The Blessings of the Animals_A Novel

CHAPTER Forty-Five

THE REALIZATION THAT IT WAS NINE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING made us finally stop fawning over Luna and the filly. We were due at the salon with Olive in less than an hour.
We drove to the salon after having called Mom and Dad, who agreed to be there for Dr. Coatney’s postpartum checkup. Tyler had offered to stay, but Gabriella had said, “Is it too late to ask you to be my date to the wedding?”
“I would love to be your date to the wedding.”
“Then you better go home and shower.”
There’s more.
“YOU’RE LATE,” MIMI GREETED US. SHE WAS ON EDGE, crazed energy coming off her in waves. I braced myself for the day. Olive waved from under a dryer. Aurora was being shampooed. Cousin Chrissie’s hair was being blown dry.
“Luna had her baby!” Gabriella announced. “We couldn’t miss it.”
“And the Davids’ baby is on the way!” I said.
As I sat there, relishing the stylist playing with my hair, I was hyperaware of the ring burning in my bra, pressed up against the soft white flesh of my left breast.
It wasn’t Olive’s ring for Nick.
No, this was my wedding ring—I’d discovered it this morning as I frantically dug through my drawer for the strapless bra I needed to go under my bridesmaid dress. When I saw it—I’d honestly forgotten it was there—I knew immediately what I should do with it.
My phone buzzed in my bag. “Sorry,” I said to the stylist, “But I have to take this, in case it’s the vet.” I looked at the number. Helen. I’d seen Hank yesterday morning and he was fine. Well . . . fine for a person getting his ass kicked by chemotherapy, that is. For a split second, I considered not answering. I’m so glad I did.
“I need you, Cami.”
A chill tiptoed across my shoulders. “Hank?”
“He’s . . . okay right now. But we need you. It’s important.”
“But . . . you said Hank’s . . . what’s up?”
Helen paused, and I felt a flicker of irritation. If everything was okay couldn’t it wait?
But then she pulled the trump card. “You said anytime. Day or night.”
I took a breath. There was only one right answer. “Where and when?”
I saw Mimi pretending not to listen.
“Right now. Miami Valley Hospital.”
“The hospital? You said everything was fine.”
“It is for now. Are you already dolled up?”
“My hair’s done. Almost,” I said, wondering why the hell she cared. “I haven’t had my manicure.”
“Skip it. Get here now.” She told me the floor and room, then hung up.
I looked in the mirror at the stylist behind me. “I have to go,” I whispered.
He looked scared, and I knew he feared Mimi. “Two secs,” he begged.
But Mimi was on her feet. “You’re leaving?”
Everyone’s head swiveled toward me.
Gabriella ducked from under her stylist’s hands. “Is it Luna?”
“You can’t leave,” Mimi declared.
I pulled a trump card of my own. “Hank’s in the hospital.” I didn’t explain to anybody that Hank was fine . . . because I wasn’t at all sure it was true. Helen had sounded so . . . panicked.
When Olive opened her mouth I had no idea what would come out. “Go,” she said. “If you can’t make it back, I understand.”
I would’ve hugged her if my frantic stylist hadn’t still had tools enmeshed in my hair.
“If she can’t make it back?” Mimi bellowed. “She’s your maid of honor!”
“And the husband of one of our best friends could be dying,” Olive said. “So shut up. We’ll deal.”
Dying? No. No. Why had she said that?
Mimi opened her mouth to retort, but Olive held up her hand. “Honest to God, Ma. Shut. Up. Helen needs Cami, so that’s where she should be. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” She turned to me. “If you make it back, it’s icing on the cake. But . . . if you don’t—I get it.” She looked at the stylist. “Now, hurry up and finish her goddamn hair.”
“Done!” he said, stepping back, holding up his hands.
I planted a huge kiss on Olive’s cheek. Then on Gabby’s. Then the stylist’s. I moved to Mimi but she turned her back.
“Tell them I love them!” Olive called as I ran out the door.
I SQUEALED INTO THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT JUST AS the first raindrops hit my windshield. Too bad this wasn’t a rescue—the weather was right on cue. Once I found a spot in the garage, I ran for the elevator, then drew concerned looks as I rushed down halls to the right room.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly. “I’m here.”
