“Sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry. It’s not you. I just feel like shit.” She rests her head against the side of the sink, and I slide down next to her, letting her rest against my chest. “I hope it’s worth it. It has to be gone this time.”
I’m not sure what to say. I hope with all my heart this works, but the truth is, it could have been gone already. If she weren’t so stubborn, she could’ve avoided all the chemo. One surgery might have ended it all.
“You could’ve had the hysterectomy, Wren,” I whisper. “There are other options.” I rarely bring this up, but sometimes I can’t help myself. I still can’t understand how someone so brilliant can be so narrow-minded.
“Oh?” Her cheeks burn red now, and she pulls away from my embrace, pushing herself to her feet. “Wait, I could have had a hysterectomy?” She flushes the toilet and slams the lid down. “No one told me that was possible. No one repeated this over and over, making me feel guilty for having an opinion about my own body. Oh, I could’ve had that surgery?”
“Wren . . .”
“Fuck you, Jimmy. Get out, I’m fine. Sorry I complained to you.” She turns her back to me and starts washing her hands.
“Wren.” I touch her arm, but she swats me away violently, splashing water every which way.
“I said get out.” She glares at my reflection in the mirror. Our eyes meet, and the spark of hatred I see causes me to drop my gaze.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, backing out of the bathroom. She doesn’t look up, and I close the door behind me.
***
“Gin and tonic, please,” I order. I’ve never been to this place before, and it’s definitely not the type of bar Wren would like. The crowd is mixed. Some locals sit around drinking beers and watching a game at the bar while groups of twentysomethings out on the prowl gather at tables in the back. Wren would describe the atmosphere as “seedy,” with its dim and smoky lighting. A few guys laugh loudly around a stained pool table.
The bartender slides the glass toward me without a word. The counter is wet and sticky with remnants of a dozen other drinks.
It’s only eight thirty, but the place is pretty busy. After Wren kicked me out of the bathroom, I headed to the office to catch up on some paperwork. Ever since she got sick, it seems like I can’t quite keep up with the constant backflow of work. Dad’s been great about letting me off the hook so I can be there for Wren, but I’m well aware that I’ve been slacking. So even though I wanted to wait in the hallway and beg her forgiveness after our fight, I knew I needed to escape the house. Her anger didn’t leave any space for me.
When I couldn’t concentrate anymore, I got in my car and drove toward home, but instead of taking the familiar right onto our street, I kept driving straight. Like an old country song, I drove until I saw a neon sun and it called me in.
A girl slides onto the stool beside me. She’s blonde and petite and very much alone. She catches the bartender’s eye, and he nods at her. She must be a regular.
“Hey,” she says, turning to look at me. Her eyes are dark brown, much darker than Wren’s.
“Hi.” I smile, sipping my drink. I make myself busy studying the labels on the bottles behind the register, looking anywhere but at this girl with eyes not like Wren’s.
“I’m Tess” she says, her voice light and airy. “Never seen you in here before, and I should know—I’m here all the time.” She’s very matter-of-fact. She’s not really asking me a question, simply stating what she sees. Like a child.
“Nice to meet you, Tess. I’m James,” I say. No one calls me James except my mother when she’s reprimanding me, but this is the first thing that comes to mind.
“Well, James, it looks like you’re getting a little low on your drink. I’ll get you another one, on me. It’s nice to meet new people in this place.” She signals to the barkeep again and points at my drink.
“Thanks. That’s nice of you,” I say, although I wish she would move a little farther from my elbow and let me finish my drink in peace.
“Anytime,” she says, and brushes her arm against my shoulder. I’ve been out of the dating scene for a long time, but I’m not completely naive. Maybe this girl does like meeting new people, but she’s bought me a drink for an entirely different reason.
How easy it would be to have a few drinks with this girl, go home with her, forget all about my problems. I could tell Wren I stayed at the office all night. I have a pullout sofa; I’ve stayed there before.
