La Vie en Rose {Life in Pink} (42 page)

“Whoa!” He jumped off the couch and got in his sister’s face. “Don’t hold back now, Rarity. Any other ways you want to make me feel guilty?”

What the hell was going on?  Emma stood, forgetting about the cookies for a moment. “Guys, stop it.”

“No, this is good,” he argued. “Give me some more criticism, Rare. Tell me how else I’m screwing up—how I’m hurting her. We had beef the other day. You wanna yell at me for that too?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “You think it’s funny—”

“Yeah, I think it’s fucking hilarious. Later on we’re gonna go tour a chemical plant and cook on Styrofoam.”

“Riley—”

“Don’t defend her, Emma.”

“Don’t yell at me,” she snapped. This was ridiculous. They were fighting over cookies! “Both of you knock it off.”

“You take her recovery for granted. Every day you get more and more lax!”

“And every day you get more and more rigid.”

“It’s called concern,” Rarity snapped, raising her voice.

“It’s called being a bitch!”

“Riley!” Emma gasped, but he ignored her.

Scowling at his sister, who scowled right back, he barked, “You’re turning into a fanatic!”

“Well, you’re a hypocrite!” She threw the remote into the chair and stood. “You say you’re cutting out all the dangerous stuff but then you bring home junk!”

“It’s my home! I’ll bring whatever I want!”

They continued to snarl at each other, their voices rising as they screamed in each other’s face. Finally, she couldn’t take anymore and screamed,
“Shut up!”

Grabbing the cookie off the table, she shoved it in her mouth. “There.” Crumbs sputtered out of her mouth. “If it kills me you can say you were right and I’ll be the one to blame.” With that she marched to her room and slammed the door.

Idiots.

She scowled and chewed up the stupid cookie. Folding her arms, she sat on the chair at her vanity, wishing she had something to throw. She appreciated everything they were doing for her health, but their home was turning into a communist kitchen. There were too many rules—over a goddamn cookie!

There was a knock at the door. “Toots?”

Busying her hands, she straightened papers without reading what they were. “Go away, Rarity.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Yeah, she shouldn’t have. “I’m over it.”

“I didn’t mean it. Can I please come in?”

She couldn’t stay in her room all day, but she wasn’t going back out there if they continued to snap at each other. Blocking the entrance, she opened the door and huffed. “What do you want?”

Her eyes were apologetic. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Fine. But for the record, stress is just as harmful as sugar. I hate when you two fight and I refuse to be the cause of it.”

“I know. But we’re siblings. Sometimes siblings fight.”

“Not an excuse.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, Em. I was really wrong to say that. Please don’t shut me out.”

With a sigh, she stepped back and let her in. “Rarity, you have to accept that I’m going to eat cookies and cakes and ice cream still. I drink Riley’s shakes, I take your supplements, and we only buy good organic food most of the time. I can’t give up much more after I already sacrificed so much.”

“I know.” She sat on the bed, head lowered. “I just get scared. I read all these articles about free radicals and cell mutation and I’m a paranoid mess now. I don’t want anything else to happen to you, Em.”

Emma sat beside her. “I know you’re scared, but we live really clean, Rare. We exercise every day to detoxify our bodies, we clean with homemade mixtures, and Riley won’t even let me paint my nails without reading the label first. I can’t handle much more than that. Sometimes I just... want the fucking cookie.”

She laughed then her shoulders lowered. “You’re right. I’m making everyone crazy around here—including myself. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with this.”

“It’s okay to be scared, Rarity.”

“I don’t like it. It all happened way too fast. I mean, we’re so lucky you’re in remission, but it was like one day you found a lump and a few months later this is where we are. What if it is all the junk we put in and on our bodies?”

“You can’t live in a bubble.”

“I know that, but I...” She huffed and growled, clearly frustrated by her uncharacteristic emotions. “If you want cookies, I’ll bake them for you. I love you, Emma. I’m not ready to watch you take risks yet.”

Emma snickered. “And what a dangerous life I lead, when eating a cookie is enough to qualify as risky behavior.”

