Summer Snow (16 page)

Simon hung his head and scuffed at the edge of a step with his bare feet. Refusing to look at me, he said quietly, “I promise I won't tell your secret this time.”

I didn't care if he told the whole world my so-called secret. But it shamed me to see him so contrite and I rushed to relieve him. “I know you won't. And don't worry. I won't tell yours either.”

Simon shot me a grateful smile. I held out my hand and he wound up with relish, slapping my palm on his way up the steps.

Out of the Blue

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
the day of my first scheduled reading lesson with Simon, I woke with a headache so all consuming I could not lift my head off the pillow.

It was strange for me to wake in a fog of pain; I rarely had headaches, even of the typical garden variety. Migraines were a thing of mystery to me, something that people complained about on television, and I wasn't ready for the throbbing band of steel around the crown of my head like some macabre circlet of misery. Feeling gently with my fingertips, I explored my temples, my aching forehead, the usually warm hollow at the back of my neck, where my hairline formed the top of a heart. It felt like my brain was engulfed in flames, but my skin was almost cold and decidedly clammy.

I squinted, barely making out the numbers on my alarm clock, and was shocked to find that it was already quarter to seven. My first thought was that I had missed my minutes alone on the porch. And then I remembered Simon.

Gripped with a need to explain why I hadn't shown up when we had agreed to meet, I rolled hastily onto my side. I couldn't bear the thought of Simon concluding that I had betrayed him, that I had made promises I did not intend to keep. Throwing the blankets off, I moved to stand and instantly felt myself anchored to the bed as if a rope were tied securely around my skull and the line was pulled too tight. My body bowed back and my heartbeat pulsed behind my eyes. The sheer force of it, a growing, swelling pressure that dotted my vision with sparkling points of ghost light, made me understand for the first time how Jesus could have shed tears of blood in the garden of Gethsemane. Surprise at the unexpected bits of information tucked away in my aching head was quickly replaced by the realization that I would not be getting out of bed anytime soon.

I let my head sink back into the warm pillow and, nauseated by the heat and the lavender and vanilla scent of my shampooed hair, carefully turned it over to press my cheek into the cool, unused underbelly. A contradiction of too hot and remarkably chilly, I pulled the blankets up to the bottom of my nose and suppressed a shiver. I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing that I could not navigate the stairs and apologize to Simon. It would have to wait. I would have to sit him down later, make him understand, do whatever was necessary to restore any confidence he had lost in me.

Somewhere in the murky basin of my throbbing mind, I also remembered that I was expected at Value Foods by eight o'clock. But I was too deep in a fog of agony to care, and I promised myself that five more minutes of shut-eye would do wonders. I would get up and make the world right then.

When I felt a gentle hand on my forehead, I started.

“Shhh …,” Grandma whispered. “Are you feeling okay, honey? You didn't come down for breakfast, and when I opened the door at the bottom of the steps, I could hear you moaning.”

Moaning? A flash of embarrassment washed over me. “Headache,” I said, and though my mind formed more words of explanation, I found them impossible to say.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Grandma consoled.

“Time?” I asked.

“Almost seven thirty.”

My eyes flew open, but the morning light was excruciating. I covered my face with my hands. “I'm going to be late for work.”

“Forget work. You can't go to Value Foods like this.”

I hadn't taken a single sick day since starting at the grocery store, and the idea of indulging in one now both appealed to me and frightened me. The thought of pulling the blankets up over my head and going back to sleep was almost blissfully comforting, but I didn't want to give anyone reason to speculate about my absence. Never mind that Clark seemed to hold sick days and absences against his employees as evidence of their utter lack of work ethic. Only a month ago Graham—innocent, adorable, likable Graham—had been out for a week with the flu. He had almost been hospitalized, but Clark made it seem as if Graham had staged the entire thing to get a few days off.

“No, I'll go,” I said, attempting to make my voice sound normal. “A couple of Tylenol and I'll be just fine.” My mind stuck on the name of the pain reliever, trying desperately to remember if I was allowed to have ibuprofen or acetaminophen and which was which. “Advil?” I asked.

