“She thinks there’s another patient in this room,” she heard Margot tell the oncologist, clearly convinced that levelheaded Franny had taken to hallucinating.
“She deserves to see whatever she wants to see,” Lerner said. He was the sort of doctor who held his patient’s hand when he had to deliver bad news, and wept in his car while he drove home. After all these years, he still wasn’t certain whether the forces above were working with or against him, but he’d seen enough miracles and agony to convince him that anything was possible.
The patient in the bed next to Franny’s was beautiful, although she barely moved and spoke only when there were no visitors or nurses in the room. She had no hair and her eyes were cloudy; she gave off the scent of roses and grass.
Breathe in, she’d whisper to Franny late at night, when the lights in the hospital parking lot filtered through the windows and everything seemed shiny, as though thousands of fireflies clung to the glass. Breathe out, she’d remind her.
Gretel and Margot took turns staying with Franny. They opened the curtains so that the shadows shifted; they brought flowers in a vase. They loved her so much Franny could feel it; their love was as palpable as a table or a chair, it was as real as a bandage or a piece of pie. But although Franny loved them in return, she could also feel their grief, and such things were a burden to her now, tying her not only to those who loved her but to her own pain. What she longed for most were the hours when she and the woman in the next bed were alone.
Look at what you have, the woman would tell her, and sure enough, Franny could see the stars, not through the window but there in the palm of her own hand.
When the levels of morphine rose to keep pace with the level of her pain, Franny began to dream that she was a little girl on a perfect July day. The scent of fresh grass was delicious. The roses were bigger than cabbages. Everything was out in front of her, the world stretched on and on. Sometimes Margot would be with her in her dreams, just as she had always been when they were girls. Frick and Frack, people would call them. Me and Too, the inseparable pair. They’d run down hill after hill until they were breathless, convulsed with giggles. Margot was always the fastest, but even when she was first, she’d wait for her cousin.
“Go on,” Franny told her. She opened her eyes and there was Margot, beside her in a hard-backed chair, sobbing. “You don’t have to wait for me.” Her voice was so distant that Margot had to bend close; still it was difficult to hear. “Go and don’t feel guilty.”
By now, Franny had lost her vision; she could only see shadows. She heard pieces of conversation, but could not recognize certain words: darling, dusk, ashes, pear, they had all become one, a single band of light. Things of this world fell away from her: she could no longer sense the pressure of an IV needle in her tired vein, but the coo of a dove a hundred miles away reverberated inside her ear. She knew that Dr. Lerner sometimes came into her room and cried when he thought she was sleeping. She knew that Gretel sat beside her for hours, watching her breathe, refusing to go home, as if pure will and devotion could keep her mother alive.
But in fact, Franny no longer minded when her visitors left her. After the nurses had gone down the hall to fill out their daily charts and those who loved her had journeyed to the cafeteria to gulp mugs of black coffee, the air in the room became lighter, as though the clouds had drifted in through the windows. The bed of the woman next to her had been pushed closer. They could hold hands now, palm to palm, fingertip to fingertip. Intertwined, their hands were equally beautiful and pale.
Franny was happy to gaze into the woman’s cloudy eyes; she was grateful for the scent of roses. In the midst of her terrible pain, she was reminded of all she had to be thankful for, but there were times when that only served to make her hold on more tightly. Her fingers ached from holding on that way; her breath rattled, hard, nearly cracking her ribs with the strain.
All we have to do is let go, the woman told Franny.
Right in front of them Franny could spy a lake where little fish swam in the shallows. There was a park beyond the lake, in which a maze had been fashioned out of hedges. Franny was afraid of thorns; still, she went closer. The other woman was already there, reaching out her hand, fearless as always. But as it happened, there were no thorns to draw blood, only green leaves and the red roses Franny’s very own daughter had planted beside their house. Franny could hear women crying, but there was no difference between that sound and the echo of the wind, so she went a little farther. Now she saw there was a door in the hedge, one that was nearly invisible to the naked eye. Franny turned to gaze at the beautiful woman beside her. She could hear the ticking of the clock in her hospital room and the beat of her own heart, slow as deep water. No one who had come this far needed to hesitate or look backward, and because she had always known this to be true, she stepped through the gate.
Still Among the Living
Margot Molinaro Sutton was the only person waiting at the arrivals gate at the Fort Lauderdale airport who didn’t have white hair. She was there to meet her cousin Gretel, whom she loved like a daughter. True, there were only fifteen years between them, but those years were enough to mark a generation, and now that Gretel’s mother was gone Margot had taken it upon herself to watch over her cousin, especially during vacations. Not that Gretel was the sort of person who might actually enjoy herself, on vacation or otherwise. It was ninety-two degrees in South Florida, but when Gretel walked off the plane she was wearing the same black wool dress she’d worn to her mother’s funeral.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Margot said after she hugged Gretel. “Wool? In this climate?”
She grabbed Gretel’s overnight case, but Gretel snatched it right back. “I’ve got it,” Gretel insisted.
