“Sure, yes, no. I mean, are you okay?”
“Maybe we should take some time off,” he said. “Maybe they should, too. Maybe we should all take some time off and go somewhere.”
“I’m not sure a vacation is—”
“I don’t even mean a vacation,” he said. “More like a break. We could go an hour away and stay at a hotel and just chill out. Just have some time for us.”
It sounded awful. The four of them in a hotel? Doing what, exactly? Maybe if the children were ten years old and the hotel had a swimming pool? It was a terrible idea.
“I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea,” she said. “I’m just wondering what we would do.”
“We could go for walks. We could find a place that’s pretty.”
No one wanted to go for walks. Why did he persist in the notion that they were a family that went for walks, despite all evidence to the contrary? Even he didn’t want to go for walks.
“We can ask the kids,” she said. She knew this was a safe bet. “Maybe they’ll have some ideas.”
?
There was little chance to introduce the topic of the fake-cation. Five minutes into the meal, Meredith excused herself and went upstairs.
“Someone should talk to her,” Claire said. “Did she say anything about school today?”
“She said it was fine,” Mark said.
“Well, there you have it,” Evan said. “All’s well.”
“Evan, will you?” Claire asked. “She’ll talk to you.”
Evan pushed his chair back and went upstairs. A moment later he returned.
“It sounds like she’s throwing up,” he said.
And this, obviously, was a mother’s job. She had seen Mark literally run from vomit, both at work and at home. He’d drive a thousand miles for a bottle of ginger ale but was unable to put a barf-soaked towel into the washing machine.
She went upstairs. Meredith was in her bedroom. She knocked softly and pushed the door open. Meredith was in bed. She had not undressed.
“You okay?” Claire asked.
“I threw up,” Meredith said quietly, not opening her eyes. “But I think it’s over.”
“You stay home tomorrow.” Already Claire was racking her brain, thinking of all the cancellations. She could work faster than Mark. “Your father can stay with you.”
“Okay,” Meredith said. Still, she did not open her eyes. Claire stood beside the bed, uncertain if she should stay or go. If Meredith had been younger, much younger, Claire would have put her lips to her daughter’s forehead to check for fever. But Meredith and Evan had vetoed this method long ago. Maybe she should get a thermometer from the bathroom. Maybe she should get some medicine of some kind. But she did not want to be a bother. She wasn’t sure if Meredith was even still awake.
“Meredith,” she whispered.
Meredith opened her eyes.
After her mother’s first round of chemo, Claire had visited and found her mother sitting on the couch, eyes closed, with three comforters on top of her. Claire had sat down gently on the chair beside the couch and her mother opened her eyes and Claire knew at once that her mother had seen something previously unseeable, witnessed something that clarified in very real terms precisely what was to come. Her mother knew she was going to die. Her mother knew that death was simply a bodily function, the result of her cancer, no more remarkable or mysterious or dramatic than tears being a result of chopping onions.
Those eyes, her mother’s eyes, were Meredith’s now.
Her mother’s eyes had held that look for two days, and then they lost it, and it never returned, not even at the very end. So maybe the look only came once, only the first time you understood. Or maybe you could only bear to see it once in someone else’s eyes, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there.
But also maybe she was overanalyzing this. These eyes—Meredith’s eyes—were the eyes of someone who had just thrown up. Her mother, too, had of course been horribly ill from the chemo. Maybe it was not death they’d faced but simply the grueling act of vomiting.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No.”
“Sweetheart, I think—”
She stopped herself, for it seemed Meredith’s eyes were already returning to normal, her face once again the flat face of the mountain, impenetrable.
“What?” Meredith asked.
Claire made herself smile. “Call me if you need me?”
“Okay,” Meredith said.
?
She called Dr. Moon.
“I know you’re talking to her at the end of the week,” she said, “but we’re at a loss. We have no idea what to do.”
“She’ll find ways to comfort herself,” he said. “Those ways might not make any sense to you or me. But that doesn’t mean they’re not working.”
“Working?” she asked. “What does that even mean? What’s she working toward?”
“She has to process what’s happened,” Dr. Moon said. “She has to figure out a way to fold it into her life. It’s part of her now. She has to find a place for it. That’s what she’s trying to do. She just doesn’t know it.”
“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
“You’re supposed to wait. And you’re supposed to be there for her when she’s ready. Obviously it’s a fluid situation.”
“How will I know when she’s ready?”
“You’ve been protecting her your whole life,” he said. “You’ll know.”
But he was wrong. Protecting her? Psychiatrists were stupid. Psychiatrists, in fact, were complete morons. She could not protect her daughter. She could not protect her from the stomach flu. She could not protect her from cancer or AIDS or the common cold. She could not protect her from the mean girls. She could not protect her from her friends. She could not protect her from her own thoughts. She could not protect her from men who took girls from the line at the Deli Barn and killed them.
She could not protect her son. She could not protect him from bullies. She could not protect him from pill bottles. She could not protect him from girls who would break his heart. She could not protect him from drunk drivers. She could not protect him from crazy people with guns. She could not protect him from baseballs.
She could vaccinate them and make them wear seat belts and batting helmets. She could give them cell phones with emergency numbers on speed dial. She could give them straight-talk books and scared straight DVDs and a solid, honest, pitch-perfect piece of advice every single morning on their way out the door. But in the end there was no intervention.
There was only awareness.
11
“Just one stripe of mayo,” Lisa was telling the sandwich farmer. Meredith noticed that she had her iPhone in her hand. It was the newest iPhone, naturally, and the biggest, large enough to contain Lisa’s large life. Meredith’s phone was Evan’s hand-me-down and the screen had been cracked for over a month, ever since she’d dropped it out the car window while trying to take a picture of a rainbow. Lisa was wearing the usual uniform: black leggings and a white, cold-shoulder peasant top, its straps just barely wide enough to pass the school district’s two-finger rule.