A Season in Hell (2 page)

I flew to Berlin next day for a full schedule of events. The following day, I was to leave Germany. I had a 7:00 a.m. TV appearance, inadvertently causing a hysterical brouhaha because I had worn a royal-blue dress and they had a royal-blue cloth backing on the set. The director insisted that a different curtain be found, refused to start filming until it was. I was growing nervous—I had to pick up my luggage at the hotel before catching my plane. In the end, I had two hours to spare before my noon flight. I had my driver take me past what had been Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. Entering East Berlin had always been an ordeal, whether one went by car, bus, train, or subway. Now we simply drove through the gate.

Although much of socialist East Berlin had been left to rot, especially around the wall, there was, farther in, a charm and peacefulness the West lacked. The West was a gigantic ad for stuff, a clamoring competition in neon stretching its neck as high as possible so as to be seen in the East, selling the virtues of cameras and cars, television sets and radios. East Berlin was in many ways a quiet little town. Blocks of apartments were lined with trees; there were few cars, few shops (and no neon signs), and few people. It was quiet, unmanicured. Now that the wall was down, there was construction everywhere—huge cranes, rutted streets, rot revealed. The work might lead to a richer future, but the place was raw at the moment.

When I boarded the plane for my trip home, I thought I had never before in my life been so tired. My fatigue felt serious, like the fatigue of illness. I told the cabin assistants not to wake me for dinner, and slept all the way back.

I had no time to recover, however. As soon as I landed, I was launched into promotion in New York, speaking at
Newsday
’s Book and Author Luncheon in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and giving print and TV interviews. Dr. Langner examined me and found nothing wrong, but she recommended an ear, nose, and throat specialist. I made an appointment with him for May 4, two weeks off, then continued to do promotion. I spoke at Sarah Lawrence College, did a host of radio and TV interviews. On Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, I flew to Terre Haute to speak on
Measure for Measure
at Indiana State University. The following week, I had interviews in Washington, D.C., and spoke at the Smithsonian. Next I flew to Boston, and late Friday I returned to New York.

On Monday, May 4, I saw the ENT specialist. Like Edie, he diagnosed an allergy, and prescribed the same nasal spray. I told him it had not helped. He said I wasn’t using it properly and gave me new instructions. I happily accepted this correction, even though my drone was sawing through everything he said. The week after, I flew to Philadelphia, then Toronto, where I addressed a large crowd at the university. I was introduced by Michele Landsberg, the brilliant columnist for the
Toronto Star
. Michele, a friend of Esther Broner’s, has become a friend of mine as well; she joined me for dinner, bringing a group of lively, warm people. Dinners like this, with intelligent, engaging conversation, were major joys in my life. I briefly forgot my dread.

On Mother’s Day, my kids took me for brunch in SoHo, but the dread was back. I knew I was not well. The sense that I had cancer hung upon me like an invisible black veil that only I was aware of, even though it occasionally occurred to me that I was inventing it. I said nothing; I was just silently terrified, unable to explain the malaise that permeated my being. Since I did not feel legitimate in speaking about it, I hardly spoke at all. Like a lover obsessed with someone married or otherwise unsuitable, I could not talk about what occupied me, but could think of nothing else. I walked through interviews and speeches like a zombie. I gave a talk at the YWCA in New York, did some interviews, and then flew to Chicago for more readings and interviews. At the end of the week I received an honorary degree from Hofstra, my undergraduate alma mater, and gave a speech; even there, I felt isolated with my terrible secret, enervated. The next week, there were more interviews, and a book party at the lovely town house of my agent, Charlotte Sheedy. A week later, I flew out to the West Coast for more promotion.

Early in June, I went to Boston for the semiannual meeting of the Harvard Graduate Society Council, an informal body intended mainly to keep graduate alumni involved with the university. As I was dressing for dinner at my Cambridge hotel, for some reason I placed my fingertips on the soft tissue just above the clavicle on the left side of my chest. I felt two small, hard lumps. The dread leaped up, then fell still. What had been only a feeling was now fact.

