The Life List (The List Trilogy) (46 page)

The month of March trickles away like the Northern California rain that always belongs to it. My week-days are filled with work and exercise and my weekends are filled with…just exercise. I took a lot of time off from yoga while I was helping to rehabilitate Kurt, but I’m more than making up for it now. I found a hole-in-the-wall place near my cottage in Lafayette to start practicing because the drive to the city to do it with Slutty Co-worker was stressing me out to the point that it made yoga completely un-enjoyable. Those assholes coming out of the Bay Bridge toll booth DO NOT know how merge! I don’t have to worry about it anymore though because just fifteen minutes from my cottage is an old, dilapidated yoga studio where almost seven days a week, I contort my body into positions that I dream of showing to Leo. It’s the only hour of my day that I feel focused and, sometimes, my mind even drifts off to a place where I’m happy and I feel at peace.

Work has become even more hum-drum than ever. I drift from meeting to meeting without a care for whatever it is I’m supposed to care about, and whenever I’m not pretending to be a corporate cheerleader, I lock myself in my office and search the internet for ways to make money doing the things I like to do. But those soul-searching intervals only end up pissing me off because…
I don’t know what the hell I like to do
! And it seems like no matter what I do to fill up my nights, they always end up with me in front of my computer where I read Leo’s email over and over again.

Chrissy, I’m not sure why I’m writing to you. I guess my mind is getting the best of me. Why did you bail on me after I saw you in New York
?
If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll assume it’s because your situation prevents you from doing so. By the way…what is your situation
?
  Leo

For weeks I’ve tinkered with all kinds of responses. They range from the sexpot kind where I ignore the entire content of his email and talk dirty to him to the idiot kind of response where I play dumb and pretend I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
New York
?
Bail on you
?
I have no idea what you’re talking about
. After spending an hour on tonight’s response, I decide that this is the email I’m gonna send. I carefully type his email address, close my eyes, and hit send as I enjoy the rush of my Leo drug as it sails through my body. Moments later, as I’m pouring myself a third glass of wine, I wonder if my chutzpah to send the email came from the first two glasses. Crap, I should know by now that email and alcohol don’t mix! I race to my computer, re-open the email and read it again.

Leo, Whatever situation I’m in, it could never prevent me from responding to your email. I’m only sorry it took me this long. I bailed on you in New York because I’m scared. Scared of what, I still don’t know. Chrissy

Shake it off, Chrissy, it’s a good email, and it’s vague. I’m sure nothing will come of it anyway, so calm down. And then the phone rings.

I look up towards the Heavens. “Grandpa, are you really giving me another chance?” Okay Chrissy…whatever you do, tell him the truth about where the divorce stands. It’s his choice how he deals with it.

Only the truth will set you free, baby!

“Hello?”

“Chrissy, it’s me.” My heart sinks.

“Oh…hey Nicole. Let me guess, Kelly’s not coming to lunch again tomorrow.”

“She’s not.”

“What’s her excuse this time? Bad haircut…baby sick again?”

“I just got off the phone with Craig.”

Nic’s voice…it’s scared or something. My voice is scared right back.

“
Why
were you talking to Craig?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Nicole?”

“She’s got cancer…Kelly’s got cancer.”

For the first time in my entire life, I’m speechless.

“Are you okay, Chrissy?”

“Tell me this isn’t real.”

 Silence.

“She’ll be okay though, right? We can beat it, can’t we?”

“Not this one. It’s pancreatic.”

“Is that bad? I mean, how much worse is it than all the other cancers?”

“Way worse.”

“Nic, you gotta tell me something good. This is…this can’t…”

“Do you know
anything
about pancreatic cancer?”

“Well no, but she’s so young. She’s strong and otherwise really healthy.”

There’s a long pause. Too long.

“
She’ll be okay, won’t she
?”

“No, I’m telling you, she won’t.”

“Stop it! How do you even know that?”

“Chrissy, no one survives this kind of cancer.”

“
So what the hell are you saying
?!”

“I’m saying Kelly’s gonna die.”

I slide down the wall in my kitchen and not in the normal dramatic Chrissy sort of way either. My body took me there all on its own.

