red strawberries.

“I’ve got Luke now, Mom.”

“Luke?” her mother asked suspiciously.

“He takes care of me.”

“No one could ever take care of you.”

“You did, Mom. Remember that summer—”

“Don’t talk about that,” her mother said.

And in her dream she knew she had been raped, weeks before, her body still raging with the physical pain, her mind still numb. Her mother kept bringing her things: letters from teachers, magazines, new records. Nothing interested her. She wanted to sleep.

“Come on, Blair. Get out of bed,” her mother urged.

“I’m dying, Mom. Let me rest.”

Luke moved in her arms, waking her. She didn’t open her eyes. She felt him ease away from her, and she felt herself sinking, someplace darker.
Stay with me,
she wanted to say. But she heard Amanda talking and remembered the exam.

Finally she opened her eyes. Amanda had her back to her and was lifting her backpack.

“Good luck, sweetheart,” she said.

Amanda turned and looked at her. She leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek.

“Easy A,” Amanda said. “I’ll prove to them that I don’t need school at all.”

“You’re going back to school in September, my dear,” Blair said. “Don’t get any dropping-out-of-school ideas.”

Amanda turned away. Blair knew Amanda wouldn’t talk about September. Her mother wouldn’t live that long.

Now Blair often dreamed the moments she didn’t want to miss: In one dream Amanda had a baby in her arms, a redheaded girl, and she showed the sweet thing to her mother, her face beaming with pride. Blair was sure the dream was true, some kind of lucky glimpse into the future. In another dream Amanda was painting a huge canvas, filling it with bold splashes of color, and the effect was so thrilling that Blair wanted to charge inside the painting. In the morning she asked Amanda, “Did you ever think of becoming a painter?”

“You’re weird, Mom,” Amanda had said.

“What do you want to be?” Blair had asked impatiently, wanting to see it all ahead of her.

“Your daughter,” Amanda had insisted.

My daughter,
Blair thought.
You will always be my daughter.

In one dream Luke was kissing another woman. When Blair woke up, she had told him, “You’ll love someone else.”

“Not like this,” he had said, kissing her better than he had kissed the dream lover.

“I gotta go, Mom,” Amanda called, blowing her a kiss from the doorway, bringing Blair back to the present. It was so hard these days to stay awake, to stay in the present.

Luke leaned over Blair from behind, placing a fresh glass of water on her bedside table.

“I want you to take that morphine now,” he told her. “Don’t let the pain get ahead of you.”

She pressed the button on the pump at her side to release the morphine into her system. She leaned back heavily on the pillow.

“How long will you be?” she asked.

“A few hours,” he told her. “Should I call someone to be with you?”