The Art of Adapting Page 21
Lana had a few hours before picking up the kids from school, so she took a couple of ibuprofen and curled up in bed. When she woke it was past lunch and she had a sharp pain in her stomach. She’d forgotten to eat, and to feed Matt. She went downstairs and found him eating at the front window.
“Sorry,” she said. “I fell asleep.”
“I can make my own food,” he said. “I know how. I just like it when you do it.”
“I know,” Lana said. He hadn’t really had that kind of a mom, the kind who doted on him, stocked up on his favorite foods, catered to his dietary whims. “I like to do it.”
The truth was, Matt had lost his mother to cancer. Not hers, but Stephen’s. From the moment of Stephen’s diagnosis, nothing mattered to Gloria but getting Stephen better. Her other three children were forgotten, left to fend for themselves. Lana and Becca survived well enough, but Gloria had no right to desert Matt, a troubled, bullied, misunderstood child who needed extra love and kindness and compassion. Lana vowed not to let her scare get the better of her. Not to let Matt suffer just because a big, frightening thing was challenging her just as they were getting settled into a routine. Matt needed a consistent home environment, and Lana had promised him one.
Lana ate a few bites of yogurt over the kitchen sink to buffer the ibuprofen she envisioned burning a hole in her stomach. She stared out back at the neglected yard. She needed to seed, water, aerate, mow, but these had always been Graham’s duties and she wasn’t even sure where to begin. She didn’t feel like being alone with thoughts of the jobs she’d inherited but didn’t know how to do, or with trying not to think about Dr. Tucker’s test results, so she tried Abby’s trick of pulling up a chair beside Matt in the early afternoon sun of the front window.
“Any Vizsla sightings?” she asked.
“Yes. Two. The same one, twice.” Matt polished off his sandwich and wandered off, leaving Lana sitting there alone. Really, she knew better than to think he was the right person for lifting her out of a funk. She was about to call Becca to dump yet another round of fears and complaints on her when Matt returned with two bowls of yogurt-covered pretzels.
“I’d rather not share,” he explained. “You were at the doctor’s office. There are so many germs there. Most MRSA infections come from hospitals and health care facilities.”
“Well, let’s hope I don’t have that,” Lana said, accepting her bowl of pretzels. It was the first time Matt had made a caretaking gesture toward her. It was tiny and enormous at once.
“You’re good for us,” she told him.
“We’re good for each other,” he said.
They ate their snacks in silence, and Lana understood why Abby liked the spot. In a world of drama and complications and emotional upheavals, Matt was the one family member impervious to it all. Matt was simply Matt, every day, every hour. Incapable of adapting. Disinterested in change. Free of judgment. Here Lana had thought she’d be the big sister rescuing him, and it was turning out the other way around.
Lana was grateful for her yoga class that night. She definitely had some stress to work out of her system. Mixed-signal Mitch was there, catching up with his young, toned, outdoorsy friends, including the lean, free-spirited young woman. Abbot settled next to her, Crocs and all, and stretched in pike position.
“I can’t help thinking of my students every time I see your Crocs,” Lana confessed, regretting it the moment she’d said it.
He laughed a hearty cackle. “I have arch issues. I used to wear Birkenstocks, but they started smelling. My niece wears these, and when they get dirty my sister puts them in the dishwasher. Can you believe it? Shoes you can wash. So she got me a pair for my birthday. It’s half a joke, but they do have a good foot-bed, and I only wear them here.” He pushed the pike deeper, nearly resting his head on his knees. He sat up and smiled, flexing his feet, clicking his rubber shoes together Dorothy-style. “They remind me of my niece. She’s nine and brilliant and everything that’s good in the world.”
“Plantar fasciitis,” Lana said, and he nodded.
“Getting old is the pits. Might as well have fun shoes.”
In one conversation he’d invoked the most positive words of wisdom from Dr. Tucker, Camilla, and the same type of pure adoration she felt for Matt. There was a cosmic feel of destiny in it.
“Okay, you swayed me,” she said. “I embrace the shoes.”
