In bed once again she recaptured sleep as the now gentle falling rain outside soothed her. But after the turmoil and horror of the last dream, she hoped she’d be allowed to rest in peace at least for the rest of the night. She’d had enough. And she was allowed that...a deep sleep until the sun shone brightly into her windows and her cats forced her to rise and feed them.

  Chapter 7

  SILAS HAD COMPLETED his daily stroll around town and up and down the country roads between Spookie and his house. He knew it was getting late and his wife, Violet, was most likely wondering where he’d been for so long. But walking, getting out of the house, away from their problems was the only way he could make it through the day sometimes. He was so angry. Angry at the world, at the universe...at God. This wasn’t what his and Violet’s golden years were supposed to have been like. Poverty and illness. Unpaid bills, endless doctors, tests and hospitals. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair.

  He’d been battling bone cancer for over two years which had metastasized and spread to other organs and then his poor wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. How did something like that happen? They were in their eighties and here they were both fighting cancer at the same time...what were the odds? It seemed to him lately that everyone in the world had cancer. He, or now his wife, would go in for a radiation or a chemo treatment and there’d be rooms full of sorrowful-faced people waiting their turn with the machines or the intravenous poison which would be hung besides them, tubes snaking from their ports to the bottles. He’d feel so sorry for them and then, seeing his wife’s ravished face and feeling the pain beneath his own flesh when he moved, he’d remember that, oh yeah, both of them were among those unfortunate ones. People with cancer.

  For a moment frozen in his mind, he relived the shock of first being told he had stage three bone cancer, and then just a few months ago, when his beloved wife was informed she had stage four breast cancer. The whole last year had been a nightmare he couldn’t seem to wake up from. No one knows how hard it will hit a person until they are the ones sitting before a surgeon who says nonchalantly, “I’m so sorry...you do have cancer. Here,” as the surgical professional hands over a stack of business cards with hand-written dates on them, “I want you to see this doctor, a medical oncologist, and then the radiologist. The appointments have already been made for you and we will also keep your primary doctor in the loop as we proceed with treatments. I would recommend we operate within the next twenty to thirty days because that initial mass in your lower chest needs to be dealt with first and taken out. It’ll be tricky because it’s spread so far already and, we fear, it might have progressed into the bones. After you have blood tests, a chest ex-ray, an MRI, a CT scan and a biopsy–we’ve also arranged appointments for those within the next week or two–I’ll set the surgery date.”

  First you don’t want to believe it, then you get infuriated and you think: “Oh, I don’t have cancer. I don’t feel sick. They’re lying to me. They only want my insurance money.” Because, oh, it is unbelievably expensive having cancer, he and his wife had swiftly discovered. Even with having Medicare and supplementary coverage, the many specialist visits’ co-payments alone added up faster than ants in an ant hill. How did they expect old folks on Medicare to pay those exorbitant sums? Oh sure there was a cap on out-of-pocket expenses but there were an awful lot of exceptions that didn’t count to it and the out-of-pocket reset every January 1st. He’d been diagnosed in November, the bills started accruing right off the bat, and by the end of December the out-of-pocket was restarted for the next year. Most old folks weren’t wealthy; he and his wife weren’t wealthy. He’d lost count a long time ago how much his cancer had cost them so far and the bills, just as unexplainable and undecipherable, for himself or his wife were waiting now most days in their mailbox and covered their kitchen table. They were Greek to him. He’d stopped opening the bills months ago. And his wife had been too ill as she went through a third round of chemo to care about anything other than staying out of the bathroom where she’d thrown up over and over. She spent most of her days now in bed, slipping in and out of sleep, weakly frail and always in pain even with the morphine the doctors were giving her. They were supposed to be helping her, instead they were killing her slowly. He hated them! All of them. He didn’t care if he was in agony twenty-four seven, but not his sweet Violet. She didn’t deserve to suffer so much and she was...suffering. She’d accepted extra rounds of radiation but now refused to have another round of chemotherapy after this one was done. Smart move. That chemo only made a person sicker no matter what the doctors said. He knew. He’d had a course or two and it hadn’t gone well. He was so ill for so long he’d wished he was dead and that was no way to live. So he’d had enough of that. They both had.

