Before I Go (6 page)

“Man, you should see your face.” He holds the cabin keys up at my eye level and jingles them. “Daisy, I’m joking. We’re all set. I can’t believe you bought it.”

I tilt my head and cock an eyebrow at him. The tension has fled my body, but my stomach is still roiling.

“OK, I guess it’s not that unbelievable,” he mutters.

Even though the trees are naked skeletons from their winter slumber, the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the cabin’s cold wall of windows is still striking. Jack is crouched in front of the fire, knocking the hot embers around with a metal poker. Flames pitifully spit from between the lengths of wood. “Wonder what I’m doing wrong,” he says, half under his breath. He’s palming his BlackBerry in the other hand, studying the screen where he’s Googled “how to make a fire.”

I smile at the back of his frustrated head from the couch, where I’m sitting on my feet and cupping a goblet of wine. I often revel in Jack’s inability to grasp such simple, everyday tasks because his
advanced intelligence intimidated me so greatly when we first met. So much so that in preparation for our third date, I had mentally practiced an entire soliloquy based on Dr. Helen Fisher’s science of love research that I had just studied in my Psychology of Human Sexuality class. I wanted so desperately for Jack to find me his intellectual equal.

“It’s really fascinating,” I said. We were sitting close on a worn velvet couch in an independent coffee shop, our mismatched china touching on the tiny table in front of us alongside a half-eaten cranberry muffin. His thigh was pressed against mine, and it unnerved me in the best possible way. “Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, she studied the brains of people in love and found that it’s actually just this heady mix of chemicals. Dopamine floods the posterior dordate causal—”

“Dorsal caudate,” Jack corrected me, smiling his crooked smile.

Heat crept into my face. “Right, that’s what I meant. And, um, the prefrontal cortex.” I was flustered from my mistake, and groped for the right words, determined to impress him. “It’s really a motivation, or reward system—not an emotion. Like a drug addiction. In fact, the brain chemistry of those in love is the same as people who are on cocaine. It stimulates the same neurotransmissions.”

“Transmitters,” he said gently.

“What?”

“Neurotransmitters.”

Ugh. Why did his undergrad degree have to be in biology? And what was I doing on a date with a double-doctoral student anyway? I was a lowly junior majoring in psychology—a degree I had realized most people settled on when they didn’t know what else to do because it sounds good—and I didn’t even know what a neurotransmitter was, exactly.

I took a sip of my coffee, hoping that my shaking hand wouldn’t betray me and slosh the hot liquid over the side, although I was already
positive that I had ruined my chances for a fourth date. I steeled myself and took a deep breath. I might as well finish my speech, I thought. There wasn’t much more damage I could do. Except when I searched my brain for all the other scientific terms and interesting factoids I had memorized, they weren’t there. My cheeks were positively on fire at this point, so I just sort of waved my hand and concluded my botched minilecture with this: “So basically, it’s not real, you know.”

Jack tilted his head, obviously amused—and confused—by my stupidity. “What isn’t?” he asked.

“Love.” I couldn’t look at him as I said the word. I was afraid the definition of it was written all over my face.

He was silent, and I felt rather than saw his body lean closer to mine. He smelled clinical, like someone who spent the day in close proximity to formaldehyde would, and I found it intoxicating. I glanced up at him and thought wildly for a second that he was going to kiss me, and my stomach flipped at the anticipation alone. Our second date had ended with our first kiss, and I was eager to pick up where we had left off. But this time, he stopped inches from my lips. “You have a crumb,” he said, wiping the side of my mouth with his thumb. He sat back, and I put my fingers up to my face where he had touched it.

“Thanks,” I said weakly. I looked up at him and he was grinning, as if he were having a secret laugh at my expense. My embarrassment flared, and an irritable “
What?
” escaped my lips.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “I just think Dr. Fisher might not know what she’s talking about.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, still fuming.

“Because,” he said, taking a bite of the muffin we were sharing, an avalanche of crumbs cascading down his shirtfront. But instead of finishing his thought, he changed the subject to something he had studied that day—influenza in fish or something equally ridiculous—and
left me reeling with the notion that I had just blown it with him. It wasn’t until months later that he confessed it was at that moment he knew he loved me.

