Before I Go Read online

  Everything about my Monday morning is like that still-standing house.

  I watch Jack shove his legs one at a time into his green scrub pants.

  He eats Froot Loops; I make a smoothie.

  He kisses my cheek good-bye.

  I dutifully drive to campus in my Hyundai Sonata.

  A tornado has ravaged my life, but everything around me—from the throngs of students loping to class to the sturdy brick buildings rooted to the ground—remains untouched. Everything is different, but nothing has changed. This paradox flummoxes me.

  I walk into Gender Studies and head toward my usual seat in the front, but at the last second I turn and walk toward the back of the class, sliding into a desk in the last row, if only to prove to myself that not everything is the same.

  “Good morning!” Dr. Walden chirps as she enters the door, clutching a travel mug of coffee with her right hand, a manila folder bursting with papers stuffed under her armpit. A few students respond with mumbled greetings.

  She deposits her belongings on the old wooden teacher’s desk at the front of the room and straightens her tiny frame. Her eyes scan the class and light on me. If she’s surprised to see me—or at my change in seating—she doesn’t show it. “Welcome back, Richmond,” she says, with a smile. “See me after class to schedule your makeup exam.” She moves toward the desk and picks up the thick folder that she just set down. “As for the rest of you, I’ve finished grading the tests—and let’s just say some of you are lucky we’re on a bell curve. You can come get them at the end of class.” She sets the folder back down with a thud. “OK, let’s talk about Julia Kristeva. Who can tell me about her?”

  This is the point in class that I would typically raise my hand or open my laptop to studiously take notes, but the tornado has changed everything. Now, even though class and Dr. Walden are the same, I’m different. And how can she just be casually discussing the theories of a Bulgarian feminist philosopher as if I’m not sitting in the back of the classroom actively dying?

  My eyes burn. What am I doing here? Why did I promise Jack I’d come back to class, resume playback in my life as if nothing had changed? I take a deep breath and scan the room, taking in the backs of women’s heads (there’s only one guy in the class, a lone crew cut in a sea of curls, messy buns, and Beyoncé-like weaves) and wondering how many people would notice if I just slipped out the door.

  But where would I go? What would I do?

  My heartbeat revs and my hands are shaking like they did the first time I took the car out by myself at sixteen and narrowly missed being flattened by a semitrailer while merging onto the highway, swerving at the last second and slamming the brake with both feet, screeching to a halt in the emergency lane. The desk/chair combo I’m sitting in suddenly feels constrictive. Why does the chair need to be attached to the wooden tray? It strikes me as some Communist one-size-fits-all design, and I desperately want to saw through the metal pole that joins the two pieces and push the chair back to allow for more breathing room.

  I’m like an eighteen-year-old boy breaking up with a girl for the first time: I need space.

  Dizzy, I stand up, forcing the metal pegs on my chair to scrape the linoleum, emitting a short high-pitched squeak into the air. A few heads turn. Dr. Walden frowns at me but continues her lecture. I glance at the door again, but my feet are glued to the floor.

  I sit back down.

  Tears spring to my eyes and I’m furious at Jack. For pushing me to go to class. For wanting everything to go back to normal, when everything is not normal.

  There was a tornado! I want to shout. To tell the back of everyone’s heads, to slow their typing fingers and quiet their glowing computer screens. Didn’t you see the tornado?

  I reach down into my shoulder bag on the floor, blindly groping for my cell phone. I need to text Jack. To tell him I can’t do this. I can’t just pretend that nothing has changed.

  And then I stop.

  Jack.

  Who’s only back at clinic because I pushed him to go. Because he has to graduate. Because he has to keep living.

  Even after I’m gone.

  I slip my phone back into the pocket of my bag and straighten my spine.

  Jack.

  Who can’t scratch the middle of his back. Or remember to eat dinner.

  Jack.

  Who doesn’t separate whites and colors. And leaves half-drunk coffee cups on floors and bathroom counters.