Hank sat upright in a hospital bed, fully dressed, holding a milk shake, laughing and chatting with Holly and an older man I didn’t recognize.
“Excellent,” Helen said, rising from beside Hank on the bed. “That was record time.” She wore a peach dress embroidered with flowers and strappy sandals with heels.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What happened?”
Holly and Hank grinned.
The older man stood and extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Adam. I’m Hank’s brother.”
“He just flew in from Chicago,” Hank explained.
“Nice to meet you,” I said to Adam, then turned to Hank and Helen. “What. Is. Going. On?”
“Do you have your dress for the wedding with you? Or anything else to wear?” She eyed my outfit—a pair of khaki pants and a T-shirt from the Kentucky Horse Park.
“It doesn’t matter, Helen,” Hank said.
“Am I speaking Swahili or something?” I snapped. “Why are you in the hospital?”
Helen flashed that gap-toothed grin. “Oh, calm the hell down. I can’t believe you haven’t guessed. We’re getting married, okay? I want you to be there.”
I knew my mouth hung open, but I felt incapable of closing it. There’s more.
“Let’s be fair,” Hank said. “We’re a little silly on relief, but we need to bring Cami up to speed.” He took my hand to pull me down on the bed beside him. Helen sat on the other side, one hand on Hank’s bald head.
“We had a big scare yesterday,” Helen began.
They filled me in. Yesterday, after I’d left, Hank felt a strange weakness on the right side of his body. When he stumbled going up the stairs, he at first attributed his clumsiness to chemo fatigue, but then late last night, he couldn’t lift his right leg at all or hold silverware or a toothbrush with his right hand. They’d gone to the ER, where a CT scan revealed a mass in his brain somehow missed—probably microscopic—at the time of his initial cancer workup. Swelling from this mass caused the neurological symptoms.
I covered my mouth at the words mass in his brain but looked at Hank, who was holding his milk shake with his right hand. “But—” I said, gesturing. “Steroids?”
He nodding, smiling. The beauty of steroids was their immediate effect.
“Everything’s okay for now, but—” He looked at Helen. She kissed his head. “But I’m a candidate for surgery to remove it. It’s a single lesion. The docs feel I’ve done well enough to warrant this surgery.” He chuckled. “They used the phrase ‘the possibility of long-term survival.’ I could have complete remission.”
“But brain surgery?” I whispered.
They nodded.
“We talked to Vijay,” Helen said.
An involuntary zip raced through my pulse.
“He was incredibly helpful,” Helen said. “He wants us to tell him when the surgery is and he’s going to try to be here.”
Because I felt raw and vulnerable—about Hank, about Vijay—I went snarky as a defense. “Did he say anything about his new girlfriend?” I asked, too flip, too glib.
Helen and Hank looked at each other. “No, he did not,” Helen said. “As a matter of fact, he asked about you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I cursed the mottles I felt blooming.
“So,” Helen said, looking at her watch. “We’re not trying to be a*sholes messing up Olive’s big day, but the surgery might be as early as this week. We could get the chaplain for sure today, so we felt we should just do it.”
“You know how we feel,” Hank said as Helen stroked his head. “This is ‘just in case.’ ”
They looked at each other and smiled, already accepting what that ‘just in case’ contained.
“We love you, and we want you to be here,” Hank said.
There’s more. There’s more.
“Come on,” Helen said, taking my arm. “We need to go. We have another wedding to get to, after this, you know.”
ADAM AND I WERE WITNESSES, HOLLY THE ONLY GUEST. A chaplain met us in a soothing, cavelike chapel at the hospital where the rain tapped on the skylight above us. “I discovered this place when Hank had his first surgery,” Helen said. “I love this room.”
I changed in the restroom in less than five minutes and decided a few wrinkles in my red halter-style bridesmaid dress wouldn’t matter.
The ceremony was simple, quick, and pure. I stood beside my friend as she and her companion of nineteen years vowed to honor, love, and cherish each other in sickness and in health, in good times and hard times, for better and worse, for long as they both should live.
I wished with all my might that that would be for a very long time.
WHEN I MADE IT BACK TO HOLY TRINITY, THE PRE-PICTURES had started and it rained in earnest. Since I didn’t have a raincoat or an umbrella, I took the floor mat from my truck and used it as a shield to protect my spectacular updo.
