Season of Blessing (19 page)

C
HAPTER

Thirty-Four

When Mark
got back from practice driving, he got Annie to take him to the local grocery store. She waited in the car while he went in and found the manager.

As soon as the man came to the front, he rolled his eyes. “Mark, I told you I'm not going to hire you.”

“I know.” Mark held up both hands. “But I wanted to try again. October's almost over and I still haven't found a job. I thought I'd have one by now. I've applied just about everywhere.”

“That happens when you've been to jail, Mark. It limits your choices.”

“But I can bag groceries!” Mark said. “My brother worked here for years, and my best friend works here now. You know my mother. I made a few mistakes, but I've changed, and I really need a job.”

The man shook his head. “I don't hire kids with records. I've kept that policy for years, and it's worked well for me. I have enough problems with the good kids.”

Mark swallowed. “I'm a good kid. I know you wouldn't know it from my past. But if nobody ever gives me a chance, how can I prove it?”

“I'm sorry, Mark.”

Giving up, Mark shuffled back out to Annie's car and slammed into it.

“No luck?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Bummer.”

“Annie, don't be cute. This is my life, and it's not going very well.”

“Mark, you'll get a job soon. It's no big deal.”

“It is to Steve. Every single day he asks me where I looked and what my prospects are. I'm getting sick of telling him how many times I've been turned down. I'm starting to feel like a loser again.”

“Well, you're not one, okay?” Annie pulled out of the parking lot. “Maybe God just wants you to concentrate on getting your GED.”

“Yeah, well, that's another thing. I took the test as soon as my class started. I didn't tell Mom or Steve because I wasn't sure I'd pass. And I was right.”

“You failed?”

“Yeah. So I'm stuck taking this class until I can try again. This isn't turning out like I hoped.”

She shook her head. “You should have gone back to school, Mark.”

“No, I shouldn't have. I still think this could work out, if I could just get a stinking job. Isn't there anybody out there with compassion? Somebody who messed up once himself, and understands that one stupid act shouldn't mean a life sentence?”

Annie pulled back onto Cedar Circle and whipped into their driveway. “There is somebody like that, Mark. Just keep looking. And pray. God'll work things out.”

Mark was quiet as he went into the house and hurried up to his room to start studying before class.

C
HAPTER

Thirty-Five

Though she
wasn't feeling her best, Sylvia continued with the Bible study she'd started in her home. The effort of keeping it going had been good for her. It had forced her to stay in the Word when her instinct might have been to wallow in her own problems and forsake the very book that gave her strength.

It also gave her a reason to see her friends. It seemed that the only time they came around now was on Bible study night, and before they did, they always called to make sure she was up to having company.

Of course I'm up to it
, she thought. Did they think that she enjoyed being a hermit? She thought back to the day when she'd shaved her head. It was the last time they'd really laughed and shared together. Since then, they seemed to walk on eggshells around her, like they feared they would say exactly the wrong thing to send her over the edge.

She leaned back on the couch, trying to get comfortable, and looked at Tory who sat next to her. “So tell me about your job,” she said. “You haven't talked much about it.”

“Well, it's great,” Tory said. “The kids are sweet. They keep me busy, but I like it.”

She looked at Cathy. “And what about your family? How's the whole stepfamily thing going?”

“Good,” Cathy said. “Great.”

Monosyllables
, Sylvia thought. Why couldn't they answer her in paragraphs instead of sentence fragments?

“And Brenda? What's new at your house?”

“Just the same old thing,” she said. “Nothing new, really.”

She sighed and opened her Bible and flipped to the page they'd be studying tonight. For a moment she just stared down at the page, feeling the grief of lost friendships.

But that was crazy. She knew they were still her friends. They weren't sharing their lives with her for one simple reason. They didn't want to burden her. They felt that her problems were so huge that she couldn't handle the weight of theirs too.

She knew all that, but it didn't make it easier. So many things had changed. She hated the cancer that had altered her world so drastically. Oh, for the day things would be normal again!

She started reading the passage they were studying, and silently asked God to clear her mind and make her stop feeling so sorry for herself. And slowly, moment by moment, she got over the hurt of being shut out of her friends' lives, and concentrated on the Word of God.

C
HAPTER

Thirty-Six

Days after
her fourth treatment, Sylvia curled her body more tightly into the fetal position she'd been in for the last five days. She lay still, focusing on the backs of her eyelids, hoping that if she didn't move, the room wouldn't begin to sway and she wouldn't have to launch out of bed like a toilet-seeking missile.