“Enough to have coffee sometime?” he asked. “I promise to wear loafers.”
They laughed and class began. He stole a glance at her and she nodded, accepting his invitation. It was good to have something to look forward to. With Abbot’s help, the week tipped the balance more toward joy and hope than fear and loneliness. So when Dr. Tucker called to follow up on her labs, Lana was fully prepared to get the all-clear.
“Well, I’m afraid we found irregular cells on your biopsy as well,” Dr. Tucker said. Her voice was softer than usual. Motherly. Which frightened Lana more than the words themselves.
“Oh,” Lana said. Irregular cells, while a terrible term, was still milder than its more terrifying counterpart cancer, and Lana hoped Dr. Tucker’s reluctance to use that word meant it wasn’t definite.
“I’m sure you have questions. Would you like to come in, or cover them here on the phone? Is this a good time to talk?”
“Um, now is fine,” Lana said. She definitely had questions, tons of them. She just couldn’t think of a single one as she sat on her bed and stared at her stunned face in the closet mirror. She’d just stepped out of the shower and was only half dressed. Her hair was wet and it was going to dry flat except for the annoying upward curl at the ends if she didn’t attempt to subdue it as it dried, but that no longer mattered, did it?
“Okay,” Dr. Tucker said, her business voice back. “I’ll just talk and you stop me when you have a question. After the colposcopy, I’ve determined that you have high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions, or HSIL cells. With the presence of these cells, I’d advise doing a LEEP procedure.” Dr. Tucker paused, and Lana waited, and after a moment of silence permeated by paper-shuffling on the doctor’s end, she continued. “What that means is I’ll insert a numbing agent into your cervix. Then I use a thin wire loop carrying an electrical current to cut away the abnormal tissue. It shouldn’t be painful. The whole thing takes about ten minutes. It has a ninety percent cure rate. Follow so far?”
“Yes,” Lana whispered. What about the other ten percent? She pushed the thought from her mind, but it kept bubbling back up.
“You might have some cramping for a day or two afterward. And you should avoid intercourse for three to four weeks after.”
“No problem there,” Lana said. She was done with men anyway. An STD that led to cancer. If this wasn’t the universe telling her to surrender to singlehood, what was it?
“This isn’t an ideal scenario, Lana, but it’s not the end of the world. Okay? We know what we’re dealing with, we have clear steps to take, and a very high success rate. These are all good things.”
“Yep,” Lana said, mustering both her shaky voice and some false confidence. “I trust you.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s set up a time.”
After they hung up, Lana did a Google search for HPV. As with any medical condition, it was a bad idea. She found tons of articles from respected medical institutions full of terrifying data. Also, very few of them seemed to back up Dr. Tucker’s claim that this was likely a decades-old STD she’d picked up pre-Graham. Maybe it was possible, but it was equally possible that it came from him, a gift from some indiscretion of his, and since there was no test for men, she could never know for sure. Not without asking him directly.
She swallowed her fear and finished dressing. Her hair was a disaster and none of her clothes fit right and she was supposed to have coffee with Abbot in two hours. She sent him a text saying she didn’t feel well. She sat on the foot of her bed, deep-yoga-breathing, rallying her inner goddess of strength and wisdom. The goddess was busy
doing other things, though. Lana gave up searching for inner peace, and wept.
22
* * *
Matt
Matt settled by the window. He’d developed a nice daily routine. The routine helped keep his body calm, while the new data kept his fast-processing mind busy. He could go an entire day without missing drinking if he kept busy enough. He flipped the green cover of his steno notebook open, uncapped his favorite green pen, and recorded:
Lunch: baby carrots (3)—7 calories, cucumber slices (2)—2 calories, Triscuits (2)—40 calories, apple (2 slices)—18 calories. Total: 67 calories. 2 grams protein.
He listed these items under the standard header for each day:
Breakfast: Cheerios 1/2 cup—55 calories, with 1/4 cup skim milk—21 calories, 8 oz. skim milk—83 calories. Total: 159 calories. 12 grams protein.
