Fading Star

"You didn't, Janice. Tell me you didn't."

"Yes I did, Sally. And so what? I don't see the problem choosing between a day with Dave and the kids at his mother's and a day at the spa."

"But . . . Thanksgiving?" Sally's breathy voice sputtered down the phone lines.

"All the better. The spa was nearly deserted. I didn't have to wait at any of the stations."

"Cool."

"Mom, Mom. Stevie's going to be late. He needs a ride."

"Shut it, Carla. Can't you see Mommy's on the phone? The football field's only a mile and a half away. Steve can walk. It's good exercise for football."

Janice brushed her daughter away and, smoothening down the back of her terrycloth robe, plopped down in a kitchen chair and lit up a Virginia Slims.

"I'll tell ya, Sally. Life is just a pile of—"

"Mommy, Mommy. I thought the tree would be out and set up for decorating tonight. But it's not—" Carla was back at her mother's elbow.

Janice turned on Carla angrily. "I can't do everything all the time. Can't you see I'm on talking with Mrs. Jameson? You know what I've said about breaking into my conversations. Get those dishes from last night washed and get upstairs and do your homework."

Janice turned her back on her daughter, who moved, dejected, to the sink, Janice settled back on her haunches and took a big puff on her cigarette.

"You there, Jan?" Sally was about to hang up, assuming the connection had been broken.

"Yeah, I'm here, Sal. Just the chains rattling at me. The ball should show up at any minute," Janice answered. She dragged a full ash tray across the table, pushing aside bowls and milk glasses from breakfast.

"You were about to tell me—"

"Yeah, it's the doctor," Janice interjected. "You know I went in because of that lump I thought I found last week. Well . . . Gawd almighty, Carla, do you have to rattle those pans around like that? I can't hear myself think, let alone hear Mrs. Jameson. For Chris' sake leave them and go do your homework. You can do those with the dinner dishes. And you'd best be back down in a half hour to get dinner started."

Carla put the pans down as quietly as she could and turned to leave. A plaintive wail floated in from the direction of the family room."

"And take the baby upstairs with you. I'm sure she needs changed."

Carla lowered her head and changed direction. "Don't cry, Bethie. Carla's coming."

Alone again, Janice heaved a heavy "put upon" sigh, took a drag from her Virginia Slims, blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth, stubbed the cigarette out, and put the phone receiver back to her ear.

"Gawd, I think I'm going to explode, Sal. Not a moment of rest."

"Tell me about it," Sally responded, "My Dennis is a real demanding sonofabitch. But the doctor's . . . you were saying about the doctor's."

"Yes, I got this strange call. The receptionist sounded like a robot. She told me the doctor needed to talk to me about my tests . . . that I needed to come in."

"Oh, Janice, of course you need to— When do you need to—?"

"Tomorrow. I go back in tomorrow. I'm sure it's the insurance papers. You know how they were about that last time. If Dave's company only was . . . Oh, speaking of the ball, I hear mine driving into the garage. Gotta go."

When Dave entered the kitchen, Janice was standing at the sink, running water into a pan.

"Hi, Hon," Dave called out as he entered from the garage. He'd started with a big grin on his face, but that turned into a reserved, tentative smile as soon as he saw Janice. They'd been here before. "Aw, Hon. You're still in your bathrobe. It's nearly 5, and—"

He knew he'd said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but there was no way to stuff them back in.

"Christ Almighty, Dave, of course I'm still in my bathrobe. Doing what I have to do around here, when would I have time to—? Oh, screw it." She brutally twisted the tap shut and turned and marched out of the room and upstairs. Dave heard the faraway sound of the bedroom door slamming.

Hours later, after Dave picked up Steve at football practice and returned in time to help Carla finish preparing dinner, to which Janice didn't make an appearance—after he had put Beth to bed while Carla and Steve cleaned up the kitchen—after Carla and Steve had finished their homework and hit the sack—and after Dave had rummaged, as quietly as he could, around in the attic for the Christmas tree, strings of lights, and decorations and somehow managed to assemble the tree in the living room, he mounted the stairs and pushed open the door to the master bedroom, the first time it had opened since Janice retreated up the stairs.

