Firefly Lane (55 page)

Now she sat in her newly decorated office in a corner of the building that didn't face Bainbridge Island, talking to her secretary on the phone. "Are you kidding me? He's canceling the show, forty minutes before we're scheduled to start taping? I have a studio full of people waiting to see him." She slammed the phone back onto the hook, then hit the intercom. "Get Ted in here."

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door and her producer walked into her office. His cheeks were pink from exertion and he was breathing hard. "You wanted to see me?"

"Jack just canceled."

"Now?" Ted glanced at his watch. "Son of a bitch. I hope you told him the next time he has a movie out he can pitch it on the radio."

Tully flipped open her calendar. "It's June first, right? Call Nordstrom and the Gene Juarez Spa. We'll do mothers' makeovers for summer. Give away a bunch of clothes and stuff. It'll suck, but it's better than nothing."

From the moment Ted left her office, the whole team was in high gear. People were tracking down new guests, calling the various spa and department store contacts, and keeping the studio audience entertained. The adrenaline was so high that everyone, including Tully, worked at supersonic speed, and the taping of the new segment began only one hour late. Judging by the audience's applause, it was a rousing success.

After the show, as always, Tully stayed around and talked with her fans. She posed for photographs and signed autographs and listened to one story after another about how she'd changed someone's life. It was her favorite hour of any day.

She had just returned to her office when her intercom buzzed. "Tallulah? There's a Kate Ryan on line one."

Tully's heart missed a beat; the hope she felt pissed her off. She stood at the corner of her huge desk and pushed the intercom button. "Ask her what she wants."

A moment later, her secretary was back on the line. "Ms. Ryan says you need to pick up the phone and find out for yourself."

"Tell her to go fuck herself." Tully wished she could take the words back as soon as she'd said them, but she didn't know how to bend now. During their long estrangement, she'd had to stay angry just to get by. Otherwise the loneliness would have been unbearable.

"Ms. Ryan says, and I quote: 'Tell that bitch to get her designer-clad ass out of her ridiculously expensive leather chair and come to the phone.' She also says that if you ignore her on this of all days she's selling those pictures of you with a bad perm to the tabloids."

Tully almost smiled. How could two sentences peel back so many years and blast through the sediment of so many bad choices?

She picked up the phone. "You're the bitch, and I'm pissed at you."

"Of course you are, you narcissist, and I'm not apologizing, but that doesn't matter anymore."

"It matters. You should have called long before—"

"I'm in the hospital, Tully. Sacred Heart. Fourth floor," Kate said. Then she hung up.

"Hurry up," Tully said to her driver for at least the fifth time in as many blocks.

When the car pulled up in front of the hospital, she got out and ran for the glass doors, pausing for a moment while the sensors engaged. The second she stepped inside, people swarmed around her. Usually she factored what she called fan maintenance into her schedule—thirty minutes at every location to meet and greet—but now she didn't have time. She pushed through the crowd and went to the front desk. "I'm here to see Kathleen Ryan."

The receptionist stared up at her in awe. "You're Tallulah Hart."

"Yes, I am. Kathleen Ryan's room, please."

The receptionist nodded. "Oh. Right." She glanced at her computer screen, entered a few keys, and said, "Four-ten East."

"Thanks." Tully headed for the elevators, but noticed that she was being followed. Her fans would nonchalantly enter the elevator with her. The brave ones would initiate conversation between floors. The weirdos might follow her out.

She took the stairs instead, thankful by the third flight that she attended daily aerobics classes and worked with a personal trainer. Still, she was out of breath when she reached the fourth floor.

Just down the hall, she found a small waiting area. The television was turned on to her show—a rerun from two years ago.

She knew the moment she stepped into the small room that it was Bad, this thing with Kate.

Johnny sat there, in an ugly blue love seat, with Lucas curled up beside him. With one son's head in his lap, Johnny was reading to the other.

Marah was in a chair beside William, with her eyes closed, listening to an iPod through tiny headphones. She moved to the beat of music only she could hear. The boys were so big; it was a painful reminder of how long Tully had been apart from them.

