“When?” said Ari. He felt as if someone had socked him hard in the stomach. He needed time to prepare himself, time to marshal his forces.
“Right away. Today, if you’re willing.” The doctor took the X-ray off the white screen and laid it back down on his desk. “I’m in surgery this afternoon, and this is strictly an outpatient procedure. Won’t even leave a scar.”
Ari moaned at this. It was an animal sound. He shook his head, like a bull sinking to its knees, shaking off the first stick of a sword. “All right,” he said. “We’ll do it today.”
“You want to call your wife?” Dr. Martin pushed the office phone toward him.
Ari waved it away. “No.” There would be time for phone calls later. His stomach was churning. He needed to be completely focused now. He couldn’t be sure Mimi would react the right way, and he didn’t want to chance it. And he couldn’t risk upsetting Julian. For now, it would be something secret between them, father and son.
He felt the preciousness of that bond, which he’d never had with his own father, and also felt, like a sudden blow, what a howling wilderness the world was when you did not believe in any power from anywhere else to rescue you. He wished he could believe. He would pray if there had been anything to pray to.
“I’d like to sit here for two minutes if that’s all right,” Ari said. He feared he was going to throw up. Ari was a generous donor to the hospital. His name was on one of those brass plaques in the lobby. He and his son would be treated well. He’d made sure of that. Beyond that—nothing. Despite all his precautions. All his care, all his money and connections and success. No guarantees.
“Take all the time you need,” the doctor said. “And don’t go assuming the worst. Please. That’s my job. Chances are it’s nothing but a summer cold.”
“A summer cold. God, I hope so.” That was as close as Ari could get to a prayer. He nodded, his eyes swimming.
Before he went out to the waiting room he splashed his face with cold water. He squared his shoulders and walked out with a big smile. “All right, boy-o,” he told Julian. “They just want to run a couple more pain-in-the-ass tests.”
“Aww jeez,” Julian groaned. Then, fearfully, the child in him coming out: “The tests won’t hurt, will they?”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Ari said, his voice thick with emotion. “I swear it.”
Julian looked up, startled.
“And after, I’ll take you out for deli sandwiches. You pick the deli. Anything you want.” His voice returned to normal.
“Deli on the Green,” Julian answered promptly, flashing him a grin. “Guess it’s not all bad, getting sick.”
“You are going to be fine,” Ari said, closing his fingers around his son’s shoulder. “Just fine.”
Mimi barely waited for Nicole to say hello before she blurted it out. “Ari changed his mind. I’m so sorry.”
The phone was slick in Nicole’s hand. She sank into the kitchen chair. “About the cord blood? He changed his mind?” It felt like a wave had rolled over her, knocking her off her feet. She thought how cowardly Mimi was to tell her this over the phone. She forced herself to take a breath. “Why?” she said. “When did this happen?”
“Can I come over?” Mimi said. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
“I’ll always want to see you,” Nicole said. “Come.—It’ll be all right,” she forced herself to say, though she did not believe it. Outside she heard the sound of children playing kickball in the street. An ordinary late summer’s day. She felt the room slipping out from underneath her—as if she might slide off the chair and end up on the linoleum floor.
“I’ll be right over,” Mimi said.
“You want coffee?” Nicole said. “I can make some.”
“I think I’d rather have a whiskey,” Mimi said. “Nikki—I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Nicole said. She felt embarrassed saying the words out loud. Mimi had always been the more demonstrative one.
Forty minutes later Mimi rang her doorbell. She held little Rianna in her arms, all bundled up though the day was sultry. Only the girl’s small face stuck out like a baby Eskimo’s.
“Does Rianna want a whiskey, too?” Nicole asked, after she’d helped unwrap the baby from her cotton blanket. Her small face looked flushed and furious. Her pink booties were removed and set in front of the closet. Rianna rocked slightly on the kitchen floor, inside her flowered infant seat, which doubled as a car seat.
“She would, if she knew what’s going on,” Mimi said. “Julian came down with something about a week and a half ago. He had swollen glands, a high fever. We took him to our GP, who thought it might be Hodgkin’s disease.”
