Before I Go (16 page)

“The spirulina is effective, obviously, but Kramer thinks we could combine it with other compounds—make a supersupplement of sorts . . .”

I know he’s speaking more to himself than to me—it’s how he organizes
his thoughts, because God forbid he would actually write anything down—so I tune him out and think more about Charlene. She has a lot in common with Jack, but is it too much? Is she scatterbrained like him, or organized? Maybe she wouldn’t even notice an unruly pile of dirty socks because she’d be too busy thinking about mushrooms or sarcomas or her latest golden retriever patient. I wonder how she is to live with—maybe I could track down her roommate and try to get some information out of her. Melissa, was it? And then the thought that tugged on me when Charlene introduced us fully formulates itself in my brain.

“Is she a lesbian?” I say out loud, not even realizing I’m talking over Jack, until the words are out of my mouth.

He stops midsentence and looks at me, taking his eyes off the dark road leading up to our street for longer than I think is safe. His eyebrows furrow, and his mouth forms an O: “Who?”

“Charlene,” I say, and then point to the windshield. “Watch the road!”

He resets his gaze forward and shrugs. “Um . . . I don’t know? I’ve never really thought about it.”

I nod. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

The crease in his forehead deepens. “Daisy,” he says. My name is a statement. “Are you OK?”

Great. My husband thinks I’m a crazy cancer patient, too. “I’m fine,” I say, waving off his scrutiny. “Tell me more about Kramer.”

But he doesn’t. After a few beats of silence he asks me how class is going. “You haven’t said much about it recently.”

Which I could tell him is because after I got a D on my makeup Gender Studies exam, I decided to stop taking tests altogether. I don’t do the reading assignments, I haven’t written any papers, and my professors and I seem to have an unspoken agreement that I can just drop in on class like a socialite choosing which fancy parties she feels like going to.

But instead, I say, “It’s good.”

He waits for me to elaborate.

I don’t.

As he sets the parking brake, he turns to me. “Hey, do you want to go to Waffle House in the morning?”

I unbuckle my seat belt and look at him. “Don’t you have PetSmart tomorrow?” Jack volunteers the first Saturday of every month with the Athens Small Dog Rescue during their adoption day at the local pet store.

“Yeah, but I can skip it.”

“You’ve never skipped,” I say. “Besides, you know I don’t eat that stuff.” I open the door, bracing myself for the cool night air that’s sure to bite my bare legs.

He mumbles something and doesn’t move from the front seat.

“What?” I fold at the waist and stick my head back in the car to better hear him.

“You used to.” The side of his mouth turns up and his crooked tooth peeks through his lips. “Remember the morning after the first time you spent the night with me?”

I cock my head at Jack’s nostalgia. He’s not the sentimental type.

And then I let out a tiny sigh as I think of that morning. Of course I remember. His bed-tousled hair. The chewy bacon. But that was before the Lots of Cancer. That was even before the Little Cancer the first time. And I am not the same girl who could throw caution to the wind and eat whatever she wanted. And Jack knows that. Or he should.

We stare at each other. Seven years of memories swim between us, and lighting on the same one strengthens the current. I swear I can feel it tugging on my heart. “Come on,” I say more gently while straightening my bent spine. “Let’s go inside.”

nine

T
HE TEMPERATURE OF the hot yoga class at Open Chakra studio is a stifling and humid 105 degrees. For the past two years, I’ve suffered through the 8
A.M.
Saturday morning sessions with Bendy Mindy and her weird southern Buddhist hybrid way of speaking (“Namaste, y’all!”), after reading a study that the practice helps rid your body of toxins and can possibly reverse the cancer process, effectively preventing tumors from growing in the body.

Now, even though I know it effectively does not, I still find myself perched on my organic jute mat, conqueror breathing in unison with eight other women—one of whom could be Jack’s wife.

“Now, again,” Bendy Mindy instructs. “Inhale deeply. From your beer guts, guys and gals!”

The hissing sound of our collective exhale fills the room like a band of angry cobras in a wicker basket and I glance around, wondering if Bendy Mindy has noticed that there are no men in her class. A woman with a Jamie Lee Curtis pixie cut in the back of the room locks eyes with me and quickly looks away, and that’s when I notice a few other classmates boring holes into my skin.

Yep, I’m orange. Get over it,
I silently tell them and then close my eyes to try and forget about their curious stares and find my Zen.

Except I’ve never really been good at finding my Zen. While everyone else is silently repeating mantras, I’m the one silently repeating items on a grocery list or psychological theories for an upcoming exam.

We move into downward dog and a bead of sweat runs from my forehead down the length of my nose and drips onto the floor. My hands slide a little on the slick mat and I concentrate on keeping my balance. I’m struck by how this simple pose seems more difficult than usual. Maybe because I haven’t been in a few weeks?

My head goes light and I squeeze my eyes shut to combat the wave of dizziness that threatens to overtake me.

I breathe in.

Exhale.

Better.

“Knees down. Now slide back to ooh-tan-uh shee-sho-san-uh,” Bendy Mindy directs in her soft twang. “And just let go of your week. Whatever you’re holding on to—anger, stress, you’re irritated that your favorite singer got kicked off
The Voice
—” She waits for a response and receives a titter of polite chuckles from two women. Satisfied, she continues: “Breathe it out. Let go of the anger.”

It feels like that word-association game where someone says “door” and you say the first word that pops into your mind and it surprises you, because at the word “anger” the first thing I think of is . . . Kayleigh.

And as soon as I think it, I know it’s true.

I’m mad at Kayleigh.

