Stoic

As soon as Gloria walks through the door, she is glad that she came. Marie gathers her into her too thin arms, and Gloria can feel the brittle twig fragility of Marie’s ribs as she presses against Gloria’s sleet-drenched coat. They rock together in a long embrace. When Gloria breaks away, her head is spinning, but Marie’s face is already less pinched and weary.

 

Gloria takes a deep breath, the sickly nausea billowing through her so suddenly that she has to drop into the seat that Marie now keeps by the front door. Uncle Maurice is coming down the hallway, his whisky glass half full and his famous holiday sweater tightly stretched across his ever-growing girth. He frowns when he sees Gloria slumping in the chair, her head hanging down as she struggles to deal with the terrible metallic aftertaste in her mouth and a cloying sense of fatigue that feels like it is sucking the marrow from her bones.

“Gloria, isn’t Marie looking good?” He says loudly, and he glares at Gloria’s audacious display of weakness.

Gloria squeezes her eyes shut and steels herself. She looks up and smiles gently at her sister. Marie is wearing a close-fitting cap of cloth roses. Aunt Chloe must have made it for her. Marie’s delicately embroidered dress is clearly the work of Great-Aunt Genevieve, and Marie’s expensive beautiful dancing slippers s surely came from Uncle Angus’s shoe store.  Mama’s carved smoky topaz beads are looped around Marie’s neck. Marie’s face is slowly becoming pinker, her eyes are brightening, and her posture is straightening as she stands with her hand on Gloria’s shoulder.

When Marie turns to confront Uncle Maurice’s inevitable unpleasantness, Gloria feels a thrill of joy to see Marie’s dark blond braid hanging down her back. She reaches out to stroke it, and Marie laughs.

“Mama cut it off for me before the treatments began. All my caps have a clip to hold it.” Marie flips up the edge of the cap to reveal a heavy barrette firmly clasping the rough-sheered end of the thick braid. Gloria shakes her head through the horrible sickly haze: she should have known that Marie’s elegantly pencilled eyebrows meant that Marie’s beloved hair was also gone.  

Marie steps forward and places her hand on Uncle Maurice’s chest.  

“Please, would you mind helping me to the kitchen?” she says sweetly. No one denies Marie anything these days. He gives up the scolding he has ready for Gloria and tenderly wraps his arm around Marie’s waist. With a pang, Gloria is reminded of the days when Uncle Maurice would grab each of the sisters by the waist and gallop down the steep hill behind Grandmother Anais’s house. Gloria digs her fingers into her palms to settle herself and repress the thought that such antics would probably crush Marie in her current state. 

The sickness is worse than Gloria had anticipated. It is taking all her will to keep from succumbing to it. She does not want her battle to become the focus of this holiday meal: she has come so that Marie could enjoy this Thanksgiving. The tongue clacking of the family members who abhor Gloria’s “dramatics” is sure to upset her doting, peacemaker sister. Gloria doesn’t know how Marie even made it to the door feeling this way, or how she can miraculously keep going day after day. 

 In every transatlantic phone call that Gloria has made to her family, Mama has remarked repeatedly on Marie’s gracious attitude and good humor throughout surgery after surgery and treatment after treatment. Gloria wishes she had come sooner. She wishes she could stay longer. Sitting in the tiny chair that Daddy set by the doorway to catch Marie if she has to collapse, Gloria now knows the truth without any doubt: Marie is dying. 

Mama slides up and sets her hand on Gloria’s shoulder.

“Honey, really, I know it’s upsetting to see Marie this way. The last time you saw her, she beat you at arm-wrestling,” Mama begins soothingly before the warning, hard tone creeps into her voice, “But I really must ask you to be brave for once. This holiday is very important to all of us. If your sister can keep a merry face, surely you can too. Please don’t turn this into the time that your cousin broke his arm.” 

Gloria stifles the surge of resentment. The pain was so horrible when her cousin Tommy broke his arm. He fractured it in three places when he tried to surf down the hill in Marie’s Radio Flyer wagon.  Gloria was brought to her knees screaming madly as soon as he struck the ground. Tommy sat looking a bit dazed, but he did not whimper or even grimace despite the blood coloring his jacket and the sharp edge of the bone spearing through his torn sleeve. Gloria bit her tongue repeatedly as she writhed on the ground. Uncle Maurice came rushing to her, panic and love distorting his usually cheerful face. He had to sit on her to get her to hold still so that he could check to see if she was hurt. While he was restraining her, Tommy wandered up holding his wounded arm. 

“Uncle Maurice, I think I want my mom,” he said calmly.  

“Good Lord, did the two of you collide or something?” Uncle Maurice blurted. 

Marie ran up to help. “I don’t think anything happened to Gloria,” Marie said in her gentle, understanding way. “Maybe she’s upset because Tommy’s arm looks so awful.” 

By then all the aunts and uncles, Mama, Daddy, Grandma and all the cousins had circled around the scene of the accident. Uncle Maurice relinquished Gloria in disgust and helped Uncle Angus carry Tommy to the station wagon.  Uncle Angus reported that the shock finally wore off and Tommy began screaming before they hit the interstate, but he was still impressed with Tommy’s original bravery. That was one bad break. Gloria’s hysterics continued for a short while after the uncles sped off with her cousin, but her screams abruptly ceased as the car disappeared down the road. 

