The trays were being cleared as the two of them started for the door, where Buddy waited with a dark-haired man, who held out a jacket to Kathleen’s new acquaintance.
The women turned to each other and laughed. “This is my husband, Buddy Levine. I’m Kathleen.”
“Joyce Tabachnik. This is Frank.”
“You mean you don’t even know each other’s names?” Buddy asked. “You’ve been over there gabbing like you were long-lost cousins.”
The four of them walked out of the synagogue and paused on the steep stairs to the street. The building had served the town’s Jews for a century, but it would always look like the foursquare New England church it was built to be. Below them, the lights of the docks and the big fishing boats were mirrored in black water.
Joyce took a deep breath and said, “God, it smells good up here.” Kathleen shivered and Buddy rushed over to help her into her sweater. They said their good-byes.
“Nice people,” Buddy said as he and Kathleen got into their car.
“Nice people,” said Frank as he and Joyce pulled out of the parking lot.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Kathleen thought she saw Joyce ahead of her in the produce aisle at the Star Market, but she then caught sight of the Naked Coed Golf T-shirt. The woman she had talked to at temple wouldn’t wear such a thing in her own bathroom, much less in public.
Kathleen wondered if Joyce would trade an insider’s tour of Gloucester in exchange for a trip to the mall. The corduroy jumper she had worn to services that night must be fifteen years old.
Joyce had walked past the same bananas earlier the same day, keeping an eye out for Kathleen. “That’s what I want to look like when I grow up,” she had told Frank on their way home from services. Joyce thought about calling Kathleen but worried that she might not want to have coffee with the author of a romance novel — though of course she hadn’t mentioned Magnolia’s Heart when they’d talked.
The following week, Joyce heard her name as she walked into Tomaso’s. “I was hoping to run into you. I see you already know about one of Gloucester’s crown jewels,” Kathleen said, opening her arms in adoration of the crowded Main Street storefront. Mismatched metal shelves held tomatoes, pasta, oil, and tuna with unfamiliar Italian labels crowding out the American brands. Dean Martin crooned from unseen speakers.
While the women behind the counter took orders, Kathleen explained the merits of the special sandwiches, named for neighborhoods and saints. “The calzone always sells out early in the summer.”
Joyce nodded and inhaled the store’s heady mixture of yeast, sawdust, and salami.
A grim-faced woman wearing orange lipstick and a green T-shirt asked for their order.
“Hi, Ginny,” Kathleen said. “How are the grandkids?”
Ginny’s frown dissolved as she pointed to a photograph taped to the counter. “The best.”
Kathleen introduced Joyce and mentioned the house on Forest Street.
“Mary Loquasto’s house,” Ginny said, nodding. “You the writer?”
Joyce blushed and nodded.
“It’s a nice house,” Ginny added, almost daring Joyce to disagree.
“We’re very lucky,” Joyce said.
“There are no secrets in a small town, you know,” Kathleen whispered. She bought a loaf of scali bread; Joyce ordered three dozen cookies for Nina’s soccer team. Dean Martin followed them out into the street. “Sometimes they play opera,” Kathleen said, pointing up at the speakers under the awning. They stood for a moment and listened to the end of “Return to Me.”
“Are you in a rush?” Kathleen asked. “The pastry shop over there has wonderful cappuccino.”
As they walked into the café across the street, the woman behind the counter said, “Hi, Mrs. Levine.”
“Hi, Philomena,” said Kathleen. “Is Serena over her cold?”
“She’ll be back in school next week,” said Philomena, who lowered her voice and added, “And I hear you’re going to be okay, right?”
Kathleen brushed off Philomena’s question and the quizzical look on Joyce’s face. “I’m fine. Can we have two of the world’s best cappuccinos?”
As she steamed the milk, Philomena got started on other people’s business. “So, is that Mrs. Fry who teaches second grade pregnant, or not?” She set down a couple of biscotti with the coffees. “On the house.”
Philomena was about to pull over a chair to join them when the phone rang. Kathleen and Joyce exchanged relieved glances. They stirred their coffees with exaggerated care, each wondering where to begin.
