Sharing Sam (7 page)

“Okay.”

He moved a little closer. I could see the steady throb of a vein in his temple. I could see the tiny quiver of his lower lip as he leaned toward me. I could see his pupils go wide and dark.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to feel.

“Kiss me, mama,” someone said. And I did.

That night Izzy called. She was really jazzed about coming home and going right back to school. The doctors were all over her about not taking on too much too soon, but she couldn’t wait. I promised her we’d go out and buy lots of cool bandannas and scarves and turbans. We considered the merits of one of those curly pink taffy wigs. Funny to us, sure, but what if no one else got the joke?

I wanted to tell her about Sam, I swear I did.

I’d been kissed only twice before, once at a beach party (hyperactive tongue, excess saliva, Blistex aftertaste) and once by a guy at science camp who’d harbored a secret crush on me (no tongue, dry lips, raspberry Bubblicious aftertaste).

But this,
this
had been a real kiss. Every time I thought about it, I got shuddery and woozy and somebody started trampolining off my stomach.

Sounds awful, I know. It wasn’t.

I felt like I’d traveled somewhere I had never been before. Like I’d finally been to camp, if you know what I mean.

I should tell Izzy
, I kept thinking as we talked about the dirty movies available on the hotel TV—did she dare order one?—and the tedious, terrifying mechanics of radiation therapy.

I should have told her from the start. I should have said, “Izzy, something magical happened between Sam and me that day in the grove.” But I didn’t, because I knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear right then.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know that waiting might make things
worse. I’d sat through two sweaty hand-holdings, that bubble gum wisp of a kiss, and a breathy, confessional mash note before I’d gotten up the nerve to explain to the science camp guy that I was already involved. (I couldn’t just say I wasn’t interested, could I?) Why hadn’t I just
told
him? he’d moaned. Camp was only six weeks long, and he’d wasted two and a half seducing me—all the good ones would be taken.

While Izzy went on about an orderly who’d told her he liked bald chicks, I heard a soft rap on the window by my bed. I peeled back the shade. There, just visible in a veil of orange moonlight, was Sam.

His bike was behind him. I knew he must have turned it off and wheeled it across the lawn, or else my dad would have been already cross-examining him. Sam pointed to the helmet he was obediently wearing, then took it off and grinned, a little sheepishly.

“The thing is,” Izzy was saying, “this orderly is coming on to me because I’m hairless. I mean, talk about your basic sick weasel.”

I laughed even as I pulled up the window. The warm, flowery air billowed the shade. Sam put his hand to the screen. I put my hand over his. It fit inside it nicely.

“What a jerk,” I said into the receiver.

“Hi,” Sam whispered.

“Hi,” I mouthed back.

“I just wanted to see you before I went to sleep,” he said. We stood there like that for long seconds. Our fingers were separated by the cool mesh screen, but I could still feel the heat of his palm.

After a while he put on his helmet, turned his bike around, and wheeled it silently across the lawn.

I thought about how he’d said he was good at watching out for people. And I thought my instincts had been right, very right, that day in the grove.

“Guys,” Izzy said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever find one. Especially now.”

“You will,” I said softly.

“You think?” Izzy sighed.

“We both will,” I said, watching as Sam slipped away into the warm, black night.

I
DECIDED TO
have a welcome-back nonparty for Iz. Nonparty because her aunt was adamant that we hooligans not cause her to overdo anything. I liked Rosa, but I think she felt I was a bad influence on her niece. Rosa was devoutly religious, and she knew my family spent Sunday mornings with the
New York Times
crossword puzzle, Charles Osgood on the tube, and a bag of warm turnovers from Publix bakery. Izzy didn’t go to church either, but I think Rosa held me responsible. Once I heard Izzy try to explain to Rosa that she did belong to a religion, one called science. The next day, Rosa gave her a neatly wrapped little box with a rosary inside. Apparently she hadn’t gotten the message. Or maybe she had.

Izzy was due to arrive on Tuesday afternoon. After school a bunch of us rode over to the condo on Siesta Key, loaded down with balloons, crepe paper, and dorky hats. I’d invited Sam to come. He said he had to check on Morgan, then he’d see. It seemed like a natural way to ease him into the picture,
just one guy among many, a casual friend, “Oh, by the way, Izzy, remember Sam?”

