All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Infinite props to Jess, k., Laura, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Tim O'Brien and Margaret Atwood. Title from Kate Bush. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback.

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Breathing
Violet


Easier to do this now, she thinks. Easier to sit in the chair pulled next to the sofa, to watch bland and garish images alternate on the television. It's always on, to drown out wheezing lungs and sizzling electricity. Easier to breathe steadily, easier to slip her hand into the hand that waits. Easier to be orphaned the second time.

Her mother likes the shopping channels--not to watch, but to purr in the background. The hostesses smile encouragingly, hair lacquered into place, careful makeup, perfect teeth, comforting Midwestern accents proclaiming the virtue of gold-plated diamonique jewelry. The satellite TV system has four shopping networks, but her father picked it out to watch hockey. When she was in grammar school, they had a huge, boxy set with a tiny monochrome screen. Her parents refused to spend money on a new one until her teens, years after everyone on the block was already watching glorious color.

The wallpaper in the living room is not the dark coral stripe she grew up with. Now the walls are crisscrossed in cornflower blue, peeling mildly with age along the ceiling's edge. She's forgotten the last time her parents redecorated, but the beige sofa is threadbare and tired. The wood floors show the same wear they did nearly fifty years ago, when she and her brothers treated them like a skating rink, a racetrack, a basketball court. Since they grew up, there has been much less traffic.

"...And I bought one for my daughter," says a loud Southern woman who has called into the housewares show. Probably a paid shill, but C.J. winces anyway, and looks at her mother. The older woman's eyes were open, but she did not see.

It's easier to do this here, because her father tried to deal with the hospital, first going in for hours of radiation and chemo. And if that wasn't horrible enough there was his inpatient stay, visiting hours from eight-thirty in the morning to seven in the evening. A rigorous schedule, strictly followed, eleven-hour days for six weeks for her father. It makes her throat close to think how the call had come at quarter past seven in the morning, at home. How, at the end, they'd been nowhere near. After his funeral, her mother pulled them aside, individually and then together, and asked them for a promise. "Not in the hospital. Not like that, not with all those strangers and all that white." Her mother was still walking then, but already thin, so thin, translucent or lit from the inside. C.J. promised along with her brothers and intended to keep it. Not in the hospital. It had to be easier at home.

She squeezes her mother's right hand in her left, listening to her cough her way from sleep to semi-consciousness. Using her right, she dabs at her mother's chin with a checkered dishcloth. There's a mountain of laundry waiting in the basement. She and her brothers often sleep in what they've been wearing, leave the discarded clothes hanging out of the hamper with dirty towels and pillowcases, with nightgowns stiff down the front with sickness and saliva, with the foul smells and the stains.

"Claudia," her mother says in a voice that is less a voice than a rattle of vocal cords that have no tension left. "What time is it?"

She always knows what time it is now, keeps it ticking in the back of her mind. "Five-thirty."

"AM or PM?"

She points to the sunlight slanting in through the curtains on the western windows. "PM. The boys went to get food."

Mia turns her face to the upholstery of the couch. "I'm not hungry."

She never is, anymore; her children have to battle to get her to drink water, or take protein supplements, and anything they get into her leaves her system, unprocessed, by one route or another. "There's nothing in the house," C.J. says lamely.

"Is anything on TV?"

She flips to the preview channel and watches for a while. "Not much."

"Leave this, then." She moves her fingers falteringly to her own cheek. The nails are ragged and unpainted, though they never used to be, even when she was a mother of small, explosive toddlers. "You should go rest," she rasps.

"I'm fine."

"You look like three miles of bad road."

"Mom, I'm fine." C.J. thinks that it would be nice to look perfect, as people do in movies at dramatic moments like these. It would be nice to have lipstick, eyeliner, to be brushed with a luster like the anchors on QVC. Nice, but impossible, to be lovely here. They watch the channels scroll in silence.

First the screen door, then the wooden one creaks open. "The food-man cometh," Thomas calls, backing in, and John follows, groceries spilling from both their arms.

"You should've gotten paper bags," Mia says disapprovingly.

"They were out," Tom explains over his shoulder as he stomps toward the kitchen.

She sniffs. "Don't make a mess in there."

C.J. is grateful that her mother can't see the state of perpetual disaster that the rest of the house has fallen into. It's especially embarrassing in the kitchen where, she has tried very hard to convince herself, she did not spot a roach in the drain. Then she is guilty for the gratitude. She helps her brothers carry in the food, peeking at the contents. "This is crazy," she says, hefting a mesh bag full of potatoes. "We're never going to eat all these."

John shrugs. "I thought mashed potatoes might be good some night."

"And corn chips and salsa," Tom says, stuffing a few bags into the cabinet. "And strawberry ice cream." He pauses and makes a face. "Not together."

"Celery, Buffalo wings, pudding, and cheese?" C.J. shakes her head. "What is this, random acts of cholesterol?"

"Shut up and have a Twinkie." Tom tosses one of the small packages to her. "How's she been?"

"The same." She hugs herself, unconsciously squishing the snack cake. "Maybe a little worse. A little apnea, when she was asleep."

"Vomit?" Tom asks, automatically in medical mode.

"Yeah."

"Blood?"

"Some."

John wedges a gallon of milk into the top shelf of the refrigerator. "Did you call the hospital?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I know what they'll say, John." C.J. sets the Twinkie down on the hutch and swipes at the stray locks of hair that cling to her forehead. "They'll say we should bring her in, and I'll say no, and they'll tell me all the horrible things that are happening inside her. They'll tell me she's shutting down and it's only a matter of what gets to her first, and they'll tell me she belongs in a hospital. They'll say we should bring her in, and I'm tired of arguing with people who are right."

He glares at her for a minute and then turns back to the groceries. "And we got yogurt, like you wanted."

"Custard style?"

John studies the carton. "Fruit on the bottom."

"Whatever." She looks down at the almond-colored linoleum and can't remember the previous pattern. There have been half a dozen since they first moved in, when she was three, and the whole kitchen was done in hideous shades of navy and olive and gold. "It's time to give her the pills," she says.

Tom checks his watch to verify the time. "Yeah. Whose turn?"

"She keeps them down better when you do it," John says, hiding behind the freezer door.

"It's true," C.J. says quickly before Tom can protest.

"Fine," he says, shoulders slumping in resignation. "I'll do it. I have to take mine anyway."

As he leaves, C.J. watches John rearrange cartons of orange juice and two-liter bottles of root beer, all of them close to empty, all of them unfinished. "I'm going outside to smoke," she says.

His forehead creases. "You should quit."

"No shit, Sherlock." She grabs a pack and a lighter off the top of the low bookcase that stores winter boots, old scarves and mismatched mittens. She half-stumbles down the three steps to the back door Outside, she rests her back against the weathered gray siding and lights the cigarette. As she takes a drag, it seems to pull back, drawing something out of her. She knows it's nonsense, but that's how it feels, as she tips her head back and exhales a swirl of smoke into the cloudy sky.

*

Ten years earlier, when her oldest brother was diagnosed, it had been foreign and surreal. Cancer was the word that they said over and over, trying to imbue it with reality. Then there were the specific words, the medical terms that the doctors used, that they all memorized. These sounded more like the Latin they knew from Catholic school than something that could kill someone you loved.

The books she read on cancer and, later, on grief, said that shock was typical. That it was normal to experience disbelief before fear, numbness before agony. It assuaged little of the guilt that hit her the day that she realized he was dying, which was two days before it happened. The knowledge drifted in her mind, painful and alien as the ravenous cells stalked her brother's lymph nodes. "Ceej," Aaron had said, the last time he was able to speak to her, "you gotta help take care of them." He hadn't specified if he meant their parents, or their brothers, or his daughters, and she has never been sure. Two days later they did what he'd wanted and turned the machines off.

With ten years' distance, she recalls what came later in an abstract blur: holding onto her sister-in-law's shoulders, an interminable morning on the phone with an undertaker, complete strangers telling her they were sorry. Then shock, and the things she did to get through it, dangerous things like smoking too many cigarettes and screwing her boss. It had been hard, but it had been a long time ago. Time had passed, the bleeding stopped, the pain faded, and finally there was only a scar. Joy came back. There were some very good years.

Mia found the lump in her breast in the middle of summer, not quite six months after Bartlet left office. Her surviving children were first paralyzed with fear and then galvanized by it, rushing to red-eye flights and crowding the oncologist's office. In her memory, C.J. can see it all as a flow-chart, or a printout from a seismograph. The spike of initial panic and the slow descent into relaxation, treatments that helped, seemed to help, didn't help, the first mastectomy and the first remission, and then the cycle repeated. Waves and surges over four years and finally this anticlimactic gradual decline.

She was forty days out of her second remission, talking to a specialist she'd heard about in a neighboring town, when her husband lost consciousness in a car on Interstate 80.

