A Hope for Emily

“I know you didn’t. Rachel didn’t, either. None of us did.” He puts his messenger bag down on the table and I stand there, a sauce-splattered spoon in my hand, unsure what to say or do. Where we go from here. It feels as if we’ve climbed a mountain, but there is still a whole range in

front of us.

“When is Rachel… when will the treatment start?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her about the details.”

But Emily is your daughter. I swallow down the words, the useless protest. “Will she go to Italy on her own? Just her and Emily?”

James shoots me a look; these aren’t the questions I should be asking. He was, I realize, giving me an opening to move on. To paper over the cracks. “I have no idea, Eva. I imagine she will.” He shrugs. “Perhaps her mother will go with her.”

“But her mother has Parkinson’s,” I say before I think better of it.

James turns to me, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “What?”

“She found out a few weeks ago. When… when we were talking about setting up the page.” I look away, feeling guilty for all sorts of reasons. It wasn’t my place to tell James about Rachel’s mother. She obviously chose not to.

He shakes his head. “Then I guess maybe she’ll go alone. I didn’t realize…” He shakes his head again.

I know he doesn’t mean to sound indifferent. I know this has been too much for him, one hard thing after another; this morning I checked the comments on Emily’s page and saw how many of them were about James. Horrible, spiteful, deliberately cruel comments, and I know he must have seen them too. Still I speak.

“That will be so tough on her, to go it alone.” I picture Rachel alone in a foreign country, navigating everything on her own, the foreign language, the unfamiliarity, the emotional highs and lows of the experimental treatment… “Will you… visit?”

James presses his forefinger to the bridge of his nose as he closes his eyes briefly. “No, I don’t think so. No.”

Somehow, even now, I am taken aback. “But it’s a whole month…”

“I’m well aware of that, Eva.” James turns away, his shoulders hunching. “It was hard enough for me to agree to the treatment in the first place. Do you really think I want to see it—Emily being zapped by some medical version of a stun gun? Do you think it’s going to be pleasant?”

“But Rachel…”

“Rachel is up for this. I am not. Besides, if I went, I would just make things more difficult for her. Trust me on that one.”

“I do,” I whisper. I feel badly for pressing the point, and yet my heart still aches for Rachel, coping on her own. “I do trust you, but…”

James throws his hands up in the air. “There is always a but.”

“I just think you’d want to be there, at least for some of it. I mean, what if the treatment works and Emily is…” I’m not sure what she’d be. “What if it doesn’t work?” I continue. “Either way…”

James turns slowly to face me full on. “Do you think I haven’t thought of that? Do you think that isn’t one of the precise reasons why I haven’t wanted to go down this route?” I am silent, shamed by the raw pain I hear in his voice. “I’ll say my goodbyes here in Boston,” he says bleakly, and then he walks out of the room.

Another night passes where we don’t talk. Now neither of us can.

Despite everything, I continue to think about Rachel, and her plans to go to Italy, even as my own life continues to implode. I don’t get called to interview for any of the jobs I applied for. James maintains a stiff formality, a chilly politeness that is worse than his silence. I ask him when he is going to thaw and he gives me a bleak look.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” he says. “Despite what you may think. I just… I don’t know how to be with you anymore, Eva.” And the truth is, I don’t know how to be with him. Has this been too much for our marriage, or has it just revealed what we never had in the first place? Part of me wishes I’d never spoken to Rachel about making a damned page. Another part—a larger part—is still glad that I did.

After another few days of mooching around the house, I end up calling Rachel. I need to know how she is doing. What her plans are. I feel far too invested, more than she wants me to be, but I am.

Her phone switches to voicemail, and I realize she must be at the hospital, with Emily. It is two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon; where else would she be? And I know where that is—the palliative care unit of Boston Children’s Hospital. It’s not even that far, a few miles. I could bike it, since James has the car.

An hour later I am being buzzed into the unit. I explained I was a friend of Rachel’s—which felt like a lie—and she had to approve my entry. She is waiting for me as I come through the heavy doors, blinking in the dim lighting. Everything is both cheerful—primary colors, murals of animals—and yet terribly, terribly sad, a hush hanging over the hallway like a thick blanket.

“Eva.” For the nurse’s benefit she offers me a tense smile. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

The nurse has gone back to the station. Rachel lowers her voice. “What are you doing here?”