by Kate Hewitt
‘Grace?’ I sound incredulous and a little accusing.
‘Hi, Heather.’ She sounds exhausted. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call. And that I didn’t come out there a few weeks ago.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Because something clearly is, judging from the tone of her voice, the tiredness. ‘Is Isaac…?’
‘Isaac’s fine.’ A pause; it feels like she’s debating what to say. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she says, but I’m not sure whether I should believe her.
‘Why didn’t you come?’
‘I’m sorry, it completely slipped my mind.’ That seems unlikely, but I stay silent, waiting for more. ‘It’s been…’ She lets out a rush of breath. ‘Really busy.’
‘So will you and Isaac come as usual next weekend?’ His visit is less than two weeks away.
Grace lets out a shaky laugh that, shockingly, holds the threat of tears. ‘Oh, Heather…’
I panic, because Grace never sounds like that. So emotional, so weak. ‘Grace, what’s going on?’
‘I can’t talk about it now,’ she says on a shuddery breath. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re going to be able to make it.’
For a few seconds I can’t speak. ‘Why not?’ I finally manage, the two words squeezed from my throat.
‘I…’ Grace pauses. ‘I haven’t been feeling all that well.’
I don’t know how to respond to that, how to feel. Is she lying? Is she really sick? What if she’s just done, and she’s making excuses to keep Isaac from me? ‘Grace,’ I choke out, ‘I thought we were going to have a conversation about this first.’
‘Oh, Heather, it’s not that.’ She sounds exasperated as well as exhausted, like I’m just too much work for her. ‘Look, I’ve barely missed a visit in seven years. Just let me duck out of one, okay? Just one.’ Her voice breaks, and I feel a mix of guilt and confusion. What is really going on here?
‘Just one?’ I press. ‘You’ll come next month?’
She lets out a ragged laugh. ‘Oh, whatever. Fine. Yes. Although I have no idea what next month will be like.’ And then she disconnects the call before I can ask anything else.
I’m left both fuming and uncertain, replaying the conversation in my mind, looking for answers I know I won’t find. Someone knocks on the bathroom door, and sliding my phone in my pocket, I unlock the door and brush past Steve, my coworker with the sweet smile and sweat-stained shirt, and go back to my desk.
I don’t have time to think too much about it, though, because when I get home everything feels chaotic. Emma and Amy are screeching at each other; Amy borrowed Emma’s favorite jeans without asking, and then ripped holes in both knees, probably on purpose.
Emma is so rarely angry, but even so she’s no match for Amy, who is fiery and scathing, while she, poor girl, just goes white and speaks in a breathy voice that is full of tears. She doesn’t stand a chance.
Lucy adds her own brand of difficult to the mix, tearful and defiant, as she thrusts a note from school at me, right up into my face.
‘What’s this?’ I ask, the words blurring before me.
‘From my teacher.’
I start to read it, how she’s failed her last three spelling tests. How did I not know that? The teacher, Mrs. Bryant, is asking for a meeting next week, after school. I’ll have to take time off work.
‘You suck!’ Emma cries, her final thrust, which bounces off Amy, who just smirks. She’s still holding the jeans.
I walk into the kitchen, just to get away from them. From all of it. I feel so tired by everything, the constant needs and demands. I open the fridge and stare into the near-empty depths. I forgot to go food shopping; in fact, this whole afternoon is a blur. What did I do? I left work and sat in my car for a while. I drove around. And I came back early, right after the girls got back. I could still go to Stop & Shop and do a quick runaround, but I can’t face it now. I can’t face anything.
‘Mom, are you going to go to the meeting?’ Lucy asks anxiously. ‘Am I in trouble?’
‘Mom, make her give back the jeans,’ Emma cries. ‘They’re mine.’
‘Just try to get them,’ Amy calls defiantly, clutching her stolen treasure. ‘You never wear them, anyway. They’re too small for you.’
I ignore them all, and I can’t even feel guilty about it. I walk into my bedroom and close the door, for once shocking all three of my daughters into silence. Then I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, my mind blanking out. Eventually I fall asleep.
