Marah poked her head in the room. "They're here. Is she ready?"
"Who is here? Am I ready for what?" No sooner had the words left Kate's mouth than the parade into her room began. First came a man in coveralls, pushing a rolling rack full of floor-length gowns. Next, Marah and Tully and Mom crowded into the small space.
"Okay, Dad," Marah said. "No boys allowed."
Johnny kissed Kate's cheek and left the room.
"The only good thing about being rich and famous," Tully said, "well, there arelotsof good things about it, but one of the best is that if you call Nordstrom's and say please send me every prom dress you have in sizes four through six, they do it."
Marah came to the side of the bed. "I couldn't pick out my first prom dress without you, Mom."
Kate didn't know if she wanted to laugh or cry, so she did both.
"Don't worry," Tully said. "I explicitly told the saleswoman to leave the skanky dresses in the store."
At that, they all laughed.
As the weeks passed, Kate felt herself weakening. Despite her best efforts and her purposely optimistic attitude, her body began to fail in a dozen little ways. A word she couldn't find, a sentence she couldn't finish, a trembling weakness in her fingers that wouldn't still, a nausea that all too often became unbearable, and the cold. She was always chilled to the bone.
And then there was the pain. By late July, when the nights began to grow longer and had the sweet sultry taste of a ripe peach, she had nearly doubled her morphine dosage and no one cared. As her doctor said, "Addiction isn't your problem now."
She was a good enough actress that no one seemed to notice how weak she was becoming. Oh, they knew she had to use the wheelchair to get to the beach, and that she often fell asleep well before the nightly movie started, but in these days of summer, the household was in a constant state of flux. Tully had taken over Kate's daytime routine as best she could, which left Kate time to work on her journal. Sometimes, lately, she worried that she wouldn't have time to finish it, and the thought scared her.
The funny thing was that dying didn't. Not so much anymore. Oh, she still had panic attacks when she thought about The End, but even those were becoming less frequent. More and more often, she just thought:Let me rest.
She couldn't say that, though. Even to Tully, who'd listen to her for hours and hours. Whenever Kate brought up the future, Tully flinched and made a smart-ass comment.
Dying was a lonely business.
"Mom?" Marah said quietly, pushing the door open.
Kate forced herself to smile. "Hi, honey. I thought you were going over to Lytle Beach today with the gang."
"I was going to."
"What changed your mind?"
Marah stepped forward. For a moment, Kate was disoriented by the sight of her own daughter; she'd had a growth spurt again. At almost six feet, she was filling out, too, becoming a woman before Kate's eyes. "I need to do something."
"Okay. What is it?"
Marah turned around, looked down the hall, then back to Kate. "Could you come into the living room?"
Kate's desire to say no swelled, almost overtook her, but she said "Of course," and put on her robe, mittens, and knitted cap. Fighting nausea and exhaustion, she got slowly out of bed.
Marah took her by the arm and steadied her, becoming for a moment the mother; she led her into the living room, where, despite the heat of the day, a fire burned in the fireplace. Lucas and William, still in their jammies, sat together on the couch.
"Hi, Mommy," they said at once, flashing their gap-toothed grins.
Marah positioned Kate next to the boys, tucked her robe around her legs, and then sat down on the other side of her.
Kate smiled. "This is like those plays you used to stage when you were little."
Marah nodded and snuggled in close to her. When she looked at Kate, though, she wasn't smiling. "A long time ago," she said in an unsteady voice, "you gave me a special book."
"I gave you lots of books."
"You told me that someday I'd be sad and confused and I'd need it."
