Before I Go Read online

  “It’s a lacka support,” he says, chewing on a toothpick. “That central beam in your basement looks like it was installed five, ten years ago. Just a Band-Aid.”

  “But our home inspector said the hump was fine—normal settling of a house this old,” I say.

  He shrugs, ignoring Benny’s incessant whines at his feet for a head scratch. “You gotta bad one. Happens.”

  “So what do we do?” I bend down to scoop Benny up with one hand and he rewards me with tiny sandpapery licks all over my jawline.

  “Y’need ’bout seven, mebbe eight new beams.” He takes the toothpick out of his mouth and holds it in between two fingers like a tiny cigarette. “But that ain’t cheap.”

  “How much?”

  “You looking at two hundred a beam, so fourteen, sixteen hundred bucks.”

  I thank him, shut the door behind him, and then lean my back up against it. I put Benny’s wriggling body back onto the floor and he scurries off toward Jack’s office. If my mom were here she would recite one of her clichéd mantras, like “When it rains it pours.” Or “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Why does every quote about bad stuff happening have to do with weather? And are there any about tsunamis? Because that feels like the more appropriate meteorological condition for my life right now.

  I glance at my watch.

  Nine thirty-two.

  I need to caulk the windows.

  I need to figure out how we’re going to pay for the new beams in the basement.

  I need to call Dr. Saunders and see how to get on that clinical trial.

  I take a deep breath, leave my post at the door, and walk down our scuffed wood hallway. I turn right into our bedroom, with every intention of pulling up the comforter, smoothing the pillowcases, and leaving my tidy bedroom to start my day.

  Instead, I crawl onto the mattress, burrow under the covers, and promptly fall asleep.

  The weekend passes in a blur wherein I find myself looking at mostly three things—the starfish ceiling fan, Jack’s concerned face peering in at me from the bedroom doorway, and the back of my eyelids. At times, I wake to find pieces of fruit—apples, bananas, oranges—on my nightstand that Jack has left for me like offerings to Pomona. I eat them without tasting them to keep the rumblings in my stomach at bay. In one of my more lucid moments of consciousness I notice the pamphlet that the second-opinion doctor had given us lying next to a cluster of grapes. I can’t remember if I left it on my nightstand or if Jack has placed it there. Slightly annoyed, I stuff a pillow behind my back so I can sit up a bit and flip through it while I munch on the orbs of green fruit.

  The title, “Coping with Terminal Cancer,” is plastered onto a picture of a storm cloud where the sun is just barely peeking through. The literal silver lining. I roll my eyes.

  Inside, it announces there are seven stages to grief. My irritation lessens when I see it’s in list format. Lists, I get. Lists, I understand. I read number one.

  Shock & Denial

  Yes! I have experienced both shock and denial. I feel like I’m fourteen and taking a quiz in YM. I have gotten this answer: correct! Next.

  Anger & Bargaining

  Anger, yes. Bargaining?

  You may try in vain to negotiate with the powers that be: “If you just heal my cancer, I’ll spend the rest of my life volunteering and giving back to charities.”

  Hmm. Incorrect! I skipped that step, which makes me uneasy, because I don’t like to leave anything undone. I decide to come back to that. Moving on.

  Depression

  This stage may not set in until even months after diagnosis, but is typically accompanied by a long period of sad reflection and isolation. You may feel lethargic and may not even want to get out of bed.

  Now I’m downright smug. I was diagnosed less than a week ago and I’m already at stage three. I’m an Advanced Griever. If there was a class in grieving, I would be an A-plus student.

  I put the flyer back onto my nightstand, roll over, and go back to sleep.

  On Saturday night—at least I think it’s Saturday night—the familiar clink of metal flatware hitting a bowl floats in from the kitchen and I know that Jack is eating cereal for dinner. I have the urge to get up and cook a proper meal for him, but it passes as quickly as it comes. I close my eyes again and drift off for the fifth or sixth time. I’ve lost count.

