The Milestone Tapes (4 page)

Then Ginny had shown up. Just knocked on the door. Simple as that. Jenna had answered the door wrapped in a thick robe, a ghostly pallor to her face and the deep purple bruises of exhaustion rimming her under eyes. Ginny had taken one look at Jenna and Mia toddling behind her and said, “I’m here to help you all.” The emphasis had been on all.

And she had.

Ginny had infused herself into the family. She was more grandmother than she was hired help just by her natural being. She was paid for her time, because it was the right thing to do and the ongoing agreement, but everyone knew Ginny would be around, paycheck or not. Ginny with her puff of grey smoke hair, apple red reading glasses, a thick and stable body, strong and steady warm smile with her knack for adding “sugar” or “sweetness” or “honey” to every sentence.

Ginny and Jenna had sat down at the kitchen table that day and talked. Ginny was a recent widow from the West End, she explained. She had three children, spread out across the country in various states of living their own lives now and being alone didn’t sit well with her. She and her husband had visited Port Angeles the way others visited Disney Land or Las Vegas, this sleepy town had been their place for relaxation and enjoyment. When he passed she had sold their home and moved here for good. Her sister joined her shortly thereafter and together they owned a small shoebox prefab home that fit their needs perfectly. She lived not too far away and was looking for work because, as she put it, she was still able bodied and able minded. She didn’t have marketable skills, she had mused, using finger quotations around “marketable,” but she had raised three children into adulthood and knew her way around a kitchen.

Jenna liked her. She felt the warmth Ginny exuded and the way that, when she spoke, she spoke with love and humor. Mia took to her instantly, and so when Ginny sent Jenna off for a good long nap, she didn’t argue. Hours later, Jenna emerged from the room to find Ginny and Mia coloring pictures at the kitchen table. Jenna exhaled.

In the years since then, Jenna had grown to love and, surprisingly at times, resent Ginny. Love was the more fierce affection of the two, but resentment bubbled just beneath and roared up from time to time. It wasn’t a lack of gratitude or even an innate dislike that made her feel this way; it was jealousy. Jenna had named it long ago and battled it back regularly with reminders of how good Ginny was to all of them, herself included. But still, Ginny had the time and space with Mia that Jenna herself wasn’t able to have. Ginny could sit beside Mia and not speak; she didn’t need to fill their every second together to the brim like Jenna did, because for Jenna, every single second was so precious and fragile. Ginny could comfort Mia when she was sick and visit her school without fear of catching something that would land her in the hospital for long stretches of time. Ginny knew Mia’s friends and had rooted opinions of them, who was bad and who was good, who was bossy and who followed along. She was involved and that bitterly grated Jenna.

But not today.

“Seattle today?” Ginny looked over the rims of her glasses at Jenna.

“Yes, Seattle. But I wanted to talk to you about that before we go. When we get back, it will be different.” Jenna hung by the table, trying to string the words together in her head so that they would make sense. These were words she knew she would be saying over and over again today, and there was no one better to practice them on than Ginny.

Ginny set her mug down and pulled off her glasses a worried expression pinching her features.

“I’m not doing treatment anymore, Ginny. I’m telling you this because it will affect us all in a lot of ways.”

Ginny reach for Jenna’s hand and squeezed it tightly, reassuringly, and waited for her to go on.

“I’m not going to get better,” Jenna began, letting the words hang in the air, watching Ginny’s eyes go wide with alarm. “That’s a fact and it’s been confirmed,” Jenna added softly, squeezing Ginny’s hand back. “I can either choose now to live the rest of my life making these day trips to Seattle and end up with, oh, an extra few weeks, maybe. Or, I can stop all that now and enjoy what’s left. I can be home with Mia, travel, spend time getting back the life that’s been escaping us. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m choosing the ‘or.’”

Ginny was quiet for a moment, reflective and her lips turned white. Hard lines gathered around them as they pursed, and the color had drained from her face, blanching it a sickly white. Ginny dropped Jenna’s hand and placed her palms flat on the dark wooden table as if bracing herself.