Maybe I’m too old, thought Kathleen. She tried to remember how she and Jeanette had started to be friends. It had taken them two years to talk about anything more important than the weather. And now Jeanette was out of her life. Kathleen knew why she hadn’t called: too many friends and family members had been diagnosed with cancer in the past few years, and Jeanette was terrified. Still, Kathleen would never be able to forgive her. For a moment, she considered sticking to the weather. But then Joyce smiled, revealing two perfectly matched dimples Kathleen hadn’t noticed the other night at temple.
“What brought you to Gloucester in the first place?” Kathleen asked.
“Actually, Nina found it,” Joyce said. “She was a colicky baby . . . what a horrible three months that was. She would only sleep in the car, and even then we had to be doing at least fifty. Frank and I drove up and down 128, taking turns napping. So one night, late, maybe three in the morning, Frank pulled over alongside Good Harbor beach. There was no moon, and the stars were just staggering. I could see the Milky Way like it was an address, you know? Like a real pathway through the sky. Eventually, all of us fell asleep, and when we woke up, the sunrise closed the sale.
“After that, we came up for vacations. We rented cottages all over the place: Annisquam, Lanesville, Rocky Neck. We were in an apartment near Bass Rocks for three years until the place went condo. By then, I swore if we ever had the money, we’d buy a place up here.”
Kathleen nodded, her eyes fixed on Joyce’s expressive face. She must be forty, Kathleen thought. I can see the little lines around her eyes. Gray eyes, very striking with the black hair.
“Of course we couldn’t afford what we wanted,” Joyce went on, “which is a water view. Our place is about three blocks up from Smith’s Cove, near the theater. Oh, right,” she said, remembering Ginny’s comment. “I guess everyone knows that.”
“It’s not bad, to be known by your neighbors.”
“I’ll have to get used to it. Belmont is totally anonymous by comparison.”
Kathleen nodded, encouraging Joyce to go on with her story.
“I love it up here. But when I try to explain what made me pick Gloucester, I end up sounding like a Hallmark card. How can you describe the sky and the light up here without getting all gooey?”
“It’s hard to describe love of a place,” Kathleen said. “I can’t do it, and I’ve been here nearly thirty-five years. I remember reading a poem that said the harbor here is big enough to hold the sky. Something like that. It was Charles Olsen. He used to live in Gloucester, you know. And there was also a line about how Gloucester was still a place to go fishing from. I should find that again.”
“I’d like to read it,” said Joyce. “Did you know Olsen?”
“Oh, no. I heard him speak at a town meeting once. Strange guy. A shame he died so young.”
There was a pause, and then it was Joyce’s turn to ask a question. “Do your sons live nearby?”
Kathleen told her about Hal, her oldest, twenty-nine and living in San Francisco, a computer programmer; and Jack, twenty-three, a chef in New York, with a Broadway actress for a girlfriend.
Kathleen asked about Nina. “She is totally into soccer,” Joyce said. “And most of the time she wishes I would vanish from the face of the earth.”
“Oh, dear. That sounds painful.”
“It is,” Joyce said, shocked to find herself instantly close to tears. “Her room is right off the kitch
en at home, and from the time Nina was a baby she made us keep that door open. She liked to listen to us moving around. She liked to know we could hear her. She told me that once.
“But in January — God, it was just a few months ago really — she closed the door. I remember it was a Sunday. And that was it. One day we were friends, tickling, and going to movies together. The next day I was a terrible embarrassment, clueless, terminally annoying.
“I wonder if the whole adolescence thing is going to be harder for me because Nina is an only child, or because she was a miracle baby. I had three miscarriages and two surgeries before we had her. I used to give myself hormone shots in restaurant bathrooms, like some kind of junkie.” Joyce paused. “I haven’t thought about that part of my life in ages. We worked so hard to get her. Now that she’s such a royal pain in the ass, I should probably remember how much I wanted a baby. But that’s not my first response when she screams at me for asking if she needs lunch money.”
