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.
