The Probability of Miracles (8 page)

“Right.”
There's a catch
, thought Cam.
There's always a catch.

“No. I know he loves me. He's just been with Kaitlin for a long time, so it's difficult for him to extricate himself,” Lily said as she shook an American Spirit out of the box.

“Let me guess. Kaitlin does not believe in premarital sex.”

“Cam. He loves me. A woman knows,” she said through clenched teeth as she lit the cigarette with the South of the Border lighter Cam had stolen from Rocket City.

“Woman?” asked Cam. “He's made a woman out of you?”

“Entirely,” Lily said, jutting her bottom lip out so she could exhale toward the sky and away from Cam's face.

“Don't smoke,” said Cam.

“Don't nag,” said Lily, flicking the cigarette into the lake.

“But how do you
know
he loves you? Like, how are you so certain?”

“There are signs, Campbell.”

“Like in Bugs Bunny when his eyes bulge out and his head is encircled with a wreath of hearts and chirping birds, and his heart springs visibly out of his chest?”

Lily turned to her. “How'd you guess?”

“No, really.”

“I don't know,” said Lily, fiddling with her pack of cigarettes and letting another one loose. She clamped it between her lips and lit it. “When he touches me,” she said, squinting one eye from the smoke, “there's a vibration. An energy that shoots through my body. A visceral wisdom. I get goose bumps. All of my hair stands on end. Every time he touches me. And only when he touches me. That's how I know.”

“Visceral wisdom,” Cam muttered. “Doesn't that just mean you want him?”

“God, Campbell. Enough! I know what I know, okay?”

“Okay, well, good for you. Congratulations about Ryan,” said Cam. She tried to be happy for Lily, but she was skeptical. There was nothing hornier-sounding than a seventeen-year-old boy named Ryan.

“I have another confession to make,” said Lily, turning toward Cam. For the first time since she'd arrived, Cam noticed how thin Lily had become. Her skin was silvery gray and diaphanous, her fingers spindly, and her facial features—her nose and cheekbones—sharp.

“There's more? I don't think I can take any more,” said Cam. “You're taking the cancerexia a little too far, by the way. Are you eating?”

“Yes, I'm eating, Cam, and I wrote a letter to Make-A-Wish,” Lily said. Cam and Lily had vowed never to do that. They weren't going to join the cancer establishment or exploit their illness for free stuff. “I want to go to Italy with Ryan,” she said.

“What does Kaitlin have to say about that?” Cam asked.

“Shut up. You should do it too. Write to them.”

Aside from
Dear Make-A-Wish, I wish I did not have cancer
, Cam had no idea what she'd write.
Dear Make-A-Wish, Can you please get me laid before I die?
Come on. She'd trained herself for so long not to want or to hope or to wish, that she had a hard time pinning down something to ask for. And she was content. She had her car. She had her bird, and she was on the road, running. If she kept running, maybe the cancer would never catch up with her.

“I don't have a wish,” she said.

“Yes, you do.” Lily leaned against her.

“Stop it. I don't.” She leaned away.

“You do,” Lily said, flicking yet another cigarette into the lake.

“What's with the littering? Dear Make-A-Wish, I wish my friend Lily would stop smoking and flicking her cigarettes into the lake,” said Cam.

“I'm going to write a letter for you then.”

“Great. They'll probably send me to Disney World.”

The chirping soprano crickets and a few croaking baritone frogs filled the awkward silence. With the new Ryan development, Lily had ventured to a place Cam would probably never go herself. It was like Cam was suddenly playing Sandra Dee to Lily's Rizzo from
Grease
, and Cam couldn't get that stupid phrase “lousy with virginity” out of her head. She felt a rift deepening and widening between them. A crack straight through her heart.

“By the way, Kaitlin has strep throat, so Ryan's going to take us on a picnic tomorrow. You'll get to meet him,” said Lily.

“Terrific. And what am I going to do while you two are off sneaking into the woods?”

“Well, Ryan has a friend. Andrew.”

“Oh, God, Lily, no.”

“Oh my
goodness
, Campbell, yes.”