  I pull my laptop out of my bag and open it on top of my Communist desk. I open a Word document and stare at the cursor blinking on the white page. A slew of adjectives fill my head: kind, funny, smart, thoughtful—but those are a given. You never ask somebody what they’re looking for in a partner and they say “dumb and uncaring.”

  So I dismiss the obvious and settle on the first couple of characteristics that are a must for Jack’s new wife.

  1 Organized

  2 Likes to cook

  3 Loves animals

  I ponder the third one for a minute and then add the word “all,” especially the ones people usually don’t love, like rodents, because Jack often comes home with lab rats and mice—and one time even a snake—after his colleagues are done conducting experiments with them. That’s how we got Gertie.

  While I read over the short phrases I’ve tapped out, I exhale a long stream of air from my lungs.

  My heartbeat slows.

  My hands unclench.

  Lists always make me feel better.

  march

  eight

  I’M ORANGE.

  As in, the color of an Oompa Loompa.

  I stare at my skin in the mirror and my face stares back at me with a look that’s a cross between horror and keen curiosity. Like I’m witnessing a science experiment that’s gone badly awry.

  Last night when I went to bed, I was a normal shade of pink.

  Now . . . now. I run the pads of my fingers over my cheeks. Gently at first, and then harsher, scrubbing the skin with my nails, as if I can rub this strange color off and return it to normal.

  I wonder if Jack noticed it when he was fumbling around in our shadowy bedroom this morning looking for his keys and trying not to wake me. But then, that’s probably something that’s worthy of waking someone up to tell them. “Psst. You are orange.”

  I run into the kitchen and grab my phone off the counter to call him, but I hesitate when I see the time: 9:06. Jack’s in surgery this morning to help remove a spoon from an overeager rottweiler’s stomach—the first big procedure Ling is letting him scrub in on since he went back to clinic two weeks ago—and I don’t want to bother him.

  So instead, I scroll to Dr. Saunders’ name and wonder how many other people have a radiation oncologist’s cell number on their speed dial. He gave it to me right before Jack and I left his office. “Call if you need anything,” he said, his eyebrows thick with sympathy. “Really. Anything.” Most people would probably be comforted in the knowledge that their doctor is at their disposal twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. All it did was remind me how dire my condition was.

  But now I’m glad to have it.

  He answers on the third ring.

  “Dr. Saunders,” I say. “It’s Daisy. Richmond.”

  “Daisy. What can I help you with?”

  “Well, um,” I stutter, not sure what to say. “I woke up this morning and my skin is—it’s not right. I look kind of . . . orange.”

  It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, and I wonder if I’m exaggerating. Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought, or maybe I’m just not fully awake. I walk back into my bathroom, cradling the phone to my ear and stare into the mirror. I blink back at myself. Once. Twice.

  Yep. I am definitely orange.

  “Mm-hmm. I see.” He clears his throat. “Sounds like jaundice. The met in your liver has probably blocked a bile duct.”

  “OK,” I say, as if this is a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I have no idea what a bile duct is or what happens w
hen it’s blocked. Except, apparently, you turn orange.

  “Any itching?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your skin, does it itch?”

  “No,” I say, and then my hand travels to my right arm. “Well, my scar, sometimes.” I’m not following the significance of this line of questioning.

  “Good,” he says. “Where are you with the clinical trial? Have you gotten your workup yet?”

  “Yes,” I say, flashing back to last week when I drove down to Emory and met Dr. Rankoff for what she called my “screening visit,” which was just a fancy term for another MRI, CT scan, and getting poked and prodded with a thousand needles and metal instruments. My mom came with me, but only after I made her promise she would leave the room anytime she felt like crying. She did surprisingly well. So well that at one point I felt myself wanting to scream, “Mom! I’m dying! Why are you acting so calm?”

  “When will you start the medication?”

  “Dr. Rankoff said if I’m a good candidate, I could begin next Friday.”

  “A week from today?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “OK, I’ll check with her, but I think getting a stent won’t preclude you from the study.”

  “A stent?”

