The Instant When Everything is Perfect

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  “This is good news, really,” Dr. Gupta says. “Stage two is not advanced, you know. The treatment will be very straightforward.”

  She wants to tell Dr. Gupta that he is wrong. Straightforward would mean that there had been no spread to the lymph nodes. Straightforward would mean that the cancer was at stage one, or even better, not on the scale at all. Was that possible? Sally wanted hers to be the first case of stage minus one.

  “I’ve sent the reports to your daughter. She will likely tell you the same thing, Mrs. Tillier. But we can talk more at your appointment this week.”

  “Do people decide not to do chemo?” Sally asks. “Is that an option?”

  In the background of the phone call, Sally can hear music in Dr. Gupta’s office. What is it? Jazz? The Blues?

  “Of course, you make the choices, Mrs. Tillier. But I would advise you to go through with the protocol.”

  “Have you ever had chemo?” Sally asks, her face flushing, from the question or a hot flash, she doesn’t know.

  There is another pause, a saxophone, a drum, a piano in her ear.

  “No, I have not.”

  “Okay,” Sally says. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Tillier,” Dr. Gupta says, and then he and the music are gone.

  Sally puts down the phone and scratches her head by her left ear. As she lowers her arm, she feels again how her breast is gone. She moves her right arm, and feels how that one is gone, too. As she walks into the living room, she remembers being five or six and running across the grass at school, her arms swinging, nothing impeding her movements. No ache from breasts sore before a period, no flesh weighing her down, no embarrassment from the jiggle jiggle of her up and down movements.

  She pushes off hard from her next step, leaning forward for a second, about to run, but then she stops. She’s not at the playground; she’s not five or six. Right now, she should have her breasts, her nipples, the fat under the skin, the milk ducts. As she stands in the living room, Sally cups the empty space on her chest, trying to remember her breasts size and feel and form. She tries to conjure up how the heaviness of her flesh felt in David’s hands, all those years ago, before the cancer made him too weak to even lean forward and kiss her goodnight on the cheek. Sally closes her eyes, imagines her body, the early breasts pushing out of the plane of childhood, the mother breasts full of milk, the menopausal sag and drift of skin and tissue, the nipples large and prominent. But she clutches nothing but air.

  She shakes her head and then looks out the window, surprised at how happy she is to see Dick walking up the front path, Mitzie and wag of excited dog body behind him. Sally goes to the front door and pulls it open, her face flushed. She watches as Dick bends down and talks to his dog, encouraging her with quick, soft, “Calm down, now. That a girl” and “Whose my girl?”

  Sally can imagine him talking to his children that way. To Ellen, his poor wife. To her.

  Mitzie yaps more loudly and follows him as he stands straight and continues toward Sally.

  “Let’s go on a drive,” she says, the words out before she really even thinks them. “Then let’s go get a milk shake. A chocolate milk shake. At Hubcaps.”

  “Great,” says Dick. He smiles at her from under his golfing hat. “We’ll have to take Mitzie home first.”

  “We’ll get the shakes to go,” Sally says. “We’ll drink them as we walk down Main Street. Mitzie can come with us.”

  Dick stands straighter, Mitzie wags her tail. Sally grabs her sweater and purse from the table by the door.

  “Sounds good, right Mitzie?” Dick says, and Sally pulls the door closed, locking it behind them.

  Now that the drainage tubes are out, Sally is glad to be walking down the street, a milkshake cup in her hand, feeling almost happy. The tubes hurt and chafed, cutting into her skin, keeping her on her back all night. During the day, she’d worn the white camisole with pockets the nurse coordinator at Inland had given her. The pockets held the collection receptacles, little plastic bottles the tubes connected to. She’d felt as if she were one of those people with artificial hearts, carrying around an important organ on the outside, not really all alive inside. Or maybe it was more like someone who had to cart around oxygen. Actually, Sally knew that it was more like someone with a colostomy, a bag hidden under a loose pair of pants. But she felt trapped, controlled, and the minute Dr. Jacobs took the tubes out and bandaged the incisions, she felt free. Now, she can swing her arms. She doesn’t have to wear the camisole, her incisions pressed against the cotton shell under her blouse.

