I Regret Everything (15 page)

—You express yourself well, Spall. A real way with words.

When he had something practical to do, Edward P was most in his element. He was on a mission. We drove up Farragut, turned onto Wakefield, and then onto Crooked Brook heading back toward the train station, but when there was no sign of my pursuer my father lost steam.

—Spall, he said, as we headed back to the house, this fellow who was chasing you, did he say anything?

—We didn't have a conversation.

—He just started chasing you?

—For no reason I could tell other than wanting to rape and murder me.

—Have you been taking the meds?

—Lower doses, but yes.

—Then don't take this the wrong way, please.

An imploring look came over his face, like he thought I might grasshopper out of the car or do some other kind of drama queeny thing.

—Uh-oh. What?

—Are you sure you really saw anyone?

The safe feeling curdled. My father was looking at me the way someone sizes up a feral dog. Is this thing going to bite? I wasn't going to bite. A sensation in my chest compressed my lungs before migrating to my throat where it made speech impossible. You're literally running for your life, you barely escape, and your father, your protector, the person who is supposed to be the impenetrable wall that keeps harm at bay, basically implies you've lost your mind or want attention.

—Yes, yes, I croaked. Someone was after me. Someone was there.

—Okay, he said, but not like he believed it.

—I don't know, I said. The crippling woe of being misunderstood was slowly eclipsed by feverish anger. Maybe it was my imagination. And what was I angry at? My father? My brain chemistry?

—Are you joking? Because if you're joking, it's not funny.

—There was a man. The next time I won't tell you. Maybe he'll kill us all.

So fur- / ther a- / way now / than I / once was.

In quiet frustration he exhaled but didn't say anything. For another ten minutes we drove around the neighborhood. It was two in the morning. Edward P was wiped and still working through the couple of Scotches he had downed at dinner. But from the way he looked at me there was some concern I was going to have another episode. Silence is the best strategy in these situations since trying to convince someone you're not insane is impossible. It was a tactical mistake to say anyone had been out there in the first place.

Back at the house I washed my face and peeled my clothes off. In gym shorts and a tee shirt I stood outside my door and listened. Edward P's door was closed. The door to Marshall's room was slightly ajar. He had fallen asleep with a reading light on and the script for the play he was doing on his chest. Standing at the closed window sealed off from the threat but not the consuming fear I looked toward the road. There was no one out there. But there had been. There had been.

I lay in bed and thought about Edward P and Hurricane Katrina and Marshall nestled in their beds and how safe they all felt. I wanted someone on top of me. To feel his weight, his thighs on my thighs, his stomach pressed against mine, to hear him breathe, smell him. I wanted him to protect me from everything out there and wondered if a fraction of this was possible with all the hookups and bad sex and date rapes a person had to endure.

I lost my virginity at a ski resort in France during spring break my junior year. I like the verb “lost” in that context. Like you left it behind a radiator. A girl at my school had invited me on holiday with her family and the guy was her older brother. His name was Massimo and he was a business student at the University of Turin. What do you do when someone tells you you're
Bella, bella
in this sexy Italian accent while he's licking your armpit? Mostly I remember trying not to laugh. He was sweet but inexperienced and the whole thing ended nearly as soon as it started. There was some pain but no drama. Massimo wanted to do it again the following night but I wasn't into it. I wanted to rest in Mr. Best's embrace.

The next morning Edward P awakened me. He was already in his work uniform of a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. Sharp aftershave cut the cool morning air.

—Would you like to tell me what happened last night?

—Someone chased me.

—I just received a call from a man who said he was a New York City police officer.

It all came rushing back, the cab ride, the crowd, the massed horses surrounding me on Third Avenue. I told my father that I was trying to protect someone. In a moment of clarity that can occur in that instant between sleep and wakefulness it occurred to me that I had wanted to do something good. This I mentioned.

—Spall, he said, that's not your responsibility. You might've gotten killed. And those people you threw yourself in the middle of? They're the ones who'd murder us in our beds if they could. Now I don't think that's going to happen but let's be clear about what's real and what's a projection of an overactive imagination.