You had to be that way with Margot, or she’d just take over. She was good-hearted in the worst way. Let down your guard for a minute, and kaboom, she’d have your whole life rearranged. Gretel’s life was running exactly the way she wanted it to, thank you very much. She had just finished her first year at NYU and had come down to visit Margot before summer school started. Gretel was always in a hurry to finish things, and now that she’d arrived in Fort Lauderdale, she was ready to turn around and go back to school.
“It’s so hot,” she said when they walked out of the terminal and the temperature slapped her in the face. She could practically feel the little black wool dress shrinking on her body.
“It’s Florida,” Margot reminded her. “What did you expect? Igloos? Don’t tell me you’re actually wearing panty hose. Are you nuts? Have you ever heard of shorts?”
Gretel laughed as she got into her cousin’s car. Margot had driven her first husband’s Mustang until it died of terminal engine seizure, and now her new husband, Mike Sutton, who had opened a chain of hardware stores all across South Florida, had bought her the car of her dreams. A Corvette.
“Amazing,” Gretel said. “You really did it.”
“Did what? Married a man who can make money with his eyes closed? What an accomplishment.” Margot flipped open the glove compartment, where she kept her chiffon scarves. “Take one. You’ll need it.”
“Admit it,” Gretel said. “You found happiness.”
They drove the scenic route, along 1A. The ocean was pale green and turquoise. Pelicans glided over the water. All the houses were white and pink and red. Margot could see why someone would believe she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted. She slipped on her sunglasses. Heat waves rose from the asphalt and the air smelled like orange blossoms.
It was so hot in Florida at this time of year the mosquitoes were too scorched to fly, and landed with thumps on car windshields. As soon as she could, Gretel peeled off her panty hose. Her legs were as white as icicles.
“Holy moly,” Margot said. “We’re going to have to work on your tan.”
Neither of them mentioned Gretel’s mother, Frances, although they both missed her like crazy. Instead of discussing cancer or sorrow or the possibility of an a
fterlife, they went to Margot’s favorite junk shop in Delray Beach and bought Gretel a pair of flip-flops, some wraparound sunglasses, suntan lotion, a straw purse, and a bathing suit.
When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bag. “What is this?”
She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases.
“Don’t be mad,” Margot pleaded.
“I’m not wearing this.” Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn’t help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss.
That night, dinner was served out by the pool. They flopped into lounge chairs with glasses of chilled white wine, and watched Mike barbecue. He was fixing skewers of halibut, red pepper, and shrimp with a red wine and tarragon marinade he’d invented himself.
“Don’t tell me I have everything,” Margot said.
“Okay.” Gretel closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of the jasmine growing along the fence. “I won’t tell you.”
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t sometime real soon,” Margot informed her cousin.
Gretel opened one eye and smiled. This sounded like one of Margot’s plans. She came up with them all the time. She was the one to decide she and Gretel’s mother should go into the catering business together, which had kept them both afloat for years. She had told Mike that the wave of the future was a chain of stores, rather than just one, and look at the success he had made. When Margot had something in mind, look out; she wasn’t about to sit still.
They left in the morning, as soon as Mike had gone to work.
“I’ll be waiting for you, sweetie,” Margot had whispered to Mike when she kissed him goodbye, but she’d already been holding the keys to the Corvette in her hand. “He’s the best,” she told Gretel as they headed north on the interstate.
Gretel was still wearing her black dress, but she’d taken a pair of scissors to the wool and scooped out the neck in deference to the weather. She’d slipped on the yellow flip-flops she’d bought the day before, and left her heavy black shoes under the bed in Margot’s guest room. She had one of Margot’s scarves tied around her hair; it was frothy and blue, the exact color of the Florida sky. Gretel flipped down the visor and smiled when she caught sight of herself, a vision in chiffon and sunglasses.
“When my neighbor Dora told me about this woman, I thought I’d wait for you to go with me,” Margot said.
“Yeah, sure.” Gretel smirked. “Meaning you were afraid to go yourself.”
“I’m not afraid.” But in truth, Margot had been awake all night, her nerves a jumbled mess.
“Fine. We’ll go and you’ll see it’s bullshit and that will be that.”
The woman in question was located in a shopping mall in Glades, beside the Dunkin’ Donuts. Her name was Natalie LeFrance, and she could cure whatever afflicted you for a hundred and fifty dollars, or so Margot’s neighbor Dora had sworn. Dora herself had been covered with warts until her visit to Glades and now her skin was clear and smooth. Well, Margot’s problem was more serious than warts, so naturally she was a little anxious. She had the right to be.
