Year of the Monsoon (29 page)

“None,” Nan whispered back. “He called me when he got to D.C.”

“What’s going on?”

Nan shook her head. “I have a guess, but he hasn’t said yet.” She turned at the sound of Todd entering the kitchen.

“It’s my mom,” he said, holding out the phone. “Would you talk to her?”

Leisa saw Nan’s jaw clench, but she took the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Taylor… No, I didn’t know anything about this,” she said with a stern glance at Todd who refused to look abashed. “Please… look, he’s here and safe now. Let him rest tonight and he’ll call you again tomorrow… all right… good-bye.”

“And now,” she said as she handed Todd’s cell phone back to him, “we are going to talk.”

“Could I have a beer?” Todd asked hopefully.

“Absolutely not!”

Leisa choked back a laugh as Nan pointed to the refrigerator and said, “You can have another Coke.”

“I’ll go upstairs –” Leisa started.

“No!” blurted out Nan and Todd simultaneously.

“Okay…” Leisa said, realizing she was going to be some kind of referee. “Let’s go to the living room.”

Todd’s long, skinny legs folded almost double as he sat on the couch.

“Now,” began Nan. “What happened?”

Todd’s expression became serious for the first time. “It’s more like, ‘what didn’t happen’,” he said. “What never happens.” He played with the tab on his soda can. “My parents… especially my dad, they just won’t talk about it.”

“About your leukemia?” Nan prodded gently.

Todd nodded. “He pretends like I have something I could get better from if I just tried harder,” he said in frustration. “Every time it goes into remission, he talks like it’s gone and life is normal and now I can go out for football.” Todd’s jaw worked back and forth a few times before he added quietly, “Sometimes I just wish it was over.”

“That part must be really hard, the ups and downs of getting better only to get sick again,” Nan said.

Todd nodded again, keeping his eyes focused on his soda can. “The first few times, you believe them; you believe you can get better, but…” He swallowed hard. “Not any more. It’s just a waiting game.”

They all sat in silence for a long moment before Leisa tentatively said, “You know, I can kind of understand where your dad is coming from, though. If you were… if you were our son, I wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of letting you go, and talking like it’s not going to happen would push it back, make it not so real.”

Todd glanced at her and shrugged his understanding of what she’d said. “Maybe. I never thought of it like that.”

“But it also means you haven’t had anyone you could talk to about what it’s like to face death,” Nan said, as Leisa winced a little at her direct approach to such a horrible topic, but Todd’s expression brightened.

“Yes!” he said with the relief of one who has been released from an evil spell compelling him to be silent. He leaned forward, bony elbows resting on bonier knees, and began talking. It seemed a dam had been broken as he began talking, finally able to express all the things he hadn’t been able to talk about to anyone else. He wasn’t emotional or morbid, but facing the possibility, the probability, of death had been his reality for nearly half of his life.

Nan and Leisa listened attentively. Nan asked questions every now and then, but mostly she listened.

“There have been times,” Todd was saying, “usually at night, when I’m laying there, and…” He stopped, clearly embarrassed.

“Go on,” Leisa said softly.

“It’s like, I can feel someone there in the room with me,” he said as if he was afraid they would think he was crazy. “Like that movie.”

“
City of Angels,”
said Nan.

“Yes!” His eyes lit up. “Like one of them is there, and if I was ready, I could just go and they’d take me… wherever.” His face burned a deep crimson. “You probably think I’m nuts,” he said with a half-laugh.

“I don’t think that’s crazy at all,” Nan said. Leisa shook her head in agreement.

“Really?” Todd asked, looking at them for any sign that they were laughing at him.

“Not at all,” said Nan. “I absolutely believe we go on from here, that the people who loved us will be waiting for us.”

“But you haven’t been ready to let go yet,” Leisa observed.

Todd shrugged a little.

“So maybe you still have things you’re supposed to do here,” she suggested. “Maybe your job here isn’t done.”

Daniel pushed himself up from his chair, grimacing in pain and grabbing for his walker. Leisa rushed over to him. “Dad,” she said, wrapping an arm around him, “what do you need? Let me get it for you.” She could feel all of his ribs. He was down to about a hundred twenty pounds after several months of chemo and radiation. Despite the treatments, his prostate cancer had metastasized to his spine and pelvis, becoming much more painful.

“I’m fine, little girl,” he said. “Got to keep moving. Where’s your mother?”

“I think she’s at the computer,” Leisa said.

Daniel’s expression darkened. “Come with me,” he said, leading the way slowly up the stairs to the office where Rose was searching the Internet.

“Hi, honey,” she said, glancing up.

“Rose –”

“I’ve been finding all kinds of information…”

“Rose –”

“…on holistic treatments and other types of chemo we can ask about…”

“Rose!” Daniel said more forcefully.

Rose froze at the computer. Behind her, Daniel shuffled to a chair and lowered himself to it. Leisa knelt beside him, holding his hand, her heart pounding.

