For Better, for Worse, Forever Read online

  Brandon stared at the note, incredulous. April was gone. Just like that. Not even a word of goodbye. She could have called. She could have told him personally or even over the phone. He turned the piece of paper over, hoping for more of an explanation on the back. It was blank.

  She could have said, “See you soon.” Or “I’ll miss you.” But she hadn’t. She and her family had sneaked away, leaving him with a hundred unanswered questions. The hibiscus bush next to the porch had been picked clean, all the flowers gone, the leaves shining green in the sun. He knew she’d taken them with her. But he also realized that she’d taken much more than the rich red and pink flowers. She’d also taken his heart.

  11

  July in New York was just as hot, humid, and sticky as April remembered. In the past, during the sweltering days, her family had taken vacations into the mountains or to Europe. Except for last year, when she’d been with Mark and hadn’t wanted to go anywhere he didn’t go. The city felt oppressive to her now, teeming with people in a hurry—a shock to her system after the easygoing atmosphere of St. Croix. Even her childhood home seemed uninviting. Her parents had called ahead to have it opened and aired, but musty odors from having been shut up for months still lingered. Her room had been cleaned and fresh linen put on her bed, but she missed looking out at the sea, missed the aroma of tropical flowers and salt-tinged air, and as much as she hated to admit it, she missed Brandon too. In short, she didn’t want to be back home.

  On Wednesday morning the three of them headed into the city for the hospital and the rounds of testing she didn’t want to face. Two days later, as they sat in Dr. Sorenson’s office, April felt drained and, like a child in a cruel mazelike game, right back at square one—the place she’d started from more than eighteen months before.

  Dr. Sorenson was as pleasant as ever, exactly as she remembered him, but he looked preoccupied, more reserved than in past visits. He placed the MRI films on the light board and drew a circle around the now-familiar dense glob pressing against her cerebellum. “It’s growing again,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice tinged with sadness.

  Deep down, it was nothing she hadn’t known, but seeing it on the film, hearing him state the obvious, made her suck in her breath. His actual words gave finality to her situation. It closed doors.

  “So where do we go from here?” her father asked sharply, after a moment of silence.

  Of course, they’d been all through her options before she’d ever left for St. Croix: She had none. The tumor was too aggressive for treatments, too large for gamma knife surgery.

  “I wish I had better news for you,” Dr. Sorenson said now, picking his words carefully.

  “Then this is it, isn’t it?” April asked boldly, suddenly wanting to get everything settled once and for all. “There’s really nothing else you can do for me, is there?” Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them out.

  “You’ve had two rounds of radiation—the maximum—and chemotherapy won’t touch this type of tumor. I’m sorry, April.”

  “Her mother and I won’t accept that.” Her father struck his fist on the edge of the doctor’s desk. “I have money. There are other doctors. Other hospitals.”

  “Your daughter’s prognosis won’t change. You can spend thousands, hundreds of thousands; it won’t make a difference.”

  “Experimental drugs,” her father shouted. “Something.”

  April recoiled. She didn’t want to be somebody’s lab experiment.

  “If there was anything on the medical horizon to help your daughter, I would have suggested it. Certainly there are quacks in the world, Mr. Lancaster. There are many people who promise cures but can’t deliver them. Many charlatans who’ll take your money, make April suffer, but not cure her.”

  “So you’re saying we just have to abandon hope? We won’t, sir. We can’t.”

  “Oh, Hugh …,” April’s mother cried. “Do something. Please.”

  April stood. The last time the doctor had tried to close the door on her hope she’d shouted at him too, and then had run from his office, refusing to listen to any more grim news. And she’d gone on to have a few wonderful months with Mark, followed by spring and most of the summer in St. Croix. This time, she was resigned. “Please stop shouting.” Her knees trembled, but she stood her ground and stared at her distraught parents. Unbelievably, a calm settled on her. “It won’t help, Daddy. It won’t change things. The doctor’s out of miracles.”

  She sat on her mother’s lap like a child and nestled her head against her shoulder, reached for her father’s hand, and pulled him closer into the circle.

  “Oh, baby,” her mother wept.

  “Tell us, Dr. Sorenson. Tell us what to expect.” April was dry-eyed now.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “I’ll be increasing your steroid medication to keep down the swelling of your brain as the tumor advances.”

  She winced. Even though the pills had helped the headaches in the past, she’d hated the side effects: weight gain, a puffy moon-shaped face, and swollen hands and feet. The treatment had deepened her voice and made hair grow in usually hairless places on her body. “And then? Please tell me everything.”

  “You’ll have memory lapses, equilibrium problems, trouble with speech and probably sight and hearing. Eventually you’ll be bedridden. You’ll slip into a coma. Your lungs will fill with fluid, and you’ll stop breathing.”

  The progression sounded logical to her. Her body would slowly shut down as the tumor choked out her life. “Will I have to be in the hospital?”

  “No, not if you don’t want to be. Hospice is a wonderful group that helps families keep their loved ones at home … until the end. You can have a nurse, a hospice member, anyone you want with you.”

