Breathless (6 page)

“That’s not an answer.” She leans against the washer. “I’m not prying.”

“Sounds like you are.” I feel squirmy.

“It’s a logical question,” Mom says. “And it wouldn’t surprise me. He’s familiar. He’s always hanging around—”

“Because of Travis.”

“Partly. I—I just don’t think he’s the best choice for you.”

“You’re the one who took him in when he was a kid.” I turn defensive.

“He needed our family at the time, and it was the right thing to do. But I don’t want you falling for him. He has … problems.”

An understatement, I think. Cooper’s a loner, nobody’s friend except Travis’s. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” I turn so she won’t see the lie. I am attracted to Cooper. I think he’s exotic and sexy. “He hangs with a different kind of girl,” I tell her. The girls he chooses don’t have great reputations, and he never stays with any of them for very long.

I sort dirty clothes silently until Mom says, “Look, I know it’s been difficult for you with all the attention going to Travis, what with him being
so sick. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are right now. I need to know that I don’t have to worry about you, Emily. That you won’t divide my loyalties.”

“You don’t want me to have a boyfriend. And you really don’t want it to be Cooper. I get it, Mom.”

She offers an apologetic smile. “You’ve always been smart, so maybe that is what I am saying. It won’t always be this way.”

I resist the urge to argue.

“When Travis was two, I found him on top of the bookshelves in the living room. On top! He’d climbed up there while I was changing your diaper. He’s always been on the edge of life, and now he’s really on the edge.”

“He didn’t ask to get cancer.”

“That’s not the point. It’s just that now he’s the focus of our family. He has to be. It doesn’t mean we love you less. If anything, I’ll depend on you more.”

That’s me, Emily the Dependable One. Her trust feels like a wool coat in summer. I bend down and pull the light-colored clothes away from the dark ones and put them into a separate pile. “I know how to be good, Mom,” I say.

“You are good, Emily, and this won’t go on forever with your brother.”

And then it will be your turn. That’s what she’s telling me. That’s what she means. What I don’t say is that I’m not even sure how to take my turn.

T
ravis returns to school in January. He walks in to a hero’s welcome, a ceremony in the gym with most of the school attending. The jocks sit in a big group—Coach’s idea, to show how much he’s been missed. I can tell Travis doesn’t want this kind of attention. People are staring at his legs. He’s wearing jeans, but the athletic shoe on his prosthetic foot looks new and way too clean.

Coach makes a speech. Then the whole swim team surrounds Travis, and a photographer from the local paper snaps some pictures. Travis looks like he wants to bolt. Finally it’s over, and kids file out to classes. I bulldoze my way through the crowd to my friend.

“Get me out of here,” he says under his breath.

“I’m taking him home,” I tell the principal. She looks baffled, as if she can’t understand why Travis doesn’t want to bask in the glow of the celebration.

Darla and Emily circle Travis. “I need to go home,” he tells the principal.

“We’ll take him,” Emily says.

“All three of you?”

“We’ll be back before third period,” I say.

She agrees, and we cut to the door.

Outside, the sun is bright, the day cold for southern Alabama, and I feel like we’ve been let out of jail.

“Did any of you know they were going to do that?” Travis asks. We shake our heads. “Because if I’d known, I’d never have come back.”

“They wanted to honor you,” Emily says.

“For what? I haven’t done anything except survive and relearn how to walk. A three-year-old can do as much.”

We pile into my car. “Where to?” I ask.

“The lake,” Travis says. “I don’t care if it’s cold. I want to be near the water.”

“What about coming back by third period?” Emily asks.

“Get a grip, sis,” Travis says. “We’re not coming back today.”

“We’ll do the drive-thru and get fries,” Darla says. “Warm us up.” She finds a blanket and tosses it over herself and Travis.

I look over at Emily in my front passenger seat. Her face is beet red. I tell her, “I can bring you back if you want to come.”

“I don’t want to.”

I’m betting she’s never cut a class in her life. “Still playing by the rules, huh,” I tease her, and her face gets even redder.

“I’m not a kid,” she growls. “Stop treating me like one.”