Beside Marah, Mrs. Mularkey sat, staring intently at her knitting. Sean was beside his mother, talking on his cell phone. Georgia and Ralph were watching TV in the corner.

By the looks of it, they'd been here a long time.

It took a huge act of will to step forward. "Hey, Johnny."

At the sound of her voice, they all looked up, but no one said anything and suddenly Tully remembered the last time they'd all been together.

"Kate called me," she explained.

Johnny eased out from under his sleeping son and stood up. There was only a beat of awkwardness, a clumsy pause, before he took her in his arms. She could tell by the ferocity of his embrace that it was more to comfort himself than her. She clung to him, trying not to be afraid. "Tell me," she said, more harshly than she intended, when he let go of her and stepped back.

He sighed and nodded. "We'll go into the family room."

Mrs. M. stood up slowly.

Tully was struck by how much Mrs. M. had aged. The woman looked frail and a little hunched. She'd stopped dyeing her hair and it was snow-white. "Katie called you?" Mrs. M. said.

"I came right away," she said, as if speed mattered now, after all this time.

Then Mrs. M. did the most amazing thing: she hugged Tully, enveloped her once again in an embrace that smelled of Jean Naté perfume and menthol cigarettes, with just a hint of hairspray to give it spice.

"Come on," Johnny said, breaking up the hug, and leading the way to another room. Inside there was a smallish fake wood conference table and eight molded plastic chairs.

Johnny and Mrs. M. sat down.

Tully remained standing. No one spoke for a moment and every passing second was a turn of the screw. "Tell me."

"Kate has cancer," Johnny said. "It's called inflammatory breast cancer."

Tully had to concentrate on each breath to remain upright. "She'll have a mastectomy and get radiation and chemotherapy, right? I have several friends who have fought—"

"She's already had all of that," he said gently.

"What? When?"

"She called you several months ago," he said, and this time his voice had an edge she'd never heard before. "She wanted to have you at the hospital with her. You didn't return her call."

Tully remembered the message, word for word.
I can't believe you haven't called to apologize to me. Tully? Are you listening to this? Tully
? And the click. Had something happened to the rest of the message? Had the power gone out or the tape hit its end?

"She didn't say anything about being sick," Tully said.

"She
called,
" Mrs. M. said.

Tully felt tackled by guilt, overcome. She should have sensed something was wrong. Why hadn't she just picked up the phone? Now all that time had been lost. "Oh, my God. I should have—"

"None of that matters now," Mrs. M. said.

Johnny nodded and went on. "The cancer has metastasized. Last night she had a minor stroke. They got her into the OR as quickly as possible, but once they were inside, they saw there was nothing they could do." His voice broke.

Mrs. M. laid her hand on his. "The cancer is in her brain now."

Tully thought she had known fear before—like on that Seattle street when she was ten years old, or when Katie had had her miscarriage, or when Johnny had been hurt in Iraq—but nothing had felt like this. "Are you saying . . ."

"She's dying," Mrs. M. said quietly.

Tully shook her head, unable to think of what to say. "W-where is she?" The question came out sounding choppy and broken. "I need to see her."

A look passed between Johnny and Mrs. M.

"What?" Tully said.

"They're only allowing one person in at a time," Mrs. M. said. "Bud is in there now. I'll go get him."

As soon as Mrs. M. left, Johnny moved even closer, said, "She's fragile right now, Tul. Her faculties have been impacted by the cancer in her brain. She has good moments . . . and not-so-good moments."

"What are you saying?" Tully asked.

"She might not know who you are."

The walk to Kate's room was the longest journey of Tully's life. She felt people all around her, talking quietly among themselves, but never had she felt more alone. Johnny led her to a doorway and stopped there.

Tully nodded, trying to gather strength as she walked into the room.

Closing the door behind her, she reached for a smile, found one that was the best she could do under the circumstances, and went toward the bed, where her friend lay sleeping.

Angled up to a near-sit, Kate looked like a broken doll against the stark white sheets and piled pillows. She had no hair or eyebrows left, and her bald head was a pale oval that nearly disappeared against the pillowcase.

