As Close as Sisters (17 page)

21

McKenzie

I
t was Sunday afternoon, market day. We were all in Janine’s Jeep Cherokee; I was riding shotgun. Cancer has its privileges.

We rode north on Route 1, with the air conditioner off and the windows down. Even though we were just going to the market, it felt like a road trip in our days of yore. Clapton was on the radio; we always listened to one of the beach’s oldie stations. The warmth of the sun and the breeze the car created felt good. It made me feel alive.

I rested my elbow on the windowsill, leaning out a little. “So how’s your mom?” I asked Janine. Kathy had called that morning. I’d only heard a snippet of the conversation, but it had sounded like they were arguing. After hanging up, Janine had busied herself cleaning up under the house; because it was built on pilings, the area always seemed to be a catchall for junk. She pretty much avoided us until Lilly had announced that we were all going to the market.

Janine kept her gaze on the road. Hands on the wheel at ten and two. “She’s fine.”

Looking into the side-view mirror, I tugged my ball cap down snugly on my head. “She call just to say hi or what?”

“Just to check in, I guess. She said to tell everyone she said hi.”

I glanced into the backseat at Aurora, who was sitting behind Janine. She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses, so I could see by the look on her face that she wasn’t buying it, either.

The traffic light at the intersection ahead turned red, and Janine slowed. Beside us, to my right, we passed a Sailfish on a trailer. Four college-aged girls were in the extended-cab pickup pulling it. They had the windows down, the music up; I didn’t recognize the song or the artist, which made me feel old. The young women were in bikinis and hats. The driver was wearing a straw cowboy hat. As we pulled up beside them, the girl in the cowboy hat cranked the music up louder. The four girls were singing together. They looked like they were having so much fun. I could tell by the way they were looking at each other and singing together.

They could have been us twenty-some years ago. I hoped the girls in the truck understood how fleeting moments like the ones they were experiencing right then are. I hoped they were getting every drop of pleasure they could that day from the brightness of the sun and the laughter of the friend sitting next to them.

I had to look away. I stared through the windshield at the Harley in front of us. The traffic light turned green, and we moved ahead of the girls with the boat.

“Todd’s new baby doing well?” I asked Janine.

“I guess.” She must have realized how that sounded because she added, “You know, she’s good. Not sleeping through the night yet, of course. Mom says Christie’s exhausted, with the three of them. Kids are on summer break, so no school.”

I glanced at Aurora. Before turning to face forward again, I caught a glimpse of Lilly. She had a pair of candy-apple-red reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was texting furiously.

I realized she hadn’t said anything since we left the beach house. Come to think of it, she’d been quiet all day. Something had to be up. But I could only handle one possible situation at a time. I turned back to Janine. “So what were you arguing about, if she just called to say hi?”

Janine looked at me, making a sound of exasperation.

The traffic was moving slowly. I could see the girls with the sailboat in my side-view mirror. They’d almost caught up with us again.

“Is there such a thing as privacy with you guys,
ever?
” Janine asked.

I shook my head and deadpanned, “Nope.”

Only Aurora laughed.

Janine sat stiff, her fingers gripping the steering wheel too hard. “Who said we were arguing?”

“We could hear you.” Aurora, from the backseat. “Come on, you might as well tell us. You know Cancer Girl won’t let it go.”

Cancer Girl. It had been a not-all-that-funny joke on the Fourth of July, but now I was beginning to appreciate it. While it could be used in a derogatory manner, there was also a certain power in it. Let’s face it: I did feel like Cancer Girl a lot of the time. Against my wishes, cancer had totally taken over my life. Rarely a minute went by that my life wasn’t revolving around this sucky situation. Why couldn’t we make fun of it a little?

Janine took her time answering me. “It wasn’t a big deal. You know, the usual Kathy bullshit.”

“She thinks you should come down and see the baby?” I probed.

Janine glanced in the rearview mirror, signaled, and changed lanes so that she was in front of the Sailfish girls. “No. I mean, yeah, she
does
think I should come, but she was calling because . . .” She exhaled and went on. “Because she’s coming up for a friend’s birthday party or something in Philadelphia at the end of the month.”