  “You know one of the worst things about having breast cancer,” she’d confided to him in her soft voice after she’d had her twentieth radiation treatment, “is the indignity of it all. You’re paraded around from one office to another in this skimpy hospital gown that’s open in the front and all these doctors and their technicians are touching, examining and seeing your naked breasts. Not an easy thing to tolerate for an old church woman who’s been modest all her life. Then you’re flopped on this table for the treatments and your saggy breasts are hanging out bare for all to see; marked up in bright blue lines like a human tic-tac-toe game. It’s all so undignified.” And Violet was nothing if not dignified and had been all during their long fifty-year marriage and no doubt throughout her life. She had a gentle but strong heart and was a loving, good woman. A modest woman. He’d felt her embarrassment because he’d felt the same during many of his medical procedures, his old wrinkled body exposed for all to see. A person gave up all dignity once they had cancer.

  He stared up at the sun, shaded his eyes with his hand, and noticed the orb was on its way towards the trees on the horizon. It was later than he’d thought. The guilt at leaving his wife alone longer than he should have, as it sometimes did, plagued him. But he told himself she was sleeping and hadn’t missed him. It was a lie he told himself often. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Oh, he was a bad man.

  Stumbling up the sidewalk lined in tall grass, he was home. Their house was in disrepair, it cried for fresh paint, some of the windows were cracked and the yard was a weed patch. It was a large frame built structure, creaky old and full of many high-ceilinged rooms. Violet and he had loved their house all the years they’d lived there and had always taken such good care of it, until now. There was a time he never would have let their home fall into such shabby condition but, as with most of his life, he’d let it slip away inch by inch...like his wife’s life force was slipping away.

  He hurried his steps, suddenly terrified he’d find his Violet, the woman he loved more than anything else in the world, lifeless in her bed. What would he do if he discovered her dead? Oh, no. He shouldn’t have been gone so long, he berated himself. He shouldn’t have been so selfish. As he shoved open the door and rushed inside, which is when the agony hit him, bringing him to his knees right inside the house on the living room rug. The pain was so fierce, so relentless for the minutes it entrapped him as he writhed on the rug, he must have passed out. When next his eyes opened the day had passed into night and the living room was dark. Some of his doctors wanted him to go to one of those rehabilitation places or a nursing home where he could be better cared for, but he wouldn’t leave Violet. And if he left they’d put her in hospice somewhere else. They wouldn’t be together and that was unacceptable. They wanted to end their lives as they’d lived them, together. There was no way they were taking her away from him.

  With great difficulty, from memory, he dragged his useless body, now all bones and thinly stretched skin, to the table lamp and switched its feeble light on. Then, hushing his moans so as not to scare his wife, he crawled to her bedroom in the next room and up to her bed. The room was shadowy but he was fearful of turning on the bedside light for what he might see.

  The body on the bed was so quiet, unmoving. He pulled himself up against the mattress and little by little extended a trembling hand until it touched something soft, warm and breathing. He exhaled a muffled sigh of relief. She was still alive. Still with him. He wasn’t alone.

  “Silas?” A tender voice spoke, a voice he knew well and his heart resumed beating. “Is that you, honey?”

  He clicked the light on. He’d put a dimmer bulb in it weeks ago when she asked him to. The brighter watts hurt her eyes. He took the fragile, aged-spotted hand in his and inched himself up on the edge of the bed. “It’s me, sweetheart. I’m so sorry to be so late. I lost track of time. It was so beautiful a day.”

  “It’s all right, Silas. I’ve been sleeping. I didn’t even know night had come. I didn’t even miss you.”

