Five Days Left (4 page)

Mara

Mara lay beside Tom in bed, running her hand over his shoulder and chest as he slept the contented slumber of a man who had just been made love to. To her, it had been a desperate, clinging kind of lovemaking. Part apology for what she was about to put him through, part gratitude for everything he had done for her and would do for their daughter. Part goodbye. To him, it had been hot.

Now, a half hour after, he didn’t stir as she moved her hand over him. She ran her index finger gently down the long bridge of his nose, over the stubble along his square jawline. He wasn’t the least bit vain but he was troubled lately by the salt and pepper of his sideburns and the way his beard grew in half gray, not that he ever let it grow for more than a long weekend. Mara loved it, though. It was as if the gray hairs were little spotlights, drawing attention to the contrasting blue of his eyes.

Neerja once told Mara that “they” say the combination of dark hair and blue eyes, rarely occurring, tends to result in exceptional beauty. Certainly Mara’s study subject of one, sleeping beside her, proved that theory. He was constantly being hit on, by both men and women. How many invitations, propositions, had he turned down in the past twenty-two years? she wondered.

How long would it take him, after she was gone, to accept?

She drew her hand away.

Disentangling her limbs from his, she crept out of their room and into Laks’s, a short detour before she made her way to the kitchen table and her waiting laptop. It was an instinctive nightly habit—a few seconds to pull up the covers, thin out the herd of stuffed animals the girl had wedged in beside her, kiss her forehead and whisper “I love you,” before she settled at the table to work or read or surf the Internet.

Only tonight, Mara was frozen by the sight of the slender little shoulder above the covers, and she stood watching it rise and fall, rise and fall, until her legs felt weak. She sat on the edge of the bed then, and when she realized her weight on the mattress hadn’t made the girl stir, she stretched carefully on the bed, inching herself closer to the sleeping body.

She put an arm around Laks and slowly pulled her closer until they were spoons, the child’s tiny bottom pressed against Mara’s stomach. She buried her nose in her daughter’s thick hair, inhaling deeply. Laks had talked her way out of a bath earlier that evening, and her hair smelled faintly of the prior night’s shampoo and . . . honey? From lunch, Mara supposed: five days a week of butter and honey on whole wheat, no crust. Six baby carrots. A bottle of water. And the blasted cookie, of course. God help the person who forgot to include the cookie.

Mara moved her nose to the girl’s neck and felt something sticky. Grinning, she pictured Laks in the lunchroom, waving her sandwich in the air as she chatted away to her friend Susan and others, suddenly feeling an itch on her neck and reaching with the same hand to scratch it. The fact that she had smeared honey on herself wouldn’t have fazed her. She would have shrugged—regretfully maybe, or maybe not—and just gone on talking. “Miss Messykins,” Tom called her.

Mara pulled Laks closer still, an outstretched hand spanning the small rib cage. She could feel the girl’s heart beating into her palm. Slowly, she moved her body down on the bed and pressed her nose and mouth against the little pajama shirt, the waffle fabric rough against her lips. She inhaled again: morning body.

“This kid doesn’t have morning
breath
when she wakes up,” Tom once said, “she has morning
body
.”

Not that they had any other child to compare her to, but it had surprised them how sour-smelling she was at the end of a night’s sleep. It was some combination of little-girl sweat and dried drool. And on no-bath nights such as this one, her scent was “enhanced” by the fragrance of whatever food she had managed to get on herself during the day.

“It’s a little gross,” Tom had said.

It’s the best smell in the world, Mara thought now.

She closed her eyes and breathed in again, pressing every inch of herself as tightly to Laks as she could, trying to implant in her memory the precise feeling of her daughter’s warmth, her knobby vertebrae, her bony bottom. The way she smelled. The way her breath sounded as she slept, the quiet little catch at the start of her inhale. The way she looked, so still, so small, so peaceful.