  “Damn fine shake,” Dick says, putting his cup in a trash can. Mitzie yaps, wags her tale, as if she expects the cup to fly out again and back into Dick’s hand. Sally smiles to herself, wonders when she started thinking about a dog’s hopes.

  “My favorite,” Sally says, still sipping her shake. They pass a bedding store, a wine bar, an Italian restaurant. No one stares at Sally. No one can see through her blouse. No one knows that underneath all her clothes, she’s a child.

  Dick clears his throat, takes her elbow as they cross the street. They step up onto the curb and stand in front of the book store. Automatically, Sally scans for Mia’s books in the window. But her daughter’s new novel doesn’t come out for two weeks. If it’s not in the window then, Sally knows she will walk in the bookstore and talk with the owner Norman. She does this at all the local stores. And when she goes into any bookstore, she sneaks to the shelves and turns Mia’s books to face front, the covers a good advertisement. Sometimes, she sneaks a stack to the front table, even though Mia has looked at Sally in horror when Sally tells her what she has done.

  “Mom! The publishers have to pay for that,” Mia said. “You just can’t move the books around.”

  “Who cares? Even if they stay there for a day, you might get a sale or two. Someone will put them back.”

  Mia shook her head, and now Sally feels the urge to do something that doesn’t remind her of cancer. She wants to walk into the store and take all of Mia’s backlist and put it out front, where everyone can see.

  But Dick walks on, up toward the bank. “Lovely spring. Not too warm, not too chill.”

  “Are you taking any trips this year? Last spring you went to Greece?” Sally remembers the quick conversations about trips and weather they’ve had before, most of them on the sidewalk in front of her condo, Mitzie jumping onto Sally’s pant leg.

  “I had thought about taking a cruise through the Panama Canal. Then the boat takes you up to Costa Rica. The rainforests and such. Apparently, you take little trips in the see the local tribes. But I don’t know. My oldest son’s been after me to spend my money. ‘Buy a new car,’ he says. ‘Take a trip,’ he says. ‘Spend it all, Dad. I don’t want it.’” Dick shakes his head. “He doesn’t really need the money, it’s true. But it seems . . . .”

  Dick trails off, pulls gently on Mitzie’s leash. They all stop walking and wait for the light to change.

  “It’s not how we were raised.” Sally thinks of her mother and father, wealthy enough, but they’d earned it all. Her father had finished medical school at the beginning of the Depression, completed his residency, married his fiancé, and started his practice by the end of it. Those lean years carried into the fuller ones, Sally’s mother a stickler about finishing what was on the dinner plate (even canned peas) and wearing clothes out until they were beyond the help of a needle and thread. There were new cars every two years and vacations to Minnesota, but no fancy camps and trips and computer games and clothes and more clothes. She and David and then Sally on her own didn’t raise Mia, Katherine, and Dahlia to think that the world was their oyster. There was the Del Mar hotel in Santa Barbara for a week in the summer and a winter trip to Yosemite or Tahoe, but not much more than that.

  “No, indeed,” Dick says, taking her elbow again and the light changes and the little walking man flashes green.

  “You should go,” Sally says.

  “Well,” Dick sa
ys, waving his hand. Sally stares at his hand and wrist, the skin smooth despite age spots and a bulging blue vein or two.

  “I think your son is right. In fact, I’ve decided that I’m going to spend my money. My kids are fine. I worry a little about Dahlia, of course. If Steve and she split up, I’m not sure how they would divide their business. But I really don’t think that will happen. They’re a good couple. It’s just mother worry. And really, I don’t think I could get through all the money I have. My husband made some good investments before he died, and it’s all done very well.”

