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“We’re both beating this,” I say. I grin. “Even if it kills us.”
“You know that makes no sense.”
“Totally.”
“But unfortunately, sister Jane, you can’t beat up my illness—or yours—the way you used to beat up the mean girls bothering me in grade school.”
“I still hate those bitches.”
Brigid laughs now, until just like that, she’s crying again. We both are, all over again.
Her plane, the same United flight I took, leaves at eight. I’ve offered to drive her, but she says she’s already booked a car from East Wind and it’s picking her up around four.
I ask if the doctors at Meier have given her any sense of how long she’ll be over there.
“Until the fuckers get it right this time.”
That gets a laugh out of me. Brigid always does when she drops an f-bomb.
Once she’s gone, I cook dinner for myself. Nothing exotic tonight, no degree of difficulty, no showing off for Ben, just pasta with an array of vegetables from Balsam Farms.
When I’ve cleaned up, I put Rip the dog into the car and we drive to Indian Wells Beach. I hope that nobody will be shooting at me tonight, it’s been enough of a monumentally shit day already.
It’s cold and windy for this time of year, so even with a lot of light left in the sky, the beach is empty in both directions.
I throw a tennis ball for Rip. He even brings it back to me a few times, as if he’s an emotional support dog tonight, and senses I needed all the support I can get.
I keep picturing Brigid waving to me from the front seat of the town car—she still gets carsick if she sits in the back—the way she waved good-bye to me from Dad’s car the day they drove to Duke before the start of her freshman year.
Despite the wind, the water is surprisingly calm. I’m not. My sister was supposed to be getting better. Only now she’s not.
It is no longer in dispute that God is officially starting to pile on.
I walk down to the water’s edge. Standing out here in the magic light between night and day, the shore and the water, always seems better here than anyplace else.
It’s time for another talk with God.
“Okay, Missy,” I say, knowing She can hear me perfectly over the soft sound of the wind and waves. “You’re the one starting to act like a mean girl now.”
Rip and I head back toward the car. Before we get to the parking lot, I stop and look up at the sky one last time.
“Don’t make me come up there,” I say.
THIRTY-SIX
AFTER BRIGID LEAVES, I spend two days in the house, most of that time in bed.
Not just a reaction to her cancer.
A reaction to mine, too.
More mine than hers in this case.
It happens occasionally, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, nothing I can take. I just have to wear it. Either the drugs aren’t working the way they’re supposed to. Or they’re working too well. Whatever the reason, I get knocked down and feel the fight go right out of me, at least temporarily.
It’s a reminder, even after any stretch when I do start to feel better, about what’s going on inside me.
The elephant in the room.
