Skylight Confessions (7 page)

ARLIE FELT THE LUMP WHEN BLANCA WAS THREE MONTHS old, while she was breast-feeding. Her breasts had been bumpy and engorged with milk, but this was something else entirely. Just what she'd always feared. Something in the shape of a stone.

John Moody had finished his building in Cleveland — it had been dubbed the Glass Mountain and people in that city were highly critical of its height. Now John was back. The baby had softened him a bit; maybe it was all right to coo and fuss over a daughter if not over a son, or maybe he'd actually heard his mother when she told him how disappointed she was.

John was in the kitchen having coffee on the day Arlie found the lump. He'd actually poured Arlyn a cup. He was trying to be considerate. When he looked up to see Arlie standing there in her nightgown, her hair uncombed, he forgot about the coffee.

"I think something's wrong," Arlie said.

John Moody knew his was not the happiest of marriages. He felt he'd been trapped; his youth had been taken from him. He had still never been to Italy, although he'd taken several courses and could now converse in halting Italian, a Venetian dialect, with his teacher, a lovely young woman he'd made love to twice. Three times would be an affair, he told himself. Once was only an experiment, since he'd been so young when he'd married. Twice was simply to be polite so as not to hurt the poor woman's feelings. When he started working on the building in Cleveland he'd stopped the classes; he had received several messages at his office from his Italian teacher, but he hadn't returned them. Frankly, he was settled into his marriage; his wife no longer expected him to be anything he wasn't. She knew him.

"Look, everyone has problems," he said to Arlie. He'd thought she was a free spirit, but she was a worrier, really. "You can't let difficulties stop you. You can't just give up, can you?"

Arlie came to the table. She stood in front of him and took his hand. His true impulse was to pull it away, but he didn't. He wanted to read the paper, but he forced himself to be there for her.

On the evening before his mother had left, she pulled him aside to say,
Be kinder.
So that was what he was trying to do. Arlie had just had a baby, after all, and couldn't be held responsible for her actions or her moods. Or so Jack Gallagher next door had told him when John complained about how erratic Arlyn was. But then Jack had no children, and in a matter of weeks he'd have no wife.

Cynthia had made it clear to John Moody that she was available; she had filed for divorce and Jack would soon be moving out. So much for his neighbor's advice. As a matter of fact, John had known about the divorce before Jack himself had. One night soon after Arlie came home with the baby, Cynthia had been waiting for John in the driveway, desperate for someone to talk to, someone who would understand.

He could deal with his own wife, surely. The newspaper could wait. But instead of wanting to talk, Arlie did something that completely surprised John. She placed his hand on her breast. He felt the lump right away; all at once he realized how long it had been since he'd touched her. And now this, a stone.

"Maybe this is normal. Maybe you should stop breastfeeding and it will go away."

That was the way he thought about life. He believed in logic and denial in equal parts, but Arlie knew better. She thought about the instants in time she'd had. Standing on the porch waiting for John, giving birth to her babies, racing along the beach with George Snow while he threw stones at the sea, the snow angels in the driveway, the way Sam reached for her hand. This moment was the dividing line between the
before
and the
after.
No more hanging globes of time. No more forevers. Sitting in the doctor's office, dozens of mammograms, making dinner for Sam and John, rock-ing Blanca to sleep, calling Diana to ask if she would come back up from Florida to help out with the children after Arlie had her surgery. It all happened so fast; the past hung above Arlyn as though imprinted on air. She thought of it as a ceiling she walked beneath. She tried her best to remember her own mother. Arlie had been three years old when her mother became ill, with what, Arlie had never been told. If she'd known it was the same cancer she herself now had, she would have known to check herself and be checked, but people didn't talk about such things. Cancer was a spell with evil effects; said aloud, the very word was capable of putting a curse on the speaker.

The worst was how little she remembered of her mother, only bits and pieces — red hair, like her own, but with a darker sheen; a song she sang, "Stormy Weather"; a single story she told, "Red Riding Hood." Three years with her mother and that was all Arlyn could recall. Her own little girl was three months old, not three years. What would she possibly remember? A red shadow, a voice, a strand of pearls she played with as she nursed.

