Hold your horses, Alice’s mother said, as she padded across the apartment. Hold on. “Yes,” she answered. “Hello?”
“I thought I’d never get you.” The voice low, smooth.
“Do you want to talk with my daughter? Who should I say is calling?”
“Uh, I’m—”
“What number are you trying?” continued Alice’s mother. “We’ve been getting a lot of wrong numbers.”
Instead of an answer, the line clicked. Alice’s mother placed the phone back in its cradle. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands, then headed for her daughter’s bedroom, where she brought up the subject of white sugar.
—
The staff nutritionist in New Hampshire had been the first to mention the stuff. Sparrow, Tilda, Kate, and the rank-and-file of Alice’s more health-conscious pals all had brought up the same worry: that cancer fed on processed sugar.
“Never again,” Alice answered, raising her right hand toward Mom. “Scout’s honor.”
Dark chocolate, tiramisu, key lime pie, red velvet cake, all her favorite guilty pleasures. “Fallen to the wayside,” she swore. “You’ll see. A new regime.”
Then the end of her next exam-room discussion. Alice volunteered her new eating habits to the medical staff, waiting for assent and approval. In fact, Eisenstatt was quick to answer. “With the chemo regimen we just put you through,” he said, “sugar’s not going to reactivate anything.”
“Sorry?” Alice said.
“The disease isn’t metabolically active right now in your case. Cancer cells aren’t dividing in your bone marrow, the way cells divide in the gastrointestinal tract. Cycle tracts are different.”
“You’re saying there’s no connection?”
“I’d say gaining weight is the priority. You want to eat anything. Whatever it might be, we need you eating.”
Nonetheless, per her orders and preference, the fridge remained stocked with unsweetened soy milk, coconut milk, plain whole-milk yogurt and ice cream, agave nectar, really, really good cheeses. Oliver spent part of each day running around — on Alice’s first day home he found a reasonably convenient lab that could turn around her blood counts, so that each night he could inject Alice with her proper Coumadin dosage (first wiping her lower belly with that brown antiseptic gel); he made copies each day for insurance appeals, double-checked things with his lawyers, handled Generii errands to get the new office in shape, juggled bullshit with the bank fools and credit card assholes. And always, before returning home, he’d follow orders, track down Madame’s every stated need: fresh mangoes and limes, tubs of weight-lifter protein powder, raw unpasteurized honey extracted straight from the rears of bees that had to be purchased on the black market because unpasteurized honey was one of the health hazards that had spread black plague and there were still laws against it. Each day brought news of a new special salve. A friend told Alice about it.
“While you are out,” Alice wondered, “could you pick up some dark chocolate for me?”
Oliver stared. “So—”
“I’m giving in to Western medicine like you want.” Alice crossed her arms, responding to his frustration before it had a chance to manifest. When one of his confounded looks followed, Alice snapped, adding, “If it was up to me I’d do it holistically.”
“Candy’s holistic now? I can grab you a Mountain Dew while I’m at it. I hear that’s pretty organic, too.”
“I’ve lost my hair. I get bombarded by radiation every month. I have all of three bites before a lid closes over my stomach anyway.”
“Jesus,” Oliver answered, rising. “I made a joke. Don’t get so defensive. One second you want it this way, the next—”
“He said I could have sugar.”
“So we’re just cherry-picking the guidelines? This is the new regime?”
“I want a bite of key lime pie.”
Implicit was her threat: if he did not get it, someone else would. Others already were.
—
Tilda’s visit the following morning included a jaunt to the bagel place across the street. Presenting Alice with the small package — white butcher paper, a price scribbled in marker across the top — Tilda repeated familiar phrases. “That you even want to try is a good sign. Even a few bites will help.”
Alice unwrapped the paper, stared. “Didn’t I ask for strawberry cream cheese? I don’t mean to be difficult.”
Tilda was careful in her response. “It’s pink, honey.”
Alice squinted. “I can’t see that.”
In short order her support network was chugging on all cylinders, and had dutifully procured a saline solution. Dabbed eyes went teary; Alice blinked a lot. She and Tilda cautioned, making sure neither overreacted; they were rational and sober, and after some more discussion, came to a larger agreement: Alice had to search for new truths. This was the only helpful interpretation. “In the large scheme, what’s pink? What’s white?” Tilda sounded like a motivational speaker. “Who cares about a couple of locations on a spectrum? Use this as a chance to focus on what’s real.”
Alice smiled. Then her façade collapsed.
“A donor will come through,” Tilda assured. She wrapped her arms around Alice’s shoulders. “Oliver got the insurance taken care of, right? That was huge. Now they’ll find this. It will get solved.”
Alice sniffed, looked up at her friend.
“It’s impossible to explain,” said Alice. “How tired I am of being less than myself.”
Both women considered her words. Soon, Oliver would as well, noticing that Alice had absorbed the sentence into her repartee, repeating it, verbatim, to at least four other guests.
Sparrow was the last of them. The healer listened, gave a slight nod, then searched inside her brightly beaded shoulder bag. A bronze figurine about the size of a baseball. The healer placed it into Alice’s palm. Cool to the touch, carrying a surprising weight. “A common misconception is that a bodhisattva is some kind of god,” Sparrow said. “But a bodhisattva is just a mortal who has spiritually advanced into a being of enlightenment.”
Alice examined the figurine, running her fingers along its grooves, into its nooks. A first glance could easily mistake it for a tree. With closer study, Alice realized it was something else: growing out of that stout, crooked trunk was a stout female figure. Her face showed large eyes, three of them. Arm after arm rose from out of her trunk like branches, or perhaps a peacock’s fan.
“Guanyin is one of the four great bodhisattvas,” Sparrow said. “Translated from Sankskrit, the name means: observing the cries of the world. She embodies pure compassion. But there were too many beings she couldn’t save. She watched armies of souls stream into the gates of the underworld. She tried to reach for them, but was so disheartened, her arms shattered into a thousand pieces. Buddha Amitabha aided her, transforming those pieces into a thousand arms, that she might reach out to those in need.”