Sweet Love (24 page)

He specializes in breast cancer.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to examine the left breast,” he says, still smiling. “May I have permission to touch your breast?”

I fight the urge to burst out laughing, to act giddy over this carefully crafted request, the product of lawsuits and sexual harassment claims. I will do anything to keep stalling.

A joke about copping a feel crosses my mind, but for once, thank God, I’m too frightened to say it. I simply nod and take my shirt off, then my bra. It was wishful thinking putting those on. They don’t ask you to take them off when the mammogram comes back negative.

Dr. Horton palpates this and that. He looks away and mutters something to Sondra, who jots down notes. What is she jotting down?

“What’s going on? You found something, didn’t you?” The hysteria in my voice is embarrassing. I want to apologize for it.

He offers to let me put on my shirt and meet him in his office, but I grab his arm, forgetting that I’m completely naked from the waist up. “How about we get this over with now.”

What he says next, I don’t know. My brain seems unable to absorb it. Something about a mass on the mammogram and a lesion. Though lesion doesn’t sound right. Isn’t a lesion a wound? And then more reassuring stuff about most lesions being benign.

I don’t know what I’m saying. Mostly I’m asking over and over again if this is cancer. Just a yes or a no. How hard is that?

“We don’t know. The odds are in your favor that the answer is no,” he says. “The question now is how to proceed. We can do an ultrasound, though all that will do is confirm we’ve found a lesion, and clearly we have. The next choice is an ultra-fine or core needle biopsy. . . .”

“What about a regular biopsy?” A fog has lifted and I’m remembering my mother’s experience.
Ask, push, and research. Don’t delay. Don’t dither. Fight. Go all the way.

“If the lesion is penetrable, then a core needle biopsy should tell us what we need to know. If it’s calcified, then we’ll have to remove the lesion surgically.”

I think about this. “I’d like it done by the end of this week.”

Sondra and he exchange glances. “If possible, that would be ideal. However, these are the summer months and with so many people on vacation. . . .”

“Please, by the end of this week. It may not matter to you, but I’m the single mother of a teenage daughter who needs me right now and, frankly, I can’t risk another day.”

He hesitates, probably considering his other patients. “I’m sorry. We’re so booked right now that even next week is a stretch. The best I can do is next Friday at the earliest.”

“Okay,” I say, resigned. Take it or leave it.

There is more stuff. Paperwork and blood work and questionnaires about my family history and more questionnaires about whether I’d like to participate in a clinical study. Part of me can’t believe it’s happening, that the shoe has finally dropped and now I’m going through the screening process for breast cancer. And yet the other part of me is not surprised. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life. Like I’m prepared.

By the end of the biopsy prep, I consider calling Arnie to have him assign Ray’s arrest to someone else. It’s a fleeting whim, however, and I scold myself for giving in after a measly old mammogram. Shoot, there are cancer patients who go to work the day after chemotherapy. What kind of wimp am I?

Searching for my car in the vast expanses of hoods and roofs in the searing Parking Lot C for Mt. Olive, I think how nice it would be to have someone to lean on—specifically someone with broad, strong shoulders. I don’t mind being divorced, but this is one of those special moments when a loving, caring husband would really come in handy.

Instead, as I get closer, I see someone better sitting on the hood of my car reading a book, her familiar straw hat shading her from the sun. And my heart breaks. My mother.

How did she know? How does she always know?

Chapter Nineteen

As far as ex-husbands go, I suppose mine, Donald Bishop . . . Excuse me—
Dr.
Donald Bishop—is not the worst. I mean, he doesn’t show up drunk and smash the windshield of my car and it’s not as if he badmouths me to our mutual acquaintances.

If anything, Donald errs on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. His feelings of anger and resentment, especially toward his mother, are stuffed in a heavy mental box, sealed for eternity, along with what little abundant love and sympathy once lodged in his cold black heart.

That he spends his days helping strangers open their own mental boxes is, at the very least, sadly ironic.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen to Donald’s practice if his patients learned he abandoned his young wife and infant daughter and hid in his mother’s Back Bay town house because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of parenthood. That he did not stop by once for six months until I went over there myself with Em in tow and thrust her into his arms.

