And then it was over, the final visit to Claire’s oncologist. Eliot rose and shook the doctor’s hand. Claire inched forward on her chair, grimacing a little as she mustered the strength to stand. Always petite, she had become tiny, her weight down to a distressing ninety pounds. Her hair was about an inch long and clung to her scalp in tight curls.
Dr. Steiner waited until she was steady, then took her hands in his. He said, “It’s been a privilege treating you, Claire.”
Eliot watched as Claire pursed her lips: preamble to a small witticism. She said, “It’s been a privilege being treated by you, Dr. Mark Steiner.”
Steiner squeezed Claire’s hands and then took a step backward and held out his arm. He wanted them to leave ahead of him, a first.
The corridor was busy and Claire stayed near the wall, pausing every now and then to catch her breath. She needed the bathroom, and Eliot stationed himself opposite a photograph of a mountaintop at dawn that he’d walked past a thousand times and somehow never noticed.
In the car she gave him a long look. “Are you OK?”
Eliot wasn’t really a milestones person, but she was—the anniversary of their first kiss, the packing of the final school lunch, the first Christmas without her mother—and sometimes she yearned to have him make a big deal over things. Today of all days he wanted to get it right. But making the cessation of treatment official with Steiner was far less emotional to Eliot than any number of other moments during the long and agonizing journey to this bleak juncture. There was a night in January when she was a few days out from her next treatment, deep in an Ambien-induced sleep because even after so many years she still got anxious before chemo, and Eliot sat in front of a basketball game and leaked tears, his whole face flowing though he didn’t cry, didn’t sob. They had still been under such pressure then.
“I am,” he said. “What about you?”
She gave him a thoughtful look. “You know what I was just thinking? If he finally buys that cabin I won’t get to hear about it.”
She meant Steiner. He’d been renting in Maine for years, two weeks every August, and had told Eliot and Claire many times that he was thinking of making an offer on the place. His rental was twenty miles from the house where Eliot and Claire always stayed, close to the lobster rolls they liked best, the small, pebbled beach. Spending time in Maine was Eliot and Claire’s favorite summer pastime and had been since shortly after they were married, when they joined friends for a long weekend south of Portland. After that they rented their own place each summer, at first for just a week but increasing to two once they had kids and three once their work schedules allowed for longer vacations. Packing up to leave at the end of the previous summer, they both knew it might be Claire’s last visit to Maine, but the chemo was still working and they didn’t talk about the possibility that she might not return. She was a milestones person, yes, but also someone with a remarkable capacity not to get ahead of herself.
“I guess not,” Eliot said.
Claire shrugged lightly. “Among so many other things.”
He gave her an understanding smile, a smile he hoped conveyed an opening to say more if she wanted. She tapped the dashboard, ready to go.
*
At home he helped her into bed and took her empty water bottle to the kitchen so he could refill it with filtered water. When he got back she was burrowed under the covers, her frame as small as a child’s. “I really am wiped out today,” she murmured, her voice in a register of mild unhappiness.
He kissed the side of her head. “I can tell. I’m sorry. Get some sleep, OK?”
He closed the door on his way out. There was laundry for him to start, the dishwasher to unload. He longed to be truly busy but couldn’t bear to begin any of the more involved tasks that might occupy a few hours. In three to six months he’d have all the time in the world to organize the garage or take up woodworking or go to Vietnam by himself.
Late in the afternoon there was a soft knock at the front door. It was Holly, with an armload of Tupperwares.
“She’s asleep,” Eliot whispered.
“I’ll be quiet.”
In the kitchen Holly put the food in the fridge, explaining what was in each container as she went. “How was it?”
Eliot shrugged.
“Anticlimactic?”
“He was sweet. In the waiting room beforehand we saw that girl.”
“Shit. Did she talk to her?”
The girl had appeared in the infusion suite some months earlier, occupying the chair next to Claire’s. Ewing sarcoma, twelve years old. Claire had fallen in love with her a little, the two of them chatting about the girl’s preference for small dogs over big ones and her attempts the previous summer to learn how to do flips off the diving board. It was one of Claire’s talents, forming swift, sweet friendships. A couple weeks later she invited the girl to the house and taught her how to make meringues.
“Just waved,” Eliot said.
“How was she?”
Eliot knew Holly meant Claire, but he had answered this question too many times over the past eight-plus years. His heart had withdrawn, and he felt wooden when he was forced to answer anyway. He pretended to think Holly was asking about the girl. “She was pretty far away, beyond the aquarium. Hard to tell.”