"Kate?" Tully said quietly, moving forward. The moment she heard her voice she winced. It sounded too loud in this room, too alive somehow.

Kate opened her eyes, and there was the woman Tully knew, the girl she'd sworn to be best friends with forever.

Put your arms out, Katie. It's like flying
.

How had it happened, after all their decades together, that they were estranged now? "I'm sorry, Katie," she whispered, hearing how small the words were; all her life she'd hoarded those few and simple words, kept them tucked inside her heart as if to let them out would harm her. Why, of all the lessons she should have learned from her mother, had she held on to this most hurtful one? And why hadn't she called when she'd heard Kate's voice on the answering machine?

"I'm so sorry," she said again, feeling the burn of tears.

Kate didn't smile or give any indication of welcome or surprise. Even the apology—as little and late as it was—seemed to have no effect. "Please say you remember me."

Kate just stared up at her.

Tully reached down, let her knuckles graze Kate's warm cheek. "It's Tully, the bitch who used to be your best friend. I'm so sorry for what I did to you, Katie. I should have told you that a long time ago." She made a tiny, desperate sound. If Kate didn't remember her, remember them, she didn't think she could bear it. "I remember when I first met you, Katie Mularkey Ryan. You were the first person who ever really wanted to know me. Naturally I treated you like shit at first, but when I got raped you were there for me." The memories overtook her. She wiped her eyes. "You're thinking I'm only talking about me, right? Typical, you say. But I remember you, too, Katie; every second. Like when you read
Love Story
and couldn't figure out what
sonovabitch
meant because it wasn't in the dictionary . . . or when you swore you'd never French-kiss because it was gross-o-rama." Tully shook her head, fighting to keep it together. Her whole life was in the room with them now. "We were so damned young, Katie. But we're not young anymore. You remember that first time I left Snohomish, and we wrote about a million letters? We signed them
Forever friends
. . . or
Best friends forever
. Which was it . . ."

Tully spun out the story of their years; sometimes she even laughed, like when she told about riding their bikes down Summer Hill or running from the cops on the night they got busted. "Oh, here's one you'll know. Remember when we went to
Pete's Dragon
because we thought it was an action movie, only it was a cartoon? We were the oldest kids in the theater, and we came out singing 'You and Me Against the World,' and we said it would always be that way—"

"Stop."

Tully drew in a sharp breath.

There were tears in her friend's eyes, and more streaking down her temples. They'd formed a small gray patch of wetness on the pillow behind her head. "Tully," Kate said in a soft, swollen voice, "did you really think I could forget you?"

Tully's relief was so huge she felt weak in the knees. "Hey," she said. "You didn't have to go so far to get my attention, you know." She touched her friend's bald head, let her fingers linger on the baby-soft skin. "You could have just called."

"I did call."

Tully flinched. "I'm so sorry, Katie. I—"

"You're a bitch," Kate said, smiling tiredly. "I've always known that. And I could have called back, too. I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without a few broken hearts along the way."

"I am a bitch," Tully said miserably, her eyes welling up. "I should have called. It was just . . ." She didn't even know what to say, how to explain this dark rip that had always been inside of her.

"No looking back, okay?"

"That only leaves ahead," Tully said, and the words were like bits of broken metal, sharp and cold.

"No," Kate said. "It leaves now."

"I did a show on breast cancer a few months ago. There's a doctor in Ontario doing amazing things with some new drug. I'll call him."

"I'm done with treatments. I've had them all and none has worked. Just . . . be with me."

Tully took a step back. "I'm here to watch you die. Is that what you're telling me? Because I say no fucking way to that. I won't do it."

Kate looked up at her, smiling just a little. "That's all there is, Tully."

"But—"

"Do you really think Johnny just gave up on me? You know my husband. He's just like you and we're almost as rich. For six months I saw every specialist on the planet. I did conventional and unconventional and naturopathic remedies. I even went to that faith healer in the rain forest. I have kids; I did everything I could to stay healthy for them. None of it worked."