Falling For Raine (Ch. 22: Savannah)

I can’t believe how easy it is to talk to Erin—how soothing it is to be with her. Before, I was holding on by my fingernails, but now—despite knowing exactly what we’re heading into—I’m not feeling so overwhelmed and it’s all because of her. We’re chatting like we’ve known each for years and years, and when she sasses me, it’s like we’ve been BFFs forever. Never once has she been weird about Friday being an absolute clusterfuck and how badly I lost it. She’s been nothing but graceful about it which I don’t deserve at all. Amie’s gonna give me a ton of shit when I tell her. When we were in Boston, we partied hard; getting alcohol was never an issue, regardless of our age. Even when we moved back home to take care of Mom, I still drank occasionally to take the edge off. Then things got bad with Carrie, my drinking picked up and Amie had to step in before I got completely fucked. When we moved to Tacoma I quit drinking for an entire year. Ever since, I’ve kept it on a pretty tight leash, though maybe not tight enough.

Erin’s so chill and patient, no matter what’s she’s been through. Leaning back in the passenger’s seat with her feet up, she looks like she belongs, like we’ve done this a thousand times. I try to be easygoing but I’m hardly ever this comfortable with people. Though if she knew me the way Amie does, would she feel different? I dunno. We all have our limits. Sure, this fake. I still want to be a person she can respect—I won’t say deserves—since that’s not an option, but could be friends with. I’m afraid she’ll get to know me too well.

We’ve moved on from the easy stuff to topics that are more deep. I went first. I told her more about moving to Vernon, the small southern Vermont town where Mom grew up and Grams still lived then; the dog grooming parlor she inherited from Grams and how Amie and I met; about the coming out pact we had and how she ended up living with us. I could tell that made her seethe but she kept quiet, although I saw her lips curl and you didn’t have to be an expert lip-reader to figure out what she was mouthing. I explained how we had to drop out of gymnastics after Dad pissed away our savings and moved to Boston after we graduated from high school, since there wasn’t any money for college either, and how Amie introduced me to pole dancing. I told her about the partying and drinking too, and the few short-term girlfriends I had that didn’t work out. She reached over to squeeze my leg and said people are awful for treating me that way. It felt like one of the sweetest, most understanding things anyone had ever done for me.

When I told her the part about Mom getting sick, Erin got really tense, and I knew it was super personal to her. I didn’t want to pry so I ignored it and kept talking until I got to my breakup with Carrie after being together over a year, ditching my phone, coming to Tacoma and Amie hooking us up with the coaching gig.

It’s been an hour now—time for girls’ break. We stop in Westminster, grab two waters while we’re at it, and get back on the road. Now it’s her turn. I ask where she grew up and she says, “Flyspeck, Colorado.”

I pull a face at her. “Is that real?”

“Obviously not,” she’d snarks back.

“Hey! I object! I was born in Hominy, Oklahoma, so how was I to know?”

That gets me a wide-eyed look. “There’s a Hominy, Oklahoma? Really and truly?”

“Really-o, truly-o,” I quote, tickled she’d come close to our code phrase. “Or there was. I don’t think it’s there anymore? It was like… two houses, a gas station and trailer when I was born.”

“Were you guys the trailer?”

“No, we lived in a tent. We didn’t count as residents.”

“Okay…” She processes that for a few moments.

“So what’s the actual name of the town you’re from?”

“Fox Creek.”

“Nicer than Flyspeck. And appropriate.” Tilting her head, she wrinkles her brow at me. “You’re a fox!”

“Oh god! You’re insufferable!” She swats me on the bicep, we both giggle and she starts fill me in. Fox Creek might’ve been bigger than two houses, a gas station and trailer, but it was tiny; the elementary school that served the local area was a couple of towns “down the hill” and had less than twenty kids enrolled.

She tells me that’s where she met her best friend Casey, who I remember from the club, in the 3rd grade. Casey lived in Jamestown where the school was. With a population just shy of 300, it counted as a “bigger” town—there was a grocery store and a restaurant famous for breakfast and live music that people came from miles around for. They grew up snowboarding in the winter. In the summer, Erin mountain biked and Casey ran cross-country, which Erin though was nuts. (Casey felt the same about mountain biking.) Turns out, Erin is an only child and so’s Casey, and it wasn’t unusual for her to stay with Casey and her dad when it snowed and the roads got bad. Casey’s parents were divorced; her mom’s English and moved back to the UK when they split. This is when I notice Erin hasn’t said anything about her parents yet. My instincts kick in, warning me I not to ask and I keep my mouth shut.

