People Who Knew Me (34 page)

When we get there, Paul asks if I want him to come into the pre-op room with me, but I say no. I tell him to go home, but he insists on camping out in the waiting area. The last thing I remember is a woman in scrubs drawing an
X
on my shoulder with a felt-tip pen, marking the diseased side. The world goes black sometime when they're rolling me to the OR.

When I wake up, it could be a few hours later or a few years later. I'm shivering violently. A nurse says, “Poor thing,” and throws a warm blanket on me. I open my eyes. I'm in a small curtained space, machines beeping. The surgeon appears, standing over me, saying they took a lot of tissue, six lymph nodes. Before I was diagnosed, I wouldn't have even known I had six lymph nodes in my armpit. The surgeon disappears as quickly as he appeared and the nurse returns.

“Do you want us to get your husband?” she says.

“He's not my husband.”

*   *   *

Dr. Richter says my margins are clear. She says that means they didn't see any cancer cells at the outer edge of the tissue that was removed, meaning they probably don't have to go back in to remove more. “Unless it reappears somewhere else,” she says. Dr. Richter and her caveats.

They release me from the hospital on Friday afternoon. Paul carries my bag and escorts me out. He asks if I feel lopsided and I tell him it's too soon for jokes. He says, “Let me know when it's not. I have a bunch.”

When we get to the house, he walks me inside. He lingers. He wants me to ask him to stay, to watch a movie or have tea or something.

“I'm really tired,” I tell him.

“Right, right,” he says. “I'll leave you be, then.”

He looks so disappointed that I find myself saying, “I'll call you in a couple days.” It's a commitment I'll regret later, but what's done is done. He seems pleased.

The nurse was very clear that I shouldn't remove my bandages until my follow-up appointment in one week. But, standing before the mirror in my bathroom, I'm curious. Once, when scolding Claire about something I can't even remember, I said, “Curiosity killed the cat,” and she looked at me quizzically and said, “But, Mom, I'm not a cat.”

I'm not a cat
.

One of the corner edges is slightly upturned. I pick at it. I can always reapply the bandage. I just want a peek.

I pull it off, slowly. And then there I am, my new self. A dark red horizontal line, a railroad track of stitches, is across half my chest. When I was younger, I longed for larger breasts. That longing seems silly to me now. My healthy breast, small as it is, looks perfect compared to what is no longer there.

My mother had huge breasts. I'd stare at them when she changed in front of me, wondering when I would have my own. She said to me, “You're just so thin. You'll probably always be flat-chested. Don't blame me. Obviously wasn't my genes.” So my breasts came from my father's side of the family. I can't know that for sure, of course; I never met him, never will. My mother never knew her father, either. Claire will break the cycle.

I run my fingertips gently over the sewed-up incision, picture the scar that will be. I don't think the scar will bother me as much as the fact that my nipple is gone. It's not just that I no longer look like a woman; I no longer look human. Dr. Richter said I could consider breast reconstruction—nipple included!—but somehow I feel like it's better to accept what is. To resist the urge to cover up the truth with something fake. For once. And, besides, if I'm granted more years of life, I shouldn't care about a stupid nipple.

“Does it hurt?” a voice says.

I cover my former breast and whip around to see Claire standing behind me.

“I didn't hear you,” I say, horrified that she's seen what she has.

“Heather's mom just dropped me off.”

She's staring at my chest.

“It doesn't scare me,” she says.

Even so, I close the door to the bathroom, create a barrier between us. I stick the bandage back on, along with my T-shirt—an oversized one, a freebie from Claire's soccer league. When I open the door, she's sitting on my bed, feet dangling.

“Sorry, honey.”

“I'm just glad it's gone,” she says.

“Me, too.”

“I wonder what they do with it,” she says.

I laugh. “That's a good question.” I can't help but picture a bin of cancerous breasts, marked with a yellow
HAZARDOUS WASTE
sign.

“Does it hurt?”

“It stings. It's still kind of numb. I've got pain meds, though. And the nurse gave me some exercises to do so I don't get too stiff,” I say.

