Links

I’M STILL HERE

Alice ’s chair wobbles on uneven legs all during lunch with June at Florie’s Natural Foods where they laugh over June’s latest x-rated joke and her boss’ comb over. June, thin, dark and smartly dressed for business in a black pants suit and royal blue blouse, quips, “You know I can retire in only 12 years.”

Alice , a plump little pale-blond, chuckles, “Only 12 years? By then…”

“I should be a grandma.”

“Sounds good,” Alice adds, “You know what I like best about teaching?”

“What?”

Alice laughs, “The summers.”

“Lucky,” exclaims June.

“In another few years, I’m going to spend the summer…”

“Where?”

“In Europe .”

As June takes a sip of her tea, a truck backfires startling them into looking out the window for just a moment, then she leans forward, toasts, “Bon Voyage!” whispers, “Green tea,” nodding toward the cup, “tastes like shit but it’s good for you.”

“You’re kidding.” Alice laughs.

“Helps prevent cancer.”

“Really?” Alice raises her eyebrows.

That was two weeks ago.

Yesterday June calls Alice and between sobs says, “They just told me…”

“June, what’s wrong?” Alice ’s voice rises then falls hard on, “wrong.”

“It’s…it’s…” she stammers, weeping, manages, “I’ll call back…”

“June! Junie! What’s wrong?” but the phone is already dead.

Alice waits by the phone, watches the second hand jerk along, the space the minute hand must travel between lines seems vast. She waits, touches the receiver to call, pulls back. Waits.

The phone rings, “June! What…”

“ Alice , it’s bad.”

“What’s bad?”

“Cancer,” she weeps.

Alice   insists, “Who has…?” as she twists the phone cord around her finger like a tourniquet.

“Me. I do. It’s me, damn it, it’s me!” she cries.

When Alice gets to her house, June comes to the door, hair wild, smeared make-up mixing with her tears and after hugging her and holding her while she sobs, while they both sob, they go into the kitchen where, despite it being a dark and dank day, neither bothers to turn on the light. June says, “I’m having…”

“What?”

“A double.”

“A double what?” Alice raises her eyebrows.

“Espresso…screw the green tea, want some?”

“Okay,” Alice says without thinking.

          June goes to the espresso machine, “And, I’m going to take up smoking—doesn’t fucking matter now.” She holds out her arms and raises her palms in resignation, then turns to measure out coffee but her hand shakes and she spills some on the counter, mutters, “shit,” and brushes it aside.

“Doesn’t matter?” Alice asks, her voice rising in dismay, then in her habit of emphasizing certain words her voice stresses “matter.”

June sighs, falls into the kitchen chair, “I’m 53 years old.”

“Not until…”

“Well almost and I’m not supposed to…” she stops, wipes her eyes.

“What?”

“Die. I’m not supposed to die,” she wails.

“No! You’re going to be...” A car alarm goes off interrupting Alice .

“There I said it! Die! That’s what’ll happen but it’s not supposed to be over so soon.” Alice reaches over to hold her but June rocks back and forth hugging herself, weeps, “What am I going to…”

“What?”

“You know…tell my kids.”

“Junie, easy…” she reaches over and rests her hand on June’s arm.

“That they’ll be without their mother, that I won’t make…I won’t get to…”

Alice gets up puts her arm on June’s shoulder, smoothes her hair, “Shshshsh…”

“Stacey’s High School graduation, never see her get married …”

 “Junie, it may not be…” Alice wants to reassure her.

“That Bryan can make the team but…”

Alice hugs her, pleads, “Please…stop…”

“…but I won’t be there to see him play?” Then she moans, “And Ray…”

“He doesn’t know?” Alice keeps her hand on her shoulder.

“I haven’t even been able to reach…”

“Where is he?”

“Some business thing…can’t find him.”

“Oh God, he’ll be…”

“Allie, he needs me!” June puts her face in her hands.

Alice wipes her eyes, wants to pretend this isn’t happening, to blot it out, to comfort her, to make it all better, to make it go away. She puts her arms around June, puts her face next to her’s and feels her tears wet on her face, June’s tears salty in her mouth. She feels June’s body shake and she rubs her back aware that she did that when her kids were little, as if that would comfort and protect her like it did them. June pulls away, looks at her and demands, “I haven’t been a bad person.”

“No! Of course…”

The rumble of a low flying plane drowned her out and rattled the dishes on the cupboard.

“Why me?” June pleaded, “I never even smoked?” She collapses crying and Alice holds on to her; June clinging to her so tightly that her nails dig into her back and whimpers, “My uncle.”

“Who?”

“My uncle died…”

“When?”

“Of lung cancer; it was horrible…emaciated, must have been 85 pounds at the end,” then attempting a smile, “ Shitty way to lose weight!”

Alice fleetingly thinks of her mother who had breast cancer but is barely aware of the terror building in her. When June repeats, “It was horrible,” Alice blurts out through her own tears that she should tell her what happened and immediately feels like an idiot because she realizes both of them know what happened. Still, June sits up, blows her nose. Alice gets up, pours them each a cup of espresso and puts the cups on the table. June takes a sip, holds the cup between her hands, tells how she had a bad cough and how the chest x-ray revealed some spots and how they did a biopsy and how they can’t operate.

Alice begs, “But can’t they…?”

“What?”

“You know…” Alice holds out her hands, palms up, fingers outstretched.

“What?” June crosses her arms.

“Do something. Treat it,” Alice is insistent throwing her hands out for emphasis.

“Yeah,” she unfolds her arms and waves her hand slapping the air away, “Chemo, radiation.”

“So?” Alice tries to sound brighter.

“Some choice!” June cries out.

