Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (13 page)

TWENTY-THREE

My mother was buried in a suburb just outside of Detroit, three hours from our home, in a cemetery where her own parents and many of her relatives lay.

It might as well have been Uzbekistan.

It wasn’t as though physical proximity to the cemetery would have allowed me to interact with her, but I was still furious. It was just one more way in which she had been kept from me.

Perhaps because of this, in the months following my mother’s death—
our
death, really, as our family as we knew it had died there next to her—our father drove me and Paul to the cemetery as often as we requested. Then, after several exhausting months of weekend travel, he said no. “I’m tired, and we’re beginning to outstay our welcome with my cousins,” he told us, referring to the relatives we stayed with during visits. “We’ll go again soon. Just not right now, okay?”

It wasn’t okay with me, but instead of saying this, I decided to relay my anger by taking a pair of craft scissors to my curls. Paul, sensing a catastrophe in progress, let himself into the bathroom while I was halfway through the hack job. He didn’t say anything, just held out his hand for the scissors, which I gave him.

“You can’t tell Dad that this is about him not taking us to Mom,” he said as he did his best to make it look like I had not stuck my head in a fan.

“Fine.”

“Libby, please,” he said, still snipping away, “you
can’t
. He’s already upset. Pretend you had gum in your hair. Tell him you were tired of kids pulling on your curls. Just, this is not about the cemetery, okay?”

I didn’t respond, but when I saw my father later that evening, I smiled as wide as my face would allow, as though I were tickled
to be the spitting image of a young Billy Crystal. And as he smiled back in response, I realized Paul had saved all three of us from yet another unnecessary maiming.

That was Paul: fixer of situations, savior of me. I needed him, and maybe more important, I needed to make sure that the increasingly suspicious Tom was not the one to tip Paul off about the terrible thing I was concealing.

So after Milagros brought me back to the beach house, and I had tossed back a handful of antibiotics and ibuprofen, I reluctantly called him. But when he picked up, I couldn’t make myself say it. Instead, I sat on the end of my bed and cried into the phone.

“Let it out,” Paul cooed. “Honestly, it’s a relief to hear you cry. I know how horrible this has been for you. Keeping it all bottled up won’t help.”

“Wahhhhh!”
I howled, because even though Paul was referring to Tom, it was so good to hear him confirm that what I was going through was horrible. It was. As much as the gash in my stomach hurt, my heart felt worse. Like my tumor, the bit of hope left in me had been torn out, leaving a gaping hole and an unspeakable ache in its stead.

Yet I couldn’t admit this out loud. Every time I went to tell Paul what had happened, my shame for not telling him immediately only deepened. So I curled up beneath the bedspread and cried while he listened to me carry on, interjecting an occasional soothing comment.

“Are you still in Vieques?” Paul asked when the worst of the wailing subsided.

“Yes.” I sniffed.

“Good,” he said. “Are you leaving soon?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m such a wreck right now.”

“Shhh, you’re not a wreck. It’s okay. Stay put and we’ll figure something out. We always do, don’t we?”

“Thank you,” I whispered. Snot was collecting on my phone, and shame or no shame, it was evident that this would not be when I told him. “Can I call you later?”

“Of course. Just please, promise you won’t pick up and fly to yet another country without telling me.”

“Puerto Rico is part of the United States,” I said, feeling defensive of a place that was not my own.

“So you say. By the way, I love you the absolute most.”

“Yet I love you more,” I said, and it was the truth.

The antibiotics began to work their magic. When I woke the next morning, I could actually manage breakfast; I even took a shower and got dressed without wincing. I walked along the beach for a while, then drove into town to have an early lunch at the café where I’d had my first solo meal. It was a sleepy weekday, and there were few people to people watch, so I pulled a novel out of my bag. I was able to lose myself in the misadventures of a pair of ill-fated lovers for a short while, but then said lovers began humping with a literary vigor typically reserved for straight-up erotica, and I became distracted by the thought of Shiloh. If only I’d met him under happier circumstances—in an alternate universe, perhaps, where I was neither married nor a ticking time bomb. But I knew that we would not have come together any other way.

I reached into my bag, grabbed my phone, and called him. He sounded sleepy when he picked up. “Hey, how are you?”

“Um. Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“Well . . . I kind of passed out yesterday and ended up going to the doctor. But I’m doing better now, so no need to worry.”

Shiloh let out a low curse. “I knew it.”

“You knew what?

“It’s getting worse.”

Yes, it’s getting worse
, I thought.
I’m dying
. “Not true at all,” I said in what I hoped was a buoyant tone. “The doctor said my incision was infected.”