  Of course he didn’t believe her but it was the game they played between themselves. He abandoned her at times and she pretended it was no big thing. She was like that, always had been. He’d been a runner all their marriage. Run here, run there. I’m just going out for a pack of cigarettes, honey. Or I’m going to get gas in the car, be right back. Of course he rarely was, right back. He’d disappear for hours, lollygagging here or there, wasting time, or talking to friends or strangers for hours while she waited patiently at home for him. She’d always been so understanding, forgiving. So loving. Then there’d been his temper. He’d spent his life being an angry, argumentative son-of-a-—-—but she had been able to calm him, keep him from exploding, hurting or killing someone who had riled him, and ruining his life. Her love had saved him so many times. What would he do without her? He truly didn’t know.

  “Are you hungry, sweetheart? Can I make you a snack or some supper? Some warm milk?”

  She tried to sit up but couldn’t make it and fell back down again. The face on the pillow gazed up at him with shadowed eyes and translucent skin. She’d lost so much weight in the last month the eyes in her sweet face seemed huge. Once she’d been a dark-haired beauty with wide blue eyes and skin as white as alabaster. She’d been smart, a book and an animal lover. She used to like solving crossword puzzles and drinking chocolate malts he’d go out and bring back for her. Her career had been a nurse, and she’d been an excellent one, so she knew what his illness was doing to him and her illness to her. She knew too much. She smiled at him. “Maybe some soup? I’d love a bowl of chicken soup.”

  “Then soup it is, my love. We’ll both have soup and there are a couple of biscuits from last night left in the refrigerator I can warm up and butter for us as well. I won’t be long.” He fought to come to his feet without crying out again in pain. It was agony. Get a hold of yourself, old man. Stop whimpering. Put that smile back on your face. For he couldn’t let her see how ill he was. When he was upright, his cries imprisoned in his throat, he hobbled from the room and, leaning against the wall in the hallway, he caught his breath and after he resumed his trip to the kitchen. One shuffling step at a time; holding onto the wall so he wouldn’t fall in the hallway.

  Tomorrow Violet had another radiation session and therapy at that big fancy hospital fifty miles away where her specialist was and he prayed the car would get them to the hospital and back. It was an old car, a nineteen ninety three Chevrolet. It had been acting up lately and sometimes he had trouble starting it. The paint was rusting and the tires were bald. That’s why he walked everywhere he could and didn’t use the car anymore except for their hospital or doctor visits, saving it for the necessary trips. They did their shopping or any other essential errands on the way to the hospital or on the return trips.

  He made the soup and the biscuits and carried the tray into his wife’s room. He fed her in between feeding himself, because she was too weak to feed herself, and they talked in whispers about happier days.

  “Remember that trip we took to Mackinac Island in nineteen eighty-three?” his wife asked. “We rode around the island on our bicycles and we came upon that flock of seagulls by the water? We threw stale bread at them and had them eating out of our hands? We laughed and laughed. When the bread was gone we had jump back on our bikes and ride away because they wouldn’t stop flying at us, begging for more? Remember how beautiful they were as they rose into the sky?”

  “I remember, sweetheart.” He gently squeezed her hand then gave her another spoonful of soup. “You loved the island, the people, and the lake around it. I liked that there were no cars, just horses. And that Grand Hotel was magnificent. So huge. The flowers around it so beautiful.”

  “It was magnificent, wasn’t it?” she murmured. “We strolled through the hotel’s hallways and had that exquisite buffet in the main dining room overlooking the water. I love that island.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I wish we could go back there now and ride in one of those carriages. I wish we could walk down its main street and stop in the quaint little shops. Buy some more of that heavenly fudge they sell. You know, I can still almost taste it. Silas, oh, how I wish we could go back...go back in time and do it all over again.”

  Her voice sounded so painfully wistful he had to ask, “To the island?”

  “No,” and now her voice sounded on the verge of tears, “I wish we could go back in time. When we were young, strong and healthy. Go back to nineteen eighty-three and do it all over again. Our life.”