“Oh, Mimi,” Nicole said. Her hand went out instinctively to touch her friend’s arm. “Why didn’t you call me? Is Julian all right?”
“He’s fine,” Mimi said. “Don’t worry. It was just swollen glands—a summer cold, maybe a touch of flu. They drew blood, they ran all the tests. He’s fine. He’s playing soccer, he’s playing Guitar Hero—he’s absolutely fine.”
“I don’t understand,” Nicole said. “Then what’s the problem?”
Mimi twisted her thin gold wedding band around and around on her finger. Ari had given her a large pear-shaped diamond ring for their tenth anniversary, but she hardly ever wore it. Now and again she’d sport some piece of costume jewelry that Julian had bought her for Mother’s Day. Mimi wore a black T-shirt and jeans. Her hair looked as if she’d forgotten to brush it.
“Ari is scared,” she finally said. “He’s just scared to death. ‘What if it really had been Hodgkin’s?’ he keeps asking me. ‘What if Arianna gets sick? We might need this cord blood.’ Julian’s blood is a better protection for Rianna than it is for Julian. Did you know that? They have a six/six match. It’s perfect. That’s practically unheard of.”
Nicole said nothing. She stared at her own hands, lying in her lap. They looked unfamiliar. She put them on top of the counter, but that only made it worse.
Mimi said, “I told Ari that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Chances are we can use this cord blood more than once. You are sick right now. You need this now.”
“Thank you,” Nicole said. She hated the quiver in her voice. She hated the pathetic gratitude she felt. She hated being sick, like being stuck alone, lost in a country where you didn’t know the rules or the language. She was sick and tired of it, and she knew it was all just beginning.
“Don’t thank me,” Mimi said. She looked grim. “It didn’t do any good. Ari just went ballistic, shouting that I’m a terrible mother. Maybe I am.”
“You’re a great mother,” Nicole said.
“I don’t know what I am,” Mimi said. “Ari thinks I’m some kind of monster.”
“You are not,” Nicole said, “any kind of a monster.”
“It was the worst fight we’ve ever had,” Mimi said. “We said things neither of us will ever forget.”
Nicole wondered if she should ask about those things, but she wasn’t sure she could stand to hear them. Jay was always so gentle with her, so loving. The worst fight they’d ever had was over some ice cream he’d eaten when she was pregnant. Jay had finished the last of it and put the empty carton back in the freezer—like a little kid. She’d thrown the carton at him. He’d gone out and bought some more. End of story.
“If you feel like talking about any of it, I’m here,” Nicole said. “You know that.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” Mimi said. “It was bad enough hearing it once.” She leaned down and did something to the back of Rianna’s infant seat that made it bounce lightly back and forth. The baby looked more startled than pleased. Her arms and legs went straight out in the air. “Rianna woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep,” she added. “I ended up sleeping on the nursery floor. None of us got much rest except Julian. He could sleep through an earthquake.”
Nicole looked more closely. Rianna had bags under her baby eyes, lik
e a little old lady. Her cheeks sagged. Her head was nodding, but she was fighting to stay awake. Mimi didn’t look much better.
“You want that whiskey now?” Nicole asked. She went over to the liquor cabinet to see what was inside. Not much. A few bottles of wine that Ari had given them, a dusty bottle of rum she used for baking, and a quarter of a bottle of brandy.
“I have to work today. I owe a new comedy routine to that guy out in Hollywood. The least funny man on earth. At least he’s living in the right place.—I’ll take a glass of cold water, though.”
Nicole went to the fridge and poured some into a blue glass.
“Don’t give up on us,” Mimi said. “That’s what I really came to say.—Ari might change his mind back. You know how he is. He just got scared when Julian was so sick. He went nuts. But he loves you. Your cousin is not a bad guy.”
“Of course he’s not,” Nicole said. She gazed down into the glass of water, as if it were a cup of tea leaves, as if she could read her fortune there.
