How Do I Love Thee (12 page)

Dana drove to the house, parked in the driveway, and rang the doorbell. No one answered. She screwed up her courage and went
around to the backyard. Steve was sitting on the patio, staring into the cool depths of the pool. She took a deep breath to calm herself and opened the gate. As she came toward the patio, her footsteps crunched over the fallen leaves.

Steve looked up; his tortured expression softened. Shaking with emotion, she walked toward him, stopped in front of his chair, and dropped to her knees. Dana took hold of his hands and kissed them. Wordlessly, he reached out to cradle her cheek in his palm.

She closed her eyes as he laced his fingers through hers. She felt the warmth of the sun on her back, the familiar touch of his hand on her skin, and for a moment, time stood still. She longed to stop the world from spinning, longed to hold autumn captive, push away tomorrow, and live forever in this slice of time. She could not. She could not hold on to him, and she could not let go. Gently, tenderly, she laid her cheek against his lap and wept.

teve pulled her up onto his lap, held her close, and rested his head against the hollow of her throat. “I knew you'd come.”

“As soon as I could,” she told him. “I've been going crazy.”

“Don't cry.” Steve brushed tears from her cheek. “Not for me.”

“Then who else? Myself?” She nestled in his arms. “Talk to me. Tell me your doctors are doing something—anything to help you.”

“I'm starting radiation treatments, which are supposed to shrink the tumor, but my type of tumor grows fast and is almost impossible to
treat. Plus the MRI shows that the cancer's already spreading to other areas of my brain.”

“How about chemotherapy?”

“It wouldn't help with my case.”

His doctors had robbed him of hope, and that made her angry. “What about the headaches?”

“I have a potent painkiller for when they get really bad.”

“Tell me what to expect, Steve. Please. Tell me everything.”

“They expect me to go blind.”

She shuddered in his arms.

“After a while, I won't be able to stand up or keep my balance. I'll start forgetting things, like how to feed myself, how to breathe. Eventually, I'll go into a coma and die. Which sounds better to me than being some kind of human vegetable.”

“Oh, Steve …. it's all so cruel.” Her voice caught. She couldn't imagine his muscular body wasted away and bedridden. She couldn't accept that his smile would no longer light his face.

“I'm glad they've been honest with me. I'm glad they didn't lie and give me false hope.
That would have been worse for me. It's like a game plan in football,” he said. “Once you know the plan, you can follow it. You know what to expect, what's coming next. I just have to keep my cool, follow the course.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “A few months, maybe more.”

“So you're not going back to school?”

“What would be the point?” He shook his head. “No. I'll wait here. This is home. My family's here. And so are you.”

“I—I'm sorry … so sorry …”

“I told them I didn't want to die in the hospital. Mom's contacted a hospice so that I can stay at home until the end.” His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “I've been to the radiologist, and he's taken me through the preliminaries. I start treatments tomorrow afternoon, five times a week for six weeks. The tumor will shrink, give me a reprieve.”

“I'm glad you'll be close by. I couldn't stand it if this was happening to you and you were far away.”

“My parents are taking it really hard—especially Dad. Bobby's mad too. Finally he and
Dad are in agreement about something. They re both angry because the doctors can't do much to help me. Bobby wants to help by going on the Web and tracking down some miracle cure, and Dad's all for it. There is no miracle cure, Dana. And I don't know how to tell my kid brother that the only help I want is more time with his girlfriend.”

She wept for both of them, for his plans and dreams never to-fee fulfilled, for herself because he was being taken away so completely. Together they sat in the fading warmth of the sunlight, watching shadows lengthen across the yard. A breeze broke a few fading leaves from the treetops, and they spiraled downward, hitting the patio like teardrops.

“I want to quit school and stay at home with Steve, but Mom won't let me,” Bobby told Dana a few days later, while they were on her front porch. They had carved a jack-o’-lantern together, and Bobby was wrapping the mess from the pumpkin in newspapers. “Mom and Dad are planning on doing flex time at their jobs so they can be at home more, but they
won't let me do the same thing. I think it stinks.”

“I'm sure Steve won't let you either.” Dana set the grinning pumpkin at the top corner of the steps, loathing its artificial smile. “Quitting school and hanging around the house won't change anything.”

“When things get really bad, when Steve's dying, they can't stop me.”

“They probably won't stop you then.” Ever since her talk with Steve, an incredible lethargy had hung over Dana like a shadow. She felt as if she ‘d been shut up in a dark, win-dowless room with stale air and no sound. Not even music could break through the heaviness inside her heart. She kept feeling Steve's arms around her but seeing Bobby's face whenever she closed her eyes.

