Alternate Endings Page 7

  “Look at Harry Potter.” Calyce ticked on her fingers. “There’s Sirius Black and Snape and Dumbledore, and that werewolf. All middle-aged or older men. And there’s Ron’s mother, with all these same powers, and she spends her time in the kitchen or knitting bad sweaters.”

  “But she fights!” Her students were outraged.

  “Not until the end, when she’s the archetypal protective mother. My point is that we’re all looking for role models of how to be. It’s a key task of literature, and it’s failed middle-aged women like me. Libraries are filled with boys becoming men by not doing what they’re told and being rewarded for it, but where are the books for me, to teach me that I can choose myself and I won’t be punished?”

  “But that sounds so selfish,” a girl said.

  “Exactly. When a woman says it, it does.”

  Still dressed, Calyce sat awkwardly on the examining table very early the next Thursday, her long legs dangling like a child’s. She had found an allergist in her network who offered 7 a.m. appointments, and the thirty-five year-old was now checking her nose and mouth. But then he frowned. Four small lines cut into his skin between eyebrows she swore were plucked.

  “I do see a lot of post-nasal drip,” he said under his cliff of hair that was stiff with product. “And I heard your cough a minute ago. You’re definitely hoarse, though that’s clearing. But your nose isn’t inflamed and your eyes are fine, though what you’re describing is consistent with fall allergies. You say you have spring hay fever, so let’s get you tested. Most people with spring allergies are also allergic to ragweed. It’s airborne too.”

  He left the tiny room and sent in his chatty nurse, who scratched the lighter skin of Calyce’s under-forearm with a tray full of allergens. She bustled out, saying she would be back in fifteen minutes, so Calyce was alone on the crackling white paper when the first of the two bumps appeared.

  The nurse explained when she returned that the one nearest Calyce’s wrist was histamine, used as a control, but the second was oak trees. The ragweed spot was bump-free.

  The allergist blew in again, his white coat flapping. His frown arrived too as he examined her unhelpful arm. He sat for the first time, on a little rolling stool. “So it’s not allergies, at least not to anything that’s standard for fall. Oaks pollinate in spring. That’s why your eyes and your nose are clear. You need to see an ENT.”

  “It’s just a cough.”

  “That I can’t explain. He’ll have a laryngoscope. I don’t.”

  “My doctor just called,” Effie said in a stream of words over the phone that same night. “She got the EKG back, and she wants me to see a cardiologist. ‘Do it now,’ she said. ‘Don’t wait.’ She had her office call, before she called me, and they got me in for an appointment tomorrow.”

  An hour later, Calyce was downstairs cleaning again, but churning this time. She worked the vacuum like she was scraping ice in winter, shoving it hard under Damion’s sectional, then bulldozed the bathroom countertop, scooping everything including Selene’s plastic hairbrush into the bowl of the sink with a crash so she could rub Clorox over the entire counter. Into the cabinet underneath she threw Selene’s hairdryer, which had been on the floor by the toilet, still plugged in.

  She carried in Damion’s clean clothes and hung them carefully in his closet, sliding her hands down each side of each T-shirt and each pair of jeans so they hung independently. She put his clean underwear in one drawer and Selene’s in another, then grabbed a clean white towel from her delivery basket and folded it in thirds lengthwise under her chin. She hung up two of them, leaving precisely one inch of shiny silver bar between them.

  She retrieved his socks from the living room and his workout sweatshirt that still smelled like him. With two fingers she plucked a pair of boxer briefs from the floor on his side of the bed and from the other a red lace thong with blood that made them brittle in the crotch, together with a nude camisole.

  “‘Nude’ for her,” she said out loud. “Not for me.”

  She had them draped over an arm when Selene walked in and surprised them both.

  Calyce said, “I thought you had class tonight.”

  Selene eyed the dirty underwear. “It was canceled. I can do all that.”

  “I was down here anyway. You know, if you put things away as you use them, it’s not so much work.”

  Calyce pointed to a bag of groceries on the entryway floor she had used to prop Damion’s door open. “I thought you’d want those in the little fridge down here.”

  Selene spoke slowly. “We’ve already got too much in there. I was going to cook us dinner tonight. Damion and me, upstairs.”

  “So you want me to take it all back up?”

  When Effie spoke to Calyce next, her mother was determinedly calm.

  “I have a narrowing of one of my heart valves,” she said like she was reading a newspaper. “It’s age, they say. It’s stiff and that’s why I’ve been getting so tired.”

  Calyce closed her eyes.

  “It’s irreversible,” Effie continued. “But I can have surgery. That’s the option.”

  “Or what?”

  A space arrived and grew and drained empty. “Well. It’s irreversible.”

  “And with surgery?”

  “Years. Apparently. Simon’s coming. I already talked to him. He and I are meeting with the surgeon Tuesday. And before you say it, there’s no reason for you to come down.”

  Calyce was walking outside, bundled up and cold without her gloves, hiking up the block on the sidewalk north of the school with her one free arm pumping.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she was saying into her phone as her pumps struck the pavement so hard they were horses’ hooves.