Vaguely, she remembered the days in León when she'd worked from daylight until dark helping out in the orphanage, a surrogate mother to the broken and abandoned children. She'd hardly ever given a thought to her balance or her equilibrium, her energy or her metabolism. Health had been a given. She'd never even thought of it as a gift.

How she longed for that now! She would never again take it for granted.

Sores bubbled on her lips and in the soft tissue inside her mouth, making it hard to eat or swallow. Yet somehow she'd still managed to gain weight. How could that be? She could hardly stand anything in her mouth other than ice chips or water, and almost inevitably, whatever she did swallow came right back up. So how was it that she'd gained almost ten pounds since her treatments had begun?

Just another perk of cancer, she thought. She doubted the disease was going to kill her, but she felt certain the treatment would.

When the doorbell rang, she pulled herself tighter into a ball and tried to figure out what day it was. Monday, she thought, but she wasn't sure. Visitors didn't often come on Mondays.

She hoped Harry would send them away. She had no strength to be on display for anyone who'd come to get a first-hand glimpse of her suffering. The grapevine was going to have to be adequate for anyone looking for gossip.

You've grown bitter, Sylvia
.

The self-admonishment was no more welcome than the ringing doorbell. She didn't care if she was bitter. She had every right to be.

But the moment that thought crossed her mind, she took it captive. How dare she be bitter? She had always claimed to trust in God, whatever he brought her way. Now he had brought her something difficult, something challenging. Was she going to spit in his face now?

She heard Mark's voice in the living room, laughing and talking as if he'd just won the lottery. He must have gotten a job, she thought. He must have passed his GED.

Then she heard “driver's license,” and she carefully lifted her head to hear more.

“The guy testing me said I was the best he'd ever seen.”

She heard Harry laughing. “You've got to be kidding me. Let me see that license.” More laughter, and she realized Daniel was with Mark.

“I told him not to smile,” Daniel said, “but he stretched up like that monkey on that commercial and showed all his teeth.”

“Hey, I was proud.”

Sylvia smiled.

“We wanted to tell Miss Sylvia. Does she feel like visitors?”

“Uh…” His voice dropped. “Sylvia's not really feeling well right now, guys. Maybe you should come back later.”

But she didn't want them to come back later. Mark was excited
now
. As sick as she felt, she didn't want to miss one of the boy's best moments.

She raised up on her bed and straightened the robe she'd been wearing. “Harry,” she yelled out with as much strength as she could muster. Harry stepped into the doorway.

“I want to see them,” she said. “Give me a few minutes, then let them come back.”

She forced herself to get off the bed, grabbed her wig, and pulled it on. She straightened her robe, then sat down on the mattress. “Come in, guys,” she called, “and let me see that license.”

Mark looked around the doorway and stepped in tentatively, and Daniel followed. Mark brandished the license as if it was an FBI badge. “You believe this, Miss Sylvia? I'm a licensed driver.”

“We've got some celebrating to do.” Sylvia took the license in her shaking hands, and started to laugh. “Mark, the teeth—”

“I was just kidding,” he said. “I didn't know they were about to snap the picture. But they're tricky. They make you think they're not ready yet, so you sit on that stool and look around, and then they tell you to look at the camera. They wait for, like, the stupidest expression you could make, and then they snap it. I was trying to get a laugh out of Daniel while they were setting up, but next thing I knew they were herding me off the stool.”

Daniel joined in. “Mark begged and pleaded for them to give him another chance, but they felt they'd gotten the dumbest expression he had, so they kept it. I'd say they were right.”

Sylvia hadn't felt like laughing in days, but now her shoulders began to shake with the joy of these kids.

“Yeah, Miss Sylvia. I'm like, ‘Nobody's gonna recognize me in this picture.' I look like that chimpanzee in that pager commercial. It's cruel, I tell you. Cruel.”

Sylvia handed the license back. “But the instructor said you were…what was it you told Harry? That you were the best he'd seen?”

“Well, not the best, exactly,” Mark said. “But really good.”

Daniel shoved him. “What he really said was, ‘Fine job, kid.'”

“Yeah, well, he doesn't say that to everybody, does he? He urged me not to stop with my private license. He said I was so good I should get my commercial license and drive for a living. He practically handed me a commercial license.”

“Practically?” Sylvia asked.

“Well, almost.”