“It might …” she tries to inject some hope.

“Six months without, a year with…”

“But it might be more.”

“Along with the extra six months goes…”

“What…”

“More misery,” she hits the table with her hand; the espresso cup jangles on the saucer.

“Oh my God!” says Alice softly, almost a whisper. She looks down then reaches over and clasps June’s hand, closes her eyes, shakes her head then opens her eyes, looks around and remarks, “You know it’s dark in here.” She gets up and flips on the light. The fluorescents flicker on, casting a harsh light over the room. Each of them stares into their own cup.

The phone rings and June wipes her hands on her napkin, pushes her chair back to get up then whispers, “I can’t,” and nods to Alice to answer it.

Alice stands up takes a deep breath and reaches over for the phone, “Hello.”

“Hello?”

“Oh Ray, its me, Alice.”
            “Oh? What? June left a…”

“Yes I know, she’s right…” and hands the phone to June.

June picks it up and begins crying so hard she can’t speak, then hands the phone back to Alice .

They both can hear Ray calling through the phone, “What’s wrong?! June, what happened? Are you okay? June?” Ray feels as if he’s driven up to his house only to find fire trucks and police cars blocking the street so he can’t get through or find out what happened.

Alice takes the phone, “Ray,” her heart is racing but she tries to calm her voice, “June has had some bad news,” she takes a deep breath, “I think you’d better come home.”

“Oh my God, what happened—the biopsy came back cancer?” He combs through his hair with his fingers.

“Ray, just…just come home,” Alice leans against the kitchen counter, puts her hand over her eyes, “June needs you.”

Alice looks at June, who nods that she has calmed down enough to talk.

“Ray?”

“June! What…”

“The doctor called…” She stops to catch her breath, “It’s cancer, Ray,” she blurts out, “I have lung cancer.”

“Oh God,” she can’t see him biting his lip. He takes a deep breath and struggling to sound calm, says,  “June, I’ll be right home.”

She weeps again, wipes her eyes, pleads softly, “Yes, Ray, just come home, please.”

 “Of course, I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Alice takes the phone from her, “I’ll stay until you can get here. Take it easy driving, okay?”

June paces up and down the kitchen taking deep breaths, then stops and absentmindedly keeps busy by closing drawers and putting the coffee maker and toaster in their places. Alice sits folding and unfolding her napkin. Suddenly June stops pacing and grabs Alice by the shoulders, eyes wild, “Will you look after my kids?”

“Of course,” but then trying to sound more upbeat more for herself than for June, Alice adds, “It may not be so…”

“So what?” June challenges her.

“You know, so bad…” Alice says lowering her voice in retreat.

“So bad? Goddamn it, it can’t be worse!”

“June, it’s too early for that kind of talk.”

June gives her an annoyed look and says, “Don’t bullshit me and don’t make nice; it is that…”

“Okay, okay,” Alice nods.

“That bad.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll,” she sighs, “look after them.”

June suddenly laughs, “But don’t let Ray get married too soon…”

Alice looks at her like she can’t take in what June has said.

“And forgodsake don’t introduce him to any bimbos with big boobs and a flat stomach.” Alice doesn’t have the heart to engage in any banter, thinks of her ex-husband, “Like Frank slept with.”

A half hour later, Ray comes in, “June, I’m here,” and goes into the kitchen, puts his arms around his wife and holds her. At first Alice looks at them for a few seconds but then feels awkward that she is intruding on a private moment so she goes into the living room where she has thrown her coat down. She puts it on slowly to give them more time then quietly goes back into the kitchen. Ray still has his arms around June who looks up when she hears Alice , and holds out her hand to take Alice ’s. Alice takes it and kisses her fingers, leans over gives June a kiss, then Ray. “I’ll call later,” she says. Then looking more directly at them, “Call me any time day or night…don’t think twice about it.”

 Driving home Alice thinks of June, then Ray and their kids and what she is going through. She stops at a light thinks, “This should have happened to Frank. All those years he ran around with other women before I realized….” Her lips are set hard and tight together in anger over the sting of humiliation and thinks, “If he’d only gotten lung cancer, I’d be a rich widow and not a struggling single mother. Bastard!” The light changes.

That night Alice gets into bed, clicks on the TV thinking, I need a little humor. Jay Leno is in his monologue something about the President’s ears or his dog’s ears or dog eared pages or whatever and she can’t pay attention, she clicks it off and turns off the light.

In her dream she imagines she is driving early in the morning to the hospital to see her daughter who has just had her first child. She can see herself with gray hair now; she’s turned the heater up high; the car is warm and she feels cozy. She dreams she is practicing, “Hush little baby don’t you cry, Momma’s gonna buy you…” and then, “Five little ducks went out to play…” She is smiling and laughing not aware that the snow that had melted the previous afternoon has frozen over night leaving a layer of black ice over the road. She dreams that she can’t steer on the ice, that she has no control over the car,  aware that at any moment she may slide into one of the large oaks on either side of the narrow road, which winds down the hill. In her dream that half-second of anticipation, that half-second of horror during which she is aware that something awful may occur, seems to last for hours. She dreams that not only can’t she steer but the car will turn over, slide down the hill, gain speed and hit a tree with enough force to make it explode. She dreams that the car will slide to the side of the road and stop dead in the mud and she will laugh giddily at the death she has averted. She dreams that her car will spin out and that a truck coming up the hill will hit her in the driver’s door crushing her. She wakes up, wet with sweat and sits up in bed trembling. She turns on the light, looks at her arms, touches her chest with her hands, swings her legs over the side of the bed, feels the floor under her feet, puts up her hands to feel her face, then smiles and weeps.