If I treated her the way I want to, if I took her in my arms … I put the brakes on my train of thought and drive to the lake.

L
ife’s been rocky at my house. Dad’s temper is hair-trigger; he explodes over the smallest things. No need to burden Travis with my problems, so I keep mum, but this is how I’ll remember my senior year—my dad yelling and slamming doors and my boyfriend sick with cancer.

My father had a meltdown last night and actually slapped Mom. After it happened I raced upstairs and held my pillow over my head. I feel bad about retreating, but I wanted to stay out of his way.

Later I find Mom in the kitchen, pressing an ice bag to her face. I’m sorry for her, but I’m angry too. I say, “You shouldn’t let him get away with hitting you.”

“You’re right. He’s not good at controlling himself. He didn’t mean it. He said he was sorry.”

“Don’t defend him, Mom.”

“He’s had a bad month and he’s frustrated.”

“Well, if he ever does it again, you should take Kayla and leave. Or call someone to help you deal with it. You shouldn’t let him get away with excuses.”

She dismisses me with a hand wave. “Oh, Darla, I won’t leave. You know that.”

“But it’s not right. It’s against the law.”

“This is our home.” She hardly listens to me. “I know he shouldn’t have done it, and I know he’s sorry. I love him. And he loves me. I know he does”

I want to shake her. I know what love is, and it isn’t about yelling and not at all about hitting. “I’m getting away from here right after high school, and you know that,” I tell Mom. “You and Kayla should come with me.”

“Marriages have their ups and downs. One slap isn’t right, but it also isn’t grounds for leaving, Darla. You’re young, and you don’t understand how people can get angry at one another but still love each other. My life isn’t yours.”

She’s right—I don’t get it. Dad’s losing control more often, and she acts blind, or worse, just lets it go. “Well, if he ever looks like he’s going to hit you
again when I’m in the room, I’m going to get in his face. I won’t stand around while he smacks you. You should tell him to stop.”

“It won’t happen again,” she insists, trying to soothe me. She shifts the ice pack. “He truly loves me—all of us. He’s just so very unhappy right now. He’s suffering.”

I don’t say, “He’s mean and rude and always has been,” like I want to. I tell her, “I think you should leave if it ever does happen again. Don’t let him get away with that.”

She studies me with eyes that look old. “And what about Travis? Will you walk just because he’s sick and you’re tired of watching him suffer?”

“I’ll never leave him.” I bristle at the idea. “Don’t even compare these things. I love him.”

“Then you understand perfectly how it is for me. So don’t get all uppity and tell me what to do, Darla. I’m not leaving your father.”

“It isn’t the same at all!” I say. “Travis didn’t ask for cancer.”

But she isn’t listening. She walks out of the kitchen, leaving me to sit alone in the dark feeling furious at the unfairness of life. Travis is good and kind and sick, and my father is healthy and mean and unworthy of my mother’s love.

A
diver understands statistics.

Two summers, my junior and half of my senior years, since they took my leg.

Five months of remission.

One relapse.

Second remissions are harder to achieve. Third remissions are almost impossible. I know the odds. I’m keeping score. Zero hope.

This is how I think about my life: Before I got sick, endless possibilities. After? No possibilities.

I started my senior year full of determination. Now I’ve stopped going to school altogether. The principal says that I can graduate if I finish my work at home. Fine. Suits me. It’s hard hanging around the classroom when I feel rotten, even
harder when I see kids horsing around and I haven’t got enough energy to stand up. I miss diving. It’s like an ache in my gut, the wanting to be up there on the board. Our team lost the district title my junior year. Everybody says we’d be state champs if I were still on the team. They’ll get another shot at it in a couple of months, but I never will again. It’s over for Travis Morrison.

Everyone expects me to be strong and courageous. Mom and Dad see me as a fighter. Cooper thinks I’m invincible. Darla sees me as brave. Emily believes I’ll triumph and get well.

The other afternoon, when Darla was with me, I understood how cut off I am from my old life. She was happy, all excited, telling me all about her upcoming tryouts for the senior play and how she was going to win the lead from all comers.

