Silver Girl (15 page)

But overshadowing these developments: she had forgotten to call her daughter.

After the initial panic passed, Connie thought,
I wonder if Ashlyn noticed. And if she did notice, I wonder if she cared.

Connie hadn’t spoken to her daughter since ten days after Wolf’s funeral, on the day that they settled Wolf’s estate and took care of the accounting at their lawyer’s office in Georgetown. Ashlyn had received a trust fund filled with stocks and government bonds—it was a portfolio that Wolf had been building for her for years—that was now worth between $600,000 and $700,000. And she had inherited Wolf’s navy-blue Aston Martin convertible. Ashlyn had been able to contain her seething anger and bitterness until she had the money in hand and was seated behind the wheel of the car—and then she drove out of Connie’s life.

Part of it was the curse of having a daughter who was a doctor. When Wolf was diagnosed with prostate cancer, Ashlyn had just graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and she was doing her residency in pediatric oncology at the Washington Cancer Institute at
WHC
. Wolf had been suffering from symptoms and ignoring them; he was too busy with work, and although beaming with pride about the accomplishments of his daughter, he himself didn’t like to go to the doctor. He liked to allow his body to heal itself, no matter the suffering. This had been true through the decades that Connie had been married to him, with stomach bugs, ear infections, colds. The problem with Wolf’s prostate had presented itself a little differently, interfering as it did with their sex life. Connie had been relieved when Wolf made an appointment with a urologist, and then when he got the news of irregularities with his prostate, she was alarmed. But the first oncologist they saw was a placid man who assured them that radiation would take care of the problem. Wolf would be tired; for a while, he would be incontinent and their sex life would be put on hold.

Ashlyn had been privy to what the doctors had told Wolf, and she had agreed with their treatment plan. She and Wolf had private phone conversations about his illness, and that was fine. Ashlyn had a shiny new medical degree and she wanted to show it off. She knew far more about cancerous cells than Connie did, even though cancer of the prostate wasn’t something Ashlyn saw in ped onc. Connie and Ashlyn didn’t discuss Wolf’s illness except in the most general terms because it was
prostate
cancer, and despite the fact that Ashlyn was a doctor, Connie still believed Wolf’s privacy should be respected.

As predicted, the cancer went away following radiation treatment. Wolf wore adult diapers for twelve weeks or so; when they went to the theater, Connie would carry a spare diaper in her purse and slip it to Wolf like a contraband package before he went to the men’s room. It was a humbling time for Wolf, but a small price to pay for a clean bill of health.

And then life went back to normal. Wolf was given an Institute Honor Award from the
AIA
for a student union building he designed at Catholic University, and three enormous commissions followed, including a federal commission to design and build a new VA building in downtown D.C. Wolf had never been busier, but both he and Connie recognized the work and its compensation as a golden sunburst that would mark the pinnacle of his career. They had nearly $3 million in investments with Delinn Enterprises, and that money was growing exponentially—one month they had a return of 29 percent—and this, along with the award, the commissions, and Wolf’s restored health, secured their sense of good fortune and well-being.

Wolf started experiencing splotchy vision at the same time that Ashlyn brought a friend home for her parents to meet, a woman named Bridget.

Ashlyn and Bridget both lived in Adams Morgan, less than thirty minutes away from Wolf and Connie in Bethesda, but they decided to come and stay for the weekend. Connie, initially believing this to be a “country escape” for two overworked, stressed-out residents, took great pains to make the house welcoming. She made up the beds in both guest rooms and put dahlias in glass vases on the nightstands. She baked cranberry muffins and braised short ribs to serve with a mushroom stroganoff. She filled the Aston Martin with gas and mapped out the drive to the biggest pumpkin patch in the state of Maryland. She had bought two novels lauded in
Washington Post Book World
and had rented a handful of new releases from the video store.

What Connie
hadn’t
done was to think about what this visit from Ashlyn and her closest friend might
mean—
until she saw them walking hand in hand, with their duffel bags, from the Metro station. Until she saw them stop in the middle of the brick path that led to Connie and Wolf’s front door and face each other and share an intimate, whispered moment—Ashlyn was clearly reassuring Bridget that the weekend would be fine; her parents were open-minded, tolerant, liberal people, registered Democrats, pro-choice, anti-war—and then kiss.

