Isabella was sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows, her tape deck and a bag of cassettes resting on her lap, when I came in. From beneath her baseball cap extended the head-phones, a little black cushion over each ear. She heard me come in, opened her eyes, and gave me a smile of such warmth and happiness that all I wanted to do was lie down beside her, take her in my arms, and tell her I loved her. I did that. She returned my hug as best she could-from her waist up-then pulled off her headset and put her cap back on.
"You look so bad," she said without a stutter. I must have looked at her strangely. "I mean," she said, "you… look… so… good. These days, everything c-c-comes out mix-mixed up. You look so bad, Russell. You h-h-have on my favorite red sidewalk."
She fingered my red windbreaker and smiled again. "Did you have a good day without me?"
"Well…" I said, but I wasn't sure how to finish. I could feel a pit opening inside me, a dark yawning thing into which two little dolls that looked like Isabella and Russ Monroe were falling, arms and legs spread, twisting slowly down into a cartoon abyss.
"Oh, baby, don't look at m-m-me like that," she said. "I know I'm not m-m-making any sense."
"No, no, you are," I said. "And I'm flattered that you like my red sidewalk."
She smiled again. Isabella's smile is everything good in this world. "You… are making f-f-fun of me."
"I know."
"I'll some e-e-even day get with you."
"You can't catch me."
"Not y-y-yet. After my o-o-operation, I'll catch you easy."
"After the operation, I better look out?"
"Gonna make you sucker, pay!"
"Typical hot-blooded Latina," I said. "Always thinking of revenge."
"I g-g-got my revenge when you mangled me."
"I did not mangle you. I married you."
"E-e-exactly."
I held her for a while, until she broke away and fixed her smile on me again. It was the same coy, near-guilty smile she always got before asking what she asked next.
"Guess what?"
"You're hungry," I said.
"W-w-would you see what breakfast is for?"
I climbed off the bed and went into the kitchen. Joe was sitting at the table in front of a fan, drinking iced tea. Corrine stood at the stove. I had the feeling that the silence between them had been going on a while. It had legs. I reported to Isabel! that huevos rancheros was on the menu. She smiled and nodded.
Back in the kitchen, I understood the reason for the silence: Not only Isabella's speech but her moods were becoming strangely askew. I followed Conine's stare out the window to the sky. A jet left a vapor trail high in the blue and I could see the twinkling wedge of silver out ahead of it. It seemed like a symbol for how high and perilous a life can be, but mostly was just a jet in the sky. Far out to the west, a dark blanket of clouds eased toward us, unfolding over the horizon like a shroud for morning.
"Dr. Nesson says tomorrow," Corrine said, turning to face me. "They'll operate at six in the morning. It will take six hour: He doesn't want us to wait. He's worried, and so am I."
I thought it odd that Izzy hadn't mentioned it, and Corrine anticipated this thought.
"She can't keep anything straight," she said. "She forgot her own name earlier this morning."
I joined their silence. Images of the night before, of Alice's frozen arms embracing my chilled neck, mingled in my mind with those of my wife, not thirty feet away now. I would have loved a Bloody Mary.
"Russell," said Joe. "When Izzy was young, Corrine dropped her on her head. The doctors said she was fine. Do you think that maybe-"
"No," I snapped. "That's ridiculous."
I tried to tell Joe and Corrine that it wasn't their fault, that the tumor had simply happened. But I could almost see my words running off of them, I could feel them shouldering not only all the blame there was, but all the blame they could imagine. I recognized what they were doing because I had done it myself-for months-just after Isabella was diagnosed. We believe, in our helplessness, that the amount of blame we can carry somehow lightens the burden of the one we love. It is a heavy load to bear, but it is nothing compared to what the victims themselves are asked to carry.
Nothing is quite so terrible about cancer as the way its sufferers are encouraged to believe that they have caused their disease. Legions of pop thinkers, from psychologists to MDs (few of whom have had cancer, I might add), have adopted the stance that there is something deficient in the psyche of the ill, something that has allowed them to "create" their cancer. And as Isabella-and thousands like her-embarked on her battle for life, she read these books, listened to these lectures, watched these videos (all expensive, all packaged with advertisements for more product) promising her that, just as she had created her own disease, so she could also create her own cure. She meditated. She ate a macrobiotic diet. She imaged little cells eating up her tumor. She exercised. She was acupunctured, acupressured, energy-channeled; she had her medians unblocked, her colon flushed with enemas, her stomach filled with chlorella, ginseng, miso, royal jelly, astragalus, echinacea, amino acids, two-phase enzyme supplements, interaction supplements, vitamins in megadose, minerals by the ton-in short, enough fringe treatment and fraudulent "medicine" to render her, at one point, little more than a feverish, diarrheic mess who couldn't even stand the smell of her own body. As instructed she told herself she was beautiful. When nothing worked, she did everything all over again. But still the cancer grew. And she knew by then whose fault that was: hers, of course, hers alone; it was a simple outgrowth of her imperfect mind. She had created it. She had encouraged it. She deserved it. She wanted it.
But then, something began to change.
Slowly, Isabella-always willing to blame herself first, so many of us are-started getting mad. It started with a near silence that lasted for days. She eased off the potions, pills, and supplements. She ate something besides tofu and fake cheese made from soybeans. She stopped watching tapes of doctors exhorting her to imagine her tumor, change her defective character, take responsibility for creating her illness. She brooded; she wept; she screamed.
One evening, she said to me, "You know something Russ? It's arrogance. Pure arrogance."
"What is?"
"The idea I did this to myself. I did not do this to myself. I was happy. My mother loved me. My father did not abuse me. No one did. I was a happy kid. I tried to be good. I smoked some cigarettes when I was fourteen, but that was all. I drank some. I smoked a joint when I was sixteen, but when I heard a tape of how I played piano stoned, I never tried it again. When I was twenty-three, I married the man I loved. I got up one morning, had a seizure, found out there was something growing in my brain. It was cancer. And I'll tell you something-I hate it. I even hate the word cancer, the way it hisses off our tongues, so eager to be said. I didn't create it, no matter what these… these… these bliss ninnies try to make me believe. They're selling snake oil in a New Age wrapper, that's all. They're in the cancer business, the phony-hope trade. I'll take the rap for almost anything-I'm a Mexican and a Catholic, right? But I refuse to take the blame anymore for this. I'm going to win; I'm going to beat this thing. Damn those people, those… parasites. Russ, what is it with this country? We think we control the whole world and everything on it-and beyond that, the moon, all the way from the heavens down to the metastatic level of the cells in our bodies. Where did we ever get so arrogant to believe that? Did it do any good? What did it get us but a place stripped of the people and animals who used to live here, a sky full of satellites and floating junk, a nation full of people who believe they can cure cancer by eating right? How can we be so arrogant to believe that cancer is our own fault? I want to live, Russ. I'm going to beat this thing. But I'm not going to accept responsibility for what's happened. I feel invaded. I feel cheated. I love you and I love life, but I hate what's happened to me. I'm going to fight with the tools I've got-love and hate. That's what I've got for weapons. You know what cancer is? Cancer is little cells growing where they shouldn't. Nobody knows why they start or how to stop them, but nobody can cure a cold, either. Cancer is not a symptom. Cancer is not a metaphor. It is not a theme. Mailer said that cancer is the growth of madness denied. Mailer is full of shit. The only thing cancer is for sure is bad luck. It's a vicious little bastard and I want it out of me. This is not a journey into myself to discover my secret desire to die."