“Nice of you to be here,” Mimi huffed, not even asking about Hank.
Olive, Gabby, and Aurora asked, though, and I assured them he’d had a scare but was fine. I’d wait until after the ceremony to tell them about the surgery. I’d let Olive have her spotlight.
The photographer began to coax us into formation. As I posed for four wedding party shots, Bobby entered the church and sat in a back pew, watching. As soon as I wasn’t in a photo, I walked back to him. His suit was spattered with raindrops.
“You ready for this?” I joked.
He smiled. “I’m ready for my mother to calm the hell down, that’s for sure.”
We gazed at the rest of the wedding party for a moment. Bobby said, “Gabriella is so beautiful.”
She stood near the altar, looking down at what I hoped was her speech. The rainy day’s feeble light came through the stained-glass window to the left of us, bathing her in a muted rainbow. She was the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen, the feeling even more intense than the day she was placed in my exhausted, waiting arms.
I don’t know if it was my lack of sleep, my hope for the Davids’ baby, the strange mix of emotions from witnessing Luna’s labor, or the weight of Hank’s prognosis, but I felt raw and vulnerable, and I had to tell someone. I couldn’t carry this secret all day. “Hank has a lesion on his brain,” I whispered.
When Bobby reached out to take my hand, I let him. He looked at me with such tenderness that for a moment I could remember how we once cherished each other. I had a flash of his face full of hope on our wedding day, a flash of his face beside mine as I labored to deliver Gabriella, a flash of his dark eyes alight to see me enter a room.
“We need to clear the chapel!” Mimi called. “People are arriving, and we need to get the bride sequestered.”
Sequestered? Bobby and I looked at each other and cracked up.
Mimi’s footsteps clicked down the aisle toward us. “Bobby? Thank God you’re here—” She stopped. I turned my head and saw her open mouth. I realized Bobby still held my hand. I saw the hope in her eyes. Hope, happiness, and relief.
“For the love of Christ,” she muttered. “This day is going to be the f*cking death of me!” She clattered back away, tossing over her shoulder, “You kids clear out of here soon.”
“Oh,” I said, pulling my hand from Bobby’s. “She thinks—”
“She hopes,” Bobby said. “She wishes. She tells me every damn day.”
I didn’t know what to say, or what to do with my hands.
“So,” Bobby said. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“Wait! There’s something I want to give you.” I dug into my bra and retrieved the warm ring. I held it out to him.
His lips parted for a moment before he said, “I . . . I thought you sold—”
I shook my head. “I had it appraised,” I said. When I told him the worth, his eyes widened.
“That should buy you the time you need to find some clarity.”
He stared at me as if he hadn’t understood what I said.
“You know,” I said. “To figure out what you want to do after the restaurant.”
“You’d do that?” he whispered.
I held the ring out on my palm, but Bobby closed my hand over it. His mouth trembled. “I regret what I did,” he said in a rush. “I regret it nearly every moment of every day. I want you to know that.”
The ring cut into my palm, the way he pressed my hand closed. After a moment, I pulled my hand away and put the ring into one of his. “Thank you for telling me that. Truly. That . . . that’s a generous gift.”
Olive called from the side door. “Cam! C’mon!”
I heard Mimi hiss, “Leave them be!”
“Listen, I know you need to go.” He sidestepped out of his pew. He held out the ring. “Keep this. Please.”
“It’s yours,” I said. “I should’ve given it to you when we were working out the divorce.”
He turned the ring in his fingers, and I knew he was reading the Italian inscription. “Thank you,” he said.
Thunder rumbled in the sky.
“What is this?” Mimi yelled. “Who left this here? We’re about to start a goddamn wedding, for Christ’s sake!” She held up my truck’s floor mat.
“That’s mine! Sorry!”
As I took it from her, a huge crack of lightning and thunder made us both jump. “What next?” she asked, but her eyes twinkled as she looked at me.
I NEARLY FLOATED THROUGH THE DAY. BECAUSE OF THE rain, the wedding party couldn’t go to the building next door as planned, so we squeezed into a side foyer of the church to wait. The pile of guests’ umbrellas grew to look like some kind of prehistoric jungle flower garden.
Helen and Hank arrived. I watched him lean on Helen’s arm as he slowly tackled each step, then I dashed into the rain, ducking under their umbrella to take his other arm.
