“You won’t let them chop me up, Ace.” Her face was red and distorted with crying and she pressed it into the mattress muffling what she said. His hand moved around steadily between her shoulder blades.
“No,” he said. “I won’t let them. I promise. If I have to I will kill you.”
“Promise.”
“I promise. You know I will. You know I can do what I have to do.” I can too. He had thought of that already and knew that it was serious and knew that she meant it and knew that he did, but he also knew in the other ironic part of him that was open-shuttered and recording that this was melodrama of an intense kind. I could never put this dialogue down in fiction, he thought. It is very hokey.
“But that’s tomorrow, or next month, and we don’t think about that. We’ve got to concentrate on what we know. Today you check in. Tomorrow you have tests, Tuesday you have tests, and Wednesday you have surgery and maybe a mastectomy. That’s what we know and that’s all we know and we gotta concentrate on that and not speculate. We have to, otherwise we go crazy.”
“I know.”
As he talked his hand moved in the same steady circle between her shoulder blades. She had stopped crying.
“I think you ought to get ready to go,” he said.
And now she wanted to. But there were things she had yet to do. “Pretty soon,” she said.
He left her alone and went back to the porch to watch the second half. It had been harrowing, but he’d done it. He hadn’t failed. What he’d said was what he should have said. It was hardly fresh material, he thought. But it was true. Throughout that spring he noticed how commonplace were the things of suffering and fear, and how commonplace their defense. Remarkable.
In the middle of the third quarter, with the score 69 to 63, Seattle, Sharon and Mike appeared at the front door with a box of candy. As he opened the door he said to himself, Not this time, and stood in the open doorway and smiled but didn’t invite them in.
“Joan’s asleep right now,” he said. “She’s going to the hospital for a little surgery later today and needs to rest.”
They gave him the box of candy. Mike asked for and got a glass of milk. They thanked him for Joan’s help, and it was clear they wanted to stay.
“Okay, kids,” Ace said. “Thanks for the candy. We’ll see you.” He gently herded them toward the door as he spoke. When they were gone he ate two pieces of candy and went back to watch the rest of the game.
Chapter 13
Joan cleaned up the loose ends. She called her aunt in western Mass. Joan was fond of Virginia. She didn’t tell her what was happening. She just called to talk, to hear Virginia’s voice. Joan’s parents were dead; Virginia was almost all that was left of family outside of Ace and the boys. Joan was never sure what prompted the call, a sense perhaps of I’m-never-coming-home-from-this, a desire to talk with Virginia before she went. I want to talk with her before I go, was all she could articulate. But what does go mean? she thought. Does it mean before I go to the hospital or before I cash in the old chips? I don’t know. But I want to talk.
She called several people that afternoon, old friends she hadn’t talked with lately, and talked and said goodbye without telling them. And then it was time. Okay, she said to herself, okay I’ve put my house in order. I want to go. The house is clean, the tapes are done. The phone calls are made. Now I want to go.
Monday was David’s sixteenth birthday. She wouldn’t be there. Holidays meant a lot to her, birthdays and Christmas particularly. They were important. She wrote a small birthday card with a poem, a variation on the roses-are-red-violets-are-blue theme, as she always did. She wrote one for her father-in-law, whose birthday was also April 21, and what she called unbirthday cards for Ace and Daniel. She gave all of them but Ace’s to Ace to give out the next day. His she slipped under the spread onto his pillow, so he’d find it when he went to bed.
As she wrote the cards here eyes filled. Jesus, is this it? Write the old cards and you won’t be here for the kid’s birthday. Why is this happening to me? How can I take it? How can I endure what’s happening to me, what’s ahead of me? How can I let them do this horrendous thing to my bod? Why can’t I stop it? And she could hear his voice. ‘We’ll deal with what we have to, we won’t look down the road, we won’t waste time asking why. We’ll do what we have to.’ And she pushed back the self-pity. She talked to herself. This is the right thing to do. This has happened to you and you must take it. You must hang on like hell. You must hope the surgery does the trick and the cancer hasn’t spread. You mustn’t get hogged down in why me. You must not. But Jesus, where the hell had that thing come from? And she knew what he’d say to that, even though she’d never asked him. He’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter where it came from. It only matters that it’s here and we have to get rid of it.’ And now she wanted very much to go. I want to get the hell out of this house and get this the hell over with.
They had agreed that it would be better if the boys didn’t go with them to the hospital. She said goodbye to them at home. At twelve, Daniel was very loving and huggy. He gave her a large hand-drawn card to take with her to the hospital. It had many “loves” written on it. Joan thanked him profusely, thinking as she did, Jesus maybe I’m going overboard because Dave hasn’t given me a card and he’ll feel bad. It was harder for David to be demonstrative at sixteen. At any age he had always been a very interior person. They parted without tears, but with little laughter either and with faces that revealed that what they were doing was hard.
Driving to the hospital with her suitcases in the back of the station wagon, he thought of the times he’d driven her before. Twice, for the babies, beginnings and endings, he thought. He did not share the thought with her. When bathos can be avoided it should be. Union Hospital was no more than a mile from home and the drive was brief. In the parking lot they met June Crumrine, who did volunteer work at the hospital. They stopped and talked. Ace had Joan’s luggage in hand. Joan was obviously checking into the hospital. June could obviously see that. June obviously wondered why, but was obviously not going to ask. Joan obviously was not going to say. It was one of the clumsier moments of the period.
As they sat in the admitting office and waited while the forms were typed, he said, “You gotta start telling people. Poor June didn’t know what the hell was happening. She’s a good friend and she’s confused.”
“Would it have been easier on her if I’d said I have breast cancer and I’m going in for a mastectomy?”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t. But you can’t keep this quiet. It hasn’t even happened yet and half of Lynnfield knows you’re in the hospital or having surgery or have a lump. You can’t keep it quiet. You have too many friends. You know too many people. I could come in and have my head removed and keep it a secret. But you — it’s going to be known.”
“Well, let’s be sure. Let’s keep it quiet until we’re sure.”
“How about the special people? Ganems, for instance. Can I tell them?”
“Yes, but wait till we know. Unless it comes up for some reason. You know the people that I love. You tell them when you think you should.”
Being in the hospital was for both of them a relief. They had plugged into the process and the process would carry them for a while. It was as if they’d finished a long journey. A candy striper led them to Joan’s room. Eliopoulos had gotten her the private room, West Wing, second floor at the end of the corridor overlooking a small side street where the homes had gardens behind them. There was a private bath and a television. And a phone. Ace showed her how the TV worked. She unpacked. In her suitcase, slipped into a side pocket, was a card from David which showed a small boy hugging a puppy. “Without you I’m nothing,” the card said. “I miss you already.” Joan’s eyes filled and she showed it to Ace. God, she thought, that is a grabber. He read it without comment and felt his throat tighten.