Before I Go (7 page)

I stare at the screen. It looks as though it’s on fire.

“Daisy, the cancer is everywhere. You’ve got mets in your liver, a few in your lungs. Your bones. And even . . .” He falters for a minute, and this sliver of emotion reminds me that he is delivering this news
to me, about me, and not just teaching a class on PET scans. He takes a deep breath, punches some more keys, and the image changes into a clear cross-section of a brain. There is a large glowing orb at the bottom of the picture. “You have a tumor in the back of your brain the size of an orange.”

My hand reaches up to the back of my skull. I prod the skin beneath my hair, looking for a piece of fruit. I don’t feel anything.

“I don’t understand,” I say sluggishly. My mouth feels like I’ve been chewing molasses. “It’s only been a year. All my six-month checks were clear.”

He shrugs and slowly shakes his head. “I’m so, so sorry. Unfortunately this happens sometimes. A patient goes from six-month checkups to annuals and the cancer sneaks in. Yours is particularly aggressive.”

Aggressive. The word triggers that football cheer and I can’t help but silently chant:
Be! Aggressive!
You’ve got to be
aggressive
!

Brains are funny that way. The memories they conjure. The tumors they grow.

“Daisy, I know this is a lot to take in, but it’s not all bad. You’re asymptomatic, which is a good thing. It means you feel good, and you could continue feeling good.”

He’s wrong. I don’t feel good.

“And the tumor is in a good spot. Easily removable. Of course, neurosurgery has its own dangers, so you’ll want to talk to the surgeon and weigh the risks. Then, if you want, we could do radiation, make sure we zap any other cancer cells in the brain. For the rest, we can try chemo, see if anything responds to that. We’ll look into clinical trials—”

“You’re saying I can be cured, that you can cure”—I wave toward the glowing screen—“all this?”

He puts the pencil he’s been playing with back on his desk. “I don’t—” He stops. Tries again. “I’m not—” Another break. He sounds
like a skipping record. “No.” He scans his desk with his eyes, as if the words he wants to say are written on a piece of paper somewhere and he just needs to find it. “I’m saying we can . . . prolong things.”

“Prolong things.” I have become a parrot. “For how long?”

“It’s hard to say,” he says.

“How long if I don’t do anything?”

“Hard to say.”

“There must be statistics.”

“I don’t work in statistics,” he says. “You’re not a statistic.”

“Dr. Saunders.” I will him to look me in the eyes. “Tell me how long.”

He takes a deep breath and puts his glasses back on. “Textbook for stage four is 20 percent survival rate.” He pauses, glances at me, then back down at his desk. “Yours is fairly . . . advanced. If I had to guess . . .” He looks at me again.

I nod.

“Four months. Maybe six.”

I quickly do the math. June. Or August.

“But listen, people can live for years. It’s not unheard of. And of course there are complementary therapies, diet, meditation—”

I stand up and he stops talking. I need to leave the room, but my legs suddenly feel hollow, like two straws holding up a potato, and I don’t think they’ll support my weight. I sit back down.

I stare at Dr. Saunders’ furious eyebrows, while the last two words he spoke run on a loop in my head. Diet. Meditation. Diet. Meditation. Diet. Meditation. I tried that already, I want to say, but I don’t have a voice. So I think it instead. I list out all the things I’ve done the past four years to prevent a moment exactly like this one. Yoga. I hate yoga. Roasting, broiling, steaming, and sautéing every vegetable known to man. I hate vegetables. Breathing exercises. Preparing 1,467 smoothies. Give or take. Drinking 1,467 smoothies. Give or take. Eating blueberries. Eating pomegranates. Drinking green tea.
Drinking red wine. Taking fish oil. Taking coenzyme Q10. Avoiding secondhand smoke like the plague.

And yet, here I am.

I stand up again on my straw legs. Dr. Saunders stands, too. Reaches out to me.

“I need to leave,” I say.

“Daisy, let me call someone. Jack. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

I shake my head. Jack. There’s not enough space for him in my brain right now, so I push his name away and try to focus on the information at hand.

An orange.

Four months.

So, so sorry.

“Daisy,” Dr. Saunders tries again. He’s now standing, too, and he reaches for the phone.

“Don’t,” I say. I glance at my watch. 5:52. This day is almost over, but there is still so much I need to do. I mentally force steel into my extremities, lift my chin up, and sling my shoulder bag across my chest. Then I meet Dr. Saunders’ gaze and say: “I have to go buy caulk.”

I STIFLE A giggle all the way to the parking lot, and when I finally slide into the front seat of my car, I let out a loud guffaw. Though I’m looking at my steering wheel, I can only see Dr. Saunders’ face—his bushy brows forming half-moons over his bulging eye sockets, his mouth a perfect O. His countenance was hilariously frozen. Shocked into silence by my declaration.

He thought I said “cock” instead of “caulk.”

The word hung in the air, and when I realized the source of his
bewildered confusion, I mumbled something about my won’t-shut windows that were really quite beautiful but completely impractical and quickly walked out the door of his office, closing it behind me.

My shoulders convulse uncontrollably and I feel a rivulet of tears meander their way down my cheeks. This sets off another wave of laughter, because I’m crying but not really crying. Not the way I’m sure most people would cry after getting the news I’ve gotten.