  By Sunday morning, the thought of sitting up doesn’t overwhelm me, so I do. Then I stand. My legs are a little wobbly and blood rushes too quickly to my head, but it feels good to stretch. I head down the hall and am sniffing my sour armpit when Jack walks toward me holding a clementine. He pauses midstride when he sees me.

  “You’re up,” he says.

  “I need a shower.”

  “Bathroom’s that way,” he says, and points with his left hand. He’s wearing a ridiculous grin.

  “I want a drink of water first.”

  He steps to the right, blocking my path. “I’ll get it for you,” he says. “You go on into the shower.”

  “What’s your deal? Move,” I say, brushing by him. “I’m not an invalid.”

  I enter the kitchen with Jack and Benny both at my heels and when I stop short and suck in my breath, Jack nearly topples me over from behind.

  “Daisy—wait.”

  To call the kitchen a disaster would not do it justice. I scan the room from left to right and top to bottom, taking in the bowls, Tupperware, and mugs peppering the counters, containing dregs of milk and bits of swollen cereal, and various levels of what I assume is now-cold coffee, the fluffs of Benny’s dog hair that roll like tumbleweeds on the fake Saltillo tile, the square cardboard box with grease spots and the words “Hot fresh pizza” on the side sitting on the glass kitchen table. I don’t have to lift it to know that my finger smudges from Thursday still mar the surface beneath.

  The first question that comes to mind is: How long have I been asleep?

  I give voice to my second: “Why are the cabinet doors beneath the sink open?”

  Jack sighs. “I’ve been trying to fix it.”

  “Fix what?”

  “There’s a clogged pipe somewhere,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “Everything’s backed up.”

  And that’s when I notice the stench. And the dirty rags and tools that litter the pink floor in front of the sink.

  Jack is many things, but a handyman is not one of them. When he attempted to put up the ceiling fan in our bedroom, he forgot to turn off the breaker and electrocuted himself. “Just a small buzz,” he says, annoyed whenever I tease him about it. “It wasn’t a big deal.” I hired an electrician to finish the installation.

  I close my eyes.

  I need to call a plumber.

  I need to add it to my list.

  But my list is all the way across the room on the counter.

  And I am going back to bed.

  THE MOVEMENT OF the mattress from Jack’s body weight sinking into it wakes me up later that night.

  “What time is it?”

  “Eleven.” He brushes my matted hair off my forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It’s fine.” I sit up a little.

  He reaches under the covers and rolls his socks down past his hairy ankles and off his feet, one at a time. Then he pulls them out from under the sheets and drops them on the side of the bed. “I called Dr. Ling to let him know I’m not coming in again this week,” he says, and reaches up to the lamp chain on his nightstand. He pulls it and the room goes dark. He leans toward me and his lips land somewhere between my nose and cheek. “G’night,” he whispers.

  I lie there for a minute, paralyzed. Jack is less than four months away from graduating with a degree he’s worked more than seven years to obtain. He’s already given up an entire week of clinic in his final semester while I’ve been fully absorbed in my (albeit accelerated) seven-stage grieving process and not even considering how my Lots of Cancer has affected him.

  I reach over for the chain o
n my lamp and yank it. Light fills the room again.

  “You have to go,” I say. “You have to graduate.”

  “Daisy,” he squints, holding his hand up to shade his eyes. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  “It’s not like you’re jetting off across the country. You’ll still be here.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Jack, seriously. You’ve worked too hard for this. We’ve worked too hard for it. I want you to graduate.” And then in a smaller voice: “I need you to.” And as I say it, I realize it’s true. Jack continuing clinic, graduating, means life goes on as normal. The steady rhythm of our days can resume like a couple in a ballroom competition that trips, but picks back up with their waltz. Last week we stumbled, but now we must carry on.

  “OK,” he says, resigned. “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you.” I give a curt nod and reach for the chain again.

  “But only if you’ll go, too,” he says. My hand freezes midair.

  “What?” I picture myself following Jack around the vet school hospital like one of the animals on a leash. It’s such a ridiculous notion that I almost burst out laughing.

