The Perfect Stranger
Read The Perfect Stranger Online
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
For Jessica Krawitt, Stacey Sypko, and Carla Bracale
For survivors everywhere . . .
And for Mark, Brody, and Morgan, with love.
With gratitude to John Strawser, Bridget Kubera, and Lisa Taylor-Phelpps and her “stinkerdoodle”; to my editor Lucia Macro and her assistant Nicole Fischer and the many amazing people at HarperCollins who had a hand in bringing this novel to print; to my agents Laura Blake Peterson and Holly Frederick, and to Mina Feig and the team at Curtis Brown, Ltd.; to Peter Meluso and to Carol Fitzgerald and the gang at the Book Report Network for keeping my Web sites up and running; to the gals at Writerspace for wrangling the newsletter; to David Staub and Stacey Sypko for all things tech or trailer-related; to Mark Staub, business manager, creative advisor, proofreader, and oh, yeah, love of my life. My glass is raised to my family and friends for careening along with me toward yet another deadline—and being there, always, to toast the end. Finally, I offer heartfelt appreciation to booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere—because without you, I could not wholly be me.
Contents
When the doctor’s receptionist called this morning to say that they had the results, it never dawned on her that it might be bad news.
“Hi, hon,” Janine said—she called all the patients “hon”—and casually requested that she come by in person this afternoon. She even used just that phrasing, and it was a question, as opposed to a command: “Can you come by the office in person this afternoon?”
Come by.
So breezy. So inconsequential. So . . . so everything this situation is not.
What if she’d told Janine, over the phone, that she was busy this afternoon? Would the receptionist then have at least hinted that her presence at the office was urgent; that it was, in fact, more than a mere request?
But she wasn’t busy and so here she is, blindsided, numbly staring at the doctor pointing the tip of a ballpoint pen at the left breast on the anatomical diagram.
The doctor keeps talking, talking, talking; tapping, tapping, tapping the paper with the pen point to indicate exactly where the cancerous tissue is growing, leaving ominous black ink pockmarks.
She nods as though she’s listening intently, not betraying that every word after
malignancy
has been drowned out by the warning bells clanging in her brain.
I’m going to die
, she thinks with the absolute certainty of someone trapped on a railroad track, staring helplessly into the glaring roar of an oncoming train.
I’m going to be one of those ravaged bald women lying dwarfed in a hospital bed, terrified and exhausted and dying an awful, solitary death . . .
She’s seen that person before, too many times—in the movies, and in real life . . . but she never thought she’d ever actually
become
that person. Or did she?
Well, yes—you worry, whenever a horrific fate befalls someone else, that it could happen to you. But then you reassure yourself that it won’t, and you push the thought from your head, and you move on.
This time there is no reassurance, no pushing, no moving. The image won’t budge.
Me . . . sick . . . bald . . . dying.
Dead.
Me. Dead.
The tinny taste of fear fills her mouth, joined by bile as her stomach pitches and rolls, attempting to eject the tuna sandwich she devoured in the carefree life she was still living at lunchtime.
Carefree? Really?
No. Just last night she lost sleep over the usual conflicts involving money and work and household mishaps. When she woke this morning, her first thought was that there would be too few hours in the day ahead to resolve everything that needed to be dealt with. She actually welcomed the call from Janine the receptionist, thinking a detour to the doctor’s office would be a distraction from her other problems.
How could I have thought those problems were problems?
Stomach churning, she manages to excuse herself, lurches to her feet and rushes for the door, out into the hall, toward the small restroom.
Kneeling and retching, she finds herself wondering if this is what it will be like when she goes through chemotherapy. You hear that the harsh drugs make patients sick to their stomachs.
Me . . . sick . . .
Dead.
How can she possibly wrap her head around that idea? If only she could magically escape to her bed right now, where she’d be alone to cry or scream or sleep . . .
But she can’t. She has to pull herself together somehow, make herself presentable and coherent enough to walk back down the hall to the doctor’s office . . . and then, dear God, the nurses and Janine and a waiting room full of patients still lie between her and solitude.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
I need to be alone . . .
Five minutes later, shaken, she emerges from the bathroom, returns to the still-ajar door marked with the physician’s name.
As she crosses the threshold again, the doctor looks up, wearing a nonplused expression that makes it clear this isn’t the first time that a patient on the receiving end of a malignant diagnosis has behaved in such a manner. “Feeling better now? Come on in.”
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammers, making her way back to the seat opposite the desk, where the anatomical diagram still sits like a signed, sealed, and delivered execution notice awaiting final action.