She grabs her drink and lifts it, inching closer to me. She turns on the stool so her knee rubs up against my thigh. “To meeting new people,” she says, raising her glass to clink against mine. She flips her platinum hair behind her shoulder and bats her long, fake lashes. It’s all wrong. She’s all wrong.
“To meeting new people,” I say, clinking back. I take a long sip of my drink, finishing it in one swallow. “But I really must be going now.”
***
I don’t turn on any lights as I weave through the living room and up the stairs. Wren is tucked under the blankets and the room is pitch-black, but I know she’s not sleeping. Her breathing isn’t quite deep enough. When she sleeps, she snores quietly. I always tell her even her snoring voice is pretty.
In the darkness, I undress and slide under the covers. Her breathing gets a little faster and she stiffens.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear, wrapping my arm around her small waist. She fits perfectly against my body. My little spoon.
She nods and relaxes. “I’m sorry,” she whispers back.
24
Wren
Age 31
September 2002
Maybe I’m not exactly beautiful, but I’m nice-looking. Jimmy will argue that I’m the most beautiful woman in the world, but I’m self-aware enough to stay grounded in reality. But since I was a girl, my hair has always garnered me the most compliments. It’s my “crowning glory.” According to my mom, I was born with a full head of hair that grew longer and thicker every day. As I got older, my thick mane of honey-brown hair was my one source of vanity. It falls past my shoulders in shiny layers, and I’ve never touched the color. I don’t know if a salon could match my particular shade. So this morning when I lifted my head and saw the chunks of lustrous strands stuck to the pillow, I couldn’t stop myself from sobbing. Up until now I’ve been able to keep the truth of my condition at bay. It takes my hair falling out to crumble the fragile facade protecting me from reality.
Gingerly I pick the pieces from my silk pillowcase, horrified to hold a ponytail-thick chunk in my palm. Still crying, I reach my other hand to my scalp and try to run my fingers through the rest. Pieces fall away and float to the floor.
“Jim!” I yell between sobs. Crying hurts my eyes now. Decreased tear production is one of the many side effects of chemotherapy. “Jimmy!” I call again, barely more than a whisper. My throat is hoarse and raw and my lips are chapped. Everything hurts.
I hear him running up the stairs, skipping steps in his hurry to get to me.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” he says, dishrag still clenched in his fist.
I hold out my hand, and a tangled nest of my precious hair spills from my palm, spiraling to the rug. Auburn-colored proof that I’m not getting any better. Shining proof that it’s not working.
I’m not sure what else I have left to give. All these drugs should have rid my body of the cancerous tumors while preserving my fertility. Every day I’m sick from the drugs. I’m weak. I have no appetite. But it’s not enough. Now it’s stolen my hair. I need a break before I break all the way. Jimmy and the doctors call the periods between chemo treatments “breaks,” but that time is anything but restful.
“Oh, Wren, it’s okay, it will grow back,” he says, taking the hair from my grip and letting it slip to the floor with the rest of the tangled pieces.
“I don’t want it to grow back! I don’t want it to fall out at all!” More dry tears.
Tenderly he brushes away a few strands stuck to
my sweaty forehead. The meds and anxiety have me feeling queasy and hot, but I don’t have the strength to walk the ten steps to the bathroom to wash my face. I can smell my skin, a sickly perfume of perspiration and antiseptic lotion. Plus, there’s a mirror over the sink and I can’t bear to see my reflection.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he says. He stands and holds his arms out to help me up.
“I just want to stay in bed today. I’m tired.” I lean back against the headboard. I’d like to hide under the covers for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the week. I wish Jimmy hadn’t taken the day off from work to drive me to my appointment. I don’t have the energy to get dressed or to see people. All I want to do is sleep.
“Come on, let’s take a shower. I’ll get in with you,” he says, pulling his shirt over his head. He starts unbuckling his belt.
“Stop. You already showered. I heard you this morning,” I whimper. He slides his jeans down his hips and shimmies them to the floor. He stands in front of me in his boxer briefs and socks. He crosses his arms over his broad chest self-consciously, and I bite back a smile.
