Five Women

by Rona Jaffe

  A man from the collection agency wrote to her telling her to call him to straighten this out before she got into trouble. Gara called him. “Why are you persecuting me?” she said. “I’m a sick woman, I have cancer, I don’t need stress. Stress will give me cancer again.”

  He seemed sympathetic, a little nervous. “Well, I wouldn’t want to make you sick again,” he said. He kept her on the phone for forty-five minutes telling her how he disliked the system, telling her horror stories of other patients who had not paid their bills, and how the insurance companies had made their lives a living hell. Then he offered to give her another month if she would get after the hospital. A month later they went through the same thing. She thought that having to listen to him telling her the same stories for forty-five minutes was part of the living hell.

  When it was time for her next surgical improvement Dr. Lister put her into another hospital, where they didn’t know a bill collector was after her, and which Dr. Lister thought Blue Shield might be more inclined to pay. Blue Shield wouldn’t pay them, either. Then the new hospital said they would send a collection agency unless she started paying a little bit every month, so she did. She wondered how women who had been mutilated the way she had been ever could afford to be made normal-looking again, and thought how unfair it was to add this financial worry to everything they were going through. When they told you that you had cancer they told you that you might die, but they didn’t mention that you would also go broke.

  She hired a lawyer, finally, who wrote a stern letter to the CEO at Blue Shield, pointing out how they were harassing a sick and vulnerable person, causing her stress, which in her condition was to be avoided. They paid her first disputed hospital bill immediately, and the second one eventually.

  She had recovered from the effects of her chemotherapy, and her youthful and healthy-looking face had reappeared as if it had never been away. Everyone asked her if she’d had a face lift. That was when Gara really understood how debilitated she had looked under chemo; no one had told her she looked sick, but now they told her, surprised, that she looked wonderful, and asked what she had done. As a bonus her hair had grown back thicker than ever. She wanted time to go faster so she could reach her five-year survival mark and feel safe, but at the same time she wanted it to go slowly so she could savor the good things about each day. She wanted all her reconstructive surgery to be finished so she could forget about it, but she knew she would never forget about it. She looked different than she had before, and she always would.

  Her insurance company wrote to tell her the rules had been changed: she could buy a Major Medical policy now without being turned down for a pre-existing condition, with no questions asked; this was the policy she had been turned down for years before because she had ripped her knee ligaments in aerobics class and had been in physical therapy for a while. A little late, Gara thought, but she bought the policy. This time, if she had cancer, they would pay for almost everything. I hope I never need it, she thought.

  She didn’t think about cancer all the time the way she had in the beginning. There were many hours when she forgot about it entirely. Looking at herself after her shower, she had to remember. Getting dressed, she remembered. Hearing about women she had known who did not survive it—and there were those, who always seemed to have their recurrence unexpectedly—she was filled with fear. When she went for her checkups and blood tests, first every three months, then every four, then finally every six, she was only frightened for the week before she went to the doctor’s office, wondering if this time her reprieve would be denied.

  A married friend she had known years ago in Paris, when she and Carl had been married, passed through New York on business, alone, and invited her out for a drink. Carl had married Lucie, he told her. They had a little girl, named Adrienne, after the painter friend who was her godmother.

  I wish I could see a picture, Gara thought, and then, no, I don’t. I don’t know these people. They are no longer in my life.

  “Carl speaks French fluently now,” the friend said. “But remember how awful his accent was? It’s still awful.” She knew he was trying to make her smile, but he only made her sad. “The baby is bilingual,” he went on, “as most French children are.”

  “She’s American,” Gara said. “Her father is American.”

  “Of course. You’re looking great. Better than ever. You know, we all liked you much more than we like Lucie. She’s a child, really, very shallow. Some women always remain children, no matter how old they are.”

  And some don’t, Gara thought.

  “I’ll be in New York for a week,” he said. “Why don’t you call me and we’ll have dinner?”

  “All right,” she said, but she never did. Dinner took too long. They would talk about the old days, or the new ones, about things she didn’t want to think about or know about. She wanted closure. Carl’s marriage should provide it, but she still had to be careful not to ask for information, not to live vicariously, only to remember that they both had secrets from one another, which was as it should be because they were no longer even friends.

  Gara was not looking for a man anymore. She wasn’t ready yet, and wondered when she would be, if ever. She felt too vulnerable, too afraid of being rejected. She knew of women who had been left by their husbands and lovers when they got cancer, because the men said they were afraid to watch them die. What if she met a man like that—fearful, insisting on promises kept? What if she met one who thought her body was ugly, and wouldn’t wait around long enough to care about her in the first place? She still needed time to heal in many ways, and she knew she was atypical in hiding what had happened to her, that most women with breast cancer went public as soon as they knew they had a chance to survive, became activists, told friends and strangers in an effort to help others and themselves.

