Five Days Left Read online

  But exercising poor judgment didn’t disqualify a person from raising her own child. If it did, Janice told Scott, many parents would be disqualified. And if having roaches in the kitchen, being a poor disciplinarian or staying out a little too late now and then with shady people while neighbors looked in on her child meant LaDania didn’t deserve to get her son back, then there were plenty of people in Michigan and beyond who had better hand their children over.

  FosterFranny told him the same thing in a series of late-night PMs last fall, adding that LMan’s story wasn’t all that different from that of any number of kids in Detroit, Cleveland, Houston or a hundred other cities around the country. There were plenty of parents who could do better, plenty of children who might get more to eat, more attention, more help with homework if they were sent to live with different families than their own. But that didn’t mean taking them out of their homes was the right thing to do. There wasn’t a child psychologist in America who would say that a nicer house, better meals and more regimented discipline were better for a child than the love of his own parent.

  “The state has no right to require perfection from parents,” Janice told Scott. “We always hope people will strive to be the best they can be for their children. But if they love them, and want them, and aren’t putting them in danger, then we have to consider that to be enough, and move on to the next case.”

  Scott wished it could be enough for him, too, to know Curtis was with a parent who loved him and wanted him. He told himself it was—he repeated it every day in the words he’d said to Laurie the day before. But despite the self-talk, he hadn’t been able to stop his stomach from burning every time he thought of Curtis living in his old apartment. It tore him apart to think of the boy’s potential, and how it would be wasted when he took up his old life again. The homework that would go back to being undone, the reading level that would surely nose-dive at the same rate the boy’s visits to the principal’s office would skyrocket.

  The high school diploma that might never get earned. Never mind about college, and getting out of the crummy neighborhood that had trapped so many, LaDania included, in a downward cycle of drugs and booze and poverty. Bray had fought his way out, but Bray was unique, a one-in-a-million kind of kid with an unusual combination of talent, height, work ethic and intelligence that didn’t come from straight DNA, which Curtis didn’t completely share with him anyway. Scott hoped eight was too young to tell, but so far it didn’t seem like Curtis had the same drive as his brother, the same physical prowess or even the same potential for height. In the Coffmans’ house, he could achieve something, make a good life for himself. Scott and Laurie would have seen to it. Without them? It made Scott’s stomach hurt to imagine where the boy would stall out.

  He lowered himself into the rocking chair and let his eyes take one more tour around Curtis’s abandoned room. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, recalling his mantra, but it came out weak and thin and unconvincing. “He’s going to be okay,” he tried again. But it didn’t sound any more true, and as he spoke the words he wasn’t sure he believed, he thought the city-map rug, the low bookshelf and the basketball posters all seemed washed out suddenly, as though their vibrancy, their usefulness, their very colors had seeped out of the house now that the boy wasn’t coming back.

  24.

  Mara

  Mara took in the group of people in her living room and realized that in a few-foot radius sat the four people who, besides Tom and Laks, were most important to her in the entire world. A loud cackle erupted from Steph, and Mara turned to study her friend’s profile. As usual, Steph’s face was a dichotomy of fast-moving lips and still, intense eyes. She was the first person Tom had called, after Mara’s parents, the day they received Mara’s CAG score. She’d been waiting by the phone at home; she took the day off, she told Tom, because she knew whatever the news, her response would be loud and obscene.

  Sure enough, he’d had to hold the receiver away from his ear as she shouted, “Goddamn sonofabitch! I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She’d repeated the phrase, not quietly, countless times over the next week until Pori was repeating it, too, much to his wife’s disapproval. And much to Gina’s disapproval, Mara thought, as her eyes moved from one friend to the other. Gina was all southern gentility and conducting oneself appropriately; Steph had no interest in any of that.

  Before HD, only Mara’s constant refereeing had kept the two women from coming to blows. Kept Steph from coming to blows, that is—Gina would never have participated in such unladylike behavior. But after the bad news came, the relationship between them shifted and the differences that used to annoy them about each other were now sources of good-natured teasing.

