A Little Hope(22)

A hostess squeezes by Freddie and calls a table of twelve. “Yeah. I feel like I have nothing ready.” She holds the pager in her hand and wonders when it will buzz. Her heart thumps as she starts to panic. Greg shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t eat this food. At home, he only drinks distilled water.

“How’s he doing?” Alex asks, gesturing toward Greg. As though she could think of any other he right now.

“Okay.” She wonders how many people have touched this pager. She never used to be a germaphobe. She used to wipe her hands on her jeans after pulling weeds. She never worried about anything then. Dirt. Poison ivy. A kiss from the dog. She drank out of the milk container once in a while. “At least he’s listening to what they tell him… he doesn’t want to stay in the hospital again.”

“I miss him at the office.” Alex smiles at a woman who comes in with two baby carriers. “Hands full,” he says, and holds the door for her. “Twins—can you imagine?” he whispers to Freddie after the woman passes. Alex has nice lines around his eyes. He is seasoned. A later-years Michael Douglas or James Caan. Will Greg ever be his age?

She looks across the people, holding their coats over their arms, some carrying holiday gift bags. Addie is lying on Greg now, her head against the arm where all the bruises are. He doesn’t flinch. He holds her there and closes his eyes.

The third rule is that she will not cry. Her role model in not crying is Mrs. Crowley, who always keeps herself composed. She can try to be Darcy, can’t she? When she sat in Darcy’s office at the dry cleaner’s that day in October after the big appointment when their whole world seemed to collapse, Darcy stayed calm and took in every word Freddie told her. She sat at her desk with her hands folded, and Freddie sat in one of the chairs opposite her, slumped over, sharing the news in a low voice.

Darcy’s steely eyes watched Freddie carefully. She nodded as Freddie spoke, voice cracking, saying it was bad, saying she might have to miss some days, saying she might have to leave the seamstress job altogether, saying she couldn’t even look at Addie. Darcy stood up then from her desk chair, and it rolled backward and bumped the wall, and she shocked Freddie by rushing over to the seat beside her. She patted her shoulder. “I have no idea what’s next,” Freddie said, and she started to cry.

“I will do anything, anything to help you, my dear. And I mean that.” The blazer she wore was scratchy against Freddie’s neck, but the hint of her perfume felt like a blanket. Darcy put her hand under Freddie’s chin. “Look at me,” she said, and her voice was unwavering. “You will get through this, and you will help him. And I will be with you.” Freddie didn’t want Darcy to move away from her. She never imagined sharing something like this with her boss, but now she felt like they could never know each other in another way. Something about Darcy’s steadfastness inspired her to push forward and confront the disease head-on.

“Thank you,” Freddie whispered.

“Anything you need, you say the word,” Darcy said. “I’ll even send those paisley dresses down the river if you want.” She raised her eyebrows.

For a moment, they laughed.

Freddie hasn’t been great about not crying.

She cried in the bathroom once, her hands on the white pedestal sink. She cried in the car when the doctor first told them on October 17 that it was much more serious than they’d initially thought. Greg laughed and said, “Should we swing by the gas station so I can start smoking?” She sobbed and slapped his chest and then felt awful.

Now she sees her daughter lying against the father she loves so much, and Freddie hears in her head a thousand things she could write to chronicle all this. She presses her teeth together. She cannot cry anymore. Even though Greg looks so young and vulnerable with that hat on. What a shame, she thinks for a second. What a goddamned waste. A perfectly good person wasted. She shakes her head. She will not think like this. She will not cry. Even though “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (Rosemary Clooney) plays, and that song always gets her. Something about the longing in the words, the hope and vulnerability: if the fates allow. She hears everything differently now.

She could almost start writing. She thinks the words could explode out of her everywhere, like steam through a cracked pipe. For her application, she has been touching up some of her old writing—nothing new. She promises herself she will write again if Greg gets better. What if he doesn’t? Will she write anyway?

But she will not cry, not in front of Greg, and certainly not in front of Alex Lionel, who has probably never cried once in his life. Alex who no doubt smiled a stoic businessman’s smile at people on the day of his son’s funeral and told them he appreciated the fact that they came. How did he and Kay bear all of that? How did they assemble themselves back together like this?

The table next to the partition has a man and a woman with their heads bowed, and that brings up the next rule: she will not pray. She will not say, Please don’t take him from us. Or, I will give up my own life for him. She will not sit in church like a hypocrite and beg for a favor and strike a deal the way some people do, even though she heard Greg whisper, “Please,” once. Such a loud, forceful whisper. He still had his hair that day—charcoal gray and thick. He was looking out the window of the den, and Freddie saw all the leaves gone from the trees but a bright and trustworthy sun, a sheet of diamond frost across the grass.