This trip being at my own expense, I could take some time for personal pursuits. I wanted to see Barbara Greenberg, a close friend for almost thirty years. Barbara, a poet who lives in Boston, offered to drive me around Lincoln, where I had set
Our Father
, the novel I was writing. I had often visited that beautiful town during my years at Harvard, but I needed more detailed background for the novel. Barbara and I spent a grand day visiting churches and gazing at mansions.

Barbara’s husband, Harold, is a surgeon, and over the decades of her marriage she has picked up considerable medical knowledge. So as we relaxed over drinks at her house, I asked her to feel the lumps and tell me what she thought. She did; she frowned and said, “Show them to Harold tonight.” Harold came in as we were about to go out to dinner, and I repeated my request. He felt them, frowned, also said, “Show them to your doctor.” The concern and dismay they tried to hide reinforced my sense that the lumps were cancer.

As soon as I returned to New York, I made an appointment with the ENT physician I had seen before. He ordered a CT scan. As I was leaving his office, he said, “I am very sorry for you, Ms. French.” I deduced he didn’t need a CT scan to know cancer when he felt it. The scan, taken on Thursday, June 11, showed a growth on my esophagus. I was given the results on Friday.

Sick at heart, I flew to Dublin on Sunday, to give the keynote address at the Joyce Symposium. I love Ireland, and I’ve walked through Dublin often, on Bloomsdays and other visits; and this was to be a special visit—President Mary Robinson was to introduce me. But after giving my speech and attending the Bloomsday Banquet (at Trinity this year, rather than Dublin Castle), I left. I did not stay to enjoy the city or the rest of the symposium, as I usually do. I was too anxious and frightened, and I needed to make plans for treatment.

The day after I returned, I went to St. Luke’s–Roosevelt for a biopsy conducted by the ENT specialist. He called even before the sample had been biopsied. There was no question in his mind: the mass in my esophagus was malignant. He wanted to operate, to get rid of it as soon as possible; how about Monday? The idea that he could rid me of this cancer that easily and quickly very much appealed to me, and I agreed. But I also called Edie Langner, who said that was rushing things. Wait, she advised. Consult other doctors. I’ll get some names for you.

On Friday, the next day, I was supposed to fly to Stratford, Ontario, to give a talk at the Shakespeare Theatre Festival, but the biopsy had left my throat too sore for speech. I realized this on Thursday afternoon, a little late to find a replacement. I felt terrible at letting the Stratford people down, especially at the last minute, and searched my mind. Then it came to me: Gloria! It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a Shakespeare scholar; everyone would love meeting the most famous feminist in the world, who is also a graceful, intelligent speaker and a lovely person. If she was free, if she was willing, she could give the speech I’d written—if she wanted to use it. She might even enjoy it: I had analyzed
Measure for Measure
with special attention to its several endings, in which two wronged women clamor for justice. Both have been harmed by Antonio, the surrogate for the true ruler, the Duke, who has been away. The women charge Antonio with what we would call sexual harassment and rape. But what is astonishing is that the arguments Antonio and the Duke (acting as male authority) use to silence and dismiss the women are exactly the same as those used by the men of the Senate committee against Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings.

I called Gloria, who said she was pleased to do this, especially since I had never before asked her for anything. Not a word about her rare free weekend sacrificed, or the fact that she would have to leave for Canada the very next day. She went and was, of course, a sensation; the Stratford audience and officials were delighted. On top of that, she donated the entire honorarium to a cause she supports. This is one example of why so many people consider her a saint.

The biopsy showed I had squamous cell cancer, a slow-growing type that grows in organ linings. I later discovered that the mass the ENT man found was not the primary cancer but a
metastasis
. Edie had saved me from a terrible error. If the ENT specialist had operated on the tumor he found, he would not have removed the entire cancer and might have damaged my voice box, since the cancer was touching the nerve leading to the vocal cord. I never returned to that doctor.

The soreness in my throat faded in two days, and on Monday I went ahead with my plans to fly to Amsterdam for the 1992 Feminist Book Fair, where I was to speak. I enjoyed the week at the fair as much as I could enjoy anything in that time. I met Marleen Gorris (who in 1996 would win an Academy Award for
Antonia’s Line
but who had already made the deeply impressive
A Question of Silence
, which many people believe to be the greatest feminist film ever made). I went through the motions of debating Fay Weldon (a dear woman with whom I have no significant differences). With my friends Annaville Petterson and Nettie Blanken, I walked out to Marken lighthouse, a beautiful spot on Lake Ysselmeer, the former Zuyder Zee. It was too long a walk for me, and I was grateful when we stopped for beer and sandwiches on the way back.

