Live a Little (3 page)

Now nobody can find anything, even me. I see that I should have sorted our mess by emotional state. It’s always easier to remember how something made you feel than the actual fact of it. Thus, I’d have slotted the Lake Tahoe vacation photos into a “Happy” folder, while Phil’s abandoned dissertation would be filed under “Grim” and the 2003 taxes tucked neatly into “Suicidal.”

“Mom, where’d you put my junior high yearbooks?” Taylor’s forehead has a dewy sheen. Even for an athlete, undermining your mother is hard work.

Hmm. Try “I” for “Ingrate.”

“I think they’re over there, in that white bin,” I say instead. “What do you need them for, anyway?”

“Linds and I are trying to figure out if Quinn got a nose job the summer after eighth grade. She says she didn’t, but I remember it being bigger.”

Supposedly, Taylor, Lindsay, and Quinn, along with three or four other girls who attend the H. Arnold Tater Academy, where Phil teaches with skill but without political aptitude, are best friends. The horror of Taylor’s statement tells you something about the state of comradeship in suburban America and why raising a daughter in today’s world is a thankless job.

I nudge the holey socks into a pile. “Well, maybe Quinnie’s self-conscious about it. If you’re going to tease her about it or judge her, why should she tell you? She’s probably afraid you’re going to act like little bitches and sell her out to the whole school for a few laughs.”

Taylor’s eyes widen. Her lips are parted slightly, like a transfixed toddler’s. Before I can backpedal—
“I don’t know what got into me, honey. I’m sure you’d never act like a little bitch, nor would any of your darling friends. Plus, it’s not really a very nice way to describe someone, is it? Even if she is a little bitch, I mean”—
Taylor’s shoulders jerk slightly, and she starts burbling.

“Oh, Mom,” she says. Tears pool, making her look even younger than her fifteen years.

“Oh my God. I can’t believe I was going to do that. I’m a
total
bee-atch. It’s just—Linds and Quinn were ragging on me about spring break, and I couldn’t stand it anymore”—her eyes dart toward the washer, where a tangle of jockstraps and sports jerseys circles—“I know it sounds bad, but I just wanted them to stop picking on me. They treat me like shit.”

“Don’t say ‘shit.’ ”

Taylor nods. “I can’t believe you’re really sick, Mom. You seem so normal.”

“I am normal, Tay,” I say calmly.

Raquel, don’t be a shit.

“Dad said—”

“What did Dad say?” I suppose the discreet meetings—the ones about how to carry on after I dissolve into a husk of my former strapping self and, eventually, join Pickle under the rosemary— have already begun. I wonder if Phil has surveyed the range of available divorcées and widows and chosen a replacement yet.

Taylor nervously flicks her ponytail. “He said it doesn’t make sense to talk about it until you get a second opinion.”

“You’re getting a second opinion, right?”

“Meissner’s the best, Laurie. It
is
Stanford, you know.” I say it a little proudly, as if I’d gained admittance to graduate school instead of chemo.

“You said he was young.”

I shrug. “I think he was second in his class at Harvard Medical School.” The diploma hung, crooked and dusty, over the big-ass oak desk, broadcasting that Meissner was too busy fighting the crime of cancer to bother with ambience.

My sister leans forward on her Laura Ashley–style floral lounge, radiating the slightly manic style of caring that has made her a local celebrity. “Rachel,” she says in her classic compassionate purr, “you need to cover all the bases. You need to mount the fight of your life. I think you should see another oncologist, and a naturopath, and an O.M.D.”

“Raquel.” I know it seems petty, but why can’t a family chock-full of brainy lawyers, doctors, and CEOs remember that I changed my name legally back when I still had a waist?

“Quel, I think you should see an oncologist, a naturopath, and an O.M.D.” she repeats, her voice even.

“What’s an O.M.D.?”

“Doctor of Oriental medicine.”

“Oh, like an acupuncturist.”

“Eastern medicine has been healing people for literally thousands of years, when our people were still running around in loincloths and slapping on leeches. When I was studying with Xia Chi-Hong at the Center, I personally witnessed him cure several terminal cases who’d been written off by Western doctors.”

When I was studying at the Center. . .

Spare me.

