Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

“He went to the store.”

“Oh. Oh.” She seemed to gather herself.

“I’m one of his colleagues, from the hospital. He said I could stop by and look at a brain scan. Your daughter let me in.”

“You are a doctor?”

“Yes. Dr. Clayton.”

“Did Mike send you to sit with me?” She spoke in staccato, each word with its own fervent stress.

“Yes,” Shayla said. “He told me to keep you company.”

“Good.” Fawn seemed to be waiting for her to say something else.

“Where do you want to sit?”

“The living room. I like the couch in the living room.”

With a walker, Fawn made her way across the carpet slowly. Shayla moved the coffee table out of her way.

“You can sit next to me,” Fawn said. “I don’t bite.” She patted the sofa’s cushion.

Shayla sat down.

“What is your name? I forgot your name.”

“Shayla Clayton.”

“Oh, oh.” Fawn seemed to remember something. “You are the doctor whose mom is going to die.”

Startled, Shayla nodded.

“Mike said she is old.”

“She’s not that old.”

“Mike said she is old,” Fawn insisted.

“She’s sixty-two. I don’t consider that old enough to die.” Shayla had to get out of here. She was arguing with a stroke patient.

“I’m…” Fawn paused. “Do you know how old I am?”

Shayla didn’t know exactly, but she was about to take a guess just to keep the conversation going when she felt someone behind her.

“Hello?”

She jumped up and held out a hand to Rebecca. “I’m Dr. Clayton. Your dad said I could come over and look at my mother’s brain scan.”

Rebecca looked at her suspiciously.

“Middie let me in. I guess your dad went to the store.” A mistake. How did she know Middie’s name?

“Rebecca, I want a Pepsi,” Fawn said. “Your father was supposed to bring me a Pepsi.”

“I’ll get it.”

Rebecca came back with a root beer. “I couldn’t find any Pepsi. Is this okay?”

Fawn frowned. “I do not want ice. I want it in the can. I like the can.”

Rebecca was already heading back to the kitchen. Shayla heard the fridge open and close, then Rebecca returned holding the root beer can, the soda apparently poured back in. One bead trickled down the side.

“I couldn’t find any Pepsi.”

“You didn’t look hard enough. You never look hard enough.”

“I looked, Mom.”

“Did you move things? I bet you didn’t move anything.”

“I’ll look again.”

Shayla and her mother used to have spats like this. Norma called her snobby when she was shy. She called her lazy when she was tired. Norma also cooked Shayla’s favorite dinner every Thursday, came to all her volleyball games and helped her pick out her first bra, turning away so Shayla wouldn’t be embarrassed.

While Rebecca clinked around in the kitchen, Shayla plied Fawn with simple questions. How old were the girls? What school did they go to? What were their favorite subjects? Fawn answered slowly and earnestly, as if after careful reflection.

Rebecca returned without a Pepsi and Shayla tried to calm Fawn down. “Maybe Mike is getting it. Middie said he went to the store.”

Rebecca leveled a cold look at her. “We know. You said that already.”

For a disturbingly long moment the sight of Shayla’s car outside his house sent a bolt of pleasure through Mike. For a disturbingly long moment he forgot she shouldn’t be here and didn’t even consider why, most likely, she’d come.

Inside, Shayla sat on the couch beside Fawn, who slept peacefully with her head lolling against the sofa’s back, a glisten of drool like a tear on her chin. Shayla held up a palm in greeting, the unmistakable look of regret on her face, then rose by inches, watching Fawn to be sure she didn’t wake.

Mike followed through the foyer, out the door into utter darkness.

“She wanted Pepsi.”

“I got some.”

The wind flattened their coats, too light for the weather, against their bones. At the curb next to Shayla’s car, Mike looked up at the bedroom windows on the second floor. The blinds were all pulled. No faces, no shadows.

He took her hand. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“I told your girls I came to see her scan.”

Mike nodded. “Good.”

Shayla took her hand back. “Fawn told me you love her too much.” She had dissolved into tears when a Pepsi couldn’t be produced, and that had led to the confession that Fawn wanted to die. “She said you won’t let her.”

Mike cupped Shayla’s elbow. “I’ll bring us Indian next week. You like that place by the mall, with the spicy chicken.”

“You hate Indian.”

“I’ll have rice, and that flat bread.”

“You can’t live on bread, Mike.”

He grinned. “Sure I can. Prisoners do.”

Shayla wanted to lean against him one last time, tell him the failure was hers. Someone else could string a life together from moments like this.

A car turned the corner, catching them in its headlights. Mike dropped Shayla’s elbow and looked over his shoulder. Quickly, she slipped in the car. Tomorrow, or maybe that weekend, she would move in with her mother. Take charge of medication schedules and doctors’ appointments. Do the shopping and cleaning. Smooth the edges of Norma’s last few months. It was a job Shayla could do well, she knew, only because its time was short.

She sees him first at the back of the lot, belly-deep in snow by the wild grape. Alec sits at the table, eating the new organic eggs. It’s Valentine’s Day.

Cory calls her husband Scott. “What do coyotes look like?”

“Uh, like a dog, I guess. Long snout maybe.”

“I think I saw one in the backyard. He went into the woods.” A tunnel in the snow testifies to the animal’s route, but the pack is too soft and deep to retain clear tracks.

“I’ve never heard of coyotes in the middle of a city.”

“Last March, Manhattan.”

“Was he living in a homeless shelter?”

“Ha, ha,” Cory deadpans. When Alec was a baby and refused to breastfeed, Scott just shrugged. “Maybe he’s gay — doesn’t like a nice pair of tits.”

Cory calls the municipal office. The city manager sounds tired. “Yes, we’ve had a few other unconfirmed reports. Nobody’s sure yet. There’s no real danger. As long as nobody feeds them.”

But how do you know if anyone is feeding them?

When she asks Scott this over dinner, he scowls. “What kind of idiot would do that?”

•

That night Cory watches a special about kids with brain cancer. It’s terrible, but compared to the other threats against her son’s life, it also has a kind of innocence, almost a reprieve.

There’s the yellow card from the doctor — measles, mumps, rubella — without a single mention of how they can be so damn sure vaccines don’t cause autism.

There’s the faceless manufacturers with their recall alerts. Apparently, the strap on her ninety-five-dollar car seat can melt in a high-speed crash.

The blank-faced sickos in her email alerts. Sexually Oriented Offender, victim: Child Female. File last modified 2006-09-19. Unlawful sexual Contact w/a minor. What is unlawful sexual contact? How minor?

The little girl Alec goes to preschool with. Once, in Cory’s dream, green-eyed Lily handed him a syringe. After that Cory studied the other toddlers, trying to guess who will convince him to take a hit, pass along AIDS, make a bet about how much he can drink or how fast he can drive on a rain-slick road. Who will bring a gun to school?

Cancer may strike without warning, but at least it arrives without recrimination. Blame lies with God.