Wake (17 page)

The Harcourts give Eric and I the queen-sized guest bed to share. Eric offers to take the couch but Mrs. Harcourt waves away his ‘gal antry’ and insists that the bed is big enough for two. I bet she thinks he’ll drool on her nice throw cushions if she lets him have the couch. The Harcourts are weird about their possessions—their house looks like a museum or a magazine photo; not quite lived in, somewhat staged, and emotionally void.

As soon as Mrs. Harcourt leaves, Eric tells me to take the bed. We use the extra pillows and a spare blanket from the closet to make up a cot on the floor, and Eric sleeps there. I would share the bed with him gladly, but it’s a risk. Eric is a wild sleeper and if he hits me during the night it would cost me more than a bruise. Then there’s the fact that my immune system is still weak. I shouldn’t be sharing close quarters with anyone right now.

“Wake me if you need anything, eh?”

“Sure.” I don’t get much sleep anyway, the way my brother snores.

Friday

Around nine we leave the bourgeoisie neighborhood the Harcourts reside in for the more unassuming suburb that Emily calls home. I’m sweating by the time Eric pulls onto her street. I’ve been waiting for her to call and bail, but the only response to my text that we were on our way was a smiley face. What the hell does that mean? Stupid noncommittal emoticons.

Eric parks along the curb in front of her house and I get out of the car. He joins me, which is a surprise, but a nice gesture nonetheless.

“You look sick, bro.”

For a second I wonder if my ‘sickness’ is enough to get away with waiting in the car for Emily, for not going inside to see her parents, but that would be terribly rude.

“Come on.” Eric puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me forward, up the front walk and onto the low porch. He rings the bell while I panic inside like a five-year-old girl.

“Relax, it’s Emily, not the Inquisition,” he whispers.

“You did your History homework.”

“Al one-third of it,” he says proudly.

Emily answers the door with a giddy smile on her face. “Hi guys.” She steps aside and holds the door open for us. Eric and I walk in amid an exchange of hellos, and I notice Emily giving me the once-over.

She seems to be having trouble holding her smile.

“still cheerleading?” Eric asks.

“I made captain.”

“Congratulations.” They exchange a friendly one-armed hug. Emily looks at me like she isn’t sure if she’s obligated to touch me now, too. A year ago she had no problem sticking her tongue down my throat and inviting me to grope her.

I make it easy for her, looking the other way and asking politely if her parents are home.

“Mom’s out, but my dad is home.”

Emily goes upstairs to get her overnight bag while Eric and I make polite conversation with her father.

It’s easier for Eric—they talk sports. Emily’s dad does that thing that everybody does these days—looks away from me when he’s speaking because it’s too awkward otherwise.

“Ready to go?” Emily says with forced cheerfulness. I bet she’s regretting this already. On the way to the car she studies me some more and says, “You look pretty good.” Pretty good? That’s a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.

*

The drive back to Smiths Falls is fill ed with friendly but unsubstantial conversation. Celeste and Eric have their talk in the front seat, Emily and I have ours in the back, and occasionally the subjects cross to include everyone. For the most part, Celeste isn’t interested in talking to Emily or me. She dislikes me for a variety of reasons and disdains Emily on principle. I’ve heard Emily referred to as ‘that cheerleader’

when she isn’t around. Celeste considers herself so beautiful that she doesn’t have to ‘put herself on display like that,’ to use her phrase.

“Are you really okay?” Emily asks lowly as we drive through Kanata.

“Yeah. I’m getting better.”

“Ask him how much he weighs now,” Eric says with a stupid grin. I kick the back of his seat and Emily looks out the window uncomfortably. He got that idea from Mom, who has been bragging to anyone who will listen about how I’ve been gaining pounds by eating soup.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

“If I guess right, will you tell me?” Celeste says with a mean smirk.

“Piss off, Barbie.”

“Show her how they jack you into the Matrix,” Eric says. I kick his seat again.

When we arrive at the house, Mom meets us at the car and gathers Emily into a hug of welcome. Eric unlocks the trunk to get Emily and Celeste’s bags, and I corner him to demand what the hell he was trying to do to me back there.