“You know I can play the sick card, right? I really feel like crap.”

“Trust me,” Lily said.

“Okay, fine,” Cam said. She wished she'd thought to put
disastrous blind date
on her Flamingo list because she felt certain she would accomplish that now.

“There's something I want to do,” said Lily. She got up and moved behind Cam. Cam thought she was searching for some more fireworks or something, but before she could turn around, Lily muttered, “InthenameoftheFatherSonand-HolySpiritIbaptizeyouCampbellMariaCooper.” And then she pushed Cam off the dock.

It took Cam a few moments to make sense of what had just happened. To make whole the pieces of synaptic experience, connect the dots, and understand: pushing, falling, fear, wet, cold, splash, muffled sounds, underwater, lake! She let herself hang suspended for a second in the underwater quiet. She felt some soft seaweed tickle her foot and then kicked to the surface.

The water felt so clean that Cam dunked herself under again and then grabbed onto the white plastic ladder at the end of the dock and pulled herself up face-first.

Lily peeked over the edge of the dock with an impish look on her face. That fabulous glint in her eye that meant she was up to some harmless no-good. Like the time in the hospital when she raided the supply closet, stole huge white garbage bags, tied toilet paper around their heads, and made Cam march with her in the Halloween parade as “white trash.”

“Excuse me,” said Cam, spitting some water, “but did you just freaking baptize me?” Cam's parents were agnostics and didn't believe in religious rituals that tried to set some people apart from others. How could dumping water on someone's head help them gain access to heaven?

“Sort of,” said Lily.

“Lily! You can't do that to a person against her will.”

“We do it to babies all the time.”

“I'm not a baby. Here, help me up.” Lily reached a hand out for Cam's. Cam pulled on it, hurling Lily into the water headfirst.

“I can't believe you fell for that,” said Cam when Lily resurfaced. “That's the oldest one in the book.”

“I deserved it,” Lily said, trying to tread water. Their wet clothes weighed their skinny bodies down, so staying afloat was difficult. Cam held a hand out to Lily and dragged her to the ladder. She was so light.

“Yeah. How do I get unbaptized?”

“Sin. A lot.”

“You seem to be better at that than I am. I'm the pure one.”

“Except for the ‘thou shalt not steal' thing.”

“Yeah, that's getting to be a bad habit.”

The moon threw its light right onto Lily as if it were her personal spotlight. It danced behind her on the ripples of the lake.

“You don't believe it makes a difference, do you?”

“I don't know. Did you find Jesus?” Lily asked.

“Why? Is he under there?” joked Cam, ducking under the dock.

“Very funny. I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.”

“Um, thanks? I guess?” Cam tried to be angry, then figured that if it hadn't mattered to her that she wasn't, it shouldn't matter to her that she was. Baptized, that is. Her Catholic grandmother would be thrilled. And it was sweet of Lily. It was her way of bringing Cam into the fold, into her new, Christian-y, Ryan-y life.

Cam climbed out of the water and wrapped herself in the huge orange towel. The two of them shivered as they picked up the Coke cans and the ashtray and the cigarettes. The house seemed to smile at them through a face of yellow-lit windows.

“Anyway, now you're saved,” Lily said. She linked her bony arm with Cam's as they hiked up the sloping lawn together and made their way into the house.

McMANSION LIVING WASN'T ALL BAD. THE NEXT DAY, AFTER SLEEPING with seven down pillows of different shapes and sizes beneath matching sheets in a room to herself that was perfectly climate-controlled to seventy-two degrees, Cam awoke feeling energized. Ready to face what Lily had in store.

She made her way groggily down the staircase made of shellacked split logs covered in the center with chartreuse carpeting. Lily's mom, Kathy, greeted Cam in the kitchen. She was southern. Like
Gone with the Wind
southern. She had a fake blonde bob, fake boobs, and fake fingernails.

“Good mawnin', Cayum,” Kathy said. She wasn't as dumb as she sounded with the accent. Weird how an accent could make you seem dumb. Cam didn't have one because her mom's Jersey accent was tempered by the Florida one, and it all sort of morphed into a nonaccent. “What kin we git you for breakfast?”