“See? I’m crazy. Gah, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be this way!”

Emma plopped a hand on top of her head and pulled her close until their skulls were touching. “Yes, but we know it’s out of love. I appreciate everything you’re doing, so does Riley. I’ll tell you what, if you keep that cookie jar filled I’ll only eat what’s in there. But I’d really appreciate something in the chocolate family. I am a woman after all.”

She nodded. “Deal. I’m sorry.”

“Hug?”

“Hug.”

Emma wrapped her arms around her, and whispered, “Right now, I’m not going anywhere, Rare. So let’s try to get past being afraid, at least for a little while.”

Her arms tightened. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

****

I
t took three months for the chemo to officially be out of Emma’s system. Her expanders were slowly doing their job and, in a few months, she’d be back under the knife getting implants. Her tests were all showing wonderful progress and, aside from the random bout of exhaustion that struck every couple of weeks, she was relishing life.

Late May, as they were on their way back from the musical
Wicked
, the subway raced toward home and she remembered the first time they’d ridden the train together and how Riley flirted with her to make the other girls jealous.

The train wasn’t as full as it had been that day, but several women looked at her, when before she’d felt invisible. Now she was just aiming for normal—whatever that was.

Her hair was gradually filling in and her expanders gave her chest a bit of dimension. She could almost pass as an ordinary flat chested girl with a pixie cut.

She grinned at the one woman staring, not bothered by her curiosity. The woman nodded and casually lowered the collar of her shirt, exposing her shoulder where a pink ribbon was tattooed.

Emma’s grin fell as chills raced up her legs. “What time is it?” she whispered to Riley, not taking her eyes off the other woman.

“Six-thirty.”

Her smile returned. Six-thirty and she was just then having her first thought of cancer that day. It was incredible. How had the word that troubled every second of every day, slipped her mind for the past twelve hours? She hadn’t thought of it once. Amazing.

The woman stood as the train stopped, sharing one last glance over her shoulder. A sense of camaraderie took hold of Emma in a way she never expected, as if she finally could understand the sisterhood that existed behind the pink. The solidarity she’d felt so apart from months ago, now engulfed her. She’d made it to the other side.

When she was in the thick of it, every attempt to pretty up her suffering with pink, grated. The expectation to
be
pink distorted the typical emotions she wanted to feel, like anger. It was cancer. There was nothing pretty about it. But today was not a day for anger.

Today was a day to celebrate, a day to embrace the slow return to normalcy. Today she actually felt a little pink—a little pretty. Maybe she’d get a tattoo. She wondered, if she hadn’t seen that woman, how much more time might have passed before she thought about that atrocious C-word. Six months ago she never thought of it at all.

Resting her head on Riley’s shoulder, she decided she’d like to live somewhere in between educated awareness and aggressive activism. That neighborhood seemed much nicer than responsive panic and unpreparedness.

Maybe she’d misunderstood the color all along. Perhaps it wasn’t the color of breast cancer, but the pretty glow of survival, the blush returning to her cheeks. The shift in her eyes when she cried, because she was so happy to simply be alive. Sometimes pink wasn’t a bad color at all.

Riley kissed her head. “You okay?”

“I’m better than okay. I’m really happy.” She’d never wasted so much time thinking about a color until her life was washed in a million and one shades of pink, but the delicate shade fit her mood today.

He smiled at her. Life, when it was good, was indeed pink.
La vie en rose.

––––––––

R
iley glanced at the door as Rarity came inside. Emma rested on his lap, casually flipping through channels. His sister freed Marla from the leash and the dog shuffled over to greet them. As his sister sorted through the mail she paused and silently held up another bill.

Put it in the drawer,
he mouthed and she nodded, sliding the medical bill next to the others. They were going to need bigger drawers.

Emma had insurance, but it was minimal. So much of her treatments and procedures came with out of pocket deductibles and, because she had a hundred different doctors, they billed her separately for each and every one.

They’d gone to great lengths to avoid unnecessary stress, agreeing that stress created an acidic environment in the body, and cancer just loved acidity. However, life had some stresses that couldn’t be avoided.

