CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DEAN
March 23
“YOU OKAY?”
The minute the question escapes my mouth, I want to bite it back. But Liv only nods, grasping the porch railing as she comes up the steps. The fifth round of chemo has hit her especially hard—maybe because of the build-up of drugs in her system, or her increasing weakness.
In addition to the chemo infusions, there are check-ups, blood tests, plans for radiation, counselor and nutritionist appointments, shots, and the seething fear that every ache Liv feels, every headache or bone pain, could mean something worse than a side-effect. It could mean that the cancer has taken root in another part of her body.
At this afternoon’s appointment, the results of a blood test didn’t prompt Dr. Anderson to hospitalize her, despite the fact that she struggled to make it to his office. He only prescribed some new medicine for nausea, since none of the previous ones have worked well. For the hundredth time, I had to smother my urge to demand that the doctor do more.
I help Liv off with her jacket before she starts up to the bedroom. She gets halfway up the stairs, then sinks down onto a step to catch her breath. Her skin is white, her eyes glassy, her breathing too fast. She bends forward, clutching her stomach. Beads of perspiration dot her forehead.
My chest knots painfully. I reach to pick her up. She shakes her head.
“I can do it, Dean.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“I will.” She waves her hand, her chin setting with stubbornness. “Go away. I get a little tired of you hovering all the time.”
I bite back the retort that I hover because she has dizzy spells and panic attacks that render her incapable of moving. What if she faints or falls or—
“Dean. Go.”
A raw feeling of helplessness surges inside me. I back down the stairs, suddenly hating this big house with all the staircases and floors, and the space that makes it necessary for us to text each other when we’re in different rooms.
I stop around the corner in the foyer, where at least I can hear her if she calls. My fists clench and unclench with impatience. I wait for what feels like an interminably long time before I return.
Liv is no longer sitting on the stairs, which is a relief since that means she made it up okay. I stop in the bedroom doorway. Fear lashes through me.
Liv is on her hands and knees, halfway between the bed and the bathroom, her face shiny with sweat and tears. Her back arches with a violent spasm of heaves. Vomit spills onto the carpet.
“Oh, Jesus, Liv…”
I rush to grab hold of her, haul her upright. She shakes her head, ineffectually pushing me away.
“Go away,” she rasps, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Liv…”
She manages to yank herself from my grip, retching with another spasm as she crawls toward the bathroom.
“Liv, let me help you.” Panic burns in my chest.
“No!” She makes it to the bathroom, half closing the door behind her.
I shove it open, grabbing a hand towel and dampening it with cold water. Liv leans over the toilet, heaving so violently that her scarf slips off her head.
“Liv, please.” I get to my knees beside her and put the wet towel on the back of her neck. “I can…”
“Goddammit, Dean.” Tears spill from her eyes into the sweat on her cheeks. “Go away, please just go away.”
“Why won’t you let me help you?”
“I hate that you have to see me like this,” she cries.
For an instant, I can’t move. I pick up her scarf from the floor and push it into my pocket. She inhales and sits back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I’m not going away,” I tell her.
Liv looks at me, her eyes bloodshot.
“I’m not going away.” I move closer to her, putting my hand on her head. “I’m not leaving you. We’re in this together. We always have been. Every part of you, the best and the worst, belongs to me. I can take it. I’ll take anything for you.”
“I hate that I can’t even be a real wife to you anymore.”
My heart breaks a little. I run my hand over her shorn scalp.
“You’re real, beauty. There’s no one more real than you.”
She closes her eyes, then grabs for the toilet again. The sound of her vomiting echoes against the tile, a horrible retching like it’s tearing her insides out.
I tighten my grip on her and drag a few breaths into my lungs, battling the endless pain and fury that always lurk close to the surface. My heartbeat thunders in my ears. I force it to slow down, force my brain to focus.
Liv pulls herself away from the toilet, putting her hand on my shoulder as she gets to her feet. She’s sheet-white and shaking. I help her cross to the bed and get underneath the covers.
After she’s settled, I clean the vomit on the carpet and turn off the light. Liv’s body shudders with a sigh that makes her sound a thousand years old.
My vision blurs. I wait a few more minutes, until she shifts into the rhythm of sleep. Then I adjust the sheet around her, wipe the lingering sweat from her forehead, smooth my hand over her head.
I walk back downstairs just as the front door opens. The dark cloud lifts as Nicholas and Bella stomp in with a flurry of noise and chatter.
“Daddy,” Bella yells, flinging herself into my arms.
I hug her tightly, extending one arm toward Nicholas. I want to hold them both forever, but before long they’re squirming out of my arms and taking off their coats and hats.
