The double doors swished open into a wall of gumball machines. Beyond that was the store. The vastness of the place, after the corner delis and economy of city space I’d grown up with, had been remarkably easy to get used to. As soon as we hit the cart corral, Stella struggled to stand up. “I’m fine,” she muttered.
“No, you’re not,” I said.
“I’m fine,” she said again.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Samantha looked at the empty wheelchair.
“Stick it by the carts,” Stella suggested.
Samantha looked suspiciously at the people ambling through the lobby. The room echoed with beeping cash registers and screaming kids. Something told me Samantha didn’t spend much time in her town’s Wal-Mart. “Someone might take it!” she whispered.
“We could put it back in the car,” Stella said.
“But don’t you need it?” I asked Stella.
Stella shrugged. “I need to start walking more anyway. I’m pretty sure the jackalope museum isn’t wheelchair-accessible. It’s not much more than a shack.”
I gave her a weary look. “We might not be able to go. It depends on how long it takes to get to Cheveyo. He lives in the middle of nowhere.”
“Near the Amish,” Stella stage-whispered, sinking into a seat at a snack bar table. “I’m not sure it’s right to be around Amish people when you’re ill.”
“Where’d you hear that?” I demanded.
“Oh, it’s around. It’s everywhere. The Amish people are carcinogenic.”
I thought of the pamphlets I’d gotten in the mail about Cheveyo. Miracle healer, the cover of the first pamphlet said. There sat Cheveyo, a wise hippie toad in his tie-dyed T-shirt, his face the color of a worn-out saddle. Next to him was a young woman who had cervical cancer. That was how she was described in the caption: Cheveyo with Jane (31, cervical cancer). Cheveyo did something with stones. Or feathers. Animal spirits. Aromatherapy. Peace pipes. No one was very specific about his practices. “It’s hard to describe,” said Jennifer (59, rheumatoid arthritis). “It just worked. I felt better immediately,” said Lori (42, lupus).
“Cheveyo could really help you,” I told Stella, drumming my fingers on top of the laminated snack bar table. “He was on Oprah. Remember when we watched it together? How he helped all those people?”
“I was sleeping.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want that type of treatment,” Samantha piped up.
My whole body tensed. “She wants to go. We’re going.”
“Which means I need to practice walking, then.” Stella pointed vigorously at the wheelchair, as if it were the cause of all the problems.
At that exact moment, a boy next to us decided to fart very loudly. His parents barely noticed and continued eating their hot dogs. Samantha thrust her purse higher onto her shoulder, the disgust on her face apparent. She eyed the wheelchair. “I’ll put it back.” She turned around and wheeled it out of the store, losing control of it for a moment or two, the front wheels lifting off the ground and the seat tilting backward. I wondered if she’d figure out how to remove the wheels and fold it up, or if she’d just stick the whole thing in the back of her SUV intact.
Stella surveyed the store, straightening her wig. I knew she was searching for acquaintances, people who wouldn’t expect to see her in a wheelchair.
Her oncologist was in Pittsburgh, only an hour drive away, but Cobalt was so insulated and separate from Pittsburgh that Stella felt like her secret was safe here. She felt like no one in Cobalt would ever guess how many times we’d gone to her doctor—first for the surgery to remove the portion of her rectum, then to prepare for the bigger surgery in her colon, then for the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, then for the various surgeries to remove more and more pieces of her colon and to probe parts of her intestines and inspect her lungs, which had suspicious spots on them, too. Then for the CT scans, more chemotherapy, experimental drug chemo pills that she could take at home. We were in the middle of radiation to shrink the tumors in her lungs, staving off the disease’s possible progression to other systems, especially her brain. Her doctor warned that the various treatments Stella requested were far too aggressive for someone her age, but Stella squared her shoulders and said, “Bullshit. I can take it like a man.”