“I think boys are easier,” Kathleen said. “But there is an undeniable loss when they get to this age. And it’s never as sweet as when they’re little and sitting on your lap.”
They sat quietly for a moment, each savoring memories of little shoes, effortless kisses, bath time.
They smiled at each other. This is good, thought Joyce.
The conversation turned to work, and Kathleen talked about the never-ending budget battle over funding for the library. Joyce told Kathleen how her first national magazine article was completely “edited” to say the opposite of what she had intended.
They agreed to a second cappuccino and traded favorite authors.
“Jane Austen, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison,” Joyce said.
“Beverly Cleary, E. B. White, Maurice Sendak,” said Kathleen.
“Oh, Sendak is a genius.”
Kathleen beamed. “Absolutely.”
“Did you ever try writing a children’s book yourself?”
“Once upon a time. It was pretty awful. I’m good at helping children find books to love.”
The door opened and two men walked in, shouting greetings to Philomena in Italian. A moment later, four Japanese tourists crowded in. Kathleen looked at their cameras and whispered, “They’re early this year.”
Out on the sidewalk, Joyce suggested that Kathleen and Buddy come for dinner the following week; the deadline would help her get some painting done.
Kathleen hesitated and the invitation hung in the air for a moment too long.
“Don’t feel you have to,” Joyce said.
But Kathleen heard the catch in Joyce’s voice. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that . . . I, umm, I’m facing radiation treatments, and I don’t feel like very good company.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. What is it? I mean, why are you having radiation?”
“Breast cancer.”
“Oh, shit.” Joyce flinched, afraid Kathleen would think she was crude.
“It’s not that I don’t want to get together again. I’m just . . . I don’t want to talk about it anymore and I don’t want to be treated like a patient,” Kathleen said, a little louder than she’d intended. “They’re all as sweet as can be — my family, neighbors, people at school — but ever since the diagnosis, it’s all anyone can talk about. Any room I’m in just fills up with cancer. My cancer. Their best friend’s cancer. Their dog’s cancer! Honest to goodness! One woman cornered me and told me about her twelve-year-old dog’s liver-cancer treatment, like I was an expert on the subject.
“Oh, dear. I sound furious, don’t I?”
“Well, why the hell shouldn’t you be furious?” Joyce said softly.
They smiled at each other. They were going to be okay.
The next day, Joyce called to say that she had found the Olsen poem about Gloucester, and they chatted about the weather for a minute. Then Kathleen said, “I’m getting measured for the radiation in a couple of days. They’re going to make some kind of a plastic form for me to lie in so the ray goes to the right place. And then they are going to” — she took a deep breath and tried to sound casual — “put tattoos on me. So they zap me in the right spot, I guess. Or maybe so they don’t shoot the wrong one by mistake.”
“That sounds hideous!”
“I think so, too,” Kathleen agreed. “They say it’s not going to hurt, and I’m usually pretty good at putting things like this into perspective, but I’m dreading this tattooing thing so much, I can hardly stand it. Is that silly?”
“Nothing about how rotten you feel is silly. You’re not going to a day spa, for God’s sake. The whole thing sucks.”
Kathleen giggled.
“Excuse my language,” Joyce said. “But even the littlest part of this sucks. And don’t let anyone try to tell you different.”
Kathleen felt better after she hung up. She hadn’t told anyone else how upset she was about the tattoos. Thank goodness Joyce hadn’t tried to cheer her up.
Joyce knew she’d said the right thing — or at least that she hadn’t said the wrong thing. After her first miscarriage, people had said nothing but the wrong thing to her. One ex-friend patted her hand and said she should be glad “Mother Nature was taking care of her mistake.”
The doctor who did the D&C said, “Don’t worry, hon. We’ll get you past this and within a year you’ll have a healthy baby and forget this ever happened.” After he left, the nurse snorted in disgust. “What a crock of horse manure,” she’d said, crossing her large arms. “Losing a baby is a heartbreak that you never forget.” Nurse Phyllis Burkey was a woman Joyce remembered with fierce affection. “It sucks,” Phyllis Burkey said, “and don’t let anyone try to tell you different.”
