Maine (24 page)

For a moment, she thought it was just one of his stupid jokes.

“That’s not funny,” she said, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw tears there for the first time she could remember.

Her heart sped up. “You’re serious?”

“I found out on Tuesday,” he said. “Well, the doctor sent me in for tests two weeks ago, and to be honest I had a feeling even then. But I hoped I was wrong. Anyway. Turns out I was correct, as usual.”

He gave her a wink.

“Daddy,” she said. “What type is it?”

“Pancreatic. Same as your uncle Jack had.”

Her head was swimming. “How did this happen?”

“Well, remember I told you I was having some chest pains?”

“Yes.”

“They started to get really bad. I’d wake up at night and the pain would be sort of all the way through to my back. Your mother thought I was having a heart attack every darn night. I thought, maybe, you know, heartburn. Anyway, Alice kept nagging me to go see Dr. Callo. He sent me in for an ultrasound, which I thought was excessive, but then he told me it was cancer. Then there was another test to determine what stage. And that’s all she wrote.”

She could tell he was trying to sound cheerful, as if a light tone might soften the blow of his words.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry you kids.”

She could swear she heard her heart thump against her ribs. “What now?”

“Now we wait.”

“What do you mean, we wait? Wait for what?”

“There’s not much they can do for it, sweetheart. It’s spread to my lungs. It’s everywhere. There’s almost no chance of recovery.”

“Well, almost no chance is better than no chance,” she said. “You can’t just leave it. They’re doing amazing stuff these days.”

She was beginning to feel hysterical. He was usually the one to make sense of life for her.

He squeezed her shoulder. “Listen to me: I have given it a lot of thought. I don’t want any of that—no hospitals, no tubes, no radiation microwave bull crap. I just want to keep going. I feel fine, really. This is what I want.” He gestured back toward the cottage. “I want all of you together. I want to see your mother’s smile as many more times as I possibly can.”

“What does she say about all this?” Kathleen asked. “Why hasn’t she tried to talk sense into you?”

“She has,” he said. “Believe me, she’s livid. But from now on, I want us to pretend nothing’s happening, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay. Are you saying there’s no chemo, no surgery that will—”

“No. Radiation might help to shrink the tumor a bit, but not in any meaningful way. Surgery’s not an option. I’m too far gone for that. Anyway, I never believed in surgery. My father used to say that once they cut you open, you’re done for. I think there’s some truth to it. Something about the air getting in.”

She wondered whether he might have brain damage, if maybe this was one of those moments in life when the child was supposed to do the opposite of what her parent said. But then he continued: “Kathleen, if I thought there was even a shred of hope that all that junk would make me better, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But the doctor made it very plain that it won’t. I’ve known him forever. I asked him, ‘Jim, if this were you—,’ and before I had even finished the sentence, he said, ‘I would just try to enjoy the rest of my life to the fullest.’ Fact is, if I’m lucky I could have another good year left.”

With those words, Kathleen felt a black cloak wrap itself around her body, tight. She wanted to cry into his sweater as she had often done over the years when life got too hard, but she knew that she needed to be the strong one now.

“I understand if you don’t want radiation,” she said softly, remembering her sponsor, Eleanor, at the end—too weak and sick to walk, her hair falling out. “But there are natural approaches too. Homeopathic medicine has made big strides.”

He grunted. “No thank you. I plan to start smoking cigars and eating raw hamburger rolled in salt like my mother used to. Steak tartare, that’s called. I’ll pass on the chanting and all that, kiddo.”

She laughed, in spite of the situation. She had given him an Irish chant CD a few years back, and he had mocked it mercilessly every chance he had gotten since.

“Not chanting,” she said. “There’s real science behind it. I’ll do some reading. At the very least, it might make you feel more comfortable.”

Then she did start to cry, and the tears were fat and fast.

He hugged her close. “I’m going to tell your brother and sister now.”

She nodded.

“There’s one last thing,” he said. “Kathleen, your mother has been through hell in her life, in all sorts of ways. I only ever wanted to make that better for her, not add to it. I’m worried about how she’ll fare on her own. You, too, sweetheart. In my fantasy I picture the two of you helping each other through. That’s how I’d like it, anyway.”