*

Her first cigarette is gone, and her second one fast disappearing, when she realizes the sun is setting. Her skin prickles, and the concrete of the patio seems cold to her bare feet. She tugs the sleeves of her charcoal sweater down over her forearms. Inside the house they keep the temperature high, and no one is ever warm enough.

What's happening must not be harder, so it has to be easier. When she flew out three months earlier, she told her friends she was going home for a while. Now she thinks: I haven't been home in three months. It's disturbing to feel homesick in a place as familiar as her own flesh. It must be pretty unusual, these days, for a family to keep one house for five decades. But they'll have to sell it, after--she mentally chokes that off, knowing only that neither she nor her brothers want to live there anymore.

The end of the cigarette burns down to her hand. She yelps and drops it, putting her fingers into her mouth to relieve the pain. The remnant smolders on the pavement a few inches away and she contemplates a third one, shaking the pack against her hip. She decides to wait, takes a few seconds to compose herself and goes in from the gathering darkness.

"Hey," Tom greets her as she comes into the kitchen. He pours water into the coffee-maker and turns it on. "She took the potassium and the codeine."

Though she knows it's like holding a parasol up to the Deluge, she feels her heart skip. "That's good."

"She spit out the tamoxifen, but I figured it wasn't worth fighting about." Tom rubs his forehead. "It's not going to slow things down any further. And what's the point of slowing it down anyway?"

C.J. makes a soft, noncommittal sound and opens the refrigerator, letting the freon cool her burn. "What did you buy that's quick and easy?"

He folds his arms and leans on the counter. "We got some bologna."

"From the deli?"

"Oscar Meyer." A smile, almost goofy, appears and disappears on his face. "All this time, I still haven't learned to cook. I can ruin spaghetti."

Staring into the fridge, she thinks of the dinners that Toby has learned to make. He's got a touch of insane genius for cooking like he's always had for language. "I can burn instant pudding."

"And you know why that is?" He cocks his head toward the living room. "She used to chase us out of the kitchen waving a spatula. 'I swear to God, if you touch one of those cookies...'"

C.J. chuckles and finishes the refrain with him as she takes out the lunch meat and a loaf of bread. "'I will make a call, I will have you killed.' Yeah. I didn't know how the burners worked until I was twelve. Hand me a paper plate?"

Tom does. The coffee machine beeps, and he removes the pot. "Coffee," he shouts into the hallway, and turns back to his sister. "It's funny. Technically, she might die of malnutrition."

She looks up sharply from the food. "Don't say that."

"I didn't mean it was funny, Ceej," he says. "You know that. I just meant, of all things, of all people--"

"I know what you meant." She pushes at her hair. "And she still won't let you put in an IV."

"No. She was always scared of needles."

"When was she ever scared of needles?"

He takes out three mugs and fills them with coffee. "Remember when we were kids and we had to get measles shots? She always used to wince and shield her eyes."

"No," C.J. says. "Why don't I remember that?"

Tom shrugs. "It was a long time ago. We were little. You need coffee."

She accepts the cup and drinks from it without stopping to consider the temperature. "Ow!"

His eyes widen in amusement. "Burned your tongue there, did you?"

"Let me ask you something. When did I lose the ability to coordinate motion with thought?"

"When did you have that ability?"

"Shut up."

As C.J. sets her mug down, John walks into the kitchen. "Hallelujah," he says to his coffee cup.

"Did you know Mom was afraid of needles?" C.J. asks.

"I guess. Yeah. Why?"

"I didn't."

"She's falling asleep." He stands in front of the sink, blowing on his coffee. "This stuff is like heroin to me."

"Yeah, because you know the hard stuff. You've been down on the corner." Tom looks at the ceiling. "It's okay to drink now, C.J."

She picks up the cup and stares into it. "What's on TV tonight?"

"Garbage as usual." John looks at her. "You need a shower."

"You're a bit gamy there yourself."

"What we need," Tom intones dramatically, "is a plan. A plan for how to do this."

"I agree." C.J. gulps some coffee. Her tongue tingles unpleasantly. "A plan would be a good thing to have."

"Well, there are people who are professionals at making this kind of plan," John begins, oblivious to the dirty look Tom directs at the back of his skull. He looks across the room. "Whose sandwich is that?"

C.J looks at the dark glossy surface of her coffee. "I'm not hungry."

*

C.J.'s niece, the older of Aaron's daughters, was driving the car. She panicked, but did it gracefully, pulled off to the side of the road and called 911, managed to make it clear that she wasn't just trying to get her motor jumped faster than Triple-A. Her grandfather woke up before the ambulance got there. He tried to talk, but his voice was weak, his words disjointed. Delirious, Robin said, when she told them. He had been delirious.

They all thought it was a heart attack, until the chest x-rays came back, spotted with shadows, blue-black and ominous. It looked like moth-eaten fabric, like Swiss cheese, like a Rorschach test from Hell.

He didn't want them to get upset. He was disgusted with the fuss and the unsubtle exchanges of worried glances. C.J. tried to keep things calm over the phone, while the line on the other end passed from hand to hand. "They caught it early, right?" she had said, she was sure, fifty times. "That's why they do these x-rays. That's why they have the treatments. They caught it early." And her father called her a good girl when they gave him the phone.

"I'm an old man, Claude," George said. "I feel like hell when I have to bend over to tie my shoes. Tell your mother to stop pestering the nurses and let 'em alone and sit down."

She had laughed. But they had all been wrong again, wrong or lying to themselves. Her father obeyed the rules, followed the prescribed courses of therapy. He called it nonsense at every turn, as his wife and children alternately cajoled and threatened him. He never missed an appointment, or a chance to gripe about the outdated magazines lying around the waiting room.

They diagnosed him in the spring, and by the end of July there was no more pretending it was only an old man's aches and pains. Before the leaves turned, the fear was back. It was a living thing that touched her, grabbed her, metastasized at the same rate as the tumors drifting around her father's lungs and heart.

And her mother kept losing weight.

*

"It sucks," Josh says sympathetically.

C.J. sits on the floor beside her bureau and twines the phone cord around her fingers. "Yeah."

"Nothing about it that doesn't suck."

She leans her elbows on her windowsill. The glass reflects her own face, the low lamplight, the cream-colored walls. She peers through the image to see the night. "Did the President ever tell you that story about the old couple in the winter of 1714?"

"No. Tell me."

"There was this old couple in the winter of 1714."

He chuckles. "You're a great storyteller."

"Had you noticed that about me?" She shifts the receiver from her left ear to her right and continues. "They lived out in the woods in a cabin, and they were walking back from town in a blizzard. I think maybe the man was carrying the woman because she had the galloping consumption or whatever people got back then."

"Syphilis?"

"Do you want me to tell the story or do you want to be a stand-up comedian?"

"Sorry."

"Anyway, there was a blizzard and they were snowed in for a long time. When somebody finally came and found them, they'd frozen to death. And the man had the woman's feet cradled against his stomach, so the last of his body heat went to keep her warm."

Josh listens thoughtfully. "And you think that's the way it's supposed to happen?"

"I think their kids would agree it sucks. How's Sam?"

"He continues to burst with pride. He wanted me to tell you that you've got to come by when--" he swallows "--you get back, and see the baby."

C.J. sighs. "I've already seen her several times."

"Yeah, I can't believe we've lost Sam to this cult of parenthood."

"Cute baby, though."

"If you go in for that sort of thing. And of course you talk to Toby."

She doesn't call home as much as she should, and she knows that. There are times when it's like she might drown if she doesn't hear his voice, and then she calls and when he speaks it's hard to breathe. "Yes," she says simply.

If she didn't know him so well, she might not have noticed the edge in his tone. "Have you talked to Donna?"

She stands up straight, crosses the small bedroom and flops down backwards on the bed, stretching the phone cord to its full capacity. "Once or twice."

"She called you?"

"I called her," she admits. "Just to check in."

"So you have her new number."

"Josh--"

"Can I have it?"

"No."

"I just want to talk to her," he says, his speech plaintive and strangled. C.J. can picture him laying his head back on the top of his chair, fidgeting, looking both exhausted and boyish. "This is stupid. I just want to talk to her."

"It's not up to me to give out her number, Josh." She rubs her eyes. "If she doesn't want to talk to you right now--"

"Yeah, yeah." He breathes deeply and slowly. "Last time we talked she told me I should call a lawyer."

"You should."

"I am a lawyer!" Josh laughs bitterly. "Besides, they charge like two hundred and fifty dollars an hour."

"Yeah, and I know how you're hurting for cash there, buddy." She taps her fingers on the top of her thigh. "Look, I'm sorry, I really am, but I'm not taking sides. I'm not sure that she should be cutting off all contact, but you haven't been the best husband."

When she stops talking there is nothing but the pops and hisses on the line. "You still there?" she says, tentatively.

"This is the point where we used to talk about work," he replies.