  An unhappy childhood is the wound that never heals, Gara told herself. All these years she had told her patients it took time to uncover the past, and then to understand it, and finally to get safely beyond the harm that had been done—to develop a kind of scar tissue, but she couldn’t seem to do it herself. May had brought her up to be perfect, or at least to pretend to be and fool people. The mother who had forced her to sit at lunch with a bottle of smelling salts under her napkin so the boy she didn’t like wouldn’t tell his mother she had fainted and was therefore imperfect and undateable and unmarriageable and unlovable had taught her too well.

  Spring came. Gara was a three-year survivor. Her odds were getting better all the time. “You had cancer,” Dr. Beddowes told her cheerfully. “You don’t have it, you had it. Think of it that way. See you in six months.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have news,” Jane told her on the phone. She did not sound at all happy. “We’re moving to Singapore.”

  “Moving?” Gara’s heart turned over. “To that place where they cane people?”

  “They don’t cane women.”

  “Oh, great. How long will you be there?”

  “I don’t know. Eliot has a TV series that’s going to be made there. An hour once a week. If it’s a hit we may be there for years. I have to go with him, or I won’t have a marriage, but I hate everything about the idea. I’ll miss my family and friends, I’ll miss you terribly. It’s too hot there, I mean really, really hot, and you go to prison if you drink anything alcoholic, and I won’t know anybody.”

  “Sure you can drink,” Gara said. “It’s the home of the Singapore Sling.”

  She was used to Jane’s absences on location, but they had always been known to be temporary, finite, an adventure. This sounded ominous. What would she do without her best friend, now that she was all alone? Maybe the series wouldn’t be a hit. She didn’t want to wish them bad luck, but she knew Jane was hoping the same thing. “Why would he want to live there anyway?” Gara asked.

  “I don’t know. He says it’s an opportunity. He’s excited.” Ja
ne sighed. “He says he’s tired of Hollywood and wants to do something different.”

  “The mid-life crisis. At least he wants you to come with him. He’s not just running off like my ex-husband. When are you leaving?”

  “Next month.”

  “So soon!”

  “He’s been talking about it, but I never really believed it would happen. And now it will. We’re subletting the apartment. I’m glad at least I was able to be there for you when you were sick.”

  “Me, too,” Gara said. She still felt numb with surprise, but a big lump of loneliness was beginning to gather in her chest.

  “You have to visit,” Jane said. “We’ll have a big house and lots of servants. My kids are going to visit. I want everyone to come.”

  “I will,” Gara said, but she didn’t know when.

  “August in Singapore, what a treat,” Jane said sympathetically, knowing, as always, what Gara was thinking. “When the only thing you like to do in August is go to your house on the beach. But we’ll have fun.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll visit you back here when I can.”

  “Of course.” But she doubted it. She knew Jane; Jane complained and hated a place and then she settled in.

  “We’ll write to each other.”

  “Absolutely.” Neither of them was a good or faithful letter writer; Gara had never gotten so much as a postcard from location, even when they were in Africa.

  “And we’ll call each other. You’ll call me, won’t you?”

  “You know I will.” But Gara knew that the three-hour time difference from New York to Los Angeles had always seemed insurmountable—whenever each of them thought of the other it was the wrong time to call—and she wondered how often they would speak when Jane was in Singapore.

  “I hate this,” Jane said.

  “Me too.”

  And then she was gone.

  It was strange to be here in New York knowing her longtime friend wasn’t, odd to pass Jane’s apartment building, look up at the lights, and know strangers were moving around in those lighted rooms, living lives that seemed an intrusion. So many losses . . . Gara felt adrift. She had always had friends in New York, but everyone was busy with their work—working too hard, traveling for business—and their private lives and their families—college-bound children, aging parents—so to see anyone you had to make plans far in advance, and those plans were likely to be canceled for emergencies of one sort or another. It was not that she had seen Jane so often or spoken to her every day, but they had always been there for each other and had known it.

  They called each other a few times, and then the calls tapered off, as Gara had known they would. They knew they would see each other again, but not for now. Gara continued to go to dinner parties, to cocktail parties, to art openings, dealing with the shyness, trying to have a good time, and now she realized she was going there looking for new women friends.

  She met Felicity Johnson at a fund-raiser for women politicians, where both had gone alone. They started talking and liked each other immediately. Felicity was very pretty and bright and bubbly; she had an honesty and vulnerability about her that touched Gara, and she had a good heart. She told Gara about her unhappy marriage and Gara told her about how Carl had left her. They commiserated and made each other laugh. By the time they knew each other better and Gara saw the other side of Felicity—the deep depression, the confusion, the painful self-doubt—she already liked her enough to feel protective toward her and want to try to help.

  She met Eve Bader through Felicity. At the time Gara thought Felicity liked Eve more than she actually did. Gara thought Eve was flamboyant and funny, a character, and Eve made her laugh, too. She had never met anyone like Eve. The three of them began to go out to dinner together once in a while.