  “I do, too, honey. I do, too.” For a moment Silas was overwhelmed with sadness that had become all too familiar of late. The past was gone. Their youth was gone. All that awaited them was more illness, pain and death. They’d lived their lives and now there were no more doors to go through. He felt like crying but, as always, fought it off. He had to stay strong for Violet.

  Then he crept into bed with her, turned on the television, and before the ten o’clock news he fell asleep beside her. That’s the way it was with them these days. They fell asleep early and slept late. That’s what an old person did when they had cancer.

  Chapter 8

  FRIDAY. ABIGAIL WAS happy it was the Friday. Laura came home most weekends from college and this was one of them. Going into the IGA she was mentally thinking of what she had to buy to make Laura’s favorite meal and when she’d have to start it so it’d be ready when her daughter arrived. For supper she was going to make a pot roast with all the sides, potatoes, corn and carrots, a meal her daughter was especially fond of. Perhaps a store bought chocolate cream pie for dessert? And on Sunday, she could send a container of the leftovers back to school with the girl. And that afternoon before Laura would drive back to college, Abigail decided she’d make a sumptuous brunch of waffles and fruit toppings. Laura loved them covered in cherries and whipped cream.

  As she shopped, she thought about the Mexican mural she was nearly halfway done with and smiled. It was looking pretty good, she must say so herself, and she was proud of it. She couldn’t wait to show it to Laura, who was becoming even a better artist than she was. Laura loved the art college she was attending and was blossoming into quite an independent young lady. Abigail couldn’t wait to see her. Nick and Frank would be happy she was home, as well. Nick missed his sister though he’d never admit it. Teenage boys kept all that sappy stuff to themselves.

  She was leaving the store, getting ready to slip into her car after putting the groceries in the trunk, when she saw Samantha hurrying over to her.

  “What, you haven’t had that baby yet?” Abigail exclaimed in a friendly tone, giving the other woman a hug. Pregnant women needed hugs, she thought. Hugs comforted anyone whose life was about to change so drastically and there were few things more changing than having a baby, fostering or adopting one, or two.

  Samantha sighed and leaned against Abigail’s car. She patted her huge stomach. “Nope, this alien creature in my humongous belly is never going to come out. Never.” Then she grinned. “I’m due in a few weeks and I can’t wait. I’m sick of being fat and grumpy. I want my figure and my life back. You know I wake up ten times a night just to pee and some mornings the heartburn is terrible.”

  “Heartburn means the baby will have a mop of hair. It’ll probably be bright red like yours.” Abigail ushered her friend around to the passenger side and opened the door. “Sit down, oh-so-pregnant lady, for a minute or two while we catch up. Your face is flushed and you look like you’re going to faint.”

  Samantha slid into the seat and Abigail got in on the driver’s side. The day was the hottest of the spring so far. For the first time it felt almost like summer.

  “I just might faint,” Samantha complained, her head resting against the seat as she fanned herself with a piece of paper. It looked like a bill of some sort. “It’s so hot today.”

  “That it is. Gonna get hotter, too. It’s only April.”

  “I know, I know. And I don’t look forward to this last segment of my pregnancy. I hate hot weather to begin with and to be like this,” the hand with the fan languidly waved over her belly, “in hot weather is even worse. Yuck. I just pray the baby comes on time and not...late. I have places to go and things to do.”

  “You look tired, Samantha. You haven’t been overdoing it, have you?”

  Samantha sent her a sarcastic smirk and intoned flatly, “No.” Then grinned.

  “Really? Frank says you’re at the newspaper every day working way too hard. Isn’t it about time you take off and rest up? Do you have the baby’s room ready for him yet?”

  Samantha and her husband had known the child she was carrying was a boy for months and they were happy over that. “Boy first and then a girl and I’m done.”

  “What happens if you have a second boy?” Abigail couldn’t help but voice.

  “Well, still that will be it for me. I already told Kent that two kids are my limit. There are so many more things I need to do in life. Oh, I want it all. A family, a loving husband and a career. I think two children would be manageable, but no more than two.”

 

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