A Window Opens: A Novel (29 page)

Oh, sure, I thought; this one went viral years ago. Why had it taken so long to reach Susanna?

We’d had an ugly morning at our house, where I harangued everybody about leaving shoes all over the house and swore I was going to charge one dollar for the return of every item I picked up off the floor. I may have used bad language. I tripped over Cornelius and then yelled at him, too. Two out of three kids had been in tears when I left for the train, and by the time I arrived at the station, I already had a text from Nicholas: “Seriously, was that necessary?”

I pressed play again.

And again.

As I was about to watch the video a fourth time, I sensed eyes on my back. People were staring: Matthew, from his tall chair; and Genevieve from the doorway, where The Mask was hardening—this time with a raised-eyebrow twist.

Because, of course, my headphones weren’t plugged in.

Sheepishly, I said to Genevieve,“It’s funny though, right?”

“I guess, a little. Maybe if you’re forty-five and live in Des Moines.”

I was having trouble linking to the ANT drive, where we shared all our files with Cleveland, but after the video snafu I was too embarrassed to ask anyone for help. Usually I tried to spread my technical problems among my colleagues, so as not to impose on anyone too heavily. I’d bothered everyone enough for the day.

“Hello, you’ve reached MainStreet Computer Services. May I have your name?”

“Alice Pearse.”

“Hi, Alice Pearse. Can you read me your twelve-digit IP address? Look under—”

“I have mine memorized. It’s—”

“Memorized?”

“I call you guys a lot.” I recited the number.

“Great, thanks. What seems to be your problem?”

Take your pick
, I thought. “I got a prompt to change my password and now the new one isn’t letting me log in.”

“Okay, that should be an easy fix. Do I have permission to take over your screen for a second?”

“I wish you would.”

“Great. A window will open; just click ‘Accept.’ ”

A few seconds went by. I opened a bag of gummy bears and grabbed a handful, keeping one eye on the screen.

“Hello? I’m sorry to report, I’m not seeing a window.”

“Really?”

“Really. The window is not opening.”

“Huh.”

I fished out all the orange gummy bears—my favorites—even though I’m certain all the colors taste the same.

“Alice? Still no window?”

“I don’t see one.”

“Can you hang on a quick sec? I think I need to refer your case to my manager.”

I
n the new, new normal, my dad slept most of the time and was attended to by hospice volunteers, nurses, and my mom, who tracked his every painkiller and calorie in a Mead composition notebook. The one time I peeked inside, my eye fell on “Changed socks, brushed teeth, 10 a.m.” I closed the cover before I fell into the Grand Canyon of heartbreak contained inside.

The first floor of my parents’ house was transformed from its familiar mash-up of mission style and Victoriana into a style I thought of as modern healthcare chic. The living room was cluttered with medical equipment on wheels: hospital bed, walker, commode. There were cans of formula stacked in cardboard flats and boxes of gauze pads in all shapes and sizes. The kitchen counters were covered with a buffet of syringes, beakers, binders and of course, brochures.
Your Guide to a Peaceful Death at Home,
and the like. (Was it possible to get extra credit for reading all the literature?)

One day I walked into the house without ringing the doorbell and found my dad getting a sponge bath from Linda, the nurse who drove a
Camaro. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He towered over Linda, still well over six feet tall but frail, with skin draping off his back like ill-fitting curtains. What bothered me more than seeing my dad naked was the way Linda gently wiped the back of his neck with a pink washcloth from my parents’ bathroom. The gesture seemed so hopeless, swabbing at that area when the tumor was inches away, impenetrable and tenacious. I imagined it looked like one of the plastic pencil-topping monsters my kids begged for at Filament Stationers: mean and green, with hairy, rubbery tentacles and one beady eye.

Silently, I held up my hand like a stop sign so my kids would stay behind me in the kitchen. I don’t know how they knew to be quiet, but they were.

I whispered, “Pop needs a minute,” and they followed me, single file, back to the minivan. We sat there for a minute and then went back into the house as if we’d just arrived.

