Where the Forest Meets the Stars(21)
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you about my Hetrayeh family,” Ursa said.
“I would. You know I would.”
“Tell Gabe about how your mom saved your life.”
“Changing the subject won’t help anything,” Jo said.
“You changed it,” Ursa said, “because you didn’t want to talk about your mom.” She pushed out her chair and left the table to go to the bathroom.
“Outsmarted again,” Jo said.
He smiled.
She slid away her empty plate. “You’re probably wondering what Ursa meant about my mother saving my life.”
“I’m guessing her cancer led to the discovery of yours.”
Jo nodded.
“How long ago did that happen?”
“About two years ago. She died this past winter.”
“And all the while you were dealing with your own cancer. Were you a graduate student yet when you were diagnosed?”
“I was, but I lost two years—between helping my mom and my treatments and surgeries.”
“More than one surgery?”
Her lack of breasts was obvious, but she hadn’t intended to mention the oophorectomy. Especially to a man her age. But she had to get over all of that.
“They found my cancer at an early stage,” she said, “but I still had a full mastectomy and my ovaries removed—because I was at high risk for recurring breast cancer and ovarian cancer.”
He leaned toward her, his face washed in candlelight.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
He sat back in his chair. “I won’t. As always, words fail when you most want to say the right thing.”
“People think they have to say something, and it never makes me feel better.”
“I know. I’ve decided language isn’t as advanced as we think it is. We’re still apes trying to express our thoughts with grunts while most of what we want to communicate stays locked in our brains.”
“This from the son of a literature professor?”
“Maybe I didn’t get the literary gene from him.”
Jo rose to collect plates so he wouldn’t feel obligated to eat what he couldn’t finish. He helped, stacking his dish on top of Ursa’s.
“What is your mother’s field of work?” she asked.
“She was an elementary school teacher for a while, but she did what your mom did: she quit when Lacey was born. She’s also a poet,” he said, following Jo into the kitchen. “She has two books of poetry published.”
“Really? Does she still write?”
“She can’t. The Parkinson’s makes her hands shake too much to write or type.”
“She could recite it while you write it down for her.”
“I suggested that, but she says that would ruin the creative process.”
“I guess I can see that.”
“The Parkinson’s is probably wiping out the poetry anyway.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah.”
Ursa already had the marshmallow bag in her hand.
“Don’t you ever get tired of marshmallows?” Jo said.
“We don’t have anything else for dessert, and the fire is going. Please?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you want some?” Ursa asked Gabe.
He looked at Jo. “Maybe I should get going.”
“Stay for a while,” Jo said.
“Are you sure?”
“The longer you can avoid the chains, the better, right?”
14
They settled into lawn chairs while Ursa cooked marshmallows. Gabe was quiet, staring moodily into the fire. Ursa didn’t say much either, her usual exuberance diminished by his silence.
“Is Lacey leaving tomorrow?” Jo asked.
“Now that I’m up, she probably will,” he said, still gazing into the fire.
“Where does she live?”
“Saint Louis.”
“That’s good.”
He looked at her. “Why?”
“Because it’s a short drive.”
“It would be better if it were longer.”
“She visits too much?”
“Not because she wants to. She comes when my mother calls her and tells her to come.”
“Does your mother do that often?”
“If I lie down for a long nap, my mother calls Lacey. If I’m in a quiet mood, she calls Lacey. If I skip the morning chores, she calls Lacey.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks I’m going down again.” He glanced at Ursa to see if she understood his meaning. “She’s terrified I’ll stop taking care of her and the animals.”
“Has that ever happened?”
He made a wry sound. “I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never had a chance to see if I would let it get that bad. Lacey always shows up before it does.”
“And then you shut down because you can and they expect you to.”
His eyes lit up with more than reflected fire. “Exactly!”
“That’s messed up. And having Lacey around would make anyone shut down. She almost seemed pissed that you were able to get up.”
“She was. She complains about coming here when I get depressed, but in reality I think she enjoys it. It’s some power thing with her.”
“That’s why she wouldn’t let us see you. She was threatened by the possibility that you have friends.”
“Who might give me a reason to get out of bed . . . which you did, by the way, and thank you for that.”
“Thank Ursa. I was too chicken to do it.”
“Thanks for sticking to your guns, Ursa. I mean . . . not guns . . .”
Jo and Ursa laughed.
He looked better and maybe felt better, because he toasted two marshmallows and ate them both. But anything he gained would be lost when he returned to the poisonous atmosphere of his home. “What did your sister say when you left to come here?” Jo asked while Ursa ran after a firefly.
“You can imagine.” He tossed his marshmallow stick into the fire. “No, you probably can’t, because you’re a normal person.”
“What did she say?”
He glanced at Ursa to make sure she couldn’t hear. “First, she ripped into me for buying clothes for Ursa. My mother told her about that while we were in the barn. When I ignored her, she got nastier until I got angry, like she always does. She said I might be accused of being a pedophile if I kept letting Ursa come to the farm. I asked her if that was a threat, and she said maybe. She said it was weird that I was picking her up in my arms.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah, it was bad. And she mocked me about you—like she thought we were involved or something.”
So Jo had guessed right about that. “What a bitch! If she thought you found someone, she should be happy.”
“My happiness can only make Lacey miserable and vice versa. She’s hated me since I was in the womb.”
“You know what she said to me?”
“What?” he asked with alarm. Apparently he didn’t trust anything his sister said.
“She told me I should dump you now, rather than later when my research was done.”
“God damn her!” he said, looking in the direction of his cabin.
“Don’t worry about it. I could see what was going on. But I thought you should know.”
He studied Jo’s eyes. “Did she say anything else?”
“That was the gist of it.”
He kept his eyes on hers, as if searching for the truth beyond her reply.
“What did you think she’d said?”
He looked down at his hands, rubbing his palms between his knees. “She and my mother think you’re the reason I went down—because I was last with you before it happened.”
She had surmised as much when he first disappeared, but she wouldn’t ask if it was true. That question might lead to why she had suddenly turned cold the night they looked at the galaxy. She never talked about how the surgeries had changed her view of her body. She could only visit that desolate place in private.
Gabe turned his face toward her. “She had no right to lay that on you. I’m sorry she involved you in our family bullshit.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I called her a bitch. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “You bitch!” in the direction of his property.
“I doubt she heard.”
“You never know. You can hear loud noises between these houses. I’m sure you hear our cow.”
“I do.”
“I meant Lacey.”
“Okay, stop. We should feel sorry for her. People as bitter as her usually have a reason. Is she divorced or something like that?”
“No, but you’re right about her being bitter. She was always desperate for our father’s approval, and she hated that he bragged about how smart I was when I was little. Mostly to please him, she majored in English and tried to become a writer, but she failed. Around that time, she got really mean. She used to tease me relentlessly until my temper blew. She enjoyed trying to make me look bad in front of our parents, especially our father.”
“That’s all pretty typical sibling rivalry.”
“Is it typical for a woman in her twenties to play games with a little kid so she could crush him and tell him how dumb he was? Or to say her newborn brother looked like a toad and call him Mr. Toad into adulthood? Around her, I felt like the ugliest, stupidest thing on Earth.”