The Last Time I Saw You

  Dick had his back to her, washing his hands; and she went ahead and told him what she’d imagined about the patient she’d heard laughing. “I decided it was someone going on a fabulous trip to some exotic place; and he came here today to get his shots. And he’s so excited, he just keeps laughing.”

  Dick turned around and gave her one of those raised chin, closed mouth smiles and she realized that it was none of her business. She looked into her lap, embarrassed.

  “Not quite that,” he said, and asked her to lie down. Then, as though to mitigate her embarrassment, he shared a little information. “That patient’s been living with a terminal disease for a while, and has learned some terrific coping mechanisms. He’s a pleasure to be around, he’s always cheering everyone else up.”

  “Oh,” Candy said, “that’s wonderful.” But now she felt even worse. She felt as though she’d come onstage to audition after someone really, really good had just performed. Not that this was an audition, but didn’t one always want to be one’s doctor’s favorite patient?

  Dick asked her to lie down and proceeded to examine her. When he pressed on her abdomen, she felt a sudden, deep pain. “Ouch!” she said, then, “Sorry, that just kind of hurt a little.”

  Dick looked over the top of his bifocals at her. “It hurt?”

  “No, I guess… not really.” She waved her hand. “I’m sorry. I think you just surprised me.” He pressed again, a little more deeply this time, and she gasped and reflexively pushed his hand away. “What’s under there?” she said.

  “Your ovary, among other things.” He spoke in the same soothing voice he always used, but wrinkles appeared between his eyebrows and he began pushing again, here, there; and Candy clenched her fists and didn’t make another sound. At one point he looked at her and said, “Is this still hurting?” and she nodded and looked at the wall. He ordered some blood tests and an ultrasound and an MRI. And she had them all done, praying to the blessed Virgin before and after each one.

  About a week later, just after Candy had finished eating lunch, her doctor’s office called to say she should come in on Friday morning to get the results. Candy leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Is it bad?” She looked at the sandwich crust she’d left on the plate, and thought, I should have eaten it.

  “We’d just like you to come in,” the receptionist said. “It’s pretty standard procedure.”

  Pretty standard. “But is it bad?”

  “You know, you’ll have to talk to Dr. Johnston about the results. I don’t even have all the information here. I’m just calling to make an appointment.”

  “So it’s bad,” Candy said, and her kitchen suddenly seemed vastly bigger. She made the appointment and then washed her lunch plate and started thinking about what problem she might have that wasn’t so bad. In the back of her brain, someone stood clanging a big bell, and the bell did not peal but rather spoke, and what it said was It’s very hard to survive ovarian cancer. It said, Gilda’s fame and fortune couldn’t help her one bit. At that moment, Candy wanted a sibling more than ever before, and she had spent plenty of her growing up years wanting a sister or a brother. She wanted a sibling or her parents. Or a child. But her only family is Cooper. Who has grown tired of her. To put it mildly. Oh, not that he has cheated on her, not to her knowledge. But they’ve not had sex in years. And for many more years, he has not complimented her, or rushed to tell her anything, or listened with any interest to anything she has to say.

  They get along, she supposes she would have to say. They have their routines: Breakfast out every Saturday morning. The Sunday morning news shows. Plays, the symphony. Trips to Europe twice a year. Candy focuses on the house and garden, her visits to various art museums in the city, her donations to this charity and that, and their bulldog, Esther. Cooper works long hours, and then comes home to their huge Wellesley colonial, eats dinner, and watches television until he falls asleep in front of it. When there are terrible headlines, or terrible storms, or something awful happens to someone they know, they talk then. They come together almost like in the old days, then. What a strange way to find intimacy in a marriage, she always thinks.

  Candy doesn’t have girlfriends to talk to. Most women don’t like her. Men always did. Boys always did. At first it was because she was so pretty—she was awfully pretty for a very long time. But when they got used to the prettiness, as always happened, then they would like her because she was actually a very nice person. But she is no longer beautiful and Cooper is not particularly gratified by his wife’s being nice. “What’s that, being nice?” he’d once said, when they were having one of those arguments where she felt compelled to defend her attributes. “How about interesting, how about that?” he’d said. “How about intelligent?” Well. Maybe he won’t have to endure her vacuity for much longer.