“Mrs. Paulson hasn’t told us what the play will be. We’re just supposed to show up in the auditorium, and that’s when she’ll give us the book for a cold reading. Can you imagine? So impromptu—wonder what play she’s picked? Anyway I can’t wait. I’m good at impromptu.”

I used to be excited about the future too,
pumped before every competition, eager to talk to every recruiter who called or wrote. Once, I was going to be a great diver. I saw myself as fearless, a champion, ready to take on the world. Once upon a time.

F
or a brief few months, Travis went into remission, and we thought he was on his way to full recovery. Hope was smashed five months later, just after the start of his senior year, when cancer was discovered in his lungs. He went back into chemo, and then into dialysis because his kidneys are failing due to the chemo. A vicious cycle.

It’s my sophomore year, and I’m put into honors classes. The work’s harder; I spend lots of afternoons in the library studying. Sometimes instead of the library, I go to the church. The minister’s daughter is a junior, and I hitch a ride with her. I’m not sixteen yet, so I only have my learner’s permit, but once in a while, when he’s feeling good,
Travis lets me his drive his car and comes along for the ride. Those are good days.

The church in the late afternoon is empty and quiet, and daylight hits the rose window high in the back and throws beautiful colored patterns across the stone walls. I walk the long carpeted aisle to the front, light small tea candles, and line them up on the altar rail. And I get on my knees and beg God to make Travis well.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison….

A tear splashes and a tea light sizzles.
Kyrie … kyrie … eleison … eleison….

I stop abruptly when I hear an unexpected noise behind me. I leap up, turn, and face Cooper standing in the middle of the aisle. “Don’t do that!” My voice bounces off the walls.

“Do what?”

“Sneak up on me.”

He raises his hands, backs off. “Sorry.”

My pounding heart slows. “Wait. I—I didn’t mean … you just startled me, that’s all. Why are you here?”

“To take you home. Your dad’s running late, and he called and asked if I could pick you up.” Dad usually comes for me after work at either the library or the church.

“I can wait for Dad,” I say, feeling self-conscious
and wondering how long Cooper’s been watching my rituals.

“Not an option. I can wait a little while for you, but I’ve got to go to work.”

It’s six o’clock. “Now?”

“New shift at the warehouse. Time-and-a-half pay if I work till midnight.”

“I’m ready,” I say, looking from the candles I’ve lit for Travis.

“Do those candles help God see you?”

“Of course not.”

“Did God speak to you?”

My face goes hot because he’s taunting me. “Please don’t make fun of God.”

“I’m not.”

“Or of me and what I believe.”

“I’d never make fun of you, Emily. God, maybe. Never you.”

This doesn’t reassure me. “Then what’s your problem?”

“I don’t get how you can keep asking God for something that isn’t happening. Is he deaf? Why doesn’t he answer?”

Haven’t I asked the same question? Why doesn’t God answer? I don’t want Cooper to see my confusion, so I sling my book bag over my
shoulder and head outside into the parking lot to his old tank of a car.

We drive in silence, until Cooper says, “There is no answer, is there? Travis has cancer and your God’s pulling the strings and he doesn’t have to explain himself, right?”

“Maybe he has another plan,” I say in God’s defense.

“Then what good is he? To have the power and not use it to help people? God’s a fraud.”

“Don’t say those things!”

“Why not? If he’s real, if he’s listening, maybe he’ll get mad and turn his attention away from Travis and onto me.”

His words splash cold water on my anger. When he pulls up in front of my house, he says, “Tell Travis I’ll catch him later.”

I feel his eyes on me as I leave the car, as his offer to substitute himself for Travis follows me through the front door and into the light.

At the dinner table on Sunday night, Travis asks, “Mom, would you put a DNR on my chart?”

She looks startled. “Where did you hear about a DNR?”

“In the drip unit.” That’s what he calls chemo. “From a woman with cancer.”

“Is this an inquiry or a request?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters.” Mom puts down her fork. “Do you know what one is?”

“It means they won’t revive me if I die.”

My stomach seizes. I glance at Dad, then back at Mom and Travis.

“I won’t do that,” Mom says.

“But I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s what I want.”

“Now, you hear me, son. So long as you’re alive, we’ll never sign a DNR on you.”