The Benefit Supper at the Legion Hall

The page

It came up third. A fundraiser page with my photo at the top, the one from my cousin’s wedding two summers ago, the one where I am laughing at something Mark said. Someone had cropped Mark out.

The title said “Please Help My Baby Sister Fight.” The organizer was Tracy Voss, Wisner, NE. The total under the thermometer bar was $11,400.

I read Tracy’s post three times. It said I had been diagnosed in August. It said the treatments were in Omaha and insurance was “not covering near enough.” It said I was “a private person and too sick for visitors or phone calls right now,” and that the best thing anyone could do was give and pray.

Then I scrolled through the names. That was the part that put me on the floor, more or less. I did not actually sit on the floor, but I wanted to.

My third grade teacher had given fifty dollars. The man who ran the elevator when Dad was still farming had given a hundred. Arlene had given twenty-five online, on top of the twenty she mailed. A girl from band had written, “Praying hard, Shan. You were always the tough one.”

There were ninety-six names. Some of them I had not thought about in twenty years. Every one of them believed I was dying.

I called Tracy that night at seven. It rang four times and went to voicemail. Her voicemail still says, “This is Tracy, I’m probably at work, leave it at the beep,” the same as it has for ten years.

I did not leave a message. I did not know what you say on a message like that.

Four calls

Mark came home at six-thirty with his tool belt still on, because he had been on a service call in Waverly and forgot to take it off in the truck. He is an electrician, and he is a quiet man who does not like to guess. I handed him the card and my phone.

He read it all twice, the way he reads a wiring diagram. Then he set my phone face down on the table.

“Did you call her?”

“Once. She didn’t pick up.”

“Call your mom?”

I had not. My parents retired to Mesa, Arizona, six years ago, and they talk to Tracy every Sunday after church. If anyone knew what was going on, it was Mom.

I called her. She answered on the second ring, and I could hear the television and Dad asking who it was. I asked her, very carefully, when she had last talked to Tracy.

“Sunday,” Mom said. “Why? Is something wrong with Tracy?”

So Mom did not know. Tracy had told the church and not our parents, which meant she knew exactly who would stop her. I told Mom I just needed to reach Tracy about something. She did not believe me, but she let it go.

I called Tracy again on Wednesday at noon, from the parking lot of the clinic. Voicemail. I called her Thursday night. Voicemail. I called her Friday after work and let it ring until it stopped. Four calls.

She had seen every one of them. I knew she had. Tracy has never in her life let a phone ring without looking at it.