“I just think this is a rough time for you to go through change of life, Sam. I'm going to need your help while I'm going through the chemo. And to be honest,” which she always was, painfully so, “you haven't helped yet. That doesn't exactly give me much hope for the future.” She was becoming strangely calm about it, and a little less angry.
“I'll do my best. I'm just not real great around sickness.”
“So I noticed.” She smiled ruefully. “Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it. I'm scared,” she said in a gentler tone. “I don't know what it's going to be like.”
“I'm sure it's not as bad as it's cracked up to be. It's like the horror stories you hear about childbirth. Most of them are bullshit.”
“I hope so,” she said, because she had heard some bad ones when she joined Liz a few times at the support group. She went to please Liz but it helped her too. And a few of them had done well with chemo. But most people admitted that chemotherapy was rough. It made you feel worse than anything you could imagine. “Anyway, I'm glad business is going so well for you these days. It looks like Simon really is an asset. I guess we were both wrong.”
“We sure were. You wouldn't believe the people he put me in touch with in Hong Kong. They are fabulously wealthy. Rich Chinese, in the shipping industry. They make the Arabs look like paupers.”
“How much are they investing with you?” she asked as she put the dishes in the dishwasher. She had always been very interested in his business, and that was still a safe subject between them.
He smiled at her now, proud of himself, as well he should be. “Sixty million.” She was hurt though that he hadn't told her about it sooner, it was only now when she pressed him.
“That's a nice chunk of change for a boy from New York,” she praised.
“Cute, huh?” he grinned, looking like the man she'd fallen in love with.
“Very. I'm proud of you.” It was a funny thing to say to a man who wouldn't come any closer to her than to stand across the room, a man who had hurt her as badly as he had. But she was willing to give him his due. A sixty-million-dollar deal in Hong Kong was a real coup. “It must feel pretty good.” It did. And he had had Daphne with him. But more to his own amazement, they had continued to abstain even in Hong Kong. It had driven them both crazy, but he still didn't want to cheat on Alex, no matter how great the temptation. But he also didn't want to sleep with Alex now, he couldn't. The only one he wanted physically was Daphne, and he refused to let himself have her.
He went back to their bedroom then, and watched TV for a while, but as usual, by the time she went in half an hour later, he was asleep, and she shook her head as she looked at him. He was hopeless. He was so afraid of getting close to her again that he would have done anything to avoid it.
“Maybe he's narcoleptic,” she whispered to herself as she picked up her briefcase and went back to the study. Whatever he needed to warm up to her again, he was definitely not getting it, and she was just going to have to be patient. A woman in the group had had similar problems with her husband, and they had even separated for a year. He just couldn't face her raw need, and the fear of her dying, so he had shut her out. And she had left him. But now they were back together. And she had been free of the disease for six years. They had been back together for four of them. Hearing those stories gave Alex hope. But it still didn't make it any easier to deal with Sam. And the next day they had a huge fight after Annabelle's bedtime.
Just before dinner, Alex had explained to Annabelle that the next day she was going to the doctor and they were going to give her some medicine. And it was going to make her pretty sick. Eventually, it might even make her hair fall out. It was pretty bad stuff, but it was kind of like vaccinations. Taking it was going to make her sick for a while, but then strong again, and it would keep her from getting bad sicknesses. But Annabelle was going to have to be kind of patient with her, because sometimes she'd be okay, but sometimes she'd feel sick, and sometimes she'd be very tired. It was the best she could do, and when she was finished, Annabelle looked very worried.
“Will you still take me to ballet?”
“Sometimes. If I can. If I'm too tired, Carmen will take you.”
“But I want you to take me,” Annabelle whined. She was good about Alex's being tired most of the time, but sometimes it really scared her.
“I want to take you to ballet too, but we have to see how I'll feel. I don't know yet.”
“Will you wear a wig if your hair falls out?” She was intrigued by that, and Alex smiled.
“Maybe. We'll see.”
“That would be really ugly. Will it grow back?”
“Yes.”
“But it wouldn't be long anymore. Would it?”
“Nope. It would be short like yours. We could be twins.”
And then suddenly Annabelle looked terrified. “Will my hair fall out too?”
Alex was quick to put her arms around her and reassure her. “Of course not.”
But after she'd gone to bed, Sam was furious and went after Alex with a vengeance. “That was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. You scared her to death.” His eyes were blazing at Alex, and as always, she was hurt by his complete lack of compassion.
“I did not. She was fine when she went to bed. I even got her a book about it. It's called Mommy's Getting Better.”
“That's disgusting. Did you see the look on her face when you told her about your hair?”
“Look Goddammit, she has to be prepared. If I'm going to be too sick to do things for her while I'm on chemotherapy, she has to know it.”
“Why can't you suffer quietly? You're always making it her problem, and mine. Jesus, have a little dignity for chrissake.”
“You sonofabitch!” She grabbed at his shirt and it tore in her hand, which surprised both of them. She had never done anything like that, but he was driving her to distraction. She had lost her husband, her breast, her sex life, her sense of her own femininity, her own sense of well-being and immortality, her ability to have more kids. She had done nothing but lose things that were really important to her in the last six weeks, and he had done nothing but criticize her for it. “God damn you! All I do is struggle with what's happening to me, and try and manage it so it doesn't inconvenience you, doesn't hurt her, doesn't overburden my partners at the law firm, and all you ever do is bitch at me and treat me like a pariah. Well, fuck you, Sam Parker. Fuck you if you can't take it.” All her anguish of the last six weeks came spewing out of her like a volcano. But he had so much pain of his own that he still refused to hear it.
“Stop congratulating yourself for how noble and long-suffering you are. All you do is whine about your goddamn breast, which wasn't such hot stuff in the first place. I mean, who even notices that it's gone, and the only other thing you do is ‘prepare' us for chemotherapy. Get it over with for chrissake, do it, don't beat us to death with it. She's three and a half years old, why does she have to go through it with you?”
“Because I'm her mother and she cares about me, and my feeling sick is going to affect her.”
“You're making me sick, and that's affecting me. I can't live like this, with the daily cancer bulletins from Sloan-Kettering. Why don't you just take out billboards?”
“You shit! You didn't even ask about the pathology reports when I got them.” It was the day he had first seen her scarred breast and his horror had superseded his interest.
“What difference does it make? They cut your breast off anyway.”
“It might make a difference if I live or die, if that still matters to you, or maybe that's like the breast you care so little about. Maybe if I disappear too, you won't even notice. I don't see how you could. You don't even bother to talk to me anymore, let alone touch me.”