  Dick turns to her and smiles, his dark brown eyes intense against his fair skin. “Who knows? We could try to spend it all. What about a trip around the world?”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Bangladesh.” As Sally says the name, she realizes it’s true. But why? Why Bangladesh? “And Tokyo and Budapest and—and Edinburgh.”

  Dick rubs his forehead, moves aside as a woman carrying four large shopping bags passes him. They stop at the next corner and press the button to cross the street.

  “I’m not sure about India. Or Japan. Or even Hungary. But Scotland. I’d love to go to Scotland. Sort of a romantic idea. All that green. The highlands. Red-haired women, men playing bagpipes. The whole fairytale. Maybe I’d even buy a kilt to wear at the senior center to scare the ladies.”

  In the middle of the crosswalk, Sally grabs Dick’s arm. “Let’s go, Dick. Let’s go to Scotland.”

  They stop and stare at each other. Sally realizes she’s never sad anything this wild to anyone on the planet. A vacation? With a man she’s only really known for a few months? As she stares at him, his face happy as he mulls over the idea, Sally is hit with the truth that she’s never really gone anywhere without someone she’s related to, either by blood or marriage. But the idea is out there, floating in the middle of Main Street.

  A car honks, and Dick pulls Sally and Mitzie across the street. They start walking back to the car. Sally tosses her milkshake cup into a trash can, but this time, Mitzie ignores the experience.

  Dick stops again, this time with his hand on Sally’s shoulder, only six inches from her incisions.

  “You’re joking with me, right?” he asks, blinking.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Sally says.

  “What will your daughters say?”

  “I don’t know,” Sally says, though she can hear Katherine perfectly.

  “He could be a murderer,” Katherine will say. “He might be a gold digger. You don’t even know him very well. And what do you need a man for? Go on a trip by yourself. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

  Dahlia will say, “Okay, Mom. Sounds good.”

  Mia won’t say anything, nodding, listening to Sally talk. Then, after a long pause, she’ll ask, “Are you sure about this?”

  Sally can imagine Mia wanting to take notes: a long widowed mother off on a far flung vacation with a tall, dark—okay, not dark, very gray, actually—man. She can hear Mia ask, “How do you think it’s going to turn out?”

  Right now, Sally can see Mia’s eyes, watching her.

  “Bring me postcards,” Mia will say once the story has taken hold. “Take lots of pictures.”

  Dick squeezes her a little, all of his fingers pressing on her gently. She likes his touch, his warm fingers. “Do you think you should talk to them about this?”

  One finger at a time, he lets go of her shoulder, and they begin walking again. Suddenly and without warning, Sally is tired, wishing they were already back at the car. Her incisions pulse. Her throat feels itchy. But more than anything, she wants to go to Scotland. She wants to see Loch Ness. She wants to listen to Scottish people talk, their accents lulling her into exactly what Dick said—a fairytale.

  She wants to see Dick Brantley in a kilt at the senior center, chatting up Evelyn Hagen, his long legs on display.

  And since the cancer diagnosis, Sally has talked about every single detail with her daughters. Talk, talk, talk. All this talk after years of not really talking about anything important. Truthfully, she’s tired of the truth and disclosing her feelings, exposing her body to everyone’s’ gaze. She wants to leave her surgery and all that her surgery means far behind.

  “I’ll tell them,” Sally says, glad to see Dick’s solid Lincoln town car a block away. “But I’ll tell them after we’ve made the arrangements. We’ll plan to go after my chemo is through, Dick. Four or five months. I’m not certain how it will go yet. I have an appointment on Tuesday. But then we’ll go to Scotland.”

  Dick reaches into his pocket and pulls out his keys. As they near the car, he presses a button and all the doors unlock. Mitzie barks and jumps up on the door, scratching lightly with her tiny claws. Dick opens the car door for Sally and smiles at her.

  “Scotland,” he says.

  “Yes,” Sally says, sitting down. She leans against the smooth leather seats and breathes in the whiff of new car smell. Scotland, she thinks.

  “If I were the oncologist,” Katherine says into the phone. “I’d recommend just Tamoxifen. With your path report, it’s indicated.”

