People Who Knew Me

by Kim Hooper

  THIRTEEN

  Drew got his driver’s license back right before Thanksgiving. I thought that would coincide with an immediate plan to move his mom back home. When a week passed without that plan, I couldn’t restrain myself anymore.

  “How much longer is she staying with us?” I said to him. We were in our bedroom. That was the only place the two of us were ever alone. We spoke in whispers regularly, taking on his mother’s voice, as if in a show of strange solidarity.

  “Just give me time to figure something out,” he said. He was noticeably agitated, impatient with my question even though it was the first time I’d asked. It must have been bouncing around in his head for a while, like a pinball in a machine.

  “You see how much worse she’s gotten in the last six months,” he said.

  With just that one statement, I understood: she wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  Nancy and I continued our Thursday night meetings at the coffee shop. Bitching sessions, we called them. We didn’t meet on Thanksgiving, of course. We were both busy preparing turkeys and pretending life was normal for the sake of our loved ones. When we met the Thursday after Thanksgiving, we hugged like we hadn’t seen each other in months.

  “I missed you,” I said. She’d come to be the only person in my life besides Drew, his mom, and coworkers. Marni had found herself a boyfriend and effectively disappeared from the planet. My mother had a new boyfriend, too. It was one of her chaotic on-and-off-again situations that consumed every minute of our few-and-far-between phone calls. She asked how I was, but it was obligatory, not curious. And that was fine with me. I didn’t want to tell her about my life. She would just make me feel worse about it.

  “How was your Turkey Day?” Nancy asked.

  We draped our coats over our usual chairs, at our usual table in the back corner. The girl behind the counter had come to know us, and we’d come to decide that she wasn’t always high; she was just a little dumb. She remembered our orders, though—cinnamon herbal tea for me, black coffee for Nancy. And she always brought us one of the baked goods they were going to throw away at the end of the night, like we were homeless people, charity cases.

  “Drew’s mom briefly choked on my mashed potatoes. So that was exciting.”

  She laughed. These were the things that humored us.

  “You don’t have my full sympathy until you’ve done the Heimlich,” she said.

  “You have?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the incident that drove me to that stupid caretaker group,” she said. “It was a piece of toffee, of all things.” She simulated the trajectory of the toffee, drawing an arc in the air from her mouth to my side of the table.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Nah, he wasn’t there. I don’t know where the fuck he’s been.”

  We giggled like schoolgirls.

  “So when’s she leaving?” Nancy asked, blowing on her coffee. Her lips had deep lines in them, like she’d spent years in the sun or smoked thousands of cigarettes. I rarely asked about her past. Our presents were much too consuming.

  “It’s become a question of if,” I said.

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  Last we’d talked, I’d been hopeful. I’d picked out the new couch we’d get to replace the one she’d slept on all those months. I’d told Nancy maybe Drew and I would talk about having a baby.

  “He said he needs time to figure something out.”

  “What’s there to figure out? He can go back to taking care of her in her own home. Or hire someone to do it. That would be the smartest idea. I’m hiring someone.”

  “You are?”

  “I’ve had it,” she said, with a quick jerk of her head that sent the tail end of her braided hair flying over her shoulder. “I figure my mom can’t live for more than a year or two like this. She’s already choked, broken her hip, and had stage three bedsores. I can afford two years of care, max. If she’s still going after that, I’ll have to kill her.”

  This was just how Nancy spoke. She wasn’t serious. She loved her mom. I could tell by the way she checked her cell phone every five minutes to see if she’d missed a call, if there was a new emergency.

  “Drew says we can’t afford to hire someone.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s probably true.”

  The words slapped me in the face. It was devastating to hear someone besides Drew telling me there was no other option.

  “If he got a good job, it might be an option,” she said. Then: “Maybe.”

  “He says the pay from a restaurant job wouldn’t cover the cost of hiring someone,” I said.

  Oh, how I wanted her to dispute him, say he was wrong.

