Her vision, during the day, was splotchy, she suffered from insidious headaches; it hurt just to look out the window at the bright sunlight and the green leaves. Her brain felt like a piece of meat boiling in a pot. She was dehydrated, despite the fact that Brenda replenished a frosty pitcher of ice water with lemon slices floating on top every few hours. Brenda held the straw to Vicki’s lips, as did Melanie, as did Ted. Ted laid a washcloth across her forehead—a washcloth that they started keeping in the freezer, that made her cry out with pain and relief. Once, Vicki opened her eyes and was certain she saw her mother standing in the doorway of the bedroom. It was El en Lyndon, come from Philadelphia, despite the fact that her leg was imprisoned in a complicated brace. El en’s hand was cool on Vicki’s forehead; Vicki inhaled her mother’s perfume. Vicki closed her eyes and suddenly she was back at her parents’ house, in her childhood bed, with a cup of broth and angel toast dusted with cinnamon, with strains of Mozart floating up the stairs from the kitchen. Vicki rose from her bed. There was something in her shoes. Sand.

She was taking antibiotics, strong ones, although no one in the hospital could tel her where the infection was. Her fever dropped to 101 then shot back up to over 104. They threatened to admit her while she was at the hospital getting an injection of Neupogen, the drug that was supposed to boost her white count. She was taking four painkil ers every six hours, and every two hours she suffered through the goddamned thermometer under her tongue or in the crook of her arm. Vicki started moaning about her missed chemo. Now that she couldn’t have it, she wanted it badly. Dr. Alcott told her not to worry. Blood count up first, then they would let her return for treatment. Vicki’s body felt like a murky soup, her blood poisoned and diluted. Al the colors of the rainbow mixed together, Blaine had once informed her, made brown. That was Vicki.

Al across the globe, mothers were dying. Engulfed in fever, Vicki tried to count them—women she remembered from childhood (Mrs. Antonini next door died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, leaving behind seven-year-old twins); people she didn’t know (Josh’s mother, hanging herself); people she had read about in the newspaper (a Palestinian woman, eight months pregnant, blew herself to pieces at an Israeli checkpoint. In Royersford, Pennsylvania, a disgruntled client walked into the headquarters of his insurance company with an AK-47. His first victim was the receptionist, Mary Gal agher, who was on her first day back from maternity leave. Seven mothers were kil ed in Los Angeles when a commuter bus flipped on the freeway and caught on fire). These women floated over Vicki’s bed, she could see them, sort of, she could hear them crying. Or was that Vicki crying? Curse the God who took mothers out of this world! But no sooner was she cursing Him than she was praying. Praying! Don’t let it be me.

Please.

The only pleasure she had, if you could cal it pleasure, were those sips of water. The water was so cold and Vicki was so, so thirsty. Half the time, she swore, she didn’t even swal ow it. It was absorbed instantly by the chalky insides of her mouth, the dry sponge of her tongue. She had to be careful to ration herself. If she drank too much at once, she would spend torturous moments hanging off the side of her bed, sweating, her stomach twisting and clenching, her back spasming, her shoulders and neck as tense as steel cable as she fought to bring up teaspoons of bitter yel ow bile.

On the sixth day, she woke up and her sheets were soaked. She feared she’d wet the bed, but she could barely bring herself to care. On top of everything else, what was a little incontinence? But no—it was sweat. Her fever had broken. Vicki took her temperature herself, then had Brenda double-check: 98.6.

Blaine ran into the room to see her, and she barely recognized him. He was brown from the sun. His hair, so blond it was almost white, had been cut to reveal pale stripes behind his ears and around his neck. Porter had a haircut, too.

“Who took them to get haircuts?” Vicki said. “Ted?”

“Josh,” Brenda said. “But that was last week.”

Already it was the middle of July. Where had the time gone? Vicki’s fever had subsided and she and everyone else were glad about that, but Vicki was left feeling like a hol ow log, one that the cancer cel s might carry away, like so many ants. She went back to the hospital, they drew more blood, Vicki’s count rose. On Tuesday, they would resume treatment, though slowly at first. She had lost an additional five pounds.