Holly gave him a searching look. Now she’d ask how he was.
“How are you, Eliot?”
“It was just a formality, going in.”
“I know.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out lip balm, apparently in no hurry to leave. The understanding was that the two of them were a team, president and vice president of Claire’s support system. They traded information, observations. But Eliot wanted to be alone. He wanted to do his back exercises, maybe have a beer.
In the distance the bedroom door opened. Eliot heard Claire’s walker bump the door frame, the familiar sound of her cough. When she saw Holly, she broke into a smile. “You’re here.”
They fell into each other’s arms. Tall, robust Holly with her thick auburn hair, her muscular body. Claire was engulfed. Holly’s shoulders shook, and Claire made soft shushing sounds, then wept a little herself. She tilted her head in the direction of the bedroom, and they headed off together, likely to be out of sight for hours.
To Eliot’s surprise, Holly reappeared just ten or fifteen minutes later.
“Leaving?”
“She wants ramen. Is that OK, if I pick some up for her?” Eliot doubted Claire would eat it once it arrived, but it was certainly OK. “Of course.”
“Do you want some? She specifically said we should ‘all have ramen’—it was like a vision. Remember in the old days when we had those Friday night dinners and the littlest kids wouldn’t eat the pizza?”
Eliot remembered children kneeling on the ladder-backed dining chairs he and Claire had inherited from his grandmother. The chairs had high centers of gravity and sometimes tipped over if their occupants were too rambunctious. Eliot pictured the noisy, crowded dining room, three, sometimes four families squeezed together. Claire in her prime, seeing everything, knowing everything. Late on those evenings, as Eliot loaded the dishwasher, Claire told him everyone’s business, information gleaned as much through observation as report. Dave Moulton had some kind of secret—gambling maybe, or drugs; or who knew, maybe an affair. The Baxter boy was having trouble in school, and the Baxter marriage was in trouble again. Eliot loved hearing Claire talk about people, her combination of warmth and dispassion. Holly called her “Oh Wise One” for how evenly she viewed the small, ordinary problems of family life. In those years especially, Holly could be quite judgmental.
“Right,” Eliot said to Holly now. “They ate ramen instead. I might have a few packages here.”
“No, she wants it fresh, from the place. I’ll get you one, you can decide later.”
Once she was gone he went into the bedroom. Claire was propped up against the headboard and talking on the phone. In the six months since he moved to the guest room, afraid of disturbing her sleep, what had felt equally owned had become entirely hers. Clothing, books, magazines, her water bottles, pills, photographs recently pulled from albums to keep at hand. Moisturizer, a heating pad, a small notebook and pen. It was her den. Eventually he moved his bathroom stuff to the guest bath, ceding the entire space.
“Michelle,” she mouthed, pointing at the phone, and he retreated.
*
Abby visited on the weekend, leaving the grandchildren home with Isaac. The kids couldn’t do the round-trip from Virginia in two days, it would be hell for everyone. Nor could Abby wait; she too was very much a milestones person and needed to see Claire right away. At one point Eliot entered the TV room and found Abby with her head on Claire’s lap, Claire stroking her hair. It could have been twenty years earlier, Abby a heartbroken middle schooler. It was almost too much for him, thinking about the passage of time. He couldn’t go into it, the past, all those feelings; he couldn’t or he might never come back.
“Dad,” Abby said that evening, once Claire was asleep. “You need to reach out. You need support too.”
“I’ve been taking care of your mother for a long time. I’ll be OK.”
“Emotional support.”
“I knew what you meant.”
Abby was on the window seat and got up, antsy, crossing the room to lean against a wall and moments later crossing it again to pick up an abandoned mug. Her hair was short these days, severe to Eliot’s eye, though it made sense given her busy life. She said, “I should’ve tried harder to get you guys to move.” Her voice had the tight, desperate quality that frustration had triggered in her during childhood. Frustration born of ambition, Claire always used to say, reminding Eliot that Abby was a lot like him. If you substituted a group of headstrong little girls for a group of business executives, Abby was no less determined than Eliot to impose her will.
“You honestly think that would’ve helped?” Eliot said. “Trying harder?”
Claire’s first metastases, found in her lungs three years earlier, had caused a great reckoning in the family. Within a year Eliot retired, and Abby launched a campaign to relocate her parents. Eliot was agnostic on the subject, saw pros and cons, but there was no missing how much Claire wanted to make the move, to be close to Abby and the grandchildren. Nor was there any missing how adamant she was that they couldn’t, wouldn’t do it. Abby was a pediatrician, spending hours every day taking care of other people’s children before spending hours taking care of her own. Claire was terrified of being a burden.
