Souvenir (25 page)

If only I had a song for you.

Forty

A
LTHOUGH
M
EG HAD TO WORK HARD TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE OF HER ILLNESS
for now, Wednesday night felt better to her than old times. She and all three of her sisters sat together on the patio, drinking wine and laughing about the trials of motherhood. Beth couldn’t relate fully, but she had her own tales to tell, of college students and their transparent attempts to lie their way out of assignments or low test grades. “They think I was never nineteen, and that I don’t understand the Internet and all the electronic gadgets. Do I look that ancient?”

“At thirty?” Kara laughed. “You’re just a baby yourself! The ink on your last diploma is hardly dry!”

“I do have tiny lines around my eyes—see?” She leaned forward, but Meg, sitting at her left, saw only smooth skin. No lines, and no freckles either; Beth looked more like their mother, like the Jansens, creamy-skinned Southerners whose way-back ancestors were Scandinavian. Her hair was dark like Savannah’s, but straight, and cut in an engaging chin-length bob that made her brown eyes stand out.

“I don’t see any lines,” Meg said. “It’s all those letters after your name that make you seem so different from your students—
Doctor
Powell.”

“Perhaps,
Doctor
Hamilton.” Beth laughed. “If only
my
letters meant I could do some good, like you. I feel like all I do is grade bad essays and sit through excruciatingly long faculty arguments—I mean, meetings.”

“Can you spell that?” Kara teased.

“What,
meetings
?” Beth asked.

“
Excruciatingly
.”

“
I
can’t even say it,” Julianne said. “Is it a real word?”

Kara said, “And I thought
my
vocabulary was limited.” She poked Julianne, who sat at her left. “If you’d finished school, you might know the big words.”

Julianne tossed her long hair, red-gold like Meg’s, and said, “I got my GED. Anyway, what difference? I’m raising children, not correcting essays.”

Kara, the only one of them who’d gotten the full red of their father’s hair, held up her hand, four fingers extended. “Can you count? This is how many kids I have, but I don’t use that as an excuse for being uneducated. Pick up a book once in a while, why don’t you?”

“If you weren’t sitting around reading so much, maybe you’d be a size six like me,” Julianne said, grinning her Cheshire cat grin. She’d always deviled Kara, who didn’t have Meg’s oldest-sister authority and wasn’t close enough to her in age to be a pal.

“Marilyn Monroe was my size,” Kara said. She stuck out her tongue.

“Now, children,” Meg said, interceding as she’d always done. “Play nicely. Jules, grab that box, behind you there. Dad gave me some old photos of us. I thought you guys might want to divide them up.”

“You’ve already taken out the ones you want?” Beth asked, and Meg realized she’d nearly slipped up, dropped a clue about her illness before she was ready to tell them.

“Right, I did. Only a few, though, of just me.”

Julianne opened the box and pulled out a messy stack of photographs, various sizes, some with thick paper backing, some with rounded corners, most of them cloudy or faded or creased. “Is there any system to these?”

“No,” Meg said. “Apparently Mom just stuffed them in.”

The women all leaned in and began sorting through the photos.

Beth held one up to Meg. “How about this? You and Carson…”—she read the date on the back—“in ’84.”

“His high school graduation,” Meg said, taking it with her left hand. Her right thumb, she found, was twitching and wouldn’t quit; she pressed it under her leg to keep her sisters from noticing. “They had that big picnic out by their lake.”

“I remember that,” Kara said, looking over Meg’s shoulder. “Look at your hair! Definitely an ’80s ’do.”

Meg remembered the effort she’d put into getting her straight hair to stay in the upswept, ratted style. “It took a whole can of hair spray for just the bangs.”

“Yeah, and then you ruined it by swimming.”

Beth said, “Carson looks so pleased with himself.”

“We’d just finished getting him moved into that shed we redid.” His smile was in anticipation of their plans for later that night: she would sneak out of her house and join him in his new place, to make love for the first time. She was smiling in the photo too, though with less obvious anticipation—because her mother was taking the picture and she didn’t want to look overeager. Carson had an excuse, it being his graduation day.

