Before I Go Read online

  Tonight I just return her smile. “Then I broke the two cardinal rules of grocery shopping.”

  She hooks her thumb in the waistband of her pants and tugs back and forth, adjusting the fit. It’s a movement her hand makes unconsciously and often, much like my hair petting. “I’ll help you carry them in,” she says, her sausage fingers already reaching to scoop up a load of bags, like the claw in that arcade game grasping for stuffed dolls. “So you know how I was hearing that scratching noise in my walls at night?”

  I grab a few bag handles and lead her up the back steps of my house while she launches into a story about flying squirrels. At least I think that’s what she said. I’m only half paying attention. I set my haul down at the top of the landing and fish for my keys in my shoulder sack. I hear Benny whining and scratching at the other side of the door, and guiltily realize he hasn’t been out since I left for school that morning.

  As I open the door, a ball of fur shoots past us and down the steps.

  Sammy takes a break from her narrative to comment: “Little guy’s quick on those three legs,” then she picks back up with her tale. A high-pitched shrieking assaults us from the direction of the living room. I put the groceries on the counter and reach into my bag for a few of the carrots that I had packed that morning but not eaten. I walk into the living room and slip them through the bars of Gertie’s cage. I know that I’ve been rude, leaving right in the middle of Sammy’s story, but there’s a disconnect in that knowledge and the emotion that’s supposed to accompany it. “Here you go, girl,” I coo quietly. “I bought you some cucumbers, too. Your favorite.” She twitches her ears in appreciation and begins munching on a carrot. With her squealing silenced by food, the house is quiet and I wonder for a moment how long I can stand exactly where I am, not making a sound. Maybe Sammy will just leave. Maybe she already has.

  But when I return to the kitchen, Sammy’s coming back in the door with another load of groceries, Benny at her heels. She seems unperturbed by my bad manners and continues with her story, presumably where she left off. It takes us two more trips to get all the groceries in from the car, and the bags cover nearly every inch of floor and counter space.

  “And then the exterminator is telling me—get this—that they don’t really fly. Not like bats or whatever. They don’t have wings or anything. They glide. They should be called gliding squirrels, he says. And I said I don’t care what you call them, I just don’t want them in my house, you know?” Her deep belly laugh causes the corners of my mouth to turn up perfunctorily. I’m like Pavlov’s dog. Someone laughs, I smile in return.

  But Sammy’s not looking at my response. She’s already started to unload purchases, opening cabinets, the pantry, the fridge, placing things at random according to where she thinks they should go. When she places a Styrofoam package of chicken on the third shelf of the fridge, I open my mouth to tell her that meat goes in the drawer above the vegetable crisper. Then I close it. I don’t have the energy.

  I pick up a box of Cheez-Its from a bag on the counter. The unnaturally orange crackers pictured on the red cardboard beckon me. I used to love Cheez-Its. I slip my finger under the tab on the box top and peel open the plastic bag inside. I stand in the middle of my kitchen eating one cracker after another, while Sammy works around me.

  “I don’t know how you eat all this stuff and stay so skinny,” she says. I look up to see her holding a package of Oreos and a can of whipped cream. It’s Kayleigh’s favorite snack—eating the two together. I’ve watched her carefully squirt the foamy cream onto each cookie and stuff her maw with the entire concoction at least a million times, all while turning my nose up at the processed, sugar-laden, additive-and-chemical-riddled treats.

  “I walk a lot,” I say. I should tell her that I don’t typically eat like this. I don’t want her to think I’m one of those girls who flips her hair and says, “Oh, I’ve just got good genes.” Instead, I add: “And do yoga.”

  Sammy plucks the thought out of my head. “Must be genetic.” She puts the Oreos on a shelf in the pantry and then tugs at her waistband. “ ’Cause I ride my bike every day and can’t seem to drop a pound.”

  I crunch another Cheez-It and pretend to think about this. But I’m really staring at her breasts and thinking how they look like two soft fluffy pillows, her stomach a cloud. I’m suddenly tired. Oh so tired. And I wonder if I can lie on her. Just for a minute.