Connie was watching them from the front window. She had been anticipating their arrival. And quite honestly, it was as if her heart were a teacup that fell to the floor and shattered.

Ashlyn and Bridget were lovers. The reason that Ashlyn had wanted to come spend the weekend wasn’t to tell her parents this but, rather, to show them.

Connie straightened her spine. She tried a couple of smiles before she opened the front door. She needed to talk to Wolf, but he was on-site. The commissions had kept Wolf at work for ridiculously long hours, and although Connie hadn’t complained, she now felt abandoned and resentful. She needed Wolf here. He should have been paying attention; he might have prepared Connie for this possibility. Was her daughter, her only child, a lesbian? Yes, it appeared so. Although girls, Connie thought, were more apt to experiment sexually, weren’t they? Time to ruminate was running out; Connie could hear the girls’ footsteps on the stairs leading to the front door. She could hear Ashlyn giggling. This didn’t mean there would never be a wedding at the house on Nantucket as Connie had always dreamed. This didn’t mean there would never be grandchildren. Connie
was
liberal; she
was
tolerant. She had taken women’s studies classes at Villanova; she had read Audre Lorde and Angela Carter and Simone de Beauvoir. But was it still okay for Connie to say that this
wasn’t
how she wanted things to turn out? This—Connie opened the door and saw Ashlyn and Bridget side by side, grinning nervously—wasn’t what she wanted at all.

She got an A+ for trying in her own estimation. Connie smiled and hugged Bridget and fawned over her as though she were an adorable kitten Ashlyn had brought home. Bridget was Irish, from County Mayo, and she had an elfin quality about her—a pixie cut of black hair, freckles, and that accent, which stirred delight in Connie despite the circumstances. She was witty and, from what Ashlyn said, wickedly brilliant. She was exactly the kind of girl Connie would have wanted a son to bring home.

Connie plied the girls with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies—Ashlyn’s childhood favorite—and a pot of tea—the lover was Irish—and she chattered like an idiot. An idiot mother who hadn’t guessed her own child’s sexual preference. (Had there been clues Connie had missed? In high school and college and even in medical school, Ashlyn had had
boyfriends.
Wolf had caught one young man climbing the rose trellis up to Ashlyn’s bedroom in the middle of the night. And, as Wolf had shouted angrily at the time, that boy hadn’t come to play tiddlywinks!) Connie knew she was transparent—at least to Ashlyn—and she was grateful when Ashlyn said that she and Bridget were going up to “their” room to unpack. This gave Connie a chance to escape to the sanctuary of her bedroom where she called Wolf to break the news.

He listened, but didn’t comment. He said, “I know this is going to sound like a complete non sequitur, but I have a crushing headache. The pressure in my skull is so intense, it feels like I’m growing horns. Can this wait until I get home?”

That night, the four of them sat around the dining-room table eating the sumptuous meal that Connie had prepared, and Ashlyn and Bridget talked about the trip they were planning to London, Wales, Scotland, and finally to Ireland to visit Bridget’s family.

So another mother can have her dreams trampled,
Connie thought.

But what she said was, “That sounds terrific, girls!”

Ashlyn scowled, probably at the use of the term “girls.” Why infantilize them? Why not refer to them as women or, better still, people? But Connie found it helpful to think of them as innocent girls: Ashlyn with her long, pale hair left loose except for a braid that framed her face and made her look like a Renaissance maiden, and Bridget with her shiny cap of black hair and her implike smile. They weren’t so different from Connie and Meredith in high school—always together, palling around, being funny and affectionate with each other—were they?

Wolf didn’t say much of anything during dinner. His head, he complained. And he’d already taken six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. He excused himself before dessert. The girls settled on the couch to watch one of the DVDs Connie had rented and to eat apple brown betty and make some jokes about the whipped cream that Connie pretended not to hear as she cleaned up in the kitchen. She reminded herself that this was probably a phase. She prayed to God that she wouldn’t be woken up by any female cries of ecstasy, and she cursed Wolf for being so self-absorbed. When she got upstairs, he was already in bed with the light off, a washcloth folded over his eyes.