"Okay, so talk about work." She reaches out lazily for one of her pillows, sliding it under her neck. "You're backing Lawrence DePeter."

"Yeah. You want a job?"

"I've pretty much hung up my campaigning shoes."

"Damn. I was hoping maybe you'd take over for me."

She scoffs gently. "That bad, hmm?"

"Pop quiz, hotshot," Josh says. "Name the incumbent Presidents defeated in the last hundred years."

It only takes her a couple seconds. "Taft, Hoover, Carter, Armstrong."

"Beaten by Wilson, Roosevelt, Reagan, and Bartlet. I don't think the incumbent's in a class with the former, and Larry DePeter is definitely not in a class with the latter."

C.J. nods even though he can't see her. "Well, they can't all be."

"Guess not." Josh yawns. "It's about two-thirty in the morning here, C.J."

"Yeah. Thanks for calling."

"Like you could stop me?"

She frowns at the overhead light. "You know, when your father died--I felt terrible about it, but I didn't know it was like this."

"I had the campaign to distract me," he says casually.

"Did that help?"

"No." He pauses. "Talk to you soon."

"Bye." C.J. gets up again. It's exactly like being a teenager, the long conversations with her best friends. But then she was always being interrupted by loud, alarming crashes downstairs, by her brothers trying to invade the room, by her mother yelling that dinner was ready. She drops the phone into its cradle. The house is quiet.

She wants a cigarette. She tiptoes to the back stairs and descends, placing her feet precisely on the steps to keep them from squeaking. As she nears the kitchen, she hears voices. Her brothers are at the table; John is sipping coffee while Tom idly shuffles a deck of cards.

"What're you two doing up?" she wonders, stopping in the doorway.

"We're old," Tom says.

John grimaces at him and then looks at C.J. "He's old, and I'm anxious."

She pulls a stool up between them and sits down, crossing her legs. "About what?"

"Take a wild guess." He gestures toward the living room with his coffee cup. "And I haven't seen my wife in a week and a half."

"So call her," Tom suggests, fluttering the cards into an arc and flattening them back down. "Have her come over."

"Wendy doesn't handle illness very well," John mutters. "You saw how she was with Dad. She cries at the drop of a hat."

Tom raises an eyebrow. "Why would she cry if somebody dropped their hat?"

"The Cregg children," C.J. says, resting her chin in her hands, "are not criers."

"They are not," Tom agrees. "Anyone want to play a game of something?"

"No." John folds his arms on the table. "I'm tired."

"Me too," C.J. says. "And I may never sleep again."

"Well, I hate being the bad guy, but--"

Tom interrupts him with a groan. "It starts."

"We should've gotten hospice in here weeks ago," John says firmly. "At the very least, Mom ought to have a nurse or something. And what we really ought to do is make her go to the ER."

C.J. stares at him for a beat. "No."

"She's loaded up with disease and painkillers," John says defensively. "She doesn't know what she wants."

"Really?" Tom snaps. "She seems like she's in pretty much sound mind, to me."

"You act like I'm suggesting something radical." John struggles not to raise his voice. "This is what hospitals are for, to save lives."

"We're past that," C.J. says flatly. "You do know that."

"Of course I do." He drums his fingers on the table, frustrated.

"Of course he does." Tom's voice is chilly. "You know, I think you're just scared. Strike that, I think you're selfish."

"Oh, I'm selfish now?"

"Stop it," C.J. orders. She reaches for John's coffee cup, touching his hand. "John. Johnny. She knows what she wants and it's not up to us."

"Fine," he says dubiously.

She takes his mug and drinks the cold liquid, as if it seals some kind of contract. "Are you two done bickering like the Gabor sisters? Because if you are, I can go out--"

"Kids?" Mia's voice from the living room is as loud as she can make it, which is feeble, pathetic, frightening. They troop into the living room, single file, guilty-faced as if they were caught in the cookie jar. C.J. believes they can never grow up completely in their mother's eyes. Thirty years of playful, well-intentioned nagging about marriage and career have only been minor variations on lectures about getting chocolate pudding on lace tablecloths.

"You shouldn't be up," Mia tells them sternly.

"Back at you," Tom says lightly.

"Me?" She coughs; her children tense up until she relaxes again. She regards them jovially, as if she's caught them in some foolish behavior. "I sleep all day. What's your excuse?"

John takes a step backward. "We should get you some water."

"I'm fine," she insists. "I suppose none of you listen to me anymore."

"We listen to you," C.J. says.

"I tell you to go to bed, you sit in the next room fomenting rebellion." She shakes her head. "It's not very polite, and it's not very mature."

"Fomenting rebellion?" Tom repeats.

"Shush, you. I get the History Channel." Her smile is as frail as her voice, ghastly, and gut-wrenchingly hopeful. C.J. looks away, and Mia glances at her. "Go to bed. Or else let's all play cards."

"We should all sleep," John says.

"One game," Mia presses.

Tom holds out the deck. "Hearts?"

C.J. sits down on the floor, legs folded Indian-style, and looks steadily at her mother across the coffee table. "Deal."

*

Her brother's widow called her at work on a Monday afternoon at the start of December. "They want him in the hospital," Paula said, beginning the pattern they would all fall into. The doctors, the nurses, the administrators--their names were forgettable. It was just 'they,' and they had wanted her father in the hospital that night.

C.J. had been frozen in her office, back turned to the wide desk, staring at the big window with the mediocre view. The ashen sky was spitting down sleet. "Okay," she'd said, and "Yes, yes, of course," and hadn't been able to move. She found herself prying her own arms away from her chest, gripping the edge of the desk for leverage as she rotated her chair.

Susanne, who worked across the hall and was technically her boss, came in later and said the kind, soothing, meaningless things that needed to be said. The job paid in flexibility what it didn't in salary. Susanne said, "Take all the time you need."

George resisted the order in his typical way, alternating between playful pleading and cantankerous refusal. Finally, they conceded two weeks to him, to prepare, to pack, to put things in order. "A stay of execution," he joked, and C.J. tried not to feel the sting of the phrase.

She went home and filled two suitcases quickly and haphazardly, piling a tangle of stockings and sweaters on top of her favorite shoes and jeans with holes worn in the knees and the seat. The cat had mewled anxiously at her ankles. "It's okay," she said, stretching a hand down to stroke the soft spot behind the pointed ears. "Stop looking at me like that." But when she looked up, Toby had been watching her from the doorway, with the same expression behind his beard.

"I'm flying out of Baltimore," she said, reflexively crossing her arms again. "It was fifteen dollars cheaper."

He nodded. "I'll wake you up, if you want."

"I have an alarm."

"You always hit the snooze," he pointed out. "Then you lie there listening to bad pop radio. I'll wake you up."

"Thanks." She dug her fingers into her upper arms and did not feel it. "He'll be eighty years old, come the spring."

Toby gave her another slight nod. "You'll be all right," he said.

She wasn't sure whether it was a statement or a question. She wanted to point out that he hadn't gone to his own mother's funeral, that he was even further in mind and body from his family as she was from hers. She wanted to tell him that, for all his knowledge of her and of the world, he couldn't possibly fathom how far, how insurmountably far she was from being all right. She bit her lip, nodded back, said nothing at all.

In his bed that night she was needy, demanding, a bitch, and he played along with it every inch of the way. C.J. didn't notice when she fell asleep, but Toby woke her in enough time for a shower, a cup of coffee, and the drive to the airport. The sun came up behind the westward flight. She could never sleep on planes, and she contemplated pop music and sex and fiery crashes instead of hospitals and heart monitors, instead of what she was heading into.

*

The card game lasts halfway into the second round, when C.J. finds that she's the only one playing with her eyes open. She trudges back into her bedroom, slumping momentarily against the wall, too far beyond tired to sleep. She opens the window a crack; the night air bites her fingertips. Shivering, she lights a cigarette. Something like relief courses through her as the poison prickles her lungs. She dials the phone with her free hand.

It rings several times before Toby picks up. "Where's the fire?" he grumbles, voice thick with sleep and static.

"Hi," she says clearly, trying to penetrate the fog.

"Hi," he echoes. Then he wakes up. "Hey. Hi."

"What's up?"

"It's..."

She hears the bedding rustle around him, imagines him squinting to read the clock. "About four a.m. there."

"Yeah," Toby says blearily. "You're not sleeping, then."

"I got a couple of hours earlier tonight," she says, finding it surprisingly easy to lie to him when she can't see his face. She doesn't even care whether he believes her.

"Your cat keeps waking me up," he complains.

"It's because she knows you secretly adore her."

"She's a monster with too many parts that end in sharp points. And she's unhappy because she knows I don't obey her every whim."

"And yet you're sleeping with her," C.J. observes.

"She insisted."

"Well, I'm sorry I disturbed the both of you."

"Let's stop," Toby says, bemused. "Let's stop talking about the cat now."

She blows smoke toward the window. "Want to have phone sex?"

"You sound like Hell."

