Side Effects May Vary (3 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Alice.

Now.

M
om and Dad cried freely now, and rightly so. I wasn't dying.

I wasn't dying.
Not actively, anyway.

“You're sure?” I asked in a quiet voice.

Somehow Dr. Meredith heard me over my parents' celebratory tears. His glasses had slid down to the tip of his nose. He flipped through the stacks of papers in my thick file. “I'm positive, Alice. Your white blood cells are regulating, and in your most recent bone marrow sample, there was no trace of cancerous cells. I had the lab techs double-check and triple-check. Remission is constituted by shrinking or lack of growth, so there you are. Of course you'll still be going in for scans and blood work on a weekly basis. We'll be keeping a very close eye on you. It can always come back stronger, so it's always best to be aware and prepared.” He closed the file sitting in front of him—my file.

My stomach twisted. This should have felt good, but it didn't.

“You'll need to start intensification therapy followed by maintenance therapy, but not until we know what triggered the remission. We're at the peak of the mountain, folks, but let's not relax yet. Thankful, but mindful. That's going to be our mantra these next few months.”

My parents sobered up at that and turned in their chairs to face me. They looked at me, really looked at me like they hadn't seen me for a year, and I guess in a way they hadn't.

After I got sick, I wondered if they tried to stop loving me a little bit. Not on purpose, but maybe in the interest of them surviving this thing. I mean, my parents loved me. But wouldn't anyone try to distance themselves from something they knew they were about to lose entirely? I was their only child, but my life had never consumed theirs. Then I got sick, and for the last fourteen months, my disease had become the axis of their world. They'd gotten to this point where they started looking through me, rather than at me. It wasn't anything I fully realized until this very moment, this moment when they were really looking at me again, their daughter. It made me want to be anywhere but here. With a handful of words my life had fallen off the rails.

I'd wondered what would happen to them after I died. Would my mom have left my dad for that guy? But, now, what would happen now? Would she tell us that she'd been having an affair? Would she leave us after we'd weathered this storm together?

I opened my mouth to speak, but swallowed my words when I realized I had no idea what words to use. My body was being stretched in every direction, begging to be felt. The list—my final to-do list—had fixed almost everything. But nothing could fix this.

My vision blurred, and all I saw was everything I'd done over the last year. Everything I'd said.
Harvey
. I didn't know how to live with the weight of what I'd told him the other night, what I'd said without words.

“That being said,” the doctor continued, “in all my years I have never . . . I've never seen anything like it. My profession frowns upon this word, but, Alice, it appears to be what some call a miracle. You hear about these things from time to time, circumstances that defy science. It seems that after we had decided to suspend your chemotherapy treatment, your body began to fight back. I could go on for days with theories and possibilities, which I will do next week during our official appointment. And I do apologize for the last-minute call, especially right before the holidays. I wanted you all to know the moment we were sure.”

After we had decided to suspend your chemotherapy treatment
. The day we stopped, none of us had said we were giving up, not out loud. But we did, I did. I had given up the day I was diagnosed. The chemotherapy was horrible and, in my eyes, made the act of dying that much more degrading. After almost a year of chemo, I had to put my foot down.

All of a sudden, the room and everything it contained rushed to meet me. I emerged from under water, hitting the surface after having been submerged, and the sound of nurses in the hallway and the smell of disinfectant clogged my senses. Everything had been muffled and blurred, but now it was all too sharp and overenunciated.

I'll miss you most
. I didn't know how to be with Harvey now. Not without ruining us. What if I already had? We had nowhere else to go.

“Motherfucker,” I mumbled.

My mom heard me and turned back around. My name formed in her mouth like an old habit as her lips parted. But she stopped herself. I could even hear it.
Alice Elizabeth
, she would say in a vicious whisper that I could hear even in my sleep. But no, instead my mother was utterly confused, like I was an equation with no answer. It wasn't the cursing that bothered her; it was me saying it here in my doctor's office after he'd told me I was some Lifetime miracle.
Yell at me
, I wanted to say.
Make this normal.

After wiping his tearstained eyes in the crook of his elbow, Dad stood up to shake Dr. Meredith's hand. “Thank you so much, Dr. Meredith, we're so . . .” He reached out for my mother's hand and she was at his side in an instant. “We can't believe it,” he finished.

Over the last year, I'd watched my parents transform into magnets defined by the length of space between them, letting this tragedy hold them together. But no matter how dependent upon each other they seemed to be, all I saw was the truth that had become the lie my mother lived. It was the truth I'd never been able to tell my dad, even if he deserved to know.