  It was one of the few positives from the before HD/after HD list, Mara thought, grinning now as Gina put a hand on Steph’s forearm in an effort to get her to ratchet down the foul language in front of Mara’s parents. Steph shook off Gina’s hand and said, in response to a statement Mara hadn’t heard, “I know, that’s what I thought! I mean, what the fuck, right, Pori?”

  Mara stifled a laugh as Gina shuddered and Neerja pursed her lips. But at least Gina didn’t storm out like she might have done before Mara’s diagnosis. Although she would never condone the cursing, over the past four years, Gina had learned to appreciate Steph’s directness because of the obvious relief Mara felt in having at least one person who could always be counted on to call it as she saw it.

  “Yep,” Steph had said to Mara once, after Mara had complained about how the disease was making her face look too angular, “I can see how you’d think you were looking a bit skeletal. The gray in your hair’s not doing much for you, either. Nothing a little color and foundation can’t fix, though. I’ll get us both on the schedule at the salon. And after, we’re going to stop at the makeup counter at Saks, see about getting better foundation.”

  And Steph soon saw there was more to Gina than a rotund repository for rules of decorum. She was as loyal and tireless a friend as she had been a secretary, forever culling through the stacks of mail on Mara’s kitchen counter and labeling them “M” or “T,” and then following up with Mara to make sure she’d gone through hers. She spent a weekend overhauling their laundry room, pantry and front hall closets to make it easier for Mara to keep things in a certain place—all the easier to remember where she’d put something last.

  “You’re the most organized person I’ve ever known,” Steph told Gina once. “You’re better than every secretary at the firm, combined.” Mara and Those Ladies were sitting in lawn chairs in Steph’s backyard, drinking wine and discussing their own, and each other’s, greatest strengths and faults.

  “And you’re the most direct person I’ve ever met,” said Gina, quickly adding it was meant as a compliment. “I wish I could tell more people what I really thought.” It was then that Steph had made the suggestion that between the two of them, Those Ladies would be able to cover every topic Laks would ever need help with. “So true,” Gina said, laughing. “You’ve got me on organizing school supplies and schedules, along with manners, how to write a proper thank-you note, all of that. And Steph on everything no one else wants to face head-on: getting a period, masturbation, oral sex, birth control.” Mara had laughed along with Gina and glanced over at Steph, waiting for her to join in on the joke she’d given wings to.

  But Steph’s lips were turned down, not up, and Mara saw tears on her friend’s cheeks. “Steph?” Mara asked. “What’s wrong?”

  They had been sitting in a loose circle, and Steph picked up her chair, moved it closer to Mara and took Mara’s hand in hers. “I know you worry about how she’s going to be when you’re—” She choked on a sob and couldn’t finish. Mara squeezed her friend’s hand and Gina moved her chair closer to the other two and put a hand on Steph’s knee. “When you’re gone,” Steph finished, choking out the words. “But I want you to know”—she looked at Gina—“we want you to know—” Steph choked a
gain.

  Gina patted Steph’s knee and finished the sentence Steph had begun. “We want you to know,” Gina said, tears streaming down her cheeks, too, “that we’ll be here for Laks. For whatever she needs. Whatever she has questions about. Needs help with. Wants to talk about. Forever.” She reached for each of the other two women’s free hands. And then Mara was crying, too, and the three of them sat that way, holding hands and weeping, until Gina finally wiped her eyes and sniffed and asked Mara, “Was it wrong of us to bring it up now? Too early, I mean? Because it’s not like Laks will need us for years—”

  “Not wrong,” Mara interrupted. “Wonderful. I worry all the time how she’ll be without a mother to turn to. She might not need you right now, but I needed to hear this now. Tom is incredible, you know that. But can you imagine him talking to her about choosing her first bra, or getting her period for the first time, or having her heart broken? These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night. And even though I’ve always known you two would see her, spend time with her, I would never have asked you to sign on for this kind of thing.”