“Hi, Dean.” Claire closes the door behind them. “I didn’t know you’d be home.”
“Yeah… uh, Liv had an appointment for a blood test, so I went with her.” I swallow hard and drag a hand across my eyes.
Claire looks at me perceptively and bends to help Bella take off her gloves.
“There’s a snack on the table for you,” she tells both children. “Go on in.”
Nicholas and Bella charge toward the sunroom. When they’re out of earshot, Claire moves closer to me.
“Not good, huh?” she asks in a low voice.
“The blood test came back okay,” I say. “But Liv is in pretty bad shape.”
“I’m sorry.” Claire shakes her head and sighs. “I’ll make some oatmeal for her, if she feels like eating.”
She starts to go into the kitchen, then pauses to look at me. “Dean, you don’t look as if you’re doing all that great yourself.”
I suppress a wave of irritation. What the fuck does it matter how I’m doing when my wife is so sick she has to crawl to the bathroom?
“I’m fine.” I walk down the remaining stairs and go into the sunroom to join the kids at the table.
They’re busy with a snack of cheddar crackers, grapes, and milk. Claire starts bustling around the kitchen, so I take the opportunity to sit alone with my children. I ask them about school, their friends, what they did at recess, and for a few minutes I’m able to suppress my bone-deep despair.
“Where’s Mommy?” Bella asks.
“Upstairs. She’s not feeling well, so she needed to take a nap.”
“I want to show her my bird sculpture.” Nicholas gets up and goes to rummage through his backpack. “It’s blue and red.”
“She’ll want to see it, but let’s wait until she wakes up.”
“I see her now,” Bella says, a faint whine in her tone.
Not only does Liv need to sleep undisturbed, but I don’t want the kids seeing her so sick. We’ve been honest with both of them about what’s happening and haven’t tried to hide the effects of chemo, but I still want to protect them from the worst of it.
My heart is brittle, on the verge of shattering. I reach out to straighten my daughter’s crooked pigtails. There’s a half-circle of milk on her upper lip. I wipe it off with a napkin.
“Look, Dad.” Nicholas comes over with his brightly colored, cloth bird sculpture, which is on a wooden stand and has real feathers sprouting from its wings.
“That is so cool.” I take the sculpture and study it from all angles. “How long did it take you to make?”
“We’ve been working on them all month.”
“I want Mommy,” Bella says, her voice more determined this time.
“Hey, Snowbell, why don’t you make a list of things you want to tell Mom when she wakes up?” I suggest.
She shakes her head, her pigtails waving. “I want to see her now.”
“You can’t see her right now, honey.”
Bella gives me the mutinous look that precedes the start of a tantrum. In two seconds, she jumps off the chair and darts toward the stairs. Knowing how fast she is, I run after her and catch her on the stairs, grabbing her arm to stop her.
“Bella, I told you you can’t see Mommy right now.”
“I want her.” Bella pulls at her arm, trying to free herself from my grip.
“I know you do, honey, but she’s really sick and needs to sleep.”
“Mommy!” She kicks at me and grabs the stair railing to hold her ground.
“Bella, stop it.” My tone hardens. I tug her arm to get her to come downstairs. “Come and finish your snack. You can see Mommy when she wakes up.”
“Now!” Bella yells, her face reddening with the effort of clinging to the stair railing.
Frustration slams into me. I latch my arms around her.
“Let go,” I order.
She shrieks and grips the railing harder. What little patience I have left snaps like a twig.
“Bella, enough!” The words come out on a roar that shocks me as much as it does her, but suddenly I can’t stop, and next thing I know I’m yelling. “We are leaving your mother alone. Let go and come back downstairs. Right now!”
My daughter lets go of the railing. And stares at me, her brown eyes filling with tears. Before the guilt can claw at me, I pick her up and carry her back to the sunroom. She sobs and wiggles free, then throws herself facedown on the sofa.
I stand there, my breathing too fast, my fists clenching and unclenching. Nicholas is still at the table, silent and watchful.
I drag my hands over my face. Guilt surges, raw and jagged.
“She’ll be fine,” Claire says gently.
“I… I’m going to get some work done in the garage,” I tell her. “Will you be here awhile?”
“Yes, until dinnertime.” She squeezes my arm, as if she’s trying to tell me that it’s okay.
But it’s not. It’s not okay that I lashed out at my daughter for wanting to see her mother. It’s not okay that my son is looking at me warily, like he’s afraid of what I might do next.
“Okay.” I grab my jacket from the back of a chair. “Listen for Liv. If she calls, text me.”