  “Daisy?” She’s looking at me strangely. “Are you OK?”

  I wish people would stop asking me this. What does OK even mean? It’s not even a real word. It’s unacceptable in Scrabble.

  “I’m just tired,” I say.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she says. “And I’ve been going on and on. Let me get out of your hair. I got to be up early anyway. I told Carl I’d take his shift tomorrow morning—he has some NRA meeting or something or other. Anyway, he’s taking my Saturday night. Happy to trade with him. College kids are the devil on weekends.”

  I vaguely wonder if I’m supposed to know who Carl is.

  After Sammy leaves, I realize that I forgot to thank her for helping me with the groceries. This oversight makes me unspeakably sad. She was so kind. I wonder if I should go back outside and knock on her door to thank her, but the forty steps between our two houses feels like miles.

  I set the box of Cheez-Its back on the counter. Nearly half of them are now in my stomach, but I’m still ravenous. And then I remember the steaks I bought at the butcher counter. Big, red T-bones with thick white bands of fat. My mouth waters. I can’t remember the last time I ate red meat. I open the fridge and remove the white paper bundle that Sammy had placed on the second shelf and not in the meat drawer.

  With a click click click, the gas burner turns into a flame, and I cover it with a cast-iron skillet. I leave the steaks to sizzle and pop in the hot pan and I go into the living room. I want music and vodka. Not necessarily in that order. Vodka was my go-to drink in undergrad. Vodka Red Bull. Vodka cranberry juice. Vodka and Rainbow Sprite. But tonight I pour the Absolut that we keep for company straight into a highball glass that has an R etched into it. The set of four was a wedding gift from Jack’s aunt.

  I take a mouthful of the clear liquid and cough and sputter as it burns all the way down my throat.

  “Daisy?”

  Jack is standing in the arched doorway between our kitchen and living room. I didn’t hear him come in.

  “Are you making steaks?”

  I nod, my eyes still watering from the vodka.

  His face falls, and all I can think is: he knows. I don’t know how, but he must know what happened to me today. The fiery PET scan. The four months. All the Cheez-Its I just ate. Maybe it’s because our connection is that deep, our bond that strong. And it’s a relief, because until that moment I had given no consideration to how I was going to tell him.

  But I don’t have to think about it anymore because he knows.

  “O-kaaaay.” He furrows his brow. “What’d the doctor say? I’ve been calling you for the past three hours.”

  He doesn’t know.

  I take another sip of my drink. It tingles less this time.

  He stares at me, and I know he is trying to piece together the puzzle he has walked into—why his wife who hasn’t eaten red meat in four years is suddenly sautéing T-bones at 10 P.M. on a Monday night. That’s what his brain does. It’s always working, figuring things out. His brain is the reason he won first place at the Science of Veterinary Medicine Research Symposium the last three years in a row. His brain is good at numbers, and reasoning, and calculations. My brain, apparently, is good at growing tumors.

  As I ponder how to respond, I suddenly remember the cock /caulk miscommunication and I tell him the story.

  He laughs, as I knew he would.

  Then I tell him the other stuff Dr. Saunders said in one long breath. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I don’t breathe at all as I speak. He stops laughing.

  And besides the stunned silence, our
home fills with the scent of seared flesh burning. I forgot about the steaks.

  five

  I WAKE UP AT 2:58 A.M. with a mouthful of cotton and an intense stabbing pain behind my right eye.

  Water. I need water.

  I get out of bed and grope my way to the kitchen in the darkness, feeling for the refrigerator handle in the dark. When I open the door, the bright light momentarily blinds me.

  I squint and the throbbing in my head gets worse.

  Stupid vodka. I drank two more glasses while Jack had me repeat everything Dr. Saunders said verbatim three times. Jack has never encountered a puzzle that he couldn’t crack, so I knew he was just trying to get all the pieces of the equation so he could solve for y.

  “Well, of course you’ll do the surgery,” he said, more to himself than to me. “And the chemo. What did he say about the clinical trials again? Which specific ones?”