A sob thrust its way out of Mara’s chest. A panicked, terrified sob that made her tighten her hold instinctively. Laks stirred and tried to roll over, but her mother’s body blocked her on one side while twenty stuffed animals trapped her on the other.

“What? Mama?” She wriggled out from Mara’s grip and turned to face her, awake now, confused.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mara said, standing. “I came in to pull up your covers and you looked cold, so I thought I’d hug you a bit first, warm you up. But I was just leaving. Go to sleep.”

She leaned down to kiss the girl’s cheek and felt both relief and sadness as Laks blinked once, then drifted off.

Mara made it into the hallway before her knees gave out. She shot a hand out against the wall to brace herself. Straining, she could hear Laks’s quiet breathing through the doorway, and in the darkness she closed her eyes and saw the narrow shoulder rising and falling. She smelled morning body and stale honey.

A low moan left her throat before she could stop it and she clapped a
hand over her mouth. Aching to feel the small body against her again, she stepped toward the doorway. She heard the catch at the end of the girl’s breath and clamped harder against her mouth as another moan sounded, this one louder than the first. Laks stirred and Mara stepped back, away from the doorway.

It was too soon.

She couldn’t do it. Sunday was far too soon.

What if she had another twelve months? Another full year of packing lunches, giving baths. Of hugs and tears and giggles and tuck-ins. Of waffle pajamas and morning body.

Maybe it was an isolated incident, what had happened in the grocery store. Maybe she should talk to Dr. Thiry or one of his staff about it before she so hastily concluded this was the beginning of the end. Huntington’s was different with everyone, they would tell her—they told her this at almost every appointment. One incidence of incontinence might signal the beginning of major decline for one patient, but it might be a random, insignificant, one-time thing in another.

In the kitchen, she reached for the phone, pressed the speed-dial button for Dr. Thiry’s clinic and left a message asking them to fit her in tomorrow for a brief consult, even if only by phone. Nothing urgent, she added, just a quick question or two about a minor incident. It was probably a molehill, and their answers would surely keep her from making it into a mountain.

She felt her pulse slow as she stared at the receiver in her hand. Maybe she had until next year’s birthday.

Scott

Scott leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “You are one great cook, Laur. That was terrific.”

“Thank you.” She pushed her largely untouched plate toward him.

He took a few bites before holding up a hand. “That’s it for me.”

Turning to Curtis, Laurie said, “I thought I’d make spaghetti tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to help bake the cookies for dessert?”

Curtis, his mouth full, smiled and stuck one thumb up.

“Not because of the glowing report I know Miss Keller will write in your planner tomorrow afternoon, but just because.” She put a hand on his and Scott grinned as he saw the boy look suspiciously at the fingers that held his; he knew what was coming. “It shouldn’t always be such a big deal that you behaved properly in class,” she said, her voice stern but gentle. “You know that. It should be something you do all the time, because it’s the right thing.”

Curtis nodded, still chewing.

“One day, you’ll have to be able to act the way you’re supposed to even when there’s no sticker chart to fill in, no special dinner, no movie night, no me or Scott looking over your shoulder. Because doing the right thing doesn’t come from a sticker chart, right?”

The boy shook his head.

“It comes from . . . ?”

He pointed to his forehead.

“Right. And where else?”

He pointed to his heart.

“That’s my guy.” She patted his hand. “You got this. You can do this. You don’t need me, or Scott, or the chart, or even Miss Keller. You’ve got everything you need, right here”—she pointed to his forehead—“and here.” She pointed to his heart. “Right?”

“Right,” he said, now finished with his bite. “Like today, when I did everything good. Everything I was supposed to. Just like it says in my planner.” He glanced at each of them briefly before snapping his chin down to study his plate.

Scott looked sideways at his wife, wordlessly betting her she wouldn’t be able to let the lie go. “And that’s why you got such a great note from Miss Keller,” she said to the boy before turning to grin victoriously at her husband.