  “I’d like that. I’d like to die at home.”

  “Except for headaches, which will pass in time, you won’t be in pain. That’s a unique feature of the brain. It has no nerve endings. That’s why we can perform complicated surgeries on it with nothing more than a local anesthetic. Patients can be wide awake through several types of brain surgery, even talk to the surgeon and give reports on what they are feeling.”

  Cold comfort, April thought. She said, “So, I’ll just go to sleep and not wake up?”

  “Yes, that’s pretty much how it will be.”

  It was impossible for her to imagine nonexistence, to think of herself not of this world. She hugged her mother tightly and squeezed her father’s hand. “I want you with me the whole time.”

  “We’ll be with you, baby,” her mother whispered. “You know we will.”

  April closed her eyes, shutting out all but the sound of her own breathing.

  Later, April told them she didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to concentrate on what was happening in the here and now, not in the future. But when she was alone, she steeped her senses in touching, tasting, seeing. She walked in the yard, fingered flower petals, sniffed the roses, all the while mourning the loss of them. Once, she held her breath for as long as she could, but gave up and gasped for air just as she started to feel light-headed. Would she do the same thing when she was in a coma? She wished she’d spent more time talking to Mark about dying, about giving up and letting go.

  And she thought about Brandon too. She wondered if he hated her for running off without a word. She thought about calling him but wondered what she would say to him. It was as if she were two people: the girl in New York who was dying, and the girl in St. Croix who was carefree and happy and having a wonderful time. How could she merge the two? How could she expect Brandon to understand? She’d been unfair.

  She wondered too how his mother could have tossed away her life. The pain her suicide had caused Brandon was immeasurable.

  Hadn’t she considered what it might do to him? April knew that if she could do anything to hold on to her life, she would. It made no sense to her that someone would throw away what she so desperately wanted.

  The hospice people came out to
the house to visit, to talk. They were kind people, understanding, with their own losses behind them. But April realized they were more for her parents’ benefit than hers. Her parents would be the ones left behind while she would go … where? She’d always believed in heaven, had been taught about it in Sunday school. She tried to remember what she’d been told but could only recall that heaven was a place of great beauty where there would be no more sadness or sorrow.

  But thoughts of eternal peace and perfect happiness brought her little comfort. There were still so many things she wanted on this side of heaven. She had wanted a career and to get married, maybe to have children. Until now, she’d given no thought to growing old, but suddenly it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to do. What would she have looked like? Would her hair color have faded? Would her complexion have wrinkled?

  “The trouble,” she told herself one morning as she studied her face in the mirror, “is that you have too much time to think.” She needed to talk to someone, be with someone other than her parents. Kelli wouldn’t be home for another few weeks. April needed someone now. Which was how she ended up calling Mark’s mother and making plans to visit her. Yet as she climbed up the steps of the old brownstone on a hot, muggy morning, she felt it might have been a mistake. The pain of the happy memories she’d shared with Mark at his parents’ home engulfed her. She almost turned and skittered away, but the door was flung open and Mark’s mother, Rosa, threw her arms around April and dragged her into the cool quiet of the foyer.

  “Praise be!” Rosa said. “How good to see you, April. When did you get home? How was your trip? You look wonderful! So tan and beautiful.” She held April at arm’s length, stroking her with her gaze.

  To April, Rosa was ever pretty, with lively eyes and black hair sprinkled with gray. She looked so much like Mark, it brought a lump to April’s throat. April gave a brief accounting of her time, leaving out her reason for returning to New York.

  Rosa herded her into the kitchen, where a giant pot of simmering soup filled the room with its tomato aroma. Rosa sat April down at the table and proceeded to ladle up a bowl of soup. Never mind that April wasn’t hungry. “Tell me everything,” Rosa insisted, sitting with her at the table. “Did I say that we’ve missed you? Thank you for the postcards … such a beautiful place.”

  April talked glowingly about St. Croix, not mentioning Brandon, of course, and finished by asking, “How have you all been?”

  “Mark’s father is well. Still working too hard, but such is a detective’s life—there’s so much crime out there. And it’s good for him to have a job he loves. Marnie and Jill still aren’t married, but Mamie’s met a nice Italian boy and we have hopes for her.”

  April smiled, recalling Mark’s pretty sisters and their parents’ desire to see them married and settled. It didn’t seem to matter that both were competent, professional women. To Rosa, marriage and children were the only real-life choice for a woman. “You tell them hello for me.”

  “Why me? You tell them yourself. Now that you’re back, you and your parents can come for dinner.”

  “We can do that.” April felt her mouth getting dry and knew she was having an attack of nerves. There was so much she had to tell Rosa, but how should she begin? “I miss Mark,” she confessed. “In St. Croix, I thought about him every day. He would have really liked it there.”

  Rosa’s smile turned wistful. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him too. I … we … miss him very much. But I want you to know how much happiness you brought him the last year of his life. I will always love you for that.”

  “I still have the wedding dress. It’s packed away in a huge box in the back of my closet.”

  “You were beautiful in it. Maybe you can wear it for another.”

  April dropped her gaze. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor.”