  When I started slurring my words in response, Jack finally stopped talking and opened his arms to me on the couch. I crawled into them, laid my head on his chest, and closed my eyes. He smelled like a raccoon.

  I chug an entire glass of water and then refill my glass with the plastic pitcher from the fridge. I put it back on the top shelf, and then let go of the door. It slowly closes with a thhwwuck.

  Even though it’s drafty in the kitchen, and I’m only wearing a long T-shirt and underwear, I’m unbearably hot. The floor beckons me like a pool on a hot summer day and I let my body sink into a puddle. I stretch out and lay my cheek against the cold tile.

  Salmon. That’s the color the real estate agent called it. “Very authentic to Spanish design,” she said. “It’s not Saltillo, but it’s a good imitation.” Jack laughed when we got back to our apartment that night. “The kitchen is pink,” he said. “We’re buying a house with a pink kitchen.”

  Moonlight filters through the windows above the sink. I stare at the dark crevice beneath the cabinets where dirt and old cereal flakes and wisps of Benny’s hair accumulate until I banish them with my broom once a week. I spy an orange Froot Loop. Jack must have dropped it at breakfast this morning.

  Orange. I gingerly touch the back of my head where Dr. Saunders says an orange-sized tumor sits. Maybe he said an orange Froot Loop and I just didn’t hear him. Or maybe that’s what he meant to say and he accidentally left off the words “Froot Loop.” I might be able to believe that I have a tumor the size of a cereal O, but a piece of fruit? It’s unbelievable. And I don’t say that lightly. I think the word unbelievable is overused. People say “That’s unbelievable!” for things that really aren’t. Like Skype. My mom thinks it’s unbelievable that you can see someone across the world in real time as you’re talking to them. “It’s just like in the Jetsons!” she typed to me in an email when she discovered the video chat system four years after everyone else in the country. But Skype was really just the next logical step in the advancement of technology. It wasn’t implausible, or something that came out of the blue.

  Me with a tumor the size of citrus and cancer all over my body? That’s the very definition of unbelievable.

  Far-fetched.

  Preposterous.

  Unreal.

  Like soap-opera-story-line-babies-switched-in-the-hospital-at-birth unbelievable.

  My brain pauses, considering this.

  Babies are actually switched in the hospital at birth sometimes. In fact, doctors make mistakes all the time. A few months ago, I read a story in the Athens Banner Herald about an Atlanta man suing Fulton Memorial for amputating the wrong foot. His right foot was supposed to get whacked off due to a bacterial infection, but nurses accidentally prepped the left one instead. When the surgeon entered the operating room, he didn’t double-check the chart; just went right ahead with the procedure.

  I sit up.

  If something that big can happen, then surely a few test results can easily get mixed up. Right? Right? Right.

  That must be it. Dr. Saunders showed me the wrong PET scan. And MRI. And one of his other patients laid her head on her pillow tonight thinking she just has a small tumor in her breast that will be taken care of with a simple lumpectomy.

  Something loosens in my chest and I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I should wake up Jack and tell him.

  I make an effort to stand up, but the burden of what I’ve just discovered pushes me back down. My hands start shaking and the throbbing in my head revs up in earnest. Sweat pushes its way out of my pores. I’m overcome with sadness for the poor woman who’s blissfully asleep, unaware of this life-altering mistake.

  I’ll call Dr. Saunders in the morning. He’ll fumble for words. “I have no idea how that happened, Daisy.” This time his apology will turn up at the end with a happy exclamation, instead of a somber period. “I’m so, so sorry!” And then he, too, will get quiet, as he realizes what this means for a patient I’ve never met but am now intertwined with in a horrific twist. And we’ll both be thinking the same thing: though the news is wonderful for me, somewhere out there is a woman who is on the shit-end of Newton’s law. For every action, there’s an equal, opposite reaction.

  I’m going to live.

  Which means she’s going to die.

  JACK IS A sound sleeper. I often tease him that if our house were lifted off the ground in a Wizard of Oz–esque tornado, he would snore right through it. But tonight as soon as I tap his arm, his eyes pop open.

  “Daisy,” he says.