  “Well, yeah, that’s probably true, too.”

  My shoulders slumped.

  “You might just have to wait it out,” she added.

  “It” being Drew’s mother’s life.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” she said, “waiting it out.”

  It occurred to me right then that maybe Nancy wanted me to be miserable, like her. She wanted the company.

  I sipped my tea. She sipped her coffee. I waited for the burst of anger I felt to dissipate. I couldn’t hate Nancy. She was just the messenger of truths I needed to face.

  “You’re going to have to do Christmas with her,” she said. I’d already confronted this particular truth, shook its hand, agreed to be civil.

  “I know. I’m going to have Drew go get her boxes of Christmas decorations tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll put them up. She’s obsessed with Christmas.”

  “Look at you—Saint Emily.”

  I shrugged. “I have to balance out all my complaining with some goodwill.”

  Drew and I had just had a big fight a couple days before in which he’d said he never knew I could be such a bitter person. It hurt to hear. I felt guilty, like I’d become this person he didn’t marry, like I’d duped him.

  “You’re a better person than me,” Nancy said.

  I didn’t believe that was true, but it was good to hear it anyway. At home, I saw myself as callous, cruel, because that’s how Drew saw me.

  Nancy checked her phone and said she had to get home. On our way out, I asked if she’d show me the Heimlich maneuver, just in case I needed to use it. And there we were, on the sidewalk outside a Brooklyn coffee shop, Nancy grabbing me and hoisting me upward. To drivers passing by, we must have looked insane.

  * * *

  Drew’s mom had thirteen boxes of Christmas decorations. Five boxes of just Santas: fat Santas, thin Santas, stuffed Santas, wood Santas, glass Santas. A set of reindeer and a sleigh meant to occupy a grand mantel. Snow globes, a village of ceramic houses with snow-covered roofs, garlands, wreaths, and three boxes of ornaments. And she had a six-foot-tall fake Douglas fir that we propped up to the left of the TV. It was too big for our small space. I told Drew that just looking at it gave me heart palpitations. He said, “You’re so dramatic.” I said, “No, I’m so claustrophobic.”

  We set aside Saturday night to put up all the decorations. It was hard to tell if Drew’s mom was happy—she didn’t have enough strength in her face to form a smile—but Drew said she was. He could tell, he said.

  “I’m going to pick up some food. You two get started,” he said, kissing me on the nose before heading out the door with Bruce. I would have rather been the one to pick up the food. He had to know that.

  I started unpacking the boxes slowly. I put everything out on display on the hardwood floors. It looked like a Christmas-themed yard sale in our tiny apartment. Drew’s mom surveyed it all and pointed one mostly bent finger in the direction of the sleigh and reindeer.

  I went to her side, leaned in so close to her that my cheek grazed hers. This was the only way to hear her.

  “Shhh—” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  The first “What?” was always patient, kind, understanding. The second was embarrassed. The third was frustrated.

  By the fourth atte
mpt, I understood that she was saying, “Shelf,” that she wanted me to clear the books we had and replace them with the reindeer and sleigh. I obliged because, really, what other choice is there with a sick person?

  I transported the books to our bedroom closet, stacked them beside a pile of her shoes. When I came back, she was pointing at the fattest of the Santas.

  I spent an hour like that—being directed around my own home by a woman who couldn’t speak. There was no need for it to be an hour. Drew was taking his sweet time. I knew that because it was exactly what I would have done. It was why I wanted to be the one to pick up the food. I eyed my running shoes by the door. The second Drew walked in, I would be gone, around the block before he could ask if I wanted him to put the pizza box in the oven to keep it warm.

  She bent forward toward the coffee table, as slow as the Tin Man in need of a squirt of oil. Her destination was obvious: a plate of sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles on them. Drew had bought them yesterday. His mom’s favorite, he said. We were constantly trying to fatten her up, to no avail.

  I set the plate on her lap to save us both the agonizing time it would have taken for her to obtain a cookie on her own. While she nibbled on one, I went to my running shoes, sat on the floor, laced them up. I was ready.

