Читать книгу Last Flight Out - Jennifer Psy.D. Vaughn - Страница 6

Don’t ever let anyone tell you Irony isn’t an evil bitch. The day my life hit the skids should have been murky and overcast with a pelting rain and icy chill. Instead, it was postcard perfect. Everything went down the crapper on a brilliant early fall afternoon with gently blowing air that felt as soft as a cotton ball. The sun had reached that spot high enough in the sky to make you sweat in the long sleeves you threw on that morning when old man winter felt like he was tucked into the bed right beside you. In the moments just before my cell phone rang, I focused on drawing the air deep into my lungs in a lame attempt to flush out the fear that felt like quick sand.

I closed my eyes against the sparkling blue sky. The warm breeze felt like the tiny hairs of a paintbrush, feather light strokes that tickled my cheeks, my forehead, and my chin. I wished I could stay in that moment forever. With my eyes closed, hair blowing in the wind, no one wanting anything from me. Right that second, I felt healthy and strong. I wanted to hold onto that for as long as I could.

And…time’s up.

My cell pulsed in my right hand. The foreboding almost so powerful it felt paralyzing. I braced my body for the words that would crush my spirit like a hammer on a walnut. The pieces smashed into such tiny particles there would be virtually no hope of putting them back together again.

No one knew what was happening. Not a single person was aware of my personal crisis unfolding right there on a ridiculously tiny patch of grass in mid-town Manhattan. Sounds strange, I realize, and my explanation for not sharing is relatively simple. I’m just not very good at being the center of attention. I get all flustered and uncomfortable, and start to scan the room for a wall to hide myself behind. Sure, I have an interesting worldview, and I can easily weigh in on lots of topics, just as long as none of them is about me. I understand basic human nature, I get that most people need constant validation. I’m here to give it to them.

I can deliver the belly laugh at the end of what is supposed to be a rip-roaring hysterical story with flawless timing. I’m a master of the wide-eyed “wow” as I properly celebrate someone’s latest accomplishment or bemoan their ultimate betrayal. I add the exclamation point at the end of someone else’s paragraph, and I am just fine with that.

So having the starring role in my own drama was particularly unappealing. None of it made any sense. At twenty-eight, I assumed I was in a grace period of sorts for something like this. My lifestyle was clean, my habits boring, and I could think of nothing I had done to support the potential revolt happening inside me right now.

The incessant buzz of my cell reinforced the tingle in my fingers and the teeth-rattling shudder of my heart. It did not matter that I was sitting there all alone, with no awaiting hand to close around mine, or a shoulder turning toward my falling chin. I needed to answer the phone; the news would not wait.

For once, it had to be all about me because my life depended on it.

My finger pressed the button.

“Hello,” I said, trying to pretend my voice wasn’t quivering. “Hi, Ella, it’s Doctor Sturgis. Are you free to talk?” Oh sure.

Free and clear, and ready for you to swoop right in and attack my life as I knew it.

I had attempted to steady my voice again before I replied, even though it felt like I had just taken a karate chop to the larynx. I had already made my doctor promise that no matter what the tests revealed, I would get the news over the phone. I explained that it would be easier for me that way. I simply could not take his sympathetic eyes planted on me in anticipation of my emotional breakdown. If there were to be any kind of breakdown, it would happen about as far away from the consult room of a doctor’s office as I could get.

“Yes, Dr. Sturgis. Free and clear, so just lay it on me.” Please, be gentle.

“Okay, Ella.” Long pause. Just that alone told me all I needed to know.

“Unfortunately, the tests revealed a malignancy. You do indeed have breast cancer.”

I guess the very first thing I realized is that you don’t actually drop dead right then and there. You’re still among the living, even though everything about you is suddenly different. Somehow, I managed to get through that phone call, pick myself up off the grass that had begun to feel like thumbtacks in my rear, and go back to work. It may be a blur of events, but no one referred me to the psychiatric unit that day so I must have managed to keep up some sort of charade that everything was fine and dandy.

I am a few days into my cancer diagnosis and this new life still feels surreal. Even when you have a sense of yourself, and how you react to certain situations, this is different. No matter how prepared you think you are it still feels like a backhand across the jaw, a leveling blow that catches you off guard and takes you down before you even know what hit you.