"I guess I'll take that as a no."

"I meant it literally." He sounds more alert now. "Your voice is bad. Might just be the line."

Her throat has been sore for weeks, from not crying and smoking and other forms of abuse. It hasn't stopped bothering her, but it's faded to the background with almost everything else. "I liked it better when we were talking about the cat," she says.

"Are you ready?" he asks.

Anyone else would have asked how she was doing, or how her mother was. But those are stupid questions, with glib and obvious answers. He has a need to be precise. "No, I'm not." She hesitates, and adds distantly, "It'll be over soon. That's horrible, isn't it?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm horrible, to say that." She laughs and stubs her cigarette out, flicks it through the open window. In the dark, she cannot see it plummet down to the lawn. "'It's almost over.' That's so selfish. Like I'm waiting for Christmas morning. Of course, you're Jewish."

"I knew what you meant."

"And Mom is Catholic. I mean really Catholic, not, not technically Catholic like me." She doesn't know why she keeps talking. "Mom believes in, you know, venial sins and abstinence until marriage, and papal infallibility. And Heaven. And Limbo. And Purgatory, which is like Hell with time off for good behavior. And I'm not a very good person."

"C.J." His tone is too soft, too close to pity. "There aren't really ways of talking about this that aren't crass."

"You should write some for me," she says, rubbing at her neck.

"I've been writing." Toby is quiet for a minute. She hears his footsteps, doors being opened and papers shuffling. "I've been writing this damn thing for 'Time' on Social Security. Six thousand words right now. I may be eligible by the time I get it finished."

"Send it to me when it's done."

"And Sam. Although he doesn't read much anymore, aside from Dr. Seuss."

"'Pat The Bunny'." C.J. almost giggles. "You know, good for him, though."

Toby emphasizes the phrase differently. "Good for him. Yes."

"The danger is past, my friend," she says wryly. "They're probably going to do a great job. Better than most, maybe. I thought Josh and Donna would..."

"Josh has, at this point, become more annoying than your cat," he declares.

"He's taking it hard. As you of all people should--" She starts to cough, hard, and covers the mouthpiece of the phone until she's got it under control.

Bedsprings creak as he sits down again. "If we'd been having phone sex, you would have killed the mood just then."

She snorts. "Fuck off, would you?"

"I'm glad you called." Toby manages to sound sarcastic and sincere at the same time.

"But you want to go back to bed."

"You should go back to bed, too."

"Okay." She clears her throat. "Okay, fine. Be nice to my cat."

"Yeah. My regards to your family."

"Of course." Sometimes, when saying goodbye long distance, she tells him not to do something outlandish, like start his own clothing label or sleep with a call girl. Nothing comes to mind this time. "Sleep well."

"You, too," he's saying, but the phone is already away from her ear. She hangs up and switches off the lamp. It's too hot in the house, and the heat rises up the stairs and through the floors, into her room. C.J. undresses and curls up tight on top of the blankets on the too-small bed. She waits the remainder of the night out that way, not really sleeping but certainly not awake.

*

Her father's two weeks of freedom were glorious, idyllic, every moment tailored to make a happy memory. They drank a lot, ate even more, told and retold childhood stories like Homeric epics, like they were tribal shamans formulating oral tradition around a fire. They laughed until it hurt, and then until it nearly stopped hurting.

Aaron's widow came up with her daughters, the girls, not little now; Robin was teaching eighth grade French and applying to grad schools and Ashlee was a year away from graduating high school. Sometimes during the two weeks, they separated unintentionally into two halves. The women in the kitchen washing dishes or the attic, unpacking boxes of junk no one wanted to look at or to throw away. The men in the living room watching football, or standing around the front steps, bonding in the crisp air. At night, when they stayed up so late talking that it made little sense to bother going to bed, and over breakfast, they all smiled and did not speak of fear.

They couldn't beg any more time. It just wasn't possible, the doctors said, and so George went into the hospital and Christmas came five days later. They didn't fuss over it. No presents, just an hour-long, non-denominational service in the chapel. Mia sat, her limbs trembling, but her eyes steady and stern under the crown of her bowed head. It wasn't a proper Midnight Mass, she said later, but it was convenient, and God knew it was better than nothing. That was one ritual. For C.J., the other one was calling Josh early the next morning. He had never learned to like the holiday. He made jokes about coal in the stocking and not having a chimney, and said it was a white Christmas in Washington. C.J. looked out the window and longed for snow. Instead it continued to rain.

Other people's discarded trees, shreds of tinsel and shards of colored glass, lined the curbs and protruded from Dumpsters. It was a new year; they hardly noticed. Every morning they drove, following each other or filling up C.J.'s rented Hyundai, from the house to the hospital. Every night they drove home. At first it looked like things were going to get better. Then it didn't look that way. Then it was clear that things would get worse.

The call came at quarter past seven in the morning. She'd been in her pajamas, trying to fill a glass with the inadequate dribbles of orange juice someone had left in the carton in the fridge. She answered at the same time as John picked up the extension upstairs. "Hello?" they said in unison, and listened, and made sounds that weren't quite words, that were practically silence.

C.J.'s first reaction was a desire to run, a tingling in her legs to get somewhere she wasn't and could never be. She tried to shake the mental image of empty rooms, of the harsh fluorescence of industrial light, the persistent thought that it should not be the last light someone saw. It was unnatural, too false for her father, who was--had been--real.

The three of them told their mother together. Mia's mouth pressed into a line; she nodded, and for the first time C.J. really saw the fine bones under her skin, saw how the color of the skin was wrong, saw hollow places and puffiness and, even worse, the strange, brittle brightness about her. But she would not let her children see her cry.

*

After the night they play Hearts, John stops sleeping at the house. He claims it is because he is tired. Tom says it is because he is weak. C.J. knows it is because he is scared, and angry, and not entirely unjustified in either. Mia stops talking the same day. They are not sure if she's lost her voice, if she doesn't have the energy, or if she is afraid of what she might say.

Things that would have horrified C.J. years or months earlier no longer faze her. She is not startled when she finds still-sticky maroon bloodstains on the couch cushions, not agitated when she has to clean frothy saliva from the crevices around her mother's mouth. It is mostly blood that she throws up now; there is so little else left.

It's not serenity, C.J. decides, as she says goodnight to John over the phone. She sips lukewarm water from a Mason jam jar and thinks: I am not calm. But panicking only makes things more complicated, so when she does it, she does it silently, alone in her room or outside in the warmthless sunshine. She clenches her teeth and grinds her knuckles against her lips and does not sob or scream, not even at God. It would be pointless.

Two days go by like working the swing-shift, and their mother does not talk, and C.J. and Tom only whisper. "Have we called everyone?" he asks her in an undertone, as they pass on the front stairs.

"I think so." She runs down a mental list of relatives and family friends. "Did you call Aunt Celeste?"

"Shit," he says. "No. Do we have to? She's not even really our aunt."

"Yeah."

"And Mom doesn't really like her. She's always said so."

C.J. leans on the wooden banister, running her fingers over scratches in its polish. "We have to call her anyway, don't we?"

"I guess so." Tom flicks a lock of graying hair away from his forehead. "I need a haircut."

She nods. "She sleeps with her eyes open, sometimes."

"I know."

"Is that weird?"

He shrugs, not knowing or not saying, and continues up the stairs.

It's been three months since she left Washington, thirty-four days since her father passed away--that's the phrase the hospital used--and three nights since John stepped back. C.J. sits in the tan recliner in the living room, plucking idly at a loose ivory thread in the arm. By lamplight, the room's signs of wear and age don't show so clearly. It is still comfortable, still inviting and tasteful.

The television is muted, but it flashes garishly, as if to compensate for its silence. The end of a Lifetime movie blends into Unsolved Mysteries and then to an infomercial for a miracle cleaning product. C.J. fixes her eyes on the screen and listens to her mother, lying on the couch, breathing and missing breaths.

All of it is melodramatic, over the top. The cancer in her mother's breasts spread, like lichen on a tree or dandelion seeds on the wind, to her lungs, her bowels, her bloodstream, her womb. The last tests told them it was doing that, moving everywhere, mutating, colonizing. So it is really four or five diseases consuming her. But it makes sense, maybe. It takes a lot to sap that strength.

Mia is breathing, and shaking, and then she is choking. It isn't the first time that night, or the first time in the last hour. C.J. gets up from the armchair, tosses her hair and walks to the couch. She bends down, tips her mother's head back gently to clear the airway, and waits.

Her mother gasps as if in surprise or mild disapproval, as if someone told a tawdry joke at the supper table. It seems like a good sign, but then it turns guttural, more than a groan, almost a growl. The sound is clotted and tremulous and warped, failing like her internal organs are. It is not language. It is unmistakably human. C.J. stoops to one knee, strokes her mother's forehead, takes her mother's left hand in her right.

