Hope and Other Punch Lines

by Julie Buxbaum

  “That’s why I needed to get home after we talked to Jamal. I realized that my mom must have known. She had always known. And she didn’t tell me. My dad was this hero—he saved lives—and she kept it a secret.”

  “Maybe she had a good reason?” I say this without a single thought as to what that could be. I want to extend her the same courtesy I’m asking of my own parents—to understand I had my own reasons for not telling them everything.

  “Actually, I think she did.” Noah’s eyes glitter, and he clears his throat. “I wanted to tell you the truth. Not only because you deserve to know why we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing, why I was so insistent, which was horrible of me, but also because I didn’t want you to think I was running away from you the other day. I’m so sorry for all of it.”

  “Maybe you should run away from me. I’ve got a tumor. I’m dying,” I blurt out.

  Oh no. I had no intention of telling Noah this. In fact, I had every intention of not telling Noah this.

  “What? Come on, you’re not dying. Though, by the way, there’s been a lot of talk that you OD’d.”

  “Seriously? I’ve never done drugs in my life.”

  “Wait a minute.” Noah pauses a beat as he catches up in our conversation. “You have a tumor?”

  “In my lung. They’re going to biopsy it later today.” I keep my voice calm and refuse to allow self-pity to creep in. If Noah can handle losing his dad twice, I can handle a simple medical test.

  “You don’t know you’re dying. You don’t know that for a fact.” He says it with such authority, it’s as if he thinks he can make it true by being emphatic.

  “No one wants to say it out loud, but I’m sure it’s because of nine-eleven. Lots of people are getting sick. Fifteen years seems to be the magic number for these types of cancers.”

  “Some people are fine. Lots of people. Jamal was the healthiest-looking person I’ve ever met and he’s forty.”

  “I have a tumor.” My imploring tone now matches his. I don’t know why I feel the need to push the point when I never intended to make it in the first place.

  In the early hours of the morning, after my mother had fallen asleep, I Googled lung tumors. The vast majority are malignant.

  “What about if I know you’ll be fine? What about that?” Noah asks.

  “Honestly, I wish it were up to you.”

  * * *

  —

  A few minutes later, after we’ve turned the television on and off and waded through the awkwardness, Noah stands up, walks around the room one time, then comes back to the bed and sits down right next to me. Like he’s thought about it and made a decision.

  “You need to get better. You know why?” Noah asks.

  “So you can drive me crazy by calling me Abs?” I joke.

  “Because I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re not sorry,” I say, but I’m smiling.

  “You’re right, I’m not sorry. By the way, I like your shirt. I think unicorns are both over- and underrated, as far as mythical creatures go.”

  “What? Why?” I ask, and then realize that now is not the time to get derailed by a Noah theory, though I do, at some point, want to know what he thinks of narwhals. “I don’t want to be your friend either.”

  Our eyes catch for a minute. Noah looks at my lips and starts to lean in, and for maybe the first time in my entire life, I know exactly what happens next.

  Noah seems unfazed by the fact that we are in the least sexy place in the world and that I, fewer than five minutes ago, told him I’m dying. It’s just him and me and the kissing—which isn’t normal kissing. We’ve graduated to the next level somehow: accomplished kissing, two people who know what they’re doing. My entire body hums with desire. Joy too.

  I might be dying, but I’m alive right now.

  The beeping grows louder and more persistent, almost angry, and Noah breaks contact to make sure I’m okay. At first, we have no idea what’s happening, and I worry that it will be musical chairs redux. Blood and hyperventilation all over again.

  But then it dawns on both of us at the exact same time and we burst out laughing. Among this collection of wires, I’m hooked up to a heart rate monitor.

  My mom demands that Phil put away his phone tonight, so the three of us sit around the dining table, dishing pot roast onto our plates and half talking. I feel sorry for Phil that this meal is not billable, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he has papers in his lap. My mother beams at me, like we’re about to embark on some sort of happy familial breakthrough. Oh, crap. I better not be getting a half sibling.

  “So I had a better idea for this weekend instead of golf,” Phil says.

  “It’s a Christmas miracle.” I hear my sarcasm and then try to break the bite in my voice with a smile. It’s not Phil’s fault that I despise his favorite hobby. It’s not Phil’s fault that I’m pretending to be eating when I’m really pissing myself with worry about Abbi. It’s only even sort of Phil’s fault that he’s Phil.

  “One of my clients got me two tickets to see some comedy roundup at the Apollo. You in?” he asks.

  “That’s awesome,” I say. “Yes. But just so you know, you had me at not golf.”

  “We can go to the club after the show,” Phil says, and I groan. I’ve been vocal about how much I hate Phil’s country club, which is full of rich, entitled white assholes who live in McMansions like this one. It makes me terrified that my future looks exactly like my right now, only with a beer belly and a forty-minute commute. “I’m joking.”

  Until yesterday, my worst fear was never leaving this place. Now it’s Abbi dying. Earlier, I Googled lungs and 9/11 syndrome. Not my finest idea.

  “How’s Abbi feeling?” my mom asks, as if she can read my thoughts.

  “She’s really sick,” I answer, and find that my throat closes around the word sick.