His pages of Abby-data were growing. But she still wasn’t eating enough calories each day. And definitely not enough protein. She mostly ate fruits and vegetables, which was good, healthy. But almost everything else was missing. Even good things that went with vegetables, like butter.
Matt had done some research and figured out a healthy, balanced diet based on Abby’s age, height, and weight, and the types of foods he’d seen her eat. When he showed it to her she didn’t say anything, just stared out the window until her dad came to pick her up for dinner. After she came home from Graham’s, though, Abby told Matt that he could help her eat more of the right things, but only if he didn’t tell anyone about it. Not even her. Matt kept notes on everything she ate, but he never told her how many calories he wrote down. That was one of the rules. The other rule was that he could only add one small thing to her diet each day, no more than a few bites. That was fine. Matt understood not wanting to change too many things at once.
Matt had calculated a steady daily increase in food that would get Abby up to eight hundred calories each day. It wasn’t enough, but it was a lot more than she was eating now, and when he’d said she needed to eat at least twelve hundred calories a day she’d started crying. Eight hundred didn’t make her cry.
By adding a few bites each day Matt would eventually get her up to 250 calories at each meal, plus one 50-calorie snack. Tomorrow she would add half a banana to her breakfast for an additional 50 calories. That would put her at 209 calories instead of 250, which wasn’t the exact right number. Eating the whole banana would have been the best idea, but Abby didn’t want a whole banana. Matt tried changing the banana idea for something worth 91 calories instead, but Abby wouldn’t let him change his choice once he’d made it. He was still figuring out the rules. They were very complicated. But sometimes complex rules were the only ones that made you feel really safe and in control. Matt understood that.
Matt was reviewing his notes on Abby’s dinners when a police car pulled up out front. Matt was home alone, and as Nick Parker got out of the car and adjusted his police officer belt loaded with police officer gadgets, Matt didn’t know what to do. Nick didn’t have a baseball or bat, so he wasn’t there to teach Matt to hit a baseball. He had to be there to see Lana, but she was teaching that day.
Nick stopped halfway up the front walk and waved at Matt. Matt sometimes forgot that people could see him in the window. Matt waved back but didn’t move. Nick Parker came closer to the window, rested his hands on his hips.
“Can I come in?” he asked. Matt could hear him clearly, so he must’ve been talking pretty loud. Matt was worried the neighbors would come outside and wonder why a police officer was yelling through his front window, asking to come in. And the only way to stop him was to let him inside. Which Matt didn’t want to do. Matt’s stomach churned and his ears buzzed and his chest got that funny overfull feeling, but he got up and headed for the front door anyway. Nick wouldn’t stay once he knew Lana wasn’t home. He opened the door.
“She’s teaching. I can’t remember where. Not her usual elementary school, but somewhere else,” Matt told him.
“Okay,” Nick said. He leaned against the wall just outside the door and crossed his arms. He’d asked if he could come in, but now he wasn’t coming in. “I actually wanted to see you.”
“Oh,” Matt said. He wished Lana were home after all. “I haven’t been to see Spike. Not once. I promised.”
Nick held up his hands and shook his head. “I’m sorry. That’s what I came by to say. I’m sorry I got so angry and sorry that I yelled at you. I was upset, worried about you and Lana, but that’s no excuse. I was wrong.”
Matt nodded and smiled. It was his anxious smile and he hated that he was doing it, but there it was. Nick brought out that smile more than anyone.
“Wait one second,” Nick said. “I have something for you.” He walked back toward his police car and Matt had a panicky feeling, because there were all kinds of scary terrible things inside a police car and Matt didn’t want to see any of them. But then Nick reached into the passenger side and pulled out Matt’s favorite cobalt-blue fleece jacket. The only one he’d ever really liked. He came up the walk and Matt went outside even though he had no shoes on, because he was so happy to see his jacket again. “I don’t suppose you want to know how I got this back?” Nick asked. Matt shook his head. What did he care how? He had his jacket back and that’s all that mattered. It was the perfect color and the perfect softness and his whole day was better now.