Somebody turned on the CD player, loud Pearl Jam to blast away our anxieties about what we would say to Iz and how we would say it. Rosa, a heavy woman in her forties, hovered in the corner like a nervous shadow. She’d lived with Izzy’s family since leaving Cuba, and although she had a fulltime job as an administrator at a nursing home, she seemed to me to be as much a permanent fixture in the condo as the baby grand in the living room.

“Like the balloons, Rosa?” asked Gail, one of Izzy’s former teammates on the girls’ basketball team. Izzy had quit a year earlier to spend more time on her science projects.

“Very nice, yes,” Rosa said, not convincingly. She eyed the silver sentiments: Get Well Soon, Welcome Back, Atta Girl. There was also a Beavis and Butt-head balloon, sentiment-free.

“Nothing was quite right,” I explained as I tied a balloon to a chair.

“Yes,” Rosa agreed, black eyes flitting over our disruptive flurry.

“Hats, everyone,” added Carla, another basketball friend who topped six-one.

Steve, Izzy’s physics partner of the freckled, sincere, platonic variety, climbed onto the piano bench to hang crepe paper. “I thought about shaving my head,” he said, accepting a pink paper hat from Carla. “You know, in solidarity with Iz. I’ve heard of people doing that.”

“Izzy would think that was truly insane,” I said.

“Really,” Gail agreed, “she’d die if we—” She swallowed her sentence, aghast. “I mean, I meant—”

For some reason our multiple gazes pivoted toward Rosa, who abruptly left the room.

“It’s okay, Gail,” I said. “Face it. We’re going to say and do stupid things. Izzy’s cool. She’ll understand.”

“God, I’m so afraid I’m going to blow this. I want her to feel comfortable,” Carla said.

“Well, that’s not going to happen if we’re all being weird,” I pointed out as I went to answer the door.

I was surprised to see Sam standing there, helmet under his arm. He had a handful of limp yellow daisies ensconced in a newspaper cone. “For Izzy,” he explained. “We have that field out back.”

“Come on in,” I said. As I reached for the flowers our fingers touched. A sweet, shuddery warmth made its way down my spine. Amazing, I thought, that the briefest touch could spin such magic.

I led him down the hall. “Everybody,” I said, my voice pitched a little higher than usual, “you all know Sam?”

This time all eyes pivoted to me. The looks varied from surprise to outright shock.

“That’s Gail, Carla … well, you can figure out the rest,” I said. “Let me put these in some water.”

I left Sam defenseless and took the flowers to the kitchen. Gail scurried in behind me. “How do you know him?” she demanded.

“We’ve talked a few times.”

“I heard he’s Alec Baldwin’s illegitimate son.”

“I thought it was Mick Jagger.” I found a tall glass and filled it with water.

“Cute,” Gail said, chewing on a bright red thumbnail. “Tall
and cute. Did I mention cute? Are you … sniffing each other out?”

“How subtle.” I arranged the daisies, the warm stems already droopy. Then I lied. “No.”

I don’t know why I didn’t say yes. Gail was a good friend. But Izzy was my best friend, and if I told Gail anything before I told Izzy, it might get back to Izzy, complicating things. And then she would think I was being patronizing, not telling her about Sam because I didn’t think she was up to it. Even if that was true, I didn’t want Izzy to think it. I wanted her to feel that nothing had changed, despite the fact that everything had.

We heard a commotion at the front door. Izzy’s dad, Miguel, came in first, carrying a big stuffed cat and a large suitcase. Lauren followed, shepherding Izzy through the hall.

“All right, Rosa!” Izzy cried, embracing her aunt. “A keg party!”

“Isabella,” Rosa whispered, sobbing hugely.

We were all staring while trying not to. Izzy looked the same, only not. She was wearing a blue bandanna tied artfully around her head, a T-shirt and embroidered vest, jeans. But there were glossy blue-black circles under her eyes, and her skin was pale and slack, like a balloon that’s been blown up and deflated.

Izzy got passed around the group and hugged uncertainly, the way you do when you greet someone with a lingering case of the flu. When she got to me, we both laughed, then started to cry, then laughed again. “Check it out,” I said lightly, pointing to the dining room table. “We brought munchies.”

“You made Rice Krispies bars!”

“Isabella,” Lauren said, “you need to go easy. You’ve been back on solid food for only a week.”

“I ate half a pint of Chunky Monkey for lunch,” Izzy pointed out. As she dove for the table she noticed Sam for the first time. “Well, well,” she said, wiggling her brows, “what have we here?”