  “You have to go back to school, too. Tomorrow.”

  Oh. My school.

  This triggers a flood of phrases: My degree. My Gender Studies exam. My thesis. My career. All of which I have given absolutely zero thought to in the full week since I was sitting in Dr. Saunders’ office. But now that I am thinking about it, I have a bizarre urge to laugh and cry at the same time. It all seems so . . . pointless.

  “Isn’t that what Dr. Saunders said the first time?” he says. “That you should keep working, stick to your daily routine. It helps.”

  “Jack, this isn’t like the first time,” I say quietly.

  He folds his arms across his chest. “That’s my deal,” he says. “I’ll go if you go.”

  I consider this. I’m sure if I keep arguing I could win. He obviously hasn’t thought it through—the amount of school I’ll be missing for doctor appointments and the apathy I feel (that anyone would feel) about working toward a degree I’ll never likely get to use. But I’m just so tired. And really, what else am I going to do with my time? Suddenly, the vast amount of unfilled, unplanned hours and days looming in front of me feels overwhelming—even if there are only four to six months of them left. “Fine,” I say.

  Jack’s eyes get big, and I realize he wasn’t counting on me giving up so easily. I reach up to turn off the light and leave him to enjoy his victory in the dark.

  The mattress shifts as he rolls himself into his burrito of blankets, and after a few minutes I hear Jack’s breathing slow and deepen. It’s one of the things that drives me crazy about him—how he can fall asleep within seconds of closing his eyes. Once, I tried to get him to teach me how to do it. I wanted to learn the secret to overcome my all-too-often insomnia. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just kind of let my mind wander and next thing you know, I’m asleep.” When I let my mind wander, sleep is the last thing that overtakes me.

  Tonight as I lie there, my thoughts drift to Jack in his cap and gown, a proud grin on his face. My husband, a doctor twice over. And the pride I feel for him in that moment is almost enough to overcome the loss I feel at my own unrealized dreams. Almost. And then an idea sprouts in my brain, and as much as I try to push it aside, it grows like kudzu, overtaking every happy image I’ve conjured: what if I’m not here to see it?

  I swallow. Breathe. I will be. Of course I’ll be here. I have to be. Please. Please let me be here to see Jack graduate. I’ll do anything.

  I don’t know who I’m talking to: gods, fate, some divine being that believes in me, even if I don’t believe in it (isn’t that what those WWJD people are always saying?) or just myself. But I feel better, if only because my grief journey is now more complete: I’m bargaining.

  Jack shifts beside me and groans. “Daisy?” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep.

  “Yeah?”

  “Scratch my back?” His face is half smushed into his pillow and it takes me a minute to register what he’s asked me.

  I reach over and feel for his body in the dark. My hand brushes against his warm, bumpy skin—Jack has a moderate case of bacne. I ordered him that body Proactiv from the infomercial more than a year ago, but I don’t think he’s used it once. The bottle sits full in the shower, mold threatening to form a ring around the bottom of it if I didn’t scrub beneath it once a week.

  I slowly run my fingernails over his back near the length of his protruding spine.

  “To the left,” he mumbles.

  I acquiesce.

  “Higher.”

  I move my hand to just beneath his shoulder blade.

  “Little lower.”

  I oblige.

  “Ah.” A sharp intake of breath. “R’there.”

  Having found X on the treasure map of his back, I scratch the spot as I would Benny’s belly, with gentle vigor. After a few seconds Jack mutters something like “thanks” and I feel the tension leave his body as he settles back into his sleeping position.

  I slip both hands between my head and my pillow, palming my skull, and lie on my back, wide awake. Something has just cut loose inside of me, like a snagged thread on a sweater threatening to unravel the entire hem, but I can’t put my finger on it.

  It’s something to do with Jack, I know. Maybe I’m still shook by the thought of not being there for his graduation. But no, that’s not all of it.

  And then it hits me.

  I’m shook by the thought of not being here—at all.

  And not because of my lingering existential high school fear of death. It’s not about what’s going to happen to me.