“See? You need to go back to the mainland, Libby. It’s time to get this thing treated.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I have almost two weeks left in Vieques, and I plan to enjoy them. Heck, I might not even leave at all.” Though it hadn’t previously occurred to me, the idea made sense. Vieques was my Heaven’s Mouth; the longer I was here, the less I wanted to be anywhere else. It was the ideal place to end it all.

“No,” Shiloh said firmly. “You’re leaving. Don’t make a bad decision just because you’re afraid of being afraid.”

I pushed my toes deep into the sand. “What a ridiculous thing to say,” I said crossly. What did he even mean, anyway?

“Is it? Ridiculous, I mean? You’re already dealing with pain, so it’s not that you’re trying to avoid.”

I thought of the large bottle of horse pills in my fridge. “I
was
in pain, but I’m feeling much better. The antibiotics are practically a cure-all.”

“I’m happy to hear that. But less pain doesn’t mean that the cancer is gone. I think you’re putting off treatment because you don’t want to feel vulnerable. It’s not chemo and radiation you’re afraid of—it’s letting yourself feel how scary it is to not know what’s next. Please don’t choose the worst-case scenario just to avoid that feeling. You have people to see you through this. I’m one of them.”

Tears pricked my eyes. “Thank you so very much for that stunningly inaccurate analysis, Señor Freud.”

“That’s not nice, Libby.”

“Well, I’m not a very nice person.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Believe it, hombre.”

“Libby,” Shiloh said slowly, “I’m going to go now before this conversation takes a wrong turn. Please just consider what I’ve said.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Take care.” He did not say he planned to return to Vieques to see me—which was what I wanted to hear—so I didn’t respond. But instead of filling the silence, he said good-bye softly and hung up.

As silence filled the air, I stared at my phone. Seconds passed, then minutes, but instead of bursting into tears or throwing the phone into the sand, I just sat there. Numb.

Love guts you, then saunters away as the vultures swoop down to steal what’s left. I
knew
that. It had been mere weeks since Tom had reminded me.

But what had I done? I had run right back for another flaying—only to find myself surprised that once again, I was emptied and alone.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Milagros? Hello?” I called through the screen door, but my voice was met with silence. It had been two long days since I’d spoken with Shiloh, and I was hoping a Spanish lesson would help take my mind off our chafing conversation. Plus, though I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, I was a bit bored. I’d eaten at most of the restaurants on the island, sorted an inordinate amount of shells, and walked the beach until my legs would take me no farther—which was not particularly far, given the way I was feeling. Could I really keep doing some version of the same for an unspecified amount of time? Especially if it meant doing it
alone
? I’d gone to Vieques on a solitary mission, but then Shiloh had come along, and being there without him felt all wrong.

Strangely, I missed work. Not the work itself, and not Jackie, obviously—but the structure to my day. The purpose. As I wandered from Milagros’s house back to my own, I wondered what my purpose was, now that I was unemployed and had a markedly shortened shelf life. Maybe I could finally learn to cook, or—

A sharp pain shot through my stomach, as if to remind me of my only purpose: to survive.

No, no, no
, I argued with myself as the word
survive
resurfaced in my mind.
That’s not right. It’s a biological urge at play, just like your urge to procreate with your nonfunctioning baby-making equipment. There is no surviving. There is only coming to terms with not surviving.

Just thinking about it felt exhausting, and when I let myself into the house I immediately lay on my bed and closed my eyes. I quickly fell into a deep slumber and emerged groggy and ravenous two hours later. I fixed myself a bowl of SpaghettiOs (in a moment of acute desperation, I’d purchased four cans at the mini-mart), then went to the sofa on the back porch, propped the bowl on my stomach, and sloppily spooned
O
s into my mouth. Through the glass doors, I watched a kiteboarder zigzag across the water. Something darted through my peripheral vision, and although it was probably nothing but a lizard or another kiteboarder, I glanced around for a large object with which to defend myself. But when I turned again to see what sinister criminal lurked beyond the glass, Paul was staring back at me.

Lord help me, I fell right off the sofa. Paul yanked at the patio door, but it was locked. The bemused expression on his face as he waited for me to scrape myself off the floor told me at once that he had no idea about the big
C
.

He still thought this was about Tom! Excellent: I could tell him on my own time. I pushed myself up, trying to pretend that doing so did not make me feel as though my lower abdomen had been impaled. Forcing my grimace into a smile, I unlocked the patio door.

“Is it really you?” I said, touching his arm lightly, because I was still in too much pain to give him a proper hug. “You actually flew to Puerto Rico?” Paul did not fly—not when his big-shot clients invited him to Aspen, not when investors asked him to go to Europe or Hong Kong, not when Charlie had to be in Los Angeles for work. Half the reason our father had moved to New England was so he’d be within driving distance of Paul. Yet Paul had gotten on a plane for
me
. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or concerned. (Had I really sounded that awful? Probably, I conceded.) Mostly I was relieved. My brother was here to help me make sense of this catastrophe. It was unfortunate that he was not yet aware of said catastrophe.