“It’s all right. Here . . . drink some water.”
She takes the paper cup the doctor offers. Sips.
As the lukewarm water slides along her throat, left raw from retching, she nearly gags again.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, and sets aside the cup.
“No need. Would you like to call someone?”
Call someone . . .
Would you like to call someone . . .
Unable to process the question, she stares at the doctor.
“A friend, or a family member . . . someone who can come over here and—”
“Oh. No. No, thank you.”
I just want to be alone. Can’t you see that?
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m . . . I’ll be fine. I just needed a few minutes to . . .”
To throw up my lunch and splash water on my face and look into the mirror and try to absorb the news that I have cancer and what if I die?
Me . . .
Dead?
It’s unfathomable that her worst fear might actually come to fruition after all these years, but then . . .
Isn’t it everyone’s worst fear?
We’re all mortal, aren’t we?
I wouldn’t be the only person in the world who’s ever lain awake at night, tossing and turning, terrified that I’m going to die, only to have it actually happen.
No. But it becomes second nature to reassure yourself that it’s not going to happen—not really, or at least, not anytime soon. You almost believe you’re safe, that you’ve escaped the inevitable, and then suddenly . . .
“I know it’s difficult to hear news like this,” the doctor is saying, “but the important thing is that we caught it early. We’re going to discuss your treatment options, and there are many. New ones are being developed every day. The bottom line is that the survival rates for a stage one malignancy are . . .”
Treatment options . . .
Survival rates . . .
Stage one . . .
And here she is, right back to
malignancy.
Jaw set grimly, she wills herself not to cry, but the tears come anyway.
Sixty Is the New . . . Oh, Who Am I Kidding? Sixty Is Old!
I can’t recognize a single musician on the cover of
Rolling Stone,
I can’t remember my user names and passwords if they’re not saved in my laptop or phone, I can’t see a blessed thing without my bifocals, and if they’re not on my head, chances are I have no idea where I left them . . . Still, faced with the prospects of old age and senility—or not sticking around long enough to grow old and senile—I’ll take the prior.
—Excerpt from Meredith’s blog,
Pink Stinks
Nightgown on, glasses off . . .
About to climb into her side of the bed she shares with her husband, when he’s not up in Cleveland tending to his elderly mother, Meredith Heywood winces and reaches back to rest a hand against her spine.
The ache is even worse now than it was before she took a hot bath, hoping in vain that it would relax her muscles. An entire Saturday spent working in the yard—followed by a few hours hunched over her laptop, writing about the garden she just planted—had been inarguably good for the soul. But for her middle-aged, cancer-tainted, bones . . . eh, not so much.
“Why don’t you wait until I get home to do the planting?” Hank had asked on the phone this morning when she told him of her plans. He’d always liked to do things with her—and for her. Now, more than ever.
It’s not just her illness; he was laid off from his job as an airline mechanic a few weeks before they got the news that her cancer has spread.
It’s almost been a relief to have him away. When he’s here, he hovers, trying to take care of her.
There was a time when she enjoyed that kind of attention. That was in another lifetime: a younger and thus occasionally emotionally insecure lifetime that was, at the same time, a physically self-sufficient and healthy lifetime.
A lifetime before cancer.
“I can’t wait until you’re back to do the garden,” she told Hank. “It’s getting too late.”
“It’s not even summer yet, Mer.”
Had he really interpreted her statement to mean that it was too late in the season?
Or maybe . . .
Was that really what she’d meant, in a momentary lapse with reality?
Too late . . . too late . . .
Those two words have taken on a whole new meaning now.
“We usually get the vegetables in over Memorial Day,” she pointed out to Hank. “That was last weekend.”
They’d been planning to do it then, but Hank’s mother took a bad fall the Thursday before, and he had to jump into his truck and head to his hometown. He’s been there ever since, trying to convince the most stubborn woman in the world that at ninety-three she’s too old to live alone.
Mission accomplished—finally.
“I can handle the planting,” Meredith assured him when he mentioned that it may be at least a few more days before he gets his mother acclimated to her new nursing home and cleans out her condo so the realtor can list it. “It’s going to rain for the next couple of days, so this is the perfect time to get the seedlings in.”
“Why don’t you call the kids to help you?”
“Maybe I will,” she lied.
Their daughter and sons, all married and scattered within an hour or so drive of this small middle-class Cincinnati suburb, have their hands full with jobs, young children, household obligations of their own. She wasn’t about to bother any of them to come help her.
Especially since . . .
Well, they don’t know yet that her cancer has returned a third time and spread. And she doesn’t want them to suspect anything until she’s ready to tell them. No need for anyone to worry until it’s absolutely necessary.
