The Return of Jonah Gray Read online

  Now she sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve got loopers,” she said.

  I swam over and propped my elbows on the pool’s edge. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” I admitted.

  “They’re an evil sort of worm. At least, I think that’s a looper. I keep meaning to bring one to the nursery, but with the anniversary party and then your father’s ankle and—well, maybe this is not the year for broccoli after all.” She shook her head sadly, but remained where she was, bent over her wan little plants, picking bugs off one by one. A thankless task, I thought, before swimming away.

  My mother de-looped for a while longer, then carefully took off her gardening gloves and rose to her feet. She wiped the dirt from her lap, turned around and looked at us. I was still in the pool with the boys. Lori was sprawled across a towel, reading a magazine. Kurt remained in the lounge chair, brooding.

  “I’m so glad you could come over this morning. I have to tell you something,” my mother said. We all watched her, waiting. “Your father isn’t well.”

  “It’s not the flu, is it?” I asked.

  “He’s in the hospital,” she said.

  This was how I would find out, wearing a bathing suit, my fingers pruned and pale from the water, the sting of chlorine in my eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” Kurt asked.

  “Daddy’s sick?” Eddie asked, looking at Kurt.

  “Not me, honey. Grandpa is. My father.”

  “Grandpa’s sick?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “The cancer came back,” my mother said. “It’s in his brain now. Dr. Fisher believes he might have six months.”

  “Six months?” Kurt asked.

  “Left,” my mother said.

  “What’s in six months?” I heard Jackie whisper.

  “Shh,” Lori said. “Just listen.”

  “Is that why we’re here?” I asked. I wished I were out of the pool, or at least wearing a shirt. It seemed as if I should have been wearing clothes, serious clothes, at such a moment. But I was frozen there.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Kurt asked.

  “I just did,” my mother said.

  “Six months?” I repeated. “Are they sure? Can they be so sure?”

  Anyone who has ever had a relative in remission lives in fear of this sort of news. The phone call from the doctor’s office. The routine blood test, sure-it’s-nothing, we’ll-know-on-Monday call that comes in around lunchtime, as if it’s an animate thing that knows just how to kill an appetite. I remember when we found out the first time. My father had had a fever that nagged on too long. Stage-three lymphoma, as it turned out.

  But in a way, that initial announcement wasn’t the worst because my family was so cosseted in denial. It was a wrong number, a mislabeled file, or else it was a technician’s mistake, not cancer at all. It takes time for that stuff to sink in.

  One night in January of that same year, I had found my father passed out on the floor of the hallway bathroom, vomit half in the bowl, half out. I thought we’d lost him, and only then did it occur to me that we might. Chemotherapy is literally a mix of solvents, like alcohol. After a time, it will wear away the most stubborn lacquer of denial, whether you’re the one taking bitter medicine or your father is.

  Only, he had beaten it. He had knocked those angry, replicating cells from his lymph system, and what the chemo didn’t dissolve, a surgeon pulled out, leaving my father with fewer lymph nodes but a body no longer at war with itself.

  I don’t know why I had assumed that it wouldn’t return. I think I figured he was so difficult to get along with, the cancer would eventually move on to a more amenable host.

  “When did you find out?” Kurt asked.

  My father, it seemed, had begun to lose his color vision about a month earlier. My mother said that he thought it was just a side effect.

  “Of what?” I asked. “He hasn’t been on chemo for four months.”

  “Don’t be mad,” she said. “It wasn’t until it was nearly gone that he really noticed. And of course, he’s been having those headaches.”

  “What headaches?”

  “He didn’t mention them?”

  “What headaches?” I asked again, though the answer didn’t matter. I thought of the deviled eggs he’d found too pale, the stumbling, his fall at the anniversary party, his irrational anger. So there had been headaches, too. It didn’t change anything.

  The phone rang.

  “I’d better get that,” my mother said.

  “Just let it go,” I said.

  “It might be the hospital.” She stepped inside the house. “He should be coming out of surgery soon.”

  “He’s in surgery?” I called after her. I turned to Kurt. “Did you know about any of this?”

  He shook his head. “I should have. I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s brain cancer,” I said. “Why do you think you would have been able to see it?”

  “I can’t believe you’re swimming at a time like this,” he snapped.

  “Sasha,” my mother called. “It’s for you.” She stood at the sliding door with the receiver in her hand.

  “Who is it?” I asked, but she just shrugged. I pulled myself out of the pool and padded over to her.

  “Aren’t you going to dry off first?” my mother asked.

  I grabbed a ratty towel from the nearest chair and patted my legs. “Surgery?” I repeated.

  My mother handed me the phone. “Say you’re in the middle of something,” she said.

  “I told you not to answer it,” I said. “Hello?” I pulled the line tight and stood just outside the sliding doors. The last thing I needed was a lecture from my mother about wet carpet.

  “Sasha, it’s Ellen Maselin. Your parents’ neighbor?” she said.

  I covered the receiver and whispered to my mother. “Ellen Maselin.”