“Rose,” he said again, more gently this time. “We have to talk.”

She sat stiffly and silently, staring at the computer monitor.

“I can’t,” Daniel said simply. “I can’t go through any more. It’s time.”

Leisa closed her eyes as tears sprang to them. She hadn’t wanted to cry in front of her father, but she couldn’t help it.

Over at the computer, Rose’s shoulders shook as she cried silently.

“I want to enjoy the days I have left with my girls,” Daniel said affectionately.

As far as Leisa knew, her mother did all her crying that afternoon. She was sure she must have cried more, but Leisa never saw it. They called hospice when Daniel couldn’t easily get out of bed anymore, and within three weeks of that conversation, he was gone. He died peacefully, at home, with his family around him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said to Leisa the day before he died. “It’s not hard if you’re ready.”

“You’re still here for some reason, Todd,” Leisa said, though talking was hard as she remembered that afternoon with her parents. “As much as you trust that there’s someone waiting for you when it’s time, you need to trust that they haven’t taken you because there’s something you haven’t completed yet.”

Todd’s father wanted to fly up to Baltimore immediately on Friday to drive back to Georgia with him. Nan convinced him to give Todd a couple of days. “He’s dealing with a lot, and it would probably do him some good to have some time away from… from doctors and hospitals,” she quickly amended. “You can call anytime you want, and I promise we’ll call you if he gets sick.”

Leisa went to work on Friday, Nan’s last scheduled day home before returning to work the following week.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” Leisa asked.

Nan sighed in resignation. “I have to admit, it’s not how I planned to spend my last day at home, but we’ll be fine.” With a touch of wry humor, she added, “I feel like this is a warm-up for my clients.”

Todd slept in late and had two huge bowls of cereal for breakfast.

“How about a walk?” she suggested when he was done. “I could use some exercise.”

“I don’t want to tell him what happened with the shooting,” Nan had insisted. “He’s got enough drama in his life. We’ll just say I’ve been sick if he asks.”

She led the way now to the park, passing houses where azaleas and dogwoods and redbud were just coming into bloom. Todd looked around at everything with interest. “These already bloomed down in Georgia,” he observed.

“I remember,” Nan said. “Savannah’s beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

“What are your plans for the summer?” she asked as they walked.

Todd rolled his eyes. “There’s a family reunion in June,” he said dully.

Nan looked up at him curiously. “You don’t want to go?”

He shook his head. “Both sides of the family are the same, but this is my mom’s side. There’s tons of them.”

“So what’s the problem?” Nan asked.

Todd bent down to pick up a stick and began peeling the bark off as he walked. “I don’t fit in.”

“What do you mean?”

He walked a few more steps before saying, “Well, the cancer thing for one. No one ever knows what to say to me. They never ask me where I’ll be going to college or anything about the future.”

“Does that make you feel like they’ve already written you off?” Nan probed.

Todd looked down at her and smiled. “You’re the only one who says the things everyone is thinking, but won’t say out loud.”

Nan laughed. “Lots of practice trying to figure people out. You do know that they just don’t want to remind you of what you might not have. Death is an awkward topic of conversation. It’s hard trying to know what’s okay to say and what’s not. Especially with a young person.”

“I know,” he admitted, snapping the stick in his hands. “Plus… I’m the only one who’s adopted,” he added as if it didn’t matter.

“Is that a problem for the relatives? I mean, your parents obviously are proud of you and love you very much,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but, we’re in the South. I swear, every time we get together with any relatives, someone makes some comment about ‘blood being thicker than water’ or ‘family is everything’. And all the comments about how much the grandkids look like this person or that person…” He released an exasperated breath.

Nan thought about the things Leisa had said to her over the years. “And you don’t look like anyone. Don’t you feel like family?”

Todd looked skyward as he struggled to explain. “It’s not me. It’s like… every time someone says something about family, they look at me real quick like they’re afraid they said something that would offend me, so it’s more like they don’t think of me as family.”

Nan laughed and said, “Believe me, even when you’re born into a family, you can feel like you aren’t part of it.” She proceeded to tell him a little about her family.

“Wow,” Todd said after listening. “Your family is more screwed up than mine.”

“You know, it’s really weird talking to you about this, because, technically, I suppose they’re your family, too, except they don’t know anything about you.”

Todd was quiet for a few seconds. “You didn’t tell them about me?”

Nan shook her head. “I only told one person. And she will kill me if she finds out you’re here and she didn’t get to see you.”

That evening, Maddie stood in their kitchen, the only person tall enough to look Todd level in the eye, and said, “Oh, my gosh, I held you right after you were born. You fit in my two hands. I can’t believe this… you’re all grown up.” She looked him up and down. “You’re still bald, but you looked different naked.”

Todd snorted with laughter, choking on his Coke. When he could talk, he looked from Maddie to Lyn and asked, “So, are you two…?”