  “Sorry, a plastic tube inserted in the duct to open it up. I can set you up with a gastroenterologist next week. It’s a quick procedure and it’ll relieve your jaundice.”

  Next week. Which means I will remain orange for the foreseeable future, which includes Jack’s annual spring awards banquet for the veterinary school.

  Tonight.

  My head is spinning.

  I could stay home from the banquet. Of course I could. Except I can’t.

  Jack’s new wife could be there.

  OPPOSITES DON’T ATTRACT. The notion that they do is one of those culturally imbedded ideas that’s actually not true at all, like the old wives’ tale that going to bed with wet hair will bring on a cold. I know this because for the past two weeks I’ve been poring over my back issues of Psychology Today and Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, studying what makes a marriage work. It would have been faster to go on the Web and type “marriage” into the search engine on livescience.com, but it felt like cheating. Too easy. I’m searching for a life partner, not a pair of shoes. It deserves a marked effort.

  On my breaks from thumbing through the monthly tomes and squinting at the black print, I’ve been haphazardly going to class—partly because I promised Jack I would, but mostly because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of available women on campus at any given moment. I’ve begun to feel like an anthropologist, studying their actions, trying to attach meaning to them. Reapplying a dark burgundy lipstick to your pout while waiting for the bus—high maintenance. Checking your smart phone every three minutes—clingy, desperate. Wearing flannel pajama pants to class—too immature. Wearing heels to class—too much. I assign faults and pass judgments as if I’m a Manhattan prep school queen bee, deciding who to let in my clique with the point of a finger and flick of my hair.

  After days of studying women in the flesh, at night I’d dig back into my stacks of journals, trying to get into their brains and discover what makes someone a good mate, what the defining characteristics of long-term healthy couplings are.

  Turns out, my near-master’s in psychology isn’t useless after all. Though I do wonder if I should have been more proactive in this research before Jack and I said “I do.” In the eyes of science, we’re not a picture-perfect duo. For instance, according to a study by Florida State University, fighting makes for a happy marriage. It’s unhealthy for couples to internalize their anger, the researchers concluded—which is really all that Jack does. Getting him to talk about his feelings is like trying to make it rain on a cloudless day.

  But dwelling on Jack’s shortcomings wasn’t going to get me any closer to finding him a wife, so I tucked that nugget of info into the far back of my brain and added to my growing list of qualities Jack’s wife should possess. Number twenty-four? Someone who has similar personality characteristics to Jack, because studies show that people who are alike have lower divorce rates. I need a nerd. One who’s logical, even-keeled, and looks before she leaps. And where better to find someone who’s like Jack than at his veterinary school? All those cerebral, doctors-to-be gathered in one place.

  I look over my list one last time and close my laptop. Then I stretch my neck and slip my feet into a pair of red heels. I’m hoping the pop of color in contrast with my black dress will attract people’s attention downward—away from my carroty skin.

  I hear the screen door in the kitchen creak open, then slam shut, and Benny goes scurrying out of the room to greet Jack. Gertie chimes in with her own squeaky salutation.

  Seconds later, Jack fills the door frame of our bedroom and stops.

  “Beautiful,” he says, almost under his breath.

  I look up at him, ignoring his mandatory compliment, and meet his gaze. It took me a few days to get used to the new intensity with which Jack’s been looking at me. As if he’s memorizing every detail of my face and filing it away for later. Later is, I realize, when he won’t be able to see it anymore, but neither one of us has given voice to that inevitable future.

  “Better or worse than you thought?” I had texted him a warning of my new appearance after getting off the phone with Dr. Saunders.

  He walks closer and rubs his fingers over my bare shoulder. “Better.” His lips curve up, but the delight doesn’t reach his eyes. They remain serious. Focused. “Sexy, actually. In an X-Files kind of way.”

  He pulls me to him. “We don’t have to go. You know I hate these things.”

  I move out from his embrace. “Of course we’re going. It’s your big night.”