“Are you still there?”

“I don’t understand how you can just say that. You’re talking about Kelly!”

“Maybe it’s the doctor in me. Maybe it’s that I want you to start processing the reality of the situation as soon as possible. Maybe I’m in shock, too. Courtney and I are on our way over to your place now. We thought we should be together right now.”

“How long will…OH MY GOD NICOLE, THE BABY! WHAT ABOUT HER BABY?!”

I sit on the floor and try to process what Nicole just told me, my head wobbling from side to side like I’m a hundred year old with a completely degenerated nervous system. But we’re only thirty. Not Kelly. Not us. What will Craig do? No, no, no, no…this isn’t happening. I have to talk to her! She’ll tell me it’s not as bad as Nicole said it was. She’ll make me feel better. I grab for the phone and punch in Kelly’s number, but the machine picks up. I call again and again and again…every single time the machine picks up. I hear Nicole’s car pull up, so on my last attempt, I leave a message.

Kel, it’s me. I need to… I don’t understand…I don’t know how to do this. I have to talk to you. Please call me. Don’t be mad at me for saying this… I love you
.

I open the door, and the three of us hug without saying a word. I can’t remember the last time any of us were this quiet this long. After we help each other wipe away the tears, we stagger over to the couch.

“Do you guys want tea? I might have some.”

“I don’t drink tea.”

“Me either.”

“I don’t either. What the fuck was I thinking?”

“You’re not. None of us are.”

“Please, someone tell me how this happened.”

“How do we really know how anyone gets cancer?”

“I need some answers, guys. She’s only thirty! She hardly drinks alcohol, exercises regularly, doesn’t smoke.
Why her
? Courtney?”

“It’s random, Chrissy. Could’ve just as easily happened to one of us.”

I remember that stupid toast I made at dinner last year, the one where I joked about the chances of one of them getting a horrible disease, because I had already suffered enough as the divorced one. I’m such an asshole.

“Yeah, it’s like sometimes I think God’s up there playing duck, duck, goose with us.”

“
God
? There’s no God, Nicole! What kind of a God would take a young mother away from her baby!? I have to talk to her!”

“Not a good idea, Chrissy. Right now, we have to respect her wishes.”

“She has wishes?”

“Craig said she wants to be left alone. She doesn’t want any of us making a fuss about this. You know how Kelly is, so don’t even think about picking up the phone and leaving her some gushy message. Got it?”

I’m so much more than an asshole.

“Craig says they’re working on an aggressive treatment plan. She starts radiation and chemo next week.”

“That’s positive news, right? I mean, her doctors wouldn’t do all that stuff if there wasn’t hope…right?”

“In her case, I think it’s just a plan.” Nicole’s no use. I turn to Courtney.

“Can’t they just cut the cancer out of her?”

“They could do something called the Whipple procedure. But according to Craig, the tumor’s pretty large so they’d have to shrink it before they consider surgery. That’s why they’re getting started so fast with the chemo and stuff.”

“Well, how did it get so fucking big? I mean, she’s been complaining about pain for months! All those trips to the doctor…why didn’t they see it?”

“The pancreas is located smack dab between the spine and the stomach. It’s in a truly God awful place that makes this kind of cancer nearly impossible to detect until it’s too late.”

“And the really horrible thing about the disease is that it usually causes no symptoms. People don’t know they have it until the tumor is large enough to detect, and by then it’s inoperable. I’m afraid Kelly might fall into that category.”

“Does
anyone
survive this?”

The long stare they give each other offers me no comfort. I start pacing the room like I’m the one who’s gonna come up with the cure.

“Chrissy, come and sit down. Her doctors are gonna do everything they can to shrink the tumor.”

“But, Nicole, you just said yourself that you don’t think she can survive! That you think the tumor is already too big to do that Whipple thing! So what happens to her today? What will her doctors do for her right now!?”

Again with the long stare. Sometimes I feel like a child when I’m with these two. That feeling is multiplied when they talk to me in a whisper, like Courtney’s doing now.

“Eventually,
probably soon
, her treatment will be designed to improve her quality of life for the duration of it.”