  “Move the appointment,” she instructed. “I need to be there and I can’t do it until the Friday after Thanksgiving . . . Then get another surgeon.”

  She marched up the road and left the school behind. “It’s not Mom’s job to call me. It’s yours.”

  It was much colder outside than she anticipated. Her phone hand was freezing.

  “Move it,” she interrupted.

  She interrupted again. ”Because I said so.”

  In her cold hand the line went dead.

  Damion had asked to meet with her that next Sunday. When she came to his room at the appointed hour, he and Selene were ready, sitting together on the corner of the sectional farthest from the door, with Selene cuddled close under his left arm. A sheet of paper lay next to Damion and Calyce had no idea what it was, nor did she know what was on the page Selene also had.

  Damion thanked Calyce for coming, then once she was settled leaned forward grandly to slip his hand behind himself and pull out a hidden, folded, fat wad of cash. He handed it over to his mother, who sat confused while he and Selene Cheshire-cat smiled.

  “What’s this?”

  “There’s more,” he said. “Hold on.”

  He cupped his hand and Selene opened her own to drop coins in it that she had been hiding in her palm. He gave them to Calyce too, counting them out, one dime and three pennies.

  “Eight hundred dollars and thirteen cents,” he said. “That’s six hundred and fifty for my share of the utilities and groceries for this month and another hundred and fifty and thirteen cents toward the student-loan payments you’ve already made.”

  Damion looked at the paper on the cushion next to him. “That leaves exactly four thousand six hundred and ninety-eight dollars – ”

  “Ninety-nine,” Selene corrected as she looked at Calyce.

  “Ninety-nine, even, that I still owe you. I – we – plan on giving you that same amount every month.” He looked at Selene. “Don’t we?”

  “We do,” Selene said to Calyce.

  “But where did you get this?” Calyce asked.

  “You want me to show initiative, so I showed it.”

  Damion was enjoying this. Selene nudged him with an
elbow.

  “Oh,” he said, “and there’s this.”

  Selene handed Calyce the sheet Selene had been keeping face down next to her: a copy of Damion’s updated single-page resume, which Selene said she had already uploaded.

  Calyce went outside as soon as they finished and walked her neighborhood for an hour, turning corners, reaching asphalt bulbs at street ends as she rose and fell for the first time on the slopes of her tightly packed neighborhood. She stopped at a little story-land footbridge that had been built for display by the developer over a tiny rivulet, which she had never noticed before. But now she saw the wink of the water and heard it sing over the decorative rocks. The tall stalks of specially planted reeds rubbed each other and whispered. They calmed her.

  The late-fall afternoon brought low-angle sunlight that fired the houses, making them golden. The air was brisk and clean and smelled of changing weather. She took one deep breath and another and then stopped entirely to open her lungs, spreading her legs wide at parade rest as her father had taught her, clasping her long fingers behind her thin back. She raised her chin in the middle of the street to look at the scrim of uninteresting clouds.

  She finally said out loud, “This is what I wanted. He’s self-sufficient, making his own money. And why shouldn’t she help him with his resume? I don’t have to do everything anymore. He’s a grown man.”

  She talked herself into accepting this new chapter as she passed roads she had never seen, until she received a beeping text. She pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. It was an automated message from the ENT, confirming her upcoming appointment.

  It could be anything, Google said, basically. From a sore throat to cancer. Esophageal cancer. Survival rate poor. Most dead within a year.

  As she internet-searched in her bedroom, a text popped up on her screen, this one from Simon.

  Mom wants this guy. No times Thksgvg Fri. Appt still day after tomorrow at 2. I WILL HANDLE.

  By midnight Simon still had not returned her voice message demanding to talk to him live, and Calyce was hungry from the waiting. Halfway down the stairs, though, she saw that Selene was already there, burrowed again into a corner of Calyce’s couch, watching television in the dark. Jimmy Fallon.

  Absorbed, Selene was laughing and didn’t see Calyce perched, stopped, high above her.

  I don’t want to talk to her, Calyce thought to herself as she backed up silently to return to her room. Fortunately, Selene didn’t notice.

  Once Calyce had closed her bedroom door, she murmured to herself out loud, “This girl has really taken over my house. She’s everywhere. And I’m still hungry.”

  “John, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to find someone to cover for me. I’m at the airport. I’m on stand-by and they just called my name. I have to go down and see my mother.”

  Calyce handed the gate agent her ticket and hurriedly rolled her bag past her. Everyone else had already boarded. “She has a doctor’s appointment I can’t miss, in Florida, but I should be back at school the day after tomorrow. I’m sorry for the short notice but I’m sure you can relate to this, given your history with your brother.”

  I want to take this opportunity as Interim Head to encourage everyone in the English Department to advocate for Belinda Rhoades with school administration. As you know, she is very interested in becoming our new Interim Vice Principal now that Janice DeGroot has had to leave to tend to John’s brother, who has been institutionalized.

  Calyce took a sip of the bubbly water in the clear plastic cup in the round drink indentation on her tray table, then continued typing.

