by Taylor Stannard
A year later, on the night of her forty-sixth birthday
she was summoned from sleep by a noise, the same small
sound, she realized, that had permeated her empty sleep for
weeks. Tonight, however, was the first time the sound had
roused her completely. She lay still in the darkness and
struggled to bring her mind into focus. It was raining
lightly; could that have been the sound? No, it was more
of a rustling than a pattering. She couldn't locate the
source. She held her breath and strained to hear around
Beth's breathing.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was gone. Her
muscles unclenched. It wasn't a mechanical sound, nor was
it animal. Or human. It was probably just the sound of her
undreamed dreams coalescing into . . . what? A poem, maybe.
Or a song. She liked the idea of her unknown dreams
becoming musical notes and beckoning to each other. She
imagined them arcing, dolphin-like, in playful sound waves.
Like the graceful tendrils of whale song captured on a
shipboard monitor, she thought. Dream song. She smiled and
closed her eyes. It was best to enjoy such indulgences
while she could, she knew; the pain would be back soon.
Sure enough, there was the familiar gnawing. Her
clarity stumbled and within moments she was back inside the
overcast. She needed more morphine. She had to hurry,
before she was so far inside the pain that she was no where
at all. Her fingers fumbled for the button on the pain
control pump. She found the small red knob, pressed, and
smoothed it with her thumb in thanks.
She was skimming the edges of sleep when it came again:
an almost imperceptible fluttering, like the tiny, dry
swishing of bird's wings. The morphine had done its job;
she could think again. What was it? Instinctively her
fingers sought the dent that had been her breast, where the
malignancy had first taken root. The sound stopped.
She wondered if the sound had awakened Beth, too. She
shifted her head until Beth was in her line of vision. As
if in answer, Beth turned, her hair a spill of dark on the
pale pillowcase. A sadness had taken over Beth's face, even
in sleep. Stella felt her heart contract. She reached to
touch Beth's forehead, weighed the possibility of waking
her, and wound a long strand of the deep auburn around her
finger instead.
Beth frowned. Her delicate, arched eyebrows bunched in
worry and she murmured, "Stell?" In their twelve years
together Beth had given as she had taken, with an
uncomplicated depth and in equal measure. All that was
changed now; she was giving all and receiving nothing,
willing even to be robbed of sleep's freedom. Stella
gathered her portion of the sheet into a nest and put one
hand on, one under, the soft sphere of her remaining breast.
She swayed as a breaker of fresh grief bore down on her.
There was the silken shuffling, back again, nearer and
a bit louder, almost recognizable this time. It seemed to
emanate from the balcony off their bedroom.
She leaned in that direction but it disappeared when she
moved. She lay motionless and waited. Yes, there. It was
a definite rustling, like the small, dry stirring of corn
stalks in an autumn field.
The blue clock numbers were flashing; it must have
stormed. She tried to gauge the time; it was still night;
no light squeezed under the drawn shades. She sniffed. The
air had an early, leaden quality to it. It was maybe a
little after midnight. One o'clock, even two, but certainly
no later. The soft swishing began again.
She was thirsty, then suddenly terribly, unbearably
thirsty. The radiation treatments had left her scorched and
hungry for moisture. She knew without having to check that
the half inch of water in her bedside glass was sour, dank
as flower water left too long in a vase. Sweat rings, dried
to white on the dark wood, were magnified in the blue clock
light. The inside of her mouth was chalk. She reached for
the glass. As her fingers brushed the rim, the sound began
again, but this time it was louder, and with it came a new
persistence. The sense of urgency grew large as she
listened. It began to shape itself into one voice, one cry,
until she could no longer hear anything else. There was no
mistaking its message: Come to the balcony. Alone.
She glanced again at Beth. Her eyes were dream-
flickering beneath creased lids; she was completely gone,
oblivious to the sound. Maybe Beth was having her dreams,
Stella thought ruefully. She wondered if she could still
walk and if she could make it to the bathroom for water and
then to the sound on the balcony before the pain came
howling back.
"I can do this," she said aloud. Such simple words,
each only one syllable, but they emerged in a complicated
garble and she wondered why she could hear them so clearly
in her head. She was wasting time; she must obey, and
quickly; the pain was on its way.