“Dad, come on,” Abby said now. “All I’m saying is I wish you were closer.”
“And all I’m saying is don’t blame yourself that we’re not.”
“You’re suggesting I’m not all-powerful?” she said, fighting a smile. “I have children, I think I know that by now.”
“Fair enough,” Eliot said. Then: “I’m glad you’re here, sweetheart.”
In the morning they Zoomed with Josh. It was still the dead of winter in Chicago, and he wore a beanie and two sweaters, his house old and very drafty. He said, “Mom, do you feel like getting a massage? Can I gift you a massage?”
Claire glanced at Eliot; Josh barely made ends meet. She said, “You’re sweet. You having that thought is all the gift I need.”
An hour later it was time for Abby to go. She clung tightly to Claire and said, “I can come back anytime. Literally anytime, this is exactly why I’m in such a big practice. Wait, do you have a fever?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a forehead thermometer.
“Always prepared,” Claire said—amiably enough, but it made Eliot remember earlier moments when Abby’s professional identity bumped up against her identity as a daughter. Soon after Claire’s diagnosis, medical-student Abby insisted that Claire meet with her mentor, an academic oncologist she’d gotten to know during a summer research project. Claire and Eliot made a special trip to Boston . . . only to have this doctor give them the exact same recommendation they’d received at home. Since then, Abby had kept any doubts to herself.
“Ninety-eight point three,” she said, reading the thermometer. “So more like ninety-nine point three, but that’s still fine. OK, I feel better leaving.”
Once she was gone the evening lay ahead of them. Eliot delivered pills, prepared small snacks because Claire felt nauseated and though hungry could eat only a little at a time. Awake very late, she sat with him in front of the TV while an oldish comedy played. She liked to guess the year a movie had been made using only what clues were provided by hairstyles and clothing. “Those shoulder pads!” she said. “Where’s my phone, I have to see if Holly remembers this movie. I had a blue linen dress kind of like that, with shoulder pads like wings. Will you get me my phone so I can call her?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“She’ll be up. Or she’ll call me back in the morning.”
Eliot found the phone and handed it to her. “What if she has your number set to wake her?”
“She’ll go right back to sleep. She wants me to call. She keeps saying so.”
“Of course.”
Holly was Claire’s oldest friend, her dearest, going back to second grade. At the beginning, when Eliot and Claire had been dating for a month or so and it was time to be introduced to family and friends, Eliot slightly dreaded meeting Holly. Claire had reported various cutting things Holly had said about other guys, and Eliot knew she wouldn’t soft-pedal any doubts. After the first encounter, Claire reported that Holly found Eliot “quietly witty,” such an unrousing endorsement that Eliot for the next week or so made a point of being as noisily witty as he could. At last Claire asked what was up with him, and he confessed that Holly’s comment had caused him to try to be more dynamic. “Well, don’t,” Claire said. “You’re being weird.” She reported the whole thing to Holly and came back saying she’d had it wrong, Holly hadn’t found him “quietly witty,” she’d found him “quiet and witty,” which was so much worse. But the entire back and forth delighted Claire and served as a small stepping stone on her path to feeling Eliot was the man for her. He was smart and competent, he knew how to move through the world. Those were the qualities she prized.
“When we were young,” Claire said now, setting the phone down absently, “I was in such awe. I always felt so dumb and ordinary in comparison.”
“To me?” Eliot said, puzzled.
She laughed lightly. “To Holly, honey. She was such a sparkler, she had so much verve. I mean, in retrospect it was probably agita over all the stuff at home expressing itself, but to me she was magically funny and energetic. I was really a little dullard.”
“No, you weren’t,” Eliot said, but he was lagging behind, wounded by her amusement at his mistaken assumption.
“If I said I was,” Claire said, “that means I felt I was.”
Now Eliot was flustered. “OK. Sorry.”
“You’re so literal.”
“And yet so unliterary. It’s amazing we lasted.” He looked at her and waited, wanting just an agreement, an acknowledgment of his value, something. In the old days she sometimes called him “my businessman,” a label that an observer might assume she employed to emphasize how different she and Eliot were, when the point was that she loved his practical, efficient side.
She motioned at the TV. “I think I’m done with this.”
__________________________________
From Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer. Copyright © 2025 by Ann Packer. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
