Something Right Behind Her (2 page)

“Say hey for
me?” Naya said. “Say hey to Eve-ster?” God, Eve hated when Naya called her
that.

All day, people
had been telling me stuff to say to Eve for them, and my answer was always the
same. “Say it yourself. Send her an e-mail. She likes to hear from people.” I
was like a little cheerleader for keeping things normal, but what I didn’t tell
anyone was that I hadn’t seen her myself, hadn’t laid eyes on Eve since early
summer, before I went down to the beach to do nothing but sit on my butt, and
think about what a shitty best friend I was. But then she went away too,
traveled the world on her whirlwind tour of advanced medical facilities. But
she’d been back now a couple of weeks, and where had I been?

Mrs. O’Meara had
sent my Mom her update on Eve’s condition in August. She had explained, in her
careful way, that the doctors at Mayo, the ones who specialized in pediatric
ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, were concerned about the degree of
deterioration they were seeing in Eve’s right side. She explained how Eve’s ALS
had entered an “aggressive phase” over the summer that had required Eve to use
a wheelchair full-time now. Eve’s correspondence was being handled by others as
well. There was no such thing as a private email or text, since Eve couldn’t
text back on her own. Everything had to go through Mrs. O’Meara.

That was what
started it, my putting off any kind of visit. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself
to call Mrs. O’Meara, couldn’t call for an appointment to see my best friend. I
wanted things to be magically how they were, even back in the spring, when sick
as she seemed, Eve had hope. She had been looking forward to going to
California to see “the best neurologists in the world,” as if going to the Mayo
clinic was like going to a museum in Paris, a brush with greatness.

But now she was
back, wheel-chair bound, and thoroughly mom-dependent. I couldn’t help but
wonder how much seeing me would help her, and how much it might hurt. How would
I have felt in her place, seeing everyone else going on with their lives? But
maybe that was all an excuse for my own fear. Maybe I just didn’t want to see
for myself what kind of disease “aggressive” ALS really was. How many times had
I reached for the car keys, started down route 117 on my way to the O’Meara’s?
How many times had I turned around and gone home?

Maybe it was
that I had such a strong association of being at track with Eve, or maybe all
that guilt and pretending had finally gotten to me, because I hadn’t planned at
all on doing what I did next. I just started walking, not saying anything to
anyone. I left the locker room with Naya and the rest of Girl’s Track, as if I
was headed out to the practice. Then I just walked off into the blazing sun of
the parking lot.

I’d tell them I
got sick, that I had a migraine, or heat stroke. I wouldn’t lie because I was
covering anything up, but because there were certain words it was hard for me
to say, and Eve’s name was one of them.

All the way over
to Eve’s house, I could feel my heart beating in my chest. At one point, I even
forgot which street was Eve’s, a street I’d driven a thousand times.

I went straight
to the back porch, up the creaky old wooden steps, hesitating slightly before
opening the screen door, and letting myself in. Mrs. O’Meara was in the
kitchen, wearing a white and pink tracksuit, her hair in a slightly frizzled
bob. She was by the kitchen table, unpacking groceries, a lot of frozen-type
stuff, like lasagna-in-a-box. Eve always liked to eat over at our house,
because my Mom cooked real food, unlike hers. My Mom even had a dish she called
Eve’s chicken, since Eve always found some reason to come over whenever she
made it. Eve would ask my Mom questions about ingredients, as if one day she
planned to cook the same way.

I rapped on the
metal pane of the door as I opened it, so I wouldn’t startle Mrs. O’Meara. The
woman had to be a ball of nerves. But she seemed pretty composed--acting so
chipper and sweet you’d think her head would pop off with the effort. “Oh,
Andy, dear!” she said, “how lovely! Eve will be so delighted you stopped by.”
She kissed my cheek and held my hands in hers, holding me, I thought, a bit too
firmly, a bit too long, and I worried for a second she would say something
about how she hadn’t seen me in months. But she didn’t say anything more, just
sighed and said, “She’s downstairs resting, but you go right on down!”