“We have a generic brand,” Grandma clarified, “and it's perfectly safe for you to take. But I don't want you to go to work if you feel like this.”

“But—”

“Don't argue. There are more important things than perfect attendance at Value Foods.” Grandma's voice was firm, but her hand trailed softly along my cheek, the hard line of my jaw. Her fingers brushed mine where my hand still lay across my eyes.

I dropped my arm and melted into the bed, grateful to bend to her authority and even more thankful for the loving way she touched me. It had been too many weeks since we had allowed a chasm to separate us, and her presence at my side, the compassion in her fingers, felt like the beginnings of a bridge.

We had a ways to go, but I was ready to reach for her.

Though I was nineteen years old and soon to be a mother myself, for this one brief moment on a pain-filled morning I felt like a helpless child. I almost wished I were still small enough to climb into her lap and be encompassed by the loving ring of her arms.

And like an unanticipated fragrance—a whiff of wild strawberries in a ditch full of weeds—I remembered the last time I had been a child on my father's lap.

We found out that he had cancer a week after Christmas. I was fifteen years old, self-absorbed, I suppose, and convinced that my world would never be any different from what it was at that safe and comfortable time. The news hit me with the force of a nuclear bomb. Of course, I knew something was wrong; Dad had been circling in and out of the doctor's office for weeks. But I told myself that he would be diagnosed with high blood pressure or high cholesterol or something else appropriately run-of-the-mill and treatable with mild diet exchanges that we would joke over. Grandma would fry bacon and eggs for me in the morning, and I'd tease him about his pasty bowl of oatmeal.

When he sat me down in the living room on New Year's Eve, my heart knew that the heaviness in his eyes carried something much more fateful than a few uncomplicated diet alterations. The news was not good.

“Baby girl …,” he started and couldn't continue.

My hands began to sweat as soon as he called me by that special name, a nickname he only used once every great while because I had asked him not to call me by it. I wasn't a baby anymore, and I definitely considered myself more woman than girl. But sometimes, when he loved me so intensely he could think of nothing else, he didn't remember my request and called me
baby girl
anyway.

I waited, breathless, and he said a lot of things before finally getting to the
C
word,
cancer
, and another one,
colon
, which inexplicably made me blush because I was young and could not imagine a more horrible manifestation of such an awful disease. I was shocked and suddenly freezing, and when my teeth started to chatter, I made them stop by saying, “No.” I said it over and over and over again:
No, no, no, no, no, no …
A quiet drone, an intonation that quickly became a chant, as if the right mantra could tame and trap the words that he had released into the room.

I jumped up from the couch at one point and began to pace, but before I could take five steps, Dad was behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders and choking back a sob. He sat down in the recliner, pulling me with him until I was curled on his lap, my head on his trembling shoulder. He cried and stroked my hair, wetting it with his tears. I didn't have tears, not yet, but I felt my heart pounding behind my rib cage, straining against the bones that held it in place and beating wildly as if I had just run the two-mile in gym class. Dad just rocked and rocked.

He lived only nine and a half months after the diagnosis.

I remember wishing near the end that I had sat on his lap more. But after the revelation, there hadn't been any time to. Chemo and radiation happened simultaneously, a drastic approach recommended because Dad was young and seemingly healthy. He was left a wasted man. While the narrow bones of his legs would never support me, and the crushing weight of my hundred-pound frame would have been unbearable, I held his hand or stroked his head, remembering what it felt like when his arms were strong around me.

From the cloudy haze of my headache, I was comforted by the fact that if Grandma felt tears on my cheeks, she would most likely attribute them to pain. I turned my face into her hand almost imperceptibly and gave in. “Okay. I'll stay home.”

“Good.” Immediately Grandma was all business. She gently tapped her knuckle under my chin and then straightened out my bedclothes, folding the sheet over my down comforter and bringing the satiny fabric up around my neck. “I'll call Value Foods and tell them that you're sick today. Who should I ask to speak with?”