  “Ask me for anything.”

  “Come with me to the cemetery. I want to visit Mark’s grave.”

  12

  The cemetery stretched green and quiet in the hot sun. Manicured lawns were broken by aboveground mausoleums, statues of saints, and carved stonework and bronze markers with vases. April watched sprinklers spew sprays of water over sections of grass as Rosa drove slowly along the internal roadway toward Mark’s grave. The cemetery was more beautiful than April remembered from the day of Mark’s burial, but she’d been so numb at the time she’d hardly noticed anything.

  “It’s over there,” Rosa said, stopping the car.

  They got out and wound their way through a field of markers until Rosa halted near a weeping willow tree. April stooped down. A marker held Mark’s name, his birth and death dates, and the inscription BELOVED SON. AT PEACE FOREVER. Rising over the marker stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, her arms open. A bronze vase held fresh flowers. “I wanted him to always have flowers,” Rosa explained. “The groundskeepers put them out once a week for him.”

  “Do you come often?”

  “Maybe once a month. It hasn’t been that long, you know.”

  He had died in the fall. April stared down at the marker, imagining her name etched in the metal. She took a quivering breath. “I’m dying, Rosa.” It was the first time she’d ever called Mark’s mother by her first name. Always before, she’d addressed her as Mrs. Gianni.

  “What?” The woman stepped backward as if she’d been struck.

  “The tumor’s growing again. There’s nothing the doctors can do.”

  “Oh, April, no. It can’t be true.”

  April looked at her, saw tears swimming in her eyes, and swallowed against the lump of emotion wedged in her own throat. “It’s one of the reasons we came home from St. Croix. I started having problems again. We had to get them checked out.”

  “This isn’t right. You don’t deserve this.”

  Mark’s family had always known about her brain tumor, but Mark’s problems were so overwhelming, Apirl’s had taken a backseat. “Mark didn’t deserve CF either. We knew that this was a possibility when he and I first met. For a long time, it scared me so much I didn’t even want to date him. But he was a hard one to say no to.” April smiled, remembering his long pursuit of her and the way he had worn down her resistance. “We loved each other, but sometimes I forgot about the illnesses. I didn’t believe either of us would actually … you know … really die.”

  “There must be something the doctors can do for you.”

  “They introduced us to the people at hospice. I don’t want to die in the hospital.” The memory of Mark’s last days haunted her. There had been nothing friendly, nothing comforting about the cool technology of the hospital’s machines and antiseptic smells. She wanted her departure from the planet to be different.

  Rosa crossed herself. “You mustn’t give up.”

  “I’m not giving up. I’m being realistic. It’s better to face the truth than to pretend it isn’t happening.”

  “Is there anything you want me to do for you? Just ask.”

  “My parents … it’s hard on them. If you could be here for them … you know … afterward.”

  “Absolutely. If they ever want to talk, tell them to call.”

  Mark’s parents knew what it was to lose a child. Funny, April hadn’t thought of herself as a child in many years, but she felt like one now. She felt small and frightened. She wanted the bad things to go away. She didn’t want to go through what lay ahead.

  “And I was thinking … do you think I could be buried here? By Mark?” She wasn’t Catholic, but all at once it was important to her to think about having a place to belong to, a place for her parents to come and visit.

  “I’ll talk to my priest. You were planning on marrying in the church. What can it matter if you want to rest beside your fiancé forever?”

  April knelt and ran the palm of her hand across Mark’s name. The bronze felt smooth and warm from the sun. Shadows from the willow tree danced across the grass beside her. She too would soon become a shadow, shifting in and out of the sunlight.
Her body might be placed below the ground, but her spirit—“You believe Mark’s in heaven, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I believe Mark’s with God. The only thing that makes losing him easier is knowing that, and that he isn’t in any more pain. The pain he suffered was always the hardest part for me … although he rarely complained.” She sighed. “Long ago, I resigned myself to knowing that I would never hold a grandchild of his.”

  Because boys with cystic fibrosis are sterile, April reminded herself. She remembered the night he’d told her he’d never be able to father children. He’d been so afraid she’d leave him. As it was turning out, she’d never give her parents a grandchild either. Her parents’ genes, her family tree, ended with her. “Do you think God will tell me why, if I ask him?”

  “Why?”

  “Why Mark and I had to die. Why we were ever born in the first place.”

  “I certainly plan to ask him,” Rosa said with a shrug. “My priest says God has a reason for everything, but that he doesn’t owe us any explanations.”

  April wondered if once she was dead, she’d understand God’s purposes. The meaning of life and God’s purposes were too vast a subject to think about now.

  She said, “I’m ready to leave now.”

  “Of course.” Rosa began walking to the car.

  April followed. In the distance a sprinkler sent water skyward, and in a quirk of the light, a rainbow formed. She watched it shimmer and thought of childhood stories of pots of gold at the rainbow’s end. Somehow it seemed fitting, and also a kind of foreshadowing. At the end of the rainbow of her life, the ground would swallow her. And she would lie beside Mark in death, as she had been unable to lie beside him in life.