Good Harbor

She hadn’t been herself for a week, since the radiologist had used the word cancer. Five years ago, after the first needle biopsy, she’d been ready for that pronouncement. In fact, she’d been so sure of a cancer diagnosis, she had reread her will before the appointment. She had searched through the filing cabinet for the deeds to their funeral plots — hers and Buddy’s.

But after that lump had turned out to be benign, she’d gone for her regular mammograms without dread. That was stupid, she now realized. What had made her think she was going to get away with it? Breast cancer had killed her sister; it was bound to get her sooner or later.

When he’d delivered the bad news, Dr. Barlow had tried to be reassuring. “All we see so far is DCIS,” he’d said. “Hopefully, the surgeon won’t find anything else.”

Back from the doctor’s office that afternoon, she called her sons in New York and California. She left a message for her friend Jeanette, in Florida. But she waited to tell Buddy until he got home. They sat at the kitchen table, and Kathleen watched the lines on her husband’s face grow deeper.

Lying in bed that first night, Kathleen realized that she had already left the world of small talk and gardening and current events. She was in the airless, out-of-time place she knew from the long, murderous months of Pat’s breast cancer. She’d been to that place with Danny, too, though it had been much quicker with her little boy. It was only that one horrible week in the hospital. Not even a week.

In the morning, Buddy sat beside her as she called the surgeon, Dr. Cooperman. And when she got home from school that afternoon, Jack was in the kitchen, a pot of soup and a pan of frying onions on the stove. “Mom,” he said, and swept her into a hug.

“I didn’t add the dill,” Jack said. “Even though chicken soup is way better with dill, I know you don’t like it.”

Kathleen ran a finger through his thick black hair, just like hers when she was young. “Nice beard,” she said, passing her knuckles across the soft growth. “It makes you look a little like my grand-dad, in that photo when he was just off the boat.”

Jack was her youngest, twenty-three years old, sous-chef at a three-star restaurant in Manhattan. His framed diploma from Johnson & Wales hung over the kitchen table.

“How’s Lois?” Kathleen asked, trying not to show how curious she was. She had never met his live-in girlfriend; only spoken to her on the phone.

Jack stirred the onions. “She’s great. She sends her best. Her show opens next week, though I don’t suppose you’ll be coming down to see it — now.” The word hung in the air, and he looked stricken.

Jack would need her reassurance as much as Buddy did. She was going to have to keep her guys propped up, all the way through her surgery and “follow-up treatment,” whatever that meant. Dr. Barlow said the surgeon would explain.

The kitchen clock presided over the silence until the phone rang. “Mom? Did you get my messages?” asked Hal without preliminaries, as usual.

“No, honey, I just got back to the house. Jack’s here.”

“Tell him hi. I surfed the Net for a while last night,” Hal said. “I’ve got six Web sites for you to visit and I’ve E-mailed a list of books and magazine articles you should read. Whatever happens, you should get second opinions.” Hal had taken premed courses for three years, and even though he’d switched his major to English and worked as a technical writer for software companies, he still entertained thoughts of himself as a doctor. So did his mother.

“I’m planning to,” said Kathleen. “I’d really like to get into Boston to see Jane Truman, the one who wrote that book, you know?”

“Yeah?” he said, impressed. “That would be great! Her name’s all over the bulletin boards and chat rooms.”

Kathleen promised to log on and read Hal’s messages later that night. “Dr. Barlow thinks it’s the ductal carcinoma in situ.”

“Yeah, I read about it. Some people consider DCIS not really cancer at all, but a kind of precancer.”

Kathleen frowned. Was that supposed to cheer her up?

“Sorry I’m so far away,” he said.

“This is still a guilt-free zone,” Kathleen said, reading from the cross-stitched sampler she had put above the kitchen sink twenty years ago. She noticed that the frame needed dusting.

Buddy’s voice broke into her momentary trance. “Where’s my son, the dishwasher?” he called from the door.

Kathleen said good-bye to Hal as Buddy Levine tramped into the kitchen and reached out to hug Jack. Buddy was six feet, a few inches taller than his son, and apart from a slight paunch, in very good trim. He still had a full head of hair, and the toothy smile that remained the working capital of Levine Electric: A Cape Ann Tradition Since 1930.

“You knew he was coming, and you didn’t tell me?” Kathleen said, poking her husband gently. “You sneak.”

“Why ruin his surprise?” Buddy said, and hugged her. She looked up into his face. Years of fishing had baked Buddy’s face to leather, but he was still a handsome man. They were both lucky in their looks, Kathleen knew. Her eyes were even bluer now that her hair — the chin-length bob unchanged through years of family photos — had gone white.

They sat at the dinner table for a long time that evening. Kathleen and Buddy praised Jack’s meal of elegantly presented comfort food — chicken soup, meat loaf and mashed potatoes, apple pie. Bite by bite they oohed and aahed, and laughed, as they always did, about the way he’d overcome the unlucky marriage of Irish cooking and Jewish cooking.

Kathleen was reminded of how easy it was with just the three of them. When both her sons were at the table, one could get sulky while the other took center stage. She stared into her wineglass, wondering if they’d ever outgrow that. She caught Buddy’s and Jack’s anxious eyes on her and stood up to clear the table. “I wasn’t even thinking about it,” she said, surprising herself with the sharpness in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sinking back in her chair. “I guess I’m kind of tired.”

Jack moved his chair closer to hers and took her hand. “It’s okay, Mom.” They all sighed in unison, then laughed at themselves for being such peas in a pod.