They are both sweating. Mia pulls for more air, the uneven gurgle growing in her throat, louder but still so little, so low. Her whole body is involved in this, everything she has left focused on the effort, the struggle. C.J. watches her, pale and small on the sofa in the dim golden light, and tries to think of the things famous writers say. Death is the mother of beauty, she thinks, and decides there isn't any way of talking about this that isn't horrible.

She considers calling for her brother, but when Tom sleeps he goes down heavy and hears nothing. She could hurry upstairs, try and wake him, hustle him into the living room. He would be blinking and fuzzy, but he would be present. Mia's eyes snap open, sightless, hazy blue and then shut again, and that settles it as much as anything. C.J. won't move.

In the corner of the room stands a wooden end-table, squat and weathered, the oldest piece of furniture in the room. C.J. remembers playing under that table as a toddler, getting in trouble for scribbling on its underside with crayons. As she sits on the floor, the fringe of the rug tickling her bare feet, everything in her memory falls into place.

C.J. remembers playing in the backyard, mud on her feet and face and in her hair, chasing her brothers and her mother chasing her, remembers dozens of scoldings for broken china and ruined party dresses and talking back. She hears herself asking detailed questions of the first set of doctors, trying to understand how normal, healthy cellular processes could just change. She thinks of bedtime at nine, of "When are you going to get married?" and "You work too hard." All the years she did work too hard, rarely visited, stayed so far away. All the years they were not close. She remembers the unreality of her brother's funeral, learning to drive, her mother brushing her hair. Most of all, she remembers patience, "be patient," and how she never was. And how she can be, when there's no choice.

Mia's grip tightens convulsively, slackens, her breathing even more erratic. Her lungs are wet and won't inflate; her muscles useless. She drags so little air in now that the effort uses up more fuel than it produces. C.J. leans in closer, drenched in adrenaline and recollection. She has no idea how this works, what is happening, no idea if there is a reason why. She is crouching like an Olympic athlete about to sprint, waiting, waiting as everything slows down.

Another gasp. A sputter. A silence.

Then she is alone in the room.

C.J. lets her mother's fingers slide out of her own, and recalls, abruptly, the early childhood checkups. A lollipop and a Band-Aid from the doctor, those were the most important things to her four-year-old mind, but before that there was the bee-sting of the shot. Her mother held her hand and looked away.

She's wearing a pair of John's jeans even though they're too loose. Tiny, dark spots appear on the denim over her thighs, but the tears can't be hers. The lamp casts her shadow, sepia on the creamy rug and charcoal on the blue wallpaper, deepening as the eastern windows grow brighter. She doesn't move, and doesn't know what time it is when Tom comes down the stairs, or how long he stands and how he looks at her, until he comes forward and touches her on the shoulder.

"Okay," he says softly, helping her up from her knees. "We. We're supposed to have a signed death certificate. By a physician."

She twists her neck and looks up at him, thinking that he needs a haircut. "You're a doctor," she says, and barely recognizes her own voice.

"Yeah." He lets go of her arm with that, and she walks down the hall without looking back.

*

They had walked through the cemetery, through the February thaw that fooled everyone into thinking of early spring. After consolation and condolence and prayer, they had walked away together, heads up and hands linked, a family.

"Not in the hospital," their mother said, a command, a plea. And they promised. *

C.J. puts her mother's death on her MasterCard and goes outside to smoke. The ridges of the white aluminum siding are unyielding against her spine. The sky is a ferocious summery blue, making the cold bite harder. She huddles inside her black nylon cocoon, a designer coat that lost its shape years ago. The hood hangs in wrinkles below the base of her neck. A soft breeze bounces it and throws her hair into her face. C.J. draws an aimless pattern in the sawdust with the toe of her sneaker, shields her lighter to produce a flame.

They found Impelliteri-Bridges for her father, by rifling through the Yellow Pages. They picked the place mostly at random, guessing correctly that the Italian name meant they could arrange Catholic services. Her father wouldn't have cared. Her mother would. When C.J. went in, the directors--undertakers, she thinks, sucking hard on her cigarette--were startled and concerned to see her. As if she'd come to lodge a complaint, to demand a refund or an exchange.

Tom's bulky, weather-worn Ford pulls into the small parking lot. C.J. straightens up, reflexively hiding her cigarette behind her back before bringing it back to her lips with a defiant smile. The driver's door opens first and Tom swings his legs out. He smiles faintly and steps forward, and as he does, Toby gets out of the passenger's side.

The cigarette gives her an excuse to hold her breath. He's exactly as she expected him, solid and handsome and neat in a dark suit. She turns her eyes to his and looks for the glint that always appears when he sees her. She looks for his certainty, and tries not to notice the clouds, not to notice that she isn't as he expected her. Toby raises his eyebrows and doesn't quite nod. She lets the smoke drift out through her nostrils, streaming thinly away from her face.

"Hey," she says.

Tom steps up the curb, squinting. "Been waiting long?"

She shrugs. "How was traffic?"

"Lousy. You know."

C.J. looks past her brother to Toby. "Good flight?"

"I've had worse." He walks up, trying to look her over with some subtlety and failing.

"I'd have met you myself." She takes a drag on the cigarette, massaging the back of her neck with her free hand. "I just hate that drive."

Toby shoves his hands into the pockets of his overcoat. "Can't blame you."

"I do the dirty work around here," Tom jokes. He sneezes, fishes a paper napkin in his pocket and wipes his nose as he studies the building. "So, you ready to go in and talk to them?"

C.J. attempts to swipe some of her hair into place. "I did it already."

Both men stare at her for a beat. Tom frowns. "Shit. I thought you were going to sleep in. I mean--it's expensive."

"Well, I fully expect you to kick in your third," she cracks. "It's not the money."

"It's not the money," he agrees. "You didn't have to."

Her shoulders hunch forward involuntarily. "What else was I going to do this morning?"

Tom glances back and forth between C.J. and Toby and tosses the napkin on the ground. "Okay. I'll just, I guess, go in and talk to them. You should go on home."

She tilts her head back as her brother walks past her and inside. "Thanks for coming." It sounds like she's talking to a kid at her birthday party. She expects Toby to make fun of her.

He doesn't. "Your brother calls you Ceej."

"They all--they both do." She chuckles, then coughs. Her voice sounds tinny. "Since before I could talk. It drove Mom nuts. You didn't know her."

"No," he says cautiously. "She raised fine children."

C.J. wants to laugh again, but it sticks in her throat, immobile. She shakes her head. "I'm freezing."

Toby holds out his hand before she steps forward, knowing that she'll be there. His fingers curve firmly into her waist; his beard grazes her cheek in an almost-kiss. She remembers a time when he couldn't and wouldn't do that in public. It was a long time ago, but it still seems a shade too intimate, an inch too close. She still has trouble deciding whether she wants to swoon or slap him. Instead, she lets what's left of her cigarette fall and accepts the support of his touch.

"Thanks for coming," she says again, and means it as they walk, against the wind, to her car.

*

Toby had come to her father's funeral, but he hadn't stayed long. He'd been in the middle of teaching a two-week seminar on creative nonfiction. C.J. imagines the e-mail he'd copied to thirty honor students, composed with haste and his usual elegance: "Attending a funeral out of town. Take the day." He would have signed it with his initials, like any of the thousand memos that used to cross their desks daily.

He had come out for the day, and he took her coat as they went into the church, wrapping it around her as they left. She remembers kissing him goodbye, missing him sharply when he was out of her sight. But most of her attention was concentrated on her mother. C.J. watched Mia's face for hints of the emotional breakdown that didn't come. She made her promise and looked at her mother and thought: Jesus, you can see right through her. And she thought: How long?

*

There's so much to do over the next two days that she does not sleep, much less take note of where anyone else sleeps. There is paperwork, there are bills. Lawyers and insurance agents squawk at her through the phone. Neighbors and relatives drift in and out, pushing things into her arms: flowers, cards, Tupperware bowls filled with slimy pasta salad. Someone brings nachos, but C.J. sets them down on the counter, turns around and they're gone.

It rains over the second night, into the third morning. Be grateful for small favors, C.J. tells herself; the afternoon is still overcast, but the air feels fresh. She concentrates on stepping over puddles, keeping her footing on the damp, dimpled stone steps. Toby guides her coat off, black sliding away from the navy of her sweater. They walk the long aisle down the center of the church. Eyes turn, followed by murmurs that ricochet off the high ceiling. She settles on the chilly wooden bench and doesn't look at anyone.

The priest is not young and not old. He's in his mid-forties, which suddenly seems like childhood to C.J. He speaks, and reminds her of something indefinite. It's like Sam, she realizes with a start. It's like one of Sam's speeches, these prayers with their blend of wonder, weariness, and an arrogant touch of optimism. It's beautiful, almost even believable.