Bobby said, “You know who called him the other night? Brittany, his old girlfriend.”

Dana felt as if Bobby had twisted the pumpkin-carving knife in her. “What did she want?”

“To come see him. He said no. He says he doesn't want people coming by to stare at him
like he's a freak. He doesn't look so good right now anyway. The radiologist shaved his head and marked it up with blue ink to help the doc line up the machine to zap the tumor. For all the good it'll do,” he added bitterly.

“It's only hair,” she said.

“He doesn't care about his hair. He just doesn't like feeling pathetic and having people talking about him. I don't blame him. All his life everybody's admired him, talked about how great he was, but now—well, things are different. I bought him a baseball cap, and he wears it whenever he goes out.” Bobby sounded pleased.

“Good idea.” Without meeting Bobby's gaze, she added, “Did I tell you? I'm starting to play the piano at the hospital two afternoons a week. The hospital's posting signs on every floor so that any patient who's ambulatory can sit in and listen.”

“I'll go with you.”

“Um—it's the same afternoons you have Brain Bowl.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, then brightened. “That's all right, I guess. We'll both be tied up at the same time.”

“Yes, that V what I was thinking too.”

“You're not going to stop dating me because of Steve, are you?” Bobby asked.

She started “Why would do that?”

“I don't know. I'm just feeling helpless and useless watching Steve go through this and all. Maybe you don't want to be around all this sadness. I wouldn't blame you.”

She went to him. “I won't leave you, Bobby.”

Bobby wrapped his arms around her. He whispered, “I don't know what I'd do without you, Dana. I love you so much,”

She didn't answer but held him, closing her eyes to shield him from her awn pain.

Dana played her first concert to a room filled with people in wheelchairs and hospital gowns. When she was finished, and after the applause had died, she promised to return on Thursday and began gathering up her music. The room had almost cleared when she saw Steve in the back by the door. Her heart leaped.

“That was great,” he said. “I could listen to you play for hours.”

“Thanks. I was playing for you, don't you know?”

He touched die bill of his cap. “Sorry about die hat, but my head looks like a road map.”

She smiled. “Does it matter? You're still the same on the inside.”

His smile faded. “No, I'm not.” He took her music. “Can you come with me?”

“Where?”

“Tb a place I'd like you to see. But we have to hurry because the sun's going down soon.”

She followed him in her car to the outskirts of the city, into die countryside, and down a bumpy dirt road. He stopped at a clearing near a creek and got out. She let him lead her up a dirt trail to a jutting rock that hung over die water. Colorful leaves blanketed the ground and floated in the sluggish water. Snippets of a cerulean blue sky shone through the trees, and sunlight sparkled on die water like little jewels.

The beauty of die setting took her breath away, made her ache for all the autumns he would never have.

He sat beside her on the rock and took her hand. “I found this place a few years ago. I'd come and swim, spend time by myself. It's
where I make all my great decisions, where I solve all my life problems. I've never shown it to another person.”

She was flattered. “It's beautiful. Thank you for bringing me.”

“Some life decisions need input from other people.”

“Like what?”

Steve looked across the creek into a stand of trees. “I want to be with you, Dana.”

Her pulse quickened. “I want to be with you, too,” she confessed, “but—”

“But neither of us wants to hurt Bobby.” He finished the sentence for her. “I love my brother too. And you and I both understand his demons. Once I'm gone, he'll have no one to champion him except you. So I'm not asking you to choose between us.”

“What then?”

“Whenever you're able, whenever you can, come to me. I know I'm asking a lot. I know you'll be taking a risk. And I know it isn't fair to put this kind of pressure on you, but I can't help it. I don't have a whole lot of time left, and I want to spend as much of it as I can with you. Is that too much to ask?”

Steve was asking her to lead a double existence for the short duration of his life. It meant telling lies. It meant deceiving Bobby. He didn't deserve it. But Steve didn't deserve to die either. She had a decision to make, and she knew Steve would accept whatever it was.

Dana took a deep, shuddering breath and touched Steve's shoulder. He turned toward her and she moved into his arms.

“I love you,” he said.

“And I love you,” she whispered.

The rays of the setting sun sparked the water like fire, and as their lips met, Dana set her mind and her heart on a course from which there ‘d be no turning back.

or die next month, Dana felt as if she were living her life in parallel universes. In one, she went to school, took piano classes, dated Bobby, remained an ordinary girl aiming toward graduation and attending college at the Juilliard School. In the other, she spent long afternoons with Steve, holding on to him, afraid to let go of him, certain that if she did, he'd be swallowed up by the black hole where his star had once shone.