“Clark,” I muttered, wishing that there were someone else I could direct her to. He would not be gracious or accommodating.

“All right. I'll let him know, and then I'll be right back with something for the pain. Are you hungry? Maybe a slice of toast?”

“No, thank you,” I said, unwilling to even think about chewing as it would mean moving my head. An undulating roll of nausea also added protest to the topic of eating.

I heard rather than saw Grandma get up to leave. Her footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs and I opened my eyes a crack. “I'm going to make an appointment for you with Dr. Morales.”

My heart seized at her proclamation. It hadn't occurred to me that this was anything more than a headache, but apparently the thought had crossed her mind.

“Do you think there's something wrong with the baby?” I whispered, barely able to get the words out around the fear that had suddenly lodged tightly in my throat.

“No,” Grandma assured me. “Headaches are often part of pregnancy.” She started down the steps and just before her head disappeared she added, “But we want to be sure.”

I held my mind still while she was gone, suspending any movement or thought so I wouldn't panic. And in the stillness, I noticed that something was missing. I didn't feel her moving. Anxious, I tried to remember the last time I had felt her twirl inside me and realized that she had wobbled shortly after supper last night. I had not felt her again. A slow horror raked gnarled fingers against the thickness in my chest. But because I could not deal with my fears, I pressed them down and down until this worry was a caged animal, thrashing and wild but contained.

Against my wishes, Grandma returned with a tray of orange juice, water with three square ice cubes, and a plate that was still steaming with hot scrambled eggs and buttered toast topped with her homemade strawberry jelly. I had helped her put up the neat jars of garnet-colored jam myself in early June. Last summer. It seemed a world away. Before Brighton. Before Thomas's rejection. Before Parker. I hadn't thought of him in many weeks, and just his name in my aching mind startled me wide-awake. My fears and shortcomings lined up like accusers at the foot of my bed. I stifled a groan.

Grandma smiled at me and left the tray on my bedside table. “Everything is taken care of. Clark sounded a bit put out, but I told him you were very ill. Dr. Morales is going to squeeze you in at eleven.” She slipped out as unobtrusively as she had come.

Eleven o'clock seemed far away, and my heart grew featherless little wings when I thought of my baby in distress. I could feel the weak fluttering throughout my entire body, but I held myself from the verge of full-fledged terror by focusing on my afflicted head. Purposefully, in an act of resolute self-preservation, I pushed the dismal possibilities out of my mind and propped myself up on my elbow to reach for the water and the two neat little pills beside it. I willed myself to start feeling better and drank the entire glass without stopping. For some reason, the ice appealed to me and I let each cube melt slowly on the desert of my tongue.

I wanted to lie back down, but I forced myself to nibble at the corners of my toast. I even tried a forkful of eggs, but they turned out to be limp and unappetizing, so I swallowed them quickly without chewing. Though I was still nauseous and dizzy, I felt that I had at least made some progress. Surely I would be healthy and whole in no time. Surely this headache was nothing more than exactly that.

I fell back into my pillow and promptly drifted into a sleep like shallow tide pools; I wanted to dive in but couldn't.

I did feel a little better when Grandma woke me after ten. The headache that had exploded like fireworks in the dark caverns of my brain was diffused and insubstantial, trails of that formerly unbearable intensity trickling from the top of my head, down my neck, and across my shoulders in ashy lines of washed-out color. A mere watermark of what had come before. But the echo of pain remained and I was spent and exhausted, worn and weary as if I had just run a marathon.

The steamy spray of a hot shower felt disproportionately wonderful, and I let the jets pulse against my closed eyes, washing away the clinging remnants of the agony I had felt. I told myself that this day was a gift, that after a reassuring appointment with Dr. Morales, I would actually have the entire house to myself for an afternoon. Janice would be at work, Simon at preschool, and Grandma at Ladies' Aid. I could read books, tune the radio to my favorite station, maybe even bake cookies and have them ready with a tall glass of cold milk for Simon when the bus dropped him off at three thirty. It would be a peace offering to make up for the disappointment of our missed morning together.