“Of course.”
I pull the jacket on and leave through the sliding glass door. The afternoon air feels good on my face. A few birds chirp in the trees that have already started to bud.
There’s a loose section of the back porch railing that needs to be fixed. It won’t keep me busy long enough, but at least it’s a job. I get the toolkit from the garage and stabilize and reattach the railing.
Then I walk around looking for something else to do. I pull a few weeds, fix some loose flagstones, clean out the birdbath, and rearrange the garden tools in the garage.
A stack of logs sits behind the garage, waiting to be split into firewood. I’d been postponing doing that until I could get a chainsaw, but suddenly it’s urgent that I get the job done right now. I grab an ax from the garage and haul a log from the pile onto an old tree stump.
I lift the ax and slam it into the wood. Hard satisfaction fills me when the blade strikes. The wood splits, two halves falling to the sides. I cut them each again, then drag a new log onto the cutting block and lift the ax again.
Thunk. It’s a good feeling, a good sound, the wood splitting cleanly halfway down. I slice through it to separate the halves and go back for another log.
I lose track of how long I’m chopping, but my hands start to burn with blisters, and my muscles strain. Sweat drips down my forehead. Crack thunk crack thunk.
The pile of firewood grows until there are only a few logs left. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand, my chest heaving with exertion. The logs at the bottom are especially thick, from the widest part of the trunk.
I slam the ax into the largest log, but the blade sticks in the wood. With a grunt, I yank it out and try again. Again it sticks.
Anger claws at me. I pull the blade out and bring it down a third time. Fucking stuck.
“Goddammit.”
I swing the ax over my head and strike it downward as hard as I can. Though there’s some satisfaction in the sound of the metal hitting wood, the ax barely makes a dent in the thick log.
I lift the ax and bring it down again and again, mutilating the log with deep grooves but failing to split the damned thing in half.
“Shit.” My lungs burn. I strike the ax down again, sinking it halfway into the log. I yank at the blade, but can’t pull it out with one try. “Fucking stupid piece of wood… motherfucker…”
“Whoa, man. What’d that log ever do to you?”
I jerk my head up at the sound of Archer’s voice. My brother is standing by the garage, his hands on his hips, looking at me with puzzlement. I drag a breath into my aching lungs and toss the ax aside.
“Just… uh, splitting firewood.”
“Yeah, you’re going at it like a madman,” he remarks.
The log is now scarred with crossed ruts and furrows like an unsolvable maze. I shove it with my foot and send it crashing to the ground. I sink down onto the tree stump and rest my elbows on my knees, all the fight draining from me.
Archer picks up the discarded ax and goes back to the garage. He returns with my toolbox, a notepad, and a grease pencil.
“Come on,” he says.
I look up. “Where?”
“Just come on.” He strides toward the woods.
I glance at the house. I have my cell phone in my pocket, so Claire can reach me if she needs to. I follow my brother.
Archer walks through the groves of trees, his boots crunching on the dried leaves and undergrowth, patches still covered with mud and icy slush. He pauses a couple of times, looks up, then keeps going.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Archer stops underneath an old pine tree with thick, low-hanging branches that fork out over an open grove. He reaches into the toolkit and tosses me the measuring tape.
“This one has a good, solid V in the middle for support,” he says, pointing to where the trunk splits into two parts. “I’m thinking we could do an eight by eight platform, maybe with a rope bridge across to that tree there, depending on the architecture. Angled roof, at least four windows, maybe a balcony. Definitely a rope ladder.”
It takes a second for my brain to process all that. “You… you’re talking about a tree house?”
“Yeah. Bella might be a little young for it, but she’ll grow into it, and maybe we could do a lower-level terrace for her or something. Nicholas is a perfect age. He can even help us with the planning and building.”
I remember the day six years ago when Archer suggested I build a second version of the tree house—The Castle—he and I had when we were kids.
Only when he’d mentioned it, neither of us had foreseen that he would be here to build it with me. Neither of us had foreseen—
“The Castle Two,” I say.
“Yeah,” he replies. “The Castle Two.” He gestures to the measuring tape in my hand. “Let’s do some math. We’ll work on a blueprint back at the house.”
I unroll the tape as he hauls himself up into the tree and reaches down for the end of the tape. We measure the diameter of the trunk, the distance between branches and the other trees, the position of post supports.
We mark points on the tree with tape, discuss the necessity of a rope ladder, and talk about the original Castle with its warped boards, torn tarp roof, sheets of plywood, and the makeshift door we’d made from an old piece of crate siding.
“Frostie Root Beer,” I say.