—Did you report what happened to the local police?

—I called them when we got home.

Was that true? Oh god, I don't know. When he left the room I lay on my side. Consumed with a deepening sense of the great distance between here and a future I cared about, there was a vast longing that seemed to take on corporal form and lie at my side, enveloping me, soft breath whispering isolation. Exhausted, there would be no rest. Homesick, I had no home. I thought about calling Gully but that was complicated. He had his own life and if all I ever did were bitch and moan he would dread hearing from me.

Ten minutes later I was still in bed when my father stuck his head in the room.

—Spall, let's go. We're going to miss the 8:25.

B
eth the Nurse inserted the needle into a plump vein in the back of my hand. In her early forties, she was a friendly woman to whom, because of my shaky emotional condition, I ascribed healing qualities. Beth told me they'd had good results with this protocol. At that moment I felt a deep love for Beth who, with her magic needles, was going to summon more life.

A transparent bag of industrial-strength cyclophosphamide dangled from an IV pole and the clear liquid flowed into my vein to begin its seek-and-destroy mission.
Rogue cells beware—you're going down!
(When thinking of my cancer cells, I was careful to maintain a posture of aggressive hostility.)

I had arrived in the oncologist's office pumped like a quarterback playing in his first Super Bowl, torqued, battle-ready. Give it to me, I implored. Whatever you have, I can take it. No, I can't just take it, I
want
it, okay? I fucking
want
it. That was what I was thinking as I prepared myself. In my head I was a Marine at Parris Island,
sir, yes, sir!
I was a paratrooper leaping from a plane, an astronaut blasting into space. All the images spinning through my mind were military because I was at war and would
not
be defeated.

This arduous mental activity occurred while I was seated in a green vinyl-covered chair from which I was not able to move for three hours. And I was not alone as the inner battle raged. I was in a room with five other people, three men and two women who ranged in age from their thirties to their seventies, none of whom were speaking to each other, all of whom were having chemotherapy, engaged in their own quiet battles.

Three hours.

Three long hours absorbing poison. But I brought a book and it was not just any book. It was Martin Gilbert's (“Magiste­rial,”
The Guardian
) biography of Winston Churchill. A big, imposing hardcover, a bulky stack of pages suggestive of both Churchill's impressive physical form and the length of his ninety-one-year life. A Churchillian who had devoured his entire oeuvre, my father had given it to me as a high school graduation gift and it lay open on my lap. This book was a talisman, a Bible. Although Churchill had hardly been right about all the issues of his day, I always admired the man. To anyone facing long odds, his confidence was rousing.

I read several chapters and after an hour was ready for a break. But I couldn't go anywhere since I was pinned to the chemo bag. In the course of my voluminous post-diagnosis reading, I discovered that visualization is a popular new age healing technique. It was very simple. One conjured an image that would have a positive effect on one's state of mind. Then biology took over. This was a phenomenon known as the “mind-body connection” and it was making inroads with the medical community. For those who doubt the reality of the mind-body connection, I submit: A man is shown a picture of an attractive naked woman. He gets an erection. Case closed.

It's actually more complicated than that.

But not much.

I closed my eyes and imagined a scenario.

A beach, white sand and tropical, was invaded by cancerous gremlins that ran around screeching madly, drinking rum, smashing into each other, scratching, clawing, humping, humping, humping. A tsunami appeared in the distance. As the wave rolled toward the shore, it gained in size and force, building, growing, one could hear it, louder,
LOUDER
. By the time it smashed into the beach, it was overwhelming. The gremlins? Gasping. Choking. Drowning. Another wave appeared, more powerful than the first. The remaining gremlins, already soaked and decimated, cringed. Their pitiful remnants were carried out to the sea, dead, dead, dead, and vanquished forever.

When the cyclophosphamide drained out of its bag, Beth reloaded with fludarabine.

Drip, drip, drip.

More war. More gremlins, more waves.