Dr. Meredith grasped my dad's outstretched hand. “Now we'll see Alice next week. We'll stick to the regular schedule,” he said, “because you never know. This could be the eye of the storm. We don't know. That's the hard truth. But be happy for today.”

Mom doubled back to me and ushered me forward, nudging me with the tips of her fingers at the small of my back. I knew what she wanted, so I played along. It had been quite a while since I had made nice for Mom and Dad, and now it looked like there would be some making up to do. I reached up to pat Dr. Meredith on the shoulder and thank him, but he pulled me into a bear hug instead. The sweat seeped through his dress shirt, and I wanted to pull away, but I didn't. Because if I did, my parents would have seen the few tears rolling down my cheeks and onto Dr. Meredith's lab coat. I'd grown so used to the terms of my life—the conditions—that now I didn't know how to tell the difference between the good and the bad. But I knew, unless the cancer came back, that I was going to live. Now, I had to decide who and what I could live with.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers

Harvey.

Now.

A
fter grabbing my keys, I headed out to my hand-me-down car. I had parked out by the buzzing Grocery Emporium sign with the rest of the employees. I spent most of my childhood with this car, a mid-nineties red Geo Metro. It was small, but it'd always been me and my mom so it was never a problem. For my sixteenth birthday my mom bought herself a shiny new Jetta, slapped a Miss P's Ballet Academy car magnet on the driver door of the Geo, and called it my birthday present.

Technically, it was more than a ballet academy. When I was younger, my mom had all these requests for jazz and tap classes, so she expanded her courses after her first couple years in business. Not until I was about nine or ten did she hire a hip-hop and jazz teacher and a lyrical/modern dance teacher. I tried to convince her that changing the name of the studio to Miss P's Dance Academy would bring in more students, but she refused. The name was something she wouldn't budge on. When she'd first decided to open a ballet school, she wanted to call it the Poppovicci School of Ballet, but Bernie told Mom that people don't like to do business with a place whose name they can't pronounce. Eventually Mom caved and settled on Miss P's.

The bumper of the Geo was covered in recital stickers (Martin designed new ones every year). One day I tried to scrape them off, but my mom threatened to take the car right back if I touched her stickers. So, essentially, my car was on loan from my mom until further notice.

It wasn't really a
guy
car, but it was my car. The fact that it had an engine and wheels outweighed the fact that the steering wheel bumped against my knees when I turned and that I always hit my head when I got in and out of the car.

Before reversing out of the parking lot, I glanced through the call history on my cell. No missed calls. I'd spent the last couple months teetering on the edge of insanity, so scared of getting
the
call.

I took the back roads to Alice's house, hoping to beat the five o'clock traffic, which sounded more pressing than it was. We lived in Hughley, a small suburb, where traffic existed solely because modern roadways did not. Every street was a two-lane street, and many streets were one way.

Racing past the studio, I prayed my mother wasn't outside greeting students at the door. If she were, she might see the Geo speeding down Little Ave and know that I'd skipped out on work early. Again.

I didn't really have big plans for tonight, but Alice had been so tired lately and I was scared. Every night could be the last. By the time my shift ended at seven thirty she was usually about to fall asleep, so I tried to cut out early as much as I could. Her body was starting to wind down on her, drowning bits of herself a little more every day. It wasn't what I'd expected, dying.

 

As I shifted the Geo into park, Alice's front door closed. Either Bernie or Alice's dad, Martin, must have just gotten home. Like I'd told Dennis, on the menu tonight was
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
. Dennis said it was hilarious and a little sad too. The sad I could handle; it was the hilarious that worried me. The funny movies had been the hardest to get through, because you're supposed to laugh and Alice was too tired to laugh. When she couldn't laugh, I tried to remember her laugh for her, and for me too, in case I forgot it. But every time I recalled it in my head it sounded distorted and far away, like the screams you hear when you're waiting in line outside a haunted house.

I grabbed the DVD from the passenger seat, not even bothering to take off my Grocery Emporium apron. Running past Alice's mom's car, I could still feel the warmth transmitting from the engine.

I knocked on the door as a formality. I had my own key anyway. But before I had a chance to shove the key into the lock, Bernie answered the door, her normally smooth face a red mess.

“Harvey, we just got—”

I interrupted her because I was scared of what she would say. “Hey, Bernie, I brought over another movie.” I began to step toward the front door, looking down at her as I asked, “Alice in her room?” But Bernie wasn't shifting to let me through. Her body stood wedged in the crack between the door and the frame, like I was a threat.

“Stay put for a minute, Harvey.” She shut the door without giving me a second to respond. Then the lock clicked.

The muscles in my back tensed.

