Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

"I don't care what she wants: You tell me now."

Paul takes another big gulp. He says, hardly saying it, "It's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma."

"What the hell is that?"

"It's cancer in the lymph nodes."

"But she'll get treatment, she's getting treatment."

He shakes his head. "We've been to every doctor in Oregon and Washington. We're seeing someone at Yale Medical School tomorrow. But I think it's going to be the same story. It's not something they can operate on, and the chemo and radiation would hurt the baby."

"So what the hell are you two doing? What the hell is this?"

"She doesn't want to hurt the baby, Jerry," he says. "We've fought over this and fought over this and I haven't been able to change her mind. She's going to try to wait until after the baby's born. It's due in December."

"She can have another baby!" I say. "She's only thirty, for heaven's sake! Am I missing something here? You can have a half dozen more, if you wanted."

"There's the problem of the chemo causing infertility. That's not certain, though. But really, it's that she's decided she wants this one. You talk to her tomorrow. Please talk to her. I can't anymore. Right now I just have to support her, Jerry, because there's no other way."

"Dammit, Paul, this is all fucking crazy. You're both fucking crazy!"

"Don't you think I know that?"

"Oh fuck it!"

We're suddenly shouting at one another, standing toe to toe, and I realize that I've gripped my wineglass so tight that it's snapped at the stem. One of the points is digging into my palm.

I'm stuck and bleeding. I drop the two pieces onto the chair cushion. Paul reaches for a box of tissues and gathers me up a wad, and when I press it I get a sharp, ugly surge of that old feeling again, when Daisy was so lovely and so fragile, the feeling like I want to break or ruin something. Something always need.

HE DAY THAT DAISY DIED was a lot like this one, early July, with the sun seeming stuck right at the top of the sky, T

casting the kind of light and heat that make all the neighborhood kids vault over themselves with pant and glee and then cows everyone else, moms and dads and us older folks and teenagers and the family pets. Daisy liked the heat, and though she didn't know how to swim she'd spend plenty of time in our backyard pool, tanning in her plaid one-piece in the floating lounger or else dog-paddling with an old-fashioned life ring looped under her arms. I tried to teach her how to swim a couple of times, but I'd end up cat-scratched about the neck and shoulders, and then half-drowned besides, Daisy lurching and pulling up on me whenever I let her go, yelling out if her face or scalp got wet. She wasn't so much dainty or persnickety but for some reason hated being submerged or drenched. She always showered with a cap and on alternate days shampooed her hair in the sink, the drain of which I'd have to unclog every couple weeks of the thick black strands, using a pair of chop-sticks.

And I swear — I swear, I swear — that I never imagined for a second that the pool was dangerous, at least for her. Sure I jumped in a half-dozen times to pluck out one of my kids or their mangy, booger-streaked friends thrashing fitfully in the deep end, but Daisy was always careful and tentative, even after she started to change and began seeing our family doctor for meds. She always entered the water as if it were as hot as soup, then pushed off from the steps with her float tube and kicked, her taut chin just barely hovering above the surface.

Hey, honey, she'd say to me, the ends of her hair slicked to pencil points, I'm a mermaid.

Sexier than that, I'd say, through the Sunday paper, through the summer haze.

It was nice like that, a lot of the time. I remember how Theresa and Jack would spend pretty much every second between breakfast and dinner in our backyard pool, or else run

about on the concrete surround and the lawn spraying each other and whatever friends were around with water pistols filled with Hi-C punch or sometimes even pee (I caught.them once in the rickety little cabana I'd built, giggling and pissing all over their hands trying to fill-er-up). If it was the weekend I'd be out there for a good while, too, chuck the kids around in the water and play the monster or buffoon and do a belly flop or two for a finale, then dry off and wrap a towel around my waist and drag a chaise and a beer beneath the maples and snooze until one of the kids got hurt or fell or puked because they drank too much pool water, all of which in the heat and brightness and clamor made for a mighty decent time. This, of course, was dependent, too, on what mood Daisy was in, but in those early days she was pretty solid, she was pretty much herself, she was just like the girl I fell in love with.

In those days she would set up the patio table with all kinds of vittles, she'd have the soppressata and the sugar ham and the crock of port wine cheese and the Ritz and Triscuits and she'd have plenty of carrot and celery sticks and pimiento olives and then she'd have the electric fryer on the extension cords snaking back through the kitchen window, to fry up chicken wings or butterfly shrimp and french fries right there on the table, so it was hot and fresh. If my folks or other people were going to be over she made sure to put out her homemade egg rolls and some colorful seaweed and rice thing that we didn't yet know back then was sushi, which people couldn't believe she had made, and maybe some other Oriental-style dishes like spicy sweet ribs and a cold noodle dish she always told us the name of but that we could never remember but which everyone loved and always finished first. She had this way of arranging the food on the platters that made you think of formal gardens, with everything garnished by fans of sliced oranges or shrubs of kale or waterfowl she'd carve out of apples, giving them shiny red wings.

I was working a lot then, having just been made second-in-command at Battle Brothers by my father and uncles, and Daisy was like a lot of the young mothers around the neighborhood, meaning she took care of the house and the kids and the cooking and the bills and whatever else came up that I could have dealt with but somehow didn't, for the usual semi-acceptable reasons of men; but I will tell you Daisy didn't mind, that was never a problem between us, because when you got right down to it she was an old-fashioned girl in matters of family, not only because she wasn't so long removed from the old country, but also because her nature (if you can speak of someone's nature, before she changed and went a little crazy and ended up another person entirely) preferred order over almost all else, and certainly didn't want any lame hand Jerry Battle could provide.

In fact the first real signs of her troubles were the kinds of things you see whenever you go into most people's houses, stuff like piles of folded laundry to be put away, some dishes in the sink, toys loose underfoot, everything finding its own strewn place, but for Daisy, when it began to happen, it meant there was maybe a quiet disaster occurring, a cave-in somewhere deep in the core. One time, a day just like this, kids frolicking about, our guests arrayed as usual around the backyard and the spread of piquant goodies on the patio table, Daisy sort of lost it. I don't know what happened exactly but maybe one of the kids bumped the other table where she was working the deep fryer, and the hot oil lipped over the edge and splashed the table and then spilled down onto her sandaled foot. I knew it happened because I saw her jump a little and leap back, and it occurred to me only later that she didn't shout or scream or make any sound at all. I went over to see if she was burned but before I could get there Daisy did the oddest thing: she picked up the fryer by the handles and turned it over and sort of body-slammed it on the table, the oil and chicken wings gushing out sideways, luckily in nobody's direction. I ran up and quickly yanked the extension cords apart and asked her if she was all right and she had this sickened look on her face and she said it was an accident and that she was sorry. By this time our guests had descended and I'm sure no one saw what had really happened, as everyone was appropriately concerned, but I knew and I got angry (if only because I was confused and a little scared) and yelled at her about being more careful. She started crying and that pretty much brought an end to the afternoon, most of our guests deciding to leave, among them some neighbors who never called us again.