Beth leaned back. “So what happened with you two anyway? You seemed like such a sure thing, and then it was just
over.
I felt like he’d moved away or died or something. I never saw him anymore. It was weird.”

“You know what happened,” Julianne said. “She dumped him for Brian.”

“Obviously,” Beth said. “But I’m asking why. Until then, Carson was like part of the family. I don’t remember you guys fighting or anything.”

Meg put the photo down. She
could
tell them the truth, now that none of it mattered, but why bother? She didn’t want them feeling responsible in any way, or guilty. She didn’t want them to think less of their parents. Always the protective oldest child—that wasn’t going to change.

“We didn’t fight,” she said. “We just…went in different directions.”

“Because he wanted to be a musician,” Julianne offered, “and you wanted to stick close to home and be a doctor. Right?”

“Something like that,” Meg said, drawing sharp looks from Kara and Beth. Kara would remember that neither her career choice nor Carson’s would come until later. Beth just seemed able to smell a lie. Her sisters didn’t call her out on it, though, and she was grateful. There was no other lie she could tell with more conviction. For Beth’s sake, she added, “Brian had a lot to offer, and back then I thought that made a difference.”

“Money,” Beth said, shaking her head. “Sometimes you’re better off without it.”

“How can you say that?” Julianne protested. “Look around! Wouldn’t you love to live like this?” Her place in Quebec was a late-sixties split-level with only one bathroom.

Beth shrugged. “Only if it came incidentally. I’d rather be happy.”

“Oh, happy,” Julianne said. “Which is why you’re still single. Your ideals are too high. Nobody stays truly happy.”

Kara said, “Not so! I’m happy—Todd too. Wouldn’t change a thing about our life—except to move back here.”

“
You
married for love,” Beth said. “You’re the only one who did it right. So far.”

“Are you saying I don’t love Chad?” Julianne protested, fickle as she’d always been. She hated to be wrong, hated to lose ground to any of them.

Beth smirked. “You married him because you were knocked up. You knew him for what? Three months before the wedding?”

“Four,” Julianne corrected.

Meg pulled out another photo, one of the four of them all lined up and dressed for Easter in flouncy dresses and tights and white patent-leather shoes. Julianne was hardly old enough to stand up on her own. “Here,” Meg said, passing the photo to Beth in an effort to get them all onto a new tack. “Remember this? Grandma Alice was still alive; she came down and took us shopping for these outfits and made us go to church.”

Beth gave her a look that said she knew exactly what Meg was doing, then looked at the photo. “No, I don’t remember this at all. Look at us, so clean and pretty—an alternate reality. Nice if that could’ve been real, huh?”

Meg nodded. She understood the appeal of an alternate reality all too well.

Forty-one

T
HURSDAY NIGHT, AFTER BEING AT THE HOSPITAL WITH THEIR FATHER MOST
of the day, Meg and her sisters sat out on the patio again, drinking wine and telling stories as they’d done the night before. It was as if their combined memories, the energy of them together in one place, created a time machine. One moment they were giving Julianne, at a year old, her first riding lesson on their crabby Shetland, Guinevere. Another moment they were riding the spinning Mad Hatter ride at Disney World, screaming when Kara threw up her blue cotton candy. All anyone had to do was say, “Remember when…” and off they’d go. Meg soaked up the camaraderie and marveled at how their memories didn’t always match. Beth, for instance, couldn’t recall them ever owning a mare named Bride, while Kara not only recalled the mare but could remember in vivid detail watching their mother pick splinters out of Meg’s back and painting the whole raw site with iodine.