“Jenna, in so many ways you really are a daughter to me. I have loved you and prayed for you since the moment we met. Now, I can’t say you’re doing the virtuous thing or the wrong thing, but I trust that you’re doing the right thing for you.” Ginny’s eyes welled with tears as she finished her thought. Slowly rising from her seat, she learned over to kiss Jenna square on the cheek. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sweet little girl to go wake up.” Ginny pivoted slowly towards Mia’s room and walked away from Jenna and the conversation.

Gabe paced into the kitchen at just that moment, his hair still wet from the long shower that morning. He looked devastatingly handsome, Jenna thought, in his casual jeans and cable knit zip up. So handsome and all hers, for just a little bit longer. She stared at him as he poured his coffee, sugared and creamed it.

From the moment Jenna had laid eyes of Gabe, she was hooked. Hooked on his beautiful blue eyes, easy smile, suntanned skin (a remnant from desert life), and effortlessly mussed dark brown hair. He was so handsome and so unaware of it that it made for an interesting mash up. But, if possible, he was better on the inside.

When Jenna had been writing fast and furious, she had started a habit of brainstorming her characters in one word; it helped her fit them into the novel and eventually it was as if all their other traits bloomed from that one word core. Jenna had once played that game with Gabe, to see if, in fact, her methods were practical, if she could concentrate an entire person down to one lonely word. She had worked backwards from the blooms to the core. In the center, in one word, Gabe was good. He was a good man, a good father, a good friend, a good boss. She wasn’t objective of course, but her Gabe, as she knew him, was just a good person.

“J, you ready?” Gabe had wandered over, draping an arm across her thin shoulders.

“Let me kiss Mia goodbye and we can go.” Gabe leaned down, kissed her head and released her. He was trying, she’d give him that.

~ * * * ~

The day had beaten them both down. Six months. That was the answer they went for, and the answer they got. Six months without treatment before Jenna would need pain management and hospice. Eight months with treatment, at most, before she’d face the same inevitable fate. Two months’ difference. 8 weeks. 60 days. 1,488 hours. 86,280 minutes. 5,356,800 seconds. But how much of that would be spent enjoying the time? She would, as Dr. Vaughn explained, be required to be in Seattle as much as 4 days a week if things went well, possibly more so if things went poorly. So subtracting that, she’d actually be left with less time by trying for more.

Jenna had clung to Gabe’s hand. She knew that numbers would change things for him, numbers meant more to him. He’d look at that as a countdown, but she looked at it as a count-up. This was tangible time she could fill doing things she loved, and when the blow was leveled and her time was up, she would leave feeling fulfilled in knowing she had made the best of this life, given what she was working with.

Pushing open the door into the entryway of their home, Jenna felt light.

“Mia baby, Mia?” Jenna called out. The lights glowed from every room and something spicy and warm bubbled in the kitchen.

“Momma!” Mia trilled from the family room, her bare feet slapping the hardwood as she made her way to her mother’s arms.

Jenna dropped to her knees and wrapped her daughter in her arms, squeezing tightly until Mia squirmed to free herself. Jenna inhaled the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo and play before releasing her to her father, who picked her up and flung her around in circles. Ginny strolled into the foyer, gathering her purse and rain slicker from a hook.

“Mia had a wonderful day at school, homework is all done. Dinner is on the stove keeping warm, figured you’d be hungry when you got home, so I just went ahead and made some sauce and noodles. I’m gonna see myself out and I’ll be back tomorrow morning, bright and early,”

“Ginny, go ahead, take tomorrow off. I’ve got Mia covered.” Jenna reached and squeezed Ginny’s arm in silent thanks for all the times she had had it covered.

“Well, alrighty then. I’ll be home though, so if plans change, you just give me a holler, okay?” Ginny smiled weakly and mussed Mia’s hair before slipping out the leaded glass door into the dark hush of the evening.