Only Hank is aware of the truth. He’s having a rough time with it.
“There are so many things we’ve been waiting to do until I retire,” he said one night a few weeks ago, head in hands.
“We’ll do them now.”
“Now that I don’t have a job and we’re broke?”
“We’re not broke yet. Don’t worry. You’ll find another job.”
“Where? Not here. And how can we move, with—” He cleared his throat. “I mean, you need to be near your doctors now that . . .”
Now that it’s almost over.
But he didn’t say it, and Meredith, who has spent decades finishing his sentences, didn’t either.
She just assured him, “You’ll find something here. Some other kind of work.”
“With decent pay? And benefits? If I don’t find something before our medical insurance runs out . . . I can’t believe this is happening to us.”
“Not just to us. Teddy’s in the same boat, and with a baby on the way,” she pointed out. Their firstborn, an accountant, lost his job and health care last year and has been struggling to keep a roof over his family’s heads and food on the table. Hank and Meredith have been giving him whatever they can spare—but that’s now gone from very little to nothing at all.
“Yeah, and then there’s my mother . . .” Hank was on a roll. “No long-term care insurance and she can’t keep living alone. And of course I get sole responsibility for her since my brother fell off the face of the earth.”
Hank’s only sibling stopped speaking to both him and his mother after a family falling out years ago.
It would have been easier if the old woman hadn’t fallen last weekend, accelerating the need to get her out of her condo and into the only available—though not necessarily affordable—facility.
Easier, too, if Hank’s mother wasn’t so damned adamant about staying in Cleveland. They could have moved her to Cincinnati years ago to make things easier on Hank—though certainly not under their own roof. Even if Meredith were healthy enough to be a caregiver—as opposed to facing the eventual need for one herself—her mother-in-law is downright impossible.
“She’s never living with us, no matter what happens,” Hank said flatly many years ago, when his mother was widowed shortly after their engagement. At the time, Meredith found the statement unduly harsh and started having second thoughts, wondering what kind of man would say such a thing.
That was before she got to know his mother—in small doses and from a distance, thank goodness.
“She’s probably going to live to be a hundred,” Hank says frequently—and dismally.
He’s probably right. But whenever he brings it up, Meredith duly points out that he’s lucky to have her, having lost her own mother when her kids were young, and now facing her own mortality at this age.
“I know. I just . . . I’m worried about having to deal with her while I’m trying to find a job, and worrying about health care . . . In the end, it always comes down to money we don’t have. Story of our lives, right?”
Money? In the end it comes down to money?
He doesn’t realize what he’s saying.
That’s what she told herself. She knew he was just stressed, knew he loved her, knew that deep down his priorities were straight. He’s only human.
But—being only human herself—she couldn’t help saying, “Hey, you can always push me off a cliff and collect on my life insurance policy now instead of later. I mean, I’m a goner anyway, right? Why not put us both out of our misery—the sooner the better?”
His jaw dropped. “What kind of thing is that to say?”
“I’m sorry. I was kidding. Come on, Hank. Look at the bright side.”
To his credit, he didn’t say, “What bright side?”
If he had, she might have broken down and cried.
Instead, he’d hugged her and apologized. “I just want to make sure that we do everything we ever said we were going to do. No more putting things off—not because I don’t think you’re going to be around, but because . . . well, I don’t like to waste time. That’s all.”
Right. Because she doesn’t have time to waste.
Why dwell on the past when you can focus on the future?
That was the title of an optimistic blog post she wrote back when she was in treatment, still assuming she was going to beat this disease.
The piece was met with a mixed reaction from her followers, depending on their stage of the disease. Those who were in remission shared her mind-set. Those who were not—those with very little future left—didn’t want to think about what might lie ahead. They found comfort in reflecting upon happier times.
Now I get it. Now I’m sorry, so sorry. I wish I could have told some of them . . .
But it’s too late.
Too late . . . too late . . .
Meredith arches her back, stretching, trying to work out the kinks as a warm breeze flutters the peach and yellow paisley curtains at the window.
Through the screen she can hear only crickets, a distant dog barking, and the occasional sound of traffic out on the main road. The houses in this neighborhood may be of the no frills, cookie-cutter architectural style, but they’re set far apart on relatively large lots.
It was the quiet, private location that drew Meredith and Hank here well over three decades ago, when they were living downtown in a one-bedroom apartment with two toddlers and an
oops
baby on the way. This seventeen-hundred-square-foot house—with an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms, and one and a half baths—seemed palatial by comparison.
