“I had something called Chiari malformation.” I don’t know what the fuck that is, maybe it’s a kind of brain tumor. “It’s a birth defect, where—I don’t know. I don’t know what you want toknow about it.”
“I want to know everything,” I say, immediately. I’ll get my panic attack journal and take fucking notes. I can tell already what I’ll do when she leaves here tonight. Now that she’s told me, now that she’s let me in—I’ll look this thing up online until I know every goddamnedthing about it.
She unclasps her hands in a deliberate, focused effort. “Basically it’s—ah. As I grew up, my brain tissue—” She closes her eyes, like this is the hard part to think about, to talk about. I sympathize. She saidbrain tissueand my heart stopped beating. “It sort of extended out of its appropriate area. It has to do with the shape of my skull.”
“Jesus.” I’m guessing she’s given me the most dumbed-down version of this possible, but it still feels complicated, unknowable.
“It’s not that uncommon, the kind I have. Type 1. Some people have it and don’t even know. They live totally regular lives, and maybe have a car accident or a minor fall, and they find out then, and there’s no need to really do anything. But I—that’s not how it was for me. I started having the headaches when I was about fourteen, and that’s not so unusual. That could have been anything. Hormones. Stress. Anything.”
I know what she’s doing with this, with thisThat could have been anything. There’s a gossamer thread of defensiveness there on behalf of the people I’ve just spent the last few hours with. I’ve heard Kit do it on my own behalf, thousands of times.That’s no big deal, she’d say, when I couldn’t get a turkey for Thanksgiving, when I couldn’t make enough money to cover a science camp she wanted to go to.Turkeys are full of chemicals, anyway. I can do the stuff from thecamp on my own.
“Sixteen, when I started going to Patricia—I’d had more issues. The headaches were unmanageable. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t swallow, which maybe seemed like anxiety. My ears would ring. I had trouble sleeping, and so I’d miss my alarm for school, or I’d be asleep on my desk by ten a.m.”
I have a flash of Josh’s red polo shirt, the pride he’d taken in telling me he’d helped Greer with school. I’m irrationally angry about it, that he didn’t notice more. Bringing her fucking worksheets but not getting her to a doctor. It is entirely beyond my capacity to remember that he would’ve been a kid himself at the time.
“Greer.” I hope my voice doesn’t sound as choked as it feels. “You don’t have to tell me this if youdon’t want to.”
“It’s fine.” The samefineshe’d used earlier. She shrugs, falsely casual, and I wonder if she knows she did get some of her mother’s acting skills after all. Her voice changes, growing flippant, impatient. “Patricia told my parents that they needed to do some more investigating before she’d see me for more sessions. You know how she can be.” For the first time, her mouth eases, a tiny smile at the corners, not unlike the one she’d had when she’d first told me about Patricia. But it fades quickly. “A few scans later and we had a diagnosis. The first surgery didn’t take, but the second one did. Turns out, my type 1 was more like—a type 1.5.”
I’ve got about 1.5 million questions right now, 1.5 million frantic thoughts about Greer getting her fucking head cut open. Greer sick and ignored. Greer scared and alone. Not one but two surgeries, and I know there’s a lifetime of experiences she must’ve had during both, in between both. I stand from my chair because—because I worked hard enough staying away from her after Josh, after that scene on the deck, after she made clear she didn’t want me around. I’ve got to get close to her again.
“Don’t,” she says, and I freeze. “Let me finish.”
I stay still but don’t sit back down. I wonder if she can see the way I’m breathing, the way it’s too fast and too frantic.
“I didn’t graduate from high school, not until later. Obviously college wasn’t an option, and when it was—well, it’s expensive to have this. To be sick, to do the physical therapy you need to recover. My parents were going to send Ava to New York for a year; that had been the deal, so long as she saved up for a year after she graduated from high school. But then they couldn’t, so Ava stayed here. Humphrey, he took a semester off college. My mom quit her job to stay home with me, and my dad took out a loan on the house. I tried to work, to pay back some of the—but, you know. I had trouble finding good jobs.”
I’m trying, I’m trying so hard to listen. There’s all sorts of dots to connect: what Greer had meant, when she’d said she “shared” her lottery money with her family. What Susan had meant, looking at Greer that way. But my head is so full of noise I can barely think straight. Greer’sbrain. Brainsurgery. “But—you’re okay now?”
