People Who Knew Me (20 page)

The phone rang once, twice, three times, then:

“This is Gabe.” His voice was deep and strong. He spoke in public with level-ten confidence, I was sure.

“Gabe,” I said. “This is Emmy. From college. Emily Overton.”

The five seconds of silence that followed felt like five minutes. I squeezed my free hand so tightly that a couple of knuckles cracked.

“Emmy Overton?” He said it with the type of surprised enthusiasm I'd hoped for. I relaxed my hand. The bartender brought me another beer.

“It's me,” I said. I wanted to blurt out a coherent explanation for why I was calling, but my throat was clenched shut by nervousness.

“Are you finally ready for that date I offered eight years ago?” he asked.

I laughed, thankful for the broken ice. He didn't only remember me, but he remembered wanting to date me. There was no pause in the calculation of how many years it had been; he knew.

“Sometimes a girl needs time to think about such a thing,” I joked.

He laughed.

“It's good to hear from you,” he said. “What the hell are you up to?”

“Well, at this moment, I'm just starting my second beer.”

I took a sip.

“Sounds like a better Thursday than the one I'm having.”

“Trust me,” I said, “I'd much rather be behind a desk right now.” This declaration wouldn't make sense to an employed person, so I explained: “I got laid off last week.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I worked at an ad agency. They're notorious for layoffs. Lots of client turnover, that kind of thing. It's amazing I lasted as long as I did. That was my first real job out of college, if you can believe it. So much for loyalty to employees.”

He was quiet. I was saying too much.

“I've heard ad agencies can be brutal,” he said, straining to contribute to the conversation I was dominating.

“Anyway,” I said uncomfortably, “that's actually why I'm calling.”

He was quiet again.

“I may have heard through the grapevine that you're hiring right now.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right.” There was a subtle disappointment in his voice, like he'd wanted to believe I was calling for a reason other than hitting him up for a job. “What grapevine might this be?”

“I can't reveal that information,” I said with false seriousness.

He coughed and said, in a suddenly professional tone, “It's an administrative assistant position in the international sales department. Coordinating travel arrangements, handling expense reports, scheduling appointments, receptionist duties.”

He said it like he'd explained the position to a hundred other people. He may have already had someone in mind to hire. I just said, “Uh-huh.”

“What did you do at the ad agency?” he asked. This was becoming an interview, which was what I thought I'd wanted. I felt a little let down, though, deflated. Maybe I wanted it to be something else.

“I was just a writer,” I said, downplaying myself. Then: “I hear Berringer is a great company.”

“It is.”

With the help of the beer, I asked, “Do you think I could come in for an interview? Catch up?”

“Those are two different things—an interview and catching up.”

“I suppose so,” I said. My heart was beating fast. “We could just do drinks. Or something. Keep it casual.”

“That sounds good,” he said, his voice relaxing again. “Does tomorrow work for you?”

“Tomorrow. Friday. Sure,” I said. “I don't see why not.”

I waited for him to suggest a time. A lunch would mean one thing; a dinner, another.

“You know Mangiapane's? In the Village?”

“Heard of it,” I lied.

“Pianist starts at seven. Meet you then?”

“Great,” I said.

I heard someone's voice in the background and Gabe said he had to run. When I hung up, I felt dizzy—from the beer or something else entirely. I asked the bartender for water and sipped it until I could close my eyes without feeling the world spin around me.

 

SEVENTEEN

I would describe myself as a cynic, but there are times I think I'm a closet optimist. I'm just afraid of vocalizing my hopes and jinxing everything. I assume, for example, that the chemo is working. It must be. There are days when I feel like it is killing every cell in my body, and that must include the cancerous ones. There are lots of people in the infusion center who come in for treatments like they're just part of a regular routine, like going to the gym or getting a manicure. I eavesdrop and they all speak of end points—
When this is over, When I'm done
, that kind of thing. Maybe we're all just trapped in a bubble of denial.

“It's not working as well as I'd hoped,” Dr. Richter says when I meet with her.

Bubble, popped.

I sit there, unblinking, staring at that picture of her girls.

“It doesn't look like the cancer is spreading, which is a good thing, but it's not retreating, either,” she says.

“Not retreating,” I echo.

The way my body reacts—a wave of nausea, clammy hands—tells me I wasn't ready for this news, not at all.

“I'm going to try Taxol,” she says, writing down something on a pad of paper.

She looks up and her face softens when she sees my expression. I must look horrified.

“Most of my patients do the combo ACT regimen.”

ACT—Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Taxol. Going through cancer is like working in corporate America—so many acronyms.

“And that's better?”

“The response rate with using Taxol after AC is as high as thirty-three percent.”

So, sixty-seven percent of people are still shit out of luck.

“That's not very high,” I say.

“In the world of cancer, it's high.”

The world of cancer sucks.

“I've had successes,” she says.

But the tightness of her smile tells me she's had failures, too.

*   *   *

The infusion center is decorated for the holidays, a half-assed attempt at merriment. There's a fake tree—frocked—in the corner, underneath the wall-mounted television. A few ornaments hang from it. Red, green, and silver tinsel is strung from one corner of the room to the other. The red strand has fallen from its taped-up spot. I keep waiting for someone to fix it.

“So they're switching you to Taxol,” Nurse Amy says, hooking up a bag of the brand-new poison.

“Yeah, the other stuff wasn't working, apparently.”

Nurse Amy does a little flip of the wrist to suggest this is no big deal.

“Lots of people do ACT,” she says. She knows the acronyms.

The bag is attached, the poison is flowing.

“Most people seem to have fewer side effects with this one,” she says.

“I sure hope that's true.”