They both went Casey Middle School, which it how Casey got her nickname. She ditched the name Kate (she’d punch anyone who tried to call her Katy) and has been Casey ever since. They sound as inseparable as Amie and me: went to high school together, then CU Boulder where they were roommates, then grad school where Erin got her MBA and Casey got two masters: double-E and computer science. After they graduated, Boeing made Casey a nice offer, so they moved to Seattle and Erin went to work at a big tech firm.

She goes quiet. Keeping my eyes on the road I wait a full minute. Afraid I’m making her uncomfortable, I glance sideways. Her lips are pinched colorless. “My dad became sick a few years later. Colon cancer.”

This time I reach over to put my hand on her knee and she covers it with hers. We drive in silence for awhile. I fear I know how this is going to end… At first she flew back and forth pretty much every weekend between Seattle and Denver, where he was in the hospital. After an operation and two rounds of chemo, he went home to “recuperate.” It was near Thanksgiving and she was negotiating with her job to take the rest of the year off to be with him and her mom. There were a series of early blizzards and she couldn’t get out there until mid-December.

“He went into coma on Christmas eve,” she says in a broken voice. “Died three days later.”

I squeeze her knee and blink away the tears blurring my vision—don’t want us to end up in the Connecticut River.

She’d stayed another six weeks with her mom before flying back Seattle. That’s when she met Maggie, looking for help with the estate and getting her mom resettled. They ended up selling the home in Fox Creek to a family friend and her mom moved out to live with her in April. Erin felt it was necessary…

“But I lost her too. Heart attack. Only a month later.”

I didn’t see that coming and it’s a double gut punch. The dam breaks; Erin starts telling me about her parents—how her dad was a cabinetmaker who’d made all their furniture and how her mom baked and canned for the whole town and volunteered at her tiny school and their holiday get-togethers with all the neighbors—and I can’t hold back the tears. Neither can Erin and by the time we cross into Vermont, we’re openly sobbing. We keep sobbing right until we arrive at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, park and I punch that stupid, pointless ignition button. Our eyes are red and puffy from crying and our sleeves are disgusting from wiping our runny noses. Naturally, neither of us thought to bring handkerchiefs.

“We look a mess,” she says, smiling through her tears.

“A proper mess,” I agree with a watery smile of my own. “Nothing like girlfriends looking a proper mess together.”

“Girlfriends,” Erin whispers.

Yeah… girlfriends. It’s time for my fake girlfriend to meet my family.

♦ ♦ ♦

Getting out of the car, I wave at Jessie standing by the main entrance. I had Erin text her when we crossed the town limits to give her a heads-up, so I expected her to be outside. She’s easy to spot in her gray Tufts hoodie, loose faded jeans and beat-up black ankle books she’s had since the 9th Grade and has had resoled twice. She’s cut her hair again and, as always, it looks like it was chopped off with a hedge trimmer. I think one her roommates does it—not with an actual hedge trimmer, though. I’ll never let on that the ragged cut looks good on her. Jessie hates anything that might make her look cute, which sucks for her because she has the heart-shaped face of a roguish pixie, especially when she smiles, which also means she hates smiling.

She’s certainly not smiling now. The tension is practically vibrating off her, which does nothing for my nerves that are writhing in my stomach like a basket of eels. Jessie sees us and starts to run our way as we head to meet her. She stops in front of Erin and drags a hand through her messy hair.

“Hey, you’re Erin, right? Hi. I’m Jessie. Thanks for coming.” Her focus shifts to me before Erin can respond. “The oncologist’ll be here any minute. Gotta hurry.”

This is very un-Jessie-like behavior—she prides herself on being the epitome of chill—so I don’t do anything but nod and gesture for her to lead the way. She does at a brisk trot and as we try to keep up, Erin shoots me a worried look. I reach out and squeeze her hand. It’s not like things are okay, but I want reassure her we can handle it. I hope that’s true.

As we walk in, it hits me how much I hate the smell of hospitals—the scent of too much scrubbing and carefully regulated tidiness that overlays the odor of pain and fear and lurking desperation. The skin tightens between my shoulder blades and I feel Erin squeeze my hand this time. I remind myself this can’t be easy for her either. We share a shy glance and I’m swamped by how glad I am she’s here.