Arlie thought carefully about what she wanted to do before her surgery. She treated it as though it were her last day on earth. She kept Sam home from school. He had been more withdrawn since his pet squirrel died, though Arlyn had tried to explain why the loss had happened. She'd told him there was a natural order to all of life, and that he had done his best to care for the creature. No one, not the president, not the man in the moon, could say who would live and who would die.

Arlie read to Sam all morning on the day before her surgery.

They were up to
Magic or Not?
— almost done with the Edward Eager series of Connecticut marvels. Arlie brought the baby into bed with them so she could feel how alive both her children were.

Blanca's gurgles; Sam's warm body stretched out beside her. Sam was tall for a six-year-old; he'd be like his father, rangy, needing to duck under doorways. Arlie wanted Sam to have everything; she wanted the world for him. With so little time, she did the best she could; at lunchtime, she took the children to the ice-cream parlor on Main Street and let Sam order a Bonanza, the sundae of his dreams — four flavors of ice cream, chocolate and butterscotch sauce, lots and lots of whipped cream, red and green maraschino cherries. He ate about a third of it, then held his stomach and groaned.

As for John, he was at work. Not as heartless as one would think: Arlyn had told him to go, said she wanted the day to be normal, otherwise she wouldn't get through it. Or maybe he simply wasn't a part of her perfect day. Maybe she wanted John gone for reasons she could barely admit to herself. Maybe she had to see George Snow one last time.

Late in the afternoon, she brought the children to Cynthia's.

"Arlie," Cynthia said. Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of her neighbor.

"Can you watch them for me?" Arlie had her car keys still in her hand. It was April and everything outside was greening.

"No," Sam said. "Don't leave us. We hate her." "You see,"

Cynthia said helplessly.

Arlie led Sam into Cynthia's hallway, then handed the baby to her neighbor. They might not be friends anymore, but sometimes friendship was the least of it. "I need you," Arlie said.

"I won't stay in a witch's house," Sam told his mother.

"He won't." Cynthia looked down at the baby in her arms.

Blanca gazed back at her.

"Okay, then take them home, the back door's open. They'll be happier over there. Let Sam watch TV and give Blanca a bottle.

Heat it under hot water, then test it to make sure it's not too hot."

"I'm not an idiot." Cynthia sounded as though she might cry.

"Just because I don't have children doesn't mean I would burn her mouth."

"Of course you won't. I know that, Cynthia. I trust you." Arlie turned to Sam. "Do what Cynthia says for the rest of the day unless it's utterly stupid. I'm asking as a favor. I need you to."

Sam nodded. He had an awful breathless feeling, but he knew when his mother meant something.

Arlie got into her car and drove to New Haven. She knew where George was living. She had looked him up in the phone book months ago. She'd called once, then had hung up before he answered. If he'd known Blanca was his, he would have come after them. It would have been a mess. Now, everything was a mess anyway. Arlie drove too fast. She felt hot all over. Around her neck, the pearls George had left for her were feverish, colored with a rusty tinge.

She parked across from the three-story house where he rented an apartment. She guessed it was the top floor. She wished she could see the mailboxes and find his name printed there, but she stayed in the car. Good thing; just then his truck pulled into the driveway. He was working in a pet store. George and his brother no longer spoke; they'd had a terrible argument after they'd been fired by the Moodys. Frankly, George avoided most people, preferring the quiet camaraderie of parakeets and goldfish. He got out of his truck, then went around the back for a backpack and a lunchbox. His collie, Ricky, jumped out. The dog looked older, but George looked the same, just far away. It had been only a year since Arlyn had seen him, so how could it feel like forever? He was whistling as he walked from the driveway, up to the steps to the porch. Then he was gone, the collie at his heels, the door slamming.

She didn't get out and tell him. She almost did, but she had always been afraid of stones, and the path to his house was made of them, small round bits of gravel. It was too late. It was too awful and unfair to come to him now. Arlyn was holding on to the steering wheel so tightly her fingers turned white. Lights went on in the third-floor apartment. If she'd gone with him when he asked her to leave John, they would have had this year together. Now there was only pain and sorrow to share. She didn't want Blanca fought over, pulled apart, even at this cost. At least she'd seen him.

