The Chain(62)

She wakes with a start.

The bed’s empty. Pete is gone. The house is quiet. She’s had this dream before. Variations on a theme. You don’t need to be a genius to interpret this nightmare: You are in debt. You will always be in debt. You owe. Once you are on The Chain, you are on forever. And if you even think about trying to emancipate yourself, the blowback will come for you.

It’s like her cancer.

It will always be there, lurking in the background, for the rest of her life. For the rest of all their lives.

Cancer.

Yeah.

She looks at the pillow, and sure enough, there are a few dozen brown and black hairs and—oh, how charming—quite a few gray ones now too.

When she’d gone to see her oncologist on that fateful Tuesday morning, Dr. Reed had immediately sent her for an MRI. The results were sufficiently concerning for Dr. Reed to recommend a surgical intervention that afternoon.

It was the same cream-colored room at Mass. General.

The same kind Texan anesthetist.

The same no-nonsense Hungarian surgeon.

Even the same Shostakovich symphony playing in the background.

“Honey, everything’s going to be just dandy. I’m going to count down from ten,” the anesthetist said.

Come on, who says “just dandy” anymore, Rachel thought.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

The surgery was declared a success. She would “require only one cycle of adjuvant chemotherapy,” which was easy for Dr. Reed to say because she didn’t have to go through it. She didn’t have to have the poison dripped into her veins.

Still, once every two weeks for four months is something Rachel can handle. Nothing is all that terrible now that her little girl is back again.

She brushes the hairs off the pillow and the bad dream from her mind. She can hear Kylie upstairs above her in the shower. Kylie used to sing in the shower. She doesn’t do that anymore.

Rachel pulls back the blinds and picks up the mug of coffee Pete left for her by the bed. It looks like a nice morning. She’s surprised to see that there’s no snow. The dream felt so real. The bedroom faces east toward the tidal basin. She takes a sip of coffee, slides the glass doors open, and goes out onto the deck. It’s crisp and cool, and the mudflats are full of wading birds.

She sees Dr. Havercamp walking through the dunes in front of the house. He waves and she waves back. He disappears behind a large beach plum bush from which this island and the one in New York got its name. The beach plums are ripe now. They’d made jars of preserved plums last fall, selling them at the farmers’ market. She and Kylie split the proceeds. Vineland Jam Corporation, Kylie had called it, writing that on the homemade labels. Kylie had loved the fact that dangerous piratical Vikings had maybe made it as far south as Plum Island. Those were days when you could long for danger from a place of safety.

Rachel tightens the belt on the robe and goes into the living room. “Honey, do you want me to make you breakfast?” she calls to her daughter.

“Toast, please,” Kylie says from somewhere upstairs.

Rachel pads into the kitchen and puts two slices of bread in the toaster.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” someone says behind her.

“Shit!” she says, spinning around and holding up the bread knife.

Stuart comically puts his hands in the air.

“Stuart, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were over,” Rachel says.

“You can put the knife down now, Mrs. O’Neill,” Stuart replies, faking terror.

“Sorry about the S-word too. Don’t tell your mother.”

“It’s fine. I might have heard that word once or twice before in various, um, contexts.”

“Would you like some toast?”

“No, thanks. I just came by to say hi to Kylie before you guys leave.”

Rachel nods and makes some toast for Stuart anyway. She and Kylie and Pete are going to Boston for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was only two days after a chemo Tuesday, so Marty had stepped into the breach and invited them all to his place for the holiday.

It’s OK. Everything is OK.

Rachel makes two more slices of toast, puts them on a plate.

Pete comes in from his run, looking breathless but happy. He’s been running a lot the past two weeks and getting stronger. The VA in Worcester got him into a methadone program, which allows him to ease the opiates out of his system gradually. It’s working so far. And it would have to keep working. Her family is the priority. Pete knows that.

Pete kisses her on the lips.

“Good run?” she asks.

He looks at her. He can tell. “Bad dream?” he whispers.

She nods. “The same,” she says.

“You should talk to someone.”

“You know I can’t.”

They can tell no one that they have gone through the looking glass and into the world where nightmares are real.

Pete gets himself coffee and sits next to Rachel at the living-room table.

He had never formally asked to move in. He had driven to Worcester and brought the stuff he’d wanted—which wasn’t a whole lot—and then just sort of stayed.

Out of the three of them, Pete perhaps is doing best.

If he has bad dreams he doesn’t mention them, and the methadone keeps away the worst of his cravings.

Out of the three of them, Kylie is definitely doing the worst.