Tension knotted in his shoulders, a special sort of worry he wasn’t used to bearing. Maybe what he was going through wasn’t special at all. Maybe this unannounced sense of heaviness was something every guy experienced. Perhaps it was because Emma now wore his ring. Or maybe he was simply coming down from all they’d been through at a different pace than everyone else and returning to normal suddenly felt wrong, like outgrowing jeans he’d worn his entire life. Or maybe it was just money.

He had money, a notable savings, plus the portion of his inheritance he couldn’t access yet, but it seemed wrong to touch that—felt even worse to see how fast his savings was dwindling after something as costly as cancer. The days of banking his measly paychecks after deducting the cost of supporting only himself were over. Yeah, money was definitely stressing him out.

Finding the trigger to his anxiety did nothing to relieve the very real fact that he now shouldered some financial burdens a single man didn’t have to worry about. He’d pay her bills like he’d been doing since December. Sometimes one got through the mail to her, but most days either he or Rarity intercepted. Emma assumed her co-pay was the end of her responsibility—which in all honesty was how insurance
should
work.

He wasn’t complaining. Honestly he’d lost count after the first twenty-thousand dollars. She was alive, and that was all that counted. But he was concerned about their future and the sort of life he could provide on his annual salary once his savings ran out—which would eventually happen.

Everything cost so much money. How did people living on a budget afford sickness? The wealth he’d once taken for granted, now made him immeasurably grateful, but it was only a matter of time before that comfort was gone.

The rest of his inheritance was there, but he couldn’t touch that money without an investment plan, according to his grandparents’ will and his pretentious parents’ impossible standards. It was sitting there, in untouched accounts racking up interest. He’d intended to leave this world never touching that money, but now he wasn’t so sure. That money could make a life for them, a future, something great enough to sustain their family for generations. But it was earmarked for investments and he was the farthest thing from a businessman.

Emma had lost all sources of income. She had until August to return to her job, but they were no longer compensating her for missed work. If he hadn’t been secretly paying for all her expenses, she’d be homeless and starving, debt collectors harassing her non-stop.

It was another reason why this disease needed to be stopped. People simply couldn’t afford cancer.

If he had access to his money he’d talk to a lawyer about creating a fund in Emma’s name, one that sponsored families with a member undergoing treatment. He could provide groceries or pay their utilities. The idea—though not necessarily a business plan—filled him with passion. His money could do things like that, but again... he couldn’t touch it.

But people needed help. There was someone out there suffering, and someone else probably loved that person the way he loved Emma.

For weeks the idea had been kicking around in his head and he was tired of thinking about it, because so long as he didn’t have a plan that promised capital gain he didn’t have the funding for those sorts of dreams.

“What did you get at the store, Rare?” Emma asked as she stood and moved toward the bathroom.

“Goodies. Wanna play in the kitchen with me?”

“Sure. Let me use the bathroom first.” Emma smiled, which she’d been doing a lot lately, and that made him happy. He wanted to make other people happy.

“You wanna help, too, Ri?”

He tossed the remote aside. “Sure. What are we making?” He hoped it was food because he was hungry.

“Deodorant.”

“Oh.”

Emma returned and washed her hands as his sister set up a bunch of ingredients. Rarity opened a bag of something called arrowroot and dumped a measurement of the powder into three bowls. She slid one in front of each of them and cracked open a jar of coconut oil.

Riley dug a spatula into the semi-solid oil. “Is this what we’re mixing with it?”

“Yup,” his sister said. “Get a glob and mush it with the arrowroot until it makes one big lump.”

He took some and passed the oil to Emma. The three of them blended and poked, each working with their own concoction.

“I’m adding essential oils to mine,” Rarity said. “I’m thinking lavender.”

Emma frowned. “Mine’s not working.”

“Just keep mushing.”

Today they were making deodorant. Yesterday they made laundry soap and tomorrow they were scheduled to make a new batch of kitchen disinfectant. Each product was derived from completely organic materials and one hundred percent toxin free.