“You two were so painfully awkward,” he says with a nod in Emily’s direction. “Just talk about it and demystify the whole thing before it wrecks your weekend.”

When Eric sounds wise, you know you’re screwed.

Elise accosts Emily in the foyer with giggly demands for updates on all the friends she left back in Ottawa when we moved. Emily obliges as best she can, and we somehow end up on the couch watching
Harry Potter
with my sister. Elise is trying to hide her dorkiness, but every so often I catch her mouthing the dialogue out of the corner of my eye.

In the kitchen, Mom is trying to cook a special meal in honor of our guests. A jar of Willa’s homemade soup for me is on to heat, and Mom is making an attempt at kosher food for Emily. Her parents are strict about stuff like that. They make her do all sorts of volunteer work at her synagogue or she doesn’t get to stay in cheerleading.

When the kosher meal is ready, I’m glad I don’t have to eat it. Mom isn’t a great cook when it comes to recipes she’s done a mil ion times, never mind new ones. She’s too scatterbrained and ‘as long as it’s edible’ is her philosophy.

I smugly eat my soup while the others force their way through dinner. Elise wipes her mouth a lot and crumples at least a dozen napkins. I wonder if she swallowed anything at all. The food is so bad that not even Celeste tries to be a kiss-ass by complimenting it, and when everyone quits trying to choke it down Elise offers to make milkshakes.

“How’s your soup?” Emily asks as Elise sets up the blender. I’m practically licking the bowl—it’s that good and I want to rub it in.

“It’s ok.”

“His friend makes it for him,” Dad chimes in. “She’s a very good cook.”

“I guess you eat it a lot,” Emily says like she’s trying to joke. I can’t see what’s funny about that exactly, but I smile anyway.

“It’s all he
can
eat,” Celeste interjects, and I’m not smiling anymore. She must be fondly remembering my first round of chemo, when she was in town and I almost threw up in her car. I still regret asking her to pull over. I should have barfed on that bitch’s nice leather seats.

“He’s a sucker for milkshakes, too,” Elise says. “You’re going to love these, Emily. Do you want raspberry or peach?”

Despite her talent for annoying me, my little sister knows how to pleasantly divert an uncomfortable conversation. I don’t even mind that I owe her one now.

Saturday

Dad has the day off, and he proposes a day trip to the Rideau Trail, since the weather is going to be nice. It’s one of Eric’s favorite places to hike, but I’ve never been there. We head out after breakfast,

Mom and Dad in the Audi and the five kids in Eric’s Neon. Elise claims the middle seat as the littlest person, but sandwiched between me and Emily, she seems like a protective placeholder; like she doesn’t want anyone getting too close to me.

Rideau Trail Association organizes activities year-round. Right now we have the option to hike or snowshoe along the trail around Perth. Sections of the trail include a wide gravel path, while others are just trodden ground.

“Only three quarters of a kilometre to the first rest stop,” Elise notes aloud as she flips through the brochure. Her pink-gloved hand slips into mine and squeezes. That’s longer than I’ve walked in a while.

I’m not going to fail at this, though, especially in front of Emily. I don’t even want to contemplate how embarrassing that would be.

She hasn’t looked at me all day, except from under her lashes when she thinks I’m not looking. I’m making her uncomfortable just by the way I look and my silence on the subject, but I don’t know how to initiate a conversation of that sort and she hasn’t done so either. Lucky for me, Elise is good at chatter, and she fills the silence along the trail. She stops to take photos a lot, and I take each opportunity to rest on a rock or fallen log.

“Are we moving too fast?” Dad asks.

“Not at all.” My joints are going to hurt tonight.

It’s almost noon when we get to the first rest area. It took us twice as long to walk the first leg of the trail as it usually takes Eric when he comes here alone. Blame it on Elise’s photo taking and Mom’s scatterbrained bird watching and my growing fatigue.

We stop at the rest area for a picnic lunch—no kosher food this time; Mom’s given up already. Emily sticks to vegetables and dip and I eat a Jel -O cup. Eric eats four sandwiches and Elise loses half of hers by dropping it on the ground. Eric dares her to eat it anyway.