“Of course it’s me,” he said, throwing his arms around me, oblivious to how much his hug hurt me. “And yes, I set foot on a giant death trap just for you.” Paul’s smile faded as he examined my face. “Libs, are you bleeding?” he asked.

I touched the skin beneath my lip, looked at my finger for a second, then stuck the orange-red digit in my mouth. “Nah, that’s tomato sauce.”

Paul did his own version of the disappearing neck trick. “Enough of the niceties. You, sister love, are in even worse shape than I was expecting.”

“I’m fine,” I protested, but no sooner had I said this than Shiloh appeared on the patio walkway.

I did a little jump: he was back! And just in time to meet my brother! I waved him in. “Paul, this is Shiloh,” I said as he walked into the sunroom. “Shiloh, Paul.”

“We’ve met, actually,” said Shiloh.

“You’ve—what?” I turned to Paul, who looked nonplussed.

“What?” he said. “I had to figure out where you were staying without tipping you off because I knew you’d try to talk me out of coming. Turns out that there aren’t many pilots named Shiloh in Puerto Rico. It took me all of three minutes to track him down. He met me at the ferry to help me get over here.”

Shiloh smiled thinly as I gave him a bug-eyed stare.

“Great,” I said flatly. “Mind if I borrow him for a second?” I said, grabbing Shiloh’s arm and pulling him into the bedroom.

“Cutie, chill out,” Shiloh whispered when we were alone.

“So you didn’t tell him?”

“Give me some credit. It’s not my place.”

I exhaled.

Shiloh looked at the door, then back at me. “You do have to tell him, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious, Libby.”

“So he can talk me into treatment?”

His eyes held mine. “That wouldn’t be the worst outcome.”

“We already know the worst outcome, and my body’s hurtling toward it at warp speed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But the doctor said—”

“I know what he said. But you didn’t get any of your follow-up scans, did you? Did they look at your lymph nodes yet? Run DNA tests?”

“You’re surprisingly knowledgeable for someone whose last brush with disease occurred around the same time as the Iran-Contra affair.”

“Enough with the jabs, Libby,” he said, too calmly. “Your brother is in the other room waiting for you, and the longer we’re in here, the more curious he’s going to be about what’s going on.”

I almost hit him. Almost. But then my lower lip started trembling and a fog of sadness rose through my chest and head, emerging as tears.

“Now what am I supposed to do?” I whispered.

“You go out there and spend time with Paul,” Shiloh said, putting his hand on my upper back gently. “For the record, he thinks he’s here because you’re having a break
down
prompted by your break
up
. But, cutie . . .”

My nickname was back. We would be okay, at least for now. “Yes?”

He wiped my eyes with his thumbs, then kissed my forehead lightly. “Tell him. Right away.”

“You’re awfully quiet,” Paul said, examining me from the other side of the kitchen island. Shiloh left right after we emerged from the bedroom, claiming he was meeting a friend on the other side of the island. “Are you still upset I didn’t tell you I was coming?”

“No, no. It’s just that I’m starving,” I twittered as I stuck my head in the fridge, as though I had not just done sick things to a can of pasta. “You know how I get when I’m hungry.” Bypassing a container of sliced papaya and a container of yogurt, I located the jug of pineapple juice. Then I reached into the cupboard for the bottle of rum I had purchased the day before.

Paul watched me as I put the alcohol on the counter. “Rum, huh? I’ve been trying to get you to imbibe since you were twelve. If I knew it was as easy as dropping you on a tropical island, I would have done that years ago.”

“An island, and a failed marriage,” I said as I poured two glasses, topping both with pineapple juice. I slid one of the glasses to him, avoiding his eyes.

Paul took a demure sip of the drink, sputtered a little, and put it back on the counter. “You’re aware that alcohol isn’t food, right? And I won’t even mention that the gap between your thighs worries me. Skinny isn’t a good look for you, Libbers.”

I glanced down at my legs and realized that for the first time since fourth grade, I could see between them. “If you say so. Anyway, how’s work?”

“Work, shmerk. It eats my life, and I secretly love and loathe every minute of it, so no change there. On to more important things: how are
you
?”

I took an enormous swig of my drink and ignored his question. “Why didn’t Charlie and the boys come with you? It would have been nice to see them.”

“Charlie’s filming. And I can’t take care of Toby and Max without him, especially not on a trip that involves flying. Besides, I thought it would be good for you and me to have to spend some quality time together.”