Now I know exactly what has hit me. It is a formidable opponent with potentially deadly intentions. My doctor and I have begun to map out my treatment plan but it is so daunting I think half my brain checks out during these conversations. I guess that’s a typical reaction because Dr. Sturgis keeps asking if I need any anti-anxiety medications, or sleeping pills. I have denied all of it; I need to stay lucid and clear-headed. There is a lot at stake here after all, not just my health but also the pristine image of my family. For any other woman there would be that whole force field of patient confidentiality and medical privacy rights keeping word of her deteriorating health on the down low.

I, on the other hand, do not have that kind of luxury.

My diagnosis may very well be front-page news in the near future, the lead story at six. Every person I confide in brings me one step closer to the big reveal. Ready or not, I will soon become the topic of discussion at dinner tables across America.

Across the world, even.

Everyone is about to find out the vice president’s daughter is sick. It’s just not right. My mother would rip a man’s balls clean off if she caught him leering at her own breasts. Now she’ll have no choice but to discuss mine.

Thanks again, Irony, you little witch.

I suppose some portion of the population will feel sympathy for us. Then there will be those who whisper in small circles at the bingo hall or in the produce aisle of the grocery store, who click their tongues over our hardship, but secretly give praise to the deity of misfortune for finally leveling the playing field.

Politics is like that. So is celebrity. So is my family.

Of course, we knew the nation’s first female vice president would be polarizing. We prepared ourselves for the onslaught, braced for the impact. My mother knew she would be both beloved and reviled. She spent her entire adult life cultivating the image that would take her straight to the top. She put in her time as a state legislator in upstate New York, and then started to think about the United States Senate, though Washington had no idea what it was getting. Off she went, this hot, young mother of three with America’s favorite former quarterback staying home to raise the kiddies. All over the country, women began to look at their beer swigging, lazy-ass husbands snoring on the couch with a brand new perspective.

“Why can’t you be more like him?” they would ask.

With my mother taking D.C. by storm, Brett Sheridan became the poster child for domestic daddy-hood. A tasty piece of eye candy for all the housewives sick and tired of cooking dinner, hauling laundry, and playing taxi driver while their husbands went for cocktails after work.

Soon enough, heavyweight names began to sniff around, looking to get involved with this rising star from the ground up. They worked on polishing her message, getting her ready for the big time. She was everything they had been looking for. Better yet, she was willing to go all the way no matter who went down in flames around her.

That would be us, to a certain extent. To fit the brass ring firmly on her finger, my mother had to sacrifice. Serious contenders need a singular focus. So systematically, we were lead along a gilded path straight to the guillotine. My mother knew what this life entailed, and she entered willingly, fully expecting that we were all in on the big secret. That this journey can be a whirlwind of good fortune but we had better be prepared to accept the short straws that come along, too.

Not that I ever had a choice in the matter.

Do I sound bitter? Am I? Probably, a little.

I had to come to terms early in life with the idea that I may have fine clothes, and smart people around me teaching me important things, but I did not have a mother who met me at the door with chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.

Not even once.

I’m the oldest child in this family of five. I love my sister and brother but because my mother was on this meteoric rise from the time we were little, there was some dysfunction planted long ago. Just like the sunflower that sprouts in late summer, you can bet it has grown tall and strong ever since. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at us. From the outside, you might just think we had it all.

While my mother’s career was exploding, my father’s was unwinding. They have been together a long time, the golden couple. Her opponents made a good case that she was nothing more than a sports wife who had benefited by national exposure and strong name recognition. In some circles, that stuck, but spend two minutes with her and you’ll see she is no slouch in the brains department, and by all means she is her own woman. She had a bunch of degrees hanging on the wall and had already logged long hours in a law firm when she first met my father. He was a few years older, had that whole professional athlete thing going on, and came at her with the kind of swagger only a few men can legitimately pull off. The rest, as they say, is history.

Theirs is a good kind of love, I suppose. They have each other’s backs all the time. When you get one, you get the other and God help you if you try to come between them. All these years later, they are still each other’s biggest fans.

Two of a kind, success stories crafted out of pure human will.