  When I turned around, she was blue. That fast. Her eyes were big and frightened, her hands slowly moving to grasp her neck. In a ridiculous display of irony, she was choking.

  Before I was sure I knew what I was doing, I was behind her, my fists pulling into her stomach, right below her ribs. She was so thin that I feared breaking her completely.

  Then, just as Nancy had promised, a partially dissolved piece of cookie flew out of her mouth and she gasped for air the way people do when they’ve been underwater too long. The blue left her face and the pink returned. She told me Thank you with her eyes, though she wouldn’t manage the actual words for several minutes.

  And I hugged her. I was either relieved she hadn’t died, plain and simple, or I was relieved that I wasn’t the reason she died.

  Just then, Drew walked in. It was as if he’d been waiting outside the door for this situation to resolve itself.

  “Where the hell were you?” I asked. I pushed him in the chest, like teenage boys do when they start fights.

  He looked dumbfounded. “What happened?”

  “She fucking choked,” I said. The adrenaline was still pulsing through me. I’d never before been so aware of the size of my veins, of their capacity.

  He went to his mom, knelt down on one knee, met her eyes with his.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded weakly.

  “She’s okay because Nancy happened to show me the fucking Heimlich maneuver the other day.”

  “Who’s Nancy?” he asked.

  In that instant, we both realized there were secrets we were keeping from each other. Things had changed between us.

  “A friend,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He brought his mom’s ever-present water glass to her lips. She sipped carefully.

  “She can’t eat food on her own anymore,” I said. I was yelling still, the adrenaline making it impossible to lower my voice.

  He got up, came to me, put his hands on my shoulders, like a fireman calming the owner of a burning house.

  “You’re just scared, okay?” he said.

  “Calm down,” he said.

  “Deep breaths,” he said.

  I wanted to punch him in the face. I could feel my nostrils flaring, the way boxers’ do in those fights you have to pay to watch on TV. He gripped my shoulders harder.

  “She needs to move out,” I said.

  “You need to hire someone to take care of her,” I said.

  “We need our life back,” I said.

  I’d said these things before, but always in the confines of our bedroom, our situation room, our war room; never in front of her. He looked away from me, to her. Her feelings mattered more than mine. It was a truth I’d known for a while, now proven.

  His mom curled her finger, beckoning him. He went to her, leaned in to hear whatever she said. It took him two attempts—“What?” “What?”—before he understood.

  “She’s sorry,” he said.

  He looked at me like I was the enemy, like I had lodged the cookie in her throat.

  “She’s just scared, Ma,” he told her.

  I grabbed Bruce’s leash off its hook, the leather in my hand an immediate relaxer, the way a stuffed animal is for a toddler afraid of the dark.

  “I’m going for a run.”

  * * *

  Bruce and I ran to Knickerbocker, where the taco shop used to be. A brightly lit Go-Go Juice was in its place. I lingered outside, watched people come and go with their tall Styrofoam cups. Most of them were in gym clothes—spandex, sweats. I needed to call Nancy. The only other time I’d called her was before our first official coffee shop meeting, to confirm it was actually happening. There was an unspoken understanding that we weren’t that kind of friends. We went about our lives during the week and confided in each other like soul mates on Thursdays. That was it. I went to the pay phone at the end of the block anyway, and dialed. It rang three times before she picked up.

  “I had to use the Heimlich,” I said.

  There was a long pause.

  “Oh, crap,” she said finally.

  “He doesn’t understand. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “I know,” she said, instead of something motivational like, Yes, you can.

  I lowered my chin to my chest, stared at the cement with old pieces of gum melted into it, part of it now.

  “Do you want to come over?” she asked. “I have my own choking hazard, of course, but we can talk it out. You can sleep on the couch. My ex used to say it was very comfortable.”

  “No, no,” I said. That wasn’t why I had called. I didn’t really know why I had called.