The walk back to the cars is even slower than our walk into the forest. Emily hangs back with me, acting like my slow pace is normal, and we talk comfortably for the first time in months. She’s stressing over what to do this summer. Her dad wants her to go to Torah camp again, but she wants to stay in Ottawa and get a job—and be near her boyfriend.

“Aren’t you old enough to be a counselor at that camp now?”

Emily wrinkles her nose. “Probably. But it’s in Montreal. I don’t want to be so far away again.” Her parents have signed her up for camp without asking her opinion on the matter for eight years running.

“Maybe your boyfriend could mysteriously end up at the same camp.”

“He isn’t Jewish.”

That makes me laugh. “What does your dad think of that?”

“He doesn’t know.” This guy is doomed. The two weeks that Emily and I tried to date last year were punctuated by no less than five attempts by her parents to set her up with nice Jewish boys, hoping to divert her interest away from the likes of me.

“Let me know when your dad finds out. I’ll swing by for the funeral.” I laugh, but Emily gasps and looks at me like I’ve said something blasphemous. “What?”

“Nothing.” She buries her hands in her coat pockets and picks up her pace a little.

You idiot.

She spent half of last year anticipating a funeral notice—mine.

*

Emily takes the middle seat on the way home. I have a headache building, so I lean my head back and close my eyes. After about twenty minutes my pose is mistaken for sleep and they start to whisper about me.

Emily asks Elise if I’m really looking better. She has no personal experience to draw a comparison.

“Yeah, he does,” Elise whispers back. “The sores have healed, and his stomach isn’t upset as much anymore. He’s got color again. He used to be so pale he looked green.” She paints a nice picture, doesn’t she? Whatever; it’s the truth.

“He’s so thin.”

“He’s gained weight,” Eric chimes in.

“I heard you were his donor,” Emily says to Elise.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a scar?”

“I have a few.” She says it with such pride, like the complications of the procedure didn’t come close to killing her. “I’m doing a presentation for my drama class—it’s a monologue about the satisfaction of being an organ and tissue donor.” She never told me that…

“Did he tell you he’s taken up knitting?” she says innocently. That little witch knows I’m awake.

“I thought it was macramé?” Celeste interjects.

“To hell with all of you,” I mutter. “Except you,” I say to Emily, and crack an eyelid to give her a sideways look. She’s as red as an overripe tomato; she was probably the only one who genuinely thought I was sleeping. Talk about an awkward social gaffe.

“Sorry.”

“Let’s play the license plate game,” Elise says, and grabs Emily’s hand excitedly. Either she’s forgotten her Ritalin again, or she is an angel.

*

It’s about an hour after dinner when Emily works up the guts to talk to me openly about…things. She sits cross-legged on my bed like a kid sitting down for a campfire story, and doesn’t protest when I take the desk chair instead of sitting with her. I prop my feet up on the edge of the bed and slouch comfortably.

“Did your mom give you the email I sent when you were in isolation?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“You didn’t write back.”

“I was in isolation.”

“I mean after.”

“It seemed stupidly belated to answer.”

“I wouldn’t have cared.”

“I called you.”

Emily grimaces sadly. “You could barely talk, your voice was so hoarse.”

“I still had sores.”

Emily scoots forward on the bed until she’s sitting right on the edge, leaning in toward me. “Can I see you without your hat?”

“Why?”

Emily shrugs. “I’m curious.” Her tone makes it sound like an apology.

“You said the photo I sent you was weird, and that was when I still had some hair.”

“I didn’t say it was weird. I said it made me
feel
weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I dunno.” She shrugs and looks away uncomfortably. “Guilty, maybe? Freaked out? Like all of a sudden it was real and you were seriously sick?”

“Why do you want to see more of that?” It was probably to everyone’s benefit that I didn’t receive treatment in Ottawa; friends would have felt obligated to visit me, and that would have been torture for us all.

“Because it is real.” I can’t argue with that. I’ve lived it. So I take off my hat.

Emily stares. She stands up and touches my head. She moves the skin around under the pads of her fingers like she’s never seen human flesh before.

“Do you think your hair will grow back the same color? I’ve heard it changes sometimes, after chemo.”

“I don’t know.”

She runs a finger over the ridge of bone where my eyebrow used to be. “Are you totally hairless?”