“And she wants to stop by?” I asked. Kathy never stayed at the house. She hadn’t stayed there, to my knowledge, since Buddy had died. She rented it out for years, then Janine took over its management and let it sit empty when one of us wasn’t using it.

“She wants to see you,” Janine groaned.

To say good-bye
came to mind. I shrugged. “And that’s a problem because?”

“Because I don’t want her here, Mack.” Janine changed lanes again. “You know how she is. How she’ll
be
. It’ll be all about her. How devastated she is that you’ve got cancer. How upset she’s been. How she wishes she had it instead of you.”

“Maybe your moms should get together,” Aurora injected.

I cut my eyes at Aurora, then looked back at Janine. “I don’t mind. Seeing her. I really don’t.”

“But I do.” Another red light.

“Janine.” I sighed, thinking before speaking. I didn’t get these kinds of opportunities with Janine. To say things like this. When she was trapped in a moving car and couldn’t get away from me. “I understand why you haven’t been close. I really do, but . . . it’s been a long time. I feel like you need to drop this grudge.”

“Grudge?
Grudge?
” she said to me. “Is that what you call it? A
grudge?
Like I’m still angry I didn’t get the Barbie camper for my fifth birthday? Or a grudge because she gave my brother more money for college than she gave me and I ended up dropping out because I couldn’t pay?” She was becoming angrier by the second. “That’s a
grudge,
Mack. Knowing my father was fucking me and pretending he wasn’t, that’s not a goddamned grudge.”

I was quiet then. We’d been through this hundreds of times, maybe thousands. Yet here we were again.

Kathy had sworn, at the time of Buddy’s death, to police and her daughter, and anyone who would listen, that she hadn’t known what was going on. She’d claimed to have been afraid of Buddy, afraid for her life. Which was a reasonable statement, since from time to time, she had had a black eye from
running into a door
or a fractured wrist from
tripping on the stairs
.

All these years, Kathy had held to her story that she hadn’t known Buddy had been sexually abusing their teenage daughter. There was no confession and begging for forgiveness. Kathy insisted on her innocence.

I honestly didn’t know the truth because Janine didn’t have hard evidence against her mother. She didn’t have evidence at all. She’d just maintained that she knew her mother knew. I felt, back then, that I had to side with Janine on this one. I still did. And I understood why, because of the circumstances, that Janine never had much of a relationship with her mother. But the woman just wanted to stop by to say hello. To me, her daughter’s best friend, who was dying.

“If you’re uncomfortable having her at the house, I could meet her for lunch somewhere,” I said.

“And make me look like an even bigger jerk?” Janine asked.

I looked to Aurora, but she was staring out the window. I twisted farther to see Lilly. “You’re awfully quiet. You want to weigh in?”

Lilly lowered her cell and glanced up over the rims of her glasses. “I’m sorry?”

“Who are you texting?” Janine asked.

“Matt.” Lilly looked serious despite the silly red glasses.

Janine signaled to make the turn into the market parking lot. “Enough, Lilly. Time to come clean.”

“You told them?” Lilly tapped the back of my seat. It was more than a tap. A slap. “McKenzie! How could you?”

Janine looked at me. I looked at her. She pulled into a parking space. “Told us what?”

Lilly sat back in her seat, staring at me. “I can’t believe you would say something. We specifically agreed I was going to think on it.”

I threw up my hands. She was talking about our conversation on the Fourth of July about her telling Matt and/or Janine and Aurora about being an escort. “I didn’t.” I undid my seat belt as soon as Janine stopped the vehicle and poked my head into the backseat. “What you and I talked about wasn’t what Janine was talking about.” I didn’t mean to sound cryptic, but there was no way I was going to be the one to tell them anything.

“What wasn’t I talking about?” Janine cut off the engine, looking into the backseat.

All three of us were looking at Lilly. She burst into tears.

Janine and Aurora looked at me. “What?” I said.

Lilly yanked off her reading glasses, dropped them into her enormous handbag, and pulled out her sunglasses. “I think I need some air.” She opened the car door.