I wake up a few hours later, blinking in the dusky light. Kev has come into the bedroom and is taking off his UPS uniform.
‘What… what’s going on?’ I ask muzzily.
‘What do you mean?’ He tosses his shirt on the floor.
‘I fell asleep… are the girls okay?’ Guilt needles me. I’m a mom – I can’t just check out like that.
Kevin shrugs. I roll onto my side, tuck my knees into my chest. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asks after a moment.
‘I was tired.’
‘You sick?’
‘No.’
He pauses, his hands on his belt buckle. ‘Is this about Grace?’ He sounds like he regrets asking the question.
‘I had a weird phone call from her today.’
Kev shakes his head.
‘I’m serious, Kev, it was weird.’
‘So what?’ he asks, and I am silent. ‘So what?’ he asks again, his voice louder, and I close my eyes. ‘Heather, you’ve got to let this go.’
‘Let Isaac go, you mean.’
‘You already agreed to it, even if you hadn’t told her yet.’
‘I know that, but not like this. Not without… anything.’
‘What was so weird about the phone call?’ he asks on a sigh.
‘She sounded tired and kind of upset.’
‘So?’
I know nothing I will say will dent his determined indifference right now, and I don’t want to try. ‘Trust me, it was just weird.’
‘So it was weird.’ He pulls on a pair of sweatpants. ‘What’s for dinner?’
I keep thinking about Grace for the next few weeks, as the silence stretches on and on. The fourth Saturday of the month passes without comment; in a burst of manic energy, I pack a picnic and we walk to Phil Rizzuto Park, spread a blanket by the playground, although only Lucy goes on the swings, and even then only halfheartedly. But I got the whole family out, even Amy, which feels like a miracle.
As I lie on the blanket and nibble my soggy sandwich, I feel a flicker of happiness, like a fragile beam of light emerging from behind dark, dank clouds. This can be enough, surely – a sunny afternoon in May, my family around me, Kev’s thigh pressed to mine. Do I really need more than this? Am I going to be so greedy?
Two days later, while I’m at work, Grace calls again. This time she sounds awful, her voice no more than a croak.
‘Heather… I’m so sorry to ask you this… but please can you pick up Isaac from school?’
Nineteen
GRACE
I have cancer. Bad cancer, although is there any good kind? I think once upon a time, I might have thought so. I might have been so insensitive as to say it. Isn’t that a good kind of cancer? My own mother died of cancer, my father too, and I had no clue. No idea what it feels like to have your body betray you, to know that your very cells are corrupted, multiplying their evil with every breath you draw.
After I found the lump, I called right away. With my mother’s history I’d always been eagle-eyed for the signs, and yet the lump still seemed unbelievable, impossible. Dr. Stein did a biopsy, and then she called me in for the results. I knew right away, from the look on her face, the sad eyes, the droopy mouth, that it was bad news.
I just didn’t know how bad.
The words kept coming. Stage four, metastatic, invasive, aggressive. Awful words. And then more words about treatment, which were nearly as bad. No quick blitz with the radiation gun for me, no easy pill, swallow and smile. No, the course of treatment she recommended
was immediate chemotherapy, the kind that left you flattened, hair falling out, reduced to scrawny skin and bone, sleeping and sick. When the lump has shrunk I’ll have a double mastectomy, and I’ll need to have some lymph nodes removed because apparently the cancer is there, as well.
Afterward, when the numbness had worn off, Novocain of the heart, I twitched with impatience, the need to do something. Solve this before it got any worse. Act while I could. I hated the thought of the cancer growing inside me and I was just waiting, helpless, letting it take over.
Despite Dr. Stein’s dire news, I had to wait a whole week before my first chemotherapy treatment, an endless week where my entire life spun out in a bittersweet reel, and each day that slipped past felt far too precious.
Then the chemo began and I realized even more how precious that waiting period had been, when I’d felt well, when all I had was one stupid lump and no real symptoms. When I went to work, I made dinner, I read to Isaac. I stroked his hair, I felt the sunshine on my face, I looked like anyone else, busy and happy. Soon it would all start slipping away.