My belly warms at the memory and I call to my husband from my perch. “Leave it. It’s plenty cozy in here.” He doesn’t turn and I know that he hasn’t heard me. Like a caveman, he is singularly focused on conquering fire.

Later, at the pine farm table in the kitchen, when I’m a little woozy from my two glasses of wine and so much unadulterated time with my husband, Jack interrupts our comfortable silence.

“Are you worried? About the cancer?”

The air leaves the room, like he’s announced “Voldemort!” in the middle of Hogwarts.

I stare at him and we have a mini conversation with our eyes.

So we’re talking about this?
mine ask.

We’re talking about this
, his answer.

I take a deep breath. “A little,” I say, and I’m relieved to admit it, since I’ve spent the last three days pretending otherwise.

“Me, too,” he says. He runs his index finger around the rim of his wineglass and stares into the plum liquid. I wait, and let him put his thoughts in order. When it comes to serious topics, Jack doesn’t like to speak until he knows exactly what he’s going to say. He takes a deep breath. “I know the lumpectomy isn’t a big deal, but what if you have to do chemo again? I graduate in three months and I thought we were going to finally start trying for a”—he clears his throat and looks at me—“a baby.”

Maybe Jack can surprise me, after all. “You did?”

“Yeah. I want a little dude to buy telescopes for and rocket kits and ant farms.”

“Or little dudette,” I say, raising my eyebrows at him.

“Or dudette,” he concedes, sighing heavily.

I laugh and the full sound comes straight from my gut.

A baby. Jack and I had always talked about becoming parents in that vague way that most couples do—“One day when we have kids . . .”—but we had never pinpointed a date. I assumed that Jack didn’t really think about it. That he had enough on his plate getting both his DVM and PhD concurrently. And then I thought when he graduated, he would have another checklist of excuses to delay parenthood—
Just let me get board certified. Maybe you should finish school. Let’s wait and see about the tumor.
Or maybe those excuses are mine.

But the thing is, sitting across from Jack and seeing the sweet eagerness in his eyes, the justifiable reasons to not have children melt away, and all I can see is a phantom tot with Jack’s flat feet and erratic wisps of my chocolate hair, Jack’s eagerness to laugh, and my eagerness to line up matchbox cars in parallel rows.

“That sounds . . . perfect,” I say. “I mean, everything but the ant farms.”

And we sit smiling at each other like two kids who have been locked in an FAO Schwarz overnight.

We make love again after dinner on a queen-size bed directly underneath a startled deer head. Then, as I brush my teeth at the bathroom sink, Jack rifles through our shared toiletry case. “Your contact solution?” I ask, knowingly.

“Yeah,” he says.

“In the side pocket of my shoulder bag.”

He grins and playfully swats my naked bottom as he strolls past me.

“You’re going to be a great mom.”

four

B
UY CAULK. I underline the sentence seven times to give it weight on the page. So now when I look at my list, it shouts at me:
buy some effing caulk!
Calm down,
I silently tell it.
Life is good. I’ll get the caulk.

But you have cancer, the paper says.

Whoa. Mind your own business.
I slide the list back into my shoulder bag and pull out my iPhone. I’m sitting in the Tate Student Center, killing the free hour between my Monday classes. I abhor this sixty minutes—it’s too short to go off campus and actually do anything productive.

I Google flooring companies in Athens and call the first one that pops up. A man who sounds like he’s been smoking longer than I’ve been alive says he can come to our house on Tuesday afternoon to give me a free estimate. I thank him and hang up, and then add the appointment to my calendar app.

That settled, I return my phone to its pocket and take my flash cards out of my bag. I stare at my black block handwriting on the index card: Matrixial Trans-Subjectivity Theory. The name of the psychoanalyst comes to me quickly:
Ettinger
. But I blank on the details. The only thing my brain seems to want to recall is the weekend spent with Jack. I’m still all pie-eyed and swoony for my husband, who now
also wants to be a dad. And the only obstacle standing in the way to the rest of our lives is a doctor’s appointment.