Brian came out to the patio to say he was taking Savannah and Rachel for ice cream—the plan they’d arranged, so Meg would be alone with her sisters. Meg poured more wine then, and when they were all relaxed—for what better time was there?—she edged into the subject of her illness by asking if any of them thought they might be coming to Florida to live anytime soon. Writing to Savannah in the journal was helping to lessen her anxieties about how Savannah would manage—not to mention helping her feel like she had more control over things in general—but ideally, one of her sisters would be able to move back and help look out for both Savannah and their father.

Meg knew already that Kara wanted to return, but in the way she’d always done when they were girls, she set up the question so as not to exclude anyone’s possibly secret or remote interest in moving. Then there would be no protests of “Why did you just assume only
Kara
wanted to move? I’ve been thinking of it for ages.” Julianne in particular always insisted on a level playing field, forever needing to be considered equal to the rest of them.

Kara spoke up first, saying that Todd was agreeable to the move, but it wouldn’t be before he had his twenty years in—three more to go. That led to a discussion of how disruptive it might be to move Keiffer and Evan from the high school they’d be in, and Kara’s reluctant conclusion that they might have to wait until all the boys were graduated, to be fair. Julianne, though her kids were younger, was in a similar predicament—not that Chad had any interest in moving to the states. Beth’s answer was the one that surprised her: Beth said she was looking for a change after a dozen years of California living.

“I’m tired of fog,” Beth laughed. “Besides, one of us should give Meg a hand with Dad. I can find work just about anywhere…and I miss Florida, and who knows how long Dad’ll be around?”

That was the segue Meg needed. She said, “Right. Life is so unpredictable. His health—or any of ours—could decline without much warning. Take me, for instance,” she said, and then spit out the bitter words once again:
ALS. Fatal. Unpredictable. Paralysis. Life support.

They were dumbstruck.

She held her breath, watching her sisters’ shocked faces while they tried to make sense of what she’d just said. Then, Julianne began to wail, breaking the tension in her characteristic melodramatic way.

Kara vowed to move to Florida immediately with or without Todd, and Beth came and wrapped her arms around Meg. For the first time since Lowenstein had released the ALS worm into her mind, she gave herself over to grief. She put her head against Beth’s shoulder and cried.

After they’d all wiped their eyes and noses, Beth asked what she meant to do with the time she had left; leave it to Beth to be straightforward.

“Clean out my office,” Meg said, “see my lawyer—get things in order, I guess.”

Kara frowned and shook her head. “No, come on—what are you going to
do
? Like, ‘I’ve always wanted to…’ you know, fill in the blank: see Niagara Falls. Skydive. Sleep with Antonio Banderas. Like that.”

Meg looked at them, their expectant faces, without knowing how to answer. She’d done so much in her life, been so many places, shared so many joys. There was little she lacked. Finally she said, “I’m going to talk with my daughter, every day.” Her only other wish was beyond her reach.

S
HE REPEATED THE SCENE IN MINIATURE WITH HER FATHER
F
RIDAY MORNING
while her sisters waited outside his room, ready to offer postannouncement support. He stared at her, then coughed in a futile effort to keep back tears. “Don’t waste any time, Meggie,” he said.

Too late.
She bit her lip hard to keep the words back.

“That’s good advice, Dad, thanks,” she managed.

She left the room recalling a placard posted in the coffee shop near her practice. She’d read it many times—a Shakespeare quote, and didn’t he have the wisdom of the ages? “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

Forty-two

F
OR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MEETING
V
AL
, C
ARSON WASN’T GLAD TO HEAR
her voice on the phone. She called at lunchtime Friday, when the three movers were lounging with him in his kitchen, eating pizza he’d ordered. He went out onto the broad balcony to talk, stepping into hazy sunshine that made him squint. The sound gleamed more blue than gray, and was dotted with boats helmed by people reveling in the Seattle springtime—something he, too, would like to be doing but his enthusiasm for spring, for Val, for moving to Malibu was as boxed away as his belongings.

“It’s all over,” Val said, and Carson forgot for a split second that she would mean the Bali surfing competition. “I edged her out! You should
see
the water—I didn’t know if I could hang on, but I did!”