He found Janice sitting at a window—where he often found her at this time of night. She was dragging on a Virginia Slims, sipping Scotch from a juice glass, and staring up at the sky.

"What do you see, Janice?" Dave asked in his best attempt at a soothing, nonthreatening tone.

"Nothing," she answered in a manner that had Dave backing off. But she didn't see "nothing." She was watching her star, her special star. The star she had located in the firmament the night her mother had died, when Janice was just twelve. The star she watched for every chance she could since that night. Janice's dad had called it a Christmas star when Janice had shown it to him, a star that was most prominent during the early winter. It hadn't seemed too important to him. In fact, after Janice's mother died, her father just seemed to withdraw into himself—until he too seemed to fade away. However the star, this Christmas star that was more prominent in this season than any other, gave her some sort of grounding. Her own star. It twinkled brightly tonight, giving her strength. She'd been dismissive about the call from the doctor's office when she'd talked with Sally earlier. But she'd brought it up because she was going to ask Sally to go there with her. To give her strength. But the children, and Dave coming home early. Well, that ruined everything. But her star was still there, twinkling brightly. At least Janice had that.

"I know you're tired, Hon," Dave said. "Maybe you should go to bed. I'll shower and be there in a minute. I can give you a backrub, and then, maybe—"

"Sure, right," Janice said dully. But she didn't move from where she was, or take her eye off her star, until Dave had gone into the bathroom and she heard the water running in the shower.

When Dave came out of the bathroom, naked and moving with a grace and hardness of body that would have made most any wife melt with anticipation, the room was dark. He climbed into bed, finding that Janice was already there, turned away from him. He stretched out along her body, his thighs touching the back of hers, but his torso pulled away from hers, giving him room to get his strong hands in position to rub her shoulders and then move farther down her back and lower, working hard to interest and arouse her.

But Janice was already asleep. Or at least her eyes were shut tight, and she was completely nonresponsive. Dave eventually gave up, sighed, and turned over—his buttocks against hers—still trying to maintain a connection with this woman he loved and who had mothered his children. No response, however, and he sighed again as he drifted off into sleep. They had been here before, almost constantly in recent months.

* * *

She'd been the last patient of the day. It was dark when she stumbled out to the parking lot, struggled with her car keys, and somehow got behind the wheel. Janice was trembling so hard she knew there was no way she was driving anywhere for some time.

For a long while she just sat there, staring up into the sky from the side window as twilight turned into night, the transition from murky day to darkest night coming quickly in early December. It was cold. They had predicted snow, but the sky was still clear.

Janice watched the stars begin to come out. She hungrily watched for her star, her very own star. When she saw it, it seemed to be dimmer tonight than last night. Somehow it didn't surprise her the star was dimmer. But she had hoped . . . She wearily let her head fall against the cold pane of glass. And she cried, all alone in the parking lot, taking more than an hour to pull herself together well enough to drive the car and to face her family, to think of something she could say, some way she could deport herself so that they wouldn't know there was anything wrong.

When Janice arrived at home, Steve and Carla were already in their rooms, finishing up on the homework and preparing to go to bed. The kitchen was spotless, everything washed and put away. Even her ash tray was empty and had been washed. Dave was in the nursery, rocking Beth to sleep. No explanations were necessary. No one looked at her. No one asked her anything.

Janice went directly to the bedroom, changed into her nightgown, and went to the window. It had clouded over and was snowing now. No stars could be seen at all. Not even Janice's own star. For some reason she couldn't specifically identify, her tears started to flow again. Janice gave up on her vigil and went to bed. She was asleep before Dave managed to get Beth to sleep and quietly entered the room.

* * *

The doctor had said she would receive a letter. They would try surgery, and she'd receive a letter giving her a surgery date and telling her how to prepare for it. He probably had conveyed what he had to say as sensitively as anyone could want under the circumstances, but it had all sounded so clinical and abrupt to Janice. The doctor wasn't the one who was dying. He clucked and clucked and look so forlorn and talk in such hushed and soothing tones when he'd told her. But he was trained to do this—and then to go home to a roast beef dinner and a night on the town with his wife. This is what had happened to Janice's mother. At this very age. How did one fight those inevitabilities?