“What do you know about llamas?” Helen asked me.
“Uh . . . not much. Why?”
“I just got a call about an abuse case.” We paused a moment to let Hank catch his breath. “Maybe we could check it out after the reception? After a stop to see your new nephew, of course.”
Hank nodded, and we proceeded up the next step.
“Helen! It’s your wedding day!” I said. “We’re not going on a rescue today.”
But Hank laughed and said, “Hey, we swore getting married wouldn’t change a thing about our relationship.”
I kissed them both and let Bobby usher them to their seats.
My parents arrived.
“How’s my baby?” I asked my mother, the wind fluttering our dresses as we stood near the open doors.
“Healthy as can be. Mama, too.”
“And opinionated as all get out,” my father said. “Already.”
“Anything new from Uncle Davy?” Gabby asked them.
They beamed. “All progressing well. We’ll head there after the ceremony.”
I floated on their love. I floated down the aisle with Nick’s brother and stood beside my former sister-in-law as the priest told us why we were gathered there this day.
From my vantage point I saw Helen and Hank hold hands, their faces emitting enough joy to light the stormy, gray sky outside.
I saw my mother whisper something into my father’s ear. He smiled and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
I saw Tyler gaze at Gabriella with such naked love I had to look away.
A cold wind blew all the way into the church, ruffling people’s hair in the pews.
I recognized how easy it would be to respond to that look of hope in Mimi’s eyes. To marry just to please someone else. Because it would be easy. Convenient even. But there was no going back with Bobby. The marriage I once treasured with him was over, and rightly so.
We sat down, and Gabriella did her reading. I would love to say she had amazing insights that made us all gasp, that she left us changed. But she didn’t. She was winging it. She was, as I’d heard her say of certain debate rounds, “pulling it out of her ass.” I silently wished for her valedictorian speech to be much better prepared. I saw that the others were too impressed by her poise and vocabulary to recognize how na?ve and shallow her thoughts were. I saw it had been ridiculous to ask an eighteen-year-old to have any real thoughts on marriage. On love, perhaps, but marriage? Marriage took some time. Marriage took some living that Gabby hadn’t done yet. You couldn’t ask someone who’d never been married to comment on it. You couldn’t know. No one knew unless you were one of two people wrapped up in a marriage’s arms.
While Cousin Chrissie sang “Ave Maria,” my mind wandered to Dubey. And to Vijay. To Vijay being here for Hank’s surgery. Then I thought about llamas and what creature I might meet later today. What would it teach me?
We rose again, and I stood beside my friend as she vowed to love one man forever. I handed her the ring that symbolized their union.
What a risk love was. But the riskier the venture and greater the chance of failure, the higher the reward.
My dad had once tried to teach my ten-year-old self this fact about horse-racing: why a two-dollar bet to win made more money than a ten-dollar bet to show. “It’s worth more because you risk more,” he’d said. “You’re betting you’ll be absolutely right, no ‘maybe’ or ‘close’ about it.”
A whip crack of lightning and a crash of thunder made everyone jump, then laugh in nervous relief.
Mimi, in the front row, next to Bobby, crossed herself, her muttered “Oh merda” audible to the wedding party. We all chuckled.
The lights flickered.
The priest picked up his pace.
“What do you give them?” Aurora had asked me once.
I shamefully remembered I’d quipped, “Three years. Tops.”
Thunder boomed, and the rain stopped abruptly. Every head turned up to the stained-glass windows just as the city’s tornado sirens rose in mournful warning.
A collective groan ran through the church.
I caught my mother’s eye. Her mouth twitched in a smile, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.
The priest presented to us the now married couple, then immediately announced, over the distracted applause, that the assembled should move downstairs to the basement classrooms.
I remembered reaching out for that moving wall of air. Trying to do the impossible. Believing I could do it. Believing it wouldn’t hurt me.
Olive and Nick kissed each other. They were attempting to do the impossible, too.
So were the Davids and bold, generous Jess.
I looked out at Gabriella and her father, at Tyler, my parents, Helen and Hank, Aurora.
All of us so brave.
We were all—every one of us—rushing out into the hail.
Dancing out into the hail every single day.