I make it through the rest of my classes—nervous energy escaping my body through toe tapping or knee jiggling—and find myself at the end of the day sitting, once again, in the uncomfortable blue chair in the exam room waiting for Dr. Saunders. I swallow down the guilt at not letting Jack come with me for this either.

“If you come, that means we expect it to be bad,” I reasoned to him in bed last night.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’re not even superstitious.”

“It’s not superstition!” I protested. “It’s like that book—
The Secret
? We have to put out into the universe what we want to happen. If I go alone, I’m announcing to the world that it’s no big deal. I’m conjuring good results.”

“What, are you Wiccan now? Seriously, Daisy, I’m coming,” he said.

I switched tactics. “You can’t miss clinic. If you miss too many days, Ling won’t let you graduate and I’m not going to have that on my shoulders.”

That, at least, was partly true—Jack had been working on his dual degree for seven years and I’d be damned if I was the reason he didn’t graduate on time. But the real reason I was fighting him so hard was that I hated to be seen as weak—especially by Jack. It’s why I didn’t let anyone go with me to my chemo appointments the first time around and why I preferred to be left alone when puking into the toilet or the plastic bucket beside my bed if I didn’t make it to the bathroom. “Shut the door!” I’d yell out between dry heaves to whoever was on sick-patient duty—Jack or Kayleigh or my mom.

“I think Ling will understand,” he said.

I switched back to my original argument, telling him if he did come with me, he was basically saying he wanted the results to be awful.

“You’re unbelievable,” he said, but I could tell I was wearing him down.

I shrugged. “It’s how I feel.”

Now, even though Jack was right and I don’t really believe in
The Secret
or superstition, I silently repeat the positive thoughts I’ve been harboring.

Tiny tumor.

No chemo.

Tiny tumor.

No chemo.

My stomach growls, but before I can reach into my bag for the carrots I brought, the door opens. I look up. Instead of woolly worms, I see the perfectly arched and plucked brows of the nurse who did my PET scan. Her name tag reads
LATIVIA
. “Follow me,” she says. “Dr. Saunders wants to speak with you in his office.” This is strange because I’ve never been to Dr. Saunders’ office. He must not need the whiteboard in the exam room this time, which can only mean that everything is better than expected. Sick people have to be in exam rooms. Healthy people sit in offices. But if that’s the case, why does it feel like I’m walking through air as thick as mud, as if I’m nine and have been summoned to the principal?

Lativia stops outside an open office door. The placard on the wall beside it announces:

Dr. Robin Saunders

Radiation Oncologist

I pause because I had never noticed before that Dr. Saunders has a girl’s first name. Then I walk in without the nurse and she closes the door behind me. Dr. Saunders is sitting in a large leather captain’s chair. He doesn’t look at me.

“Daisy,” he says, taking off his glasses and setting them on the desk.

“Dr. Saunders,” I reply, sitting down across from him.

Then his eyes make contact with mine and I see that they’re sad. They’re sad in the way that other people’s eyes are blue or brown or green. Dr. Saunders’ eyes are the color of sad. And that’s how I know what he’s going to say before he even says it.

“It’s not good.”

I feel heavy, as if all the clothes I’m wearing have been soaked in water.

He turns his computer screen toward me. “This is a normal PET scan,” he says. The image on the screen looks like a dark blue neck pillow with a few blurry patches of yellow, green, purple, and orange. It’s like a Rorshach test in color. Dr. Saunders picks up a pencil from his desk. “Picture the human body as a sliced loaf of bread—the PET basically shows us images of each piece. So this one happens to be a cross-section of the lungs.” He uses the pencil as a pointer. “Here’s the spinal cord, the lungs, the breasts.” He hits a few buttons on the keyboard in front of him and the image changes. “We can move up and down through the body section by section. See how the heart is glowing in this one? All the cells in your body typically eat some form of sugar. The hungriest ones eat the most, so the sugar molecules we injected into your body congregate where the hungriest cells are—like the heart, kidneys, and any areas where there are tumors or cancer cells.” He pauses and looks at me to make sure I’m following. I don’t say anything.

“So like I said, this is a normal PET. The heart is orange and yellow, but there’s not much in the lungs, liver, brain, etcetera.” He manipulates the keys again and another image pops up. “This,” he says, “is your PET scan.”