  She pours herself a cup of coffee and snaps open the Times and starts reading the front-page stories. When, after about half an hour, she hears Cooper coming down the stairs, she can’t help it, she feels glad. She folds the Times back up and puts it on his side of the table.

  He comes into the kitchen, pours himself a cup of coffee, and sits heavily at the table with her. “Damn, that coffeemaker’s loud,” he says.

  Her mouth tightens. Not today, Coop, she thinks. Today you’re taking care of me. And yet she hears herself saying, “I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”

  “Well, Candy, what do you think?” He opens the newspaper.

  “Do you want some breakfast?”

  “Yeah, in a minute, let me wake up.” He wipes at something under his nose. “Get me a tissue, would you?” he asks, and she does.

  She moves to the center island to begin chopping onions and peppers for an omelet.

  “What time did you get up, anyway?” he asks.

  “I didn’t even look. The sun was just starting to come up. It was two pink clouds after a star.” She figures he’ll turn around and say, “What?” and she’ll say, “You know, like two minutes after five, two clouds after a star.” But he doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t do anything.

  When she puts his omelet in front of him, he says, “Smells good.” So, you know. She sits down. She salts her omelet. She eats it. When she has finished, she will put on one of the beautiful St. John suits he insists she wear. After the appointment, no matter what the news is, she’ll tell Cooper that she’s going to her high school reunion this weekend. When she got the invitation and asked if he’d like to go, he’d said, “Good God, no. Clear Springs? No. Thank you.” She waited a day or two, then called the airlines to make a reservation for herself and her dog, and then called Pam Pottsman to say she’d be coming, alone except for her bulldog; and Pam was so excited. “Are you still unbelievably gorgeous?” Pam said, and Candy said, “No, Pam, I am not.” Pam said, “Oh, yes you are!” and they both laughed. And it was fun, that moment on the phone. It lifted her heart to hear Pam’s voice and to be suddenly enriched by a rush of memories. She saw the wide steps of the high school, smelled that janitorial waxy smell you always noticed when you first came into the building, saw the lit trophy case out in the hall with the photos of outstanding athletes. She saw the crowds of students walking down the hall, the teachers standing at the fronts of their classrooms. She saw the gymnasium at night, decorated for a dance, felt the pressure of a crown being put on her head as she sat on a plywood throne that had been painted gold. After Candy hung up, she went to look at herself in the mirror, and for the first time in a long time she saw how her blond hair was still thick and lovely (if chemically enhanced), how her wide eyes were still a clear green, how her expensive night creams had kept wrinkles at bay. She thought, I am still kind of gorgeous.

  She’s going to that reunion tomorrow, no matter what. Before, she just kind of wanted to. Now, she needs to. Now, she would go in jeans and a sweatshirt and a shower cap and no makeup, just to sit at a table and be surrounded by people she used to know, just to be near someone familiar in the old way. Someone from before.

/>   SEVEN

  LESTER, ON LUNCH BREAK FROM HIS VETERINARY CLINIC, takes the mini Lop from his nine-year-old neighbor, Miranda. He holds the rabbit tight up against his stomach, facing out. “When you examine a bunny,” he says, “the thing to do is to hold it like this.” The bunny begins to kick wildly. “And when they kick, which they usually do, you rub your hand slowly over their tummies, which sort of hypnotizes them.” He demonstrates, and the rabbit does indeed calm down. Lester uses one hand to support the rabbit’s bottom and turns him to face his owner.

  “Yup. He looks pretty happy, now,” Miranda says.

  “What did you decide to name him?”

  “Custard.”

  “Ah.”

  “Because he’s gooshy like custard. You’re the one who told me to name an animal because of how it is.” Miranda pulls her T-shirt away from her neck and blows down on herself. It’s a warm afternoon. She and Lester have just had lunch, as is their custom on Friday afternoons. Lester does scheduled surgeries on Friday mornings, and most times there’s a couple hours’ window before he needs to be back at the clinic for routine appointments. Miranda, who comes home from school for lunch, began eating with Lester on Friday when she was seven, and they alternate preparing the food. Today was Miranda’s turn, and she brought a sophisticated roll-up: lemon hummus, lettuce, tomato, onion, and kalamata olives, which were inconsistently pitted.

