Tuesday night they brought her an assortment of movie fan magazines. She had a passion for fan magazines but was embarrassed to buy them. She read them only at the beauty parlor.
“The clerk looked at me kind of funny,” Ace said when he gave her the magazines. “I bought one of every kind they had, except a whole issue devoted to Bobby Sherman.”
Dave said, “You don’t look like a teeny-bopper.”
Dan said, “How about a Big Bopper,” and everyone laughed.
Ace said, “There used to be a rock-and-roll singer named the Big Bopper.”
“How about Whale Bopper?” Dan said.
“Want to hear my Big Bopper impression?” Ace said.
“No.”
The kids fought a bit over what program to watch, and at nine the security guard came around, carrying his time clock and nightstick, and said that visiting hours were over.
“Be sure to meet my class tomorrow,” she said as they left.
“Of course,” he said.
When she was alone at night Joan thought about Jerry Wilkinson and her prayers. It must be a great comfort to have that kind of belief. I’m not sure I have no belief, but... I certainly don’t have any belief in a benevolent God that’s taking care of me, working out my life to the best advantage. What’s that line that Ace uses?... The ways of the Lord are often dark but never pleasant. Who said that originally? I’ll ask Ace. I know it’s not his. Anyway I could make some kind of bargain. But with whom? Maybe if I became a believer again? If I believe and promise to believe always you’ll make this just be breast cancer and spare the rest of my body. You can take the boob and give me the rest of my body. Balls. What kind of God is that who would say, Oh, okay. We were going to infuse your entire body with cancer, but as long as you agree to believe in me, we won’t. Well just take one boob. I can’t accept that God. If he’s up there I decline to accept him anyway. That’s no deal.
She was watching the “Johnny Carson Show.” The sound came from the small speaker by her bed, and it had fallen away and hung from its strap, turned away from her. She couldn’t hear what was being said, just a low entertainment noise and Carson’s face like a good-natured boyish Satan. He seems so good a man. How could all those divorces have happened? Why can’t he live with a wife? He can’t quit smoking either. But I can. I have. And I can make that deal with myself. I’ve been back-sliding, a cigarette here, a puff on someone’s there. I’m not becoming a smoker again, hut this situation makes smoking more needful. If I get out of this I won’t be a smoker again ever. I won’t start smoking a few cigarettes at parties and worrying about whether I’m creating lung cancer, and waking up with the terrible smoking taste in my mouth and he scared about that. I won’t smoke again if I get out of this. That’s a deal with me, not with God.
The pact with herself was something that made sense to her, and yet she knew there was superstition involved as well. Though she never felt a benevolent God by her side she was never able entirely to rid herself of the feeling that something was out there. Some presence. Maybe just a hangover from childhood belief, she thought, maybe superstition. But there was a sense of someone out there to whom she addressed remarks now and then without thinking about it. “Listen, you’ve got to help me through this. I need help with this. Get me through tonight. Give me the strength to endure this.” Who am I talking to? Is it really God I’m talking to? I don’t know. She thought about mysticism. About contacting those who had died before her. Her mother, her father. She had some acquaintances who were very much convinced of the reality of such extracorporeal matters. What do I do, start calling? Hello, out there. Hey, here I am. This is the time. This is when I need you. It seemed laughable to her. She had to reject that. But she was looking for something and she very much wanted belief. She needed some pattern to this. Some way to order the experience and impose meaning on it. But she couldn’t, and she had come, by late that night before surgery, to the simple realization that there was no order or meaning to it. She came to think of it as she did always thereafter as simply something that happened to her.
The meaning she found was in the mature and caring response of her children, the permanence of her husband, the commitment of her friends, the warm support of the nurses. I don’t know if there are any atheists in foxholes, she thought as she drifted into sleep. But there aren’t any misanthropes, I’ll bet. Sleep was sound and dreamless. She had expected to spend the night awake and frightened. She did not. She couldn’t remember getting a sleeping pill. She never did remember and she never thought to ask. Maybe Valium, she thought. Maybe it’s Valium that’s putting me to sleep.
Chapter 16
Wednesday, April 23
They woke her very early for surgery. She was calm. Resigned. Not a lamb to slaughter. Simply one ready for what was to come. She was not frightened. Valium, do your stuff, she thought. But her calmness was more than just resignation. It was a kind of eagerness too. As she had wanted to come to the hospital Sunday, so now she wanted to get on with the surgery. I have to come out of the other end of the tunnel. I have to get on with my life after this day and this surgery. She wanted to begin that life. She wanted to get to a point of certainty. To know if she’d live.
She got up and did her face. Lipstick, blusher, eye makeup, mascara, eye liner. Her nails were done. She brushed her hair. She was very careful with her hair. Dr. Eliopoulos was quite a nice-looking man.
Norah came in and gave her a shot. “Just some medication to make you drowsy. Won’t put you to sleep. Just make it easier for us to get you asleep in the OR.”
Things did get a little drowsy then. Two nurses, Norah and Eunie, came in and shaved her chest.
“I don’t want to spoil this,” Joan said. “But I don’t have any hair on my chest.”
“We do it routinely,” Norah said. “It’s silly, but we always do it.”
They put long white surgical stockings on her. Like my mother used to wear, she thought. But they only came to your knees. Nice. Just like knee socks. Maybe I can keep these and wear them later. No, maybe not. Probably don’t look good playing tennis in surgical stockings.
One of the nurses said something about nail polish.
“What?”
“You’ll have to remove your nail polish,” the nurse said. Joan wasn’t quite clear which nurse it was.
“Why,” Joan said. “Why is that?”
“Oh, just take it off.” The nurse handed her some polish remover.
“But I like it on there. I think it looks kind of neat.”
“Well, the thing is they want to be able to tell if your nails turn blue. They have to be able to see that.”
“Christ, I wish I hadn’t asked,” Joan said.
“And the makeup,” someone said. A tissue appeared. “Okay, wipe it off.”
Joan removed the makeup. The nurse washed her face.
Then she was moving. The bed was wheeled into the corridor. Benny was there, “You’re going to be okay, okay.” And into the elevator and down. Very down and then out into what seemed like a basement. Cinder-block walls painted bright green. A long corridor, other beds along the wall now and then. Nurses in green uniforms with skullcaps, and a strong sense of being deep underground. Windowless and silent. A different world right here on Lynnfield Street, next to the Shop Kwik Market that was always open. Even Christmas Day. And quite busy down there. The bed was parked next to the wall and Grace was there, a neighbor, but only a casual acquaintance. “Hi, Grace,” and Grace startled. It’s my hat. I’ve got on one of the goddamned hats, and poor Grace doesn’t know who the hell I am. Do I have on a hat? “Grace, it is I, Joan Hall Parker.”