  “I’m sorry. She’s young, though. She’ll be okay.” My mom uses her best skinned-knee-mom voice.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t,” my mom replies, and I wonder if she’d have backed down so easily if we were having this discussion last week or the week before. She and I now live on less stable ground. She treats me like I could detonate at any moment. She’s probably right.

  “I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass. But you don’t know,” I say.

  “You’re worried. You should be. We get it. We are too,” Phil chimes in, and I wonder if this version of Phil, iPhone-less and still with something to offer, has been here all along. It’s possible I mistook unflappable for boring. He’s such an easy target, with his collared shirts and workaholism and shredded wheat every damn day. “But I really do believe she will be okay.”

  “That sounds a lot like magical thinking. I’m kind of done with that.” I cut my meat into smaller and smaller pieces, with no intention of eating them. I make track marks in my mashed potatoes with a fork. I consider building a spud snowman. Anything to not look up.

  “Or it’s good old-fashioned optimism,” Phil says. “Sometimes there’s a difference.”

  “Thanks for the tickets,” I say, because I’m suddenly grateful that Phil is here with us.

  “Wait, you do realize I’m coming with you, right?” he asks.

  As they put me under for surgery, six hours after I was scheduled, I feel myself slip into sleep. In my dream, I’m falling fast headfirst toward the ground. My body lines up with the building behind me in perfect synchronicity, and I don’t need to look to know where I am. One World Trade Center smokes from the top, like the tip of a dainty cigarette. Paper blows around me in a tornado of documents: personnel files and receipts and contracts. These things kept in folders, once thought important, now exposed
as meaningless.

  Other than the roar of the wind, it’s quiet, almost peaceful; the decision has been made. No choice but to give in and to let my body fall.

  Of course it’s 9/11.

  Of course I’m Falling Man.

  The ground comes toward me fast, and right before I slam into it, the image morphs again. Ash swirls, coats my face, like I’m swimming in paste. Am I Dust Lady? That would be the logical next step in this iconic photo nightmare. But then I see Connie, and she runs next to me and she’s smiling. Alive! Connie signals that I should follow her with a flick of her thumb. I am again Baby Hope, except this time, I am not a baby. I am sixteen-year-old me, running for my life while the taste of death sits on my tongue like a cough drop.

  I grip the string of a red balloon with my right hand, always with that damn balloon, but this time I’m not strong enough to hold it down. Instead, I find no matter how hard I try, I can’t let it go, and so it lifts me up toward the blue, blue sky. As I rise, Connie shrinks smaller and smaller still, until she becomes nothing but a speck on the ground. Just another particle of dust for someone else to ingest.

  And then I too am lost to the heavens.

  I am terrified I might never wake up.

  Baby Hope, my father, and nineteen jihadis walk into a bar….

  * * *

  —

  Still no news from Abbi or her parents.

  When I open my eyes, my grandmother is sitting next to my bed, and Paula, her aide, is sleeping in what I already think of as my father’s chair. My chest feels like someone cut it open with a knife, which given the circumstances is totally appropriate. My inner elbow, where the IV attaches, throbs, and though I’m buried under blankets, I feel cold.

  “Where’s Mom?” I ask. I need to see my mother’s face. Right now. I feel unmoored and confused and I don’t care if wanting my mommy makes me sound like a whiny baby.

  “Your parents stepped out for one second. They’re going to be so pissed off. They’ve been waiting for you to wake up for forever,” my grandmother says, and reaches out her hands and grabs mine firmly in her grip. “I don’t know what you’re playing at with this whole hospital thing, but just so you know, I’m the only one who’s allowed to die around here.”

  “Grandma,” I say, but then my lids close and I drift off for a minute. I open them again.

  “I’m going to say some words that are scary to say, especially right now, but that I still need to say, okay?” she says. “I’ll always be with you, even when I’m not.”

  “What?” Where is she going? Why does my mouth feel like I licked the inside of a toilet bowl?

  “You know what I think about sometimes? I think about how all the little bits of me that I’m losing will somehow find their way to you. Like they are…what’s the word…tangible. Like they are tangible things that can crawl from my bedroom to yours and so as I become less me, you will become more you, and I will continue to march on within you when I’m not me anymore. You’re going to keep growing. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” I can smell my grandmother, feel the knots of her fingers. Her words add up somehow to a feeling. A swell. “This is life with a capital L. It’s not always pretty,” she says, and she laughs the same laugh I remember from childhood, when we wore steel colanders on our heads while we chopped vegetables from her garden. A memory bubbles up: she always let me use the grown-up knives. “But you already knew that.”

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “I’m going to be okay, though, right?” I ask even as I realize it’s unfair to make her promise me something she has no control over, and something she cannot have for herself. And yet, still I ask.

  “Of course you are,” she says, and strokes my cheek. “Of course you are.”

  And this time I let myself sleep with the comfort of knowing I will again wake.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know how much time has passed, but my parents sweep into the room, their arms overflowing with flowers. My dad has a bottle of something that looks celebratory tucked into his elbow.

  “Abbi!” they scream in unison.

  “Hey,” I say, and look around the room. “Where’s grandma?”

