“Can we tell people?” Dan said.
“Mom still has some impulse to keep this a secret, but I think that she will change her mind. It can’t be kept a secret. I see no reason why it should be. I think she has a right to require us to be secret until she does change her mind. As far as I’m concerned you can tell everyone you want to anything you want. Will either of you be embarrassed?”
“No.”
“No, why should we be embarrassed?”
“No reason, I simply asked. Sometimes a kid might find it embarrassing to talk about his mother’s boob. I don’t think you would be, but I thought I’d better check.”
They seemed sincerely puzzled at the prospect of embarrassment and he was relieved. At least that’s not a problem, he thought.
They wheeled into the parking lot at Union Hospital and went up to Joan’s room. The boys seemed okay. The loss of a breast didn’t seem to hit them much differently from, say, the loss of an appendix. I wonder, if they were girls would it strike them more? Or is it striking them more than they show? I always tell them to let their emotions out, to express them, let them show. But I always repress mine, and, then tend, I think, to learn more from what I do than what I say. He laughed at himself. Christ, Bob, you are a profound bastard. You really know kids.
When they went in the room Dan was frightened. He was scared to see Joan, for fear of how she’d look. When he saw her he thought she looked awful. Lying in the white bed, the IV in her hand, the white bedding rumpled around her. Her lip-sticked mouth a bright slash against her white face. Why did he tell us right before we came? Dan thought. She looks awful.
“Hi, Ma,” he said.
She was awake and animated. She seemed completely lucid now. They all knew that she would put out her best for the kids when they came, but even so it was convincing.
“Did Daddy tell you what the operation was?”
“Yes.”
“Well, easy come, easy go.”
“Besides,” Ace said, “now you can get bras at half price.” Once you got an act that works, he thought, you may as well keep playing it. Now is not the time to break in new material.
They already knew, between them in the soundless communication that had evolved out of twenty years together, that this was the handle they were going to grasp. They had already established, without once saying so, the basic joke, and they would work variations on it as long as there was need.
The boys’ visit was blurry to Joan. Later they all discovered that she forgot much during the April days that followed surgery. She was always lucid and rational when she spoke, but she sometimes repeated things and she forgot things.
On Thursday, April 24, when they went to visit, she did not know whether they had been there Wednesday. She had a sense of Ace’s presence. Not so much a memory of his visit but an instinct that he had been there. But she always knew the breast was gone. It was as if she had never discovered it, simply that she had awakened knowing it. The way you know that you have a nose, or that you breathe. It was simply a part of her consciousness.
She felt all right. Wednesday night, after visiting hours, she had felt some little nausea. She had mentioned it to a nurse, and almost at once there was a small shot in the buttocks and the nausea was gone. It never came back.
Ace came right after the boys went to school. She was awake when he came in and sitting up.
“How is it?” he said.
“Fine, really, I feel okay. The incision isn’t bad at all. But my goddamned left arm hurts like hell.”
“That’s dumb,” he said. “They did not remove your arm, they removed your boob. Your boob is supposed to hurt.”
“Well, it doesn’t.”
“You can’t do anything right,” he said.
“Did you cover my class yesterday?”
“Of course not. I stayed home and waited for Eliopoulos to call.”
“Did you let them know?”
“I canceled it Monday.”
“Jesus, they won’t like that.”
“They should feel free to discuss it with me when I go in Friday.”
“Don’t get mad at anyone. Please, I don’t want that. I have to work there.”
“Me, Mr. Warm?”
“Yes.”
“Oh for crissake, Joan. I’m not a goddamned animal. Of course I’ll be pleasant. What do you think I am?”
“I know what you are, and I know sometimes if you get mad you can be really lousy to people. And it would just make it harder for me if you blow up at any of the people down there.”
“How about I give the whole administration an hour to get out of Beverly?”
“Besides,” she said, “I like some of those people.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“How are the boys?”
“Good, they’re okay. They seemed not too shook about it.”
“Were they here yesterday?”
“Yep. You talked to them terrific. You were good.”
“Good. When are you going to do David’s birthday?”
“Today. I got the tickets and everything. I figure we’ll just go ahead and do what we were going to do.”
“Yes.”
“Have they given you anything for the arm pain?”
“I don’t know. It’s not bad unless I move a certain way.”
“What do they say it is?”
“Oh, they talk about lymph nodes and certain glands being removed. But to me it feels like a pinched nerve. You know. Like a hot needle sticking me if I turn a certain way.”
“How about the rest of you. The boob area and such?”
“The discomfort is really very minimal,” she said. What a pleasure to listen to her talk, he thought. How come I’m a writer and she’s not and she talks beautifully and I don’t. Her expressions were so graceful, and her sentences were so full and complete. She seemed always to know ahead of time exactly what she wanted to say. And yet the language rolled out spontaneous and fresh. Funny. When she tries to write things it doesn’t come out. Speaking and writing appear to be different gifts. Another insight. Mr. Deep.
“All I can compare it to is a sunburn. I don’t mean it burns like a sunburn. The sensation is different. But the level of aggravation is about the same. You know. You go to work or clean the house or drive a car when you have a pretty good sunburn and you say to yourself, ‘Oh, this sunburn is really annoying.’ It never keeps you from functioning. It’s just sort of annoying. And you’ll be glad when it’s better. You know?”
“Is it tight?”
“A little. They took some tissue and the skin is sort of right against the rib cage. There’s no padding, and until that rebuilds it will be sort of tight.”
“When you come home we can do a little weight work and build that up,” he said. “It’s just pectoral muscle and if it’s slow coming back we can build it up with some bench presses or flies.”
“Oh, flies sounds super.”
“I got a fly for you,” he said.