careful to stand behind you,” he said in the way that only people who had been through what they had together could get away with.
“You're disgusting.”
They talked about their Thanksgiving plans late that afternoon. He was going to friends in Connecticut, and she was staying home with Annabelle and Sam. She confessed to him then that she wasn't enthusiastic about doing the cooking.
“Why doesn't he do it then? Can he cook?”
“Well enough, but Thanksgiving is my specialty.” And then she admitted something she hadn't told anyone else. “I feel like I have to prove something to him. He's very angry about all this. Sometimes I think he hates me for it. I need to show him that I can still do everything I used to, that nothing's changed.” It sounded so pathetic when she said it, but he seemed to understand perfectly. Better than Sam did.
“It's only changed temporarily. Can't he understand that? Even if you can't do it now, you will later.”
“He's still too angry to see that.”
“That's rough on you.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“How's your little one holding up?”
“She's doing okay. She gets worried when I'm sick, and I try to keep it away from her as much as possible. None of this is easy.”
“You need good friends to help you through it,” he said warmly.
“I'm lucky to have you.” She smiled at him. And the night before Thanksgiving, she gave him a hug and told him that she was thankful for him this year. They went downstairs together, and for an odd instant, she felt sad when she left him. She could be so honest and outspoken with him. While she sat throwing up next to him, she had come to rely on him, and on being able to tell him her feelings. Suddenly a four-day holiday without talking to him seemed very lonely.
And when she got home, she saw the turkey in the refrigerator, and thought of all the work she had to do the next day, making stuffing and yams, and popovers, and vegetables and mashed potatoes. And Sam always liked both pumpkin and mince pie, and Annabelle liked apple. And she had promised to make pureed chestnuts this year, and homemade cranberry sauce. It made her feel ill just thinking about it, but she knew that this year, more than any year, she really had to. She felt as though her relationship with Sam was resting on it, and how much she could prove to him that she could still do it.
He had had his own tender partings at the office too. Daphne was going to Washington, D.C., that night to visit friends, and he felt an ache of loneliness when he took her to the train and watched her leave. He was getting more and more attached to her, and more and more unhappy whenever he didn't see her. It frightened him to know he would be alone with Alex for four days, but he acknowledged that maybe it would do them good. But as soon as he got home that night, he realized that it wasn't going to be easy to pretend that things were the way they always had been.
She was lying on their bed with an ice pack on her head, and she had just thrown up, Annabelle told him.
“Mommy's sick,” she said quietly, “will we still have turkey?”
“Of course we will,” he reassured her, and put her to bed, and then came back to look at his wife, stretched out miserably on their bed. “Do you want to go to a restaurant tomorrow and just forget it?” he asked, with a tone of accusation.
“Don't be silly,” Alex said, wishing they could forget the whole thing, but of course they couldn't. “I'll be fine.”
“You don't look fine.” He was always torn between thinking she was exaggerating, and it was really psychological, and feeling sorry for her. It was hard for him to know what to think. “Can I get you anything? Ginger ale? Coke? Something to settle your stomach?” She was guzzling whole bottles of Maalox these days, but nothing helped her.
She got up again after a little while, and went to do what she could in the kitchen. She set the table for the next day, and as she did, she realized that each step was an agony. She felt crushed by exhaustion. Her whole body ached, and she wondered if she was coming down with the flu, or just having more side effects from the chemo. Her bladder