  Jack’s getting an award for the research he presented to the Science of Veterinary Symposium, as well as being the first recipient of the Donald J. Hook research grant.

  He steps toward the closet while pulling his T-shirt off over his head.

  “Is my suit clean?” he asks, rummaging through the hangers.

  I don’t answer, as I see that his hand has found the plastic dry-cleaning bag encasing his sport coat and neatly pressed pants. I perch myself on the edge of our bed and smooth my dress over my thighs.

  “Have you told people?” I ask. I don’t add “about the cancer” because for the past few weeks Jack and I have abided by an unspoken agreement to not say the word—or discuss what the word is slowly doing to my body, our marriage, our happily ever after.

  “A few,” he says, buttoning up a crisp white shirt. I notice slight yellow stains at the pits and make a mental note to order him a new oxford online.

  I nod. I don’t want to get pity looks all night long, but I also don’t want to have to explain why my skin is glowing like the sun.

  As if reading my thoughts, Jack adds, “We’ll just tell everyone else you spent too long in a tanning booth?” He pulls his pants up each leg, then stuffs his feet into a pair of black loafers with shiny silver buckles.

  “Nobody goes to those anymore. Well, unless you live on the Jersey Shore,” I say.

  Jack looks at me blankly.

  “You know, like JWoww? Pauly D?”

  “Who?”

  I laugh at his almost nonexistent pop culture knowledge. “C’mon, grab your jacket, we need to go.”

  He glances at the clock. “Relax, we have almost an hour.”

  “Jack,” I say, rolling my eyes. I should have realized he probably never even glanced at the invitation. “It started thirty minutes ago.”

  I LOVE WALKING into a room with Jack. His towering height commands attention, literally turning heads most places we go. I wasn’t blessed with model-good looks, so it’s the closest I’ve come to knowing what that might feel like. With him, I turn heads by proxy, and the exhilaration that comes with it rarely gets old. But Jack hates it. If it were up to him, he would be a chameleon, blending into the walls and carpet everywh
ere he went. Jack suffers from a moderate case of social anxiety. He finds most conversations with strangers awkward and uncomfortable and often relays to me in bed at night the stupid things he’s said or done in the company of others, which I find deliciously charming.

  But tonight, for the first time, I wish he wasn’t quite so noticeable. Heads turn from the speaker when we attempt to sneak in the door at the back of the hotel ballroom, and I feel myself start to burn under the scrutiny. “Where are our seats?” I hiss at Jack, trying to fold my shoulders in on themselves, making my body as small as possible.

  He spots them across the room, and we weave in and out of tables, trying not to trip over handbags and chair legs and people’s feet. What feels like hours later, I gratefully slip into my seat and pick up the goblet of water in front of me. Sweat has broken out on my forehead and I wonder why I didn’t just take Jack up on his offer to stay home.

  “Am I bright red?” I whisper to Jack, because my face is absolutely on fire. Then I realize what I’ve said, and we both burst out laughing, which garners some irritated glances from the other people sitting at our table.

  Jack leans his mouth closer to my ear. “More of a yellow, actually, if that’s possible. Must be the light in here.” I stifle another giggle, as a man in gloves and a white jacket sets a plate with a gravy-covered chicken breast and four limp stalks of asparagus in front of me.

  I compose myself and cut small bites of the cold food as the man at the podium talks about the year in veterinary science.

  “. . . and who could forget the woman who brought in what she thought was an injured house cat but turned out to be a bobcat? Thank god for Dr. Lichstein and his quick reflexes with the Diazepam.”

  Polite laughter titters through the audience. I laugh again, too, and sit back in my chair feeling light and airy and happy to be sitting next to Jack.

  “Finally, before we move on to the awards, I’d like to congratulate this year’s PhD and DVM candidates, who might just be the hardest-working, most innovative thinkers in the area of veterinary medicine that we’ve ever had.” He pauses, then waves his hand toward the audience. “I know, I know. I say that every year. Congratulations on your achievements and I look forward to handing you your diplomas in May.”