C.J. kneels on cue. She was raised Catholic and knows what goes where, even when she's not listening. Even when she's thinking about how she's never gone to shul with Toby, or how Tom once told her that confessionals made him think of pornography, or of Mia forcing her to eat two bites of everything, including the broccoli. Along with everyone else she says 'amen' and her face does not change.

Her brothers, two cousins, a neighbor's son, somebody's husband: they rise first to lift the smooth wooden box. C.J. envies them the weight. She wishes she could feel the physical pressure in the muscles of her arms, the brass handle imprinting the flesh of her palms. She catches John's eye briefly as the casket passes her. She doesn't envy them after all.

Then they are out, and then they're in cars. Traffic stretches the five-minute drive into seven, then nine, but they arrive. The procession proceeds.

"Grant her peace and tranquillity..."

Along with everyone else she files past the new space hollowed out of the ground.

Afterwards, she does the geometry she learned at fundraisers, knowing everyone's positions without looking, calculating distance. Aunt Celeste, bristly and babbling, has cornered Tom on the wet lawn; he is trying to repress a sigh at her speech. John walks over gravel with one arm tight around his wife as she weeps into his shoulder. He rolls his eyes over her blonde hair. The Cregg children are not criers, C.J. thinks, and her head is bowed but her back is straight. Toby is a few yards away in the background, always fully present in a part of her mind.

"C.J.," someone calls gently. She turns and sees her favorite cousin. They were the only girls their age in a family that ran to boys. In the summers they slept at each other's houses, went swimming, stole their brothers' records, told each other secrets. Alexis comes to her now with hands outstretched. "I am so sorry. What can I do?"

C.J. reaches out. "We've got it covered."

"Yeah?" Alexis arches a brow. "You thought I'd buy that? You're losing your touch."

"It's under control," C.J. insists. "We just have to keep up."

"That's harder than it sounds."

"It always has been." She senses Tom just beyond her field of vision; a quick glance confirms that he's actually cringing now. Alexis' eyes follow hers. "I have to go save him," C.J. says.

Alexis presses her hands. "I'm sorry," she says again. It's what everyone says; it's the only thing to say. C.J. concentrates on placing her feet as she steps into the grass and wishes she never had to hear it again.

*

"I'm sorry," Donna says over the phone.

C.J. holds the mouthpiece away for a second to take a breath. The room smells like her mother's lavender perfume. "Me too."

"I've been talking to my mom every couple of days lately." Donna's voice is scratchy, and she sniffles after every third or fourth sentence. "I can't conceive of what I'd do. I mean, I can't."

"I know." C.J. crosses her ankles, tapping them against the base of her parents' bed. She imagines herself getting staggering drunk, worse than she ever has, or driving a few towns over and lying to a doctor for pills. It might even help, for a while. She changes the subject. "How are you?"

"Um. I'm fine, I think." Her voice shrinks. "I can't believe I'm actually doing this."

C.J. realizes she doesn't know what Donna's best friend's apartment looks like; she can't visualize the scene at all. But she knows Donna's face hasn't changed much over the years. Everything must still be written on it, the same lines of hope, doubt, determination.

"I still love him," Donna says.

"I know."

"I do," Donna continues, as if C.J. had questioned it. "I've been in love with him since I was twenty-six years old. And it's always been so much work."

Once, C.J. walked behind Toby into a crowded room, where Josh shook her hand and said, "What can you do for me?" She blinked and he flashed his charming smile. He didn't trust her yet, she knows now; he made her work. He made her prove herself in combat with the press, in strategy meetings, in midnight bull sessions on long bus rides. She loves Josh, of course, but she can't imagine loving Josh the other way.

"It's not that I want to walk away," Donna is saying. "But it's been, it's been uphill, always. And the top of the hill doesn't get any closer, you know? And I just get older."

"You're so young," C.J. scolds. She frowns at the sound of her voice, but it's true. Donna's not forty yet. Her hair is still blonde, though shorter now, and strands of it are probably coiled around her fingers as she speaks.

"It's like working for him on the worst days. Maybe that's the problem. Underneath everything, he still thinks he's the boss."

C.J. believes her. She suspects, though, that the real problem isn't Josh thinking he's the boss. It's that Donna thinks the same thing. "Maybe you'll work it out," she says soothingly.

"And maybe not."

"And maybe not, and you'll be okay either way. Eventually."

"I looked it up. Two-thirds of marriages end in divorce."

"It can't be that many."

"Sixty-one percent." Donna sighs. "Maybe the system just doesn't suit anybody. Maybe more people should be like you and Toby."

"Well. We're not like anything. We just keep waking up in the morning."

"You've been living with him for like five years," Donna points out gently. C.J. has to count backwards to realize it's been that long. She has to count backwards to remember that it hasn't been always. "So, you know, something's working, right?"

Toby wanders through the doorway, then. He stops and stands just inside, shifting his weight and looking at her with his head down. C.J. strokes the dark green fabric of her parents' comforter. "Right," she says weakly. "I should go."

"Oh. Wow, yes, it's late." Donna attempts to sound stable. "I've just been talking about myself all night. You should have told me to shut up."

"No, no. It's fine. I'll call soon."

They say goodbye. C.J. presses the button on the cordless and looks at Toby. He pulls off his tie and speaks without preamble, as if they're in the middle of a conversation. "We were in Paris. Working."

She spends a few seconds parsing this. "When your mother died."

"The drug manufacturers thing. AIDS in South Africa."

"You got lost buying condoms." She stifles a giggle. "On some side-street. In the rain."

"Liberté," he pronounces carefully, sitting down beside her. "Egalité. Fraternité."

"And we went to Nôtre Dame. And we prayed." C.J. draws her knees up to her chest. "She's depressed."

"Our Lady of Paris?"

"Donna."

"I'd expect she is." He bites his lip slightly. "I have plane tickets for Friday. But I can change them to Saturday."

C.J. stares at her mother's night-stand. An old-fashioned brass alarm clock counts the minutes under the lamp that turns on and off at a touch. There are photographs; she tries not to see them. "We have to do the personal effects."

"Or Sunday. If it's easier."

She turns her head and the afterimage of the lamplight burns blue on her retinas. Everything blurs. "I don't know."

"You don't know if Saturday or Sunday--"

C.J. rests her cheek on the tops of her knees. "I don't know, Toby."

He twists his hands together. "Okay."

"There's a lot to do." She lets her vision stay unfocused so she can't read his expression. "I have to maybe stay here for a while. I can't just leave it. And I don't know how long."

"I said okay." Toby runs a fingertip along the soft skin behind the jut of her anklebone. "I'm not asking."

"You should be."

He is quiet for a while. His fingers graze over her Achilles tendon, and then he holds her ankle, not clutching, just encircling. "What do you want?" he asks at last.

She wants to wake up. She wants to fight with him, to call him cold, to throw a tantrum. She wants to have sex with him, so badly that she's sure she's visibly quivering. She surprises herself with another truth. "I want to be alone."

Immediately he stops touching her. He doesn't talk, and then when he does his voice is low and terribly calm. "I can change the tickets to tomorrow."

"Who's feeding the cat?"

"The green house."

"Jamie. That's good." C.J. pinches her eyes shut, sudden pressure in her temples. "My parents didn't really keep a pet. There was, for a while, almost a dog."

He doesn't ask, and she doesn't explain. He doesn't state that a dog either is or isn't there, that almost doesn't count or even exist. He doesn't state that there are some things without ambiguities and grays. "The house is in your name."

She fights the impulse to wince. "I'll be an absentee landlord," she says. She lies back on the bed, unbuttons her blouse and stares at the ceiling and the back of Toby's neck. Sleep takes her by surprise like a lioness pouncing on its prey, going for the jugular.

She wakes up in the exact same position, arms folded across her bare stomach. Toby is beside her, facing the wall. It must be like sleeping next to a coat-rack for him, she thinks with sympathy. He wakes up seconds later. Blinking away the night, he looks at her like he used to study a sentence that wasn't formed properly, like the wrong words are overwhelming the right ones. And C.J. does not apologize.

That day, they stand in the terminal under brilliant fluorescent light, which makes C.J.'s head pound. She wishes she could smoke while they wait for his flight to be called. More than once, she catches herself chewing her fingernails.

"It's just that there's a hell of a lot we have to go through," she says lamely, clasping her hands in front of her. "It's best that I'm here. While we're clearing it all up."

His eyes drill through her. She wonders how much he's discussed with her brothers, and guesses it's enough that he knows they would let her go. "The house is in your name," he reminds her evenly.

She stares down at the fake marble design of the floor, the reflected lights. "Technically, the house here is mine, too," she says to his shoes.

In another moment, he walks away.

*

There's no estate. They weren't rich people, and though they never touched the house, their other assets were depleted by medical bills and by simply living for so many years. Left behind are fading papers and photographs, forgotten furniture, tired clothing and ugly knickknacks. All this detritus, with no value but the sentimental, is an inheritance.