It’s been almost three weeks since I told her about the Lots of Cancer on the phone, and though we’ve texted, she hasn’t come over. She hasn’t just shown up at the back door and let herself in and put her shoes up on my coffee table without being invited. And even though that’s what used to irritate me, now I’m irritated that she hasn’t done it. And until this moment, I’ve been trying to ignore it.
The little voice in my head has been making excuses: She’s busy! I’m busy! We’ve gone longer without seeing each other! Quit being so needy!

But now the little voice in my head is wondering if maybe, even after all these years, I’ve miscalculated her. Maybe she isn’t as strong as I thought. Maybe she’s avoiding me like all my other “friends” who fell away the first time I had cancer because they didn’t know if they should ask how the chemo was going or pretend I wasn’t having chemo and talk about the weather or the latest episode of
Revenge
instead. So they just didn’t talk to me at all.

Freud would say I’m displacing. I’m pissed about the cancer and I’m taking it out on Kayleigh. That’s the problem with being a psych major. I can’t just have feelings like normal people. I have to try to
understand
them. It’s exhausting.

I sigh and give my head a gentle shake as Bendy Mindy directs us into the bridge.

God, it’s hot. Is it always this hot?

“Concentrate on your breath, y’all.”

I close my eyes again and exhale and try to let go of Kayleigh and my displaced anger or whatever it is. I need to be thinking about Jack anyway.

And his new wife.

We stand up for warrior pose and I try to discreetly survey the room again, but turning my head makes me decidedly more dizzy, so I look toward the mirror at the front of the room and try to focus on myself. Is my body aligned correctly? My back toes perfectly perpendicular with my front heel? Sweat drips in my eyes, blurring my vision, and as I lift my hand to try and rub it out, I feel my body swaying.

“Daisy?”

I hear my name, but it sounds far away and kind of singsongy, like when my mom used to serenade me with my favorite nursery rhyme
over and over when I couldn’t sleep. And then the song is on a loop in my head.

Dai-sy, Dai-sy, give me your answer, do!

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!

It won’t
be a stylish marriage,

I can’t afford a carriage,

But you’ll look sweet

Upon the seat

Of a bicycle built for two!

I open my eyes, smiling a kind of dumb, childish smile as if the song has transformed me into my three-year-old self, and I’m a little confused because all of these faces are staring at me and it takes me a minute to realize I’m on my back.

“Are you OK?” says the mouth of a woman who has hard, sinewy arms but a soft, dewy face and I feel like the duckling in that book: “Could you be Jack’s wife?”

And then I notice that my head is pounding and I roll to the side just in time to throw up what’s left of my kale smoothie on the sinewy/soft lady’s bare feet.

And that’s when I decide that I’m done with yoga.

JACK’S NOT ROMANTIC. At least not in the conventional way. At least that’s what I tell people when they ask
What did Jack get you for Valentine’s Day/Christmas/your birthday?
and they expect me to say
a bouquet of tulips
or
a sapphire bracelet
or
a box of truffles
. But instead I say, “Oh, Jack’s not romantic in the conventional way,” which leads them to believe that he
is
romantic in some other supersecret way. But he’s not.

Jack’s logical. Which isn’t to say he isn’t sweet and thoughtful, because he can be, but he can also be royally clueless, as if he’s never seen a Meg Ryan movie in his life. I learned early in our relationship that if I wanted to be wined and dined, I was going to have to make the reservations—or specifically tell him that I want to go out to eat, which night I want to go and that he should wear a sports jacket and tie.

Which is why I’m shocked when Jack comes home early on Monday night and asks me to go out to dinner.

“A new restaurant just opened up downtown,” he says. “Wildberry Café. It’s one of those farm-to-table deals. Thought we could check it out.”

“Tonight?” I ask, looking down at the same pajamas I’ve been wearing since I woke up this morning. I had planned on changing before Jack got home, so I could pretend that I had been to class, but it’s only 5
P.M.
and he never comes home before eight. I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just gotta change.” Benny at his heels, he walks back toward the bedroom, pulling his T-shirt off over his head as he goes.

“I’m not really hungry,” I call after him, and snuggle tighter into the divot my butt has made on the couch. My cell buzzes on the coffee table and I know it’s my mom, because she’s texted me seven times in the past hour confirming her arrival Thursday morning to drive me to my stent procedure. It’s taken her seven texts because she just learned to text a month ago and she accidentally hits send too soon or she leaves out an apostrophe or she wants to make sure I’ve gotten the text and that it’s not floating in cyberspace somewhere or has erroneously (and miraculously) been zapped to someone else’s phone, even though I’ve explained to her that that doesn’t happen.

I pick up my phone. This one says:
Should I bring shedts? Or do you have? Can’t remember.

I know she means sheets. And I know I’ll get another text message clarifying that when she realizes that she’s misspelled it.

Minutes later, Jack reappears in a burgundy polo and looks at me expectantly.

“C’mon, go change.”

So he has noticed my pajamas.

“What are you doing home so early?” I ask.

“I told you,” he says slowly, as if I’m the crazy one. “I want to go to dinner.”

I sit with this information. First it was the Waffle House and now this, and I couldn’t be more baffled than if Jack had told me he was quitting school to be a trapeze artist. Part of me knows I should be thrilled. Isn’t this what I always told Jack I wanted? To be caught off guard by a romantic dinner invite? Except when I told him that last year in a fit of restlessness because we’d only been married a year and I thought maybe we were lacking some of the spine-tingling excitement newlyweds are supposed to revel in, he said: “It’s just not me. I don’t think about stuff like that.” And though I was disappointed, I knew he was right.

It’s not him.

So instead of being elated, I feel something else, even though I can’t immediately put my finger on it. It’s like a sweater that used to hug my curves in all the right ways, but then shrunk in the dryer. This new Jack doesn’t fit right.