“Don’t make me go in alone,” he pouts, sticking his lip out in his best puppy-dog impression. Kicking off one sock, he tosses it at me.
“Ew, gross. How do they already smell bad? You just put them on,” I groan, swatting it off the comforter and laughing.
“See, I do need another shower,” he says, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Boys are smelly creatures.”
Damn him. He’s annoyingly adorable. “Fine, but only because you look so pathetic standing there in your undies,” I joke.
Throwing the covers back, I swing my legs over the bed and stand. A wave of nausea hits and my knees buckle.
“Gotcha.” Jimmy is there, catching me before I fall. He cradles me to his chest, kissing my sweaty forehead. “Let’s go get sudsy,” he says, before scooping me up into his arms.
****
“I thought you got all of the masses when you went in before.” Jimmy stares intently at the ultrasound images that our newest doctor, Dr. Russo, so kindly printed out for us. Maybe I’ll take them home and hang them on my refrigerator.
There’s something about doctors that I don’t like. I know it sounds crazy, because everyone loves doctors, but it’s the truth. Society might revere them, hailing them as some of the most trustworthy people around, but I don’t buy it. Looking at Dr. Russo, I can tell she isn’t telling me the whole truth. Maybe she isn’t lying, but she’s omitting. Her smile is too bright and she’s eerily calm and patient. She knows something but is trying to figure out how best to tell us.
I’ve refused the hysterectomy over and over. Even though she has assured me she understands and respects my decision, I’m sure she wants to kill me at this point. At the very least, she must think I’m an idiot. I’ve no doubt she’d love to knock me out, pin me to the table, and rip out my uterus. Things would be a lot easier for all of us if I’d simply agree. Instead, I force her to give me a list of options she doesn’t truly believe in. She sidesteps the whole truth because the whole truth is scary. The whole truth is that I’m a crazy, selfish bitch who is slowly killing herself.
“We were able to remove all the visible tumor, but cancer is a very sneaky creature. There must have been spots that were already spreading and too small to see.”
A bead of sweat trickles into the corner of my eye, and I wipe it away. Her office is a hundred degrees. “What’s next? More chemo? Radiation?” Bile rises to the back of my throat, and I swallow it back. “What?”
Jim puts his hand on my shoulder, and I lean into him. “What’s the next step?” he asks, clearly trying to make up for my abrasive behavior. I’m ready to scream at all the niceties, the polite banter between my husband and doctor.
“At this point I know I sound like a broken record, but a full hysterectomy is still the treatment with the best possible prognosis.” She lifts her brows at me, hoping this might be the appointment when I change my mind. I keep my mouth shut, refusing to give her what she wants. “Another surgical option is to remove the one ovary where the majority of the tumors were found and leave the other intact. The best alternative to surgery is to tweak your dosages and perhaps change cycle times. You’ve already undergone three cycles in recent months. I don’t want to push your body too hard. I’m also recommending a round of radiotherapy on your abdomen. I’ll limit this to one treatment to preserve fertility. After the radiation, we can reevaluate with some blood tests to see where to go from there.”
Jimmy squeezes my shoulder. My body starts to shake, my heart beating too fast, fluttering in my chest. Radiation.
“I definitely need the radiation?” I’d been hopeful the multiple rounds of chemo would do the trick. The radiation posed yet another threat to my chances at making a baby.
“I would recommend it at this point. It’s your last best shot at remission. If this doesn’t work, I will stress again that you reconsider another surgery. I’m not going to lie to you: this is going to be difficult. The combination of chemo and radiation is going to be tough on your body.” She looks from Jimmy to me and back. “I’ll leave you alone to talk about it,” she says before closing the door to the exam room behind her.
Jimmy stares at me with tears in his eyes. He looks at me like he might never see me again.
“Stop, Jim. It’s okay. I can handle it. I want to do it.” I shake my head with all the false confidence I can muster. I shake my head like I’m not terrified, like I believe it will all be okay. I shake my head so Jimmy will stop looking so worried. Guess I’m a liar just like my doctor. “I want to do this, and I will beat it. I’ll beat it, and then we can have a baby.”