Acknowledgments

If you write nonfiction, you have to fight to prove every fact, but if you write fiction, everyone assumes it’s all true. Because I got divorced during the writing of this book, there will be several people who assume this book is about my own life. Anyone who even remotely knows me or my ex will recognize that this book is entirely a work of fiction. The only characters taken “from life” are some of the animals, so let me begin by thanking Booker T., George, Humphrey, Jenny, Max, Peggy Eileen, and, most of all, Degas—the equine love of my life.
Huge love and thanks to my agent and friend, Lisa Bankoff, who not only demonstrated great patience and belief but generosity in the form of a New England autumn retreat in her beautiful Connecticut home, where I at long last finished the novel. Here’s to Scrabble, bears in the yard, and heated mattress pads!
Thanks to the amazing Elizabeth Perrella and Tina Wexler at ICM for their cheerful assistance and expertise.
I am so grateful for my publishing home at HarperCollins and the many talented people there who bring my books to life and get them in readers’ hands—Amy Baker, Erica Barmash, Jonathan Burnham, Kevin Callahan, Mary Beth Constant, Mareike Grover, Samantha Hagerbaumer, Jennifer Hart, Gregory Hart, Emily Krump, Julia Novitch, Jennifer Pooley, and Stephanie Selah. A special class of gratitude goes to the brilliant Carrie Kania and to Claire Wachtel—even if she wasn’t my editor, there’s no one I’d rather talk politics or go coat-shopping with. Thank you for saving me from my worst writing mistakes. You are “awesome” (couldn’t resist).
Thanks to all the independent booksellers out there (with special love to Jill Miner of Saturn Books), to Heather Martin and Susan Strong for sharing honest insights about open adoption, to Marie Dzuris for speech and debate details, to Judy Keefner for animal rescue stories and her description of broken-rib pain, and to Michelle Tedford for Web site assistance and unbelievably scrumptious meals (thank you, Kevin, too!).
Bryan Lakatos, Dan Florio, and Michael Cetrangol answered odd questions about all things Italian at any hour of the day or night.
Dr. Rajeev Venkayya generously offered medical guidance—both real and fictional—from at least four different time zones.
Portions of this novel were written while I had the good fortune to be in the Spalding University’s MFA in Writing Program. To Sena Jeter Nasland, Kathleen Driskoll, Gayle Hanratty, Karen Mann, and Katy Yocom my deep thanks for that experience. I was privileged to have Roy Hoffman, Rachel Harper, and Jody Lisberger as my mentors, and Crystal Wilkinson, Robin Lippincott, Mary Yukari Waters, Joyce McDonald, and Charles Gaines as my workshop leaders. I learned from and was inspired by all my fellow writers there but must single out Brad Riddell, Tanya Robie, Grace Farag, and Sam Zalutsky in honor of gin-and-gingers in the lobby of The Brown.
There aren’t really words for the gratitude I feel toward my mom and dad, my talented sister, Monica, and Rick, Amy, and Nathan for their inspiration, encouragement, and support.
Love and “I owe you” to Rachel Moulton, Anne Griffith, Katy Yocom, Sharon Short, Kathy Joseph, and my parents for close, careful reading and feedback.
Big love and gratitude to every book club who has ever chosen one of my novels, and to all the wonderful readers who have written to me. Special thanks to Jayne Patton of the Cincinnati “Wine, Women and Words” book club for permission to use her “inexpensive” Christmas tree story!
In addition to Ted and David, to whom I dedicate this book, a shortlist of other couples keeps me believing in miracles. A few who’ve made it in the long haul and epitomize true, inspiring partnerships are Ed and Anne Griffith, Beth Common and Marv Thordsen, Mike and Lauren Reed, and the Beckies (my Queens of Carpe Diem).
Rachel Moulton writes circles around me and can talk me through any meltdown. She is, hands down, the most fiercely loyal, honest, fellow zombie-loving, and fun friend I’ve been lucky enough to find in my life. She read this entire novel at least four times in as many years and helped make it better each time.
Dr. Kathy Joseph not only answered countless veterinary questions and allowed me to shadow her at her clinic, but she is a strong, kick-ass woman, brave enough to trek out solo for what’s authentic. Here’s to goats in the house, to long talks over biryani and chai, and to “not interfering.” Thank you for my stay in your magical cottage, for my big, silly boy-cat, and, most of all, for your inspiration, affirmation, and friendship.