Adam Johnson - Emporium

You told Mrs. Crowley she had something there, that working with radon and lab rats had always been a dream, but your real plans include asbestos. For some reason, you confessed to stealing your father’s drill bits, to once lying about the reading on your mother’s thermometer so you could go see Forrest Gump at the drive-in, admitted to sometimes eating her chemotherapy pills when she wasn’t around. Mrs. Crowley said remember to turn in the combination for your locker and bring a photo of yourself to the SAT.

What you couldn’t explain to Mrs. Crowley was that the real danger is in handling it too well. Managing loss is your father’s business. He’s pretty good at it. He got mom the best medical plan, the best doctors, the best palliative counselor. Dad knew the stages of grief and there were no surprises. Mom even died on schedule. Those doctors were amazing; they called it within a weekend.

Dad joined a support group and took up woodworking. He bought you a brass trumpet and a punching bag. Now he comes home from work, checks the Weather Channel — he’s crazy about the weather — puts on a shop apron, and goes into the garage to build the look-alikes of colonial furniture that fill your house.

Sometimes he gets nostalgic on Sundays or has a few too many beers over dinner and tells you things about Mom when she was young. You’ve heard most of them many times, but once in a while he says something new, and you feel close to him for that. Your mom had a pony named Applejack when she was girl. In college, her favorite movie was The Andromeda Strain . That, pregnant with you, she was in Albertson’s supermarket when her water broke, and she calmly took a jar of pickles from the shelf, dropped it over the fluid on the floor, and moved on.

But even these moments of disclosure from your father seem expected in a way, and his power tools never seem to rattle him the way you’d think they might, the way the BlueLiner’s big diesel can vibrate something loose in you that makes you forget where it is you are driving, makes you check and check the overhead mirror for her in row six. You think if Dad could have seen her on this bus one time, bright-eyed and destination bound, all those pieces from his replica projects wouldn’t fit together so well.

You hear the thump of the red door and look out the windscreen to see a kid your age cross the lot with a white bucket of beer caps. He cuts around to the back dock, where he starts dumping them in the lake. It’s dark and a long way off, but you think you know him from the baseball team, from before you quit. He leans against the rail and he pours slowly, watching the caps go down like all those green innings in a near-championship stadium. His name might be Tony. Finished, he spits on what is probably his own reflection and goes inside. When the door closes, though, there is a woman standing beneath the blue beer sign.

She crosses the lot, circling wide to avoid the floodlight. With calm, measured steps she walks around the far side of the bus, where she grabs a sapling with both hands and stares at her feet.

She’s in trouble, about to be sick, but there’s something about her shoulders, the way her ribs flare and trim toward her waist. She’s younger, new to the club, and caught your eye in the mirror on the way over. You could tell she was drawn to the mood on the bus, the abandon, the acceptance of being out without her wig. For everyone on the BlueLiner, the worst has already happened, and this is how they can laugh and talk to one another across newly emptied seats. This is what your mother wanted: for everything to race on without her.

Now, she retches, the thin branches shaking above her. When her shoes and ankles get wet, you know you should look away, but there is something necessary in the sight. It makes you wish your mother could have shown this side, the alone-and-sick, slipping-outside part of the deal, because all her strength, like your father’s adaptability, did nothing to brace you for after.

Her heels shift in the gravel again, heading for the bus, where she shakes the locked doors. You find her seat, her purse, and at the cab, strip the towel off your captain’s chair before levering open the door. With the bright lights behind, she is more than alluring. She is here and real.

She takes her bag from your hand. “Jesus,” she says. “This stuff I’m taking.”

“I’m Ben,” you tell her. Inside you’re feeling that pulse, and don’t know what to say because somehow you’re already beyond small talk. And even just talking means you’re making an investment of some kind. It’s like standing before a brass trumpet or boxer’s bag: they promise to show you a lot more of yourself than a red face or sore hands, and you’re unsure if you want to touch them for that.

You climb down to the last step and sit, so she’s taller. “Here,” you say, holding the towel in the air before her, and there’s this thing between you so clear that she grabs the door molding for balance and places a foot in your hand. You begin with her calf, stroking down to the heel.

“Do you feel better?”

“Sue. I’m sorry, Sue.”

“Do you feel better, Sue?”

“No, not really.”

She has a Hickman port in her chest, a sort of gray button connected to a white tube that disappears into the skin below the collarbone. You know your cancers pretty well, and the Hickman’s a bad sign. It’s made so they can inject really strong drugs like vinblastine, chemicals that will burn out the veins unless they’re pumped straight into the superior vena cava, straight into the heart. You can feel the slim bones of her foot through the towel. Vinblastine is made from the purple blossoms of the periwinkle plant. You want to push that button.

“I mean you’re nice for this, but this medicine…”

“Ben.”

“This medicine, Ben.” She shakes her head.

You take her other foot when she offers, wanting to make her legs dry and clean. You want to tell her you understand, that you’ve tasted Cytoxan, that it made your fingernails loose and teeth hurt. The feeling like your molars have been pulled returns: platinum spark plugs have been screwed into your jaw, and for a moment, it’s like when they’d crackle to life in the middle of the night, making you see blue on the inside of your eyelids. “It’s okay,” you tell Sue.

“What’s okay?”

“Everything. It feels pretty bad now, I know, but it’ll all work out.”

She pulls her foot back.

Your voice is thinner even than Mrs. Crowley’s, but still you say, “Things’ll be fine.”

“I’m pretty fucked, thank you. I’m screwed.”

She says this and hops once, slipping a shoe strap over her heel before walking away.

From your wallet you pull your entrance ticket to the SAT. The picture you glued to it doesn’t look anything like you. You cut it out of your sophomore yearbook, a dull-faced goofy kid who has no idea what’s coming, who doesn’t suspect that no one in his family will take a photo for the next three years.

You follow the route Sue took through the cars, into the Cove.

Inside, things are about what you’d thought. Several women have corralled two wrecker drivers into a group jitterbug that has them spinning off balance from woman to woman, their eyes unsure where to land — avoiding chests and hairlines — while their hands clutch at waists as if for emergency brakes. Oblivious to the fast rhythm, Mrs. Boyden dances with a small, older gentleman in a brown jumpsuit. They move like strangers on liberty, her fingers hooked in his collar, his hands gathering the fabric of her emerald dress like parachute cord, a move that smoothes where his head lay sideways on her sternum, listening, as if to the source of the softer music they seem to move to. There is no sign of Sue.