I want to believe her, I really do. I've been a crappy excuse for a mother lately because I'm just so exhausted. The chemo is bad, yes, but it's the attempts to show Claire that I'm okay, that our life doesn't have to be totally consumed by this, that really take it out of me. I don't know how I'm going to tell her the chemo isn't working. All this, and the cancer just sits there, unmovable.
Not retreating
. I resisted asking Dr. Richter what happens next, if the Taxol doesn't work. I will die, but when? A year? Three years? Five years? Will I get to teach Claire how to drive? Will I know her first boyfriend? Will I see her graduate high school? These are the important questions.

Paul comes in wearing his usual Cubs baseball cap. He's from Chicago, originally. Somehow, I have found myself in conversation with him almost every time we're here together. Amy says I have a kind face. Maybe that's why he keeps talking to me. I told her that my kind face is a disservice to the general public. It sets unrealistic expectations.

“Taxol,” he says, squinting to read the bag.

“Trying something new,” I say. Here in the infusion center, we speak of chemo drugs like they're different entrées at a popular restaurant.

“I was on Taxotere first,” he says. “Similar name. Not sure if they're similar drugs.”

“Didn't work?”

He shakes his head. I'm comforted by the failure of his chemo drug. It's sick, I know.

“The one I'm on now seems to be working, though. Jevtana. I told my doctor it sounds like the name of an airline with direct flights to Bali—Jevtana Airways.”

“The not-so-friendly skies,” I say.

He laughs way too loudly.

“You're funny.” He's one of those people who laughs and then feels the need to comment on the laugh.

“Isn't she?” Amy says.

I just shake my head at both of them.

“Hey, how's Claire doing?” Amy asks me.

I hate when she does this—asks about my personal life right in front of Paul. As a result, Paul knows way more than I'd like him to.

“I haven't told her about the Taxol,” I say. She hasn't asked me directly if the chemo is working, so it's not like I've actively lied to her. Like me, she seems to be operating on the assumption that everything is going swimmingly, that we will go through this treatment and then wrap this damn cancer experience with a big bow—pink, of course—and go on a cross-country road trip.

“She's class president,” I say, unable to resist sharing this tidbit. She won by a landslide. Starting January first, twenty percent of the vending machine proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society. I cried when she told me.

“We know,” Paul says.

“You told us last time,” Amy says.

“I did?”

“Chemo brain,” Paul says. “We're all victims.”

It's comforting to know it's a thing, this mental fogginess. Just yesterday, I had to really think about what goes into a Bloody Mary, a drink I've been serving for years on an almost daily basis. And I couldn't remember the word for the slicer I was using to grate cheese for pasta the other night. “Mandolin,” Claire said. “Mandolin.”

“I forgot my wife's birthday last week,” Paul says.

I didn't know he had a wife.

“Well, ex-wife, so I guess it doesn't really matter.”

“You were married?” Amy says.

“Yep, sure was. Eight years. Things started going south, then I got diagnosed and she split.”

“Jesus,” I find myself saying.

“Yeah, well, what are you gonna do?” he says.

You're going to be fucking angry
.

Amy says, “Aww, Paul.”

“Oh, god, I thought cancer was bad enough. Now I've got the my-wife-left-me sympathy to deal with.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean it like that,” Amy says. She gives his hand the same pat she always gives mine. I may not be as special to her as I think I am.

When she walks away, back to her nurse station, I say to Paul, “You are entirely too upbeat about very depressing things.” Then: “You remind me of my ex.”

It's the first time I've referenced Drew, albeit vaguely, in years.

“That's what every guy likes to hear,” he says.

I've been thinking of him lately. Drew. The looming threat of dying makes you take stock of who you are (or were), the choices you've made. You ask yourself if you could have been a better, kinder person. It's a pointless, masochistic question because, no matter who you are, the answer is always yes.

“I just don't know how you do it,” I say.

He shrugs.

“It's partially denial,” he says.

“Oh, denial,” I say. “I'm a fan.”

“And I don't like to be pitied. I can't fucking stand it.”

Yes, the pity might be worse than the hours spent in the chemo chair, harder than any of the side effects. I tell Claire and Al and JT and whoever asks that I feel great because I don't want it, the pity.

“The second I get down about things, they give me
that look
.”

I know what look he's talking about—the one that makes you feel like a hopeless invalid. And I know the “they”—the healthy people who fear not that you'll die, but that they will, someday.

“So I just smile and try to stay up.”

“They probably think you're delusional.”

“Probably,” he says. “I'd rather be the ‘crazy cancer guy' than just the ‘cancer guy.'”

“Fair enough.”

He says he's tired, that he's going to try to sleep through his treatment. I wish him luck with that endeavor. I can never seem to sleep through mine. He pulls his hat forward so the bill is covering his eyes and rests his hands in his lap. Within a few minutes, he's out. And, though I've spent many lonely, conversation-free hours in this chair before meeting Paul, I'm acutely bored.

*   *   *

Claire and I have been having breakfast and dinner in the backyard almost every day. In California, you can do that year-round. There's something about facing mortality that makes you want to be in fresh air more, create moments like those in
Sunset
magazine.

“I think I'm getting tired of the bald look,” Claire says.

She shaves her head once a week because the hair keeps growing back. Her cells are healthy, a fact that keeps me from thinking life is a total bitch. I knew she would want her hair back. She's a thirteen-year-old girl. It still makes me sad, though. The solidarity's been nice.

“It won't take long to grow it back,” I say.

“No, no, no, that's not what I mean,” she says quickly. “I have an idea.”

*   *   *

An hour later, we are in the car on our way to an address on Hollywood Boulevard.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“You'll see.”

I slow the car, watching the numbers on the buildings come closer and closer to the number Claire has written down on the neon-green Post-it. And then we are there.

“That's it!” Claire says, pointing.