Melanie came in to read to Vicki every evening after dinner. Melanie was reading from Bridget Jones’s Diary because it was light and fun, and both Vicki and Melanie wanted to spend time in a place where the only things that mattered were boyfriends, calories, and designer shoes. Vicki was embarrassed, being read to like a child, but she enjoyed the time with Melanie. They had been living under the same roof but they had lost each other. Now Melanie was coming back into focus, and she seemed different. Certainly she looked different—her body was simultaneously swol en and tight, she was tan, her hair was growing lighter from the sun. She was beautiful.

“You’re beautiful,” Vicki said one night as Melanie took the seat beside her bed. “You look fabulous. You’re glowing. You should be in a magazine.”

Melanie blushed, smiled, and tried to busy herself with finding the correct page in the book. “Stop it.”

“I’m serious,” Vicki said. “You look happy. Are you happy? ” She hoped her voice conveyed that although she herself was dying, she could stil celebrate the good news of others.

Melanie seemed afraid to speak, but the answer was obvious. And to Vicki, this change in Melanie seemed like the biggest thing of al that she had missed. Melanie was happy! Here on Nantucket!

Vicki resumed chemo. She returned to her lucky chair, the pearl-gray wal s, the sports news, Mamie, Ben, Amelia, Dr. Alcott. She was happy to hear they were stil undefeated in softbal . Vicki gasped when Mamie inserted the needle into her port—the skin there was as tender as it had been in the beginning—but she was determined to think of the chemo as medicine. Positive attitude!

“Your sister seems very busy over there,” Mamie commented. “She’s writing something?”

“A screenplay,” Vicki said. For the first time, this didn’t sound completely ridiculous. “She’s almost half done.”

Vicki had one good day fol owed by another. The lighter chemo regimen took less of a tol on her body. She was able to cook dinner—gril ed salmon, barbecued chicken, corn and early tomatoes from the farm—and she was able to eat. After dinner, she devoured ice cream cones from the market. She gained two pounds, then three, and she joked that the weight went right to her ass. The weekend came, which meant Ted, and she felt so much better and looked so much better that sex came easily and natural y between the two of them. Sex! She might have lain in bed afterward savoring the first postcoital glow she’d enjoyed in nearly two months, but she didn’t want to lie in bed when she could be up, when she could be outside.

“Let’s go!” she said. She felt wild and carefree; she felt like Bridget Jones.

She went to the beach with Ted and the kids, though it was stil too far for Vicki to walk, so they drove the Yukon. Vicki was the palest person on the beach and grotesquely skinny, and because of the port, she wore a nylon surf shirt over her bathing suit—but these things went immediately onto her List of Things That No Longer Matter. A few yards down the beach Vicki spied a familiar figure in a matronly black one-piece bathing suit.

It was Caroline Knox with her family. If Vicki wasn’t mistaken, Caroline was looking her way but trying not to be caught looking. She turned to say something to a bald man in a webbed chair next to her. Probably: There’s Vicki Stowe, lung cancer, poor woman. Just look at her, a skeleton. She used to be so pretty. . . .

Vicki didn’t care. She waded into the water with Blaine, and then she swam out a few yards by herself. The water felt incredible. It cradled her.

She floated on her back and closed her eyes against the sun; she flipped over and floated on her stomach and opened her eyes to the green, silent world below. The waves washed over her, she was suspended, weightless, buoyant. How long did she stay out there? One minute, five minutes, twenty? She lost time the way she used to as she lay in bed, only now it was liberating. She was alive, living, out in the world, floating in the ocean.

When she raised her head and looked back toward shore, she saw Ted standing at the edge of the water with Porter in his arms and Blaine standing beside him. They were searching for her. Could they not see her? She waved to them. Hi! I’m right here! For a second, she panicked. This was what it would be like once she was gone. She would be able to see them but they wouldn’t be able to see her. Vicki raised her arms a little higher; she cal ed out. Hey! Hello! And then Ted saw her; he pointed. There she is! Hi, Mom! They waved back.

First Vicki felt good, then she felt great. She cal ed her mother and, for the first time al summer, put the woman’s mind at ease. You sound wonderful, darling! You sound like your old self! Vicki felt like her old self—even breathing came easier. She imagined the tumor in her lungs shrinking to the size of a marble, she imagined the cancer cel s giving up and dropping dead. It was easy to keep a positive attitude when she felt this good.