I remember being thrilled when my sister came along, then my brother after that. Kelby and Kass are just a year apart, so we are all pretty close in age. I love them both, but we are very different. On the other hand, maybe I’m the one who is different. In many ways, they’re actually a lot alike.

My dad had just about ripped his shoulder apart by the time he was forty, and thank God, he had the wisdom and humility to step aside while he was still whole. Somehow, he avoided giving in to that nauseating ego that keeps aging athletes in the game far past their expiration dates. He admitted toward the end it got harder to get up from beneath the bulk that had just pummeled him into the turf. He began to worry about the blitzes. He knew he was losing his touch. At just the right time, he hung it up. Once he retired, my parents built a sprawling but comfortable ranch on fifteen acres in a small town. After all the adulation, glitz and glamour they were ready to slow down and raise their kids.

Or so they said. In reality it didn’t slow down, not for long anyway. Political ambition has a funny way of turning into the elephant in the room. Once that world came calling on bended knee we were off and running again.

It’s not like we were ignored, or raised by a gaggle of nannies, or even homeschooled. Sure, they were busy but my parents were involved during those early years. They were authentic in their hope that we would see parts of the real world their wealth and fame might otherwise have buried from sight. They told us early and often that we all had a responsibility to live with dignity, respect others, appreciate what we had, and work for what we wanted.

It is because of my parents’ almost altruistic shove into Mrs. Dupont’s second grade class that I found my dearest friend. I consider it an act of fate because there would have been absolutely no conceivable way I would have met Lauren had I gone to any of those private elementary schools that kept girls in pigtails, plaid skirts, and bad attitudes for their entire adolescence.

Lauren was bold and brash, almost cocky if you can say that about a seven-year-old. She was as irresistible to me as a cold Popsicle on a hot summer day. In no time, we were inseparable.

Our small town was unable to keep her around for very long. Blessed with the voice of an angel, Lauren is one of the most naturally talented women I have ever known. She packed her bags, hopped on a plane, and headed to the West Coast the day after we graduated from high school. She had contacts rather than friends, and about enough cash on hand to rent some shitty East Hollywood apartment. She would call me every Tuesday, reverse the charges, and spill her guts in ninety seconds or less. She found a part time job in some trendy Melrose second-hand clothing store, so her afternoons were open for auditions. Soon enough, she was singing jingles for TV commercials and doing background vocals for up and coming bands. Her wings were spreading, but it was a grind, and Lauren had about as much patience as a junkie in a church pew. She struggled for a while, trying to stand out in a sea of equally talented, physically flawless competitors. Who actually got the part was a crapshoot because for the most part she was as interchangeable as the rest of them.

It was a vicious, twisted world that snuffed out too many dreams, but every now and again, the magical mix of opportunity and timing paid off. It happened right before her self-imposed Hollywood age limit was set to expire. Lauren made a promise to herself she would pack her bags and her ego if nothing significant had happened by the time she was twenty-five. About six months before that fated birthday arrived, Lauren’s agent got an interesting offer. The executive director of the longest running soap opera, A Life in Progress, caught a glimpse of Lauren’s demo reel and fell in love with her dark, stormy face and her deep, perfectly pitched voice. The part was meaty, much more challenging than Lauren had ever imagined, and she became a true soap star in no time, earning two Daytime Emmy nominations, a significant extension on her original contract, and a steady paycheck that kept her on the good side of the Hollywood sign.

Best of all, Lauren has not changed one little bit. She sends a good chunk of her paycheck home to her two sisters and mother, volunteers for community music programs, and keeps her feet firmly on the ground. Never once have I found her floating too close to that stratosphere of self-importance that hovers over L.A. like smog. Lauren is real, she is true, and she is always the first person I confide in.

Although this time, the news really sucks.

This brings me back to my previously discussed dysfunctional family.

They handle good news really well. Bad news, not so much. There are a slew of reasons to avoid having heavy discussions with them. First, they are all tremendously busy people. Already pulled in a hundred different directions, they live under the earnest assumption that we can all take care of ourselves. There are no cracks in their system, so trying to squeeze my cancer into a hairline fracture is like trying to stop a nosebleed with a single sheet of discount toilet paper.

