A Small Matter (13 page)

“Thank you,” Vickie said. “I guess it must
show on my face--my fear, I mean. Here I am, right in the middle of
a life-and-death situation, and all I can think is, Why me?”

“I believe I know what you mean,” Scotia
said. “We lost my brother to leukemia when he was only fourteen. It
was a lesson for all of us. The day he died, I was in his room, and
I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, and he smiled
at me and said that all he wanted was a kiss and a dish of lime
Jell-O. I pecked him on the cheek and went down to the kitchen to
get the Jell-O. By the time I got back, he was gone.”

The sound of an ambulance siren approaching
from afar underscored the true reality of where they were and what
they were about--the preparation for marriage of a dying woman. The
siren died with a whirping bwirp as it neared the emergency room
dock with a cargo of somebody in a heap of trouble.

“Ask not for whom the siren blares,” Vickie
said, making the sign of the cross.

“You can toss your clothes into this big
wicker basket here,” Scotia said.

“To be taken out and burned, I suppose,”
Vickie said.

“Oh no,” Scotia said, laughing. “We don’t
burn designer labels around here. We’ll have everything fresh and
clean for you after you return here from the ceremony. I’ll be back
in a few minutes with your flaming chocolate and cherries.”

Vickie, alone, surveyed her image in the
mirror. Her endless day of blood, sweat and tears, which had
started out with angry pain, had finally come to an end at the apex
of these ceremonial preparations. Scotia returned and caught her
looking at herself.

“What do you feel when you look in the
mirror?” Scotia said.

“I feel sad,” Vickie said.

“Well, girl,” Scotia said, “you’ve come too
far to turn back now.”

“I was kind of hoping I’d feel more like a
bride,” Vickie said, “You know, with the pre-wedding jitters and
all.”

“Vickie,” Scotia said, “you need to get into
your bath.”

“It’s now or never,” Vickie said, draining
her flute and slipping into the surging waters of the tub.

“I’ll feed you,” Scotia said, spooning up
some warm, glazed cherries covered in chocolate.

“Gosh, I feel like a baby,” Vickie said.
“Mmm! That’s good!”

The combination of whirlpool and chocolate
brought Vickie to a point of relaxation she hadn’t experienced in
days.

“Scotia,” she said, “you probably think I’m
from another planet. Who else would get married to a guy right
before he goes under the knife for a bypass?”

“Lots of us would for the right man,” Scotia
said. “So tell me, where are you going for your cancer
treatments?”

“Nowhere,” Vickie said. “The truth is, I
panicked when I got the news. I’m supposed to be thinking it over
for a few days. My doctor is waiting for me to call. But I’m never
going back there.”

Scotia continued feeding Vickie. After the
chocolate, she unbraided Vickie’s baby braids before massaging in a
generous dollop of shampoo, working up the suds with gentle
fingers. Her probing located a spot at the back of Vickie’s neck
and she began a gentle kneading.

“Oh, that feels good,” Vickie said.

“Your medulla oblongata,” Scotia said.
“You’ve got a lot of overall stiffness in your scalp and neck. It’s
one of the few safe places for me to apply massage pressure to help
you relax.”

“Safe places?” Vickie said.

“In the presence of cancer, we have to be
careful not to do any deep tissue work near the major organs--it
might encourage the cancer cells to move somewhere else. That’s why
I don’t have a massage table set up in here. But I can do your neck
and shoulders.”

“Oh,” Vickie said. “Will it never end?”

“Eventually it will end for all of us,”
Scotia said. “You happened to receive a little advance notice. So
tell me, since you’re refusing treatment, are you planning to die
at home, or in a hospice?”

“How dare you!”

“Excuse me,” Scotia said. “I forgot we’re
supposed to be pretending that you’re going to get married and live
happily ever after.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Hearing what,” Scotia said, “the truth?”

“You have no right!

“In only a few short hours,” Scotia said,
“you’ll be standing before God, taking a vow to love someone
whether or not they’re in sickness or in health. But how can you
make such a vow if you can’t do the same for yourself. How can you
stand in front of God and lie like that?”

“Because God let me down!” Vickie shrieked.
“He chose me to die by inches from a horrible disease--I hate
God!”