  I have known and worked with Belinda since she began at the school as part of the first wave of teachers of color the school specifically recruited. (Before that, we were hired individually.) She is beloved by everyone, teacher and student; she exemplifies our values; she promotes our mission; she pursues our goals. We could not have a finer Interim Vice Principal, who frankly should be promoted to permanent VP immediately.

  Each of you please let me know what you have done to promote Belinda’s promotion to the latter position. Time is of the essence. I will be back at school on Wednesday. Calyce.

  As soon as she got inside the terminal in Florida, she hit SEND.

  Calyce and Simon flanked Effie at the conference room table at the cardiologist’s Clearwater practice. They sat with their backs to the Zen water feature surrounded by bonsai trees that Calyce could hear gurgling incongruently against the wall behind her. Across the table, in the chair directly facing her handsome mother in her white-bowed georgette blouse, a serene black man Calyce’s age had been doing his best to put Effie at ease while at the same time explaining that the open-heart bypass procedure risked her life.

  Graying Simon gripped his hands so tightly that his knuckles showed through his skin. He was shaking his head at the doctor.

  “Yes?” the dignified surgeon asked.

  Simon said, “Why can’t we do a stent along with the valve replacement, so she doesn’t have to be cracked open?”

  Calyce shot him a look and her younger brother saw it.

  “That’s the term,” he said. “They put a balloon up to push back the blockage and they can replace the valve at the same time without having to cut her open.”

  Calyce told him, “Just because you look things up on the internet, it doesn’t make you a doctor.”

  The cardiologist allowed a moment for the energy to dissipate, then continued in the same reasonable tone.

  “As you know, Effie, you’ve got a calcified aortic valve. We thought that’s what was causing all this fatigue, but it’s not. The cardiac CT you had after our initial meeting unfortunately showed that you have a couple of severe blockages in your left main artery.”

  He handed what looked like an x-ray to Effie across the table. Someone had gotten an entire x-ray onto an 8 ½ by 11-inch piece of white paper.

  “Let’s start with a normal artery,” he said, referring to his own copy, which he held up as he traced it with his slender hands. “It’s not yours, Mrs. Guthrie. See that big artery coming down from the upper left? See those branches? Go up to before it splits, to that big main trunk.”

  Huddled, the three of them followed along on their own copy as the water burbled. Against her arm, Calyce felt her mother’s shoulder.

  “That one artery there supplies seventy percent of the blood to your heart muscle. We call it the left main. The two arteries that branch off it – see those? – supply blood to the front wall of the heart and to one side. Now imagine what happens if the blood flow is cut off. It’s catastrophic, very different than if there’s a blockage farther down one of the branches. A blockage farther down means that only what’s south of it is affected, so a smaller part of the heart is harmed. It can be survived, unlike a complete blockage in the left main, which cuts off everything. Does that make sense?”

  Calyce and Simon both looked at their mother, who nodded calmly. Calyce could feel her own heart hammering in her ears, but Effie wasn’t even breathing fast, at least not so Calyce could see it.

  The doctor handed another x-ray sheet of paper across the table.

  “Now that’s your left main artery, Mrs. Guthrie. If you look, you can see it’s got two depressions in it, both on the top edge. They look like divots.” He turned his copy of the page toward them, touching the spots one after another. “Can you see how the blood flow’s constricted? Twice, with one in the middle and the other down by where the artery branches? This was that test where we put that dye into your elbow. Your left main artery is long, too. Longer than most.

  “Now, fortunately, and oddly, we don’t see blockages anywhere else. For some reason yours are all in this one area. But they are calcified like your aortic valve is. You can see it here.”

  He gave them a third sheet that showed webbing with two lightning streaks. “Two of your arteries are a bit calcified, including the left main. See that white?

  “An
d Mrs. Guthrie, let me assure you, it’s age, not anything you ate or did or didn’t do. Some people just collect calcium. It’s like bone, and it hardens the arteries.”

  Effie said suddenly and nonsensically, “I’ve always hated rocks.”

  The doctor went on. “In situations like these, open-heart bypass is really the gold standard. Though interventional cardiologists have been having increasing success with cardiac stents, it’s not the preferred standard of care for complicated multiple lesions in the left main. So Simon, you make a good point but a stent’s not recommended in this situation.”

  The doctor then said only to Effie, quite pointedly, “Ultimately it’s your decision, but it’s not recommended for patients who are not at high-risk for bypass surgery, and you’re not. You seem fine other than your heart. All those years of walking the beach.”

  He smiled and lines accordioned the bridge of his nose.

  “Your only disadvantage is you’re female. For whatever reason, older women don’t do as well as older men. But you should have the same survival rate as any other woman your age.”

  “She’s eighty-three,” Simon said. “And she’s exhausted.”

  “Which is most likely attributable to the cardiac issues. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s as well as she is. With this degree of blockage, and two of them, and her aortic valve, she should have angina at least. Which leads me to this. The combination of these two conditions and their severity, each of them, means that you need to make an immediate decision, Mrs. Guthrie. Today, if possible. Because you could have a cardiac event, and if you do, it would be devastating.”

  Effie regarded the doctor. “Am I right that open-heart bypass lasts longer?”

  He nodded.

  “With less chance of having to do it again?”