“Alison invited me,” Sam explained. “I, uh, brought you some daisies. She put them in the kitchen, I think.”

“How sweet.” She grabbed a Rice Krispies bar and held up her index finger. “Don’t go away. I shall return.”

Izzy veered into the kitchen, pulling me along. “Thanks,” she said, examining the daisies.

“For what?”

“The party hats, the balloons, the … guests.”

“Oh, well, actually—”

“Tell me the truth,” she interrupted. “I look like something the lunch ladies would serve up, right? Izzy Surprise. Izzy Noodle Casserole—”

“You look beautiful, as usual, you jerk. Just a little tired.”

“My mom’s driving me insane. She keeps treating me like I’m going to fall over dead in the next five minutes. I’m surprised Rosa doesn’t have a priest on call to give me the last rites.”

“Everybody’ll settle down. Give it a few days. You’ll be old news.”

Izzy tugged at the knot in her bandanna. “Wanna see?” she whispered.

I nodded, because I knew she wanted me to.

It wasn’t the baldness that shocked me, it was the ugly truth of the dark red incision. Until that moment, Izzy’s disease
had been an abstraction. All of a sudden it was real. I made myself look at it the way she had to look at it every morning in the mirror.

“Gross, huh? Sorry. Bad idea.” She retied her scarf.

“No, really,” I said quickly. “You look like … sort of like a white Shaquille O’Neal. With boobs.”

Izzy laughed. “God, I missed you. I knew you’d treat me like me.” She leaned down to sniff Sam’s already-wilting daisies. “I hope this isn’t an omen,” she said, cupping a drooping flower. “Sweet, though, wasn’t it?”

“Very.”

“It was brilliant of you to invite him, Al. I need a diversion. I’ve been thinking I need a hobby, anyway. I was going to take up stamp collecting, but maybe I’ll collect guys instead.” Izzy peered down the hall. “Ah, there’s a fine-looking specimen now.” She glanced back at me. “Has Sam said anything useful? Like, you know, he’s always had a hankering for sick chicks?”

“Actually …” I searched for words and couldn’t find any. “Actually, he’s asked about you several times,” I said. It was the truth, at least.

“Close enough. Wish me luck.”

I watched her race off. Lauren came into the kitchen. Her short, dark hair was flat and shapeless, her tailored navy dress wrinkled. She wasn’t her usual elegant self. She draped an arm around me. “Thanks, Alison, for this. She needed a pick-me-up.”

“She looks good,” I said.

Lauren chewed on her lower lip, where her coral lipstick was smudged and flaked. She motioned for me to follow her to
the master bedroom. As we walked down the hall I noticed Izzy talking to Sam. Briefly she touched his arm, leaning close.

The pristine bedroom was very tropical, with wicker furniture and a colorful spread. I stood by the large windows overlooking the gray-blue Gulf.

“She hasn’t asked. Isn’t that odd?” Lauren’s voice was a whisper. “I was ready to lie after the surgery, but she never asked. The doctor came in and said everything looked good, they had done what they could, and she left it at that. I was so relieved. It was so …”

“Not like Izzy.”

“Yes.” She came over, squeezed my shoulder. “You understand, right? That we’re telling everyone they got it all, and everything’s going to be fine.”

“I understand.”

There was a soft knock. Miguel entered the room and closed the door behind him. He was tall, like Iz. She had gotten her dark, thickly lashed eyes from him. “You told Alison?” he asked.

Lauren nodded.

“We want every moment to be happy, you see,” he said to me, but also to himself, I think. “That’s the right thing. It is.”

“Of course it is,” Lauren said crisply.

I heard Izzy’s melodic, up-the-scale laugh from all the way down the hall.

“What good would there be in telling her the truth?” Miguel asked.

“What if she figures it out herself?” I asked gently. “You know how Izzy is. She can’t let things alone. She’ll be digging through medical textbooks again and will be on the Internet all night. What if she already suspects?”

Lauren rubbed her eyes. She leaned close to me. Her fingers tightened on my shoulder. I could feel her nails through my shirt; I could smell her perfume, the Chanel Izzy sometimes borrowed when her mom wasn’t looking.

“She has only two or three months, Alison,” she whispered. She pulled away, and I could see in the intense heat of her eyes that there were no tears left. “Maybe less, they don’t know. The tumor was more advanced than they’d expected. For that little time, we can make it work. We can make her happy.”