  The little girl is set on becoming a veterinarian herself, and thus far Lester has given her a stethoscope, an otoscope, a white lab coat, a thermometer, empty vaccine bottles, and syringe barrels minus the needles. She brings a notebook on the days they have lunch, and she writes down the things she learns. She has a cat, a dog, and a parakeet, and she taught the bird to retrieve quarters she rolls across a table, something Lester frankly doubted a parakeet could do until he saw it with his own eyes. Just yesterday, she and her parents rescued the rabbit from the humane society. The people who surrendered him had him for only four days before giving him up, saying he had destroyed all the downstairs electrical cords. “Do you think it’s really true he did that?” Miranda asked Lester when she first showed him her new pet. And Lester told her that the only thing rabbits like better than electrical cords is birdseed. “Really?” Miranda said, and Lester said yup, that for rabbits, birdseed is like candy. You shouldn’t give them too much, though, just like people. A little went a long way. The girl considered this, then asked, “Do you like birdseed?” Lester allowed that he had never tasted it. “Should we?” Miranda asked, and Lester said he thought he’d rather have the sandwiches Miranda had brought. “That’s not all,” she said and showed him the red apples, the entire roll of Oreos, and the napkins she had decorated with rainbow stickers.

  Now she lays Custard in her lap and pets him. “Aren’t they so luxurious, rabbits?” she says. “They’re like you have a mink coat but you don’t have to kill anything.” She looked up at him. “I have something to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tomorrow night? There’s a play at seven o’clock in Mr. and Mrs. Pichiotti’s basement. This kid Eddie Sandman wrote it. He’s twelve. It’s about a vampire, and guess who the vampire is?”

  Lester strokes his chin. “Hmmmmm. Would it be Custard?”

  Miranda giggles. “No!”

  “Would it be Eddie Sandman?”

  “No, he’s the director!”

  “Hmmmm,” Lester says. “Give me a minute.…”

  “It’s me!” Miranda says.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No!”

  “You can act, too?”

  “Yes! Can you come? I get to suck blood two times. And we have strawberry jelly hidden in a Baggie in my cape and I secretly smear it on and it looks exactly like real.”

  Lester sits back in his chair and reaches over to pinch off a dying leaf from one of the plants on the windowsill next to the table. He’s got a series of glass shelves in lieu of curtains, and they’re full of flowering plants. It had been his wife’s idea; the window got lots of sun. “I can’t come tomorrow night. I’ll be out of town.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to a high school reunion. You know what a reunion is, right?”

  Miranda scratches a mosquito bite at the side of her neck with apparent satisfaction; it makes her mouth draw over to one side. “Yeah, it’s really good friends who all come from all over to see each other again.”

  “Right,” Lester says. Though to himself, he thinks, Well, really good friends…

  “What all are you going to do?” Miranda asks.

  “We’re having a dinner and dance and then brunch the next morning.”

  “You can dance?”

  “Why, yes, Miranda, I can.”

  “I never saw you dance!”

  “I never saw you dance, either.”

  “Well, I can.”

  “And so can I. For your information, I took ballroom dancing as a young man.” Not that it did much good, actually. Lester was an awful dancer. But at least he knew how the steps were supposed to go. The fox-trot. The waltz. The cha-cha; oh, how he had hated doing the cha-cha. He had wanted to murder his mother every time he did the cha-cha. There was simply no good way for a guy to hold his hands when he did the cha-cha.

  “What is ballroom dancing?” Miranda asks.

  “Well, literally, it’s dancing in a really big room made for dancing. But if it’s a class called ballroom dancing, it kind of teaches you everything you need to know. I mean, the basics, anyway.”

  “Who are you going with?”

  “Nobody. I asked Jeanine and her husband to come, but they can’t.”

  Miranda studies his face as though it’s a palm she’s reading. She worries about him, has told him on numerous occasions that he needs a girlfriend, and has made recommendations ranging from Miley Cyrus to the cashier at BuyLow who told Miranda she loves animals, too. “I can go with you. If you want.”

