“And you know I haven’t got that kind of time,” she declares.
“You know my motto.”
“I sure do know your motto,” I say, repeating the words simultaneously with Sarah, who has guessed our caller. “Let Being Be!”
After Sarah hangs up the phone for me, she leans back against the kitchen wall and asks seriously, “Do you think she could be committed to the state hospital?”
“Not even close,” I say, thinking of all the clients I used to represent out there.
“She’s probably as sane as the rest of us. Just a little more obsessed.”
Sarah laughs. It doesn’t take much to be weird in her eyes.
Still, Mona Moneyhart seems the genuine article.
Fifteen minutes later, Sarah is bringing me the phone again.
“Rainey,” she says approvingly.
“She’s probably calling to wish you luck.”
I smile, thinking of the differences between women. Mona Moneyhart is the original client from hell; Rainey makes me glad just thinking about her.
“Gideon,” Rainey says, her voice solemn and small, “I promised myself I wouldn’t bother you with this tonight, but I’m so scared. I had a mammogram this afternoon, and my doctor has arranged for me to see a surgeon next week.”
I can’t take this. I’m just not going to be able to go through it again. I wait for Sarah to disappear around the corner of the kitchen. In the moment this takes, all the fear and panic come back. It is as if Sarah has taken all the oxygen from the air with her.
“Who’s your doctor?” I ask, knowing I should be saying something else.
“Connie Havens,” Rainey says, mentioning the name of a busy gynecologist who is the only female in a group of five men.
I have never heard her voice sound so dead. Usually, it is like a musical instrument. Even when she is exhausted from a week’s work, she still usually manages to sound like a piano being played with one hand.
“How long have you known you had a lump in your breast?” I ask, trying not to accuse her. Rosa, who, as a nurse, had absolutely no excuse, was lax about examining her breasts monthly, even though she knew the statistics. Women, I read the month before Rosa died, wait an average of five to six months before going to the doctor after they discover they may have a problem. During this time the tumor can grow from the size of a pea to the diameter of a golf ball or much larger.
“I didn’t know,” Rainey says.
“It was just a part of a regular checkup.”
My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women Rainey’s age.
“Did she say how big the lump was?” The beauty of a mammogram is that it can pick up tumors small enough to be cured.
“You won’t believe this,” Rainey says, her voice a whisper, “but she told me and I’ve forgotten. Something like four centimeters or six.”
If I remember what I’ve read, that number can make a huge difference in her chances, assuming the tumor is malignant.
I look across the lighted kitchen to the darkness in the den. I feel myself becoming angry. Rainey knows enough to get all the information she needs.
“Maybe it’s just a cyst.”
“I’ve been going to Connie for years,” Rainey says dully.
“I know when she’s worried.”
I feel like I ‘m suffocating and reach over with one hand to push up the window across from the table. It has finally turned cool this week. A gust of air rushes over the window sill through the screen as if it were being sucked in by a pump. Rosa’s doctor had been certain she had a malignancy.
“What day is it?” I ask, knowing my own voice sounds like a computer recording. I have to give more than this, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to.
“Wednesday morning at ten,” Rainey says, her voice a little brighter.
“Have you heard of a surgeon named Alf Brownlee? Connie swears by him.”
There is no way the trial will last until then. Wednesday morning is free, but there is no way in hell I’m going to be there.
“Yeah,” I say.
“He’s supposed to be superb.” Of course, he couldn’t save Rosa, but he gave it the old college try.
“Why didn’t you write down some of the things she told you?” I sound like the world’s greatest asshole, but I can’t stop.
“I don’t know,” Rainey says, beginning to cry for only the second time since I have know her (the first was when she broke up with me at a point in the relationship when I was about to propose to her). “I guess I was in shock.”
She is waiting for me to say I will be there with her, but that’s not going to happen. I just can’t do it.
“I’ve got to be in court Wednesday,” I lie. She has a lot of social-worker friends at the state hospital. They’ll know what to say to her.
“Maybe Edna can go with you.”
There is silence at the other end. Finally, I think I can hear her sigh.
“Maybe she can.”
“I’m sorry for you, Rainey,” I say. I’m sorry, all right.
But I just can’t do it.
A couple of minutes later I hang up, but working on the case is now out of the question. I stare at the mass of paper in front of me, but all I can think of is the nightmare of Rosa’s last year. Was it as bad as I remember? I get up to pour myself a glass of water. Yes and no, I think. Afterward, I began to think of it as paying for all the good times we had had together A bill coming due much sooner than we expected. I would have preferred to pay as we went instead of having a big balloon payment that we couldn’t quite make at the end.
At the very end, Rosa saw her death as a release a part of God’s Grace. Maybe she was right, and I am wrong, but I do not want to repeat the class. I knock on Sarah’s door. “Come in,” she says primly, as if she is living in her own apartment. I go in and feel the sense of dismay that always accompanies me when I see her room: clothes, books, tapes, magazines, Coke cans, candy wrappers, and other debris litter the floor. How can she stand it? Seated cross-legged on her unmade bed with her European history book between her knees, she is not happy to see the old man.
I blurt, “Rainey may have breast cancer!”
“What?” she gasps, the thick book snapping shut as her legs jerk together.
I nod, “Her gynecologist has referred her to a surgeon.”
Unable to stand the pain on my child’s face, I let my eyes go out of focus and look at the dozens of pictures of her friends she has mounted on a board behind her.
“Oh no!” Sarah cries, her tears released as suddenly as tap water.
I wade through the junk on the floor and sit on her bed and put my arm around her.
“She’s going to the same surgeon as your mother did.”
Against my shoulder, Sarah shakes her head.
“It’s not fair!”
I close my eyes, wishing that fairness had something to do with life. But maybe I shouldn’t.
“No, it’s not,” I agree, tasting salt in my own mouth.
“Is Rainey by herself tonight?” Sarah asks, clearing her throat.
Her face against my shoulder feels as warm as a heating pad.
“I guess so.”
“You can’t let her stay by herself tonight. Go on over there. I’ll be fine,” she says, drawing back from me so she can look me in the eye.
Sarah’s mascara is smeared, and I wipe her left cheek with my knuckle. How can I tell her that I don’t even have the guts to go to the doctor’s office with Rainey?
“I’m not going to leave you alone tonight,” I say.
Sarah wipes her eyes on her bedspread, making me wonder when she last washed her sheets.
“I’ll be fine.”
Brave words, but I know if I leave her alone, she won’t sleep five minutes. She’s not as old or strong as she thinks she is. Besides, she loves Rainey… probably as much as I do.
We compromise. I tell her that I will go over to Rainey’s and try to persuade her to come spend the night with us.
“I
can sleep on the couch,” I say, never having done so. After a fight with Rosa one night, I spent five minutes on it sighing as loud as I could before she came and got me.