“Thank you,” Matt said. He hurried back inside with his cheek against the jacket and closed the door. He sat by the window and Nick stared at him from the lawn before waving goodbye and driving off.
When Lana came home Matt showed her the jacket.
“From Nick Parker. I thought I didn’t like him because of the anger. I thought I only liked Mitch because he didn’t make me talk to him. I wanted to vote for Mitch for your boyfriend, but now maybe Nick is okay, too. You can choose. I don’t need a vote.”
Lana laughed until she had tears in her eyes and then she didn’t look happy anymore.
“Thanks for your approval. But I think maybe I need to be partner-free for a while. Love is too complicated for me.”
“Love isn’t complicated,” Matt said. “If it is, then it isn’t love.”
Lana stared at him for a long time. Then she smiled. “You just sit there quietly observing and taking notes and we all think you’re in your own world. But then you say something like that and I realize you’re in our world, and you see it clearer than any of us.”
Matt didn’t understand what she meant but it didn’t matter. He had his jacket back and it was nearly dinnertime, so he was about to get more Abby-data for his notebook. His Abby notes were his favorite part of the day. He put on his fleece jacket even though it was warm enough that he didn’t need it, and went to his room to wait for dinner.
For dinner Abby usually ate corn and plain salad for a total of forty-five calories and only one gram of protein. Today Abby had agreed to add one ounce of whatever meat Lana served, which would almost double her calories for the meal. Matt had requested chicken, because it was Wednesday. That would be thirty-three more calories, and would increase Abby’s daily protein intake by seven grams, to twenty-one grams total. She was very low on protein for a fourteen-year-old girl. She needed forty-five grams of protein each day, but she didn’t like meat or cheese or nuts or anything that had fat in it. She also needed fat in her diet, but like the twelve hundred calories, talking about fat made her cry. So first Matt was focusing on the protein. After the banana day, he was going to suggest that she have milk with dinner for an additional eight grams of protein. Right now Abby only drank ice water.
Matt had made a schedule for the next month, outlining each meal and highlighting the one new thing for her diet each day. It was a nice schedule, written on a thick piece of orange construction paper, with straight freehand lines for the rows and columns and a small picture of each new food in each day’s square. He was proud of the chart and wanted to hang it on his wall, but Abby had asked him not to, so he kept it on his desk under one
of his kangaroo pictures.
Matt wanted to bring his notebook and green pen to the table, to watch Abby eat and record each bite the moment she swallowed, but Abby didn’t like to see the notebook. She also didn’t know how to measure an ounce of chicken without a scale, but Matt had an excellent sense of spatial relations and had already figured out what one ounce of chicken looked like when cut up into little Abby-sized bites. Abby was going to cut the meat into small bites and move the pieces toward the corn, one by one, until Matt nodded that she had a one-ounce portion piled there. This all made dinner so interesting that Matt thought that even if Byron was loud he’d stay at the table just to watch Abby’s pile of chicken bites form and then disappear. He could do that even with his hands over his ears. So it was just as well that he wouldn’t have the notebook there. He couldn’t write anything down with his hands over his ears.
When she was not eating, not running, not playing soccer, not staring at the wall, and not doing homework, Abby wrote poetry. Matt had read some of the poems. Abby didn’t rhyme or follow any specific meter. Matt preferred meter and rhyme, but they weren’t his poems. She mostly wrote about her body. Not her whole body, but parts of her body, as if they weren’t even hers. Matt had a couple of the poems tucked into the notebook, behind the daily calorie counts. He pulled one out, written in Abby’s purple pen on a lined sheet of school paper with three holes punched in the margin.
Hip bones sculpted into bookends
Beginning and end to the same old story
Legs strong but pockmarked with failure
Dimpled with lard
Juts of collarbone whittled free
Shoulder blades transformed into flightless wings
A hidden fairy emerging from within
Born not from pixie dust but carved from bone
A new sprite carefully shaped yet still unformed
Her magic is invisibility