He leaned over to kiss her. “Getting soft,” he whispered as he pulled away. “By the time the baby’s born, you’ll be as lax as me.” A hand landed emphatically on his knee and he covered it with his own. “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t you let Little Man and me take care of the dishes while you get ready for book club.”

When she left to change, Scott and Curtis stood to clear the table. “Would you rather have me help, even though I might drop all these dishes on the floor and break them,” Curtis asked, the dinner plates balanced in his hands, “or do it yourself, so you can be sure nothing gets wrecked? While I sit at the table, real careful, not busting anything and maybe just telling you some of my new jokes.”

“Would you rather sweep out the garage, including all the corners where the biggest, hairiest spiders live, or go down to the basement to see if we caught anything really big and ferocious in the mousetraps?”

“Ewwww.” The boy gave an exaggerated shiver and got to work.

Fifteen minutes later, Scott was putting detergent in the dishwasher when he heard his wife come down the stairs. He looked up and let out a
low whistle. Her long waves of hair, released from the confines of the ponytail, spread out past her shoulders, and the color of the dress she had changed into—cinnamon, he thought he’d heard her say—set off every feature. Her eyes shone, her face glowed, her hair looked especially rich. All that, just by wearing the right dress.

And by being pregnant, he thought. It truly had softened her, not just in the way she was with Curtis, but physically as well. It had relaxed the tightness around her temples and mouth, where her disappointment, her frustration, her resentment used to sit. Those things flashed in her expression from time to time, and in the tone of her voice, but she no longer carried them constantly.

He was happy to see she had traded the small, conservative earrings she had worn to work for the thick teardrop-shaped ones they had bought together at an art fair years ago. The earrings were long and dramatic and he thought they made her look cool and artsy and sexy. Knowing he felt that way, she used to wear them on every date night, leaving them on at the end of the night while they made love. Lately, if she wore them at all, there was as much chance the night would end with nothing more than a peck on the cheek before they each rolled toward opposite walls. But his heart sped a little anyway.

“Wow.” He crossed the room to her and moved a strand of hair out of her face. “Do they allow men in your book club? I mean, to sit and observe?”

Laughing, she craned her body around him to talk to Curtis, who stood at the kitchen counter drying the lasagna pan. “Five pages tonight, right?”

Curtis looked at her over his shoulder and nodded unenthusiastically.

She held up a hand and counted some other items on her fingers. “Also math. And a shower.”

He opened his mouth wide in exaggerated protest.

“I know,” she said. “It’s a great injustice.”

She stepped past Scott to give the boy a hug and kiss, grazed her lips
quickly past her husband’s cheek and headed for the front door. “See my two best men later,” she called. “One of you had better be asleep when I get home.”

“If we both are, feel free to wake one of us,” Scott called.

He heard the tinkle of her laugh before the front door closed.

•   •   •

Scott and Curtis were settled into their nightly positions in the family room: Curtis disappearing into the overstuffed cushions of the couch, counting down the pages until he was freed from his reading practice, Scott at the built-in desk beside the window, poised with a red pen to attack a pile of seventh-grade English papers. On the other side of the window were the floor-to-ceiling bookcases Laurie had dreamed of, now covered in two coats of Warm Ecru and filled to capacity with books and framed photographs.

A stone fireplace sat on the back wall of the room. Scott had started a fire after dinner and it crackled lazily now, almost ready for another log. They had chosen the wall opposite the fireplace for the accent color—Deep Moss Green—and it took on a textured appearance when the light from the fire danced across it, making it look as though it were covered in velvet.

A dark wood frame in the center of the green wall held his favorite photograph—him and Laurie, soaking wet on the bow of the
Maid of the Mist
at the bottom of Niagara Falls. Honeymooners, their faces pressed closely together as Scott held the camera in front to snap the picture. They were drenched and freezing and a little motion sick, both of them, yet smiling like they had won something.

At least half of the pictures around the room were the same: the two of them laughing, cheek pressed to cheek while one of them held the camera out in front. Or standing, arms around each other, as someone else captured the moment for them, bodies as close together as they could get them. Framed reminders of how happy they had been.

