“Are you sure?” I half believed Frank could be sitting across from him.
“Of course I’m sure. What’s the problem?”
“The nurse from Dr. Patterson’s office left a message on our answering machine. I just got home from picking up the boys from football practice and there it was.”
“And?”
“She said I needed to call her back.”
“Then call her back.”
“I can’t justcall her back.I have to be mentally prepared.”
In his calmest Haynes voice he said, “Didn’t you have that female test recently?”
“Yes.”
“She just wants to give you the results. Call her back.”
I was the opposite of calm. “Don’t you know anything? They don’t call you with a good result. They mail you a card. The only time they call you is when it’s bad.” My voice cracked. “Our boys will grow up without a mother. Poor things.”
“Wilda.”
“Will you call her for me?”
“Oh for the love of—” There was a long, annoyed pause. “What’s the number?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I owe you,” I said after giving him the number.
“It might take awhile to get her, but I’ll call you as soon as I hear. Everything is going to be fine.”
“I’ll be right by the phone.” I could hear him readying to hang up. “But you don’t know it’s fine,” I added just in time. “I might need to call Frank and warn him. You’ll need the emotional support once you hear the news.” Haynes’s law partner was always good in a crisis. He had stepped in when Sam Leatherberry’s wife of twenty-eight years told him she had met another woman.
“You are fine.” He hung up without a good-bye.
After fifteen minutes of staring at the phone and no Haynes, my mind raced. I flew into our bedroom. Internet searching was becoming popular back then, but I was never far from myMayo Clinic Family Health Book.I opened the drawer on my nightstand, used all my forearm strength to remove it. With shaking hands, I lowered myself onto the edge of our bed and flipped the pages of the monster 1,500-page manual back to the index. My pointer finger scanned the listings until I landed on it. Cancer, cervical, page 943. As my pulse banged in my ears, I read the entire listing. Hysterectomy, good survival rate if caught in time, causes, symptoms, risk factors, complications, treatments—chemotherapy,questions to ask the doctor.
Clutching the heavy manual to my chest, I rose slowly from the bed and death-marched down the hall toward the kitchen, glancing through the French doors at my boys throwing a football in the backyard. I finally had the answer to my infertility. If only I could have a redo. I’d go to the gym five days a week. I’d never let another candy bar pass my lips.
A solid thirty minutes passed with no Haynes. Before hyperventilation had a chance to set in, I picked up the phone to call him and happened to glance out the front kitchen window. My life passed before my eyes at that very moment. Haynes’s white SUV pulled slowly into the driveway, like a hearse arriving for its corpse. I mentally calculated that if the nurse had given Haynes the bad news within the first few minutes of the phone call, he’d had enough time to dash out of his office in tears, run to his car, and make it home that fast.
My first instinct was to run out to meet him in the driveway, but I was struck with the need to live cancer-free for a precious few more moments. Instead, I moved in slo-mo, out to the backyard to watch the boys. They should have started their homework by now, but what did it matter? In six months they would be motherless. Like I had been fatherless. “Cooper… Jackson…”I wanted to scream and envelop them in my arms, but thought better of it, opting to relish their stellar athleticism from an iron chair on the patio.
When I saw Haynes open the French doors, I held up my hand. “I do not want to see the look on your face. Don’t raise your eyebrows. Don’t purse your lips. And above all do not furrow that brow.”
He walked toward me, expressionless, before bending down to scoop me up in his arms. I went completely limp in his embrace. “You don’t have cancer,” he said, slowly, no affect in his voice. I opened my mouth to speak but he placed a gentle hand atop my mouth. “We’re pregnant.”
Eight months later, when Dr. Patterson announced, “It’s a girl!” my world went from bugs and balls to dollies and tea sets, overnight.
SEVEN
WILDA
Now here we are in Oxford, eighteen years later, moving our baby girl into Martin Hall at Ole Miss. I welcome back the flood of nostalgia, like finding an old pair of bell-bottoms in my mother’s attic. I lived in Martin when I was a freshman. Haynes picked me up for our first date in the lobby. Lisa Murphey, my college roommate, and I had a garage sale in our room trying to raise money for our spring break trip to Fort Lauderdale. Hiding boys, skipping class to sleep in, prank phone calls, late-night room parties, flip-flops in the shower—now Ellie would get to experience it all.
Finding a parking spot is worse than I thought. It’s like trying to park at the mall the weekend before Christmas, only it’s August and the hottest day of the year. Even though we’re moving Ellie in a day early, before most of the students, it still looks like a parking lot for crazies. All the SUVs and trucks are parked at careless angles, blocking one another in.
The one bright spot is: Ellie will never have to search for a parking spot. Haynes told her she couldn’t take her car to college. I was totally in favor of her having it, but there are some things I need to let go and let my husband win. When I see all the brand-new Range Rovers, BMWs, and Lexus SUVs parked erratically, I’m glad Ellie left her 2005 Jeep Cherokee in our driveway.