Two hours later I was done. Beth gave me compazine to combat the nausea that, I was informed, would be arriving on the evening train. Flumes of toxicity flowing through battered pipes, I arrived at the office in the early afternoon.

My evening with Spaulding wrestled for primacy with abject fear over what havoc the chemotherapy might cause. It was impossible to concentrate. Had I done the right thing in telling her about my mother? All I wanted was to stop whatever was happening between us from going any further. If she thought I was whiny and self-pitying, so be it.

A sugar buzz seemed like a good way to counteract my pervasive sense of post-chemo entropy. I was biting into a peanut butter sandwich in the communal kitchen when my colleague Amanda Carr appeared. A litigator, Amanda was pale in the manner of someone born to wander the moors and ten pounds overweight but with the good sense to be wearing a loose-fitting skirt suit with a billowy white blouse. Her ginger hair was cut in the efficient style of a women's basketball coach. We greeted each other with the easy familiarity of combat veterans. Many late nights during our early tenure with the firm had seen us doing a pitiless partner's bidding over cold sausage pizza in the bowels of the night.

“What happened to your face?”

She dipped a spoon into a yogurt and waited. I had been so absorbed in my health crisis I had completely forgotten that a souvenir of last night's events was taped to my cheek.

“A friend's cat. Bastard.”

Amanda chuckled. Did she have a clue what was going on with me? Only if she was a mind reader. None of my colleagues had a clue because this was not the kind of news one shared in an email blast. Could I share this with Amanda? I could not.

“Best, I hate to ask.”

Would I help fight world poverty and come to the African Horizons fundraiser, tickets were only several hundred dollars each, George Clooney was going to read a message from a jailed activist, and we'll all go home feeling better about ourselves.

It was a relief to consider Africa for a few seconds. Who wouldn't want to help? Global poverty was a nightmare. Unfortunately, the size and intractability of the problem meant the solution would not be found in our lifetimes and Amanda's cheerful obliviousness overrode the modest effects of the peanut butter. Her optimism in the face of such futility enervated me. Almost immediately my ghastly situation reasserted itself and came barreling down the veldt, displacing the elephants and lions and erupting once again at the center of my consciousness. One had to ration optimism. It wasn't as if an unlimited supply existed.

“Best . . . ?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”

“How many tickets can I put you down for?”

“Two,” I said, knowing I would not go.

Pleased with my altruism, Amanda removed a diet soda from the refrigerator and poured the contents into a glass. She took a sip and fixed her earnest eyes on me.

“It certainly puts our problems in perspective, doesn't it?”

“Our problems are nothing compared to those faced by Africans.” I hoped that sounded sincere. I meant it although at the moment it was hard to care about Africa.

“You know the life expectancy for a male in Swaziland is thirty-three?”

That barely registered because Africa reminded me of Isabel. That's where she was going when we parted, to study polygamists. My thoughts rocketed back to Iowa City, the night she asked me to leave with her, and the timid decision I made. I couldn't taste the peanut butter, couldn't hear Amanda, such was the morass of self-loathing that engulfed me.

“Best, where are you? You're spacing out.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Whatever problems you're having, you are not Africa.”

Getting into the semantics of whether my situation was equivalent to the condition of Africa led to a blind alley and I wasn't looking for sympathy anyway. Had Amanda wanted to waste time gabbing about our fellow associates or parsing the latest perfidy of some partner I would have been happy to oblige but her line of conversation so disturbed my thoughts that I had to excuse myself.

“What's wrong with you?” Reetika stood at my desk with a hand on an angled hip, her extensive dance training at work. I was calculating the days I had left on Earth but told her everything was perfect. “You look like you have an upset stomach or something. Want a Rolaid?” I said thanks, but no. “Claude Vendler, Mrs. Vendler's nephew? He called again. He wants to talk about the sale of his aunt's home.” I nodded and said I'd get back to him. When she asked if it would be all right to leave early for a theater audition I told her just get someone to cover. In gratitude (and with enviable confidence), she promised me house seats.