“Because you were worried I’m cracking up,” I said. My face was starting to feel hot, and I could feel my pulse quickening.

“Because I
love
you, you ninny,” Paul said. “Now why aren’t you happier to see me?”

“I am.”

“But . . . ,” he supplied. When I said nothing, he came around to the other side of the kitchen island and stood next to me, as though we both intended to look at the beach together. “Libs, what is it? Did you find out Tom was sleeping with someone already? Is Jackass suing you for quitting? Has Shiloh made you a member of some bizarre cult I need to know about?”

I managed a small laugh. “No, no, and no.”

“Well, then? Come on. While you would certainly be justified to be this blue over your breakup, I’m sensing that there’s something else going on.”

You know what they say about hindsight. It was moronic of me to think I could conceal the truth from the very person who made the transition from zygote to fully formed human being beside me in the womb. Yet even with Paul in front of me, sensing my deception like a dog smells fear, I was considering whether I
really
had to tell him. Wouldn’t he be best protected if I continued concealing my big awful thing?

“Um, it’s just that . . .”

“Cripes, Libs. Are you trying to give me a coronary?” Paul’s hands were on his hips, and his brow was furrowed; I could only imagine that if I were one of his minions, he’d have already tossed me out of the room.

Still I couldn’t say it. “Let’s go down to the beach,” I told him.

Glasses in hand, we walked to the shore. It was late afternoon, and the sun sagged beneath the clouds. The shore was all but deserted, and we stood at the water’s edge, letting the waves lap at our feet.

“You’re right. This isn’t just about Tom. I’m sick, Paul.”

My brother spun around toward me, but I didn’t meet his eye. “Like, in the head?”

“I’m not joking.”

“Libs, please don’t say what I think you’re about to say.”

“Okay. I don’t have cancer.”

Paul inhaled. “No, you do not.”

I kicked at the sand. “I’m sorry to say that I most certainly do.”

“And when were you going to tell me this?”

“You know. Shortly after I died.”

He threw his still-full glass into the ocean. “Dammit, Libby.
Dammit.
No wonder you’ve been so dodgy lately.”

“Sorry,” I said lamely.

He didn’t say anything for a solid two minutes. When he finally looked at me again, the pain etched on his face made me wish that rather than cancer, I’d been diagnosed with a fast-acting, flesh-eating bacteria that would swallow me on the spot. “What kind?”

“You’ve never heard of it.”

He reached into his pocket for his phone. “Spell it,” he said.

“Don’t look it up right now,” I pleaded, thinking about the images I had found online. But I spelled it for him anyway, and stood there, cheeks burning, while he stared at the small screen in his hand.

He took a deep breath and stuck his phone back in his pants pocket. “Okay. We can deal with this. I have a client at Mount Sinai, and he’ll know the best oncologists in the city. Or there’s the Mayo Clinic or Fred Hutchinson in Seattle. We can—”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Just . . . no.”

He looked as though he wanted to shake me. “Sorry, Libby, but this isn’t a choice you get to make.”

“Um, yes, yes, it is. It’s my life.”

“Do you hear yourself right now? You sound like a crazy person.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“You
are
a crazy person, and it’s Tom’s fault,” he said, as much to himself as to me. “You just suffered a major trauma.”

“Two traumas,” I corrected. “And it’s not Tom’s fault. He did me a favor. Otherwise, I would have died never knowing the truth.” Even as I said this, I found myself wishing the exact opposite were true. Yes, I had Paul; but as much as I loved and relied on my brother, it was not the same as having my husband—my purported
life partner
—by my side when I needed him most. Tom had buoyed me. Really, he was probably the single reason I had stayed so optimistic all those years. His love was like a constantly streaming subconscious message that said, “See, Libby? Even though your mother died, things can and do work out for you.” Now my life raft had thrown me overboard and taken off in the opposite direction. Despite what I’d said to Paul, it would have been easier—so much easier—to leave the world without ever learning Tom’s truth.

I had begun crying, and in an instant, Paul was at my side, soothing me. “We can get through this, Libs. We
will
get through this.”

I carried on for a moment. Then I rubbed my eyes and looked at him. “I wasn’t kidding, Paul. I’m not going to get treatment.”

He took a step back and glared at me, at once ferocious. “Christ on a cracker, Libs! How selfish can you possibly be?”

“Don’t you think I’m allowed one selfish moment?”

“A moment, yes! An eternity? That’s some bullshit! You know that?” Now he was crying.

“Please stop that,” I said, even as salty tears ran into my mouth.

“I’m going to cry! Get over it!” he yelled. Then he began glancing around.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know he was searching for an escape route.