I did as she
said, side-stepping a bunch of wood and junk, part of some stalled
home-improvement project, and started down those familiar stairs, wondering how
much my own steps had contributed, over the years, to the wearing -out of the
dingy, brown carpet.

Eve was in her
big beige hospital-type chair, watching a cooking show. There was a yellow
ceramic bowl on a side table with some dried-up grapes in it, and a bottle of
green tea with a chewed-on straw sticking out of it. I recognized the bowl from
an art project we’d done back in fourth or fifth grade. We were supposed to mix
our glazes, but Eve didn’t like the look of the drip-marks, didn’t want to ruin
her best bowl, the first she’d thrown on the wheel. I wondered if Eve
remembered that, or if the story had its only residence in my mind. I had been
impressed with Eve back then, by her small acts of defiance, her need for
things to be her way.

What’s going
on?
My voice sounded thick, unnatural.

It wasn’t the
right thing to say.

Eve said
nothing, holding her head to the side, as if it were unnaturally heavy. Her
right eye appeared somehow diminished, lacking a clear eye-shape, drooping at
the corner. It was still as blue as the other, but vacant-seeming. It wasn’t
that she couldn’t see, I realized over time, but the immobility of those tiny
eye muscles left the eye kind of dead. This is who we are, I thought. Who knew
how many muscles it took to make a face?

She narrowed her
good eye at me. “Thinking about a trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro,” She said, the right
corner of her mouth dropping--it was the opposite of a seizure, these lapses in
the hold of muscle.

“Guess that’s
off the agenda for the moment,” I said, my voice sounding hushed, though I’d
tried to speak normally. Tanzania had been her idea, and I’d backed out of the
trip in April, after she found out she couldn’t go.

Track had also
been Eve’s idea, back in freshman year, and at first I could barely run a
single lap. For some reason I didn’t quite get, it had been important to Eve
that I make the team. Most of our crowd played field hockey, or were
cheerleaders, but Eve loved to run, and she wanted me to love it too. “It’s
just a mental block,” she’d say whenever I doubled over with cramps. But when I
finished our first meet in fifth place, she’d hugged me. “I knew you could do
it!” she said, her face still flushed from her own second place finish. I
wasn’t sure, if the situation were reversed, if I’d have been so encouraging.
Would I even have cared if she’d been cut from the team, if I’d succeeded where
she failed?

It wasn’t a good
start, her bringing up Tanzania, and I panicked, like I always have, whenever I
thought I’d disappointed her.

“I got this
idea,” I said. “And came right over. Coach Landy will have to wait until
tomorrow to freak out on me.” I chuckled, like an idiot, as if blowing off
track was this wild-ass thing. “It isn’t Africa, but it’s supposed to be nice
this weekend, and if Doug or someone could come help out, it could be cool to
go down to the beach.” I could see she was starting to smile, the good corner
of her mouth rising into a familiar dimple.

I had already
started to train myself not to look into the right side of her face, the side
that sagged into blankness. “Maybe,” she said. “Doug is coming home to work on
that ramp.” The metal parts in the pile by the stairs were parts of a ramp her
dad was building, so she could ride all over the house in her wheelchair. The
thought of the ramp sent a chill down my spine, the permanence of it, like a
scar on the O’Meara’s house. “I’ll ask Doug tonight.” It was odd to hear her
speak, her voice still rich, though quieter. It had been such a big voice,
voice of a girl who ran fast without effort, voice of a girl who’d never
struggled for breath.

She eventually
lightened up on me, stopped with the Tanzania comments. “As you can see, I’ve
been doing a lot of fascinating reading in my spare time, “ she said, gesturing
with her bare foot to a pile of books and magazines on the floor. There were
fashion magazines, a couple graphic novels, some dumb-looking thrillers. I
noticed she’d had a pedicure, movie-star red, and wondered, for a moment
how--how did these basic things get done?

“My mom says we
don’t have to start the real curriculum until next week, but I think that’s
because she’s clueless. She thinks home-schooling means watching the Discovery
Channel.” I thought of Eve alone in the house with her mother 24/7. Her
mother’s relentless cheer.

“That could
work,” I dead-panned. “I like
When Animals Attack
.”