The letter arrived three days before Christmas. Thank God, Janice thought, that the postman arrived, for a change, well before the kids got home from school. She'd hidden it in the linen closet, behind the pool towels. No one would be fiddling with those for six months. She couldn't open it. Not now. If she didn't open it, nothing had changed yet. Nothing was happening. Or so she told herself.

She didn't know why, but she needed to open it at the window, at night, after her star had come out. She had to open the letter when she could see her star still twinkling in the sky. But it had been overcast and had snowed every day since she'd gone to the doctors—not enough to close the city down, but enough to cover the nonpaved surfaces—enough to bring out the Christmas spirit of all of those around her.

After hiding the letter, Janice went into the living room and opened a new bottle of Scotch and poured herself the first of three hefty shots. She sat down on the sofa next to the Christmas tree, pushing aside the lights and boxes of decorations that still hadn't been moved to the tree. Carla had continued to wheedle at her about when they would trim the tree, but Janice was having nothing of that. She'd spent most of the time in her room. She was no actress, and she wasn't ready to say anything at all to the family.

While skipping on her third Scotch, Janice had lost enough of her reason to make the phone call. Dennis Jameson had been propositioning her for months. She'd been flattered at his attentions, but he had nothing in sex appeal compared with Dave, and she hadn't had any interest in even Dave for months—so Dennis hadn't seemed to be a threat to any of her desires. Besides, he was her best friend's husband. That alone had been enough for her to hold his advances off. But that resolve was no match for her mood or for her third Scotch or for the weather conditions that had separated her from her star for several days now.

When she called Dennis, he jumped at the chance to meet her at Dunigan's—the sooner the better.

The fourth Scotch at Dunigan's, as she and Dennis sat in a booth in the shadows toward the back of the barroom, was enough for Janice to not even twitch when Dennis's hand went under the hem of her skirt and started moving up her thigh. She was so numb when his fingers had worked under her panty line and was at its goal that this was giving her no sensation at all.

What was she doing here? Why had she thought that this was an answer to anything?

Dennis was nibbling on her ear and whispering what he planned to do to her—not with her, but to her—and giving her directions to the motel he'd already booked into when Janice came out of her fog enough to mutter that she had to visit the ladies room and stumbled out of the booth. If only he hadn't talked in terms of doing it to her rather than with her. And if Dave wasn't an answer she was looking for, why the hell had she ever thought that Dennis Jameson would be?

She took her purse and her heavy sweater with her, and she walked right past the door of the ladies room and out through Dunigan's kitchen and circled back around to her car in the parking lot.

When she arrived home, Steve and Carla were already in bed. All of the lights were out in the living room except for the twinkling multicolored lights on the decorated Christmas tree. Dave was in his Lazyboy, Beth cuddled in his lap, a child's version of

The Night before Christmas

open on the floor beside the chair. Both were asleep.

They'd trimmed the tree without her. They already were learning to manage without her. She was fading away. Would she even be missed? And, if not, whose fault was that? She walked past Dave and Beth, moving quietly so not to wake them, and went to a window. She gazed up into the sky, clear for the first time in days. She felt the panic rising inside her until she found it. Yes, her star was still there. But it was dimmer than ever before. Definitely dimmer, she was sure. Her star, her life. Dimming. Her family. What in the hell had she been doing with her life?

Janice moved into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee brewing. While she waited for that to be ready, she returned to the living room, and, as carefully as she could, lifted Beth out of Dave's arms and took her up to the nursery. Beth was only half awake as Janice changed her and put a nightgown on her, but the baby was awake enough to put her arms around Janice's neck and nuzzle her face into the hollow she found there. Janice began to cry, but she managed with only low choking sounds until she'd gotten the baby settled.