  “Home.”

  “Really? I didn’t hear her leave.”

  “Dad bought some carbonated apple cider, because he’s a lunatic and counts chickens before they hatch,” my mom says, and leans over my bed and kisses me all over my face, like she used to when I was a little kid. “The doctor should be in to talk to us any minute.”

  “Mom! Stop!”

  “Sorry. You smell terrible anyway,” she says, and the smile on her face wobbles and then fixes into shape.

  She’s terrified.

  As am I.

  It turns out there’s an entire ocean between knowing and knowing. It turns out they are different states of being entirely.

  I want to stay here, in my cozy before.

  “You’re going to be fine,” my dad repeats.

  “Let’s wait for the doctor,” mom says. “But either way, Abbi, you’re a fighter.”

  If my poor mother weren’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I’d roll my eyes. I once held on to a balloon while being carried. That does not make me ready for whatever is coming.

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” my mom says.

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did in your head. You have that teenager thing where you think I don’t get you. I get you, Abbi Hope Goldstein,” she says, and plops down next to me on the bed and points her finger right at my chest. “You are a fighter. I didn’t know you were sick. You covered your tracks on that one. But all this stuff with Cat and the girls? You’ve been so tough. I knew you were heartbroken, but you kept right on, no complaints. Of course you should have told us you weren’t well. We are supposed to protect you, not the other way around. After we get you out of this place we’re going to start doing things differently. But don’t for one second think you’re not a fighter. You are the toughest kid I know.”

  “Feel better?” my dad asks.

  “No,” my mom says. “But I’ve had a bunch of Xanax.”

  “I was asking Abbi.”

  “That was quite a pep talk,” I say, intentionally rolling my eyes hard so that both of my parents can see. Then a wave of panic hits. Dr. McCuskey is here. Her hair is pulled into a bun that’s precariously secured with a pencil. She better have worn a scrunchie and a hairnet during my surgery.

  “I’ll get right to it. As you can see, Abbi handled the anesthesia beautifully. Once we were inside, we decided to do a full excision of the pulmonary mass, mostly because of the extremity of the symptoms—for example, the blood-streaked sputum,” Dr. McCuskey says, and then pauses. She looks deliberately at my mom, then my dad, and finally me, the same way I checked my mirrors on my driver’s test. Is she intentionally taking her time?

  If I were a doctor, this is not how I’d drop big news. Instead, I’d bounce into the room and shout it out in basic English, as quickly as possible: Benign! Malignant! Stage III!

  No need to keep us twisting in the wind.

  Also, what’s sputum?

  “Vessels were found around the mass, which helps explain the bleeding,” Dr. McCuskey says, and the monitor starts to beep. My poor heart. Again the dangers of sneaky optimism. Sometime since this morning, I’ve let the possibility of my being all right sneak in. I realize how stupid that was. “But there was no sign of any other growth. All the blood work looks good.”

  “Okay,” I say, in an attempt to encourage her to get to the point.

  “Shhh,” my mother says, and clamps her hand over my mouth.

  “In short, the biopsy showed a benign clear-cell tumor of the lung. As usual, we sent a sample to an outside lab to verify, but I think it’s highly unlikely the r
esults will be different,” Dr. McCuskey says.

  “Yes!” my dad screams, his fists raised in victory, as if his beloved Jets scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. I’m having trouble making sense of her words, realigning them into English. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means you’re going to be fine. It means…” My mother stops talking midsentence and folds into herself. She drops her head between her knees. Her entire body shakes with sobs. She is keening, a word I didn’t really understand the meaning of until this moment.

  My dad looks at my mom, and then he too starts tearing up.

  Dr. McCuskey clears her throat. My dad wipes his nose on a handkerchief he takes out of his back pocket. My mom sits up and pulls herself together.

  “We need to check Abbi regularly. I’m going to order a chest X-ray every three months to start, and then every six months, because these sorts of growths don’t always manifest with symptoms. Of course, if she is experiencing any coughing or wheezing, I need her to come in to see me immediately. Is that clear?” Dr. McCuskey asks.

  I nod.

  “Are you telling me I’m not going to die? For real?” I ask.

  “You are not going to die. At least, not from this,” Dr. McCuskey says.

  “Of course you’re not going to die,” my dad says, his voice thick with something like rage. “You are never going to die.”

  “Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” Dr. McCuskey barks an awkward laugh. She releases the pencil from her hair, and we watch as her long gray curls cascade down as if in slo-mo. She is not the doctor I would have cast in the movie version of my life.

  “You just said she’s fine,” my dad insists.

  “She is. But let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we? Most sixteen-year-olds do not get lung tumors. I mean, it can happen, but statistically you have a far greater chance of, I don’t know, being struck by lightning. I don’t know that that’s true, but you get my point. I do think we need to assume this is connected to your chemical exposure as a baby. Of course, there are many complicated aspects of nine-eleven syndrome, and it’s not fully understood. It can present in numerous ways—respiratory disease, cancer—and we don’t know enough at this point to predict how or even whether it will manifest. I’m going to enroll Abbi in the World Trade Center Health Program. She’s entitled to the benefits of—”