“Lilly.” I opened my door.

We all got out. Lilly took off. She cut across the parking lot, walking fairly fast for a woman seven months pregnant. I followed her. I heard the beep as Janine locked her door with the automatic opener.

“Lilly,” I called. “I didn’t say anything to them. I swear I didn’t.”

“I feel like an idiot,” she threw over her shoulder. “Matt’s acting weird. I feel like an idiot,” she repeated.

“So slow down and you won’t feel like an idiot, running through a parking lot seven months pregnant in those shoes.” Aurora caught up to her first.

Then Janine. Then me.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Janine said. “Lilly, what’s wrong?”

We walked past a candle shop in the little strip mall where the market was. It smelled good, but a little nauseating, too. I pressed my hand to my stomach, trying to keep up with Lilly’s pace. I started to pant, but I didn’t slow down.

“Lilly, let’s sit down. McKenzie’s going to fall over.”

Janine got on Lilly’s other side and grabbed her arm. “Come on, it’s hot out. Let’s get some frozen yogurt.” We had stopped in front of a sweets shop.

When my girls had been little, I had bribed them into going to the market with me by promising an ice-cream cone afterward. They hadn’t known the difference then between ice cream and frozen yogurt, which had delighted me.

“We could go to a bar,” Aurora piped up. “Bars are air-conditioned.” But she was already holding the door open to the ice-cream shop.

When we were all inside, my cancery lungs gave a sigh of relief. I was impressed with myself, though. I’d almost kept up with Lilly all the way across the parking lot. Maybe the experimental drug was working. I wasn’t sucking wind like I should have been. Or maybe, just maybe, there had been a mistake in my diagnosis. Maybe I wasn’t dying of papillary thyroid cancer in my lungs after all.

And maybe this was a shop that sold unicorn rides rather than low-cal frozen yogurt.

I half sat, half fell into a white wrought iron chair at a round table by the window.

“I don’t want frozen yogurt,” Lilly protested, but she sat down. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. They were red from crying, and her mascara had smudged under one eye.

“What does everyone want?” Janine asked.

My stomach was a little upset now. I didn’t really want anything, but for the sake of the group . . . “A single scoop of sorbet and some water.”

“What kind of sorbet?” Janine asked me. I knew she’d taken notice of my
breathiness
. She was looking at me, asking me “Are you okay?” with her eyes.

I nodded ever so slightly.
I’m okay.
“Any kind of sorbet,” I told her. “Whatever is the flavor of the day.”

“I know what Lilly wants,” Aurora said, going with Janine.

Lilly sat back in her chair, her big belly pressing against the table. “I can’t believe Aurora knows what I get. We haven’t been here since last fall.”

I waited until they were out of earshot. “So what’s going on with Matt? I thought things were fine.”

“They were.” She pulled a tissue from her bag and wiped under both eyes. “When I left he was all lovey-dovey, saying he’d miss me and that he’d have to come visit because there was no way he could go a month without seeing me.” She exhaled. “But he’s been acting weird all weekend.” She looked at Aurora and Janine in line to order.

They were talking quietly. Whether it was about Lilly or Kathy or the kid behind the counter with the bad tattoo on his neck, I couldn’t tell.

“Of course Aurora remembers what you like,” I told Lilly softly.

“There are a lot people in here for three o’clock in the afternoon,” she mused.

I glanced around. It didn’t seem any more or less busy than usual. A teenage girl and guy, clearly on a date, watched as one of the employees, wearing a paper hat, scooped frozen yogurt into a waffle cone. To our left, two tables over, were a little girl and her mother, and
her
mother, I guessed. A middle-aged couple, a little older than us, was sharing a sundae and engrossed in conversation.

“I really do feel like an idiot. I thought Janine was asking me about what you and I talked about, about me telling Matt. I know. How paranoid does that make me?” Lilly took lipstick from her bag. Even in her hurry to get out of the car, to get away from us, she remembered to bring her bag. So she could have her lipstick. She put it on her lips, then blotted it with a tissue the way my mother did. “What
was
she asking?”