Like the fact that you can’t just pick up organic kale at the Kroger down the street. The only grocer that sells it is more than eighty-five miles away, almost to Atlanta. And the farmer’s market that I’ve been getting my organic kale from this season won’t be open again until Monday. There is a small produce stand in Monroe that sometimes carries organic kale, but it’s only open on Saturday. And today is Thursday.
Jack doesn’t know any of this because he doesn’t do the grocery shopping. He doesn’t do the grocery shopping because the one time I sent him to the store for dishwasher detergent and a lemon, he came home with $125 of stuff we didn’t need—like three pounds of rib-eye steaks and a case of forty-two snack-size plastic cups of mandarin oranges.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ll get some next time I go. It’s no big deal.”
It’s no big deal.
It’s no big deal.
I pour my pink-but-should-be-green smoothie into a glass and walk over to the counter where I keep my to-do list. I pick up the pencil lying beside the pad of paper and write:
4 Clean out vegetable drawer.
5 Call Monroe to check on kale for Saturday.
Then I scan the other three things I need to accomplish today in between classes.
1 Make flash cards for gender studies exam.
2 Buy caulk for windows.
3 Work on thesis!
My thesis. For which I still don’t have a topic. I’m in the second semester of my master’s degree program in community counseling and I have chosen, researched, and then discarded roughly six different themes for my dissertation.
“Diorama!” Jack yells, jarring me out of my thoughts.
My eyes focus on him as I realize what he’s just said. Relief washes over me, and I temporarily forget everything else that has been weighing on my mind—kale, cancer, thesis.
“Yes!” I reply.
He flashes his teeth at me, and I focus on his off-center upper bite. It’s the very first thing I noticed about him, and I found the flaw devastatingly charming. That’s how I knew I was in trouble. Because when you don’t like someone, you just think, “He’s got some crooked teeth.”
Still smiling, Jack gave me a slight nod of his head, obviously pleased with himself that he had remembered the word that had eluded us three nights ago when we had been flipping through the channels and landed on Jurassic Park.
“God, this is the best movie,” he said.
“The best,” I concurred.
“I loved it so much that I used it for my fifth-grade science project—”
“—analyzing whether it was actually possible to resurrect dinosaurs from the dead using mosquito DNA. And you won first place in the Branton County science fair,” I finished for him, playfully rolling my eyes. “I’ve heard.”
But my husband was not to be deterred from reliving his nerdy glory days. “The best part, though, was that thing I built with all the miniature dinosaur models. Dang, what are they called? God, I kept that forever. I wonder if my dad still has it.”
“Terrariums?”
“No, those are with real plants and stuff. This was with the shoebox and you look in one end of it—”
“I know what you’re talking about. I just can’t remember, wait—cycloramas? No, those are circular.”
“It’s on the tip of my tongue . . .”
And on we went for another few minutes, both drawing blanks on the word.
Until now.
“Diorama,” I repeat, smiling.
And it’s not the liberation that comes with finally remembering a word that escaped recall that makes me grin. It’s Jack. My husband, who blurts out words with absolutely no context in the middle of the kitchen on a Thursday morning. And makes my heart fill with the wonderment and satisfaction of our connection. I suppose all couples feel this way at some point—that their bond is the most special, the strongest, the Greatest Love of All. Not all the time, just in those few-and-far-between moments where you look at the person you’re with and think: Yes. It’s you.
This is one of those moments. I feel warm.
“Why do you still drink those things?” Jack says, eyeing my homemade smoothie. He’s now sitting on the countertop across from me, slurping a spoonful of milk-laden Froot Loops out of an entirely-too-big Tupperware bowl. Jack loves cereal. He could literally eat it for every meal. “You had cancer four years ago.”
I want to give him my canned response when he questions my boring all-organic, antioxidant-packed, no-processed-anything diet: “And I don’t want it again.”
But today I can’t say that.
Today I have to tell him the secret I’ve been holding inside for nearly twenty-four hours since I got off the phone with Dr. Saunders yesterday morning, because I physically haven’t been able to say the words. They’ve been stuck in my throat like one of those annoying popcorn hulls that scratch your esophagus and make your eyes water.
I search the corners of my brain for the right way to say it.
The results of my biopsy are in. It doesn’t look good.
So, my tumor marker numbers are up. Want to meet for lunch today?
You know how we had that party last February celebrating three years of me being cancer-free and the end of my every-six-months blood tests? Whoopsies!
But I decide to go with something simple: the hard, cold truth. Because no matter how much the doctor tried to lessen the blow with his “we just need to run some more tests,” and “let’s not panic until we know what we’re dealing with,” I know that what he really means is one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.
I clear my throat. “So, Dr. Saunders called yesterday.”
My back is to him, but the room has gone silent and I know if I turn around and look, his spoon will be hanging halfway between his mouth and the bowl, as if he’s eating cereal in a movie and someone paused it to answer the phone, or go to the bathroom.
“And?” he says.
I turn in time to see him lower his utensil into the still-half-full Tupperware. He’s now in slow motion. Or maybe I am.
“It’s back,” I say at exactly the same time the Tupperware slips out of his grasp and a waterfall of milk and Froot Loops cascades down his leg and onto the floor.
“Shit,” he says, leaping off the counter.
I grab the paper towels from the holder behind me and start rolling off sheets until I have a bouquet big enough to sop up the mess. Then I bend down and get to work.
“Let me,” Jack says, kneeling beside me. I hand him a wad of paper.
We attack the puddle in silence—shooing Benny away as he tries to lap up the sugary milk—and I know that Jack is absorbing the information I’ve just given him. Soon he’ll chide me for not telling him sooner. How could I sit on this for a full twenty-four hours? Then he’ll ask me exactly what Dr. Saunders has said. Word for word. And I’ll tell him, as if I’m relaying bits of neighborhood gossip.
He said.
And then I said.
And then he said.
But until then, Jack will absorb. Ponder. Digest. While we—side by side—do our best to clean up this big, ridiculous mess.
BEFORE JACK LEFT for the vet hospital, he pecked my cheek, squeezed my shoulder, and looked me directly in the eyes. “Daisy. It’s going to be OK.”