  His skin is warm from sleep, and I leave my hand on his shoulder as I whisper, “What if it’s a mistake?” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I realize how childishly desperate it sounds. And the conviction I felt on the floor of the kitchen leaves me as quickly as the wind leaves a boxer who’s been punched in the gut.

  Jack struggles to sit up, and when his back is firmly against our white paneled headboard that I found at a yard sale shortly after we moved in, he reaches for me. “Come here,” he says. I snuggle into his armpit for the second time that night. And because I tell Jack almost everything, I tell him my theory.

  The amputated foot.

  Switched-at-birth babies.

  The other woman, sleeping peacefully.

  When I’m done, Jack holds me tighter. “Maybe,” he whispers into my hair, but not because he thinks it could be true. He says it because what else is there to say?

  And I realize that even though I didn’t believe it—not really—I desperately wanted Jack to. I wanted him to jump up and clap his hands together and confirm that Yes! Of course! This is all just one terrible mistake. Not one that we’ll laugh at ten years down the road. God, no. But one that we’d think of when terrible shit happens to us, like getting laid off, or both of our cars breaking down in the same week or our basement flooding (again), and he’d look at me and say, “It could be worse. Remember that time we thought you were dying?”

  I mask my disappointment and force a chuckle. “It was worth a try.”

  And then, even though Jack and I have never been big cuddlers at night, I don’t move from his embrace—even when my arm starts to fall asleep; even when a slick of sweat forms between my neck and his naked shoulder; even when the sun peeks through our window blinds.

  I WAKE UP in our bed alone, the digital clock announcing 10:37 in big red figures. Groggy and confused—I never sleep past seven—I call out into the still house for Jack.

  I’m surprised when he responds.

  “What are you still doing here?” I yell, sitting up and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “You’re late!”

  He appears at our bedroom door. “I’m not going in today.”

  “What? What about clinic? What about Rocky?”

  “Daisy,” he says, and the ache in his eyes reminds me of Dr. Saunders and everything comes screaming back at me like a freight train.

  “Oh. Right.” And suddenly I wish Dr. Saunders had given me a pamphlet like I got from the dentist the time I was diagnosed with gingivitis: “You Have Lots of Cancer: Here’s What to Do Now.”


  “Well, what are we supposed to do?” I ask Jack. “We can’t just sit around the house. What about school?” Shit. Gender Studies. “I have an exam today. And what about you? You’re about to graduate. You can’t miss clinic.”

  He comes to sit next to me on the bed and puts his hand on my thigh. It feels heavy. He says I should email my professors. He says he’s already called his vet clinic director, Dr. Ling, and that he understood. He says that he’s going to take the rest of the week off while we sort this out. And I wonder if my cancer is something that’s just been placed in the wrong pile at a garage sale.

  THE FIRST THING I see when I walk into the kitchen is the half-empty box of Cheez-Its on the counter. I cringe. I can’t believe I let myself eat those fake, processed crackers. I pick up the box, walk it over to the trash can, and let it drop with a satisfying thud into the plastic liner.

  I open the refrigerator and nearly gasp. All of my bad impulse purchases stare back at me. They lay chaotically on the shelves, like a group of children who have had assigned seating all semester and are suddenly given free rein of the classroom. Wrinkling my nose, I reach behind a six-pack of artificially flavored cherry Jell-O and grab the organic cranberry juice. I shut the fridge door. I’ll reorganize it later.

  As I pour the red liquid into a glass, my eye is drawn to the errant orange Froot Loop under the cabinet. I should get a broom and sweep it up, but I don’t have the energy. Is it the cancer? Would I start feeling symptoms so quickly? No, that’s ridiculous. And to prove it to myself, I retrieve the broom from the hall closet, take it back into the kitchen, and aggressively stab it under the cabinets, directing the Froot Loop and other debris into a neat pile in the center of the tile floor.

  I transfer the mound into the dustpan and deposit it in the trash and then stand in the middle of the kitchen. See? I’m fine. I used a broom just like someone who doesn’t have Lots of Cancer. And that niggling, hopeful thought sneaks into my mind again. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t.