He closes his eyes and touches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, like he has a headache coming. “I just want you to get better. Can we forget about the damn baby for a minute?” There’s a touch of anger in his voice, and it makes me bristle.
“No, I won’t forget about the baby. The baby is what’s getting me through this.”
He pulls me against his chest, hugging me tight. “No, I’m going to get you through this,” he whispers into my ear.
I rest my head into his shoulder so he can’t see my face. I should feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have someone like him promising to take care of me. But something inside me is broken, and instead of lucky, I just feel empty, like maybe the cancer has wiggled from my womb and encapsulated my heart and can only be pushed aside when a baby takes its place.
25
Karen
After
May 2004
Hiding while invisible is both ironic and futile. But I’ve always been a paradox. Although I’m confident no one can see me, I prefer the comfort and safety of closets and hidden spaces. When I first popped into this hellscape, I tested the limits of this notion and quickly realized I could stand on the kitchen table waving my arms and doing the chicken dance while Jimmy and Wren ate dinner, and they wouldn’t notice me. Of course, I didn’t actually do this. I hate dancing. But I did hover inches above Wren’s face while she lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling fan, and she didn’t so much as flinch. I’ve even tried to scare the lazy cat wandering around the house, but it always keeps sleeping or licking its paws, blissfully unaware of the spook that taunts it.
Two years. That’s how long I’ve been here. Scratch that. Let’s call it 700-odd days, since my sense of time has collapsed. Somehow I died in December of 2003 but popped into a life happening in the spring of 2002. Mostly I’ve lost track of the days, but every once in a while I glance at the calendar pinned to the pantry door and find weeks have gone by in a blur, time stretching and expanding, moving both faster and slower than before. All the while I hide. I hide in the coat closet in the foyer. Other times I hide in the shower, long after everyone has left for work. My favorite spot is in the nursery, which feels like a mausoleum despite the bright-yellow wallpaper. I hide not because I’m afraid they will see me; I know they can�
�t. I hide because I don’t want to see them.
Two years ago (or six months- I don’t know anymore) I swallowed a few dozen pills and chased it with a bottle of wine. My last memory is falling into a deep sleep, like I was being cradled in the arms of a wonderful hallucination. I never woke up. But I swallowed those pills expecting blackness. Nothingness. That’s what I wanted. I did not expect this existence—whatever this may be—and I certainly don’t welcome it.
Growing up, I loved The Wizard of Oz. Now I feel like Dorothy Gale, spun up in a twister and spiraled into some alternate universe. Unfortunately for me, I’ve yet to encounter Glinda the Good Witch bearing the magical ruby slippers that will send me hurtling back to Kansas. Instead of a yellow brick road, I’m trapped in a yellow three-bedroom, two-bathroom Cape on the corner of Elm and Pleasant. I’m surrounded by pictures of a happy couple and memorabilia of a shared life. This would be bad enough if this couple were strangers. It’s so much worse that I recognize them, that I’m one of them.
For two years I’ve watched some other version of myself, married to some other version of my long-ago love, James. Although this woman looks like me and this man looks like James, it’s not the us I remember. There are lots of similarities but more differences. For instance, this man is called Jimmy. My James hated that nickname. His big sister called him Jimmy until she died. After that, he went by James. This woman who looks like me answers to Wren, a ridiculous nickname if I’ve ever heard one. I’m assuming it’s like the bird, but who knows. I would certainly never let someone call me Wren. Wren. I try to speak it, but nothing comes out. I guess that makes sense, since I can’t breathe. Still. What an awful name. Not me at all.
Sometimes I pretend I’m the lone audience member viewing a fifties-era sitcom—with a twist. “Jimmy” and “Wren” live in a perfect little yellow home. They have a cat named Prissy and an empty nursery. They have a ghost named Karen hiding in dark corners who makes not a peep. It’s a perfectly twisted little family.
Sometime, Somewhere Page 11