  “Em,” she said, “you’re going to have to make a choice. You’re going to have to wait it out or leave.”

  Wait it out. I wished she would stop fucking saying that. My face was hot. Why did those have to be my only options—wait it out or leave?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as if reading my mind, “this isn’t the time. Look, come over if you want.”

  “No, really, it’s fine,” I said. “I don’t know why I called.”

  Bruce licked my leg, wagged his tail.

  “I know it sucks,” she said. “You okay?”

  “Yep,” I said. It was a blatant lie, but neither of us was willing or able to poke at it.

  “Okay, well, see you Thursday?”

  “Sure,” I said, though I didn’t think I would. I wasn’t sure if Nancy and I having this horrible situation in common was a comfort anymore. For some reason, I’d thought the two of us would come up with some way to make it all better. That was proving to be a childish fantasy. Nancy was older, but not wiser. She was just as helpless as I was.

  “Call if you need to,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t.

  I knelt down to Bruce and kissed his wet nose. I envied his ignorance. We walked back past the Go-Go Juice and then I broke into a sprint all the way home.

  FOURTEEN

  Chemo isn’t as bad as I feared. I go to an infusion center, where about twenty other cancer-stricken people sit in chairs, hooked up to poison that is supposed to make them well. Most occupy themselves with their phones and iPads. Some go old school and read actual books or knit. Nurses bring juice and blankets to us with the pleasant politeness of flight attendants: Can I offer you a warm towel? There are even call buttons on the arms of our chairs.

  They’ve got me on a regimen of Adriamycin and Cytoxan—AC, Dr. Richter calls it. She says only about fifteen percent of people with my type of cancer—my rare, brutal, obnoxious kind of cancer—have a complete response to this regimen, but there are other things we can try if I’m not in that fifteen percent. They i
mplanted this thing called a port under my skin, up near my collarbone, so I can easily be “plugged in” to the tube that delivers the chemo. Actually, before the chemo comes rushing into my veins, they give me a bag of Zofran to keep me from puking. I guess it works because I haven’t actually puked yet. I just feel like I’m going to—very similar to how I felt when I was pregnant and how I felt the time Claire and I took a boat across the channel to Catalina. The Adriamycin comes first. It’s bright red like Hawaiian Punch. Then comes the Cytoxan, clear. It doesn’t hurt when it’s happening. The problems all start when I go home.

  The fatigue is heavy-feeling, like I’m walking around with a sack of rocks on my shoulders. The nausea comes and goes. There are sores in my mouth. I tongue them when I’m anxious. They kill whatever appetite survives the nausea. I’ve lost five pounds off my already slim frame. Some days, I take a couple handfuls of pills just to function. There’s Zofran for the nausea, then laxatives and stool softeners for the constipation caused by Zofran. Oh, and I have to take Neupogen to keep my white blood cell count high so I don’t get an infection that my body is too tired to fight. Neupogen causes bone pain—a pain I’d never known before, like an ache deep below the muscles. I take Vicodin for the bone pain. Vicodin makes me sick to my stomach. You see how it goes.

  I’ve put off telling Al. I’ve gone to work like normal. Sometimes, if I stand too long, I get dizzy and the I’m-going-to-barf feeling intensifies, so I sit on a stool behind the counter. I don’t want to call in sick. It’s only here, at the bar, when I can be in complete denial that this cancer thing is happening to me. But I’m in my second month of chemo now and my hair is starting to fall out. I wake up in the morning and find sections of it on my pillow, arranged as neatly as Claire’s first hair clipping in her baby book. I have to tell Al.

  “Can I talk to you?” I say. It’s a Thursday, toward the end of my shift. The bar is quiet. Arnie is on his way to drunk, mumbling to himself in the corner.

  “What’s up?” Al says. He’s bent down, counting beer bottles in the mini-fridge.

  “Well, I just wanted to warn you that I’ll be bald soon,” I say.

  He stands up, slow and creaky. I can tell he already knows what I mean.