I am not the only one who thinks the family chain link is ridiculously strong. Enterprising reporters and paparazzi armed with telephoto lenses and unscrupulous sources have searched for the weak spots for years. There just aren’t any.

Sorry folks, it sucks for me, too.

Our closets simply don’t house any skeletons, hideous or otherwise. As hard as the media has tried, it has never been able to dig up anything that would jeopardize or shame my family during my mother’s campaigns. Countless reporters have taken a whack at it, and one of them got pretty darn close. It was during my senior year in high school, a flying soccer ball caught me right upside the head. Our team was playing “away” at the time, so how some photographer managed to find the obscure field and snap this one nasty shot is beyond me. But he did. He clicked away at the exact moment I whipped my body around, grabbed hold of the offending midfielder’s long ponytail and dropped her flat on her ass. Sure, it was a knee jerk reaction and I should have cooled down on the sidelines, but I popped her. In a way, she popped me right back.

The next day, I appeared on the front page of every rag across town. Teeth bared, muscles tensed, hand clearly seen wrapped around the long strands of brown hair. We almost laughed it off, but then the national media picked it up and played me off as Senator Mel Sheridan’s brutal beast of a daughter who obviously needed anger management intervention before someone else got hurt. My mother never addressed the picture directly, but her office did release a statement saying something to the effect of… “Our family respects the rules of all organized sports, and would expect the coaches to dole out the proper punishments for anyone caught breaking them.”

My mother was fiercely protective of her children, but she did make me well aware that the ponytail smack down was not acceptable behavior and she hoped I had learned a valuable life lesson that this type of crisis resolution did not work on the soccer field or in the real world.

Being Mel and Brett Sheridan’s daughter meant lots of little life lessons and discussions about better ways to handle those unexpected moments.

Inasmuch as I say we are a dysfunctional family, follow me here. Imagine what it feels like to live up to someone else’s expectations every stinking day of your life. Let me tell you, it can be daunting, frustrating, and just about impossible. It makes me weak, but I crawl back every time. Where else am I supposed to go?

Certainly, dysfunction is not always so subtle. It can come in the abusive taunts you hear hollered from the sidelines of a football game full of ten-year-olds. It can be the absentee mother, the only parent not to show up for the third grade Halloween party. It can be all of those obvious things, or it can be more refined and keen, cutting swaths of pain through your psyche deeper than a serrated edge can slither through skin.

I should know. It’s been happening to me my entire life.

I grew up denying my emotions, cutting off their air until they were insignificant enough to ignore. I may not be the same person I am today if I had been allowed to cry, or scream, or feel sorry for myself…just once. When you develop your personality based on other people’s expectations, you can’t help but wonder where you might have wound up.

Or with whom.

I have chased many a good man away with my inability to share, or indulge the give and take of a normal relationship. I have been told I’m far too independent, way too self-reliant, and much too eager to take on the role of the provider.

That’s pretty much more than enough to scare off almost anyone, and who could blame them anyway?

I’m a total drag. Now I have cancer.

Can I have a table for one? For the rest of my life.

Time has come for me to tell someone. Cancer is a tough thing to sit on for too long, and there is so much information to wade through I need a second set of eyes to understand it all. I’ve ruled out telling any of my family members first. I think that needs to wait until I can get them all in one room so I don’t have to keep repeating the shitty details of what’s to come.

Of course, getting the vice president to lock in on a place and time is a bit like walking through a corn maze with a blindfold wrapped around your head.

Whenever I need to speak to my mother, I usually start with my dad. At least he is easier to keep track of these days, and I don’t have to start with the chain of command to get him live on the phone. He keeps himself busy with several business ventures and a ton of charity work. My favorite is the non-profit he runs for inner city athletes who show real promise but are saddled with crack whores for mothers and fathers who beat them up.

He is always available to us, just a phone call away, albeit on a highly safeguarded phone. As the second-husband and all, he is constantly under the protection of Secret Service, but he insisted on maintaining a personal Blackberry for business purposes and for family necessity. It’s not your typical Blackberry, of course. This one has encoded GPS, and an emergency line that connects him immediately to the Situation Room at the White House. All incoming calls are cleared from a list of known or suspected terrorist extensions, and the line is untraceable.