Another perfect moment in her perfect day.

Arlie drove home slowly, trying not to think of anything but the road and her children at home. She'd been granted more than most people. Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last. There was one glitch in the day, a horrible one: a pre-op consultation at the hospital, scheduled late so that John might accompany her. The sky was turning dark blue.

April blue. Inside the hospital it was terribly bright. Arlie was the last patient of the day. Did they save the best or the worst for last?

That's what Arlyn wanted to know. The doctor was young. He told her to call him Harry, but she couldn't do that; she called him Dr.

Lewis. If he wanted her to call him by his first name the prognosis must be bad. John was there with her and she was grateful; his presence stopped her from breaking down. She knew John didn't like bad news, difficult women, tragedy. Could it be that she had never cried in front of him? Not even on that day in New Haven when she came to his dorm so convinced of the future; she'd only wept after he was gone. She wasn't about to start now.

Dr. Lewis would see the extent of the cancer when he operated; there would be two other doctors, residents, assisting in the surgery, and the thought of a team of people inside her made Arlie shudder. It took a while before she actually understood they planned to cut off her breast. She stopped thinking after that, didn't even consider further complications. She cleared her mind.

Time had stopped. She had insisted that it do so and it had. The drive home was silent and lasted a decade. She thanked Cynthia, who had made dinner for the family. After dinner, John walked Cynthia home. She put her arms around him and he fell into her.

Cynthia was there for him, the way she'd promised to be. She took him home, then upstairs to her bedroom; her love wasn't a crime, it was a gift, that's the way Cynthia saw it, and that was the way John Moody received it.

Alone in the Glass Slipper, Arlie put the baby to sleep, then washed up. Every dish was an eternity, but that was fine. She wanted it all to last. She didn't mind John's absence; she liked the stillness. That night in Sam's room, the story Arlie whispered took a hundred years to tell. It was Sam's favorite story, her father's story about the flying people in Connecticut. "If I'm gone," she told him afterward, "that's where I'll be. Right above you, flying. I'll never really leave you."

Sam had the bones of his squirrel in a cardboard shoebox in the back of his closet. He knew what happened after death.

"There's no such people," he said. "Yes, there are." "Prove it,"

Sam said.

So Arlyn did something crazy. She took Sam up to the roof. She led him through the attic to the door that opened onto a flat glass space. This was the place where George Snow had been standing when she first spied him. Clouds were rushing by the moon. The trees moved with the wind. Arlyn could feel those people her father had told her about all around her. They were the ones who never left you, no matter what.

"See them?" Arlyn's voice sounded strange, small and lost.

All Sam saw was the huge universe and the darkening sky. Blue, black, indigo; the horizon was a line so shimmery it made him blink. He realized that his mother's eyes were closed. He knew they were in a dangerous place. Something rustled in the trees.

Something beautiful. "Yes, I do," Sam said.

Arlyn laughed and sounded like herself again. She'd opened her eyes. She had already added this to her instants in time as the very best moment of all. A breathless, gorgeous, dark night. She felt so oddly free, untethered to earth. But even if she could have flown away, she would never have left her son. One more second was worth everything. They went down the steps into the attic, back to Sam's bedroom. Arlie tucked in his blankets and wished him a good night's sleep. She waited there beside him until he was dreaming, until his breath was even and deep; then she stayed a while longer, right there in the chair, until he opened his eyes in the morning. "I knew you'd still be here," Sam said, and for once in his life he had some small hope that not everything in the world was a lie.

JOHN MOODY WAS A FIXER, AND A BUILDER, AND A PLANNER; in times of sorrow he did what he knew best. He designed a project in order to have something on which he could concentrate. A ridiculous endeavor, people in town said, a huge pool set behind the Glass Slipper, a beautiful thing as John conceived it, rimmed by slate with an infinity edge that led the water into a smaller pool below on the hillside. The hole had already been dug by the backhoes by the time Arlyn came home from the hospital. It was twelve feet in the deep end and the digging seemed endless, through rock and through clay. Clods of red mud and shards of shale littered the lawn.