“Hellooo? Anyone home?” I abhorred the forced cheer of my own voice, but I figured levity was the least I could offer my parents, who were getting battered from every angle. As if cancer wasn’t depressing enough, their roof was leaking; there was a bucket in the front hallway, collecting drips.

“Alice, is that you? I’m on the phone with the insurance company. I’ll be down in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!” (Yes, my mom really talks like this.)

Oliver and Georgie made a beeline for the hospital bed, which my dad refused to use. “Let’s play doctor and you have a freckle in your armpit!”

“No, let’s play pirate! This is our ship.”

“No, it’s a trampoline!”

“How about it’s a pirate ship with a trampoline for pirate babies?” Oliver, ever the peacemaker.

Margot and I rounded the corner and found my dad in his armchair, fully clothed, hair combed but parted on the wrong side. Linda bustled around the room, filling a pillowcase with laundry.

“Hi, Dad.” I stood there, awkwardly, arms at my sides. I didn’t want to hug him in case he was in pain.

He smiled and closed his eyes.

Margot glanced nervously at Linda; then, as casually as if she was offering a knock-knock joke, she said, “Pop, can I swab your lips?”

He nodded his head, yes. I couldn’t watch but made a mental note to tell Nicholas about the easy grace of Margot’s gesture. At her age, I would have hidden in a closet with a book, willing myself into another world.

I offered to help Linda, who said, “Just be with your dad. It’s good for both of you.”

Throwing a load of stoma covers in the washer was so much easier than sitting quietly, which required bravery and patience. My dad was too weak to use Buzz or to maneuver pen and legal pad or even dry erase, so his responses were limited to thumbs up, thumbs down, and the occasional exhausted eye roll. But he did seem to enjoy company, so I kept up a constant steam of commentary about Nicholas, the news, and the weather. I read from the
New York Times
until I was hoarse, skipping the obituaries and avoiding articles with death, illness, or tragedy in the headline.

Eventually the kids got bored and went upstairs to watch
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
on the iPad. My mom was napping in her room—which is what it was, all of a sudden: just hers.

When I couldn’t think of anything else to say to my dad, I placed my hand on top of his on the arm of the chair. In the movie version of this scenario, my dad’s hand would have been suddenly dwarfed by mine; in reality, he still looked healthy and freckly from a summer spent watering the garden. In any case, the pose didn’t come naturally; we weren’t usually affectionate with each other. But this was necessary and comforting—the least I could do. I knew we would never have a final heart-to-heart conversation. He would have no last words. But we did have this: our fingers laced neatly together, everything that needed to be said already said.

I waited for my dad to doze off, and then I studied his face. Bushy eyebrows, dimpled chin, nose a pointier predecessor of my own. Smile lines, worry lines, smooth apple cheeks. For me, memorization was the first stage of grief.

•  •  •

Nicholas stopped by every morning to bring in the paper. Once, my mom called and said, “Your husband is out there in his suit, shoveling snow off the roof.” I admired his dedication while secretly worrying he wasn’t spending enough time at his new office. No matter how weak my dad was, no matter how far he slipped into a world where we couldn’t reach him, one thing remained the same: every night, our red mailbox was filled to the brim with bills. Verizon, taxes, gas, water. Time and money marched on.

There was also the issue of Nicholas’s drinking, which still happened every night. Beer was now off the menu—presumably because the bottles were too obvious—so now Nicholas drank vodka tonics that could be mistaken for seltzer from a distance. At dinner, Margot took a sip and said, “Ick, Dad, something is seriously wrong with this Sprite.”

He never mixed these drinks when I was in the kitchen, but I could hear the sound of the ice clink in the glass from wherever I was in the house, and my entire body registered the noise. Once I touched a socket that was missing its cover and afterward my whole hand felt tingly for an hour; that’s how Nicholas’s surreptitious bartending made me feel, only the tingles weren’t numbness, they were the simple syrup of rage.

One night when we were brushing our teeth before bed, I said, “You know, I’m not an idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

I spit out my toothpaste and stepped aside to let him do the same. “I said, I’m not an idiot.”

“What makes you say that? I mean, I know you’re not, but why—” He handed me a length of floss.