The cock/caulk conundrum has caused me to be the very definition of hysterical.

And all I can think is: “I can’t wait to tell Jack.”

HERE’S SOMETHING THAT I didn’t know until today: The Home Depot offers a gratuitous selection of caulk. I stand in front of the display, staring at the labels.

All-purpose

Latex Acrylic

Clear Door & Window

Silicone Kitchen & Bath

White Window & Door

Supreme Silicone

If I look at them hard enough, maybe one of the tubes will jump out into my hand. Or reveal itself in a quiet but urgent whisper:
Daisy! I’m the one for you!
When it becomes apparent that won’t happen, I start to get annoyed. What is the difference in the recipe of each caulk that warrants an entirely new product and label? It’s the same way I feel when I shop for toothpaste. Why are there so many goddamned choices?

“Can I help you, miss?” A man in an orange apron is staring at me. He has crinkly eyes and a full mustache-and-beard combo. My dad had a mustache-and-beard combo. Before he was hit by a pickup truck
at an intersection while riding his Cannondale. The collision caused his head to mop the pavement, which removed his ill-fitting helmet, and then most of his skin and facial hair. I was three when he died. A faint memory of him resurfaces at times—a man is nuzzling my neck, his sour breath familiar, his wiry whiskers scratching my chin.

I look at this man’s face and wonder if his beard would feel the same against my skin. I take a step toward him. Then I stop myself.

“I need caulk,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

I register the look on his face as one of confusion, and wonder if he, too, thinks I’ve said “cock.”

Then I realize that I didn’t say caulk at all. I actually said, “I need toothpaste.”

And I may have added “Dad.” As in: “I need toothpaste, Dad.” A giggle bursts out of my mouth and I clasp my hand over it.

“Are you OK, ma’am?”

I consider his question. No. I’m not OK. And I feel compelled to tell him the reason why. To explain my erratic behavior.

“I’m hungry.”

WHEN I PULL into the driveway at 8:37, Jack’s car isn’t there. My phone has rung seven times—eight? Ten? Really, I’ve lost track—since I left Dr. Saunders’ office, but I’ve been letting the tune play on, nodding my head to the rhythm of it, as if it’s just another familiar song on the radio. I jam my foot onto the parking brake, step out in the chilled, hollow night and walk around to the trunk, where the bagboy at Kroger helped me stash more groceries than Jack and I could possibly eat in a month.

There’s a movement in the bushes to my left.

I look over, trying to make out the shape of a squirrel or possum,
but I’m blinded by our porch light and can’t see into the pitch black untouched by its glow.

Then a hulking form comes into view and I gasp.

“Daisy.”

“Holy shit, Sammy.” I put my hand over my rapidly beating heart “You scared the heck out of me.”

“Sorry,” she says. “I thought you saw me when you pulled up.”

“What are you doing out here in the dark?” I ask, noticing that her house is shrouded in shadows. Not one light is on.

“I just got home from my shift,” she says, and now that my eyes have adjusted, I can see her shiny bike locked up to the railing of her porch steps. “Must have forgotten to leave some lights on. I was in a hurry when I left this morning ’cause mom called and she just talks and talks and talks. Never can get her off the phone. Finally, I was like, ‘Mama! Gotta get to work.’ She still talked for at least ten or more minutes. Luckily, boss was out of the office when I finally got to the station.”

She steps closer and I take in her uniform—government-issued blue cargo pants, black shoes, gray short-sleeved button-up with a patch on the arm that reads: Athens Clarke County Police Department. A belt cinches at her waist, and she looks like a gray and blue snowman: three round segments stacked atop one another to create a person. Sammy’s a cop. Well, a bike cop. I don’t know if that means she’s a full-fledged police officer, or a junior one—like a Cub Scout who hasn’t graduated to Boy Scouts yet. I’ve never had the heart to ask her. She spends most of her time ticketing drunk college students, and arresting them if they’re underage. I asked her once after she handcuffed someone how she then transported them to the station. She said that she called for a backup patrol car, but all I could picture was her somehow strong-arming these inebriated kids onto her handlebars and joyriding them all the way to their incarceration. The comical image has stuck with me.

“Having company this weekend?” she asks, eyeing the plastic shopping bags nearly spilling out of my open trunk.

“Nope.” I scan my purchases and I can’t recall even one thing that I bought—as if I were on Ambien and sleep-shopping. I scramble for an explanation. “I went to the store without a list.” As I say it, it hits me that I have never gone shopping without a piece of paper dictating what I will buy. Ever. This tiny rebellion thrills me.

“Ah,” she nods. “I make the same mistake when I go to the store hungry, which seems to be every time I go. Doughnuts, fried chicken, those little peanut-butter-stuffed pretzels . . . I just buy everything in sight.” She gestures to her doughy figure and grins. “Obviously.”

Sammy comments on her weight often, as if she learned as a chubby kid on the playground that survival skill of getting to the punch line before anyone else could. Typically her self-deprecation makes me cringe. I never know what to say—should I laugh along with her? Placate her with denial? I often just change the subject to smooth over any awkwardness I might feel.