Mimi smiled wearily. “I may be trying to convince myself,” she said. “I don’t know for sure what kind of a guy he is anymore. But I’m so sorry, Nikki, about the delay. I know you need to move forward.”
“I had set up the TBI consult appointment for next week,” Nicole admitted. Now she wished she’d made the appointment the minute Ari had handed her that letter. She had to fight against a rising tide of panic.
“Can you push it back a couple of weeks?” Mimi asked. “I hate to ask…”
“Of course I can,” Nicole said. She put one hand on Mimi’s back. The solid touch was comforting, it steadied her for a second. “Stop worrying so much.”
“Yeah. Good luck to that.” Mimi fiddled with the buckles on the infant seat and lifted Rianna with a groan. “I’m too old to be the mother of a little baby,” she said. “What was I thinking?”
Nicole fought down her own jealousy. She had always wanted two children. A pair. She worried about Daisy being lonely for the rest of her life. Especially now. So much more now. “You probably weren’t. Thinking,” she said.
“Well, help me get her into those pink booties,” Mimi said. “It’s a two-person operation.”
Once Rianna was strapped and wrapped again, Mimi hesitated at the door. “I’ll move him along as fast as I can,” Mimi said. “But you know Ari. If you push too hard, he digs his heels in. And everything medical is in his name.”
“He was like that even as a kid,” Nicole said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Divine stubbornness. In spades.”
“I’m not sure about the divine part,” Mimi said. “Stubborn, yes.—Okay. Wave bye-bye to Auntie Nicole.” She maneuvered Rianna’s little hand. “And listen,” she added. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on you or anything, but this cord thing has to work. If you died, I’d have to die. I wouldn’t want to go on living. Plus I’d have no one to practice my lousy comedy material on. So please don’t think I’m doing this for purely altruistic reasons.”
“Oh, no,” Nicole said. Her eyes were wet. “I know you’re a selfish pig.”
When Nicole closed the door behind Mimi and Rianna, she saw through the glass a few early red leaves falling to the ground like drops of blood. The house suddenly felt terrifyingly claustrophobic. She had been dreading the total body irradiation, “day zero”—the nickname for the cord blood transplant itself—the side effects, headaches, body sores, the long dragging recovery period. But now she had something much worse to dread: no hope at all.
Outside, the trees were green- and rust-colored scribbles. Nothing else in sight. No one out on the streets. It was too hot to go for a walk. She had let so much of her life slide, first staying home to raise Daisy, then suddenly getting sick. Leukemia, lymphoma. The words sounded unreal inside her head; they could not possibly apply to her. Almost the only places she went anymore were to doctors’ offices, cancer clinics, infusion rooms, and hospitals. What could she do, this minute, to keep from screaming? She looked around her as if the answer might be hanging on the walls, among the bric-a-brac. Daisy would not be home for another three and a half hours.
She could clean the kitchen floor, she thought. She could do another load of laundry. A wave of panic was coming toward her like a truck. She put up one hand against it. “No,” she said out loud. She was not sure why she was continuing in what felt like a futile and ghastly struggle against the inevitable. Why not just crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and let death come? Daisy and Jay, she reminded herself. For them. She steeled herself with this thought.
She walked to the window. She took hold of the curtains and with a sudden, ferocious movement, tore them down. Everything came toppling over with a crash—the billowing material, the metal rod; even the hinges that held the curtain rod pulled loose from their nails and hung tilting crazily forward. Now there was one more broken thing she had to mend.
A flock of brown birds flew away to the feeder outside the dining room window, raising a racket she could hear even through the glass. Their small wings beat furiously. Their throats bobbed up and down as if they were arguing.
Ari, she knew, was not going to change his mind.
SEPTEMBER 2011
The Matriarch of the Family
Phone calls flew back and forth between Nikki’s house and Ari’s. Ari called and said, “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Rip up the letter.”
Mimi called Nicole from her cell phone and said, “I need a little more time to work on him. Please don’t give up on us.”
Jay called Ari and the two men shouted at each other. Jay threatened to pound Ari into dust, and Ari hung up.
