DAYS 30–33
One morning I realize her belly has lost its distended, malnourished look. Even her peeled lips are almost normal. She looks more like herself. She is still bald but in a delicate, lovely way. The only physical marker now of what she’s been through are her nails, which are rippled with pale crescent rims halfway up, where the growing cells were interrupted by the chemo. They look like stumps of old-growth trees that show the year of fire.
Her appetite returns.
The first thing she asks to eat is a Luna Bar, then Doritos. I think we should push for some nutrition.
Brian says, “Are you crazy? Give her what she wants. Eating is life affirming.”
There are, anyway, restrictions—she’s on a neutropenic diet. She can’t be exposed to any form of bacteria or fungus. No eating things that can harbor a living organism. No raw fruits or vegetables. No feta cheese, her favorite. No blue cheese. Basically, nothing healthy. She either doesn’t care about these new rules or pretends not to.
She says, “It’s OK they won’t let me have blue cheese dressing for my croutons. It’s OK I can’t have cream cheese on my bagel.” It strikes me as a mantra of self-consolation. I think what she means is: I’m so sad I can’t have the things I want that I won’t want them.
Or maybe her sympathies just don’t revolve around herself. A day or so later, as she’s about to eat a bare cracker, she whispers to it, “I’m sorry I can’t eat your friend feta.”
*
Soon after Gracie can eat again, Cassie comes to visit. At the apartment she cooks for us, veggie soup for Brian, miso salmon for me, mac and cheese for Gabe; she vacuums and folds our clothes. At the hospital she makes Gracie laugh by turning a pair of chopsticks into battling brothers. She creates a fierce character, Edith the Avenging Cook. Edith is abrupt; she orders people around; she shouts every sentence. She threatens bodily harm if you don’t do her bidding. “You don’t like my soup?” Edith tells Gracie, “Fine. I will cut off your favorite finger. Which one is your favorite? Show me!” Gracie, sick child, coddled, catered to, and pitied, is thrilled by Edith’s intensity, her bullying. “This one,” she says, and holds up her left thumb.
By the time Cassie leaves, Gracie is revived. Gracie asks, “Where’s Auntie Cassie?” When I tell her Cass had to fly on a plane back to New York, she throws her hands into the air. “Oh no!” she says, as if Cassie has suffered a calamity. Does she think Cassie was coerced onto the plane? I often forget how little she is, how literal. I’m surprised and happy that she can track the comings and goings of other people again; she can notice, she can care.
She is coming back to life in stages. Look! Here’s my sense of humor, my food preferences, my powers of empathy, of gossip, of concern. Her world is dilating. It now includes Cassie. And Edith. Her imagination is reinflating.
DAY 34
We wake up to a flyer in the kitchen: a simple memorial service will be held for the four children who’ve died on the ward over the last eight weeks.
Ramya and I sit next to each other during the service. Varun, who cannot understand what the chaplain is saying, sits on Ramya’s lap, looking around the room with interest. He’s well enough to be out a bit. We are in the common playroom known as “the Connection.” Gracie is in our room, probably missing me, watching a video. I feel guilty, but I stay. I want to be here with people who knew the children who are gone.
Varun gurgles. He’s also growing stronger each day. He’ll go home soon. He is grasping at the gold bangles on Ramya’s wrist, clinking them together and singing out elongated, airy vowels. Part of what makes his eyes so big, I notice, are his lashes; they’ve begun to grow back long and thick. A good sign. I want to touch his cheek, but that’s not done. We don’t touch each other’s children. Transmission of infection is everyone’s greatest fear.
As the chaplain says her ending prayer, “And reside beside Him, in His house,” a computerized voice bleats out a fire drill, “Code one five seven one,” punctuated with piercing beeps. Ramya and I exchange a look. Life on the unit, typical mix of the holy and the institutional. But I know she feels like I do, grateful for this service, grateful for the chance to sit together and grieve.
They played in this room, each of the four children. They touched the crayons in that box by the door. They handled the videos. They took out the games. We are surrounded by things they picked up and put down, but with no way to call them back.
I drive home from the hospital crying. I’m not sure if I’m crying with grief for the four children who died beside us, whom we did not know. Or with relief that my child has lived. Or with lingering fear. I wipe my face and turn up the music and try to get ready to mother Gabe.
At home I try to strap Gabe into the kid seat on our blue Schwinn. He arches his back and yells, “Oolie ba ba!” His latest creed.
“Gabey, let me put you in!”
“I do it!”
If you try to help him do anything, say, put his bee boots on, he’s indignant and demands to do it himself. If he can’t do it, he’s outraged that you have let him struggle. Being two years old is an ongoing schizophrenia; the wild vacillations between I can and I can’t.
Finally, he’s in. We coast downhill in the cooling air of early evening. At the edge of the forest we pass through the fertile scent of wet upturned earth. “Yummy air,” Gabe calls it. I pedal like mad to make it back up our little hill. “Again!” Gabriel cries every time we crest the hill. I sing to him, snippets of Joni Mitchell, snippets of Van Morrison. But mostly we ride in silence, listening to the trees sigh out at the end of the day, to the multiple squawks and squeaks and chirps and khaas that are the lingua franca of the lush woods around our complex.
Gabe loves this. I love this.
A flock of wild geese flies in a ragged V along the horizon line, gray specks against an orange sky, calling to each other. This way, this way, this way, follow me.
“Gabe, do you see the geese?”
“Geese mine,” Gabe says.
“Gabey, next week is your birthday. Are you ready to be two?”
Gabe says, “Go faster!”
Four children in eight weeks. Three boys and a girl. Three of these children died before we arrived, one after. Sam, the cowboy.