  She looked at each of them in turn, her dark eyes telling them how thankful she was. “I feel like the two of you have just relieved me of the greatest sorrow I’ve been carrying. She won’t have a mother. She’ll have—”

  “Two,” they finished with her.

  Mara’s eyes spilled over again and as a single unit, Those Ladies leaned forward and wrapped their arms around her, a three-person, sobbing huddle of women. Mara’s friends had just made a promise that, until ten minutes earlier, she hadn’t dreamed of asking of them. Now it seemed to her to be the most important thing she could do for her daughter. For all her lists and plans, she had left out the biggest one. Leave it to Those Ladies to identify and resolve it in the span of half a glass of merlot.

  Steph raised her wineglass and the others clinked theirs against it. “To Those Ladies. The two of us together will never come close to being half the mom Mara is. But we’ll damn sure do our best.”

  Since that night, Mara had talked to them individually about their respective lists of responsibilities. At yoga one day, Mara told Steph, “You’re on nutrition, fitness, eating disorders, all that sort of thing—you know that, right?” Gina openly admitted to her love/hate relationship with food and her hate/hate relationship with exercise. Tom would lecture on essential amino acids and complete proteins, but what did he know about avoiding the teenage peer pressure to starve yourself? Steph tilted her head as if to say there couldn’t possibly be a different choice.

  Another time, Gina was updating the various sticky notes around Mara’s kitchen, putting things back in their proper place as she went. Mara was peering in the pantry for something to make for dinner. “You’ll tell her things like, figure out your husband’s favorite meal and make it for him often, won’t you? I’m afraid she’ll get so much women’s lib blather from Steph she’ll end up thinking that doing something nice for your spouse will lead to the complete disenfranchisement of women. I want her to feel free—and generous—in expressing her love, whether it’s politically in vogue or not.

  “And not just with her spouse, but with everyone. Calling her grandparents to check in, instead of waiting for them to call. I want her to keep all those thoughtful little things in mind, you know? All those extra-mile things that so many people don’t bother with, but that can be so important. Calling Tom on his birthday is easy but—”

  “She should call him on your anniversary,” Gina said softly.

  “Exactly.”

  “Already on my list,” Gina said, tapping her temple. “All of them.”

  25.

  Mara

  Laks flew into the living room, shrieking with delight as she discovered her favorite people in the world—her grandparents, her mother and Those Ladies—sitting together. She hugged her grandparents first, then Mara, Steph and Gina. She settled on Gina’s lap, and Mara could hear the two of them whispering about the new ballet shoes. Moments later, Tom walked in and planted kisses on the cheeks of three women, the lips of the fourth. He clasped hands with Pori as he held a small bag out to Laks.

  “Right into your closet, please, Miss Messykins, like we discussed.”

  “Dadeeeee,” Laks said, angling her eyes at the others. “Not that name in front of Those—”

  “Apologies,” he said. “Lakshmibeti.”

  Gina did a double take and Tom shrugged. “I only know nicknames. Haven’t mastered the rest of it yet. Give me another twenty-two years.” Neerja patted her son-in-law fondly on the arm and smiled knowingly at Mara. It was less about learning a second language for Tom, Mara and her mother knew, than it was about feeling like he belonged in a family. There were no pet names in his childhood, unless “little asshole, just like your father” counted.

  Laks grabbed the bag and ran to her room. “Mission accomplished,” Tom said to his wife when the girl was out of earshot. “I believe she’ll narrowly avoid death by hanging at Saturday’s class. Not sure how she’ll fare at the recital, though—I had to give up on the pink tights. They were all either ‘too strangly’ or ‘too clutchy’ or ‘too’ something else I’ve forgotten, but which seemed to involve the cutting off of her circulation to the point where an amputation was almost required.”