It suddenly struck Jenna. This was her new reality, her brave new world. She’d have the luxury of seeing Mia off to school, preparing her breakfasts and picking out her clothes. She’d be the lucky one who got to snuggle up beside Mia when she wasn’t feeling well, and the first one Mia would see in the morning when she woke up. At least for a little while. Ginny would still have her place in their lives, of course. Again at the corner of bitter and sweet, Jenna knew Ginny would once again swoop in and save them all when the time came. But until then, and she wouldn’t focus or dwell on that, she would be the parent she intended to be when she felt the butterfly kick deep within her.

“Mia, would you like to help me set the table while Momma goes and changes?” Gabe swooped up their little girl in his able arms again without waiting for a reply, and he tossed her carefully over his shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen a second later.

Jenna twisted her bedroom doorknob open and slipped inside quietly. Stripping out of her clothes and into comfortable loungewear, she sunk onto the down duvet, flopped backwards and breathed deeply.

Gabe and Jenna had discussed in hushed whispers on the plane ride back to Port Angeles how best to explain to Mia what was happening.

Gabe, being ever the logical one, thought a therapist or counselor would best relay the message and help make an easy transition. And while totally logical, of course, Jenna has resisted the notion entirely. Mia had had enough of the heavy laid on her in counselors’ offices over the years of art therapy and play therapy. She was still only a six-year-old little girl, and half of her childhood—the stuff she would remember—had all been bad. Let Mia have time with her mom without an expiration date looming over her. Let Mia bask in the time they had together when Jenna was available, an eager play companion, and just let it be simple so they could both enjoy it.

In the end, Gabe threw his hands up in surrender or defeat and turned away from her. He didn’t understand, she knew that. He couldn’t understand. He’d have all the time in the world with Mia, six months would be no more than the changing of a season in the Olympic Peninsula. It only stood to reason that Jenna should make the final call on this one, and she gave up trying to make him understand after that. They traveled the remaining way in silence.

~ * * * ~

That night they sat at the kitchen table, all three of them. Slurping down pasta, laughing at Mia as she relayed her adventures of first grade, planning a weekend escape to the wild coast or maybe the Hoh rainforest, Jenna suggested both and making a full weekend escape of it. Gabe reached suddenly for Jenna’s hand and held tight.

That night, in the cool darkness of their room, they made love. It was a liquid language, call and answer. They clung to each other afterwards and never spoke a single word.

~ * * * ~

Long after Gabe had drifted off, and the house was serenely quiet, peaceful and right, Jenna allowed herself to really think about the matter of time. Six months was no more than the blink of an eye. It felt good, thinking about having time without treatment, wondering over the ways she could spend her days now, but the amount of time beat on her chest like a tight drum. She thought of the precious little girl sleeping down the hall, how her world on this night might have felt normal. Just spaghetti with her mother and father in their warm and safe home making plans for the weekend. But Jenna knew that this evening had been the polar of normal for Mia. Family dinners were infrequent—Jenna could rarely stomach savory food let alone smell it, which made family meals near impossible. Weekend trips were unheard of now and had been for the expanse of Mia’s life that she could remember. And then there was what would come next, after the six months had passed by, and she was no longer with them. There was that to consider and all that would come after she was gone.

Jenna slipped from bed and threw on her old thick robe. Creeping down the hallway she quietly let herself into her office. This haven had been a gift from Gabe when they designed the house. She had fussed over not needing such a large space to work, but in the end, it was just right. The room was her true place in this world, full of peace and serenely appropriate for a writer, it felt plucked from her books. She ran her fingers over the spins of her novels; each had been more successful than the last as her following grew. She had actually made money as an author; she had toured the country and thrived in a circle where many others failed. She had left her mark on the literary world, small though it may be, and while she’d never be eternally famous, she would be remembered by those that had indulged and even purchased her wild dream.