Good Harbor

Jack left for New York early the next morning, and Buddy decided not to go into the store, even though Saturday was a busy day. He and Kathleen took their coffee cups out to the deck and read the papers, bundled up in wool sweaters. All day they reached for each other — a hand on the shoulder on the way to the bathroom, a kiss on the cheek over the kitchen sink.

On Sunday, Buddy suggested a walk at Good Harbor. As they crossed the wooden footbridge at the southern edge of the beach, Kathleen reminded herself to look. This place was so familiar to her that she sometimes walked halfway across before lifting her eyes to see the day’s singular display of cloud and surf.

Not even a mile from end to end at low tide, the graceful sweep of Good Harbor was her elixir, her secret potion. When she dreamed about Good Harbor, she woke up refreshed. Today the water was flat as a pond out to the horizon, but Kathleen had seen plenty of angry seas with six-foot swells here, too.

She and Pat had walked the length of Good Harbor thousands of times, back and forth, sometimes six lengths at a go, talking nonstop. Buddy called it “chewing the fat.” “You two get all the flavor out?” he’d ask when they would finally sit down for a picnic with him and the boys.

The sisters had remained close, even after Pat had entered the convent and Kathleen had started her marriage and family. A Jewish family at that. They called each other every week, and when Pat came to visit, they never stopped talking.

Buddy took her hand as they started down toward the water’s edge. Kathleen hadn’t talked to anyone like that since Pat died. She’d gotten pretty close to Jeanette before she’d moved to Boca Raton — finally convinced by a bad winter, a broken hip, and an insistent daughter. But while she and Jeanette had had some good chats at Good Harbor, they were nothing like Kathleen’s talks with Pat.

Kathleen missed Pat so much.

Buddy gave her hand a squeeze. He’s good company, Kathleen thought, squeezing back. A wonderful listener, but somehow, her husband didn’t know how to keep a conversation flowing or how to direct it forward, or whatever it was that had worked with Pat. Whatever it was that seemed to work so effortlessly between all the women around them, walking and talking on the beach. As usual, pairs of women outnumbered the man-woman couples.

It just isn’t the same with men. Why is that? she wondered.

“You okay?” Buddy asked.

“Fine.”

A black Lab raced past them and leapt three feet into the air to catch a Frisbee. “Next dog, I want a German shepherd,” she said firmly.

“And I bet you already have a name picked out.”

“Maurice.”

“Really?” Buddy said. “After Kirchel, I figured it would be Wolfie. Or Amadeus.”

“Maurice Sendak introduced me to Mozart in the first place. I think it’s only fitting.”

“Couldn’t we call him Max?” Buddy asked. “I sure am going to feel silly hollering ‘Moe-ree-eece.’”

“You’ll get used to it.”

On Monday morning, Buddy didn’t go fishing, even though the weather was fine. He read the paper until Kathleen left for work. He walked her to the car, opened the door, and waved as she pulled away.

Kathleen watched him in her rearview mirror.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and then shook her head, realizing that she meant it as a prayer. “No atheists in foxholes,” she muttered, turning on Morning Edition, hoping that they might run one of Dr. Truman’s commentaries that day. As qualified as Dr. Cooperman might be, Jane Truman had the reputation as th

e best breast surgeon in Boston — maybe in the whole country. She was also a local celebrity, thanks to her occasional two-minute radio essays about her patients, her colleagues, and her little girl.

When she got to school, Kathleen sat down in the little office beside the teachers’ lounge and called Dr. Truman’s office. She was told, very politely, even kindly, that Dr. Truman was booked solid until September. She locked the door to the teachers’ bathroom and wept, trying not to make any noise.

The gym teacher, Fiona Kent, was waiting for her when she finally emerged, and within a few hours, the whole school knew the whole story, right down to the details of her phone call to Dr. Truman. After the third-period bell, Madge Feeney marched into the library, where Kathleen was staring out a window.

“Don’t you worry, dee-ah,” said Madge, who had grown up in South Boston and still drove all the way down there for mass every Sunday. “My niece, Ellen, works in that Dr. Truman’s office.” Madge shook her head sadly, sighed, and said, “You know, my ma had it, too.”

As the day wore on, Kathleen heard that refrain again and again. Like a parade of cats with dead mice in their teeth, five teachers, two aides, and a lunch lady came to the library and laid the tale of their mother’s, sister’s, cousin’s, best friend’s breast cancer at her feet. As though she didn’t have Pat’s story, her own sister. Good thing I don’t have a daughter, she thought.

At noon, Madge’s niece left a message: Kathleen should bring her mammogram and test results to Dr. Truman’s office the following Monday morning.

“Oh, Kath, that’s so great,” Buddy said when she called to relay the news. He cleared his throat, and the noise on the other end of the phone was muffled. Kathleen never knew what to say when Buddy got choked up.

After school, Kathleen stopped at the town library. But when she got to the 600s, half the titles on breast cancer were already gone. I guess someone else got bad news this week, she thought, and wondered about all the other women who had stood in the same spot, hearts racing, hands shaking.

Even so, there were plenty of books left to choose from. She took three, worrying, as she checked them out, about where to hide them. She didn’t want Buddy stumbling across What to Do If the Doctor Says It’s Cancer, The Breast Cancer Guidebook, and Survivors: Ten First-Person Accounts by Women Who Beat Breast Cancer. But Kathleen found she couldn’t look at the books without starting to sweat and returned them a few days later, unopened.