The words took a moment to sink in. Staring
down at the suds, Vickie slowly returned to reality. “Rinse my
hair,” she said. The two women went without speaking for awhile as
Scotia gently rinsed out Vickie’s hair.

“That took a lot of guts,” Vickie said. “To
confront me like that.”

“I work part time in a hospice,” Scotia said.
“That’s why Dee called me in. I’ve learned a lot about the dying.
In your case, I decided to risk confronting you when I saw the way
you were looking at yourself in the mirror. I could tell by the
look on your face that you were caught up in something really deep
and dark. When I saw that, I decided to try and get you back to the
surface.”

“I don’t know where you came from, Scotia,”
Vickie said, “but you’ve got some gift. You’re right. What I’m
caught up in is, I don’t want to live anymore. I want out.”

“So why are you getting married then?”

“I don’t really know anymore,” Vickie said.
“My priest thinks it’s partly from selfishness. I was telling
myself I’m going through with it to help a man who’s been in love
with me for decades. The truth is, I’m probably using him--I don’t
want to die alone.”

“You’re going to marry him,” Scotia said,
“but my guess is, afterwards, when you realize he can’t give you
the comfort you’re seeking, you’re going to kill yourself in a fit
of self-pity.”

“And what if I do? It’s too hard living. I’ve
spent the day wrapping up most of my affairs. At least I won’t be a
burden to anybody else.”

Scotia held a hand mirror in front of
Vickie’s face. “I want you to look at the woman in this mirror,”
she said. “What you see is a woman dying of cancer. A woman who has
rejected her body. A woman who has lost all her inner confidence. A
woman who’s thinking only of herself.”

“You know what I fear most?” Vickie said.
“The loss of my hair. I don’t think I could stand it if it all fell
out. And I don’t know where I’m going. The truth is, I’m scared to
death. Day after day, my body is going to become more and more
helpless and useless to me--it’s like the space around me is
shrinking smaller and smaller, and the darkness is growing
larger.”

“You fear passing over into dementia,” Scotia
said.

“Yes,” Vickie said. “What will become of me
if I simply drift away in my mind? I’ll have nothing to hold on to.
I also fear the pain.”

“The fear of pain increases pain itself,”
Scotia said.

“It’s a world of horror and hopelessness,”
Vickie said. “You’ll never guess what else I fear.”

“What?” Scotia said.

“The smell. I fear the smell more than
anything. I learned to fear it when my mother was dying of cancer.
It’s a sour odor full of decay and medicine. You know the one I
mean. It’s why everybody always sends flowers--they hope the smell
of the flowers will cover it up, but it never does. I never want to
smell like that--never!”

“So tell me about killing yourself,” Scotia
said. “Do you have a plan?”

“I do,” Vickie said, “but you’ll never
believe how I plan to do it--I’ve got this really fast car, and I’m
simply going to go out one dark night and take it up to about a
hundred and sixty miles per hour and drive it straight into a
bridge abutment.”

“That’s hardly original,” Scotia said.
“Actually, that’s not how I had you figured. I thought you might
use pills or something. A bridge abutment, huh? Remind me never to
go driving anywhere with you.”

“I can’t go through with this wedding,”
Vickie said. “You’re right. The thing would be a lie. I mean, I
love my fiancee and everything, but it’s not fair to him. I can’t
marry him knowing what I’m planning to do if he can’t comfort me
adequately. Help me out of this tub. I’m going to get dressed and
get out of here. Maybe my last unselfish act will be setting him
free.”

“No, wait,” Scotia said. “Maybe you should
get married. Maybe it’s time you allowed yourself to be the center
of attention. What would it hurt? I mean, if you’re going to kill
yourself, you can do that anytime. What’s the hurry?”

“What do you mean about being the center of
attention?” Vickie said.

“It’s just that I think women don’t face
their own death well,” Scotia said. “And who can blame us? For most
of our lives, we’re responsible for providing security and comfort
for those around us--our families, our friends, people at our
church and in our neighborhoods. So when it’s time for us to die,
it’s like, we don’t know what to do. The people around us can’t
help us because they’re too busy wringing their hands over the loss
of the person who’s always taken care of them. There’s no rituals
in our world for dealing with the death of a woman--they wait for
us to die and then try to get us buried as quickly as possible and
get it over with.”