  Then at a huge dinner party where Gara had, as usual, gone alone, and, as was not usual, had arrived early, she met Kathryn O’Mara Henry, who had also gone alone, and who, she soon discovered, always arrived everywhere early so she could meet people. Kathryn was a beautiful, sophisticated-looking woman, and Gara had no idea how old she might be. The phrase “of indeterminate age” came to mind. Kathryn’s face and bearing were those of a young woman, but her knowing eyes and expensive jewelry belonged on someone very mature. She sailed right up to Gara and introduced herself, and Gara thought she was brave to be so friendly in a room full of strangers.

  The morning after the dinner party Kathryn called her and made a dinner date. They went to the Sign of the Dove and met at the bar, and in ten minutes Kathryn had picked up three men. Gara didn’t know how she did it.

  She admired Kathryn’s spirit. Kathryn was a woman who loved New York and made the most of it. She had seen every Broadway show, some several times, she went to every new exhibit at every museum, she saw every good new movie, she had tried every well known restaurant, and she walked everywhere, even across the park. She did not work, although she said she had worked for most of her life and that now she deserved to have fun.

  “Give us the best bottle of wine you have,” she would demand of the waitress. “We deserve it.” Then she would pick up the check, because she was also generous.

  There was a recklessness to her generosity, a kind of I’ll show them attitude. Gara did not know whom she was showing, or why, for a long time. “If I run out of money, I’ll make more,” Kathryn would say. It was known that her former husband was extremely rich.

  Gara introduced her to Felicity and Eve, and soon the four of them had become, without knowing how it had happened, a faithful little group. They began to have a weekly dinner together in various neighborhood restaurants, and one night Felicity suggested they go to Yellowbird. Kathryn wasn’t crazy about it and disliked the food, but the other three liked the music and the ambiance, and even Kathryn had to admit she liked the quantity and quality of men. They all liked Billie, and thought she was a character and a half. Eventually Yellowbird became their club, an eccentric and comfortable gathering place where they felt at home.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “ISN’T THIS OUR ANNIVERSARY?” Kathryn asked. They were all in Yellowbird, and it was spring. The sky had still been light when they arrived, a pearly grayish color behind the dark buildings, and all of them had walked to get there, except Felicity, who never walked anywhere if she could help it because she was always in a hurry, even when she was on time. “It was about this time last spring when we had our first dinner together here.”

  “A year already?” Eve marveled. “Where does it go?”

  “To my friends,” Felicity said, holding up her glass. “To friendship.”

  “To health, life, and love,” Gara added.

  They all nodded and clicked their wine glasses, and smiled, while Janis belted out her blues on the sound system, turned down softly, because it was still dinnertime and people needed to be able to hear themselves talk.

  At her customary seat at the bar Billie watched them and overheard. She had never had close women friends, the way they seemed to be, but she had so many casual friends of both sexes in Yellowbird that she never felt it as a loss. She had a rich, full life, she thought, everything she wanted. Having Little Billie had changed everything for her. Still, it was nice for them to hang around together the way they did, to meet so regularly, and to think of acknowledging their friendship with an anniversary. She would send them a free drink to help them celebrate.

  “I really must love you guys to have eaten all these bad meals here with you,” Kathryn said, laughing.

  Well, no free drinks for you, Billie thought, changing her mind. Then she decided to send them a good bottle of wine anyway, for being faithful spenders, and to show them who was boss. She knew the expensive one Kathryn liked.

  “To Billie!” the women cried happily, toasting her with their free wine. “Our Billie!”

  “Yours?” Billie thought. She smiled
and nodded graciously in recognition of their appreciation.

  It was a good night in Yellowbird tonight, crowded with most of her regulars and the usual strangers who had heard about her place or had simply wandered in. There was a good-looking man alone at the bar whom she might talk to later if he didn’t have a date coming to join him. Little Billie was in his booth in the back, doing his homework with the Larchmont Ladies, behaving himself, not pestering her to let him go home to make trouble with his friends. Billie couldn’t understand why those other parents didn’t take more interest in their children. She always kept an eye on him. Perhaps that was because she had to be both parents to him, make up to him for having deprived him of a father on purpose.

  It was late, after ten o’clock, when a new couple came in and was seated at table four. The woman looked vaguely familiar: the pale freckled face, the frizzy blond hair. While they were eating Billie walked around the room to see if everything was all right, and passed their table.

  “Ms. Redmond!” the woman called out to her.

  “Yes?” Billie stopped.

  “I’m Lola Gribetz, Billie’s kindergarten teacher. Do you remember me?”

  Aha. That one. How could I forget you, Billie thought. You wanted to send us to a loony doctor. “Of course,” she said graciously.

  “This is my date, Walter Norris. We went to the movies and then we came here totally by accident, spur of the moment, just to try a new restaurant, and there you were.”

  “Yes, I am always here,” Billie said.

  “And that must be Billie, back there in the booth! I don’t remember all my children, but of course I’ll never forget Billie.”

  “People don’t,” Billie said. She wasn’t sure Ms. Gribetz meant it as a compliment.

  “I’m going to go over to say hello to him,” Lola Gribetz said. “Is this a special occasion?”