Darkness had finally fallen over our street.
I stepped onto our porch and scanned the road. No sign of activity. No neighbors putting out trash or pulling out of the driveway. I made a run for it, grabbing the letters that had been sitting in the mailbox since noon.
I couldn’t go out during the day. It was too risky. Someone might see me and strike up a conversation. As I closed the front door behind me, I imagined their questions. “How’s Bill?” they might ask. “I haven’t seen him around.” Or “Has Bill lost interest in gardening? Your yard looks like an abandoned lot!”
None of our neighbors would be so rude, but they must have wondered what was going on. I glanced out the window at our front lawn. The moon cast a spotlight on grass grown knee-high and flower beds tangled with weeds. Flower beds that usually looked like a spread in Better Homes and Gardens by this time of year. The neighbors must have noticed that this year was different.
What was different was that Bill had cancer. None of the neighbors knew. I didn’t want them to. It would make the cancer real. So for weeks I’d kept his condition a secret. The countless doctor appointments, the hours I spent flipping through magazines in the waiting room while Bill received chemo treatment. The even worse times when Bill was at home suffering the aftereffects while I sat helpless with fear beside him.
You’ve got to help me, God, I thought as I tossed the mail on the table in the foyer. I don’t have anyone else.
I glanced out the window again. Our brown garden stood out so much against all the well-tended yards on the block. I’d always felt so at home here. Now I felt like I didn’t belong.
Bill shuffled into the hallway. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
Bill’s face was pasty, his forehead dotted with sweat. I punched 911 on the phone, hands shaking.
Within minutes an ambulance pulled up, sirens screaming. Paramedics ran to the door. They loaded Bill onto a gurney and gave him oxygen. As they wheeled him out, I saw Steve from next door on his own doorstep. His wife, Miki, was with him. I ducked into the house and grabbed my purse. I ran out to the car, refusing to meet the eyes of Steve or Miki or the dozen other neighbors who had also come out on their porches in their nightclothes to stare.
I felt like a criminal making a getaway. These people were our friends and I’d shut them out. I fumbled with the keys but I was too slow. Miki tapped on the window. “Lynn,” she asked, her voice full of concern, “what’s wrong with Bill?”
I couldn’t think of anything else but the truth. “He has cancer,” I said. “It’s…” My throat closed up. I sped off after the ambulance. He has cancer. It’s real. The secret was out. There was no going back. Bill had cancer. How could I ever face it?
Bill’s doctor was waiting at the hospital. “We’ll get his blood oxygen levels stable,” he told me. “He should go home tomorrow afternoon.”
I settled in for another night in a waiting room. I tried to keep my mind blank, but I kept thinking about Bill—and our neighbors. I imagined them back on our little suburban street, talking about the tragedy we’d brought to it. They would worry. I couldn’t deal with anyone’s worry but my own. How can I reassure them, I thought, when I’m barely handling this myself? I wanted things back the way they used to be, when the only thing the neighbors wondered about Bill was how on earth he managed to make his garden so beautiful.
By mid-morning, Bill was resting so I left to refresh myself at home. I turned onto my street and almost slowed to a stop. My yard was full of people. A utility van blocked the driveway, its gigantic doors open. A man from down the block unloaded a flat of flowers. He passed it to one of the wives from across the street, who passed it to her husband and so on into our garden where a neighbor patted it into the ground. Behind him another neighbor cut the grass to the trim even length Bill always preferred.
I sat behind the wheel, open-mouthed. Miki opened the car door. “Why didn’t you tell us Bill was sick, Lynn?” she asked as she gathered me into her arms. Steve stood beside her with his electric hedge trimmer. “We would have helped sooner!”
I relaxed into her arms. I hadn’t realized how tired I was until I had a shoulder to lean on. Instead of adding to my burden, Miki’s concern made me feel relieved.
“We’re here now,” said Steve. “And we’ll get this place into shape.”
“You go inside and rest,” Miki said, shooing me to the house. “Now.”
I left my neighbors with their rakes and garden hoses and drew myself a nice lavender bubble bath. Then I slipped into bed for a rest.
I awoke hours later. The yard was silent. I went downstairs and stepped onto the porch. The lawn was manicured. The shrubs neatly trimmed. Black-eyed Susans, hostas and coleus peeked out from a fresh bed of mahogany chips. Pink and purple impatiens bloomed beside snowy white begonias. Fat clay pots dotted the patio, overflowing with trailing vines and red geraniums.
When I picked up Bill at the hospital he knew something was up. “You won’t believe your eyes,” I promised. I watched as we turned onto our street. Bill sat up in surprise. Then his eyes filled with tears. “This is just…” He couldn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
I pulled into the driveway. We sat there for a long time, my head on Bill’s chest, drawing strength from the garden finer than any other on the block.
I’d feared that our friends knowing my secret would make Bill’s cancer real. But nothing was more real than God who, like our neighbors, had found the perfect way to show me I wasn’t alone, that I was part of a community in good times and bad. I was surrounded by love. It was blooming all around me.
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