It was typical of her father to be worried about Alice, even as he stood before Kathleen to say he was dying. She had a vision of the future without him in it and felt like she needed to sit down.

For as long as Kathleen could remember, he had wanted her to understand Alice. He had confided in Kathleen about the aunt she never knew who died young in a fire, a fact that Alice always blamed herself for. He had been angry when, in the throes of a teenage brawl with Alice, Kathleen had brought it up just to hurt her mother. She had felt terrible for doing it—still did, even all these years later. But she had never told anyone the story, not even Maggie or Clare.

“I’ll look after her,” Kathleen said weakly. “Even though all we have in common is loving you and being bad drunks.”

He smiled, shook his head. “You’ll both be surprised.”

That scared her. Already she had seen too much of Alice in herself—how small she felt on occasion; the way she was quick to judge or to argue or to bully. (How many times had Kathleen pushed Ann Marie to do her bidding? And she was proud of it, which was even worse.) There were certain words she was incapable of uttering without sounding like her mother. Even the earthy, almost sour smell of her skin when she woke each morning was like Alice’s, no matter what soap or lotion Kathleen applied before bed. And the drinking. If they had more than that in common, she would rather not find out.

   After he told her the news, Kathleen stayed up late every night, doing research. None of it made sense to her. When she read “Your pancreas is about six inches long and looks like a pear lying on its side,” she was filled with rage. This little nothing, this sideways pear, would be enough to kill her father, who was everything? It seemed impossible.

Her dining room table, already piled high with magazines and newspapers and stray socks and Lean Cuisine trays, was now covered in computer printouts about cancer and a dozen library books on natural remedies.

Over the phone, Kathleen cried to Maggie, who was newly in New York and constantly worried that she ought to come home. Kathleen told her to stay put, though she secretly wished Maggie would return, and many weekends she did, always leaving the overage art dealer she was dating behind, thank the universe.

Kathleen wanted a drink more than she ever had in her life. She wondered if Alice felt this way too. She could remember the way one glass of wine would dull the edges, how two would make her cheeks grow warm, her thoughts turn rosier, more hopeful. But she also knew she was incapable of drinking just one or two glasses of wine, even though she was occasionally capable of convincing herself otherwise.

She began going to AA meetings twice a day.

Kathleen brought her father teas and herbs that she bought from a well-respected healer in Chinatown. She put a jar of polished runes on his nightstand—smooth green stones that she told him were for decoration, though in truth she had bought them because it was once believed that they could bring the dead back to life. She lit chakra candles at his bedside that were said to unblock points of stress in the body and allow for white blood cells to thrive. Every morning, as usual, she meditated for two solid hours, but now rather than concentrating on herself, she focused on her father’s insides, communing with the cancer, willing it to shrink and vanish.

Her family, including Daniel, made fun of her, and she laughed, too, as if to say,
I know it’s goofy, but indulge me
. She realized it was probably bullshit, but why not try? Sometimes she even believed that maybe it would work.

In early October, Alice showed up at Kathleen’s house, a foil-wrapped package in her hands.

“What’s that?” Kathleen asked, meeting her at the door, annoyed that Alice hadn’t thought to call ahead. She was still in her pajamas and had been out in the back garden in the middle of her morning meditation.

“A coffee cake I got you at the Fruit Basket. Very moist. Delicious.”

“A coffee cake you got me, or a coffee cake you and Daddy ate half of before you decided to bring it over here?”

“You’ve always liked cinnamon swirl.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You don’t want it, fine. Truth is, you’re putting on the pounds lately. Understandable given what’s happened, but still, you have to watch yourself.”

Kathleen took in a deep breath. She had only just begun trying to practice patience with her mother, and already she was failing.

They went into the kitchen and sat down. Immediately, Kathleen saw the room through Alice’s eyes. She had never been particularly tidy, but since her father got sick she had gotten worse. There were dishes stacked precariously a foot above the rim of the sink. She hadn’t taken the trash out in a week, and the plastic bin was overflowing. When she realized that one of the dogs had peed on the linoleum floor earlier that morning, Kathleen had covered the yellow puddle with a paper towel, planning to deal with it after she’d had her coffee.

