trying to learn but yeah, we get in the kitchen together a lot.”
Andrea helps Brianna and Jacob from a car, smiling at them. “You could have your own cooking class here,” she says. “I bet Brianna and Jacob would love to learn how to bake cookies!” The kids hoot and cheer at the word “cookies,” and Lauren smiles at the thought.
EIGHTEEN
October 1972
Joan reaches for a scarf of autumn browns, oranges, yellows, and reds and ties it around her head in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. Besides the sickness following each round of chemo, looking at herself has been the hardest part of cancer. Her skin is pale, her hair is gone, the flesh on her body seems to rest closer to bone each week, and her eyes stare out from dark, hollowed-out holes. Her eyes fill with tears at the sight of herself, but when she hears Gigi’s and Christopher’s voices from the kitchen, she reaches for a tissue from the box on the counter, pressing it to each eye. She listens to her kids chatter for a moment and takes a deep breath, looking at herself again. “Today’s the day,” she whispers, surprising herself. The words plant themselves somewhere deep inside and once again, tears spring to her eyes. “Today’s the day,” she says, exhaling.
John enters the bathroom wearing his work uniform and smiles at her. “The kids are eating breakfast. I need to get to a woman’s house by eight. Fridge on the fritz.” He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Wow! Are you ever beautiful!” She shakes her head. “Crazy kind of beautiful.”
She laughs. “You’re the crazy one, John Creighton.”
“Today’s the day. Right?”
She smiles, nodding. “Today’s the day,” she says.
John thrusts his fist into the air. “Yes!” He kisses her good-bye and promises to call on his break.
She follows John to the kitchen and reaches for a skillet as he says good-bye to the kids; she wants to get at least a couple of meals prepared today before she goes in for chemotherapy tomorrow. While Gigi and Christopher eat some scrambled eggs, fruit, and toast that John made them, Joan pulls out two pounds of ground beef from the refrigerator. “What are you making, Mommy?” Gigi asks from the table.
“Chili.”
The little girl raises her head higher. “With little corn muffins?”
“I can do that,” Joan says, breaking apart the beef inside the skillet with a wooden spoon.
“I can help when I finish,” Gigi says. “I need to eat for strength.” Joan laughs. How many times has Gigi heard John or her mom, Alice, say those words to Joan over the last three months? “Have you eaten for strength today yet, Mommy?”
Joan laughs again. “No, I haven’t.”
Gigi’s face straightens like a prosecutor’s inside a courtroom. “Eat for strength now before you get weak!”
Joan raises her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. I’ll do that before I start the chili. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking,” Gigi says, taking a huge bite of toast.
Joan laughs again and reaches into the fridge for an egg to scramble for herself, along with some leftover salad from dinner last night. It sounds horrible to the rest of her family, but for some reason Joan has been craving greens and nuts and eats them throughout the day, even at breakfast. She sits down at the table to eat and smiles, watching Christopher maneuver his tiny fork, using it as a mini shovel to scoop up a piece of egg, which falls to the plate, but he perseveres, trying again until a bite reaches his mouth. “What a big boy!” she says, reaching over the table to squeeze his hand. The thought invades her brain that she won’t hear Christopher string a sentence together or run the bases at the local ball field, but as quickly as it comes, she shoots it down. “Today’s the day,” she says, looking at Christopher and then Gigi.
“For what?” Gigi asks.
“To believe,” Joan says. “Like Daddy.”
Gigi grins. “He says that a lot,” she says, happy to be sitting here at the table with her mom and baby brother. “Because it will make you strong.”
Joan thinks for a moment. “Saying it won’t necessarily make me strong. Daddy believes that saying it will create faith and help us believe.”
“In what?” Gigi asks, finishing her eggs.
Joan moves her own eggs around the plate, not wanting to eat them. “In what we can’t see.”
“Like the wind,” Gigi says, shoving the last of the toast in her