There were more recent shots, too. Laurie and Scott standing in the doorway of their bathroom last October, their mouths wide in excitement and disbelief as she held up a white pregnancy stick and he, arm extended, snapped the photo.

Scott and Curtis in the driveway, Curtis holding a basketball against his chest with one hand, the pointer finger of his other raised to announce his self-declared number-one status in their two-man driveway league. Scott was crouched beside him, his hair dark with sweat, eyes cast skeptically at the boy’s proclamation of victory, left hand poised near the ball, ready to steal it and resume the game once the picture was snapped.

Scott, Pete and Curtis on the porch steps last November, each holding a football ticket high in the air and dressed in the maize and blue colors of the University of Michigan, Scott and Laurie’s alma mater, on whose campus they had met as sophomores almost fifteen years ago. In the lower right corner of the photo stood Curtis’s older brother, Bray, a former student and basketball player of Scott’s.

Bray was now a sophomore on a basketball scholarship at Michigan. His life was so full of promise that when the boys’ mother, LaDania, had been sent to jail for a twelve-month sentence last April, Scott jumped at the chance to look after Curtis for the year so Bray wouldn’t risk his future by taking time off. In the photo, Bray stood on the grass beside the porch, holding up his own ticket. Even from his handicapped position on the ground, his hand reached a full three feet above his younger brother’s head.

Laurie and Curtis in front of the stove on the boy’s first day with them last spring, a sheet of cookies between them, Curtis holding one high in the air, a prize. The first cookie he’d ever had that didn’t come out of a package, he told them. They wondered if he’d be reluctant to eat it—for about two seconds. The instant the boy heard the camera click, he popped the cookie into his mouth. They weren’t sure he even chewed it before swallowing.

He wasn’t so cavalier about his birthday cake a couple months ago. He hollered when Laurie held the knife over it and begged her not to cut. He wanted to keep it forever, he told them. It was nothing special, Laurie said—a plain old sheet cake turned into a battlefield with the help of green and brown food coloring and a new package of plastic army men. She could make him another anytime. And she’d record this one for him, she added, lifting her camera and firing off half a dozen shots.

But Curtis held both hands over the cake, protecting it from the knife as Scott, Pete and Laurie exchanged confused glances. Finally, Bray whispered over his brother’s head that it was the first time Curtis had ever had a birthday cake. Later, he would explain that while LaDania had almost always managed to produce a present or two on each boy’s birthday (still in the store bag and usually with the price tag still on), organizing finer details like having a cake and candles ready, or wrapping the gifts with paper and bows, was more than she was willing or able to do. By then, Scott and Laurie had done so many firsts with the child, they weren’t surprised to hear it—first set of clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs or from a resale shop, first haircut at a barber instead of at the kitchen table, first time having someone pack him a lunch instead of eating the glop in the school cafeteria.

Laurie ran a soothing palm over the child’s head as she assured him again she would make him more cakes, just like this one. A cake every month, if he wanted. So he should feel free to let everyone gobble this one up today, and not worry it would be the last.

“That’s right, buddy,” Pete told Curtis. “You’ve seen how much Laurie loves to bake. She can make another one of these anytime.”

“But once this one’s gone,” Curtis said, pointing to the edible war scene in front of him, “my birthday will be over.”

“Yeah, but you’ll have another one next year,” Scott said, sitting beside the boy and putting a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your only birthday, Little Man. Right?”

Curtis’s response was so quiet Scott couldn’t hear. “What’d you say?” he asked, leaning closer.

The boy lifted his head, put a small hand on the back of Scott’s head to pull him closer and whispered in his ear. “I said, it’s my only birthday with a father.”

Scott heard a distant click as Laurie snapped another photo: Curtis and Scott, their foreheads pressed together, each with a hand around the other’s neck, gripping as though neither wanted to ever let go.

Scott kept that picture on his nightstand.