Things Unsaid: A Novel (22 page)

A
lmost two weeks after her mother’s eightieth birthday, the pain had changed. Something added to it. She wasn’t quite sure what. But she felt an increased pain, and a sensation that her skull was expanding.

The falling down and searing headaches had puzzled her at first. But she hadn’t worried much yet, no great concern. Everyone had headaches. Hers were just more intense, that’s all. And that was to be expected. No doubt it was from stress—over her ongoing separation from her feckless husband and her concerns about attracting another man to hunker down with.

But then her ears had filled up, pooling with liquid in the canals, blocking her eustachian tubes. Joanne had had the sensation of the car lifting into the air, vortexlike, spinning so fast she blacked out. Ménière’s disease. It was a near-fatal traffic accident; she’d wrapped her Subaru around a telephone pole. But somehow she escaped unscathed. Thank God there had been no damage to her face! She was lucky.

So now Joanne was calling her dad, because she needed medical advice she could trust.

“Hi. Oh. Mom. Can I talk to Daddy right away? We can talk later, okay?” she asked when her mother answered.

“Darling, darling. No time for your own mother? You always talk to me first. Leftover time is for him. I don’t like secrets kept from me, you know that. So, you’re not going to talk to him until you tell me first.”

Joanne exhaled loudly, then held her breath, worried her mother could hear her. Nagging was going to be attached to what she had to say next. She was sure of it. She pinch rubbed the bridge of her nose
with her right thumb and index finger, an acupressure move. The light pouring in through the window made her clamp her eyelids shut. She started in again blindly, with clenched teeth. Fighting nausea.

“I’ve been having severe migraines, Mom. I’ve been having them since right before my boob job. Don’t know if I should see a doctor. That’s why I need to talk to Daddy.”

“No sense in talking to him, Joey.” Her mother always called her “Joey” when she wanted to treat her like a baby. “I was a nurse, you know. A very good one, I might add. And there’s nothing to worry about. You hear me? Just relax. A mother of two teenage girls has no peace of mind. I should know better than anyone about that. More rest. That’s what you need. Perhaps a facial or two—that wouldn’t hurt either. Then you’ll be as good as new. We can have a mother-daughter spa visit, if you want. My treat.”

“Mom, you better not let Jules hear you making offers like that. She’s bailing you out. She wouldn’t like it if she heard you talking about going to the spa.”

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt us.” Her mother’s voice sounded almost gleeful, the way it had when she had talked to Andrew about
her
topaz ring.
“What Joanne doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
That’s what her mother had said. About the ring. The one promised to Joanne when she was a little girl.

How could she?
Joanne could hardly believe it—wouldn’t believe it, if she hadn’t heard the conversation herself. It had been recorded by the surveillance system before the cleaner discovered it and they’d had to get rid of it.

“Now, there’s no need to talk with your father anymore, is there? It’s all taken care of.”

“Please, Mom. Just this once. I really need to talk with him … now.”

“Geez, sweetheart, if you insist. No need to become a nervous wreck over this. Everyone gets headaches. Maybe it’s just your time of the month.”

“Nope, I have … these goddamn … headaches almost every day … several times a day.” She had to get to her bed to lie down, before she passed out. She pulled the curtains shut, darkening the room. Stumbled to bed, not sure if she could make it. She grabbed her stomach. Her hand tightened its grip on the phone.

“No need to be so snappy,” her mother retorted.

Joanne just lay on her back, waiting. Finally, she heard the shuffling of her father’s footsteps on the other end of the receiver. Slippered feet—probably those same old leather slippers the three of them had given him as a Father’s Day present when they were all living under the same roof. Worn, torn, like he seemed to her.

“Joanne?”

“Daddy, oh, I’m so worried … don’t tell Mom.” She was almost panting. Gasping. Behind her eyelids, her vitreous humor—her eyeball juice—seemed to pulsate and boil: up and down, up and down. She felt a relentless throbbing—in her eye sockets, temples, neck, even her stomach. In and out, in and out. “My headaches—they’re blinding. Unbearable.”
Like kicks to the skull
, she thought, but her words halted as spit filled her mouth, the way it did when she was about to throw up. Pause. “My balance is off.”

Her father sometimes took a staggeringly long time to answer even the simplest questions. It unnerved her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying on the other end.

“Daddy, please. I feel an attack coming on.”

“Go to a neurologist immediately. By ambulance. Go to the ER,” he said, his voice suddenly strong. “Call now.”

She felt herself drifting backwards to the operating room at the University of Washington Hospital in downtown Seattle. Rolling and rolling—like meat on a conveyor belt. Then she had the mask on, was breathing deeply, counting backwards from one hundred. At eighty-eight she thought about guardians for her two girls. She didn’t remember counting after that.

