“She didn’t run off. It’s much more serious than that.” I put a finger under her chin so she looked at me. “Andie? I need you to take this very seriously, okay?”
“Of course I’m taking it seriously. But I need to be able to talk to you more often. To see you. I’m freaking out, Nick.”
“We just need to sit tight for now.” I gripped both her shoulders so she had to look at me. “My wife is missing, Andie.”
“But you don’t even—”
I knew what she was about to say—you don’t even love her—but she was smart enough to stop.
She put her arms around me. “Look, I don’t want to fight. I know you care about Amy, and I know you must be really worried. I am too. I know you are under … I can’t imagine the pressure. So I’m fine keeping an even lower profile than I did before, if that’s possible. But remember, this affects me too. I need to hear from you. Once a day. Just call when you can, even if it’s only for a few seconds, so I can hear your voice. Once a day, Nick. Every single day. I’ll go crazy otherwise. I’ll go crazy.”
She smiled at me, whispered, “Now kiss me.”
I kissed her very softly.
“I love you,” she said, and I kissed her neck and mumbled my reply. We sat in silence, the TV flickering.
I let my eyes close. Now kiss me, who had said that?
I lurched awake just after five A.M. Go was up, I could hear her down the hall, running water in the bathroom. I shook Andie—It’s five A.M., it’s five A.M.—and with promises of love and phone calls, I hustled her toward the door like a shameful one-nighter.
“Remember, call every day,” Andie whispered.
I heard the bathroom door open.
“Every day,” I said, and ducked behind the door as I opened it and Andie left.
When I turned back around, Go was standing in the living room. Her mouth had dropped open, stunned, but the rest of her body was in full fury: hands on hips, eyebrows V’ed.
“Nick. You fucking idiot.”
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
JULY 21, 2011
DIARY ENTRY
I am such an idiot. Sometimes I look at myself and I think: No wonder Nick finds me ridiculous, frivolous, spoiled, compared to his mom. Maureen is dying. She hides her disease behind big smiles and roomy embroidered sweatshirts, answering every question about her health with: “Oh, I’m just fine, but how are you doing, sweetie?” She is dying, but she is not going to admit it, not yet. So yesterday she phones me in the morning, asks me if I want to go on a field trip with her and her friends—she is having a good day, she wants to get out of the house as much as she can—and I agree immediately, even though I knew they’d be doing nothing that particularly interested me: pinochle, bridge, some church activity that usually requires sorting things.
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she says. “Wear short sleeves.”
Cleaning. It had to be cleaning. Something requiring elbow grease. I throw on a short-sleeve shirt, and in exactly fifteen minutes, I am opening the door to Maureen, bald under a knitted cap, giggling with her two friends. They are all wearing matching appliquéd T-shirts, all bells and ribbons, with the words The PlasMamas airbrushed across their chests.
I think they’ve started a do-wop group. But then we all climb into Rose’s old Chrysler—old-old, one of those where the front seat goes all the way across, a grandmotherly car that smells of lady cigarettes—and off we merrily go to the plasma donation center.
“We’re Mondays and Thursdays,” Rose explains, looking at me in the rearview.
“Oh,” I say. How else does one reply? Oh, those are awesome plasma days!
“You’re allowed to give twice a week,” says Maureen, the bells on her sweatshirt jingling. “The first time you get twenty dollars, the second time you get thirty. That’s why everyone’s in such a good mood today.”
“You’ll love it,” Vicky says. “Everyone just sits and chats, like a beauty salon.”
Maureen squeezes my arm and says quietly, “I can’t give anymore, but I thought you could be my proxy. It might be a nice way for you to get some pin money—it’s good for a girl to have a little cash of her own.”
I swallow a quick gust of anger: I used to have more than a little cash of my own, but I gave it to your son.
A scrawny man in an undersize jean jacket hangs around the parking lot like a stray dog. Inside, though, the place is clean. Well lit, piney-smelling, with Christian posters on the wall, all doves and mist. But I know I can’t do it. Needles. Blood. I can’t do either. I don’t really have any other phobias, but those two are solid—I am the girl who swoons at a paper cut. Something about the opening of skin: peeling, slicing, piercing. During chemo with Maureen, I never looked when they put in the needle.