“I’m taking care of it,” he said. “That’s what I’m going outside to do.”
“I don’t like this,” said Lucy.
“Neither do I,” said Owen. “But do not call the police.”
Owen slipped on his jacket and opened the door. Izzy was standing in the backyard, next to the trampoline, in the dark.
“Izzy, this is not cool,” he said. “This is really not okay.”
“I’m sorry, Owen. I just really needed to talk to you.”
“No, Izzy. It doesn’t work this way. You can’t do this. You have to leave, now.”
“I have cancer,” she said.
“What?”
“I have cervical cancer,” she said. “I went to the doctor today like you told me to.”
“You don’t have cancer. You have to wait for the results of the test. I know how this stuff works.”
“They could see it, Owen.”
“What do you mean?”
“They could see it.”
“What. What could they see?”
“The cancer! It’s, like, bad. Bad, bad. There was a medical student in there, this sweet Japanese girl, and she fainted.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She looked at my cervix and she fainted.”
“She’s a student. That doesn’t mean anything, Izzy.”
“It’s the worst my doctor has ever seen.”
“Your doctor actually said those exact words?”
“Yes. And she started crying. And she got mad at me for skipping my Pap smears. She said her office had figured I’d moved out of state or something when I never returned their calls.”
“Oh my God, Izzy. I’m so sorry.”
“Damn you, Owen,” Izzy said. She hit him on the chest.
“What?” Owen said. He was genuinely confused.
“I wish I didn’t know.”
“I’ll help you through this,” said Owen. “I’ll help you get through this.”
“I wish I didn’t know.”
“It’s better to know. They can do something.”
“They could see it,” said Izzy. “They can’t do something about it when you can see it.”
*
Lucy watched the whole thing. She stood at the kitchen sink with a glass of wine in her hand and stared at them through the window the entire time. She knew Izzy and Owen both saw her staring at them, glowing in the lit-up kitchen window, and that’s the way she wanted it.
Izzy’s hair was in a real crazy-lady ponytail, sticking out of the very top of her head. She was wearing tight ripped jeans and a turtleneck sweater and a puffy silver vest.
She pounded him on the chest with both hands. He didn’t kiss her or even try to touch her. She started to cry. She hit him some more.
I’m watching my husband break up with another woman, Lucy thought, taking a big sip of wine. That’s what this is.
Lucy didn’t notice when Wyatt dragged his stuffed snake out of the playroom and pulled it silently through the kitchen behind her. He spotted a set of red Mardi Gras beads on the floor and immediately forgot about whatever he had planned for the snake, dropping it in the middle of the floor.
He took the beads over to the bay window where he liked to do his bead flicking.
“Izzy and Owen!”
Oh, shit, Lucy thought. She looked over at Wyatt, who was smiling a big smile, staring out the window at the scene, and shaking his beads more and more furiously.
“Izzy and Owen!” Wyatt said again. “Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen!”
“I don’t believe her,” said Lucy.
“Lucy.”
“I don’t. I think she is lying.”
Wyatt was upstairs in bed with the iPad, watching God knows what. Owen and Lucy were in the living room, fighting.
“I don’t think people lie about cancer,” said Owen.
“People lie about cancer all the time. Especially crazy ones.”
“Lucy—”
“I don’t believe her. I’m sorry. You picked a crazy woman who lives in our town, you introduced her to our son, and you made it virtually impossible for us to keep any of this a secret from the people that we know. So, no, I don’t think she has cancer. I think she’s lying so she can keep you in her life. Which is fine with me. You’ve got a few more months, and if you want to spend your time shuttling that nutjob to imaginary chemotherapy appointments, be my guest.”
“You sound like a horrible person right now, Lucy. Honestly, do you hear yourself?”
“I don’t believe she has cancer, Owen! I think she’s making it up!”
“She’s not making it up.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I know she hadn’t been to the doctor in years, and I made her go, I told her I wouldn’t see her again until she went. It’s not like she just showed up and said she had cancer. There are parts of this you don’t know.”
“Well, then, yes, if she does have cancer, I feel bad. Cancer is bad. It would suck to have cancer. Cancer is a horrible disease. Is that what you want me to say?”
“I want you to be the woman I married,” said Owen. “I want you to say what she would say.”
“I don’t think the woman you married would be in this situation, Owen. I think her head would never stop spinning. I think she’d think we were both completely out of our minds,” said Lucy.
“We both did this,” said Owen. “We agreed on the whole thing.”
“I know we did!” Lucy practically shouted. “But you. Chose. Poorly!”
“Lucy—”
“And if that woman has cancer, then that’s a bad thing for her. Cancer is a very bad thing. But that’s about as far as I can go. And when you talk to her again, which I know you will, please tell her to stay away from my son or I will call the fucking police.”
Twenty-One
What I find amazing is this: that two individuals who have zero genes in common can create a strong enough bond to stick together for a lifetime.
—Constance Waverly
The Waverly Report
Owen woke up late the next morning, in a quiet house, in an empty bed. It was strangely peaceful, alone in the cool soft sheets, and for a moment he tried his best to forget the high drama of the past few days, the fact that Izzy had cancer so bad it was visible to the naked eye, the fact that Lucy had more or less admitted she was doing something with somebody else.
She’s having sex with somebody else, Owen found himself thinking, almost against his will. As his mother used to say, They’re not playing Parcheesi.
When he finally went downstairs, he found Wyatt on the couch watching Curious George. His right arm was up to his armpit inside a box of Cheerios, but he wasn’t eating them. It was like he had stopped eating them a while back and forgotten his arm was still inside the box. There were Cheerios everywhere, of course, on the couch and on the floor, and Owen let himself get a little bit mad at Lucy. Just a little bit.
“Are you buying episodes of Curious George with the Fire Stick?”
“Yes,” said Wyatt.
“How many?”
“Six.”
Six times $2.99. Eighteen dollars’ worth of Curious George.
“We get it for free on Netflix,” said Owen.
“I don’t know how to Netflix.”
For all of Wyatt’s interest in tales of wide-scale death and destruction, he had recently discovered the innocent pleasures of Curious George. Owen sat down next to him and wished he were the man in the yellow hat.