Stealing Heaven (24 page)

"Excuse me," I hear, and turn around to see the doctor
looking at me.

"Might I have a word with you?" he says, and before I
can say anything he starts talking. He tells me Mom seems uninterested in
what's happening to her. He says this occasionally occurs and he certainly
understands, but that time is very important here.

He says, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"No," I say, and then he tells me.

Mom's cancer has spread. The spot on her lung is from the
spreading. She needs treatment right away. Aggressive treatment. Chemotherapy.
"I want to get started immediately," the doctor says, "but she
won't

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consent to anything. She needs to agree to this. Do you
understand?"

"Yes," I say, because now I do.

I go back to Mom's room. She glances at me when I come in, then
goes back to reading magazines. Today she's reading a cooking magazine. I sit
down on her bed, turn so I am facing her.

"I just talked to the doctor."

She keeps reading her magazine.

"Do you want to know what he said?"

She puts the magazine down. "Do you know what I hate most
about this place? I hate how everyone talks to me. The nurses, the doctors.
You. How am I feeling? Do I need anything? Do I have any questions? Do I
understand what's going on? Let me ask you a question. Do you think this place
has anything I could ever be interested in? Do you think I want to sit here day
after day after day? Do you?"

I shake my head, suddenly close to tears.

"Oh baby," she says. "Don't look like that. I just
want to get out of here. I want you to stop rushing around writing checks every
thirty seconds. I want to be in the car with the wind in my hair and the radio
on. I don't--" I hear her take a deep breath, hear the

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slight rattling sound of it. "I don't want this."

"You need to ...," I don't know how to say this.
"The doctor says--"

"I know. I need chemotherapy. But to stay here? To sit here
day after day with tests and tubes and this?" She gestured around the
room.

"What if we go somewhere else?" Her eyes light up and I
continue. "There must be other hospitals, better ones. I'll find out and
we'll pick one, go there."

The light in her eyes dims. "Another hospital."

"A better one."

She laughs a laugh that isn't one at all. "Then you'll be
writing checks every fifteen seconds."

I look down at the bed. "We have money." I try to keep
my voice even but she knows me. Of course she does.

"It's for the future. Not for me to sit here and read crappy
magazines and eat even crappier food in a place where a room with a view gets
you -- "She looks out the window. "A Dumpster." She laughs, for
real this time. "That just figures, doesn't it?"

I look at her. "Why won't you do this?"

"Because," she says angrily, and then stops. She reaches
out and cups my chin in one hand. Her fingers

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are cool. I close my eyes.

"Please," I say.

She is silent for a long time. I feel her fingers drop away from
my chin and squeeze my eyes closed harder, like I did when I was young and
would lie in bed waiting for her to come home.

"All right," she says quietly, and I open my eyes.

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32

I call Greg that night. I don't know why but I do, stand outside
the front door and unfold the piece of paper with his name scrawled across it.
It's only when he answers the phone sounding like he's asleep that I realize
how late it is, that it's dark, late-at-night dark. I can see the stars. I
hadn't even noticed them.

"You're asleep," I say, and then feel stupid for stating
the obvious. "Never mind. This was--I shouldn't have called you. I'm
sorry."

"Dani?"

"Yeah."

"I thought it was you." He sounds a little more awake
now. "Where are you?"

"At the house. Mom's asleep and I'm ... I just thought I'd
call. At"--I squint at a window, catch a glimpse of the clock by the
television--"four in the

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morning. I didn't realize it's so late. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Let me just--ow!" I hear the sound of
something falling. "Um, pretend you didn't hear that."

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. I just--I fell out of bed."

I laugh and can practically hear him smile over the phone when he
says, "I should have known that would cheer you up."

"Well, it was pretty funny ... wait a second. How did you
know it was me?"

"You didn't say hello, just started talking. Very you. Plus I
would know your voice anywhere."

I don't know what to say to that. It turns out I don't have to say
anything because he says, "I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Okay."

After I hang up I go back inside to check on Mom. She's asleep.
She looks...she looks like she always does. But then, as I'm leaving her room,
I see the bottles of pills the doctor prescribed on her dresser. He wasn't
happy when I told him I was going to take her somewhere else, started talking
about time again, but from somewhere deep inside, from a place

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I didn't know I had, I found this voice. A strong voice, a sure
one.

I told him I understood, but that I had to think of my mother
first. I asked him questions, all the ones I'd wanted to before and hadn't. I
asked about other places: other hospitals, other doctors. He told me things,
gave me numbers to call. He shook my hand when I got up to leave. He said he
wished me all the best. I believed him.

I arranged for Mom to be released. I tried to talk about our
options on the way home. She said she was tired and that we'd have to talk
later. I made phone calls while she slept. When she woke up, she said she was
going out for a while.

"Are you coming back?"

She looked at me. She looked at the lists I'd written. She looked
out the window at the car, at the driveway leading to the road.

"Yes," she said, quietly, and I believed her.

She came back but still didn't want to talk. "I'm
tired," she said again. "I'm so tired." It was then I realized
what she'd done, where she'd been.