“You want a root beer?”
“We made The Castle door out of a Frostie Root Beer crate,” I explain. “If you looked at it from the right angle, you could still see the lettering on the door. The Frostie Roo part, at least.”
“Too bad we couldn’t find a Mr. Moo Chocolate Milk crate.” Archer shakes his head wistfully. “Mr. Moo made the best chocolate milk on the planet. I’ve never been able to find another brand that was as good.”
“Are they still around?”
“Nah, I think they went out of business years ago. Small company pushed out by the big guys. I haven’t been able to find Mr. Moo Chocolate Milk in years.”
Despite all the crap Archer and I have been through—including thirty years of estrangement and conflict—it’s a good feeling to remember that in addition to being brothers, we’d once been friends who’d had a tree-house hideout. And even now, we have the same memories of root beer and chocolate milk.
After a while, we pack up the supplies and walk back to the house. Though my insides are still knotted, it’s easier to breathe now. A lot easier.
“I’ll take this back to the garage,” Archer says, indicating the toolbox.
I watch him go for a second. “Hey, why did you come over?”
“To fix that porch railing.” He jerks his chin to the house. “I was going to get the tools when I heard you chopping the hell out of that wood. Is… uh, is Liv having a rough time?”
“Yeah.” My throat tightens. “Brutal.”
A dark shadow passes over Archer’s face before he turns away. He puts the toolbox in the garage, then we go into the house together. Claire is stirring a pot of oatmeal on the stove, and the sound of cartoons comes from the family room.
“Liv is still sleeping,” Claire tells us, glancing at the clock. “There’s a casserole heating in the oven, and I’ll leave this oatmeal on the stove in case she might want it. Do you need me to stay longer?”
“No, it’s okay. Thanks.”
“Hey, who let the dogs out?” Archer calls, going into the family room where the kids are watching TV.
Greetings of “Uncle Archer!” fill the air. I walk Claire to the door and hold her coat for her.
“I really appreciate everything you’re doing,” I tell her.
“I know you do.” She picks up her purse and gives me a sad smile. “I’m just sorry for what you’re going through. I mean, I realize Liv is the sick one, but people tend to forget that the caregiver needs attention too.”
“I’m fine.” Disliking her implication that I’m not fine, I pull open the door. “Thanks again. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
After Claire leaves, I go upstairs to check on Liv. She looks so vulnerable lying there with her eyes closed, her head unprotected by her thick tumble of hair, her skin so white it appears bloodless.
But at least when she’s asleep, she’s not in pain. I press my lips to the top of her head and return downstairs to where Archer, with a giggling Bella clinging to his back like a little monkey, is wrestling Nicholas to the floor.
I start to leave them alone, grateful that my brother is giving the kids some lighthearted fun.
“Hey, come on, man,” Archer calls. “You scared?”
“Daddy, piggy back ride.” Bella launches herself at me, apparently having forgotten my earlier outburst.
She clambers onto my back, and next thing I know Archer and I are having races and wrestling matches with the kids, then starting a game of pirates where I get cast into the role of the villainous commander of the British Navy.
We take a break so Nicholas can do his homework before dinner. We sit at the table while he finishes his math and spelling worksheets, then I take out some graph paper and a box of pencils.
“What’re you doing?” Nicholas asks me, getting to his knees on the chair.
I hand him and Archer each a pencil.
“Thanks to Uncle Archer,” I tell my son, “we’re going to design your pirate fort, Captain West.”
We get to work figuring out the blueprint while Bella lounges on the sofa and looks at picture books. It’s not until I hear Liv’s voice that I realize I haven’t thought about the cancer for a couple of hours.
We all turn to find her standing in the kitchen, steadying herself on the doorjamb and dressed in yoga pants and a green fleece shirt that matches the scarf on her head. Though she’s still pale, she’s smiling her usual Liv smile—the one that has all the power needed to conquer the dark side.
“Mommy!” Bella leaps up from the sofa and races to hug Liv. “I missed you.”
Liv wraps her arms around our daughter. “I missed you too, sweetie. Did you have a good day at school?”
“Mom, I want to show you my bird sculpture.” Nicholas clambers off his chair and hurries to get his art project.
“Do you feel like eating anything?” I ask Liv. “Claire made you some oatmeal, but there’s also homemade soup.”
“I might have some a little later.” Liv looks at Archer. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” He starts rolling up the papers, which Liv doesn’t appear to have noticed. “I’ll set the table.”
Liv sits on the sofa with Nicholas and Bella on either side of her, both of them chattering and clamoring for her attention. And then the world straightens into place and the universe has music again.