Joy For Beginners Read Online Free PDF

embarrassingly brief in comparison, following behind three-year-old Robin, who strode eagerly across the common area, brown paper snack bag held nonchalantly in one tiny hand, eyes aimed forward into the day ahead, into the years when her body would finally grow into the adult she already knew she was. Robin would kiss her mother good-bye and disappear into the glories of a world filled with colored blocks and paints and other children, leaving Kate with hands so empty the only logical solution was a cup of coffee to fill them.
    Kate and Caroline had started meeting at the coffee shop regularly on Mondays after drop-off. Mondays were the most likely to fall victim to the inevitable post-weekend crises of forgotten snack items, misplaced laundry and oversleeping—but that only made the coffee at the end of it, the friendly eyes of a compatriot, all the more important.
    They had stayed friends over the years, even as their children had gone on to different elementary schools. They counted on each other to hold memories and identities, to remember birthdays and Mother’s Days when husbands or children might forget, to be the extra backbone when a hard parenting decision had to be made. The wife’s wife, they called each other jokingly, the third support in the three-legged stool that is the unseen structure of many marriages. When Kate and her husband had divorced back when Robin was starting middle school, the bond between the two women had only gotten stronger. So when Kate had called Caroline eighteen months ago after a routine doctor appointment, it had taken Caroline precisely three seconds to know that something was wrong.
    In the thousands of calls that had happened since then, Caroline and Kate had worked out a kind of shorthand. Early on, Kate had remarked that even more tiring than chemo were the phone calls with distant friends and relatives, the endless conversations about options and treatments. So Caroline and Kate devised a system; Caroline would call and simply say, “One to ten,” and Kate would name a number. “One” would mean Caroline was in the car and headed to Kate’s house. “Five” usually meant diversion was on the menu that night—a story about Caroline’s newest book find or a discussion of Robin or Brad’s most recent love interest. “Nine” and they were off the phone in two minutes, Kate eager to enjoy the health that was surging, no matter how momentarily, through her body.
    It was ironic, Caroline thought; even now with Kate fully in remission, her hair growing longer, thick and radiant, the calls were still one to ten, only now it was Kate calling Caroline, post-Jack.
     
    “ONE TO TEN,” came Kate’s voice over the phone.
    “Four and a half,” replied Caroline.
    “Still angry about your book challenge?”
    Caroline laughed. “My house has turned into Box City. What do you think?”
    Kate let the phone call unwind into the silence.
    “No,” Caroline said after a moment. “It was a good idea.”
    “Okay,” said Kate. “You don’t have to do this by yourself, you know.”
    “I know.”
    When Caroline hung up the phone, she went back into the living room and stood looking at the whiteness of the empty bookcase rising up to the left of the fireplace. Caroline went to her purse and took out the smooth black rock Kate had given her the night of the victory party. Then she walked over to the bookshelf and put the rock on the middle shelf, where it lay small and dark and quiet in the midst of what wasn’t there.

    CAROLINE WENT to the pool the next day, wanting to swim before work, needing to be somewhere simple, clean and blue. She craved the shift that happened when she moved from the loud and echoing world to one of muffled, round quiet, the energy pulsing down her legs as she pushed off the wall, propelling herself forward through the caress of the water until she finally remembered she needed to breathe, and forced herself to surface.
    The pool had been Caroline’s