There was talk of a bone marrow transplant. Dr. Pavia scheduled her for chemotherapy and radiation treatment all while nodding in response to Auntie Jo’s complaints of time, money, and the lack of both. She didn’t have insurance or healthcare, and this bit of news would not make obtaining either of them any easier. He’d heard these things before. I got the impression he heard them a couple times each day, because his answers were clear, concise, and well rehearsed. Cancer ran a tight ship. There was no convenient time to pencil it in, nor could treatment be put off. Valuable time had already been lost.
Auntie Jo asked the doctor how long she had.
He spread his hands, palms up—a couple months, five years, longer, hard to say. Another practiced answer to the most common of questions.
Although I insisted she rest, Auntie Jo worked through the first week of treatment. She even squeezed in a few doubles in an attempt to bring in extra money, but by the second week she began cutting shifts, by the third the vomiting and lack of energy kept her confined to our apartment.
About that time, the bills started. First the clinic, then the doctor, then the specialist, then treatment, followed by more treatment. We also had rent, utilities, food. The monthly envelopes containing cash continued to arrive on the eighth of every month, and I saved most of it. $34,108 on the day Auntie Jo was diagnosed, (I counted the moment we got home from Dr. Pavia’s office) but now, I found myself down at the corner store buying money orders on an almost daily basis—nearly ten thousand spent in the past few months, with no end in sight.
I didn’t let Auntie Jo see the bills. I most definitely didn’t let her see the payments—both would cause worry, and there was enough of that. She had been home, either in her chair or in bed, when the last two envelopes appeared in their usual spot at the center of my bed, but when I got home on both of those nights after my shift at the diner, she said nothing of an intruder. She made no comment at all. The door had been locked, yet somehow, someone still managed to get in and out unnoticed.
I spent a lot of time at the diner, more time than I probably spent at home. Auntie Jo continued to insist the job kept me off the streets and out of trouble, and Krendal had no trouble finding work for me. Back in January, when I turned sixteen, he even started showing me how to work the grill. He had taught me the deep frier the year before, and the year before that I had learned the proper way to prep fresh fruit and vegetables. I was grateful for anything that took me away from bussing tables and doing dishes, although I had yet to grill a burger remotely close to the quality Krendal churned out. “Too red, too thick, too flat, too brown,” he’d shout at me, his hearing long gone. Even with the two monstrous hearing aids he began wearing last year, he could make out nothing but the loudest sounds.
There were four people at the counter, six more in the booths, with Gerdy waiting and covering hostess duties.
Gerdy McCowen had moved to Pittsburgh last year with her folks. She was one year behind me at Brentwood High School, just a freshman. Outgoing and pretty, she had no trouble making friends and had taken a job at Krendal’s to save up for college—she wanted to go to Brown. Lurline talked about retiring on account of her bad knees. Gerdy was good, not as good as Lurline, and certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Auntie Jo in her prime. She had a pretty smile, though, and even prettier legs. Dunk called her a plain Jane, but that didn’t stop him from staring at her whenever he came in to harass me. Krendal caught me staring at her on more than one occasion, too. This usually earned me one of his smiles, followed by a grunt, then a thunderous, “Dishes! Dishes!” or some other push toward busywork.
Gerdy was waiting for me to ask her out, something I knew I probably should do, but the right moment had yet to present itself (although she would tell you the right moment had presented itself plenty, and I just went chicken shit). Maybe the homecoming dance. That was coming up.
I tried hard to forget Stella, I really did, but she was never far from my thoughts—particularly today, August 8.
“You’re wasting water! Turn that off!” Krendal shouted, passing through the kitchen to the small office in the back. He had put on a lot of weight in the past few years. I was standing in front of the large three-compartment aluminum sink washing the dishes from the first wave of the dinner rush. The clock above the prep station read 5:31 p.m.
I had to leave soon.
I picked up the last plate from the rack on my left and soaked it in the hot water. As I rinsed the suds away, Gerdy came in with a bus bin containing four more plates, six glasses, and assorted silverware. She shrugged, smiled, and set it down beside me before heading back out front. My eyes lingered on her backside as she strutted toward the swinging door, and I had to force myself to look away. I thought of Auntie Jo in that same uniform. That did the trick.
“Mr. Krendal! I gotta get out of here for a few minutes. I need to run home and check on Auntie Jo!” I shouted, dumping the contents of the bus bin into the water.
Krendal’s head appeared around the side of the office door. “How is Jo?”
I started to answer before I realized that he actually heard me. My eyes went to his left ear, and I noticed that the thick beige hearing aid on that side had been replaced with a smaller white one. When he caught me looking at it, he said, “New model. Doctor recommended. Not sure I like it, though. Most of the conversations I heard today were not worth hearing. Politics, war, hunger, and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Sometimes the world is better under a dull hum.”
I started pulling the dishes from the soapy water, dipping each in the rinse bin before placing it on the drying rack. “She’s getting worse, I think. She won’t talk about it, so it’s hard to tell. She’s moving so slow, though. The doctor said he increased the chemo on this round, so decreased energy is to be expected. She gets sick a lot, too. When I try to get her to drink water, she doesn’t want any, but she has to drink to keep her fluids up. I’m hoping she’ll eat something tonight. She hasn’t kept any food down for two days.”
“Maybe bring in a nurse to help?”
And what would that cost? I thought. “Maybe, if it keeps getting worse.”
I glanced back up at the clock—5:42 p.m.
“Go,” Krendal said. “I got this until you get back. Give Jo my best. We miss her here.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed a towel from the rack beside me, hastily dried my hands, smacked him on the back, and bolted for the back door.
I had to go to the apartment first and check on Auntie Jo.
I nearly knocked two people over running down the sidewalk on Brownsville. In our building, I took the steps two and three at a time.
Dunk pulled the door open, while I fumbled with my key at the lock. “Dude, she’s getting worse.”
I pushed past him into the apartment. “You need to open some windows in here. Feels like I just walked into an oven.”
“I tried, then your wonderful aunt fell trying to get out of her chair to close them. Said she was freezing. She was shaking, too. Bad. I got her back in her chair and put a blanket over her. She stopped shaking and started sweating instead. When I tried to take away the blanket and cool her off, she gave me a death stare—when a woman looks at me that way, I know it’s time to back off. She’s sleeping now.”
Auntie Jo was in her chair by the closed window, reclined, with a thick quilt pulled up to her neck. Her eyes bobbled under her lids, lost to some dream. She wore a bright green ski cap on her head.
Auntie Jo wore hats now.
