Waves of self-pity, like nausea, rolled over her. She had to fight it off. She talked to herself. Wait a minute, you goddamned fool. What does that mean compared to the luck, the total luck, don’t talk about bad luck, the total good luck, the wonderfulness of being told that you’re free of cancer and you have a life ahead and you don’t have to have radiology and chemotherapy and have your hair fall out. Think about that, you jerk. Concentrate on that.
And she would fight off the self-pity and work on the feelings when they came, and they came often at two in the morning, when she felt very vulnerable. It was a solitary battle and one of the hardest kind, for it had no audience. The feelings came and she didn’t know what to do with them except to fight them off. She didn’t cry. She didn’t wake up nights and cry, but she thought often, why me?
It was not always two in the morning. Sometimes during the day or early evening something would happen to dramatize her loss and she would feel, why me? A week after she came home she was lying on the bed watching The Rockford Files. She had to lie on her back to watch, for her side was still uncomfortable and her head was at an awkward angle and she sighed. David was in the room looking for a pencil and he heard her.
“Are you feeling depressed?” he said.
“Yes, I guess so. Not in the pits of depression, you know, but kind of depressed.”
“I don’t understand that,” he said.
“I don’t mean to be snotty about this,” Joan said, “but it ain’t your boob that was lopped off.”
“Yeah, but Mom, that’s just a crummy old boob. It’s not your life.”
And it helped. She felt the reminder and a gratitude that he was free to give it. That’s right, she thought. That’s right, Dave. It’s good that you remind me that it is just a crummy old boob. The boys’ ease with her surgery helped. When asked by their friends they spoke of their mother’s mastectomy as they would have spoken of a tonsillectomy.
One afternoon Charna Levine called. A colleague at Tufts and a friend of some years, Charna called regularly to check in and see how Joan progressed.
Always Joan said bright and up-tempo things when Charna called.
“How are things?”
“Oh fine, good. I went back to work. I told my students. It was hard, but I did pretty good.”
“You know,” Charna said, “you must be feeling angry about this. I know you feel good as well, and you’re glad it wasn’t worse. But you don’t want to deny the angry feelings either.”
“I know.”
“You have a right to those feelings, and a right to let them out.”
“I don’t want to dwell forever on it.”
“Of course not,” Charna said, “and you shouldn’t. You don’t want to get obsessive about all of this. But you need to let those feelings out. You shouldn’t be Pollyanna Parker about it.”
For Joan that was valuable. It was not that she couldn’t think of such a thing. It was that she hadn’t quite articulated it. And Charna having said it gave it configuration and reality. Of course she was angry. And in the days of re-entry she talked to herself almost constantly. She stayed way inside her head. She wanted not tears but anger. And she succeeded. Less and less she thought, Oh my poor body. More and more she thought, I wish this did not happen, but by God it’s not going to get me.
Ace asked her one night why she was so quiet. “Are you okay,” he said. “Do you feel all right?”
“Yes. I’m okay, but I have to go inside for a while,” she said. “I have to keep running this experience through until somehow it becomes part of everything. You know?”
“Would it help to talk?”
“No, I don’t think so. I have to do this myself.”
He shrugged. She knew his feelings were hurt slightly. He was devouringly possessive and he resented anything that shut him out. But he knew that about himself and he suppressed it when he could and he knew this time she was right and he would have to stay outside, for a short while anyway.
Chapter 26
It took perhaps two weeks for her to come to terms with the feelings of loss. After everything is said, she thought, nobody really gets all that stirred up over your big problems. She was driving now. She still moved her left arm a little carefully, but she was in control of the little Vega and the ride was pleasant. You reach the same level of comfortable social exchange that you had before. It’s not up to other people to do that for you. I have to do that. I have to act as if everything were the same. I can’t wallow and revel in my sadness and my loss. It’s my problem. I better get on with my life. It was given back to me, and I better use it.
After class, on a Wednesday in mid-May, Joan went to have lunch with Marie Rawlings. It was still a women’s time for her, and the friends continued to gather.
As they sipped a glass of white wine and looked at the menu, Marie said, “I really dreaded seeing you, you know.”
“I can see why you might,” Joan said.
“I was afraid you might not still be Joan. If you weren’t Joan I wouldn’t want to see you anymore. I couldn’t bear it.”
“But...?”
“But you’re still Joan,” Marie said.
“Yes, I am.”
“And it comes across. I wondered if you’d start going with the jackets so as not to draw attention to your breasts.”
Joan smiled. “I thought of that. I thought maybe people will be grossed out seeing me in a sweater or a blouse that outlines and defines the breast.”
Marie shook her head.
Joan said, “That’s right. That’s what I decided. If people didn’t like it that was their problem. If they wanted to run around saying, ‘Jesus why doesn’t she wear a jacket,’ they would have to deal with that. I’m going to wear what I always wore. If the world wants to figure out which side is the falsie then it can go ahead.”
“There’s no way to tell,” Marie said.
“That’s right. I like the way I look when I dress like this, and Ace likes it and I am still me. I’ll dress like me.”
“Yes, you are,” Marie said. “And it is such a relief. And if you keep it up, if you keep acting like Joan and wearing the clothes that Joan wears, and you make people see that you are still you and you have not been humbled, and you’re not apologetic over what’s happened to you, it will be the same.”
Joan drank her wine. “It’s almost the same,” she said. “In some ways it’s better. I feel a new power in me of what I can take. Of what I can survive.”
Marie said, “Let’s order.” And they did.
That night in bed Joan said to Ace, “There are three things left to do.”
“What are the other two?” he said.
“Getting a little randy, are we?” Joan said.
“It has now been five weeks and two days, but who counts?”
“Okay, there’s that. Pretty soon, I’ll be okay for that. I also have to get a prosthesis and I have to show you the incision.”