Jessie has slowed to normal walk and I can tell by the set of her shoulders she has her game face on. I plaster mine on too as Jessie leads us up to the nurses’ station and introduces us. They tell us to go on back and we follow Jessie down two corridors to our mom’s room. The door’s open and when I look inside, my heart does a painful skip-thump against my ribs. Mom is lying in a hospital bed, sheets tucked up to her neck, eyes closed. Her hair, which grew in white after her last cancer treatments, is fanned out onto the pillow, her cheeks look papery and her lips are translucent. I swallow hard as Jessie approaches the bed.

“Hey Mom. Savannah’s here. She brought her girlfriend, too.”

Mom’s eyes flutter open and find mine. “There you are, dear. Sorry to be such a bother. You know doctors—never see a molehill they can resist making a mountain of. And this is your girlfriend?” Her eyes track to Erin. “My, aren’t you lovely. Welcome, dear. Please forgive the circumstances. Hospitals are dreadful places to meet someone.”

Mom extends a hand from under the sheets and Erin moves over to take it in both of hers. “So very happy to meet you, Mrs. Raine, no matter the circumstances.”

“Oh psssh, dear, there’s no ‘Mrs. Raine’ here. It’s Laurel. Extraordinarily kind of you come out with my daughter—it must be awfully inconvenient for you.”

“Not at all,” Erin says with a warm smile. “Nothing more important. I should thank you for inviting me and there’s no place I’d rather be.”

“She’s a good one.” Mom lays a hammy wink on us. “How long were you planning on keeping us in the dark, sweetie? Take a seat, dear”—this to Erin—“since my daughter’s seen fit to hold out on us, I’d love to hear how you two met.”

I feel a little twitch in my abdomen at the question, but Erin sits in the chair next to the bed and launches in the story we agreed on. Mom’s smile widens with every word and some color seeps back into her cheeks.

“Summer Savannah Raine,” Mom admonishes me with her most wicked grin. “Shame on you for hiding this beautiful woman from us. Whatever were you thinking?”

My mouth opens before my brain is ready with a plausible explanation, but Erin glides smoothly into the breach. “I’m afraid that’s my fault. Life’s been a whirlwind since we met and with everyone’s schedules, I suggested Thanksgiving might be a nice time to arrange a visit and break the news.”

I wait to see how Erin’s adlib will go over, but a light rap on the doorjamb interrupts us. The three of us turn together and I find a trim woman with short salt-and-pepper hair standing there in a lab coat. She nods to Jesse and turns to me.

“I’m Cynthia Wallace, your mother’s oncologist. You’re Savannah?”

I nod and we shake hands.

“And this is?” Dr. Wallace indicates Erin.

“Erin. She’s—”

“Family,” Mom interjects.

“Pleased to meet you both,” the doctor says. “If you’ll excuse us for a few minutes, Mrs. Raine, I’m going to bring your family up to speed.”

“Absolutely,” Mom replies. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“My pleasure.” Dr. Wallace moves aside and after we assure Mom we’ll be back, escorts us to an office down the hall. We squeeze into the small space and the doctor takes a seat behind the desk.

“I imagine your sister has told you,” she addresses me without preamble, “this cancer is Stage 3 and appears aggressive. As surgery is not an option this time, I advise chemo and specifically targeted radiation therapy. As it’s best to move quickly, your mother can start her first chemo treatment on Thursday.”

This isn’t much worse that we were expecting, but it’s different hearing it in person. I feel Erin’s eyes on me. I lean into her support and try to focus on what Dr. Wallace is saying as Jessie listens intently. For the most part, it’s what we’ve heard before; the one new wrinkle is putting Mom on a fasting mimicking diet for 72 hours. The idea is to shrink the tumor; the doctor also explains it makes the cancer cells more sensitized to chemo and radiation while healthy cells become more resistant. When she finishes, Dr. Wallace asks if we have any questions. None of us can think of one. She tells us we can take Mom home within the hour and she’ll print detailed instructions about the diet and how to get ready for the chemo session.

We leave the office and again I link hands with Erin. Jessie gives us a pointed look. Just the warmth of Erin’s palm against mine makes me feel like we can do this. The uncertainty is over. We have a plan; we’ll follow the plan. We faced this before, we can face it now.

The only thing is the impression Erin made on Mom, and I think Jessie too although she’s doing her best to hide it. Somehow, I’ve managed to find the best fake girlfriend ever. Getting out of this un-relationship is looking a lot messier than I first thought. But what worries me more is that we’ve only been doing this for 24 hours and already keeping our un-relationship unreal as far as my stupid heart is concerned is starting to feel like it could be the biggest mess of all.