  “Why is she calling you?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t remember the last time I had said more than hello to Ellen Maselin. I barely knew the woman.

  “Of course, Ellen. How are you?” I asked.

  “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” she said.

  I looked around the patio. Everyone was staring at me. “It’s not great,” I said.

  “I won’t keep you,” she said. “I just called to say…well, you’ve seen my garden, haven’t you?”

  “I guess.” I passed the Maselin’s front yard whenever I visited my parents. Was the Maselin house the one with the flowers that reminded me of old ladies’ swim caps? I thought my mother had called them hydrangeas.

  “Well, I’m a bit of a fanatic. Oh, you know, I like to keep up, when and where I can. I read. I take courses. I even use the Internet.”

  “Okay,” I said, not sure where she was going.

  “What does she want?” my mother whispered.

  I waved her off. I couldn’t explain what I was doing on the phone, in my bathing suit, numb from the news of my father’s terminal diagnosis.

  “I’ll cut to the chase. I understand that one of your audits this year is a man named Jonah Gray,” she said.

  My mind whizzed to a stop. Had I heard her correctly? “Jonah Gray?” I repeated.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Kurt muttered. “Not that guy.”

  “Who’s Jonah Gray?” my mother asked. “Do I know him?”

  “Let me just say,” Ellen went on, “neighbor to neighbor, that I do hope you’ll take it easy on him. He’s a remarkable gardener. And so generous with his time and his advice.”

  In the August sun, I felt myself growing cold. The water from my bathing suit dripped down my legs, like insects racing across my skin. I wanted to know more about my father, not about the merits of the married Mr. Gray. Not just then, in any case.

  “Mrs. Maselin,” I managed to say. “You realize that I can’t discuss such matters with anyone but the person being audited. It’s a privacy issue.” It wasn’t exactly true—especially with Jonah’s o
wn open discussion of the audit. But it would get me off the phone more quickly.

  “Oh, of course,” Ellen said. “I just thought, since Ian mentioned that he saw your car, I thought I’d give a call.”

  “I’m going to have to go now,” I said. “You take care.”

  “You, too. Hi to your parents for me.”

  “Sure,” I said and stepped inside to hang up the phone.

  “What was that about?” my mother called. “Try not to drip on the carpet.”

  “When can we see Dad?” I asked.

  The front door slammed and a few seconds later Blake loped around the corner, twirling a Popsicle stick. Blake was the tallest of us Gardners, taller than my father by age thirteen, and now, at fifteen, just beginning to grow out of gangly.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, my mother squeezed past me and planted herself between Blake and the door to the patio. “Your sister came to help with the pool cover,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Is that Kurt and the boys?” Blake asked, craning his neck to see past her.

  “I hope you’re not ruining your appetite with Popsicles,” my mother said.

  Blake frowned. “They’re, like, thirty calories each,” he said.

  “Why does he know the calories in a Popsicle?” I asked my mom.

  My mother shrugged.

  Eddie ran inside just then and barreled into Blake. “Uncle Blake!” he shrieked.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Blake said, lifting him up.

  I turned to my mother. “I take it you haven’t told him about Dad?” I whispered.

  She took a deep breath. “We didn’t want to worry him before we knew more.”

  “You know more now,” I said.

  “Don’t do this, Sasha,” my mother said. “Your father and I are his parents. We decide. You’re his sister.”

  It struck me that my uncle had said the same thing to me at the anniversary party. Only about Marcus. Which reminded me that I still hadn’t called Ed to apologize for missing dinner.

  “Grandpa’s sick,” Eddie said, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear him clearly. “Six months.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Blake asked. He looked from Eddie to me and my mother.

  “He’s got six months,” Eddie said. “That’s half a year.”

  “Shouldn’t we be getting ready to go to the hospital?” Kurt called from the patio. Lori had Jackie out of the pool and dried off.

  Blake carefully lowered Eddie to the ground. He looked at my mother. “What’s going on? Is it true?”

  “It is true,” my mother said.

  “So why is Eddie telling me about this? Why didn’t you tell me? Apparently you invited Sasha and Kurt over to tell them, but you couldn’t even wait for me to get home? What the hell?”

  “Your father and I didn’t want you to worry,” my mother said.

  Blake looked exasperated. “But you could tell a three-year-old?”

  “It just kind of worked out that way,” I said.

  “Jackie knows, too,” Eddie said proudly.

  Blake shook his head. “You know, sometimes I feel like I’m not fully a part of this family.”

  “Don’t say that,” my mother said sadly. “You’re a very important part.”

  The lot of us crammed into my father’s car. My mother’s usual car was a late-model luxury sedan. It didn’t matter which make or model; she never kept a car long enough to grow attached. She’d pick out something on a one-year lease, then trade it in a year later for whatever was newer and more expensive. As luck would have it, her lease had expired earlier that week, and news of my father’s recurrence had trumped her car-shopping plans, so she’d turned in her used car without bringing home another.

  At the other automotive extreme sat my father’s ancient Mercedes. For years, he had driven the same diesel station wagon we referred to as “the Truckster.” Butter-colored and always smelling slightly of gas, the Truckster seemed to run on knocks and shudders.