I was moving about in a kind of stupor, wondering if this was the last time I would see this friend or that, the last time I would visit this lovely city, the last time I would be an apparently healthy person in public. And indeed, that was the case.

T
HE DAY AFTER MY
return from Amsterdam, I had another CT scan and began visiting oncologists. Edie recommended a lung specialist at Sloan-Kettering, an oncologist at Columbia Presbyterian, and a female oncologist in private practice. My children accompanied me, to help me decide among them. The Sloan-Kettering doctor told me the mass that had been detected was not the primary cancer and that it was necessary to discover the primary site before treatment could proceed. He suspected it was in the lung, but he could not find it on my chest X-rays or CT scan.

All of these doctors treated me like a responsible, intelligent person. None of them was able to spot the primary site of the cancer on my X-rays, which I now carried with me (Sloan-Kettering had lost my first set). Still, they made very different impressions on me. The Columbia oncologist, an extremely likable man, seemed so eager to make me better that he felt sure he could do so rather easily. He shrugged off the problem of the primary site too cheerfully to arouse my confidence. The oncologist in private practice could not get past her annoyance at our lateness (Jamie and I had been stuck in traffic for half an hour). She showed no interest in my case, or in how to find the primary site, and was completely pessimistic about my chances of survival. The S-K lung specialist, Elliot Strong, was kind and met my eyes when either of us spoke. Beyond that, he would do something that made me trust and respect him deeply.

During the weeks when I visited doctors, I was rarely alone. Someone or several people—one or more of my children, Charlotte Sheedy, Esther Broner, Gloria Steinem, LeAnne Schreiber, Barbara Greenberg—went with me to all my doctors’ appointments, CT scans, the biopsy; one or two came to have dinner with me every night. On July 2, the coven held a meeting, our usual solstice meeting, delayed because of my trip to Holland. It felt, however, like an emergency meeting dedicated to me.

At coven meetings we gather gradually, chat over drinks, then have a formal dinner. Candles are spread around the meeting place; the lights are low. After dinner we move to soft chairs, and then someone begins. She will describe a problem with which she needs help—finding direction toward some goal, or a personal transformation she wishes for but is not achieving. We listen intently; we try to rephrase what is said, to be sure we understand what is wanted, needed. Then we discuss the qualities necessary to reach the desired end. After that comes the magical part of the evening, as we surround the seeker and call down upon her head whatever she needs of spirit, courage, and clarity to accomplish her desire. I say this is magical because it feels enchanted: the wisher feels enveloped by goodwill and love; the givers feel empowered by a wave of largesse and love. And in truth, we have had some success in helping each other to fulfill desires and overcome difficulties.

This evening, my friends surrounded me with their bodies and spirits as if they were electrically charged. They changed the very air, calling on all benevolent energies and spirits to surround me, heal me.

The next day, my son, Rob, drove me to my country house. My head was not functioning properly; I felt so dazed that I feared I would have an accident if I tried to drive. The children—Jamie, Rob, and Barbara—had planned a large party that weekend. They called it a going-to-the-hospital Fourth of July party; I called it a farewell party. A host of my friends and my children’s friends attended; the kids did the planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. Many people stayed overnight, and at its end I felt surrounded by love and good wishes, deeply cared about, unusual for me.

Another week went by, and nothing happened. Edie calmly insisted that no one knew anything definite about cancer and no one could predict my future. She refused to assume either that I was doomed or that I would recover. But I was anxious: time was passing, the cancer was growing, and no one was doing anything. I believed that no one would act unless I did (shades of my childhood sense of total responsibility for our family!), that the doctors were unsure and therefore paralyzed. So I telephoned Dr. Strong, who had most impressed me medically and humanly, saying I was concerned about the delay and wanted some action on my case. He told me to come in and see him. Charlotte went with me.