Back in the kitchen, Janice tossed off two cups of coffee in quick succession and rummaged around in her purse, pulled out her last packet of Virginia Slims, and tossed those too. She padded into the living room, found the bottle of Scotch she'd opened earlier in the day, returned to the kitchen, and poured what remained in the bottle down the drain in the sink. A third cup of coffee and then she went upstairs. She was drawn immediately to the window. Yes, the star was still there. Maybe not as dim as she had thought earlier. She showered and powdered and brushed her teeth and then pawed through her drawers until she found and put on that skimpy nightgown Dave had brought home on their tenth anniversary, his blush and secret smile so disarming that she'd promptly found a babysitter while Dave called for reservations at the Hilton.

She then roused a drowsy Dave from his Lazyboy, pulled him up the stairs, stripped him and pushed him down on the bed and brought him fully awake, fully hard, fully penetrating, fully vigorous, fully delighted, and, eventually, fully exhausted.

* * *

Christmas Eve was awash with carols on the record player, cookies in the oven, popcorn on the stove, easy laughter, and overflowing love in Janice and Dave's household. Janice had never seen her husband and children happier or in such a glowing mood. If this was to be their last Christmas together, Janice was determined that it would be a memorable one. And she felt so ashamed, so happy and blessed and ashamed, that each and every one of her family members warmed to her with complete affection and trust. Not one of them hinted at the bitch she'd been toward all of them for months.

This would have been such a comfort to her if it wasn't so bittersweet. They didn't know what she knew. They took this as a "could be/maybe" that could go on forever. She knew otherwise. She suddenly had the urge to open the letter. Not because she wanted the inevitable process to begin, but because she needed some time to adjust to it before she told any of them. There couldn't be much time now before they all had to face it. The doctor had been very insistent that even to hold off on what was eating at her for any time at all, they would have to operate quickly. So, she had to read the letter tonight. She'd say nothing tomorrow, on Christmas Day, but soon thereafter she'd have to have prepared herself to tell the family.

The evening was drawing to an inevitable conclusion. They'd already put Beth to bed—she and Dave together—and soon Steve and Carla would have to go upstairs too. On a whim . . . no, not just a whim, really—on a sudden impulse of what she had to do, Janice rose from the sofa and, taking Carla by the hand, pulled her over to the window.

"Come, there's something I need to show you, Carla."

"What? Where, Mom?" Carla asked when they had reached the window.

"There, up there," Janice said. "I need to point a star out to you, and I need you to always know how to find it."

"Where? I don't see it, Mom? It's just dark out there."

And so it was. Some stars were dimly evident, but not Janice's star. She searched hard for it, and she was so intent that she was clutching at Carla.

"Ow, Mom, that hurts," Carla said. And when Janice loosened her hold. "Where? I want to see it but where is it?"

"It's not there, Honey," Janice said, trying to keep the clutch at her throat from conveying her to voice. "It's not there tonight, Carla. I don't know why, but I can't see it either. Not tonight. Maybe we can find it tomorrow night."

The children went to bed, and Janice and Dave made slow, languid love on the thick, furry Flokati rug between the fireplace, as its fire died to embers, and the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, just as they had done for years before their passion had died down into overfamiliarity. Janice was fierce and demanding in her clutching at Dave, and Dave was as young and virile and deepthrusting as he had been when they were first exploring each other back in their college days. Dave was rejoicing in what he thought was a rekindling of their love affair, while Janice was grasping at what would be the last vestige of the passion the two would have for each other, a passion that few other couples had been able to attain. A passion that she had allowed to fade away, just as she had so nearly let herself fade away completely from a position in her family. She didn't want to leave her family as her mother had, with just that one connection with her daughter, the winter-season star. That special star. That star that Janice could not find in the sky tonight.

Later, much later, when Dave was abed, blissfully snoring in the exhaustion of his satiation, Janice quietly left the bed and went to the linen closet. She'd gotten a small flashlight from her nightstand but still had trouble finding the letter. A moment of panic when it wasn't where she thought she'd tucked it, a flash of concern that someone else had found it, or that it had somehow been thrown away, or that it had never existed at all. But then, there it was, shifted to behind the pile of blankets. She took it out, slit its edge slowly with her fingernail, and took it back into the bedroom, over to the window.

She extracted the letter from the envelope and began to read it. After she'd finished, she looked up into the sky, through the window, once more searching for her comforting star.