It's not that hard, C.J. tells herself, not worse than packing up to move away from Los Angeles, or back to Los Angeles, or away again. It's not that hard, except she hated packing then. Somehow it manages to suck up all her energy and time. She spends hours one morning sitting on the attic stairs, reading postcards she sent home during college, her handwriting scurrying over the white surface.

Another day, she declares war on one of the closets. She gets as far as the shoes, before a pair of orthopedic beige flats reminds her of playing dress-up as a child. C.J. leans against the closet door and remembers tottering around in sparkly heels the color of white wine, her mother laughing as she wobbled and collapsed. "One day," Mia said, "you'll be a big girl and you can wear whatever shoes you want." She'd taken the promise to heart, even when her height made heels unnecessary, made them a joke. When she looks up again, it's dark outside. The shoes, she recalls, weren't the color of wine after all. They were the color of bone.

Time passes this way, when she's not watching it, when she's dusting the mantel or vacuuming the hall. C.J. begins to notice that dawn comes earlier. By six in the morning there's enough light to read by, to decipher the print on medical records, on old letters and newspaper clippings. In the afternoons she sorts and folds clothes for the Salvation Army, or writes thank-you letters to the people who have sent flowers and sympathy cards. She doesn't read the notes, only checks the addresses on the envelopes and reels off her replies. The flowers dry and droop and wilt on the dining room table. Time passes this way, and even the simplest things take longer than they should.

She sleeps at strange hours, watches late-night television restlessly. Three weeks after Mia's funeral, it's warm enough to eat outside. Tom goes to McDonald's for chicken sandwiches and fries, and they eat with their sister-in-law, the greasy food spread out on the patio table. "Too much mayo," Paula says, licking her lips. "They always do that."

"I could've asked them to hold it," Tom says.

"Nah, you'd've been in the line forever." Paula sits back in her plastic chair and looks up at the pale blue sky. "Nice out here."

Tom nods and glances at C.J. "Your food okay? No severed body parts?"

She furrows her brow at him and sets the half-eaten sandwich down on its wrapper. "Yum," she says, and dabs her lips with a paper napkin. "So how are the girls?"

Paula purses her lips. "They seem to be holding up. You know, they're young, they're resilient. Ashlee doesn't talk about it much. And you know, usually you can't get her to shut up."

"Are you worried?" C.J. asks.

"I don't know. A little, maybe, but I figure it's normal. Your parents were really good to them after Aaron--" Paula stops and sips her Coke. "They were really good to all of us."

"We're a cheerful bunch," Tom says, munching on a handful of fries.

"Yeah." C.J. rubs her fingers together idly, fitting them between her knuckles. "Let's have a song. Let's have a rousing chorus, of, I don't know, 'Volare'."

He hums a few bars obligingly. "Are you going to eat that or do I have to force-feed you?"

She picks up a French fry. "I'll eat it if one of you talks about something cheerful."

They are all speechless for a few seconds. "Two priests and a rabbi," Paula says finally, with a grim chuckle.

C.J.'s face crumples in frustration. "I hate this. I hate when I don't know what to say."

"I hate people who think they know what to say," Tom says. "At the service, I wanted to hit Aunt Celeste." He bangs the flat of his hand twice on the table, as if he's keeping back a fist.

Paula leans forward, elbows on the table. "Why?"

"She gave me that patronizing head tilt." Tom demonstrates. "She kept saying, 'It's a tragedy.' She kept saying, 'The real tragedy is that they went so close.'"

"Well, isn't it?" C.J. says.

For a split second, Tom and Paula exchange a look. It's not intentional, C.J. is sure; their eyes just shift toward each other. She thinks of every funeral she's attended, and feels like a child.

"They were married for almost sixty years. It's better." Paula's voice wavers slightly. "I mean, not for us, but that they didn't have to wait for each other. That they weren't apart for long."

C.J. looks at the trees that border the small yard. There are no leaves yet, but a faint ruddy haze around the tips of the branches hints at where they will be. No one has paid much attention to the grass, but there is less straw color and more green than she has seen since the last snow. She drops her gaze down to the yellow wrappers and red globs of ketchup and the white gloss of the tabletop.

"I'm too old to eat this stuff," she says, and pushes her food away.

*

The next day, she goes through the refrigerator to get rid of the neglected vegetables, turning black and slimy and smelly as they spoil. She pulls them out gingerly, tosses them into the trash, and sprays some Lysol to clear the air. She's washing her hands under the kitchen faucet when the phone rings.

"Hey," Sam greets her brightly. "I'm glad you're there."

C.J. hops up enough to sit on the counter. "Hey."

"I should've called sooner," he tells her. "I meant to, but Josh wouldn't give me your number."

Her mouth is dry. She swallows and grasps the counter's edge, dangling her legs in front of the cabinet below her. "He might be a little mad at me."

"He's not taking this well," Sam says, concerned. "In fairness, I doubt there's a better way to take it. It's all kind of come down on him fast, hasn't it?"

"I guess." She knocks her ankles together. "On the other hand, it's been creeping up on Donna for a long time."

"They shouldn't have gotten married."

"Easy for us to say."

"Yes, I guess it is." He turns away audibly from the phone, his voice muffled until he comes back bright. "Guess who's awake?"

She grimaces at the empty room, the untouched stove and the dust motes flitting through the air. "Sam--"

"Say hi," he twinkles. "Say hi to the baby girl!"

"Sam," C.J. pleads. "She's only five months old--"

"Six," he interrupts cheerfully.

"Six months, then. Can they even hear when they're that small?"

"Of course they can," he says indignantly. "Here. Say hello, so she'll know your voice."

"Come on!"

She hears the receiver being shuffled, being held into a crib, a fearsome object to indistinct, fuzzy infant eyes. "Say hi," he commands in the background.

"Hi," she says wearily. There is, of course, no response.

"Josie says hi," Sam tells her, getting back on the phone. "Aww," he murmurs. "She's all full and sleepy. I might have to go if she spits up."

"I think I might be the one spitting up." She reclines against the window. "Seriously, could you be a bit more precious?"

"I know," he says sheepishly. "I can't help it. Honestly. I think I lost my mind when she was born and I haven't gotten it back yet."

"There are those of us who would doubt--" she teases.

"Yeah, yeah." Sam laughs. "I know. I hear myself and I know, but the thing is, you're not a parent."

She lets her hands fall into her lap, the phone pinned between her ear and her shoulder. "Yeah."

"It does something to you. Having a child, it's--" He searches for the right thing to say. "It's like daylight. It hits you and it illuminates everything. It becomes the thing that you see the rest of the world by. But I know I'm annoying about it. I'm sorry, I haven't even asked how you are yet."

C.J. makes a conscious effort to keep her speech serene. "I'm doing all right."

"All right?" he repeats suspiciously.

"As all right as can be expected," she assures him.

"C.J." He laughs again, not unkindly. "You have never been good at outright lies."

"Go hug your kid," she says, silently adding: And your wife.

"I will. I hope, I hope we see you soon." Sam hangs up. C.J. runs her hands over her face and exhales slowly, controlling the rise and fall of her chest. She feels the rays of the sinking sun on the back of her neck, can see them streaking past her to touch the table, the dripping tap, the motionless ceiling fan and the clock. As the light dims, she eases herself down off the countertop and goes into the living room to sleep in the recliner.

Morning comes like a train down a dark tunnel. C.J. opens her eyes to it, sometime after sunrise, curled stiffly in the chair like the closed bud of a leaf. She stretches painfully and shuts off the chipper sight of the morning news as she passes the TV set. She pads down the hall, the wooden floor cool on the soles of her feet.

In the kitchen, she empties yesterday's coffee into a white mug, decorated with blue doves and tiny red flowers. She heats it for a few seconds in the microwave and then drinks it to the dregs in one long gulp. Then she abandons it on the table. Her hands shake as she takes the pack of cigarettes up from the hutch; she nearly fumbles the lighter.

Two cigarettes in the bathroom, ashes scattered into the sink. C.J. stabs the second butt out next to the first one, hard against the metal of the drain. She fans the last of the smoke away and faces herself in the small mirror. Quickly, she pulls off her black tank top and unfastens her slightly ratty jeans. She kicks them away; the rest of her garments follow and she stands naked in the early morning window light. She takes a step back so that she can see as much of herself as possible in the mirror; she stares, resolute and dispassionate and accusing, into the slate of her own eyes.

She looks like hell.

Her skin is dull, blotchy, loose as paper wrapped around brittle twigs for bone. There are more lines around her mouth and eyes than she has ever noticed before, and the gray roots are growing out in her hair. Her collarbone and ribs are unattractively prominent. Her legs are still shapely, but stubbled; her muscle tone is terrible. She looks scrawny and used and worn. She looks old. C.J. inhales, and her nose is filled with the stench of tobacco, mixed with her sweat and her sour breath. It isn't pleasant. It isn't how she wants to be. She stands in the bathroom with no one but her reflection and is exhausted. And her reserves are exhausted, and she no longer wants to be alone. C.J. turns on the tap and washes the ashes away.