She willed her legs over the side of the bed. She
paused to catch her breath, then gave another heave and she
was sitting. She wondered if she could stand. As if to
spur her on, the sound began again. She lurched forward,
grabbed the IV stand, heard the muffled slide of the bags
and steadied herself. Then she was up and limping. She
dragged the stand behind her, and concentrated on the
bathroom door.
The sink tile was sleek, and as cool as lake water.
She waited as the tap water grew cold then colder and she
drank greedily from cupped palms, one, two, three handfuls.
She paused, hands in mid-air, when the sound came again.
This time it did not stop when she moved. Suddenly she
knew, as clearly as she knew that the pain was only a
whisper away, that although it was summoning her to the
balcony, the sound came from within her. It was her heart,
hailing the approach of her death. It was time.
She stared, stupid with shock, at the water dribbling
between her fingers. This was the end. She had to let go.
There were no angels, at least not the ones she had been
taught to expect, no ethereal voices, no harps. There was
just the rustling, like papery wings, and the sense of
absolute certainty.
She glanced back into the bedroom. Beth had rolled
onto her back. Stella watched her breathe. Calm air in,
healthy air out. She was a steady woman, Stella thought,
and a steadying woman. Through it all, even the dangerous
times, Beth had been her ballast. She was true, and as
constant as an ocean tide. But there had been a price.
In the early days, when they called it her "illness",
and measured it in handfuls of hair rather than pain, they
had hoped. There were the early, "The statistics are on
your side," surgeries and Beth's steadfast assurances that
Stella's suddenly single breast held just as much allure as
the pair of them. "Yes, I'm sure. I'm positive. Aren't
you? God, Stell, it's only a breast. The rest of you is
perfectly perfect. Come on, you're as beautiful as ever."
Stella knew she wasn't. Her eyes burned, feverish with
fear and radiation. Her skin was sunken. She was no longer
sure of anything except the progressively grim lab reports
and Beth's frightening determination to remain optimistic.
Six months later their shock gave way to desolation and
Stella settled into a depression tinged with loneliness,
unable to understand Beth's sudden retreat to a remote,
inaccessible land somewhere within herself. "Why won't you
help me? I need you to make it okay, Beth. Please, I can't
do this anymore." Later she said simply, " Save me."
"I can't," Beth said. "My heart is dying. It's
killing me to watch you like this. I can't even save
myself." The dark circles under Beth's eyes had become a
permanent part of her cheeks. The pupils above them
glittered like bright blue jewels. "I don't know what to
do. I don't know what to say to make it okay again. I don't
think I can stand it; nothing's ever hurt this much before."
Stella watched Beth's frustration feed daily. It
thickened into anger and then into full fury. She could
feel its heat on her face as they lay, far apart, on the
sweat soaked sheets. It singed her already parched skin.
Fattened by fear, it turned bitter and began to stalk
them. Beth's gestures, once so fluent, became jabs. She
stabbed at the clutter of bedside bottles, the ice bags
and the damp towels in a strangled knot on the rug. "Jesus,
Stella, this used to be our bedroom. Now it's your dying
room. No wonder; how can anything live in here? Look. For
God's sake, just look!" She grabbed a vase from the clutter
of listless plants that had been given to them by well-
meaning friends. No matter how often she fed or watered
them, they languished. "It's dying. Just like you. Just
like us. And you know what? I don't give a shit anymore."
She pitched the vase. It splintered against the wall.
Potting soil rained on the carpet.
"What about this one? And this? And this one, too,
God damn it!" She reached for another, then another.
Stella held her breath. The lilies smeared, their open
throats pale on the gold brocade of the curtains.
Beth's eyes glistened with unshed tears. She was
panting in ragged sobs. "And you wanted me to save you.
That's a laugh. Who do you think I am, God? I don't
believe in God anymore. I don't believe in anything
anymore. And you, Stell, you just lie there, stoned out of
your mind. You're not even fighting it! You've given up.
I'm the only one who cares anymore. This is crazy. I've
got to get out of here before I start wanting to die, too."
"What in hell do you want from me?" Stella's tongue
was heavy; she struggled to form the words.
"I want you to get well, God damn it! I want you to be
whole; I hate the cancer and I hate you for getting it."