He forced himself to sound more enthused than he felt. “Hey, that’s great, congratulations!”

“Yeah, thanks. Wish you were here…. Oh, hell! I gotta go for now—I told this guy from ESPN I’d give him three minutes before the awards, and he’s coming this way. How’s the packing going? And here comes the ABC chick—sorry for the rush! Call ya later!”

Later. Later would have to be better; she wouldn’t be quite so wound up. Would he be more in the mood to talk to her even then? Everything in his world was dimmed by Meg’s bad news, and the longer he lived with it, the worse he felt.

What must she be going through? Had she told Hamilton? He’d spent some time on the Internet, reading about ALS—and just thinking about it horrified him. She’d sounded so calm…. Too calm. Too accepting. Why didn’t she fight it? He needed to talk to her again, encourage her to
do
something. She was a doctor, for God’s sake—she’d have to know of something more than what he’d been able to unearth. Some experimental cure, or if not a cure, something that could bring a remission. Losing her to Hamilton had been bad, but that paled next to the black hole he saw opening in his life if he were to lose her to
this.
He had to see her.

He stepped back inside. “Listen, guys,” he said to the movers, “something’s come up. I need you to take the rest of the day off.”

They looked at each other, seemed to shrug as one unit, and then Ernesto, the lead, said, “You’re gonna need to reschedule with the office, for us to finish. We got stuff lined up all next week.”

“Yeah, okay,” Carson said, boxing up the remaining pizza for them to take. From his fridge he took the last four beers and handed them over, hurrying the guys out. “Don’t drink and drive, now.”

As soon as they’d gone, he moved some boxes aside and sat down on his sofa, rubbing his mouth with one hand. He had no choice—he called his real estate agent and told her to delay the closing, even if it meant the buyers decided to take their offer off the table. “Tell them I had a family emergency.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie—Meg was like a distant…sister?
Oh, right
, he thought,
a sister.
She was more than a distant relative of any kind, certainly more than a sister, but what she was to him was not as easy to name as what she was
not.
She was not his girlfriend, fiancée, wife. She was not even his friend anymore. He thought of
soul mate
but shied away from the cliché—then thought about it further: his soul’s mate…. Was there such a thing? He wasn’t sure. His
heart’s
mate, though, he was sure she was that. Which didn’t mean he didn’t love Val. The feelings were completely different. Meg owned a piece of him Val would never see or reach or even comprehend. He should have fought for Meg, should have pushed through the pain of his wounded pride and showed her how wrong she was…. Ah, the genius of hindsight.

He called his travel agent. When a seat on an evening flight was arranged, he called his parents. His mom answered.

“Hey Ma, you know how when I left the other day you said you wished you could see more of me? I apologize for the short notice and all, but if one of you can stand staying up a little late tonight, I’ll join you for a nightcap.”

Silence. Then, “Carson, does this have anything to do with Meg? Because if it does, let me remind you how conveniently she left you for Brian Hamilton when he was the one with all the money.”

“It’s not like that, Ma.”

“Oh no? Wasn’t she calling to tell you she’s getting divorced?”

He closed his eyes. If only. He repeated what Meg had told him, then said, “I don’t know what I can do for her, if anything. I just…I just need to be there.”

He waited while his mom processed the news. She said, “Okay, I can understand that. What about Val? Does she know?”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow. This…it doesn’t have to be a problem. She’s very understanding. We can keep things on schedule.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry about Meg. How awful for all of them…. Just give us a call after you land, so we’ll know about when to expect you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, relieved to have her support. And then he decided, “You know, it’s gonna be late—I don’t want to disturb you guys. I can bunk in the shed.”

“Honey…I understand how you’re feeling, but you haven’t slept there in forever; I’m not sure the AC unit even works anymore. Use the guest room like always. If it makes you feel better, we won’t wait up.”

“I…I’ll feel better if I stay in the shed. If that’s okay.”

“You know we’ll just be glad to have you here,” she said.