She nods like she approves of this plan.

I sit next to her on the bed. I haven't told her yet about Drew. He's calling tomorrow and I haven't told her.

“I have some news,” I say.

She looks at me expectantly, eyebrows raised.

“I wanted to wait until after the surgery—”

“Mom. What is it?”

“I talked to your father,” I say.

She looks more surprised than excited.

“And he wants talk to you. On the phone. Tomorrow.”

“He does?”

“Yeah. I mean, if you want. It's up to you.”

She stands, paces, gnaws at her thumbnail.

“What do I say?”

“Whatever you want to.”

“Whatever I want to,” she says, tapping her bottom lip with her index finger. I've never seen her so nervous. “I guess I'll start with hello.”

*   *   *

Claire and I sit at the kitchen table, staring at the phone between us as if it's a hand grenade. I'm not as anxious as I thought I would be. The pain meds take the edge off. My wooziness just exacerbates how surreal this feels.

“You ready?” I ask.

She has a list of questions to ask her father. She's ready.

At exactly noon, the phone rings. Claire picks up.

“Is this Claire?” Drew says, his voice friendly and kind. Nothing like it was with me.

She says, softly, “It's me.”

We're on speakerphone, but I don't say anything, don't make myself part of their conversation.

“How are you?” Drew says. He's talking to her like she's younger than she is, his voice a little too cheery. If he has children, they must be small. He has no experience with teenagers.

“I'm good. How are you?”

“Good.”

And then they are silent and Claire looks at me, her eyes big and worried. I just smile and mouth,
It's okay
.

“So your mom says you're almost fourteen?”

“Yep. In May.”

“Wow,” he says. “What do you like to do for fun?”

This sounds like an uncomfortably forced interview.

“Well,” she says, “I'm class president.”

“Really? That's awesome.”

She tells him how she gets straight A's, and I'm proud. He must be relieved to know I did something right. She tells him how she wants to be mayor one day—an ambition I didn't know about, an ambition she may have made up for the purposes of this call. She tells him how we live near the beach, how she's never been out of California. He responds like this is all incredibly fascinating and I'm grateful for that, for his enthusiasm.

He asks if she has any questions for him. She does. She consults her paper. She asks what he does for a living, which is an odd first question, but who am I to judge? He says he's a chef, that he owns a French restaurant. It makes me simultaneously sad and happy that he stuck with it. She asks if he's married and he says he is, to a “wonderful woman” named Lisa. She asks if he has kids and he says he does—Wyatt is three and Winter is one. He clarifies that they are her half-siblings and she says, “I always thought it would be cool to have one of each—a brother and a sister.” He says, “Right. Cool.”

She asks if he has any pets. He says they have a cat named Felix. I want to ask,
What about Bruce?
but then I remember that he must have died years ago. She asks Drew how we met. It's a question she asked me, before this call, but she must want to hear him tell the story. He confirms what I told her: we met in college, and it was love at first sight. She says she wants to go to college someday. He says, “You're certainly smart enough.” She blushes. She asks if he likes New York and he says, “It's home.” She asks if he thinks she'll like New York, and my heart seizes for a second. Is she picturing her life there—without me? He says, “New York is exciting. The city that never sleeps.” She says, deadpan, “How do you never sleep?”

They agree to talk again soon, make it a weekly thing.

“And, I don't know if my mom told you, but we're thinking of doing a road trip,” she says. “This summer.”

My heart seizes again. Claire didn't tell me she was going to bring this up, probably because she knew I'd say something like,
Let's wait on that
.

“This summer, huh? She didn't mention it,” he says.

“Maybe, when we come to New York, we could meet,” Claire says. She bites off part of her thumbnail. I can see the muscles in her jaw contracting as she chews on it.

“Wow, um, yeah,” Drew says, noticeably flustered.

I'm sure he wants to meet her. He's probably flustered at the notion of me being there. I don't blame him. I can't imagine standing face-to-face with him again.

“Or not,” Claire says. She slouches. “It's just an idea.”

“No, no,” he says, recomposed, “let's plan on that.”