  “Katherine,” Sally says, “you’re a pathologist. Dr. Gupta is an oncologist. A specialist. And anyway, I haven’t even seen him in person yet.”

  Sally takes off her sweater and puts it on the couch. She leans forward and sees the Lincoln Town car disappear around the corner, thinks about the kiss Dick gave her on the cheek as he said goodbye on her doorstep. Sally liked it, the feel of his man’s face against her skin, his slightly chocolaty breath.

  Sighing, she sits on the couch and listens to Katherine go on and on and on about new chemo protocols and hormonal treatments. Katherine has a terrible habit of talking without asking a question for minutes. Occasionally, Sally has wanted to tell her to join a debate club or go into teaching, the only places other than court where people can talk so long and get away with it. Maybe because Katherine has worked with so many dead people, she feels it’s entirely appropriate to talk in huge, clunky paragraphs. None of her patients yawn, shift uncomfortably in chairs, or interrupt. Sally looks around her living room and then closes her eyes, leaning back against the couch.

  What will Scotland feel like? she wonders. In her dreams, the Scottish air is soft and almost green. That doesn’t make sense, but even more than she does with Ireland, Sally thinks of Scotland as green, despite her knowledge of its big cities and overcast skies. Green hills. Green golf courses. Sea green, olive, moss, loden, celadon, cypress, jade.

  “Mother!” Katherine says. “Are you asleep?”

  “Not yet, dear. But listen, I will certainly call you after I’ve seen Dr. Gupta. Nydia Nuñez is going to take me to my appointment on Tuesday, and I’ll call you right after I get back.”

  “Why isn’t Mia taking you?” Katherine says with a snort. “She’s on sabbatical for god’s sake.”

  Sally opens her mouth, about to tell Katherine how when Sally found out about the appointment, she did indeed call Mia, but something in Mia’s voice was strange, different. Sally knew Mia had a lunch date or a shopping trip with Kenzie or something else she had to push aside and rearrange for yet another Inland visit with Sally. In the instant of Mia’s hesitation, Sally pulled the conversation to a stop and then turned it around, maneuvering Nydia into it. Sally could hear Mia’s relief and thanks.

  And now Sally wants to tell Katherine how many hours Mia has stayed with her, feeding her, cleaning her, helping her through the days when Sally wanted a gun more than she wanted water. But she still hasn’t told anyone about how she wanted to die, and she certainly can’t bear to hear anything else Katherine has to say right now. So she simply replies, “She had something to do with Harper.”

  “Oh,” Katherine says, instantly defused with the insertion of parental duties, something she cannot malign because she knows she has no right. “Well, call me right away. Or what about a speaker phone? Does Dr. Gupta have a speaker phone? I could be there at the appointment with you.”


  “I don’t know. Katherine,” Sally says. “I’ll let you know.”

  “You promise?”

  Sally yawns. “Of course. I’ll talk with you later, dear.” And before Katherine can say anything more than goodbye, Sally hangs up, puts the phone down on the floor, and rests her head on the arm of the couch, falling into a quick, deep sleep.

  

  “It is my feeling, Mrs. Tillier,” Dr. Gupta says, “that because the pathology report indicated that there may have been a slight chance of cancerous cells in the right nodes, you would do well with a course of both Cytoxin and then Adriamycian and then to begin Tamoxifen thereafter.”

  Sally sits on the other side of Dr. Gupta’s desk, glad to finally be talking to a doctor with all of her own clothes on. Earlier in the attached exam room, she shucked off her top once again, and like Dr. Groszmann and Dr. Jacobs, Dr. Gupta examined her, put his fingers into her arm pits, skimmed the lines of her incisions softly with his fingertips. He even made her lie down on the table and undo her pants, palpating her abdomen. She was too scared to ask what he was looking for, suddenly afraid that breast cancer could move into the belly, a rare, little-known side effect of surgery. Then he lifted her arms and inspected the drain incisions, clucking at her bruises.