The woman uncomfortably perched on the edge of the Adirondack chair has not opened up in group. Unlike Sukanya, though, Lark is very “present,” very aware of what is going on and very sad. Her brown hair is unkempt and badly cut, as if she had done it herself. Her face is reddened and swollen.
Lark’s whole body is bloated: her wedding ring is surrounded by fat flesh and shows no sign of ever leaving her finger. Lark is a mess by anyone’s definition.
The only time anyone speaks with Lark is when she is smoking on the deck. There, the nicotine softens her hard defenses, loosens her tongue.
“Can I ask you something?” she addresses Isabel.
“The doctor confiscated my carton of cigarettes,” she confesses, not without a sneer toward the unit, “and I was wondering if you would do me a favor.” Lark has a thick Brooklyn accent. “Favor” is “fay-vah.”
Isabel has just finished lighting her own cigarette and pulls her plastic chair closer to Lark.
“What do you want?” Isabel asks.
“It’s gonna sound weird, I know,” Lark begins in what constitutes, for her, an apologetic tone, “but this happened to me before I was here. When you take a drag and exhale…just blow it my way and I’ll suck it in.” This is the most Lark has spoken and Isabel is hooked.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Isabel says.
“I’ll show you.” Kristen has pulled up a chair. She takes the smoke from her own cigarette into her lungs, and as she prepares to exhale, Lark leans way in, as though she were about to kiss Kristen. When Kristen exhales, Lark inhales.
“Do you actually get anything from it?” Isabel asks, slightly disgusted.
“Yep.” A fragment of a smile creeps into Lark’s face. “But more than secondhand smoke I get the satisfaction of not letting anyone tell me I can’t smoke.”
Lark’s asthma and a raging case of bronchitis have put her on the danger list at the hospital so the staff had to take drastic measures to get her to stop, at least while she is a resident.
“So, you said you’ve been here before?” Isabel starts slow.
Lark senses an interview but can’t withdraw if she wants to inhale any of Kristen’s or Isabel’s smoke. She’s stuck.
“Yeah.” Lark’s addiction takes precedence over privacy. “This is my fourth time.”
“Oh.” Isabel is the one stuck now since she has learned it’s an unspoken rule to let others tell you why they’ve checked in, not to push it out of them. But Isabel is a reporter at heart and knows how to interview. “Is it difficult coming back?”
“Naw.” Lark is looking her straight in the eye. “This time I’m trying to be proactive,” Lark confides. “Father’s Day is tomorrow. That’s my hardest day all year.”
They look at each other for a moment. Kristen gets up to light another cigarette and Lark looks down into her lap.
The eyes of the cat planter gleamed like marbles.
“But why?” Isabel asked, tracing the line of the tail.
“You’re just too young.” Her mother briskly moved Isabel’s hair out of her face. Still, wisps stuck to the tears on her cheek.
“He said I could come. He said.”
The plastic fork was stuck in the soil, the card still in its three prongs. “Sorry, kiddo. I’ll see you soon. Love, Dad.”
“I know that he said you could go, but Dad has lots more meetings than he thought he would. They like the new line of cars Dad is showing them. Isn’t that great? Anyway, he told me on the phone that you can definitely go on the next business trip with him.”
“But I wanted to go on this one,” she sobbed. “Why? Why can’t I just go? I can wait in the hotel room for him till he gets finished with his meetings. I can just wait there.”
“Stop whining, Isabel. Now, I’ve about had it with this conversation. You’re only eight. You’re too young to stay in a hotel room all day alone. And you’d get hungry….”
“I could order room service. Like Eloise. I could order something to eat and wait for him.”
“What did I just finish saying? Next time you can go with him. The next trip he has that doesn’t have too many meetings you can go on.”
“He always has too many meetings,” she said miserably. She stood up to go.
“Don’t forget your new plant. It’s so pretty in this planter.”
Isabel reached for the cat with the shiny eyes.
“Dad, I’m trying to help you up to bed.” Isabel’s legs were buckling under his weight even as she tried to distribute it more evenly by pulling his limp arm tighter around her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” he was mumbling repeatedly to his teenage daughter.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she lied. “Just try to walk up these stairs. Six stairs, that’s all you got.”
“One father, that’s all you got,” he muttered.
“Lucky me,” she said, more to herself than out loud. “Come on, Dad. Three more stairs. Here we go. You can do it.”
“Why do you even bother?” he asked, trying to stand up on his own for the first time since his daughter shoveled him off the bar stool in the living room.
“Huh? Come on, Dad, two more stairs.” Isabel looked down the long dark hallway to her parents’ bedroom and then focused again on the remaining stairs.
“Why do you even bother.” This time it wasn’t a question. “You know you have no family.”
A sharp pain radiated down her back. “What did you just say?”
“You have no family,” her father said, his tone mean and cold, his words no longer slurred.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said, hoping she was right and that her drunk father was babbling about nothing again.
“You have no family.”
Isabel stood on the top stair and flinched.
“You have no family.”
Isabel would never know that her father was speaking to himself and not to her.
“Dinner’s in ten minutes,” Lark mumbles. “Want me to sign you out?”
Isabel shakes the memory away like a wet dog coming in from the rain. She looks at Lark.
“Yeah, thanks. We can walk over to the cafeteria together if you want.”
A friendship forged over carcinogens. Lark walks back into the nurses’ station where the dry erase board hangs.
Kristen calls out to Lark: “Lark? Will you sign me out, too?” Then to Isabel she says, “Do you guys mind if I walk with you?”
We’re back in elementary school and we’re forming a clique.
“Sure, whatever,” Isabel replies as she steps on her cigarette.
“Where’re you from, anyway?” Kristen asks as she puts out her unfinished cigarette. “It just occurred to me that I don’t know where you live.”
“Yeah,” Isabel said. “I don’t know anyone’s last name. I grew up in Connecticut but I live in Manhattan now.”
“I grew up in Connecticut, too! Where in Connecticut?” Kristen asks excitedly.
“Greenfield.”
“I grew up in Winsford.” Kristen is beaming. Winsford is only minutes away from Greenfield.
Please let’s not play the name game.
Isabel takes a couple of steps back and looks toward the unit to see if they are to start lining up for their meal march. She hopes her body language will quiet Kristen.
“Where’s the dinner nurse, anyway?” Kristen asks, picking up on Isabel’s signal. “I’m starving. I hate it when they’re late taking us over.”
“Want another cigarette?” Isabel asks her. Kristen nods gratefully.
Isabel smiles as she pulls out her pack of Marlboro Lights. “We are one sick group,” she says, heading over to the wall-mounted lighter. “One sick group.”
Behind her Lark’s mouth turns upward, forming a slight smile.
“You got that right,” Lark says.