Stella went to great lengths to keep up as if nothing had changed. She still played euchre with her friends, a scruffy bunch of women of varying ages who had lived in Cobalt their entire lives. I tagged along, sitting in the lumpy, overstuffed chenille chairs that seemed to live in each of their living rooms, reading a magazine or the same racy parts of the romance novel they all seemed to own. Stella told everyone I was her “chauffeur” because she temporarily couldn’t drive—a small squabble with the police, she explained, rolling her eyes, making it out like she was an outlaw.
Although she never missed a euchre day, those days were always hard on Stella; after one euchre game, as soon as we had climbed into the car and rolled out of the driveway, Stella made me pull into the wooded part of the cul-de-sac so she could open up her window and vomit.
“Why don’t you just tell them?” I pleaded with her. The women had to know something was up; Stella showed up every week in those satin gloves, formal attire for a Tuesday afternoon. She declined glasses of iced tea on sweltering summer days because her treatments made her sensitive to cold drinks. At five-six—tall for a woman her age—she weighed one hundred pounds. And that was an improvement—when I picked her up after her car accident, her chart said that she weighed 88. “Then at least they’ll cut you some slack,” I went on. “Then you can lie down between hands.”
Stella wiped off her mouth with the roll of paper towels she kept in the car for exactly that kind of emergency. “There’s no way I’m admitting that I had a bout with cancer of the ass. And anyway, this isn’t because of that. It’s probably from that foul food Esther always serves. Those cookies are about a million years old!”
“They were sealed,” I argued. “They’re from the grocery store.”
“They taste like metal.”
“You know what that’s from.”
“Perhaps I’m pregnant!” Stella suggested. “You ever think of that? This could be morning sickness.”
“Some people don’t mind sympathy from their friends.”
The street ended in a T; straight across was a steep hill that looked over downtown Cobalt. It was dusk, and Cobalt’s one bridge had been lit up, making a soft, green reflection on the river. The little houses that lined the bank looked sweet and quaint that night; you almost couldn’t tell they had stability issues and peeling paint and junked-up porches.
Stella sank into her seat, looking at the view, too. “Cobalt used to be a wonderful place to live. You might not believe it, but it really was. Your grandmother and I used to do so much shopping on that main drag when we were teenagers.”
“It sounds like you guys were such good friends when you were younger,” I said. “What happened?”
“Oh, life,” had been Stella’s answer.
If it turned out the cancer took Stella, I was to handle the announcement in the papers. She didn’t want me to mention anything about her illness. If pushed or struck with a burst of honesty, I could only say she died of natural causes. But if she had her way, I was to tell the Cobalt paper that she died rather fabulously. For instance: A ten-point buck had attacked her. She wrestled it to the ground but its antlers bored her through the heart. (“Which part of the heart?” I asked. “The left ventricle,” Stella said quickly, as if she’d been thinking about it for a while.) Or: She was giving a phone interview on CNN and had gotten so wrapped up in her answer that she’d accidentally driven her car over a cliff. (“An interview about what?” I asked Stella. She looked at me sternly. “Does it matter?” “I just want it to sound real,” I said. “Fine.” Stella stared at the television. On the History Channel, a man in a tweed jacket was strolling among a bunch of enormous stone heads. “They were interviewing me
about Easter Island.”) Or that she went down with a sinking ship. (“On what body of water?” I asked. “The Allegheny River.”)
“You go get me the wine glasses,” she instructed now. “It’ll be like Christmas. I’ll just sit here by the hot dogs and wait for my gift.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “What sorts of glasses do you want?”
“Whatever, sweetie. Have Samantha pick them. She knows about that sort of thing.”
Stella had had Christmas on the brain lately. The night before, when we were preparing for Samantha’s arrival—which amounted to, basically, cleaning the toilets, doing the dishes, going through Stella’s closet to decide which robe she would wear—Stella remarked that the air seemed full of yuletide excitement. “It’s Samantha Eve,” she proclaimed. The real Christmas holiday would be here in three months. Last year, Stella had been well enough to come with me to get a tree, and we decorated it together, pulling out old ornaments of my grandmother’s that Stella had found years ago in the basement when she took over ownership of the house. It wasn’t lost on me that my father’s hands had probably touched each and every ornament, the glass balls and Styrofoam cones and ancient garland. There was even an ornament of my father’s young, smiling face in a heavily gilded frame. There were his eyes. There was the crooked incisor. The smattering of freckles on his forehead. Your life will be uncomfortable and often sad, I said to my six-year-old father’s faded image. Your daughter will run away from you. This is the first Christmas the two of you are apart.