They felt like they’d be living in the lap of luxury and promised each other they were going to grow old here.
But they’d outgrown it by the time the kids were teenagers with friends coming and going at all hours, and the house was showing wear and tear.
With three college tuitions looming in the near future, they couldn’t afford to add on or buy anything bigger. Not on Hank’s salary and what little she made working at a local daycare.
Somehow, they survived the old plumbing and wiring and constant repairs; the crowds of kids, the lack of privacy and closet space. Eventually their sons and daughter moved on, and although their finances aren’t terrific—thanks to the economy and a series of bad investments—at least Meredith and Hank grew back into their house.
It may be shabby, but it’s home.
Now, the mere idea of growing old anywhere at all . . . that in itself is a luxury.
“Ouch,” she says aloud, wincing again as she rolls her shoulders.
It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than stretching, a hot bath, or even lying down on the memory foam mattress they splurged on last September when Macy’s had a sale. That was when she was assuming their old, saggy mattress was causing the dull ache in her back. Hank’s back ached, too.
“I think it’s from giving the grandkids piggyback rides,” he said, “not the mattress.”
“Well, I haven’t given anyone piggyback rides. Trust me. It’s the mattress.”
The pricey new one was their early Christmas present to each other, along with the bright, cheerful paisley bedding and curtains that at least made it look like springtime in here all winter long . . . even after she found out the memory foam wasn’t going to cure her hurting bones. Nothing was.
She wishes now that she’d allowed her doctor to prescribe something for the pain during her last visit, but she was afraid she’d become dependent.
“That’s crazy,” Hank said when she told him. “Why would you think that?”
“You hear stories—all those celebrities addicted to prescription pain medication . . . and some of my blogger friends have had issues, too.”
Hank shook his head. “Next time you go, let them give you something. Why suffer?”
Suffer
—such a strong word. Especially since she isn’t truly suffering. Not yet, anyway.
There will be plenty of time down the road for Percocet or morphine or whatever it is that doctors prescribe in the final stages . . .
Plenty of time—please, God, let there be plenty of time.
She’s not against pain medicine, but even now, while they still have insurance, their prescription plan isn’t the best. Her medications have already cost them a fortune out of pocket—and a lot of good they did.
Plain old ibuprofen might help, but Hank must have packed the Advil they keep in the master bathroom medicine cabinet. She just looked for it and it wasn’t there. She’s too tired to go hunt for another bottle.
What she really needs right now, as much as, if not more than, medication, is a good, stiff shot of Kentucky Bourbon. There’s plenty of that downstairs, courtesy of living a stone’s throw from some of the world’s finest distilleries.
In the old days—well, in the few years’ window after the kids were grown but before Meredith got sick—she and Hank spent some deliciously decadent weekend afternoons with fellow empty nester friends, sipping their way along the Bourbon trail that lies in the bluegrass hills south of Cincinnati.
She was never a big drinker; just a social one. But that came to a complete halt after her breast cancer diagnosis, when she became hypervigilant about everything she put into her body. She lightened up a bit after five years in remission, but last year a routine test betrayed a resurgence of microscopic cancer cells in her remaining breast tissue, and she went right back on the wagon. Not a drop of liquor, no soy products, only organic fruits and vegetables . . .
I don’t know about that,
one of the other bloggers commented on a post where Meredith outlined her stringent habits.
What good is being alive if you sacrifice all the fun stuff?
I’m just trying to improve my odds. To each his own,
Meredith wrote back.
The blogger—that’s right, now she remembers, it was Elena—Elena wrote back:
My mother was a health nut who did everything right, and she was hit by a train before her thirtieth birthday.
I did everything right, and I was diagnosed with cancer right after mine. I have to admit: I’m sick of being good.
Meredith understood how Elena felt. But she hoped Elena understood why she herself wasn’t—
isn’t
—taking any chances.
Certainly not now that the cancer has metastasized to her bones. But of course, Elena doesn’t know about that.
“How long do I have?” Meredith asked the oncologist matter-of-factly when she first got the news.
“Don’t jump the gun, there,” said the doctor, a straight shooter. “It’s a relatively small spot, and we’re going to treat it. Radiation, chemotherapy . . .”
Yes. She knows the drill.
They treat it until everything stops working, and it continues to spread.
That, she suspects, is where they’re headed now. A few weeks ago, the morning after an idyllic Mother’s Day spent cooking outside with Hank and the kids and grandkids, the doctor gave her some discouraging test results, then told her they’re going to try this current treatment—which she knows is basically her last hope—a little longer and take some more tests to see whether it’s working.