She'd been to the houses. She'd gone and looked at them, dreamed
of what was inside. She had to do

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it because they're her world, her life. She'd gone because she
needs them.

"We'll talk in the morning," I said, and pretended I
didn't see the sorrow on her face.

After that I just sat. I sat downstairs, in the dark, and then I
went outside and called Greg. I know why I called him.

I want to see him.

I'm still thinking about that when he shows up. I watch his car
come down the driveway. The lights make my eyes hurt. He turns them off and
everything is dark again. I hear him get out of the car. I sit on the steps. I
hear him walking toward me.

"Hey," he says, and I see him right in front of me, a
dark shape against a backdrop of night sky and sea. "What's going
on?"

"Nothing."

He sits down next to me. "Is that your way of saying you just
wanted to see how I look at four thirty in the morning?"

I glance over at him and he's grinning. I see the flash of his
teeth. There are a lot of things I could say, but I just tell him the truth.

"I --I wanted to see you."

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"That's good, 'cause I wanted to see you too. I've been
wondering how you are. And how's your mom? I heard about the--I heard she had
to go to the hospital."

I tell him everything. He doesn't say a word, just listens, and
when I'm done talking we sit there, silent, for a long while.

"How do you feel?" he asks when the sun is starting to
rise, coloring the bottom of the sky brilliant, impossible colors.

"Angry. Scared. She doesn't seem to care. Not about anything
the doctor said, not about treatment, not about--not about anything."

"Maybe she's scared too."

"She's never scared."

"Everyone gets scared." He looks at me. "Watch, I'm
going to get scared right now. You ready? You sure? Okay." He takes a deep
breath. "Pretty much anywhere you go, they're always looking for
cops."

"Being able to get a job anywhere is scary? Why would that--?"

He moves toward me, closing the space between us.
"Dani," he says quietly, and I realize what he meant.

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" Oh. But you and me, we aren't--haven't---"

He smiles. "I know. I'm just saying. Just... putting it out
there. A possibility because I--" He clears his throat. "You know,
we're not so different, you and I."

"What?"

"I suppose I should be happy I've gotten you back to
questions." He bumps his shoulder against mine. "I just--I think we
have a lot in common."

"You and me?"

"No, the other two people sitting here.-"

"You're a cop."

"Yep."

"I'm a..."

"I know."

I look down at the ground. "It's all I know. And being
something else, doing something else, I don't know how--I can't--"

"You can do anything."

No one has ever said anything like that to me before, and looking
at him I think that maybe, just maybe,' he could be right. Maybe I can.
"Why did you say that?"

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"Because I believe it. And because I really like you. There,
I said it. I really like you. I want to get to know you."

"Me?"

He gives me a look. "But why?"

"Because when I first saw you I thought--no, I knew--you were
special. Because I still think that every time I look at you. Because I think
you're smart and funny and brave. But most of all"--he grins at
me--"because I like questions."

"But I steal things."

"So stop."

"It's not--it's not like that. Not that easy."

"Yeah," he says, "it is. You're not doing it now,
are you?" I laugh and he says, "See? Not so hard."

"But people like me--"

He leans toward me, and whatever I thought I was going to say
dries up and flies away, lost in his eyes. In what I see in them.

"Dani," he says, and then he kisses me.

He kisses me and I kiss him back and when we separate I feel like
the whole world has tilted sideways.

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I feel like I'm seeing it for the very first time.

I smile at him, and watch as he smiles back.

"You know who you are," he says. "You just have to
believe it."

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33

For the first time ever, I pick where we go. Where we are. Mom
didn't want to choose or even think about it. She just shook her head when I
asked and then closed her eyes. I listed choices anyway. She didn't respond.
She was pretending to be asleep but in a few minutes she actually was. She
tires easily these days, though she won't admit it.

We could have flown but Mom wanted to drive. It was the only thing
she asked for, the only thing she said when I told her where we were going. I
had to buy maps, which I knew how to do, and then I had to get my license. That
I didn't know how to do. I'd only ever had ones that didn't belong to me.

I went in expecting to wait in line, sit for an awful picture, and
then walk back out. It turned out there's a test. It was the first one I've
ever taken. I passed and

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left with my very own driver's license. It's strange to look down
and see my name, my real name, on it.

I know a lot about cancer now. I know what metastasized means; I
know what the drugs Mom takes are supposed to do. I know a shadow on a lung can
mean nothing or it can mean a doctor looking at the floor and then looking at
you, sorrow on his face.

The doctor mostly talks to me when the two of us are in his
office, probably because I ask a lot of questions but maybe because I write the
checks that pay him. Mom makes him laugh though, and she's the one who found
out he has two kids in boarding school, that they both need braces, and that
every summer he takes his entire family to an island off the coast of Georgia.
She asked me to buy her a map of Georgia the other day and I did, watched her
look at it while she sat through chemo.

"It's not that far away," she said, and turned the map
so I could see it, her fingers marking the island. Both of us pretended we
didn't notice the IV dug deep into her arm, the tube coming out of it. "A
day's drive."

"And a boat ride."

Mom laughed and then folded the map, handed it

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