  “That’s very nice of you. But what about the play?”

  She slaps the top of her head. “Oh, yeah!”

  Lester looks up at the wall clock and tells Miranda he’s got to get back to the clinic, and she back to school.

  “Do we have time for Three Things?” she says.

  Every week, Miranda is told three things about various animals. Parakeets have about a teaspoon of circulating blood volume; elephants grieve; horses can get sunburned on their noses; dogs sweat through the pads of their feet—that sort of thing. “Well, you have one thing already,” Lester tells her. “Rabbits like birdseed.” Miranda dutifully writes it down. He notices that she has moved into an elaborate cursive and he’s happy to see it. He’s heard that many schools aren’t teaching cursive anymore, and it makes him unaccountably sad. He still remembers Mrs. Lord in her blue crepe dress and enormous pearl clip-ons, standing over him in elementary school, trying to impress on him that good penmanship was a sign of good character and civility. She used to wear entirely too much perfume, Mrs. Lord, a heavy, spicy scent that reminded Lester of carnations. She wore rhinestone pins on her shoulder every day, and her ankles seemed to spill over her low pumps in what Lester knows now was a sign of congestive heart failure but at the time believed was a kind of decision she had made—flesh as accessory—and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. He used to look at his mother’s slender ankles and wonder if she wasn’t lacking somehow.

  “What’s another thing?” Miranda asks.

  “Well, let’s see…,” Lester says. “How about a cow one? We haven’t done a cow one for a long time.”

  “I’ve decided I’m not going to be in large animal practice,” Miranda says. “I don’t want to be driving around all over to farms and to hell and back.”

  “I see,” Lester says.

  “Can I ask two things?” Miranda says.

  “Of course.”

  “Is it true that dogs can’t see colors?”

  “No,” Lester says. “They can see colors. Just not like y
ou. They see gray, and they see the colors of the world as basically yellow and blue. You know, a lot of people don’t know that dogs don’t actually see all that well, period. They rely more on scent and hearing. For some sounds, they hear hundreds of times better than people.”

  “They are always better than people.”

  “Well,” Lester says.

  “It’s true! There are hardly any people as good as dogs, you have to admit. Name me one person you ever met who was as good as a dog.”

  “Oh, I’ve met a few.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife, for one. And you, Miranda Bryson, if you must know. You are as good as a dog.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  “If I think about it, I guess you are, too.”

  “Thank you. But listen, we have to go. Hurry and ask me your second question.”

  “Okay. Okay, it is… Oh! Custard keeps rubbing his face on me. Why?”

  Lester puts their plates in the dishwasher. “Well, that’s for a good reason. He’s marking you. Rabbits have scent glands under their chins, and they secrete something from there that only other rabbits can smell. It’s totally odorless and only a little bit damp, so you might not have noticed. But he’s saying you belong to him. That behavior is called ‘chinning.’”

  Miranda smiles. “That’s a good one.”

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  They go out the front door onto the porch, where Lester’s dog, Mason, is sleeping in the shade. “Let’s go, buddy,” Lester says, and the dog leaps up and heads for Lester’s truck.

  Lester is backing out of the driveway when he hears Miranda calling his name. He leans his head out the window. “What?”

  “You should wear something blue to the renewion!”

  He nods, waves, and as he drives toward the clinic, he thinks, Maybe I will. His wife used to like him in blue, and since she died, he’s purposefully not worn it much. But maybe it’s time. Renewion. He looks into the rearview mirror, at Miranda fading away in the distance. There was a period in his late thirties when he seriously considered adopting a child, but he worried about whether he’d be able to adequately care for a son or daughter as a single parent. Now it’s too late, and in quiet moments, he sometimes feels a profound regret about not having gone through with it. It could have worked. He could have hired someone to help him. It might not have been ideal, but he would have had the experience of raising a child, something he thinks he would have enjoyed for all kinds of reasons. The day after his wife told him about her pregnancy, she’d given him a miniature fishing rod and tackle box. It’s still in the back of his closet, and sometimes he takes the little metal box out and looks at all the lures Kathleen had chosen. Their child would have loved it, he’s certain.