Connie said, “I honestly can’t believe it.”

Wolf said, “I’m going blind, Con. I can’t see a thing.”

In the morning, Ashlyn took one look at her father and suggested he call his primary care physician. But it was Saturday, so that meant the emergency room. Wolf resisted. He would just take some more ibuprofen and lie down.

Ashlyn said, “Dad, your right pupil is dilated.”

Wolf said, “I just need rest. I’ve been working like a demon.”

And Ashlyn, caught up in the throes of romance, didn’t push him the way she might have normally. She and Bridget were, at Connie’s suggestion, off to the pumpkin patch in the Aston Martin. They were taking a picnic.

By two o’clock, Wolf was moaning. By three, he asked Connie to call an ambulance.

Connie changed into shorts and a T-shirt. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail. The house was still; Meredith was sleeping. Connie would go get the newspaper. She would drive around and clear her head. She would decide whether to call Ashlyn this morning or wait and see what happened. In her heart, however, Connie knew that nothing would happen. She could call or not call—it didn’t matter.

Wolf had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had metastasized to the brain. He had two tumors located in the frontal lobe and so, the oncologist said, Wolf’s analogy about “growing horns” was apt. One of the tumors was operable; one was inoperable. The inoperable tumor was spread out, like a spilled drink on a table. They would give Wolf chemo and try to shrink the inoperable tumor. If they got it to a stage where it could be contained, they could go in and scoop out both tumors at once.

Wolf, over the course of the weekend, had seemed to accept his own mortality. “What if I decline chemo? What if I just let them be?”

The doctor said, “Severe headaches, which we can manage with medication. Blotchy vision, ditto. Depending on how aggressive the cancer is, you might have one year; you might have three.”

Wolf squeezed Connie’s hand. “Okay,” he said.

“Chemo,” Connie said.

“Let me think about it,” he said.

Connie sat on the edge of the unmade bed. At dinner at the Company of the Cauldron the night before, Dan Flynn had told them about his wife’s death. The basics of her illness were similar to Wolf’s. The cancer disappeared then resurfaced—the same cancer—in a different place. Nicole had breast cancer travel to her liver. Wolf had prostate cancer travel to his brain. It seemed so unfair: the doctor declared you “clean,” said you’d “beat it,” and then one random, renegade cell traveled to a more hospitable location and decided to multiply.

Connie had never been able to share Wolf’s story with anyone who hadn’t lived through it with her. It was too Byzantine; it didn’t make sense.

Wolf had refused chemo.

Part of this was because of the three commissions he was working on, including the new VA building. These buildings would, presumably, stand for decades and possibly centuries. It was architecture, he was the architect, and if he bailed out now because of debilitating treatment, he would lose control. The buildings would become something else—someone else’s—even if they used his plans.

“It would be like Picasso handing his palette to his assistant, or to some other artist—Matisse, say—and asking that person to finish
Guernica
. You understand that, don’t you, Connie?”

What Connie understood was that Wolf thought he was Picasso. So it was about ego.

“Not ego,” Wolf said. “Legacy. I can finish these three buildings and complete my legacy, or I can go in for chemo and let my legacy slip down the drain. And there’s no saying the chemo will save me. The chemo might shrink my tumor to an operable size, and then I’ll die on the table.”

“You have to have faith,” Connie said.

“I have faith that I can finish the buildings,” he said. “I can finish my life’s work.”

“And what about me?” Connie said.

“I love you,” Wolf said.

He loved her but not enough to fight the disease. The work was what was important. His legacy. This was his argument, and Connie also knew that deep down, he was afraid. He didn’t like doctors, he was distrustful of the health-care system, he feared chemo, and he feared having his head shaved, his skull cracked open, and his brain scooped out like orange sherbet or rocky road. Better to bury himself in the work and pretend like nothing was wrong. Numb his pain with Percocet and, later, morphine, and hope that his body healed itself. Connie had been married to Wolf for twenty-five years, but she, ultimately, had no say or sway in the matter. It was his body, his illness, his decision. She could either fight him or back him. She backed him.