Forgetting her nausea, Sylvia pulled her feet up on the bed and leaned back on her pillows. “This fish is getting bigger and bigger, Mark.”

Mark threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, so he just said, ‘Fine job, kid.' The important thing is that he passed me.”

“That's right. What does your mother say?”

He shrugged. “She kind of turned white when I asked her if I could use the car tonight. I don't think she's real keen on me being out there on my own behind the wheel yet, but she'll get over it.” He slid the license into his wallet. “Hey, Miss Sylvia, I really like your hair.”

Sylvia grinned at him. She wasn't sure whether he was pulling her leg again. It was quite possible that Cathy hadn't told Mark about her shaved head. “Thank you, Mark,” she said.

“No, really. It looks great. I thought you were supposed to, like, lose your hair or something when you had chemo.”

Sylvia smiled, and Harry stepped into the room behind them, watching for her reaction. “Some do, some don't. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.”

Mark seemed satisfied with that. “Well, we'd better go. We just wanted to show you.”

“I'm glad you did, guys. I'm so proud of you. Even if the DMV man didn't say you were the best he'd ever seen, I'm sure he thought it.”

When the boys were gone, Harry came back into the bedroom and sat on the bed next to her. “See? I told you no one knows it's a wig. It looks great.”

She smiled. “Why is it that young people can lift my spirits so when no one else can?”

“You miss the kids in the orphanage, don't you?”

She nodded. “I wonder what they've been told about me.”

“They've been told that you're sick and won't be able to come back until you're well. They're praying for you. I e-mailed Julie with the dates of your chemo, and they're praying hard on each of those days.”

“I don't want them worrying about me,” she said. “I think if I feel better tomorrow, I'll go buy them all something and send them a big box from Mama Sylvia. I was thinking about Beanie Babies.”

“They'll love them.”

“That way they'll know I'm still kicking.” She sighed. “I wish I could go visit them between treatments.”

“Sylvia, there's no way. Your immune system is too weak. And look at you. You haven't gotten out of bed for days.”

“I know.” She slipped back under the covers and curled up. “But it's terrible to be without them for so long.”

“They're being well cared for. You're not the only one who loves them.”

“Thank God for that.” She laid her head back on the pillow.

“Do you think you might be able to eat now?”

She thought about it. “Maybe. I'm not making any promises.”

“Okay. I'll bring you some soup.”

“Not too hot,” she said. “My mouth is so sore.”

He started out of the room, and Sylvia closed her eyes and wished she had the energy to sit at the table with him. But the room was beginning to spin again.

Still, she was thankful for those two silly boys who had come by to lift her spirits. It was the first time in five days she'd seen hope that she'd emerge from under this pall of sickness. Maybe by tomorrow she could actually get out of bed.

Cathy was in the kitchen when Mark came in, closing the back door softly behind him.

“Mom, is Miss Sylvia going to die?”

Cathy turned around, startled to see tears in her son's eyes. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because I was over there,” he said, “and she looks awful. Her face was so pale, and she's got these sores on her mouth, and her hands were shaking.”

Cathy abandoned what she was doing and pulled a chair out from the table. Mark sat down across from her. “We just have to pray, Mark. We just have to hope that God will spare her.”

“And why wouldn't he?” Mark asked. “I don't get it. I thought God blessed his children. Why would he let them suffer like that?”

Cathy sighed. Hadn't she asked the same question herself a million times? “God doesn't just take the lives of the ones he doesn't like. He takes those he loves, too. Sylvia is not immune to death by disease. None of us is. But I think she's going to live, Mark. I know five or six people who've survived breast cancer just fine. It's highly curable. The chemotherapy is the worst part, but she'll get through that.”

Mark was quiet for a long moment. “Mom, I know you're uncomfortable with my driving by myself yet, but have you decided yet if I can borrow the car?”

Cathy stared at Mark, amazed at how fickle a teenager's mind could be. One moment they were talking about death, and the next he was thinking of going for a joyride. She sighed. “What for?”

“I want to buy a box of Popsicles before I go to class tonight,” he said. “I was thinking that Popsicles might be something Miss Sylvia could eat. Those sores are bound to hurt.”

So he wasn't thinking about joyriding, after all. He wanted to do something for their neighbor.

Tears misted her eyes as she leaned over and pressed a kiss on his forehead. “Yes, Mark. You can borrow the car. Go buy Miss Sylvia Popsicles.”