What Margot wanted was a baby. She had yearned for one for more than sixteen years, all through her first marriage, and during those years when she was single, and now, with Mike. Every doctor she went to told her pregnancy was impossible for her, she’d have to be a fool to keep trying. She’d read all the medical literature about infertility, been to the specialists, and had followed any suggestions, no matter how far-fetched. She had stood on her head directly after sex. She’d eaten only chocolate and asparagus, then switched to a diet of grapefruit and hard-boiled eggs. She’d had intercourse once a month, then three times a day, and none of it had worked. Now here she was, in a parking lot, pulling into a space next to a Fotomat on a broiling-hot day. It was a run-down shopping area with weeds sprouting through the asphalt and a big old palm offering the only shade. The air smelled like sugar and doughnuts and melting tar.
“Lovely spot,” Gretel said. “It looks like the perfect place to get mugged.”
But Margot had a good feeling. She felt light-headed and somehow carefree.
“This is going to work,” she insisted. “I just know it.”
“Oh, sure. If you believe in it,” Gretel said.
“You think it’s wrong to believe in something?”
Margot had gotten out her lipstick and had begun to reapply the deep scarlet color to her lips. Now she turned to her cousin, and Margot seemed so innocent and so desperate Gretel didn’t have the heart to be honest.
“Fine. If you want to believe you can find a cure in a shopping center, then believe.”
Gretel herself had believed in very little since the deaths of her mother and her brother, and who could blame her? Okay, maybe she believed in random atrocities, the old anthill theory, that human beings were equally liable to be squashed by the careless feet of fate.
When Margot and Gretel got out of the car, they noticed that two guys who worked at the Fotomat were leaning out their window, giving the Corvette the once-over.
“Lock it,” Gretel said.
“Whatever happens happens.” Margot had bigger issues than a possible stolen vehicle. “C’est la vie.”
“Okay. It’s your car.” Gretel took the chiffon scarf from her head, then tied it around her throat so that she gave a far jauntier appearance than she meant to. “But let me ask you one thing. Do you really think someone with true healing powers would be located next to a Dunkin’ Donuts?”
“Depends on the rents.” Margot knocked three times on the door, as per Dora’s recommendation, then rang the bell twice. She’d wanted this baby for so long it had almost become a living, breathing person already.
“Tell me one thing.” Gretel took off her sunglasses in spite of the Florida glare. “Do you think she could have helped my mother?”
Gretel’s mother’s cancer had metastasized so quickly and so aggressively it was like a kick from the center of the universe that struck and destroyed before anyone had time to blink.
“I don’t know,” Margot admitted. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Gretel’s black dress was sticking to her skin like needles and pins. Margot had recognized it as the one Gretel had worn to her mother’s funeral the minute her cousin had stepped off the plane, but she was far too polite to mention her observation. Gretel had been wearing the dress almost constantly for over a year. She’d been washing it by hand, but it was shrinking all the same.
“If we’d just taken my mother here, she’d still be alive? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
For years Gretel had been cutting her own hair and the dark strands stuck up in wisps all over her head. This hairstyle looked like the saddest thing in the world to Margot. She remembered the day Gretel was born, all the hope she and Frances had had, and now Gretel was a full-grown woman with a terrible haircut who didn’t believe in anything.
“Honey, we did everything we could for your mother.”
“Maybe we didn’t,” Gretel said. Her voice sounded funny, even to herself. The black dress felt like a nest of hornets on her back.
Gretel sat down on the curb, where weeds with yellow flowers were growing. She started to sneeze and her eyes welled up, but she didn’t care.
Margot sat down beside her cousin. “We did everything,” she said. “Trust me.”
They had been buzzed into the storefront, but they hadn’t noticed. Now the door opened and a woman wearing short shorts and a white halter top appeared.
“Are you coming in or not?” It was Natalie LeFrance, the healer. Margot recognized her from the neighbor’s description. Thick hair pulled into a ponytail. Silver earrings. A little blue tattoo at the base of her neck in the shape of a spider, caught in a web.
“What do you think?” Margot asked Gretel. “Should we?”
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Gretel could not remember the last time her cousin had asked for her advice. “We’re here.” Gretel shrugged. “What the hell.”
The storefront was air-conditioned and as cold as a freezer. There were bottles of herbs on a shelf, along with a TV, turned on without the sound. They sat around a table and drank glasses of warm ginger ale.
“I can see you’re in a lot of pain,” Natalie said to Gretel.
“I’m not the client,” Gretel informed her. She couldn’t help the smirk on her face.
“Really? I’m seeing pain.”
“I’m the one with the problem.” Margot tapped on the table. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“Okay. Listen to me. I want you to have sex with your husband twice tonight. Once in the moonlight, once in the dark.” Natalie LeFrance leaned both elbows on the table and lowered her voice confidentially, even though the closest human life-forms were the Fotomat guys out in the parking lot. “You understand, of course, I have to be paid for my services.”
Gretel snorted. “Naturally.”
Margot reached for her purse to search for the hundred and fifty dollars she had brought along, but the healer stopped her.
“Not money. The ring.”
Margot’s diamond was just under two carats, an unusual yellow-white stone.
“Oh, yeah, right.” Gretel got a good laugh out of this one. “Like she’d give you her ring.”