That’s about as private as it’s going to get when your wife is the vice president.

All of us live with certain measures in place to ensure our safety. We also have secure cells, and our addresses are kept off the public information rolls. I get a monthly update from the national security investigators on any attempted breaches, as do my sister, brother and grandparents. This was a point of contention early on in the president’s administration. Apparently, it was a novel idea to share security information with civilians, but my mother insisted her family receive notification if they were in imminent danger. She also demanded each of her children receive a version of my father’s tricked out Blackberry, and even made a few attempts to extend Secret Service protection to us, even though technically we didn’t qualify for it because we were all adults. What Mama wants, Mama gets because eventually the White House relented on the phone, but not on the A-Team. Personally, I prefer the whole ignorance is bliss theory, but my mother is the antithesis of ignorance and bliss, so the phone goes everywhere I go. Same drill for my brother and sister. At least we don’t have the men in black trailing us around.

Kelby, most of all, will hate that I am about to become a talking point, she is quite used to claiming that all for herself thank you very much. She loves that she is the spitting image of my mother with striking yet classic features, a wide genuine smile, and a cascade of honey blonde hair. She is tall enough to cast a noticeable shadow when she enters a room, yet beguiling enough to make her your best friend. Instead of envying Kelby, you just want to bask in her light. Until she burns your skin off, that is. Kelby is by no means evil, but she is opportunistic, self-serving, and completely obsessed with one thing.

Herself.

All those life lessons our parents forced down our throats have been kicked back up in Kelby’s case. I deal with her a couple of ways. I never expect too much, and I keep a safe distance. She’s wrapping up her last few semesters of grad school, then lord help the poor soul who gets her next.

Then there is Kass, my little brother and my hero. He is also a mirror image of our mother, but that works for him. Tall and strong, Kass is like the guys on the Abercrombie & Fitch murals at the mall. Ripped muscles, broad shoulders, long legs, Kass is the total package. Throw in a couple of perfectly placed dimples that look like God gave his cheeks a quick pinch before sending him down here to earth, and Kass is just about perfect. He also happens to be the best man I know.

When we were little Kass was always the one who wanted to linger at the soup kitchen, who stood up for the nerdy kid who couldn’t catch a baseball with an eight-foot net, and really took to heart the pious message our parents preached from the time we were old enough to hold our own sippy cups.

If there were one family member I would consider dropping this news on first, it would be Kass. He would rush to my side, hold my hand, and spew forth well-intentioned happy lines that I know he would honestly believe. That I would be fine, that this would make me stronger, that my chemo-ravaged hair would grow back better than ever. I know he would be there for me, but I don’t want him to have to be. I want him to continue on his journey of good will, to stay shiny, happy, and untouched by the shower of shit that is about to pour down on me.

Kass may look like my mother, but everything else was transferred directly from my father’s DNA. Good genes have delivered to him a bomb of a right arm, so it took no time at all for Kass to blow right by kids his own age in every sport he ever tried. By high school, the buzz on him exploded. Recruiters would line the metal fences of the baseball field, or the upper bleachers at the Friday night football games, scratching down notes or whispering into their cell phones. Not that there is not hard work involved, although I think that if there is any percentage of a successful outcome that depends on the hand of fate scooping up your ass at just the right time, the fingers are permanently cupped for Kass. Not too long after being drafted into the NFL, he shut down the critics who said he was nothing more than an entitled kid with overinflated expectations. This boy can play!

Sometimes Kass will bring his government issued cell into the postgame press conferences, dial up the White House and put the phone on speaker so the Sunday afternoon VIP crowd gathered at the other end can hear the whole thing.

He’s a regular chip off the old block. My father could not be more proud, and honestly neither could I. On game days, I am always the last phone call Kass makes before he drifts off or gets on the plane for the trip home. For a while, he would try to put in a call to Kelby but always got voicemail and no return call, so he figured he’d catch her later. I told him the later, the better.

Even though he and the rest of my family will have to know eventually, I decide that Lauren will be first.

I figure the best way to do it is face-to-face. With that, I start looking at my schedule.

How soon can I book a flight to Los Angeles?