The presurgery prep had been awful. Two ham-fisted med-techs had jammed a tube down her throat after pushing her head back, chin up, as she lay there on the gurney. First a rigid, thick metal rod—like a
steel penis—had been shoved down her trachea to prop open her throat, like a pipe brush used to first trap and then clean a shower grate. Or like a plunger, but with nails sticking out on all sides, for unclogging a toilet. Then had come a narrower polymer tube. The taller dude had stubbornly avoided her eyes, ignoring her muffled screams. Her eyes squeezed tight, her body torqued, sweaty, gagging, arms held down by the other medic.

The supervising surgeon had stood over her, his mask tight, the magnifying light in her face as she peeked up at him. “Your airway anatomy is unusual, crooked, so be patient,” he’d explained. “We weren’t expecting this.” He had patted her hand, or at least the part not covered by the med-tech, with his blue nonlatex glove.

Be patient!?
she thought, tears stinging.
Why don’t
you
see what it’s like with a pair of huge male bodies towering over you!
But she was powerless, and finally submitted. Her throat had been penetrated, the pain had subsided. The gagging had stopped. A local IV and then the general anesthesia had taken effect. She had faded out.

She remembered all this as the sound of Jules’s voice pulled her awake. Her sister was there for her! Joanne was groggy; she closed her eyes again.
So sleepy
. Then came the feel of wet, soft young lips on each of her cheeks. Sarah and Megan. She opened her eyes and looked up into their healthy, worried faces, and was wounded by their fear.

“God, Jo, how are you doing?” Jules had dry eyes as she patted her shoulder tentatively, but her voice sounded tight, pulled, strained like a wire contracting behind a picture frame. “We were all paralyzed with fear.” She could always count on Jules to cut right through, the way she always had, with a minimum of emotion. “Great news, though. The surgeon said they got everything—the meningioma that caused this.”

Joanne studied her sister’s face: it looked wounded, too. Jules’s eyes misted, pooling. “When you told us we were your kids’ guardians, in case you didn’t pull through, I felt …” The quaver in her sister’s voice hit her hard. Jules looked down at her cell phone.

Joanne opened her mouth but shut it immediately, wincing and gagging. She tried again to talk. Cautiously, very slowly.

“No, no, dear.” That was her mother’s voice, cracking. Joanne looked over at her. Her black mascara in rivulets, streaking her cheeks.

“Joanne, you absolutely cannot say a word for at least twenty-four hours,” her father said, sounding clinical. “Doctor’s orders.”

Which doctor?
she wondered.
You or my surgeon?

“The endotracheal intubation to prop open your airway severely irritates the trachea and can cause post-op complications, especially infection. An intracranial meningioma is complicated, so you must follow doctor’s orders.”

There he goes again—hiding behind medical mumbo jumbo
. Joanne thought she detected a sniffle, though. And watery, amphibious eyes.

Joanne watched as her sister guided their so-called family out. Guiding them. Jules had that way about her. Always there when their parents called. She saw her check her cell phone yet again on her way out the door. Probably just checking in with Mike and Zoë.

Five days passed. Each day better than the last. Everyone except Andrew—he was never there—waiting for her release, standing by 24/7. At one point, as the sedative was taking effect, oozing from the IV hanging above her left arm, and her head nodded in its headrest, she thought she noticed her mother placing something on the side stand next to her bed. But then she drifted into sleep.

Today, at last, it was time for Joanne to get back to her own apartment, to be with her girls. For days she had felt that her release date couldn’t come fast enough, but now it was here.

“You’re ready to go, Mrs. Grant,” the attending nurse said to her, getting the wheelchair ready for wheeling her out of the room she hoped she’d never see again.

“It was a bit rough, I have to admit,” Joanne said to her in a voice barely above a whisper, like that time she had severe laryngitis and could hardly swallow her own spit. “But I’m happy I survived. I’m still living and breathing. So I feel pretty darn lucky. Not everyone survives, I’ve been told. And now my girls don’t have to be stuck living with Al and no mom.” Joanne reflected on how circumstances could have been radically different. Her parents, daughters, and Jules were huddled around her, silent.

A nurse’s aide handed off the post-op instructions for treating her head wound, carried her small duffel to her bed, and brought her a Styrofoam cup of ice chips. Joanne jammed the handouts into her bag.
Soon I’ll be back to the old routine
, she thought as she sucked on a few ice chips.
I should check for messages on my cell phone
.

And then Joanne saw it. A beautiful, ornate, gem-encrusted hand mirror sitting on the table next to her bed—was it a present from her mother? Joanne picked it up. At first she only peeked from the corner of her eyes. Then she looked more resolutely, more intently. She gazed at herself.
Hmm, not as bad as I thought it would be
. She touched the bald spot near her right temple. Sutures: small and neat, a hole about ten millimeters in width. She stared at the small divot. No scar would be visible once her hair had grown back. It would soon be the same old face staring back at her in the mirror. The nurse’s aide wheeled her out to the exit door while her parents and daughters walked behind. No one said a word. Jules carried the duffel bag.