On that Christmas Day, Stella and I exchanged gifts—among other things, she gave me a small, cloth voodoo doll that had little afflictions and hardships written across its body, words like paper cut and audit and depression. I stabbed five white pins into the doll’s head over the words good hair day, but put the black pins aside in a dish on the credenza.
We watched White Christmas and Holiday Inn. She was so healthy a year ago, so whole. She’d gained back some weight, her latest CT scan had been clearer, and she wasn’t on any treatment for a month. What would Christmas be this year?
Samantha swooped back through the double doors, wheelchairless. We snaked through Wal-Mart to the housewares section, leaving Stella behind. Samantha ran her hands over fabrics as she walked—first an entire row of plaid shirts, then pink bathrobes, then black blazers with brassy buttons.
“I haven’t been in a Wal-Mart in a long time,” she said. “Northglenn has these darling little shops that are much better. A woman I recently sold a house to has a knitting store in town—adorable. The store, I mean. It’s so chill in there.”
She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “The house I sold her was adorable, too. One of those brand-new ones Chris built—the walls totally white, everything pretty and new, nothing damaged yet. You can just put your stamp on it, you know? Make it your own, much easier than an older home.”
“So, is it weird being back here?” I interrupted, making a turn at a vacuum cleaner display. One of the vacuums was tipped on its side, and someone had abandoned a sixty-four-ounce plastic Coke cup on the edge of the platform.
Samantha shrugged. “I can hardly remember being here, it was so long ago. Oh! Do you guys have a Foreman grill?” She pointed to one on display, lifting its plastic lid.
“We’re not big grillers.”
She clunked the grill top back down. People watched her as she strutted through the store, her skin luminous and healthy, her heels tapping against the linoleum. I wondered what really happened at real estate conferences. Did they honestly get awards? Last year, Stella and I were leaving breakfast at Mr. H’s, a restaurant connected to a hotel about fifteen miles outside of Cobalt. There was a corporate award ceremony taking place in the hotel’s only conference room. Stella peeked in and said that everyone was just sitting there, morose, like they were at a funeral. “What do you think they would do if I ran into the room and did a somersault?” she whispered giddily. “Do you think anyone would laugh?”
“So is it shocking to see Stella?” I asked Samantha.
“Do you think she would like these ones?” Samantha talked over me, holding up a box of Oneida long-stemmed wine glasses. She noticed me glancing at the price tag on the shelf. “I can pay, of course. It’s totally my treat.”
She looked at me as if I were as poor as all the other patrons of the Cobalt Wal-Mart. For a while, I had been. A few months after coming to Cobalt, my savings had been depleted to almost nothing. I couldn’t draw from anything in my father’s account—it was all going to the Center. Medicare paid for Stella’s hospital costs, but I’d had no idea how she paid for anything else. Finally, I’d broken down and asked her. “The Internet,” she told me.
She walked me to my father’s old room. Inside the closet were piles of unopened boxes of toys. A lot of it was Star Wars paraphernalia, action figures and the X-wing fighter and comic books and statues. “Ruth used to buy Richard all kinds of crap, long after he left,” Stella explained. “I put one of the things on eBay last year just to make some space in the closet, and some dumbass paid five hundred dollars for it. Can you imagine, for this crap?” She held up a box; inside was a Yoda figurine. “Now, what the hell is this thing? Why is he so hideous?”
She was slow at using the old computer she’d bought from one of the Elkerson boys, but I wasn’t. I was able to list plenty of things on eBay every week. And people bought them. I couldn’t believe how many toys were in that closet, sealed up and in mint condition, ready for my father or Steven or me to come home and play with them.