Through the door, I heard Bernie say, “It's Harvey. You should tell him.”

Silence.

My throat closed and my heart hammered a hole in my chest.

“You should be the one to tell him,” she said, more insistent this time.

Dead air.

I tried peeking through the curtains, scared of what I might find, but the blinds were pulled down too tightly. I heard hushed voices. And I knew. They were trying to figure out how to tell me she was gone. I wanted to walk right in and tell them I knew. I knew that night when she told me.
I'll miss you most.

I was a stranger on the doorstep, certain that I'd lost my connection to Bernie and Martin that mattered most. Sticking my empty hand in the pocket of my jeans, I shook around some loose change and thought about the list. When she first told me about it, I told her she was crazy. But if it hadn't been for the list, I might not have had her all to myself this last year. So, I guess we both got a little bit of what we wanted. She got the last word and I got her.

A minute later, Martin came to the door. Of course Bernie would send Martin out here to tell me, but I didn't want to think of this moment every time I saw him. He wore his usual ripped jeans, an old, threadbare T-shirt, and loafers. He looked even more exhausted than Bernie. As he stepped out onto the front porch, he closed the door behind him. No one had ever called Martin the father figure in my life or my male role model or some crap like that, but he was. And I didn't want him to be tied to this memory, the moment I found out she was gone.

What if she's in there?
Her lifeless body might have still been in there—maybe in her bed, tucked in like she was asleep—waiting to be picked up by the funeral home or the ambulance or whoever did those sorts of things. I closed my eyes, but panicked when my memory of her face was fuzzy. I wanted to see her, but it would be all wrong and I was too chickenshit for that. I couldn't see her like that. Seeing a dead body outside of a funeral home would be like seeing your teacher out at a restaurant or at a concert.

“Hey, Harv,” said Martin. He rubbed his hand up the back of his short cropped hair and puffed his cheeks full of air before slowly deflating them.

He smiled. He was smiling.

No. That had to be wrong.
You can't smile—she's dead. Don't tell me her pain is gone. Don't tell me she'll be at peace. Because she's not at peace, she's gone.
I wanted to scream all of these things at him. My blood boiled and my knuckles begged to connect with his face. All that anger felt sour in my mouth, but Alice was gone, and now I was waiting for that other half of me to disappear.

“It's gone, man.” Martin wasn't the type of guy who spoke like a teenager so he could be hip and “connect with the kids.” He talked like a teenager because he still was one, in a way. But I didn't hear Martin call me man, which would normally lift at least a corner of my lip. I heard
it
. I didn't know what
it
meant.

“It?” I asked. My voice was too high and strangled, like puberty wasn't done with me quite yet.

A whole river of tears loomed behind my eyes waiting for the word. I tried to picture myself falling apart on their front porch. I didn't even care about what I would look like or who would see me. Would they invite me in to comfort me or were they bandaging their own wounds now? Maybe they'd send me back to my car, then call my mom to warn her of the storm. What really stung was that if she was gone, I should have known. I should've felt it.

“The cancer.” Martin choked on his words. “She's in remission.”

Three words. Three words I never thought I would ever hear. Three words that could build enough tomorrows to last me forever.

“Can I come in and see her?” I asked, reaching for the door. Really, I needed proof that she was still here and alive.

He opened the door and stuck his head inside. After whispering a few words to whoever stood in the entryway, he turned back to me. His eyes shifted a little. “She's resting. Her body's still got a lot of work to do, but we'll call Natalie and plan a celebratory dinner.” He shrugged his shoulders, like he was trying to communicate something else to me, but I didn't get it.

It was the first time they'd ever told me no, the only time they'd ever not let me into their home.

But she was alive. Martin reached for me, and I stood there, shocked, as he hugged me with my arms glued to my sides. He squeezed me so hard that the DVD in my hand slipped from my fingers and clattered to the front porch.

I walked to my car, my feet knowing what to do without my mind ever telling them to do so. We could be together. Alice and I. That could be my life. I unlocked my car and sat behind the wheel for a moment, letting all of last year flood me. She'd have to make up for a lot of lost time at school. But it was okay. It would all be okay. My white-knuckled fingers gripped the peeling steering wheel as a smile tugged at my lips. Pulling the rearview mirror down to face me I saw that I wore the same stupefied smile Martin had worn moments ago.

I shifted gears into reverse, and squinted at Alice's house before rolling down the driveway. And there she was, watching me through a crack in the blinds of the big bay window in the office. The blinds shifted and she was gone. I told myself every reason why she might not let me in. Especially now, after everything. And then I told myself, it was okay, because now we had time on our side.

What should have been our end had become our beginning.