She sits up straight again. She won't look at me. She doesn't want me interfering with this plan of hers by shaking my head in disapproval.

“Really?” she says.

“Yeah. Let's figure out the dates when we talk next time.”

“Cool,” she says.

“Cool,” he says.

They stumble over pleasantries—“It was nice to talk to you,” “Have a good rest of your weekend”—before hanging up.

“You're conniving, Claire,” I say.

She finally looks at me, smirks.

“I know.”

 

THIRTY

Compared to chemo, radiation is a cakewalk. I'm in my last week of it. I go Monday through Friday, after dropping off Claire at school. Unless there's traffic and I'm a few minutes late, thus losing my place in the schedule and having to wait twenty minutes or so, I'm in and out in fifteen minutes—like a quick run to the post office to buy stamps. Rico, the radiation technician, escorts me behind a huge white door—eight inches thick, four feet wide,
DANGER
written on it in big bold letters. Despite the warning, I go in each time unfazed. When the choice is cancer or something else that could be harmful, you choose the something else. You take the risk so you can live a little bit longer, so you can be cancer-free, so you can see your daughter grow up.

On the other side of the
DANGER
door, I lie on the table—arms over my head, gown wide open—beneath an intimidating machine called a linear accelerator. And I do my best to stay still—to play dead, ironically—because if I so much as sneeze, moving even a few millimeters, the rays might shoot at my heart. The machine does its click-clacking thing and then it is over in just a few minutes and Rico says, “See you tomorrow.”

The way Dr. Richter describes it, radiation is an attempt to burn away the cells so nothing new can grow back. It makes me think of that fire that tore through Topanga Canyon a few years ago, leaving behind black earth reminiscent of the surface of Mars. But, before long, green blades started to shoot up through the soil. Nature is persistent. Cancer may be persistent. Paul says I have to get used to not knowing what the future holds.

I've been talking to Paul daily. We haven't seen each other, just talked. I think we have a mutual understanding that this is what we'll be—phone friends—until he says, “Why don't you and Claire come over for dinner?” I'm on speakerphone when he says it. Of course, with my luck, Claire hears and shouts, “We'll be there.”

Paul lives a few miles inland, in Woodland Hills. It's a small one-story house, a rental, the lease signed hastily after his wife left him. He talks about her a lot, his wife. Not in a nostalgic or longing way, but in a way that confirms he's human and has feelings. Sometimes I talk to him about Drew, about my guilt. Drew and Claire are chatting weekly, as they promised each other. She doesn't let me listen in anymore. She goes to her room and shuts the door. I wonder what they talk about. I wonder if she's told him that I never remarried, never even dated a single person. I wonder if she's told him about the cancer. I wonder if that would please him, if he would think,
Serves her right
. Probably not. Drew was never as mean as me. All Claire has told me is that he's “nice” and she can't wait to meet him. Yes, the meeting is happening, whether I like it or not.

Paul's house has twinkly, clear lights along the roofline. The front door is wide open, the sound of music audible from the sidewalk.

“Why does he still have Christmas lights up?” Claire asks.

It's May.

“Paul is just that kind of guy.”

Claire walks right through the open door and I follow her. Paul is in the kitchen, wearing an apron, standing at the stove. His dog, Chuck, sees us before he does. He barks crazily and we kneel down, put out our palms. Chuck sniffs and stops barking, concluding we are friendlies.

“He's my welcoming committee,” Paul says, turning around. “He does a terrible job.”

He puts a lid on the pot and comes to greet us. He hugs me without hesitation, as if he's forgotten that we're not that kind of friends.

“Your hair!” he says.

I look like Sinead O'Connor circa 1990. My hair started to grow back a few weeks after my last chemo treatment. It was soft fuzz at first, like a baby's, and then coarser. It's coming in brown, as it should. Claire thinks this is odd, since she has known me only as a blonde. I tell her sometimes hair grows back a different color, because that's a true fact according to the Internet and I feel sheepish telling her that I was attempting to disguise myself all these years. I'm still sorting through which details to give her, which lies to reveal.