I didn’t tell anyone at work what was going on; I was naïve enough to think I might not need to. I’d read stories online, about how some people don’t even have side effects from the chemo. I thought I could simply take a couple of days off work – I was only scheduled treatment for the first two days of each week, for three weeks – and then soldier on. Obviously it would raise a few eyebrows, and I might have to tell someone in HR the truth, but I would survive. So much of this was about survival.
I didn’t tell Stella, either. I was tempted to, to have her exclaim and sympathize and enfold me in her arms, but at the same time I didn’t want to because I was afraid of being defined by my cancer, my neediness. She was already taking Isaac two afternoons a week, but it still felt like we were equals: two moms, both with our sons. I didn’t want to change that. And the truth was, I still thought I could control this, stay on top of it. Have my treatment and let no one be the wiser, not even Isaac, until I got the all-clear and life returned to the blissfully normal.
Yes, I was very naïve.
That first day I walked into New York Presbyterian feeling more alone than I ever had in my life. I wished I’d told Stella; I wanted her here with me now, holding my hand, telling me it was going to be okay. I think she would have done that for me, but of course it’s a whole new level of friendship, of painful intimacy, to walk with someone through cancer. To hold their hand.
Of course, I have other friends than Stella. There’s Alyssa, the mom of one of Isaac’s friends at his Montessori school. We keep in touch mostly by text these days; she’s hippyish and I’m uptight, and when our sons went to different schools, we drifted apart a little, although we manage to see each other once every couple of months. But I know she’s having marriage troubles and asking her to support me through this feels a little over the top.
During Isaac’s baby days I made friends with Lara, a high-powered lawyer, when we met in the pediatrician’s office. We were both there one morning as soon as it opened at 8 a.m., both dressed in power suits, balancing our babies on our slim-skirted knees, both checking our phones compulsively. We caught each other’s eye and each of us laughed shamefacedly; we started talking and for a couple of years we got together with some regularity. But then Lara’s husband got a job in Los Angeles, and while we talked about Isaac and me flying out for a visit, it never happened.
And then there’s been Dorothy, the one person I’ve really counted on, but she’s in Chicago now, and she has her own family to look after. I can hardly ask her to come help, as much as I want her to. So I do it alone, the way I’ve done just about everything, because at the end of the day, as a single mom, that’s so often how it happens.
I take Isaac to school and then I go to the hospital, my heart beating with heavy thuds, hands clammy and cold with nerves. I lay on a reclining chair, like the kind you’d lie in at the dentist, and am fitted with a cold cap, a strap-on helmet with gel coolant that could, just maybe, help prevent the worst of the hair loss. A kindly, smiling nurse hooks up the IV. ‘This may pinch a little,’ she says, as if a needle is the worst thing I am going to face this morning.
I watch the liquid, clear and viscous, going in. Drip, drip, drip. I tell myself it is mind over matter – how can I let this innocuous, watery-looking substance affect me at all? I breathe in and out slowly and tell myself to stay strong. I don’t feel anything yet; I almost convince myself I am going to be fine. Chemo, surgery, boom. I’ll be one of the survivors, pink ribbon and all. I’ll do the charity run. I’ll eat everything organic. Hell, I’ll even give up alcohol. And I’ll tell everyone my inspiring story.
Dr. Stein has assured me breast cancer has a high rate of survival. It has an eighty-five percent five-year survival rate of cases where it’s spread to the lymph nodes. The trouble is, five years doesn’t seem that long. Isaac would only be twelve. And where will I be?
The other knowledge that is lodging like a stone in my gut is that my mother survived five years, but only just, and those five years were a blur of struggle, treatment, and pain. Is that what I want the rest of my life to look like? Maybe I won’t have any choice.
But I don’t like to think like that, to spin this story to whatever end I’m going to have, because today, damn it, is plenty hard enough.