  “Well,” Steph said, “she was with the right parent, then. You could’ve performed the amputation in the store.”

  “Derm, Steph, not surgery. A zit, I could’ve popped in the store. A leg amp would’ve been more problematic.”

  “What’s a zit?” Laks asked, back from her room. “And what’s a leg lamp?”

  “Did you put your shoes away?” Mara asked.

  “I hung the bag on my door—”

  “Please put them where they belong, and where your father told you to put them—on your ballet shelf in your closet.”

  “But Maaamaaaa. I want to see Those Ladies before they leave.”

  “They’ll still be here in two minutes, which is how long it will take you to obey your parents.”

  The girl stomped off as loudly as she could, leaving six adults behind who had to fight not to laugh. Thirty seconds later, she was back again, rounding Steph’s chair on the way to the kitchen. Steph pulled the child onto her knee, waggling a finger in the small face. “Lakshmi Nichols. What did I tell you was going to happen the next time you talked back to your mother instead of behaving all ‘yes, ma’am’–ish like the world’s most perfect five-year-old child?”

  Laks squeezed her eyes to think. Smiling, she stuck a finger in the air to show she’d remembered. “Money!”

  “That’s right.” Steph pulled a dollar out of her purse. “Remember, there’s lots more where that came from. Now, go look in the kitchen to see if there are any more samosas for Auntie Steph.” She set the girl on the floor and gave her bottom a swat. “Away with you!” Laks, giggling, ran into the kitchen, waving her money.

  “Steph,” Gina and Mara said at the same time, in the same stern tone.

  “What?” Steph said, shrugging innocently. “You had a problem with Little Miss Perfect treating you like you’re too fragile to be sulked at or argued with. I simply found a way to solve the problem. This is what they pay me for.”

  After Steph and Gina left, Mara insisted her parents stay for dinner. They conceded, but on condition Mara let them heat the casserole and set the table while she relaxed in the living room with Tom. Reluctantly, she agreed to their terms, and half an hour later they were all sitting at the dining room table. Pori had set out the good china and silver and Laks clapped her hands once in delight. If she’d only put them a little closer to her chin, Mara thought, she’d be a miniature Neerja.

  “Fancy!” Laks said.

  “Oh,” Pori said, looking to his daughter, “was I supposed to save this for a special occasion?”

  Mara was ashamed of how worried he was that he’d broke
n one of her rules.

  “This is a special occasion,” she told him. “My four favorite people together for dinner.”

  Laks giggled. “We’re together all the time, Mama. But since we’re being fancy, can we say grace? Susan’s family says it every single night.”

  Mara regarded her daughter in surprise. “Grace?”

  The girl nodded. “It’s something you say before—”

  “I know what it is,” Mara said, laughing. “I’m just surprised to hear you ask about it. But sure. Why not? Let’s say grace.”

  “Oh, goody!” Laks clapped again and looked around the table, waiting for one of the adults to begin. But three of them weren’t Christian and the one who was, Tom, appeared to be at a loss.

  “Let me think,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

  “What does Susan’s family say when they pray, Lakshmibeti?” Neerja asked her granddaughter.

  “Only about how they’re happy and thankful to be together.”

  “There’s nothing ‘only’ about being together,” Pori said. “Isn’t that right, Mummy?” He was looking at Neerja. His mouth was curled into a smile but Mara caught the sorrow in his dark eyes. Neerja nodded before brushing a finger across her own eyes.

  The reason for their shared sadness hit Mara so heavily she felt her body sag under its weight. Their daughter was dying.

  How often had she considered that—really, deeply considered it? She didn’t want to admit the answer. Or the fact that when she did think of it, it was only in a context that made clear she was the victim, not them.

  “I don’t care if their preferred method of dealing with their daughter’s incurable disease is to attack the news with a broom and a vacuum and a dish of curry,” she had vented to Tom countless times. “I am the daughter in question, and I don’t want them treating me like I can’t look after my own house or feed my own family.”