Brooke returned from Tahiti (she liked the sound of that word, and its exotic connotations, so much more than Bora Bora) looking better than she had for months. She’d regained most of the weight and muscle mass she’d lost during the run-up to the cancer diagnosis and her stint in the hospital. More importantly, in her own eyes and those of her family, her skin had regained its tone and honey-colored tan that had been her most striking feature since youth, and that in fact made her look many years younger than fifty-seven.
This improvement in her physical condition and appearance in turn led to—or, given Brooke’s irrepressible will, may have been caused by—a renewal in her energetic and optimistic outlook. In the weeks following her return, she resumed active involvement in her numerous pet projects, including One Care—her and Dave’s planned holistic care center amidst the soybean fields east of town. That project had broken ground earlier in the spring (Brooke had tried, unsuccessfully, to delay her cancer trial so she could be present at the event) and the site work was completed. They’d be pouring the footings for the main medical building—one wing dental and dermatology, one urgent and wellness care with a spacious and airy atrium-waiting room in between—the following week. She told Dave she wanted to ride out there to see what was happening.
“Dumping concrete in a hole,” he said.
“Sounds exciting.”
“There’s nothing to see, Brooke. You won’t even be able to get that close, with all the men and equipment running around.”
“Will the men have on tight jeans?”
“Coated in mud.”
“And sweat-stained T-shirts?”
“So fragrant you’ll need a respirator.”
“Then lead on, Sugar.”
“I’m booked solid all week—still trying to catch up from our two weeks in Heaven.” He’d enjoyed the trip as much as Brooke, all the more so because he knew how much it cost.
“Then I’ll drive out there myself.”
“You know you can’t drive on your meds.” She was on anti-seizure medication since her stay in ICU and a couple of “small” seizures as she was brought out of her artificial coma.
“Then I’ll hire a driver.”
“That will cost hundreds.”
“Then I’ll hire a limo.”
“Bro-ooke!” Dave said in a rising two syllables of exasperation.
“Da-ave!” Brooke sang right back.
Dave sighed then checked his calendar and the weather forecast on his phone. “Tuesday at one be O.K.?”
“Let me check my schedule.” She held up her hand as an imaginary digital appointment book. “Yep, Tuesday at one would be just fine. And if you can get off an hour earlier, Mrs. Redmon would be pleased to treat you to lunch at the Silo Diner—best lunch buffet on the whole coastal plain.”
Dave laughed at his wife. “Mr. Redmon will make room in his schedule.”
“Thank you,” Brooke said.
So the next Tuesday, a cloudless hot and dry midsummer day, Dave watched in more or less silent wonder—a wonder he’d felt on first meeting his future wife at an off-campus keg party thirty-two years before and never quite managed to shake—as Brooke easily engaged the owner and his wife and all the waitresses and half the customers at the Silo Diner with her patented mixture of insightful observations, forthright opinions, and self-deprecating humor. Not all her insights were praiseful—the chicken and dumplings was a little salty, the tables next to the windows too hot, the iced tea a tad sweet—but they were all offered and received with a smile and this unique sense of shared endeavor, almost a conspiratorial air of intimacy—“It’s us against the world, don’t you know?” And who could resist that invitation from such a ball of fire?
She managed to work a similar magic at the construction site, as she ended up surrounded by the site super, the project engineer, the grading contractor, and even a concrete truck driver (waiting his turn to dispense his ten yards) while standing atop a cinderblock, hard hat bobbing up and down on her head, as she made dramatic gestures above a set of plans spread out on the hood of a pickup truck. She’d jab a finger at something on the plans then turn to the dusty site with a big wave then address each of her rapt audience in turn, like a conductor cajoling and encouraging her star instrumentalists—or like Brooke working this latest gathering of spellbound men.
So it was with a wrenching and bittersweet mix of admiration and thanks that Dave watched this latest display of classic Brooke while standing beside his big-wheeled pickup and tried without success to understand how some microscopic mutation set loose inside her body would one day end all that vitality and spunk.