It’s the threat of exposure, I suspect, that keeps him sending those $500 child support checks the first of each month, that dutifully brings him to our house every Sunday afternoon for an “outing” with Em— usually shopping. Now I hope he will go one step further. That’s why I’m meeting him for coffee this afternoon.

It is the day after my mammogram and I’m waiting at a sunny table outside 1369 Coffee, in Central Square, right down the street from Cambridge Hospital, where Donald practices. Summer students in shorts and backpacks are giving me the eye since, without coffee or a partner, I cannot justify hogging the whole table. And just when it seems things might turn sketchy with a waitress ready to give me the heave-ho, Donald pops up looking nauseatingly preppy in a rumpled tweed blazer.

“Two soy decaf lattes, no sugar, Pippa,” he says to the waitress. “And I love what you’ve done to your hair.”

Pippa pats her asymmetrical cut and reminds him that with one more punch on his card, he could get a free coffee. Then she wipes off our table, sneers at the student who tattled on me, and rushes off.

This is Donald’s forte, his charm. Though not classically handsome— especially now that he’s bearing in on fifty and losing his hair—his manners and style are so winning that most women’s first impressions are that he’s dashing. He’s definitely one of those men you love before you get to know.

“This is unexpected,” he says, linking his neatly manicured fingers in front of him—body language for self-protection. “Is everything okay with Emmaline?”

I inform him she couldn’t be better and watch with naughty glee as the question he really wants to ask plays on his lips.

“Then . . . it’s not something with your parents, is it? Frank’s heart is on track and Betty’s cancer hasn’t returned, right?”

“My parents are fine.”

He sighs. “Then it’s money, exactly as I thought. Look, I’ve tried to explain that I don’t have as much as you think. Yes, we have the house in Newton and the vacation home in Maine. But Jillian is a stay-at-home mom and Angus is going to a private preschool. Those things don’t come free, Julie, and it’s not as though we have a choice. Angus is a highly intelligent child with a 190 IQ and his daily requirements are not like most children. He needs constant stimulation. . . .”

I let him go on, though internally my resentment inches toward the red zone. Em is a highly intelligent child, too, but he never bothered to consider her educational needs. And Jillian is, well, a whore. A lazy, self-centered whore who latched on to a man twenty years her senior and pulled every trick imaginable to land him as a husband so she wouldn’t have to break another nail in the secretarial pool.

Again I ask myself, what did I see in this bozo when I married at the tender age of twenty-three? He has no chin. No
backbone
. Oh, right. Now I remember. That pink plus sign. That’s what I saw.

“As for—”

“Donald.” I lean over and cover his mouth right as Pippa arrives with our coffees. “Stop.”

He turns bright red and as soon as Pippa leaves he scolds me for deploying embarrassing physical contact. “These are people I see every day,” he says. “Have some dignity.”

Ugh. “Look, Donald, I didn’t ask you to meet me for money. Though do I think you could afford to spend more than $6,000 a year in child support when your wife spends that much in shoes? Yes.”

He purses his lips and takes a stingy sip.

“That said, I do need a favor.” Okay, Julie, here goes. “I wonder if you could ‘surprise’ ”—I make my fingers into quotation marks for the surprise part—“Em with a trip to Maine next week.”

A knowing smirk eases across Donald’s pudgy lips. “It’s finally happened, hasn’t it? After all that waiting and worrying.”

Horrified, it occurs to me Dr. Horton and Donald are friends and that the sacred doctor-patient relationship has been violated over fat-free yogurts in the hospital cafeteria. “How did you find out?”

“Please, Julie. I’m a psychiatrist. If I can’t tell when a person is having an affair, then I should lose my license.”

“You should lose your license then,” I say, choking back a laugh. “Because I’m not having an affair.”

“So you want Emmaline out of the way for your”—he lifts his shoulders—“knitting club, is it?”

“I want Em out of the way,” I say evenly, “because they’ve found what appears to be a four-centimeter lesion in my left breast and they need to do a biopsy a week from Friday.”