  “Do you want me to drive?” I asked her, when we were out in the driveway.

  “Is that thing even safe?” Kurt asked.

  “I’ve already got the car seats in there for the boys,” my mother said. “Get in and let’s go.”

  Uncle Ed was already at the hospital, talking with Dr. Fisher, as the rest of us swarmed into my father’s oncologist’s office. We stared at them expectantly.

  “I told them,” my mother said.

  “Actually, she told the rest of them, and Eddie told me. Eddie is five,” Blake snapped.

  “A lot can change,” Dr. Fisher said. “We don’t know everything about cancer. We’re learning more all the time.”

  “You said the same thing the first time,” I said. “Can’t you give us any specifics?”

  “Sasha, be polite,” my mother said.

  Dr. Fisher said that my father’s surgery had gone as smoothly as brain surgery goes. The surgeon had shaved his head and made quiet incisions and brief explorations, then sewn him up again. When we arrived, he was still unconscious but recuperating.

  “Jacob’s metastasis is relatively aggressive,” Dr. Fisher said. “I’m recommending a course of radiation to start immediately. Chemo will follow. But the brain is difficult.”

  “I want him to get the best care possible,” my mother said.

  “Of course,” Dr. Fisher said.

  “He wants to be at home, in his own home. He’s going to be cared for at home.”

  I wanted her to stop saying home. You repeat a word too many times and it loses its context. I was already unsure what home meant.

  “You’re going to need help taking care of him,” Ed said.

  “Already?” I asked. “Is it that bad?”

  Dr. Fisher rooted around a pile of papers on his desk, then handed us all copies of a brochure. “This is that twenty-four-hour home-nursing service I mentioned before,” he said to my mother. “They’re excellent. It’s likely that his sensory and motor skills will deteriorate first. That’s just the nature of where the lesions are. That’s why we want to start the radiation as soon as possible.”

  “Can I sign up now?” my mother asked.

  “Give it some thought. Talk it over. They’re not cheap,” Dr. Fisher said.

  “Cost doesn’t matter. I want Jacob to have the best.”

  “Would you excuse me, please?” Uncle Ed said. He stood and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” my mother asked, but he didn’t answer her.

  I turned to Dr. Fisher. “There must be examples of people beating this.”

  “People beat every kind of cancer,” he said.

  “Okay then,” I said. “I don’t see why we’re not focusing on that.”

  “But at your father’s stage…well, it would be statistically remarkable.”

  “Oh, damn,” my mother murmured.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I forgot your father’s health care folder. He wanted me to give it to Ed. Sasha, will you take your father’s car and go get it?”

  “It’s a folder?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Marked Health Care. It’s probably in your father’s study.”

  With car keys in hand, I left Dr. Fisher’s office and shuffled down the hospital hallway. I could barely remember when the oncology department was unfamiliar territory. I’d grown to know its twists and turns, where the closest bathrooms were, where the soda machine was, the quickest route to the cafeteria. I hated that I knew it so well, and that I would now have the opportunity to get reacquainted.

  At the end of the hall, I saw Uncle Ed talking with a man I didn’t recognize. He could have been anyone—patient or the family member of a patient or a colleague. Maybe he was the surgeon who’d just peered into my father’s brain. Maybe he would know something more specific.

  As I headed toward them, Ed looked up, then nodded. The man—I could see that he was younger than Ed,
maybe even younger than I was—turned to look at me. Then he shook Ed’s hand and walked off. He had disappeared around a corner by the time I reached Ed’s side.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  But Ed didn’t answer. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Still with Dr. Fisher,” I said. “I’m headed back home to get Dad’s health-care file for you.”

  “Ah, right. Jacob mentioned that. Thanks.”

  “Do you have any idea when Dad will wake up?” I asked him.

  “Apparently, he just did. He’s still groggy, but I’m sure he’ll want to see you when you get back,” he said. “Sasha,” Ed began.

  “I know,” I cut in. “I totally spaced on dinner last week. I was having the worst day at work. A guy I was auditing—”

  “I’d like to try again,” Ed said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d like to bring Marcus around again. For dinner.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s just dinner,” Ed said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s family. If it was a good idea before this news about your father, it’s got to be even more important now.”

  “Did you ask Mom?”

  “Just you and me and Marcus. Nothing fancy. How’s this week. Say, Wednesday?”

  “Soon. Wednesday seems really soon,” I said, but I didn’t have the energy to fight him. “Sure, okay,” I agreed.

  “I think you’re going to like him,” Ed said.

  “Sasha?” It was my mother, hollering down the hall from Dr. Fisher’s office.

  “Over here,” Ed called, waving.

  She hurried over. “You haven’t left yet. Good,” she said. “Lori asked whether you could bring Eddie with you. He doesn’t like the hospital. You know how five-year-olds are.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Do me a favor and also bring your father’s insurance card back, when you come. It’s in that folder where he keeps all his policy information. I want to get him signed up for that in-home service.”