“Oh,” Vickie said. “This whole thing caught
me by surprise. One month I was living my life and the next thing I
know, there’s this raging sense of urgency--it was like suddenly I
found myself facing a hundred different doors to open and I had
only a moment to open them. Today I accepted a marriage proposal,
bought a house and car for my brother, and found him a woman to
marry. In two hours, I’m supposed to be giving myself to my new
husband in marriage. This is crazy.”

“You’re the one who’s dying,” Scotia said,
“and yet here you are, still trying to take care of everybody else,
right up to the end.”

“Oh, you’re right!” Vickie said. “And let me
tell you, when somebody tells you you’re dying, you realize right
then and there that you can’t handle it. It’s not something you
learn in college. There’s so much I don’t understand--it’s all
zooming way over my head.”

“That’s why you want to go a hundred and
sixty miles per hour,” Scotia said. “You think you can outrun the
fear long enough to work up the courage to check yourself out of
the planet. When I saw you standing in front of the mirror, I knew
that you were a woman who was a stranger to herself. The fact that
you’re going to kill yourself proves it. It’s easy to kill somebody
you don’t know. But it’s hard to kill someone you love.”

“Help me,” Vickie said.

“There’s still time,” Scotia said. “There’s
still time to push back the darkness. But you’ll have to start
really getting to know yourself. You’ll have to learn to look in
the mirror without judging what you see.”

“It’s too late,” Vickie said.

“Nothing’s ever too late as long as you’re
still alive,” Scotia said. “That’s the paradox. You’ve got to slow
down even though you feel as though you’re running out of time.
There’s something inside you trying to kill you, and you’re letting
it. You’ve got to stop and listen to yourself and find out why.
Cancer is a messenger. You need to find out what the message
is.”

“Oooh!” Vickie cried.

“Are you having pain now?” Scotia said.

Vickie nodded.

“Where’s your medication?”

“No,” Vickie said. “I’m going to wait.”

“Are you sure?” Scotia said.

“Help me out of this tub,” Vickie said. “And
tell your hair guy I’m ready. I’ve decided to go through with the
wedding. Selfish motives or not--I’m getting married tonight--and
then I’m going to take your advice and find out what exactly is
going on.”

Scotia pulled Vickie from the waters. “You
can have everything again,” she said.

“Thank you,” Vickie said. “For your courage.
Perhaps it was no coincidence that we met tonight. But I have to
ask you, what made you take the chance to confront me? I’m nobody
to you.”

“When they told me my brother had passed on,”
Scotia said, “I was standing in the hospital hallway with his dish
of lime Jell-O. That’s when I understood what he’d done. He was
trying to show me that if ever I came across someone who was dying,
I was supposed to give them his Jell-O. The first person I gave his
Jell-O to was myself--now I’m passing it along, in spirit, to
you.”

“I’ll never forget your kindness,” Vickie
said. She smothered her face in her towel and came forth with huge,
gulping sobs, certain that her words were true--for what remained
of her life, she knew she would never would forget the waif in the
black dress whose delight in life was to carry lime Jell-O to lost
souls and dying ladies.

Chapter 20

“Let me get this straight,” Vickie said. “You
want to cut all my hair off.”

“I want to enhance your sense of enclosure,”
Vito said. “It’s a part of the bridal mystique--you appear in the
world and yet at the same time are covered behind your veil,
enclosed and private. Too much hair sticking out from beneath the
veil suggests to the world that you are somehow a bit more
available than the veil suggests.”

Vito the hairdresser, a forties-something
slim quick man in T-shirt, jeans and Reeboks, himself crowned with
an artful tussle of curly blond locks, had Vickie hostage in his
“hair mobile”--a small cubicle at the opposite end of the trailer
from the bath--the cubicle draped in black to accentuate the sense
of impending artistry--in the middle of which cubicle she sat,
herself draped likewise in black, her head illumined in a pool of
light cast from a single overhead spotlight, such that her head
seemed to float by itself in mid-air.