The shower she takes is long and slow and scalding. Afterwards, she packs her bags as fast as she can, all her belongings in a jumble, and the things she forgets are not worth worrying about. The rental car place overcharges; the airline gouges her, even on the cheaper tickets to Baltimore. She's going to be broke, and it's difficult to care.

"Say goodbye for me," she tells Tom, and paces toward the gate. She adds, "Take care." He's confused, she can tell, but he grins widely and waves goodbye until she's around the corner and out of sight.

On the plane, C.J. eats the meal they serve, and though it's tasteless, she's starving, voracious, steals pretzels from the fat guy sleeping in the next seat. During the approach to land, she digs through her purse in search of her cell phone, hoping the battery isn't dead. It occurs to her then that her cigarettes are still lying on the bathroom counter, forgotten there with two damp towels. The plane dips; the pressure changes, hurting her head. C.J. smiles to herself. It doesn't matter.

*

Josh comes to get her, his Mercedes gleaming in the bold sunlight. C.J. laughs as he pulls up in the arrivals lane and gets out to throw her suitcase in the trunk. "What?" he says, instead of hello.

"You and your phallic symbol," she says, slapping the roof of the car.

"You know, you can walk back to Washington." He climbs into the driver's seat.

C.J. slides into the other side and buckles her seat-belt. She runs her fingers over the buttery leather upholstery. "Nice, though."

"Well, enjoy it until my assets are seized," Josh says, maneuvering them away from the airport.

"She's not after your money," C.J. begins.

Josh cuts her off. "So, is everything all right at home?"

"Here is home," she says emphatically, easing the seat back to accommodate her height. "But, you know, things are getting sorted and organized, and we'll just hire an agent to get rid of the house. John's back at work. Tom's going back to work. I'm going back to work." She chuckles mildly. "If they'll still have me."

"You can always come help me make Larry DePeter into the next Miss America," Josh offers.

"Well, he won't take the swimsuit competition."

He wrinkles his nose. "That hurts me, C.J. It hurts me a lot."

"You'll find your guy, Josh," C.J. tells him.

"Yeah." He lowers the sun visor and looks into the rear-view mirror as they merge onto the highway. "So, have you been talking to her?"

"Josh--"

"I don't want her number," he says. "And I'm, you know, I've been a total ass. I just want to know if she's doing okay."

C.J. wraps her arms around herself. "She's getting there. It's really rough on both of you, I know. I haven't been the best friend."

"Me neither." He takes his right hand off the wheel and drapes it around the back of her seat. "Pretty bizarre life we're living."

"I miss my mom," she says. "And my dad."

"Yeah. So." Josh rotates his head to relax his neck. "Home?"

"Mm." She looks at the horizon turning orange as sunset draws nearer. "Not quite. Can we stop at a drugstore first?"

"Yes, Miss Daisy," Josh says, and his eyes are almost as bright as she's ever seen them, almost as warm as she wants them to be.

*

Her keys jangle nervously in the front door, but when she walks inside, C.J. knows she was right. Here is home. Tension ebbs from her spine, weight rises from her shoulders. Her cat leaps down the stairs to meet her, attacking her ankles and purring like thunder, with an exuberance she hasn't demonstrated since she was a kitten, a decade ago.

"Hey, Circe." C.J. lifts the delighted creature into her arms, and walks into every room like she's exploring her house for the first time. The kitchen is spotless, the living room only mildly cluttered by newsmagazines and books open to the spine, though the scent of cigars lingers around them. She climbs the stairs, glad to see the lilac wallpaper she's never liked and never bothered to replace.

Her bedroom door is ajar and her cobalt-colored comforter is rumpled. She peeks into Toby's bedroom; the desk is a messy, disordered hub of activity, but the rest of the room is neat. C.J. nods to herself, understanding, though she hasn't decided yet if she's pleased. She goes back downstairs, sets the cat down and takes her hair dye out of the plastic bag from the pharmacy.

She's roses and honey when she comes out of the bathroom, clean and swathed in her oversized peach terrycloth robe. She makes tea and rummages in the fridge, happy to find plenty of sandwich ingredients. It's hard to choose, so she makes two, turkey and roast beef, and eats them in the living room, nestled on the sofa. Toby finds her there when he comes in.

He's been drinking, she suspects, but his eyes flash at her, alert and appraising. She waits for what he'll say. When he speaks, his voice sounds fairly sober. "Baltimore again?" he asks.

"Yeah." She opens her eyes wide over her teacup. "Saved my fifteen bucks so I can buy that new V.C. Andrews novel I've been waiting for."

"V.C. Andrews must be about a hundred and forty years old," he says, frowning intently.

"It's a brand name." She sets her cup down on the coffee table. "I should've let you take me home, Toby."

"You do what you have to do." He edges closer. "You're too thin."

"I know," C.J. says contritely. "I've been a mess. I'm still a mess. I'm going to try and catch up." She thinks of the McDonald's' food and her stomach turns. "Although I may become a vegetarian."

His frown deepens. "Yogurt and soy aren't food."

"Neither are bourbon and cigars," she retorts. "You've been sleeping in my bed."

Toby puts his chin down and shuffles his feet. Something inside her thaws, something that she hadn't realized was frozen. "Your cat wouldn't let me alone. I had no alternatives. And I swear to God if you make one Papa Bear joke, I will--"

She's much too old to throw herself across the room and into his arms. So that's not what she does; it must be much more stately and sedate. And she bruises easily, so the marks she finds later prove nothing.

In her bed this night he is hungry, demanding, fierce, and she meets him at every turn. If there are tears, they are stroked into her skin, or vanish under his tongue. It's been too long and they're much too old, and it's over too quickly. But C.J. smiles in the dark as he leaves to get her some water. There's plenty of time.

She dreams a true dream of Paris, walking down a narrow street with him on their twenty-minute lunch hour. His mother is dying and her brother is newly gone. The woman she was then can't comprehend why Toby won't go home, why he wants to put so much distance between himself and home. The woman she is now understands perfectly, and remembers it when she wakes up.

It's still the middle of the night. She's lying the wrong way across the bed, the pillows knocked to the floor in a heap with their clothing. Her back is parallel to the headboard, and Toby's head rests on her bare stomach. C.J. nudges his head with the palm of one hand. "Wake up."

"I'm awake," he says, unexpectedly.

She raises herself on one elbow and looks at him skeptically in the moonlight. "Enjoying yourself?"

"I'm enjoying something," he admits. He is quiet for a while, and then his voice is tinged with surprise and sadness. "I'm angry at you."

She is startled, but mostly because she didn't see it sooner. "I guess I can understand that."

"I'm angry at you," he says again.

"I know. I should've let you take me home."

"I don't care where the hell you were." He sits up, figuring it out. "Except, yeah. But you do what you have to do. But you shouldn't--don't stop talking to me. And don't tell me lies."

"I did lie," she says, dropping back onto the mattress. "Some."

"I know that." He fingers the edge of the sheet. "You're a lousy liar."

"So I've been told."

"I'm genuinely pissed off here, C.J.," he says, amazed.

She bites her lip, looking at the familiar pallor of the ceiling. "Okay."

"I might actually need time. To get past this. I may need to leave a little."

He isn't touching her, so he can't feel the way she locks up, rigid and airless, calculates. A month, maybe more, maybe six weeks. Two months. Six months. A year. She makes up her mind that she could handle a year. "How long?" she asks casually.

Toby cranes his head and his serious gaze slides toward her face. "I don't know. Maybe a week."

She breathes again and, as the oxygen rushes into her, knows it's exactly as much as she can handle. She laughs hard and helplessly. Even in the dark, she can make out Toby's scowl.

"It's not funny," he says.

"No," she says, getting herself under control. "That was rueful laughter."

He puts a hand to the back of his head. "I mean it. I think it's necessary."

"Okay," she says, trying to sound grave and giggling again. "I'm sorry."

"Stop it." There is real exasperation and frustration and annoyance on his face, unmistakable, but there are other things too. There is a glint of absolute light. "I reserve the right to call," he says abruptly. "During the week, if I want to."

Easier to do this now, she thinks. It's easier than ever to lie near him and sense his readiness to walk away. Easier to hear the things he chooses not to say, the specificity of his words and the precision of his pauses. Easier to let go. Easier to lose him, because she has a better definition of loss, and because she puts her hand out across the bed and his is already there, waiting.

"You should go pack," she says.

"It's the middle of the night," he says, not moving.

"I know." C.J. turns ninety degrees on the bed so she is beside him, and smoothes the blue quilt over her skin with her right hand. Her left hand stays in Toby's right. Though he does not look at her or speak to her, though he acts as if she isn't there, his fingers stay between hers. She shuts her eyes and counts her breaths, and listens to his, and slips back into sleep the second time.

---

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