Why are they throwing in the towel on her?! I’m back on my feet, pacing around the room, searching for answers. Shouldn’t they be too?

“Why can’t they just take out her pancreas?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not a doctor and smart like you guys! I solve problems at my job! I don’t KILL projects when they don’t work the way everyone wants them to! I keep at stuff until I’m satisfied with the outcome. Oh, I see that look on your face! Don’t even bring up Leo or my divorce! Now’s not the time!”

“Okay, okay everyone, calm down! I’m sorry we’re being so blunt, Chrissy. I think we just came here prepared to take care of you, that’s the doctor in us, but believe me, we’re just as horrified about this as you. Nicole, say you’re sorry, too.”

“Sorry.”

“Guys, please tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just do nothing, Chrissy. That’s what Craig said she wanted…nothing.”

“
But we’re her best friends
! How can she expect us to stay away?”

“Craig said he’d call with updates and when Kelly’s ready for visitors, he’ll let us know.”

“Visitors? We’re not fucking door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness freaks. We’re us! Look, if everything you guys said is true, then we’re gonna have to live with her death. She’ll be dead, she won’t have to feel the pain that we feel. I don’t know about you, but I have to tell her everything that’s in my heart. If I don’t…this is gonna kill me too.”

“But Chrissy, this isn’t about you.”

I’m speechless. I don’t know how to function when it’s not all about me.

Light’s out

April, 2000

I’m far, far away from my care free days, the days when my three best friends and I would ditch class and go to Santa Cruz. We’d stare out at the ocean as we drank the alcohol we stole from our parent’s liquor cabinets and talk about boys as we listened to
Forever Young
on our tape recorder over and over again. I’m far away from the days when I married the boy I dreamt about since the moment I laid eyes on him. Far away from the day I turned my back on that boy and met the man of my dreams and he showed me I didn’t have to dream anymore. Everything’s a blur now, now that death and its dream-killing qualities have taken over my life.

Kelly won’t take my calls. It’s been three weeks since I found out about her cancer, and I still don’t know any more today than I did on the day I found out about it. I take that back. I know a shit load about her disease, just nothing about how she’s coping with it. My office has literally turned into a research center. Books and pamphlets about pancreatic cancer litter my desk and my voicemail is maxed out with messages from John’s Hopkins, Virginia Mason Medical Center, University of Chicago, and a dude named Charlie Spencer. Poor Charlie…he’s a guy I found in an Internet chat room and is near death from the damn disease. Just like I’ve attacked everything in the past, from trying to be popular in high school, to making Kurt fall in love with me, to Leo in the front seat of my car on the night I met him, I’ve attacked Kelly’s pancreatic cancer with the hope of curing it. But I’m failing miserably. Like Charlie told me, there’s nothing I can really do for her except love her and support her. Charlie doesn’t know Kelly.

The only thing I know how to do well these days is go to my church and pray; which in my world means going to the old dilapidated yoga studio and striking a pose. Every day, to my boss’ condemnation, I leave my research center/office early, drive straight to the yoga studio, and try to make some sense out of everything that’s happening. It’s quiet, it’s cleansing, it’s nurturing and I just found out that I, too, is dying. The owner has three months left on the lease and then she’s moving to the beach to retire.

I was dealing with my divorce from Kurt like a champ. I finally started coping with the loss of Leo with grace, and I’ve been processing Kelly’s disease with courage. I’ve been able to semi-handle everything on my own because I had my safe yoga studio to hide out in, to process my pain in, to sweat out the tears in. But now that my sanctuary’s gonna kick the bucket, just like everything else in my life, I’m back in Dr. Maria’s office. It’s been months since I’ve been here, but the magazines are still the same and, unfortunately, so is Sad Frumpy Lady. Same outfit, same blank stare, same nothing.

“Everyone’s dying.”

“No, just Kelly.”

“Leo’s long gone…might as well be dead. Kurt’ll have to be dead to me when the divorce is final. Kelly’s got God only knows how much time left, and now my yoga teacher is leaving me. I’m fighting to do all the right things, make all the right choices…but still, nothing good is coming of it!”