Nicole called Mimi’s house because she longed for the comforting sound of her best friend’s voice, but Mimi got off the phone in under a minute, sounding like someone who had been caught consorting with the enemy.
A week later Mimi called back, apologized, and said, “This may take more time than I thought.”
Nicole said, “I may have less time than we thought.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say or do. I’m so sorry.” Mimi was crying, sobbing into the phone. The sound was harrowing. Nicole’s mothering instinct overrode her own instinct for survival.
“Shh…Don’t cry,” Nicole said. “I know you tried.” She heard the baby’s voice in the background. “You’re going to upset Rianna.”
“I don’t know who I married anymore,” Mimi sobbed. “Sometimes I think I hate him. I don’t know what else to do or say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.—We’ll get together soon, okay?”
They swore to each other they would. Nothing could come between them.
Nicole spent a few days just trying to think clearly. Every muscle in her body ached from the exertion of trying to get through to something like a clear idea, a way out. At the end of each day she’d find her jaw ached because she’d been clenching her teeth, hanging on, barely. She felt like someone looking at a blank wall of ice. It towered above them all, threatening to crush them. Somehow she had to climb up and over it, or force her way through. She made lists. She tried to see Ari’s side of it. Wouldn’t she do the same thing in his position? But somewhere under that was her own rebellious voice saying, I would not be so terrified that I would let my cousin die. They can save some of the cord blood. I don’t need it all. I won’t take it all. He’s just being—Ari.
Ari had dropped out of college midsemester of his sophomore year. He had made his own way in the business world, working his way up from the bottom, fiercely, determinedly. He had learned to rely on his own resources. He trusted no one. “He’s a force of nature,” Mimi used to say, trying to explain Ari to strangers. When he shut you off, it was as if someone had turned off a faucet. Nicole worked up what seemed like the last remaining shred of her nerve and called Ari herself. She asked him to see her in person, to discuss it.
“I don’t see the point,” said Ari. His voice was the flat dismissive voice she remembered from when he was in his
early twenties. It seemed to her that one minute he was a child, the next he had become an icy businessman.
“I know,” she said, “but it might help us, anyway. Just to sit face-to-face and talk.”
“I don’t agree,” Ari said. He knew if he had to sit across a table and look into his cousin’s large brown eyes, flecked with gold, if he saw her mouth, her hair—her wig, he reminded himself, with a kind of horror—if he saw Nicole, his flesh, in the flesh, he would never be able to say no to her. He could not remember a time when he had ever refused his baby cousin anything.
“Please,” she said. “We’ll just talk.”
“All right,” he said, the words dragging themselves out of his mouth of their own accord.
They agreed she would come to his real estate office in Oyster Bay. Ari hoped the dull familiarity of the office, the formality of the posh surroundings, his own surroundings—his secretary, his waiting room, his face on the ads and business cards, the framed photos of him standing beside of his most famous clients, a gold-medal tennis player, a few TV stars—all of that would help strengthen him to keep to his word. He was not a villain. He was protecting his children, doing a father’s job.
Except as it turned out, Nicole came down with bronchitis on the autumn day they were to have met. A freak snowstorm, a letter that gets stuck in a grate, a case of food poisoning, a cough, and history begins marching off in a different direction, regardless of who or what was in the lead.
The chemotherapy had made Nicole more vulnerable to every bug, and whenever she got sick, the sickness seemed to hold on a little longer, a little tighter, like a burr. She called to reschedule the meeting with Ari, but when her cousin heard Nicole’s scratchy voice on the phone, it was with a kind of deep-down relief that he seized the opportunity to refuse. She did not sound like herself, but like a stranger. You could say no to a stranger.
“Look,” he said. “There’s no point dragging ourselves through this again.” He pictured Julian, pale in the doctor’s office. It could happen again, to either of his children. His voice sounded harder, edgier than she’d ever heard it in person. In fact, one of his big clients had just backed out of a deal that morning. He was sick to death of the economy. He was sick of business, sick of autumn.