"Go to hell," Stella said. The fury crackled between
them like the flickering tongues of lightening. "Get out,"
she said. "It'll just get worse if you stay. Go on, get the
hell out." She began to gag.
Beth's face crumpled. "I can't," she whispered. That
night she pressed her face to Stella's so their eyelashes
touched and began to weep. "Please fight it," she said. "I
need to see you try. Please. Promise me you'll try.
Promise."
That had been the worst pain of all, and the most
expensive. But the anger was as cleansing as the explosion
was swift, and slowly, against the odds, they managed to
find their way back. With Hospice's help they learned to
rage at the cancer's inexorable march instead of each other.
It took longer to learn that the hating was part of the
loving, and longer still to complete their goodbyes.
Beth read her way out loud through the living room and
bedroom bookshelves, stopping only when her voice was dust
or when Stella fell into a fitful sleep. She sought out
ramshackle corner groceries that stocked rennet tablets
when, finally, watery custard was the only food Stella could
manage, and she planted giant sunflowers in huge pots
on the balcony so that Stella, starved for sun, could bathe
in the light from their faces. They towered, tall
sentinels, their raspy, overlapping leaves creating a
rampart against the encroaching cancer. "They keep moving,"
Stella said. "See how they bend and follow the light."
Each night she whispered the quotation she had chosen
for the plaque on her memorial bench: `Life: it began in
mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and
beautiful country lies in between!' For the last six months
she had credited, then thanked it, for shoving them both out
of denial and into a sweet, bitter grief. Yes, acceptance
had come hard, but the leave-taking would be easier because
of it. And now, tonight, she was empty except for the
rustling, and she knew she was ready to surrender.
She slid open the balcony door at the far end of the
bedroom, stepped free of the sill and stretched her
unencumbered arm to the rain. She caught it in her fingers
and opened her mouth, let it stream into her. She shrugged
out of her nightgown, tossed it on top of the IV stand and
raised her breast so it could drink, too. Her hair swam and
her distended ankles, even her arches, became buoyant. She
felt full and light and, suddenly, completely peaceful. Her
breast softened with the water's weight. It felt gentle,
almost mossy, and the nipple was tender and strong as earth.
There was no pain. She peeled back the adhesive tape that
bound her to the IV and tugged the false umbilical cord from
the back of her hand. She was free. She reached up,
stroked the sunflower faces a gentle goodbye and turned back
to the bedroom.
The rustling surrounded her as she lowered herself onto
the bed. She did not wake Beth. She lay quiet within her
bell tower of sound. And then there it was, all at once:
the final voice. It was tangled tree roots, clods of soil
aching for seed and the ancient green of leaves. It was the
cry of the earth.
She watched, with great patience and no surprise, as
her heart opened and a large, oval disc emerged. It grew
round, then flattened until, carefully and so slowly, the
head of a sunflower sprang from her. She heard the quiet
rattling of seeds and the thin, now familiar whisperings of
the leaves, her leaves, as they unfolded upward and out.
One by one her petals unfurled, firm and golden.
"Beth," she whispered, "look!", although she knew Beth
couldn't hear. She pressed her legs together and felt hardy
fibers. She looked down and saw that her feet had been
replaced with sturdy roots. Soil clung to them. A long
length of stalk ran between them and her new wide and open
heart.
The first streaks of daylight were inching bright
around the window sill. She smiled, blew a kiss to Beth,
turned her new face to the sun and softly died.
From the moment she learned her cancer had spread,
Stella's dreams became increasingly muted; as the pain grew
bolder, their edges softened and often when she awoke she
could remember only the pale, watercolor taste they left in
her mouth. She imagined feeling the color drain from them as
they fluttered against the morphine membrane that cradled
her. Finally, one blue August morning, the pain triumphed
and her dreams stopped altogether. She grieved their loss
more keenly than her missing right breast. 
Taylor Stannard is an Atlanta writer who has contributed portions
of her novels-in-progress, Drilling For Gold, and The Stonepile
Possum Queen to the annual Pinckneyville Readings. She teaches
creative writing at the Pinckneyville Arts Center in Norcross, GA
and is currently at work on a collection of theme-related short
stories.