She ignores me. “And of course everyone felt guilty. Everyone worried. Still worries. They look at me like—” She looks up at me, a long and steady look that opens up that pit of dread again, even wider now. I’ve fucked up just standing here; I can tell already. “They look at me like you’re looking at me now.”
“Greer, no. I’m not—”
“You know Cary thinks I can’t even travel. He’s not wrong. Ican’t, that’s the thing, or at least everyone thinks I can’t. Every time I want to, my mom asks me something about what I’d do if I had an accident, if I had to see a doctor in some other country, because—because I’m high risk. Simple injuries could be complicated for me.”
How complicated?,I want to ask, because I want to know everything about this, about her. But she doesn’t break stride, doesn’t eventake a breath.
“Or she reminds me that I get migraines when I experience air pressure changes, that my neck and back ache when I don’t get good sleep, or when I push myself too hard. It’s not just the money that keeps me living with Ava. It’s that my mother made herself sick crying when I suggested living alone. We talk every weekday morning at six thirty and every weekday night at eight, which you may have noticed because that’s when I try to duck away to the bathroom in hopes you don’t hear. If I don’t answer I’d better call her back within fifteen minutes or she’ll call Ava or Kit or Zoe, or she’ll send my dad over to the townhouse. He’ll pretend he came to check on the leak in our sink, or to drop off a new privacy window-cling film, but we both know he’s only there because my mom won’t relax until she knows I’m okay. Josh and I broke up when I was twenty years old, and he’s still got no doubt I’ll marry him by the time I turn thirty, that I’ll come around and realize I need to go back to someone who takes care of me like he did.”
That makes my knees feel weak, that casual mention of Josh taking care of her, of the two of them married. They’d probably have a backyard wedding, not unlike the party we just came from. Josh would find them a great house in the buyer’s market he’s so fucking excited about. The minivan full of toddlers would betheirs. And why,whyshould I even give a fuck about that?
Isit down again.
“The good luck charms—that’s because of this too. When I was fifteen I went through a phase where I was obsessed with astronomy. I learned all about the planets and their moons and constellations. My dad took me out one night to see the harvest moon and we saw a shooting star, and for three weeks afterward I didn’t have a single headache. And I got—I got sort of obsessed with good luck charms, good luck omens. I’d play these little games with myself. Don’t look at the clock during the thirteenth minute of every hour. Save the heads-up pennies you find on the ground. Avoid stepping on cracks inthe sidewalk.”
Her face is pink now, her voice thin. If she cries I don’t know what I’ll do, probably crumble up into dust. She clears her throat, rallying. “I know they don’t really work. I know it doesn’t make sense. But they made me feel—in control, I guess.”
I think about that, Greer feeling in control from luck. It’d always been the opposite for me, I guess. My father’s luck—good and bad—had determined the entire shape of my young life. “Lucky break tonight,” he’d say, dumping a wad of cash on the counter, swaying pleasantly from side to side and tossing me a wolfish grin, proud and undeservedly confident. Other nights he’d come in empty handed, the swaying unpleasant, vaguely threatening. He’d say his luck ran out. He’d say he’d try again tomorrow. He’d throw up in the kitchen sink and pass out on the nearest soft surface. It was all the same to me, the good luck and the bad. Some mess I’d have to clean up.
I swallow back the unpleasant gorge that rises in my throat at the memories—too much in combination with the hot slick of fear in my stomach from this new information—and scrub a hand down my face. When I look over at her, she’s watching me, and I guess it was the exact wrong moment to think of some terrible garbage from my childhood. Her face is set in a mask of neutrality, but it’s the eyes that give her away. They’rewide and clear.
Heartbroken.
“Greer.” But I know it’s too late. I’m betting that even if my subconscious hadn’t just punched me in the gut, she’d still do what she’s doing now—standing up, holding the strap of her purse where it rests across her chest. She never even took it off. She was always going to say this and go. “You can’t leave,” I tell her, and our eyes lock, both of us hearing the echo at the exact same time.
She clutches the strap tighter, her knuckles going white, a tense contrast to the shrug of her shoulders she serves up next, the sad, soft smile that curves her mouth. I already know what she’s going to say.
“I can,” she whispers. Then she turns away from me, and walks out the door.