It only takes twenty minutes to finish the drip, and then I take a cab home. I walk around my apartment, feeling edgy and restless. And fine. I feel fine, mostly, although I am waiting for something, a looming disaster, as if thunderclouds are suddenly going to appear above my head as lightning strikes. After about an hour, when I still feel fine, I decide to go to work, log in a few hours at least, while I can.
I’ve gone so far as to start getting dressed, putting on discreet make-up, because the truth is, no matter how I feel, I look like shit.
I am just putting on my pantyhose when the side effects hit me, slamming into me with the force of a sledgehammer or a freight train. I barely have a chance to make it to the bathroom, stumbling in my half-put on tights, my stomach heaving so violently I feel as if I am being wrung inside out.
I hang over the toilet, my cheek resting on the rim, as I spit bright yellow bile and know this is merely the beginning.
Eventually my stomach has emptied itself out, and I half-walk, half-crawl to bed, where I doze on and off, still half-dressed. I wake suddenly, as if an alarm has gone off, and see from the clock that I need to pick Isaac up from after-school club in five minutes. I don’t think I can get off the bed in five minutes.
But somehow I do, because I don’t have any choice. Somehow I manage to change into more comfortable clothes, grab my house keys and phone, and get outside my building, feeling as if I am about a hundred years old, my body as worn out as a wet dish rag.
I hail a cab, my arm waving limply, and make it to Buckley twenty minutes late; Isaac has been sent to the office and is looking disconsolate as he kicks his legs against his chair and a secretary thins her lips in disapproval.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, and reach for Isaac’s hand.
‘Mom, what’s wrong with you?’ He looks at me not with concern, but a kind of hurt impatience.
‘I’m just a little under the weather, bud. I’ll be okay.’
I know I am going to have to tell people at some point. Cancer is not exactly something you can keep secret, but I don’t want to blare it from the rooftops, either. And the truth is, I don’t know how to tell Isaac. Not yet, not until I know more. Until I can make him some promises I know I’ll be able to keep.
So I muddle on, making Isaac dinner, helping him with his homework, putting him to bed, everything feeling as if I’m scaling a mountain, pushing that rock that just keeps rolling down again.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asks as he blinks at me from under his duvet, eyes wide, his expression worried. My heart spasms with both love and fear.
‘Yes, bud, I am. Just a little under the weather, like I
said.’ How can I tell him the truth? I’m all he has. He’s all I have. We’re a team, and I feel like I’m letting him down, as well as myself. My body is betraying me.
The next day is the same, the hours endless, my body wrung out, but while lying on my bed with a bowl by my head – although I’m pretty sure there’s nothing left to throw up – I log onto the nanny agency website and look through some profiles. I manage to arrange an interview with two of the best candidates for later in the week, praying I’ll be well enough to see them through.
Fortunately the next few days without the chemo treatment are a bit better, and I drag myself to work.
‘Are you okay?’ my assistant Sara asks with concern as she hands me a coffee I know I won’t be able to drink. I’ve barely eaten anything in forty-eight hours.
Dr. Stein told me it was important to keep my strength and weight up, but it feels impossible. A few saltines and some canned chicken broth are all I’ve managed. I’d bought The Chemotherapy Cookbook at Barnes & Noble last week, trying to feel optimistic, but the recipes for warming soups and protein-rich smoothies seem like a joke. If it were realistic, The Chemotherapy Cookbook would be nothing but blank pages.
‘I’m okay,’ I say and sit down at my desk gingerly, every bone and muscle aching. I am dreading talking to HR. I did some research online and I know I am entitled, through FMLA, to twelve weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave, but to pull the trigger on that is to tank my job prospects in the long term. No one in this business takes that kind of leave, ever.
And yet since my job prospects are already pretty much in the basement, why shouldn’t I? The kitchen gadget start-up I was excited about was shot down at the latest meeting with barely a blink, considered ‘too home grown’. I’ve got nothing exciting or urgent on my desk, and I have two weeks of vacation left this year, as well as a couple of sick days. All told I could survive this from a career perspective, never mind my actual health. The trouble is, I don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. When should I cash in those days? When will I be at rock bottom, unable to keep coping?