  With sudden clarity, I realize my fear, deep down, is what will happen to Jack.

  And the dirty socks on the floor beside our bed.

  Early in our relationship, I asked him why he doesn’t remove them near our dresser, where he stands to peel off the rest of his layers from the day and deposits them all in the hamper, where dirty clothes belong. He said he doesn’t like his feet to get cold, so he leaves them on until he can snuggle them deep under our comforter for warmth. I once bought him slippers for Christmas, hoping he could pad over to the bed in those and leave his socks safely in the hamper, because really, is there anything more off-putting than a naked man clad only in socks? The slippers sit unused on the floor of our closet.

  But that’s not what bothers me. In the morning, Jack leaves his socks, gray-soled and rotting on the floor, only to be joined by another pair of used socks that night. This goes on until the stench or the sight of so many socks motivates me to action, and I pick up the whole dingy mess and dump them into the laundry basket. Jack sometimes mentions it, especially if it was a particularly unruly pile, with an offhand, “Thanks for picking those up. I would’ve gotten to it eventually.”

  I take “eventually” to mean “when I run out of socks.” Although something tells me that even in that circumstance, Jack would go to Target and buy a package of Fruit of the Loom in bulk rather than launder the ones beside our bed.

  Now I wonder—with not just a small degree of panic—what would happen if Jack were left to his own devices? I picture the pile of socks growing exponentially until it teeters dangerously toward the ceiling and spreads like a fungus to each corner of the room. Jack would fall asleep every night in a sea of socks, until the one night he’d choke and sputter on the noxious odors and eventually suffocate under the oppressive weight of thousands of pairs of knitted footwear.

  This is what happens when I let my thoughts wander. And this is why my heart is flapping wildly like the wings of a baby bird just kicked from its nest and why my face is hot and dry air is trapped in my lungs, unable to come or go.

  If I die, who’s going to pick up the socks?

  If I die, who’s going to scratch the itch just beneath Jack’s shoulder blade?

  When I die, who’s going to caulk the windows and call the contr
actors and sweep the floors and pack the lunches and find the jeans and load the dishwasher and go to the store and make the bed and make sure that Jack doesn’t eat goddamned cereal for every goddamned meal?

  I bolt upright in bed, my ears ringing now with flat-out terror.

  I have Lots of Cancer. I’m going to die. And then—then—what is going to happen to Jack?

  Breathe, Daisy.

  I need to make a list. I have at least four months, maybe six. Maybe even a year, if the trial works. That’s plenty of time to get the house in order, maybe teach Jack how to cook. I could make him a cleaning chart.

  My heart seizes. No, he’d never follow it.

  I could hire a maid.

  But she probably wouldn’t make his favorite tuna salad with hard-boiled eggs for lunch. Or be able to tell him where his scrubs are when he’s running twenty minutes late for work. Or scratch his back in the middle of the night.

  The corners of my eyes sting as I picture Jack alone in our bed. In our tiny dark bedroom that suddenly feels cavernous and empty and sad. The thought is enough to break me in half. To kill me long before the cancer does.

  Jack needs me.

  I shake my head.

  No, Jack needs somebody. A warm body. A body without Lots of Cancer that can take care of him and love him and pick up his dirty socks when he doesn’t get around to it.

  And suddenly, what’s clearer to me than the glowing orb on that PET scan is that this is now the number one thing on my to-do list. Take that, twenty-one-year-old me who would frolic off to Italy. I, too, have a plan.

  Jack needs a wife.

  And I am going to find him one.

  WHENEVER A TORNADO ravages some flat Midwest town, the news images of the damage always contain at least one shot of a home untouched—unmarred by the destruction—while every other house in the neighborhood is nothing but a few splinters of wood emerging from unrecognizable rubble. And in many ways, it’s the still-standing house that’s far more shocking than the one that’s not. The house that hundreds of people passed every day and never gave a second thought to has transformed into a marvel overnight, even though—or precisely because—nothing about it is different.