“Stella’s happy you came,” I tried again now, standing close to Samantha’s straight back. “She always talks about you. She wishes you’d come more.”
“You know…” Samantha turned the box over and inspected the bottom. “This one looks like it’s been tampered with. Do you think it was a return? I don’t like the idea of someone else drinking from my glasses.” She peered into the shelf. “Do you see any more like this?”
“I think she’s nervous about going to the healer tomorrow,” I went on.
“Well, I can see why.” Samantha sniffed. “And I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to buy into a crazy person like that. I thought you were into science and medicine. Didn’t you go to school for biology?”
My insides warmed. So she did know a little about me. “Medicine isn’t exactly working, is it?” But I’d asked myself this same question. Yes, I believed in science, but maybe we could believe in Cheveyo, too. Just this once. And maybe it would work, just this once. “Anyway, Stella would love it if you came with us.”
Samantha turned to me, lowering the box to her waist. “You know I can’t, Summer. I have my conference.”
“You don’t have to go.”
Something skipped across her face, and then submerged. “Yes, I do.”
“Stella’s afraid of the Amish. And you could be a big help to us—you know all about health, what with your vitamin routine and all.”
Samantha stared fixedly at a picture of a woman and man toasting on a box of margarita glasses. The woman looked like her, with shiny chestnut hair and dark pink lips. I hated myself for sucking up to her.
We stood there for a while, looking in opposite directions. Back at the snack bar, a line of people waited for food. The place was crammed with teenagers, the girls in heavy makeup and tight jeans, the boys in baggy, oversized shorts. It was possible that Wal-Mart was the cool place in Cobalt to hang out.
After a while, Samantha looked up. “I meant to tell you. Philip was asking about you.”
I looked over at her. “Philip…who used to live down the street?”
She nodded.
“You…know him?” I felt like my heart might stop.
“I went to high school with him. So yeah.”
“I mean, do you know him now?”
“We’re on the same high school reunion email list. I wrote an email to the list saying that I’d gotten married, and then I wrote another one that Chris and I bought a house.
He wrote me back about two weeks ago, asking how I was, congratulating me, you know. Then he asked if I still spoke to you.”
Philip was a ghost in my head; I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. A new couple had moved into Philip’s old house, a pie-faced young man and a pear-shaped woman with an enormous red pickup truck.
“He’s in New York,” Samantha volunteered, as if aware of my thoughts. “Or he was, two months ago. He works for an architecture company. I don’t remember the name.” Samantha rooted through the other shelves of glasses. “Wouldn’t you know it? This opened box is the only one.”
“How long has Philip been in New York?” My skin prickled. Perhaps Philip went to New York because I lived there. Maybe he thought he’d find me. But I punished that thought quickly away, mortified that I’d even considered it.
“Um…he went to college there. I think he never left.”
“What school did he go to?”
Samantha straightened up, exasperated. “I don’t know, Summer. I didn’t really ask him that many questions.” She picked up the tampered-with box of glasses. “I guess we’ll have to go with this one and wash them really well.”
I was jealous that Philip had written to Samantha. If only he knew the truth—I still thought Steven showing up the night Philip and I were talking had been because Samantha had told him to. Then again, maybe Philip wouldn’t care. Maybe Samantha had already told Philip, and he’d found the whole thing amusing.
“I have Philip’s email address if you want it,” Samantha said. “And his phone number.”
I cocked my head at her, wondering why she was being so charitable. “That would be great.”
“Remind me. I’ll write it down for you.”
“Thanks.”
“So we’re getting these?” Samantha handed me the box of wine glasses. I took them. The box felt so substantial in my hands. Heavier than Stella, maybe. My head was suddenly cloudy, and it felt like Wal-Mart’s overhead fluorescent lights were giving me sunburn. I couldn’t remember the tilt of the conversation before this. I opened my mouth to tell Samantha yes, we were getting them, but she was knifing through the aisles, already on her way to the checkout.