“Can I get you anything, Mom?” she asked.

“No, I’ll only stay a minute. Your father needs me there.”

“I’ll be close behind you then,” Kathleen said. “I was planning to come over soon.”

Alice’s eyes darted dramatically from wall to wall. Kathleen felt her insides tense up.

“This place is a disaster area,” Alice blurted after a moment. “How do you stand it?”

“I manage,” Kathleen said.

“You let people come in and see it this way?”

“Well, most people wait for an invitation rather than barging in with gently used coffee cake.”

“Excuse me for not being Emily Post. My husband has cancer.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t heard.”

Alice sighed and straightened her posture and smiled, as if to say that she was gathering up the sort of strength one needs to talk to a lunatic.

“Actually, that’s why I’m here.”

“Okay,” Kathleen said. “What is it?”

“Well, as you know, your father is being very stubborn about the radiation. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I am convinced that you are the only one who can talk him into it.”

Kathleen smiled. “That’s the same thing I thought about you, before I realized he was right.”

She felt a certain tenderness for Alice then, and put her hand atop her mother’s.

But Alice pulled away. “What makes you say that?”

“His cancer is too far gone, Mom. You know that. All that stuff would just make him miserable.”

“So he thinks,” Alice said. “But there’s always something they can do. They tell him it’s too far gone, but I see him every day and he’s okay. He’s still himself, Kathleen. I know it’s not too late. I am begging you: convince him to do the radiation. If it doesn’t work, what’s the harm? At least we’ll know he tried everything.”

“I can’t,” Kathleen said. “I want to respect his wishes. Besides, I don’t even think Dr. Callo would do it. All we can do now is hope for the best and try to make Dad happy.”

She saw from the look in her mother’s eyes that Alice had turned a corner, so quickly that Kathleen wasn’t even sure of the exact moment it had happened.

Alice got to her feet. “So you’re telling me I’m supposed to sit here and watch him die? And never set foot in a goddamn hospital room? Just lie next to him in bed and say, ‘Good night, darling. I hope you won’t be dead when I wake up.’ ”

“I know it’s hard,” Kathleen said.

“This is you—your doing,” Alice said hotly. “Your ridiculous herbs and all that. You’ve convinced him it’s all he needs.”

“That’s not true!” Kathleen said, growing angry. “You’re just looking for someone to blame, but this is no one’s fault. And I won’t have this energy thrown at me when we should all be focused on getting him stronger.”

“Energy! Focus! The man needs drugs, Kathleen. He needs a doctor. If you don’t at least try to talk to him about treatments, I’ll never forgive you.”

Kathleen shrugged her shoulders, feigning indifference. It was typical Alice insanity, which her mother would no doubt forget by tomorrow.

But after Alice walked out, Kathleen cried for a long, long time.

When she drove over to her parents’ house later that afternoon and entered their bedroom, her father was asleep. Everything she’d brought over in the previous weeks—the runes and the vitamins and the candles and the tea—was gone.

   He began to deteriorate fast. His skin turned a sickly yellow, and eventually so did the whites in his blue eyes. He was queasy almost all the time, and couldn’t keep down a bite of food. He shriveled as they watched, helpless. Daniel had always been a cheerful man, but now he grew melancholy for the first time Kathleen could remember. Everyone wanted to see him laughing again, maybe more for their own sanity than for him. To see him somber was nauseatingly odd, like a bone that’s broken, poking through skin.

They all gathered around him and did what they could. They watched an obscene amount of the Three Stooges and Jackie Gleason on video. Her nephew Ryan sang Daniel’s favorite old Dean Martin songs. Maggie mailed books of Irish riddles and jokes. Ann Marie made more soup than the average person consumes in a lifetime, and she was tender with Alice—bringing her gifts and taking her out to lunch every once in a while.

He was never alone. They gathered at Alice and Daniel’s house, the house they had all grown up in, for dinner five or six nights a week. They sat around his bed. They looked through old photos from the cottage in Maine—one night, he said plaintively, “I’ll never see it again”—and laughed at all his jokes. They let him talk on and on as he told one of his meandering stories, when they would normally have said, “Dad, would you wrap it up? We don’t have all day.”