her students’ uneven performances—a kind of musical sorbet.
She had just settled onto the bench when sharp hammering at the front door abruptly ended the night’s quiet. When she looked through the keyhole, she expected to see Richmond or her mother back for another round. Instead, Reverend Peterson stood on the porch. His dark, wrinkled face managed to appear sorrowful, beseeching, and pissed off all at the same time. She reached to turn the knob and allow him in, but then thought better of it.
Maybe it was more displaced anger, but she couldn’t help but think that Reverend Peterson’s counsel was something she was better off without. His track record was pretty bad, she thought. She had followed his directions for years and had ended up believing that, in a woman, self-respect was the same thing as the sin of pride. And his advice to shut up and pray while her husband made a fool of her by screwing everything in sight had helped to keep Richmond a spoiled boy instead of the man he might have grown up to be. Okay, it might have been a stretch to blame Reverend Peterson for that, but she wasn’t in the mood to play fair.
Fair or not, thinking clearly or not, hell-bound or not, Clarice turned around and walked back to her piano. She sat down and, to the beat of the insistent rapping on the door, began to play Brahms’s rapturous B Minor Intermezzo. As she played, she felt the stress of the day begin to fade away. Clarice thought, God and I are communicating just fine.
Chapter 30
After months of good test results, my medicine stopped working. So my doctor started me on a different regimen. The first treatment with the new medication made me far sicker than I’d been on the worst days with the old formula. And when I stopped feeling sick, I started feeling weak.
My bosses had been real nice about adjusting my work schedule to accommodate my chemo, but with this new treatment kicking my ass the way it was, I had to ask for a leave of absence. They—the principal of the school and the food services coordinator from the school board—were very understanding and told me I could take as much time as I needed before coming back. But I could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren’t expecting me to return.
One morning, just after James left for work, I had a bad spell—feverish and achy all over. I was glad it hadn’t happened when he was still there. It was next to impossible to get James out the door if he thought I was in trouble. If I didn’t look okay to him, he’d dig in his heels and declare that he wasn’t about to leave me alone. Then he’d sit staring at me like an orphaned puppy until I convinced him that I felt better.
Of course, James didn’t need to worry about me being alone. The kids called daily to check up on me and kept me talking for hours. Rudy called a couple of times a week. Barbara Jean and Clarice were in and out all the time. And Mama drifted in every day to keep me company. She was there that morning when I shuffled out of the bathroom with a cool towel on my head.
“You’ve lost weight,” Mama said.
I looked down and saw that my nightgown was roomy now where it used to bind me. I was able to grab a handful of cloth at my waist and twist it in a half circle before the material was tight against my stomach.
“Isn’t this something, all the time I wasted wishing I was able to take some weight off, and all it took to do the job was the teensiest little touch of cancer. Looks like I’ll get the last laugh on Clarice for making fun of me holding on to those old, out-of-style clothes in the attic that nobody ever thought I’d fit into again. I’m gonna wow ’em at the hospice in my parachute pants and Nehru jacket.” I laughed, but Mama didn’t.
I waved two of my cats away from their resting places on the living room couch. Then I lay down, pulled a quilt over myself, and adjusted the couch pillows to support my head. The cats reclaimed their spots near my feet as soon as I settled in. Mama sat on the floor beside me with her legs crossed, Indian-style.
After lying there in silence for