To Donald’s credit he is truly dismayed. “Who’s doing the biopsy?”

“Dr. Horton. I met with him yesterday and—”

“No, no, no.” He shakes his head as only pompous WASPs can. “Absolutely not. You cannot have a Dr. Horton, a character out of a Dr. Seuss book, handle this. And at four centimeters you cannot wait until a week from Friday, for heaven sakes.” Whipping out his cell, he says, “Who’s your insurance carrier? Are you still in the Harvard HMO?”

“Hold on.” I try to snatch the phone from his hand, but Donald, apparently having forgotten his own admonitions to maintain public dignity, keeps it out of my reach like a child. “I’ve got an appointment, Donald. It’s summer and there are staffing shortages. Don’t screw this up.”

“Staffing shortages. Is that what they told you?” He sniffs. “That might be fine for the masses out there, but you’re the mother of my child. I cannot risk you becoming permanently incapacitated during Emmaline’s crucial teenage years. She needs monitoring and stability more than ever.”

I sit back, flabbergasted by what’s really at issue here. I am not a person in Donald’s universe, a woman with a life to lead. I am the nanny of his loved but neglected spawn. When this breast cancer scare is through, he is definitely going to spend more time with Em, and not shopping sprees, either. Real family time. Whole weekends living, eating, talking, and driving together. Laundry. Homework.

“Okay. I give up.” Pretending to be defeated, I give him the go-ahead sign. “Do your will.”

Donald punches in a few numbers and, polite as always, walks to the end of the block to make the call. When he returns, everything has been arranged. “How’s Friday?” he asks.

“I have my last dessert class. Can’t go.”

“Dessert class can take a backseat to your health. I’ve managed to get you in with a preeminent radiologist, a man who practically invented this form of biopsy, Dr. Martin Spitzer. Friday at 1:30.”

Friday at 1:30. That’s it, then, I think. That’s when I’ll find out if my life’s changed or simply inconvenienced. In a mere two days.

“Thank you, Donald.” And I say this sincerely. “The long wait was bothering me, I have to admit. It’ll be good to know what we’ve got here. And you’ll surprise Em this Friday, then?”

“Yes, well, I was meaning to ask her, anyway,” he says with a pout. “You just beat me to it.”

When I return home that night, the last person I expect to be sitting on the front steps chatting with my mother is Michael.

“Oh!” I say, clutching my brown bag of groceries. “Oh!”

Michael gives me such a knowing grin, I have to look away before Mom sees me blushing. “Hi, Julie. Long time no see.”

“I meant to return your calls,” I gush, putting down the bag of tuna fish, instant salad, toilet paper, and a large bar of extra-dark chocolate. “It’s just . . . I’ve been busy.”

In fact, Michael has called me every day since our lobster date and I’ve been too chicken to talk. I blame Liza for spooking me into worrying that I’ll let something slip about my mammogram if I connect with him in a weak moment—which has raised problems because, lately, my moments have been nothing but weak.

“Michael stopped by to fix the front railing. Isn’t that nice?” Mom says, shading her eyes to look at a flock of robins. “Guess he was by here the other night and noticed it was loose. Too bad Frank and I weren’t around when you stopped by. Or Em.” Then she clears her throat.

Okay, what’s that with the clearing of the throat?

“Your mother and I have been sitting here catching up on old times, haven’t we, Betty?” he says with a wink. “She’s been telling me everything I should do with my life. Must be a Mueller woman trait.”

I’ll ignore that.

“Lord, how he’s grown. I’m so proud of you.” Like a mother, she rubs his back in wide circles. “Seems like you’re getting a bit of a curvature there, Michael. Is your chair at work okay?”

“It’s fine,” he says, laughing. “Next, you’re probably going to tell me to sit up straight and eat my vegetables.”

Mom says, “Did cross my mind.”

Picking up the bag, I announce that, “I’d love to stick around, but I’ve got ice cream. Better get going.”

“Here, let me get that,” he says, coming down the stairs for my groceries. “I’ll carry them up for you.”

And before I can object, the bag’s in his arms and Michael’s taking the stairs to my apartment two at a time, leaving me to face Mom.