Cam looked around the kitchen, with its requisite cherry cabinets, stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, and huge center island for prep work. The window behind the sink looked out onto the morning lake, which was steaming with foggy wisps like a hot cup of tea. They probably had every breakfast food imaginable, except for what Cam really wanted: Lucky Charms.

As long as breakfast doesn't involve pineapple
, thought Cam. Last night Lily's mom had set out a Polynesian (as interpreted by a North Carolina caterer) spread, heavy on the pineapple.

“Is this authentic?” Kathy had asked.

“I wouldn't know,” said Alicia. “I'm from a big Italian family in New Jersey.”

Everyone laughed. Their families were close, but they had only ever talked about the cancer. It had consumed their lives and their interactions. Blood counts, new trials, breakthroughs, symptoms, and ways to get more energy, more life.

Neuroblastoma was a baby cancer. Something happened to the baby nerve cells before they became mature nerve cells and they started growing out of control, creating tumors around the liver and then spreading to the bones or kidneys or anywhere, really. Ninety-nine percent of cases happened in babies. And most people, when they got it as babies, could survive it. With babies, it had even been known to spontaneously, miraculously, disappear. It was a different story if you got it when you were older. Chances of survival were pretty slim.

“Cayum. I wanted to talk to you for a minute, honey,” said Kathy, pouring herself another cup of coffee.

More cancer talk
, thought Cam. “Do you have any Lucky Charms?” she interrupted, trying to cut Kathy off at the pass. “I could go for some Lucky Charms.”

“We might, honey. Check the pantry.”

The walk-in pantry was almost as big as the one at the restaurant, with shelves and shelves of cans and dried goods organized by sundry. Cam looked at “cereal row,” and as she'd expected, everything was organic and fibrous. No wonder Lily was getting so skinny. She grabbed a green box of Enviro-Pops from the shelf and reentered the kitchen. “You could feed a village with that pantry,” she said.

“Yes, I guess we should take some of that to the food bank. Listen, Cam—”

“You didn't have any Lucky Charms,” Cam interrupted, “but I found these,” she said, shaking the box. “Forty percent less sugar and no trans fat.”

“Great. Cayum. Listen, there's a new study we found out about, and Malcolm pulled some strings, and we got Lily into it. It's pretty expensive, but we'd be happy to foot the bill if you wanted to try it with Lily. It's in Chicago, and we got in because we know someone who knows someone.”

Cam let herself be distracted for a second by the red dart of a cardinal flying past the kitchen windows behind Kathy. “My mom knew Madonna once,” she said. She settled on a stool at the center island and pressed her bony elbows into the granite.

“Um. Really, sugar?”

It wasn't that giving up on western medicine didn't frighten Cam. Western medicine was her life. Her whole identity had become wrapped up in leukocytes and lymphocytes and neuroblasts and metastasis, chemo, radiation, surgery, procedures. And none of it mattered. The entire trillion-dollar cancer industry and all of its machinery, Cam now realized, was for naught. All the pain it caused. All the bone-marrow transplants. For naught. The war on cancer, like any war, was useless except for its ability to stimulate the economy. Drugs were being sold. Doctors were getting paid. Pharmaceutical companies were getting rich. Cam had become collateral damage in the war on cancer. And she was done with all of it. She was throwing in
la toalla
.

“Don't think Madonna could pull any strings, though,” Cam concluded.

“So, what do you think, sugar?”

“Kathy, I think that is very nice of you. Really. But I don't think that's my path.”

“Since when do you have a ‘path'?” Alicia asked, appearing in the doorway of the kitchen. She leaned against the doorjamb in her pajamas and kimono and held her cup of coffee in both hands. Her face was chiseled into the stern, serious, and yet slightly amused countenance of a disappointed mother that Cam rarely saw because she rarely did anything wrong.

“Since now. We're going to Crazy Town in Maine, remember? That's our strategy, since we don't
know
someone who
knows
someone.”

“Don't you think we should at least try it?” Alicia said. “It's medicine, Campbell.” She swept a long curly strand of hair out of her red-rimmed morning eyes.