“I’ll make a reservation,” David says. He gets up with his plate and goes to the counter, refilling on tzatziki and roasted eggplant. It’s a shame neither one of us cooks. We love to eat so very much.
“Who should we get to marry us?” David asks, and in the same breath: “I’ll ask my parents for Rabbi Shultz’s information.”
“You don’t have it?”
“I don’t,” he says, his back to me.
This is what marriage is, I know. Tiffs and comfortability, miscommunications and long stretches of silence. Years and years of support and care and imperfection. I thought we’d be long married by now. But I find, as I sit there, that a hitch of relief hits me when David still doesn’t have the rabbi’s information. Maybe he’s still a step away, too.
On Saturday, I go to Bella’s chemo appointment with her. She chats amicably to a nurse named Janine, who wears white scrubs with a hand-painted rainbow emblazoned on the back, as she hooks her up to the IV. Chemo is in a center on East One Hundred Second Street, two blocks up from where her surgery was performed. The chairs are wide, and the blankets are soft on the third floor of the Ruttenberg Treatment Center. Bella has a cashmere throw with her. “Janine is letting me store a basket here,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper.
Aaron shows up, and the three of us suck on popsicles and pass the time. Two hours later, we’re in an Uber going back downtown when Bella suddenly clutches my arm.
“Can we stop?” she asks. And then, more urgently, “Pull over.”
We do, on the corner of Park Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, and she climbs over Aaron to retch in the street. She starts puking with ferocity, the remains of a technicolor popsicle spew out with the bile.
“Hold her hair,” I tell Aaron, who gently rubs her back in small circles.
She waves us off, breathing heavily over bent knees. “I’m fine,” she says.
“Do you have any tissues?” I ask the Uber driver, who mercilessly hasn’t said anything.
“Here.” He hands a box back. There are clouds on the cardboard.
I pluck three tissues out and hand them to Bella, who takes them and wipes her mouth. “Well that was fun,” she says.
She climbs back into the car, but there’s a change in her. She knows now that what’s to come is hers to face alone. I can’t take this part from her, I can’t even share it. I have the instinct to reach out, to try and keep the jaws open, but they have clamped shut too quickly. She leans on Aaron. I see the rise and fall of her body, matched in step to her breathing. The first evidence is in, and it isn’t good.
Aaron helps her upstairs. Svedka is still there, washing dishes that have never been dirty. Bella hasn’t fully recovered from surgery, and small things like a few stairs or bending down are still difficult. It will take her months to fully recover, and then there is the chemo.
“Let’s get you into bed,” I say.
Bella is wearing a blue lace Zimmermann dress with a butter-soft chocolate leather jacket, and I help her take them off. Aaron stays in the other room. When she’s undressed, I can see her scars, some still bandaged, and how much thinner she has gotten in just a few short weeks. She must have lost fifteen pounds.
I smile, forcing the tide back down. “Here,” I say. She holds her head out like a child, and I loop a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt over her head, then slide on some soft gray drawstring sweatpants. I pull down the freshly laundered duvet and tuck her inside, fluffing the pillows behind her.
“You’re so good to me,” she says. She reaches up for my hand, curls her tiny palm into mine. Bella has always had the smallest hands, too little for her body.
“You make it easy,” I say. “You’ll be better in no time.”
We look at each other for a beat. Long enough for us to recognize the terrible fear we’re both facing.
“I got you something!” Bella says. Her face breaks out into a smile. She tucks some hair behind her ears. Hair that will soon be gone.
“Bella, come on,” I say. “That’s not—”
She shakes her head. “No, for your birthday!”
“My birthday is next week.”
“So it’s early. I have an excuse to do things now, don’t you think?”
I say nothing.
“Greg, can you come help me?”
Aaron comes into the room, wiping his hands on his jeans. “What’s up?”
Bella sits up in bed, pointing excitedly to a gift-wrapped package that leans against her closet wall.
Aaron picks it up. I can tell it’s not light. “On the bed?” he asks.
“Yeah, here.” Bella removes a throw from her feet and moves her legs into a cross-legged position. She taps the space next to her, and I go to sit. “Open it.”
The wrapping paper is gold, with a white-and-silver silk ribbon. Bella is a master gift wrapper, and it gives me some solace, some sign, that she did this herself. It feels like proof of stability, of order. I tear it away.
Inside is a large frame. A piece of art. “Turn it over,” she says.
I do, with Aaron’s help.
“I saw a print of this on Instagram and immediately knew you needed it. It took forever to find the Allen Grubesic one. I think he only made twelve. Everyone at the gallery has been trying to track it down for you, and we found it two months ago. A woman in Italy was selling it. We pounced. I’m obsessed. Please tell me you love it?”
I look at the print in my hands. It’s an eye chart, and it reads: I WAS YOUNG I NEEDED THE MONEY. My hands feel numb.
“Do you like it?” she asks, her voice an octave lower.
“Yes,” I say. I swallow. “I love it.”
“I thought you would.”
“Aaron,” I say. I can feel him standing there. It seems crazy, impossible, that he doesn’t know. “Whatever happened to that Dumbo apartment?”
Bella laughs. “Why do you call him Aaron?” she asks.
“It’s fine,” he says abruptly. “I don’t mind.”
“I know you don’t mind,” Bella says. “But why?”
“It’s his first name,” I say. “Isn’t it?” I turn my attention to the gift. I run my hand over the glass.
“I bought it, the apartment,” she tells me. The Aaron argument dissolves as quickly as it presented. “The rest is for me to know and you to find out.”
I push the print to the side. I take her hands in mine. “Bella, listen to me. You cannot renovate that apartment. It will be a good investment as raw space. You bought it, fine, just sell it. Promise me you’re not going to move in there. Promise.”
Bella squeezes my hand. “You’re crazy,” she says. “But fine. I promise you. I’m not going to move in there.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The chemo goes from good to bad to gruesome quickly, too quickly. Next week she’s sick, the following one she’s weak, and after that she is sunken, her body practically concave. The one saving grace is that her hair doesn’t fall out. Session after session, week after week, not even a strand.
“It happens sometimes,” Dr. Shaw tells me. He comes to her chemo sessions to check up on her and run through any recent bloodwork. Today, Jill is there. Which might explain why Dr. Shaw and I are in the hallway, a whole room away from where Bella’s mother pretends to be dutiful. “A patient who doesn’t lose their hair. It’s rare, though. She’s one of the lucky ones.”
“Lucky.” I taste the word in my mouth. Rotted.
“Poor choice of words,” he says. “We doctors aren’t always the most sensitive. I apologize.”
“No,” I say. “She has great hair.”
Dr. Shaw smiles at me. Colorful Nikes peak out from the bottom of his jeans. They point to some kind of life beyond these walls. Does he go home to children? How does he shake the everyday of these patients, shrinking inside?