“Edifying,” she
said. “Definitely on the biology regents.” Eve leaned over and took a sip of
green tea out of the crummy-looking straw. She moved jerkily under her loose,
white blouse, and I had to stifle the impulse to hold the bottle for her.
“After this summer, I could probably take the MCATs,” she said. “I am
practically an expert on autoimmune disorders.” She rolled her good eye, and
the bad one stayed in place.

“Must’ve been a
lot,” I said softly. She nodded, leaning her head to the left, her bad eye
looking watery, beginning to tear.

“That happens,”
she said. “They tell me I have to
think
about blinking.” I pulled a tissue
out of the rose-patterned kleenex box on the table by her tea, and wiped the
tears from her cheek. Her face felt too soft, like the skin of someone very
old.

“Guess you
sprung a leak,” I said, and my own voice, again, was hard to recognize. It was
just above a whisper, a sick-bed voice. I’d have to lose that, I thought. I’d
have to find a way to sound like myself with Eve.

Saturday morning
I showered quickly, and threw on my bathing suit, a bikini that was, sadly, a
little stretched out on the bottom from a summer’s worth of use, a pair of jean
shorts and a white gauze shirt I didn’t even bother to button. I was already
late, groggy from yet another bad night’s sleep. Mom and Milly were in the
kitchen making pancakes, Milly’s favorite thing to do on a Saturday morning.
The whole house smelled faintly of butter, with a whiff of confectioner’s
sugar. I couldn’t begin to think of

choking anything
down, least of all the doughy mess Milly was concocting, and just grabbed the
orange juice from the fridge and started drinking right from the container.

“Glass,” Mom
said, but I ignored her, finished drinking, and put the container back in the
fridge.

“Keep stirring,
don’t let that burn” she said to Milly, who was standing on a chair in her
pink- striped pajamas, stirring blueberry sauce. Milly’s hair was all puffed up
and knotted in the back, a little blond bird’s nest. Milly is a cool kid for a
ten-year old, but she is high maintenance in the food department, always
getting Mom to make her this or that.

“You’ve got the
key? Do you know the caretaker’s number if you need anything?” Mom asked. She
faced me, hands on slender hips, feet apart, as though she were trying to
appear larger than she was. She was wearing her running shorts, and sneakers,
and looked, from the waist down, like a kid herself. But her expression was all
Mom, tension showing from terse frown to wide worried-looking brown eyes.
“Remember, be careful.
 
Stay where
the lifeguards are. And Andy, if anything doesn’t seem right with Eve, just
don’t go. Wait for another time. Her mother says she’s awful moody.” I rolled
my eyes, too exhausted to get worked up.

“It will be
fine, Mom,” I said. “We’re going to the Jersey Shore, not a foreign country.” I
could see her trying to control herself, and she finally let out a heavy sigh,
and turned back to Milly. It was good to have the kid around as a
mom-distractor.

“What’s that
smell?” Milly said, as if on cue, and Mom snatched the plastic spatula out of
her hand. Half the thing had melted right into Milly’s boiling blueberry sauce.

“Goddamn it,”
Mom said. “ Now we have to throw the blasted stuff out!”

“Ugh,” Milly
said. “I hate plain pancakes.”

I was just glad
Milly had gotten Mom off my back. All week, between Mrs. O’Meara, and my Mom,
the beach trip had seemed pretty touch and go. It finally came together on
Thursday night. Eve had called Doug and gotten him to convince his mother it
wasn’t just an ok plan, but something Eve really needed to keep her spirits up.
I loved that idea, Doug O’Meara as some kind of savior.

When he came to
pick me up, Doug was freshly shaved and wearing a ridiculous pink polo shirt,
which I chalked up to standard Princeton style. I hadn’t seen him in a while,
since he’d left for school, and he’d already acquired something of the college
boy about him. His hair was pretty short in back, but with a part in front that
kept falling into his eyes in a way he had to recognize was smarmy-cute. Doug
was unapologetic that way, didn’t mind letting you know he knew all about his
own hotness. They had that in common, Eve and Doug, neither was very high in
the modesty department.