‘What was so weird about the phone call?’ he asks on a sigh.
‘She sounded tired and kind of upset.’
‘So?’
I know nothing I will say will dent his determined indifference right now, and I don’t want to try. ‘Trust me, it was just weird.’
‘So it was weird.’ He pulls on a pair of sweatpants. ‘What’s for dinner?’
I keep thinking about Grace for the next few weeks, as the silence stretches on and on. The fourth Saturday of the month passes without comment; in a burst of manic energy, I pack a picnic and we walk to Phil Rizzuto Park, spread a blanket by the playground, although only Lucy goes on the swings, and even then only halfheartedly. But I got the whole family out, even Amy, which feels like a miracle.
As I lie on the blanket and nibble my soggy sandwich, I feel a flicker of happiness, like a fragile beam of light emerging from behind dark, dank clouds. This can be enough, surely – a sunny afternoon in May, my family around me, Kev’s thigh pressed to mine. Do I really need more than this? Am I going to be so greedy?
Two days later, while I’m at work, Grace calls again. This time she sounds awful, her voice no more than a croak.
‘Heather… I’m so sorry to ask you this… but please can you pick up Isaac from school?’
Nineteen
GRACE
I have cancer. Bad cancer, although is there any good kind? I think once upon a time, I might have thought so. I might have been so insensitive as to say it. Isn’t that a good kind of cancer? My own mother died of cancer, my father too, and I had no clue. No idea what it feels like to have your body betray you, to know that your very cells are corrupted, multiplying their evil with every breath you draw.
After I found the lump, I called right away. With my mother’s history I’d always been eagle-eyed for the signs, and yet the lump still seemed unbelievable, impossible. Dr. Stein did a biopsy, and then she called me in for the results. I knew right away, from the look on her face, the sad eyes, the droopy mouth, that it was bad news.
I just didn’t know how bad.
The words kept coming. Stage four, metastatic, invasive, aggressive. Awful words. And then more words about treatment, which were nearly as bad. No quick blitz with the radiation gun for me, no easy pill, swallow and smile. No, the course of treatment she recommended
was immediate chemotherapy, the kind that left you flattened, hair falling out, reduced to scrawny skin and bone, sleeping and sick. When the lump has shrunk I’ll have a double mastectomy, and I’ll need to have some lymph nodes removed because apparently the cancer is there, as well.
Afterward, when the numbness had worn off, Novocain of the heart, I twitched with impatience, the need to do something. Solve this before it got any worse. Act while I could. I hated the thought of the cancer growing inside me and I was just waiting, helpless, letting it take over.
Despite Dr. Stein’s dire news, I had to wait a whole week before my first chemotherapy treatment, an endless week where my entire life spun out in a bittersweet reel, and each day that slipped past felt far too precious.
Then the chemo began and I realized even more how precious that waiting period had been, when I’d felt well, when all I had was one stupid lump and no real symptoms. When I went to work, I made dinner, I read to Isaac. I stroked his hair, I felt the sunshine on my face, I looked like anyone else, busy and happy. Soon it would all start slipping away.
I didn’t tell anyone at work what was going on; I was naïve enough to think I might not need to. I’d read stories online, about how some people don’t even have side effects from the chemo. I thought I could simply take a couple of days off work – I was only scheduled treatment for the first two days of each week, for three weeks – and then soldier on. Obviously it would raise a few eyebrows, and I might have to tell someone in HR the truth, but I would survive. So much of this was about survival.
I didn’t tell Stella, either. I was tempted to, to have her exclaim and sympathize and enfold me in her arms, but at the same time I didn’t want to because I was afraid of being defined by my cancer, my neediness. She was already taking Isaac two afternoons a week, but it still felt like we were equals: two moms, both with our sons. I didn’t want to change that. And the truth was, I still thought I could control this, stay on top of it. Have my treatment and let no one be the wiser, not even Isaac, until I got the all-clear and life returned to the blissfully normal.
Yes, I was very naïve.
That first day I walked into New York Presbyterian feeling more alone than I ever had in my life. I wished I’d told Stella; I wanted her here with me now, holding my hand, telling me it was going to be okay. I think she would have done that for me, but of course it’s a whole new level of friendship, of painful intimacy, to walk with someone through cancer. To hold their hand.
Of course, I have other friends than Stella. There’s Alyssa, the mom of one of Isaac’s friends at his Montessori school. We keep in touch mostly by text these days; she’s hippyish and I’m uptight, and when our sons went to different schools, we drifted apart a little, although we manage to see each other once every couple of months. But I know she’s having marriage troubles and asking her to support me through this feels a little over the top.
During Isaac’s baby days I made friends with Lara, a high-powered lawyer, when we met in the pediatrician’s office. We were both there one morning as soon as it opened at 8 a.m., both dressed in power suits, balancing our babies on our slim-skirted knees, both checking our phones compulsively. We caught each other’s eye and each of us laughed shamefacedly; we started talking and for a couple of years we got together with some regularity. But then Lara’s husband got a job in Los Angeles, and while we talked about Isaac and me flying out for a visit, it never happened.
And then there’s been Dorothy, the one person I’ve really counted on, but she’s in Chicago now, and she has her own family to look after. I can hardly ask her to come help, as much as I want her to. So I do it alone, the way I’ve done just about everything, because at the end of the day, as a single mom, that’s so often how it happens.
I take Isaac to school and then I go to the hospital, my heart beating with heavy thuds, hands clammy and cold with nerves. I lay on a reclining chair, like the kind you’d lie in at the dentist, and am fitted with a cold cap, a strap-on helmet with gel coolant that could, just maybe, help prevent the worst of the hair loss. A kindly, smiling nurse hooks up the IV. ‘This may pinch a little,’ she says, as if a needle is the worst thing I am going to face this morning.
I watch the liquid, clear and viscous, going in. Drip, drip, drip. I tell myself it is mind over matter – how can I let this innocuous, watery-looking substance affect me at all? I breathe in and out slowly and tell myself to stay strong. I don’t feel anything yet; I almost convince myself I am going to be fine. Chemo, surgery, boom. I’ll be one of the survivors, pink ribbon and all. I’ll do the charity run. I’ll eat everything organic. Hell, I’ll even give up alcohol. And I’ll tell everyone my inspiring story.
Dr. Stein has assured me breast cancer has a high rate of survival. It has an eighty-five percent five-year survival rate of cases where it’s spread to the lymph nodes. The trouble is, five years doesn’t seem that long. Isaac would only be twelve. And where will I be?
The other knowledge that is lodging like a stone in my gut is that my mother survived five years, but only just, and those five years were a blur of struggle, treatment, and pain. Is that what I want the rest of my life to look like? Maybe I won’t have any choice.