My sister is one of those insufferable people whose lives sprout magic the way the rest of ours breed boredom and regret. Lingerie model (okay, so it was just catalogs, but still), chief executive officer of her holistic fitness video empire, personal coach, successful guru on local television. . .

The list goes on. If that weren’t enough to screw up the most secure, accomplished sibling—and we all know I’m far from that— it gets worse.

She married my guy.

With the ironic timing of those who deserve to be entitled, the onetime love of my life, Loren “Ren” White, glides into his family room right after I drop the bomb. Polite skeins of gray have just begun gilding his wavy mass of golden hair. Aristocratic bearing. No paunch to speak of. Real life-size muscles.

Warm hazel eyes. Full lips ready with a tension-shattering

quip.

God, how I’d loved him.

“Jesus, Quel,” he says, and then I am folded into my brother-in-law’s embrace. His chest, gift-wrapped in tennis whites, feels like a premium extra-firm mattress, sans pillow-top. After a respectable ten seconds, he releases me and enfolds Laurie, who tilts her highlighted head aside so he won’t muss her hair. I watch them, not twins, exactly, but indisputably complementary, what with their blond manes; lithe, naturally toned physiques; and born-to-the-manor carriage. They even have matching names (Lauren and Loren), which is why we call one Laurie and the other Ren.

I don’t hold this against them. Much.

Laurie frees herself. Ren’s beautiful hazel eyes are gratifyingly damp.

“I’m calling Xia in Beijing,” my sister says, brushing aside my reluctance, as per usual. I can see gears meshing in her head, transforming her from the host of the Bay Area’s leading healthy lifestyle show,
Living with Lauren!
, into the humble integrative health-care student who mastered Mandarin while becoming Xia’s star pupil, beating out hordes of native Chinese and a handful of hairy-armpitted Europeans in the process.

“Okay.” I have to give in. I have twenty minutes to get to the school to pick up Taylor from cheerleading practice. It’s funny how these types of mundane duties continue in the face of my impending demise.

Ren grasps my hand in both of his. Compared to his lean, smooth, manicured ones, mine looks like a fifteenth-century washerwoman’s, chapped and broad and designed to withstand prolonged contact with lye and the rigors of crude sex acts performed under less than luxurious circumstances.

“You’re going to beat this thing, Quel,” he says.

Not sure if this statement requires a response, I mumble something unintelligible and discreetly check out Laurie’s new red-lacquer Chinese butterfly cabinet, which must have set them back a pretty penny. Ren’s hands are warm. If I concentrate— which I do—I can almost remember the feeling of them cupping my nineteen-year-old ass. As a matter of fact, I recall it better than the feeling of owning a teenage ass, which tells you something about the flame in my torch.. . .

“If there’s anything we can do—taking the kids, driving you to the doctor, hiring someone to make dinner and do the cleaning—just let me know. I’ll take care of it. Christ, I can’t believe this is happening . . .” Ren’s voice trails off, empathy filling the silence.

Ren White is the only man I’ve ever met who can say these types of things without sounding like a secretly gay soap-opera hero. He even makes
me
want to be a better person.

Laurie smiles at him in sympathetic synchronicity. Better person or not, I want to kill them both.

I swing the Sienna into the parking lot at the north end of Big Basin Redwoods State Park at 5:46
P.M
. I’d dropped Taylor off at Lindsay’s, where the girls were ostensibly going to study for their trig exam. Mikey had called after soccer practice to say he’d grab dinner at Ronnie’s. And I’d fulfilled my sole culinary responsibility already—scribbling “fettuccine alfredo, add peas” on a Post-it and slapping it on the fridge so Phil would be sure to open the correct bags of frozen foodstuffs.

I slide out of the car and inhale the brisk damp scent of California redwoods and shaded water. It is the sort of bright, cool light the Bay Area is famous for, igniting everything green and wet into pearly iridescence.

Based on what I’ve read, I should want to be alone right now. Alone with my thoughts. Which are (presumably) deep because I’ve just been leveled by The Diagnosis. Given free tickets to the exclusive yet undesirable cancer club.

The problem is, being alone is making me nervous. No, wait:
panicked.
Untangled even briefly from the threads of mutual need and ridicule that comprise Rose family relations, I feel ephemeral and temporal, a substance that dissolves quickly under threat of space and quiet. These days, those feelings are too close to nonexistence for comfort. It’s ironic, really, because if someone had told me three days ago that a one-hour solitary walk would provoke anything but the most delicious flush of liberation, I would have called her nuts.