JUNE
THIS IS ridiculous,” Kathleen said when Buddy insisted they leave two hours before her first appointment. “I don’t want to sit there any longer than I have to.” But when he crossed his arms and lowered his head, she knew he wasn’t going to back down.
She slammed the car door too hard, and they drove through the morning fog and over the bridge without speaking. Just past the Ipswich exit they ran into traffic, and the radio announced a four-car accident a mile ahead. Buddy glanced over, but Kathleen refused to meet his eyes and admit he was right.
She looked out her window and tried not to think of the crash as an omen. Buddy wiped his palms on his pants.
Once they passed the backup, the silent breach between them closed. “The trees are beautiful,” she said softly, staring at the woods, filled in and fully green for the summer.
“It was all that rain we had,” he said, squinting into the rearview mirror.
Dr. Truman had recommended this doctor, but the building did not inspire confidence in Kathleen or Buddy, who remembered its earlier incarnation as St. Jude’s Hospital for Incurables. Metro-North Medical Center was a brutally ugly, low-slung, yellow-brick building. “It still looks like a tire factory,” Buddy muttered.
Inside, the crucifixes were gone and the lobby alcove where Saint Jude had once held court had been turned into a spiky garden of flowering bromeliads. The blue plastic pond was carpeted with pennies. They followed the signs to the elevators and down to the basement, where the gray carpeting exuded the faintly toxic smell of renovation. The magazines were up-to-date, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on the silk flower arrangements. Someone had tried to soften the light in the waiting room by unscrewing a few of the fluorescent bulbs and adding some table lamps, but they only cast weird shadows on the acoustic-tile ceiling.
Kathleen thought she had never seen a bleaker place. Like the waiting room for the best-behaved residents in hell, she thought, and decided Joyce would get a kick out of the image. Maybe Joyce would write a novel and dedicate it to her, as a posthumous memorial.
Kathleen was surprised by that morbid turn in her train of thought. After all, the prognosis was, officially, “excellent.”
Five pairs of eyes looked up as they walked into the waiting room. Two women in their sixties — one
wearing a head scarf against a naked skull — interrupted their whispered conversation and looked first at Kathleen and then at Buddy, trying to work out which one was the patient. An elderly man in a pressed shirt and clip-on tie leaned forward on his cane and smiled a weary welcome. A young black man — a teenager — stared blankly. Beside him, his mother glared protectively. Buddy put his arm around Kathleen and steered her to the desk, where the receptionist greeted them as though Kathleen were a long-lost girlfriend.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Levine. Marcy will be right out for you.”
“Marcy?” asked Buddy.
“She’s your nurse. She’ll set you up before you meet with Dr. Singh. I’m Carla.” Carla handed them a clipboard. “You can get started on these in the meantime, okay?”
Sitting next to Buddy, Kathleen saw that the forms asked for the same information she had supplied a dozen times in the past weeks: her insurance policy number, her weight, her height, her family history, her social security number, her primary care physician’s name. She couldn’t concentrate and handed Buddy the pen.
Kathleen kept her eyes on the floor. The young man wore an enormous pair of gleaming white Nikes; his mother, a pair of cracked black patent leather flats. The two other women wore identical pairs of sneakers with short white socks. The older man’s tasseled loafers looked expensive.
Buddy’s tan work boots were the same ones he’d been buying at Sears ever since she’d met him. Each pair lasted between three and four years. Kathleen calculated that this would be his eighth or ninth pair since they were married.
Her own blue, beaded moccasins, bought years ago at an outlet store in Maine, suddenly seemed ridiculous. Hal had teased her about them when they were new.
Kathleen wished Hal didn’t live so far away. Her hands were icy, and she could feel her heart pounding. She didn’t know how to manage this fear. She was supposed to feel fortunate. Noninvasive tumor and clean margins. DCIS is barely cancer at all. It was the right breast, so the heart is clear of the ray. And she was left-handed. All good news.
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