“You’ve had three vodka tonics since I got home, and who knows
how many before that. You can save yourself the trouble of hand washing the shot glass—I know what you’re up to.”

“Wow, nice detective work, Alice.” He stalked out of the bathroom and into our bedroom, with me trailing like the angry haranguing wife I’d never wanted to be.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Right now? Yes.”

I shot him a poisonous look, then sighed as I opened drawer after drawer and realized most of my clothes were downstairs in the laundry room. “Nicholas, I appreciate everything you do for my parents and I’m asking you to do this for me: can you
please
cut back?”

He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he tossed one of his T-shirts across the bed. “Here, wear this.”

It was the one he wears on our anniversary every year: “I ♥ My Awesome Wife.”

Distress Quiz for Family Members of Cancer Patients

During the past week I have . . .

• had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing.

• had difficulty obtaining a good night’s sleep (seven or more hours).

• felt completely overwhelmed.

• felt fearful about the future.

• felt loss of privacy and/or personal time.

• been edgy or irritable or lost my temper with others.

• felt strained between my work and family responsibilities.

• relied on alcohol, cigarettes, or prescription sedatives to manage my stress levels.

• been upset that my relative has changed so much from his/her former self.

• All of the above.

W
e had a new hire named Tracy. Even though I’d been an interviewer on her Chain, I wasn’t sure what she did. One day, I poked my head into Tracy’s office. “Just wanted to say hi and see how it’s going so far.”

“Great, I’m drilling down on these new hires in Cleveland. Some are my direct reports and I haven’t even met them yet!”

“Well. I’m sure they’ll love you.” A flash of disappointment: Tracy’s use of Scroll lingo didn’t bode well for our friendship.

“It’s all good. I’m a bottom-up manager, so I’ll let them show me what they need. Hey, want a brownie?” Tracy gestured toward a shoebox on her desk. It was lined with wax paper but there were still grease stains along the bottom corners of the box.

“No, thanks. Who sent you a care package?”

Tracy explained that her college roommate in Kansas had baked these brownies so she’d have an icebreaker to help ease her into her first week of work. “Come on, you have to try one.”

“Thanks, anyway. But they look delish.”

“Seriously, take one. My friend would be offended!”

The truth is, I’d just joined Weight Watchers. I’d gained a few pounds since starting at Scroll—too much sitting in a chair. Even though Tracy and I had already established that we both graduated from high school in 1991, it seemed weird to impose my weight-loss strategies on her at this early date, although I did take it as an indicator of our possible future friendship that she had inspired such loyalty in her brownie-baking friend.

“Alice, you must take a brownie. I insist.”

This was getting awkward, so I grabbed a brownie and took a bite and exclaimed that it was the most delectable thing I’d ever tasted. Then I held the rest of the brownie in my hand while I wrapped up the conversation as quickly as possible. Not only did I not want to exceed my daily points value, I was also a little grossed out by not knowing anything about the provenance of the brownie. What if Tracy’s friend’s cat slept in that shoebox?

The minute I extracted myself from Tracy’s office, I headed straight for the bathroom. I had to use it anyway, and while I was there—I don’t know what possessed me—I dropped the remainder of the brownie into the toilet. And then, to make matters worse, the toilet wouldn’t flush, so I made a split-second decision to abandon ship and just leave it in there. Not the smartest choice.

Imagine my surprise, when I opened the door, to find Tracy standing there in the bathroom with a big smile on her face, waiting to go into the same stall I’d just come out of. “Hello again! Hey, did you see there’s a Diane von Furstenberg sample sale . . .”

There were two stalls in the bathroom, and it seemed like a breach of office etiquette for her to proceed into the one I’d just left, but that’s what happened.

Tracy’s cheerful chatter faded away as I busted out to the hallway as quickly as possible. I couldn’t imagine what she thought when she saw the brownie in the toilet. Both alternatives were too embarrassing to contemplate.

•  •  •

“Hey, Margot, guess who I heard from today?”

“Who?”

“Your principal! She wants me to come to the middle school to talk to your classmates on Career Day.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I’d love to! I’ll take the morning off—”