Tommy’s accident happened fifteen years ago, but there hasn’t a single family gathering since then that someone hasn’t mentioned it. Although she was only seven at the time, Gloria’s cowardly response to Tommy’s injury juxtaposed with his quiet bravery forever branded her as a person who would do anything to keep the family’s attention focused on herself.  People couldn’t help but notice that Gloria always acted like she was the one who was suffering whenever anyone was sick or hurt. It was ridiculous, especially when the one who was truly suffering usually bravely acted like he or she felt no pain whatsoever.  When Aunt Chloe’s water broke at Christmas, she said Gloria’s fits were so distracting that she couldn’t even feel her contractions until Uncle Maurice had her halfway to the hospital. 

This Thanksgiving is the first holiday meal that Gloria has attended in five years. She decided when Uncle Angus nearly severed his thumb with the new electric turkey carver that she would leave them to feel their own damn pain in the future.  She merely turned pale and clutched her thumb under the tablecloth that time, but everyone looked sharply to her after Uncle Angus held up his spurting hand and looked at it with detached bewilderment.  

She wonders now if she shouldn’t have had a thicker skin: all that lost time with her sister is weighing heavily on her today. It is bad enough that Marie is dying: Gloria feels terrible that she has let her sister feel all the pain of this death up until today. After all , it is Marie who always comforted her, Marie who always brushed back her hair and rocked her while the family clucked at Gloria’s outrageous antics. Marie understood. Whenever Mama glared at Gloria with a disapproving frown and Aunt Geniveve carefully avoided looking at Gloria at all and Uncle Maurice muttered condemnations under his breath and the cousins took up the condemning attitude of the adults, Marie was there. She would take Gloria’s sharp longing for love and replace it with a mellow, golden sense of peace.  Marie was the one who loved Gloria for who she truly was. 

Hunched in the small, pretty chair like a wounded creature, Gloria shrugs off Mama’s hand.

“I will be fine. Go spend time with Marie. She’s having a really great day. Don’t waste it worrying about me making scenes. I may just go lie down out of sight in Grandma’s bed until my jet lag is under control,” Gloria gasps. 

“I’m going to do that, Gloria. I haven’t seen you in almost two years, but dammit, I haven’t heard Marie laugh like that in months. I really wish you would learn to tough it out.  If you had been here for the things your sister has suffered in the past year. . .it’s probably just as well that you weren’t. That sister of yours has more dignity than you’ll ever have.” Mama gags back a sob and pushes away from Gloria. Gloria watches her go into the bathroom and reemerge a few moments later with a becalmed, dry face. 

The dizziness and the growing need to vomit are so strong that Gloria is afraid she won’t make it out of sight in time. She drags herself up the stairs and curls up on the floor of Grandma’s master bathroom. Through the heating vent she can hear Marie chatting happily. The relatives are joking gently with her, using long-ago abandoned pet names, urging her to eat, eat, eat. They marvel at her strength. Their voices ring with renewed hope because her face seems healthier than it has in months.   

Gloria will not let them hear her vomit. That it is her holiday resolution. She cannot hold in Marie’s pain and enjoy Marie’s health at the same time. She cannot even stay and bear Marie’s burden for the next few months. It is too much, to hear them draw close to the vents and sneer about her infamous weakness and selfish need for attention. In the hallway and out of Marie’s earshot, their whispers drift up to Gloria. 

“Really, it probably would have been better if she hadn’t come,” comes Aunt Chloe’s soft voice, and Gloria tries to focus on the nausea instead of remembering how this aunt once sang lullabies to her about bears dancing on the moon. 

“I don’t know how that girl turned into such an abomination; it’s like she’s from another family,” Uncle Maurice responds.  The last time he spoke tenderly to Gloria was the day that Tommy broke his arm. 

Later, Mama and Grandma speak in angry murmurs. 

“I can’t believe that even now she’s doing this.” 

“The child has no goddamn shame in her at all.” 

“Jetlag my ass.” 

“I know.  At least she still has both her ovaries.” 

 “I’m so mad I don’t even want to set eyes on her.” 

Curled on the bathroom floor, Gloria tightens her resolve and whispers again and again, “I will be stoic. I will be stoic.”  

In the dining room below, the family gazes with loving eyes on Marie’s rosy face and shining eyes. They cheer with joy when Marie courageously summons the energy for a brief jig with Uncle Angus. They have decided they won’t let Gloria ruin this precious time.  Tonight they have one goal: to be stoic in the face of this heartbreaking loss that is ruthlessly creeping upon them. They aren’t going to let any sniveling brats take that away from them. 

They revel late into the night. When morning comes, Gloria drags herself into Marie’s room and plants a soft kiss on her sister’s peaceful brow before she goes out to meet her taxi.  As Gloria is carried away, Marie is awakened by the now familiar agony. Gloria is not relieved to feel her sister’s pain ebb from her body. She wishes she were braver, but she takes a small comfort that at least Marie will not have to suffer the sharp pain that follows Gloria wherever she goes: the pain of no longer being a beloved in a family that once treasured her.  If she could have back that love, Gloria would be willing to eat the pain of every last one of them for the rest of eternity.