Swallowing dread, I lock the car and strike out blindly for the trail. My plan is to walk the challenging three-mile loop around the reservoir. The one I’d sworn I’d circle daily the last time I flunked out of Jenny Craig with an extra fifteen pounds buttressing my waist. My current goal is not thinness, exactly, but the glory of a thin epitaph:
May God grant you eternal rest, dear (skinny) Raquel.

“Raquel! Raquel, is that you?”

I lift my head and stare into the horizontal sun, tipping my navy old-lady visor to shield my eyes. I am enveloped by a cloud of noxious, lollipop-scented after-bath spray. A millisecond later, a tangerine helmet head and white sweat suit with gold lamé stripes assaults my field of vision.

“How you doing, sweetie?”

Rochelle Schitzfelder grabs my shoulders and pulls me against her ample bosom briefly. Rochelle is sixty if she’s a day, can pass for fifty-nine after dusk in heavy fog, and runs the local JCC board like a cavalry platoon. I know it is infantile, but every time I see her, I issue a quick, silent prayer of thanks that I’m not one of those unfortunate Jews forced to bear a name with “shit,” “fish,” or “wiener” in it.

We deliver the usual platitudes about how great the other looks, how thin the other is, how busy and exhausted we are, how challenging it is to meet the needs of our genius-athlete offspring, and what a pain in the ass our husbands have become.

“Did Micah get his acceptance letters yet?” Rochelle says.

I nod. “A couple of UCs, Michigan”—I tweak an imaginary piece of lint from my jacket in an attempt to play down my (almost tacky) level of satisfaction— “and Princeton.” I happen to know Rochelle’s youngest, Larry, is, at twenty-four, in his (second) final year at a small state school up north known mainly for its alcoholic recidivism rate. Thankfully, Micah has delivered the goods.

Rochelle frowns. “You’re coming to the party on Saturday night, right?” She folds her hand around my arm. Her nails look like calcified slabs of lox.

“What is it again?”

Rochelle fixes me with an I-can-get-your-kid-bouncedfrom-varsity stare. For a swollen second, I am tempted to blurt out my bad news; it’s a ready-made excuse for every failure to execute I’ve ever had. Some wise kernel of self-preservation stops me. Telling Rochelle Schitzfelder before the two or three hundred people I like better than Rochelle, just because I’m too wimpy to just say no to her (endless) requests for slave labor, would hammer the final nail into the coffin of my self-respect. Also, I don’t think I can deal with Rochelle staring at my breasts.

“I’m sorry, Rochelle,” I say instead. “I’ve had a really rough week, and things are sort of slipping.”

“The fund-raiser? For the library? The expanded tolerance section?”

“Oh! Yeah, I was going to call you . . . Phil double-booked us. I was so pissed at him. But it’s work-related, so we kind of have to go. His boss’s birthday or something.”

Thankfully, Rochelle Schitzfelder’s gossip meter is set higher than her pique gauge. She leans in so close I can see her sherbert-colored lipstick bleed into the cracks of her upper lip.

“Did you hear about the Welch-Yens?” she whispers, as if Wendy Yen, a dermatologist who gave up her practice to raise her Silicon Valley CTO husband’s two hellions from his first marriage plus their own Clomid-generated twins, is going to spring out from behind a rock and rain staccato Chinese curses down on Rochelle’s hennaed head. I am fairly sure I met the woman only once, but, lacking a proper creative outlet, I pride myself on my meaningless-fact retention skills.

“Splitsville,” Rochelle goes on before I can reply. “Annunciata knows the receptionist at Blakely and Chao. Wendy’s already signed on with them to fight the terms of the prenup. She’ll get a nice package, that’s for sure. Connor’s rolling in it. I just feel sorry for the kids.” She shakes her big Hobbit head. “Wendy was just starting to get somewhere with the little shits. God knows Sylvia never managed to control them. Annunciata says Wendy’s going for the house. With the Bay Area real estate market like it is, I say more power to her! The girl can sell it and get something precious in Carmel or Laguna and still have a lot to live on. She’ll marry again, mark my words. Doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her!”