Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  I was: the white flecks were actually calcifications clustered in a pattern around a small tumor, he’d said. “Maybe benign, maybe not.”

  Two weeks later, I was in the mammography room again, having what the radiologist breezily called “a needle loc” in preparation for a biopsy. This procedure made me feel like a radio-controlled car, with a long wire shot straight through the side of my breast and technicians controlling my every move.

  The mammography staff, perhaps determined to take my mind off the wire, explained the hazards of their profession, like the time one of them flicked the switch to squeeze the mammography machine’s plates shut, and accidentally trapped the head of another technician between the plates instead of the patient’s breast. Meanwhile, the two women opened and closed the metal plates against my breast, flattening it up and down, side to side, working the machine like some sort of exotic sandwich-maker.

  Afterward, one technician patted my arm. “There, now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked.

  “Only when I imagined kissing my breast goodbye,” I replied, just to see her wince.

  There followed the biopsy, more waiting, and then the diagnosis–yes, breast cancer; no, it hadn’t spread outside of the tiny pinpoints of light in the milk ducts–and surgery. Then more waiting for the results of the lumpectomy. Five interminable days later, the call had come.

  “We got it all,” the surgeon crowed over the phone. “Clear margins all around!” No need for radiation or chemo, he said, going on to pronounce me “cured” before hastily adding, “Well, not that there’s really any such thing as a 100 percent cure, is there? With cancer, we can only say 99 percent. Still, pop the champagne while you can.”

  That one episode had lasted just a few short months of my life, yet I had gone from 0 to 60 mph during that time, looping through the entire Rocky Mountains of my emotions. Of course I was terrified of dying. At the same time, I felt newly awake: things that had mattered so much to me before—PTO meetings, fund raising for the school science trip—shrank to gnat-like proportions, while things I hadn’t thought about in ages—like my brother, and why he’d dropped off the family radar screen—suddenly seemed vitally, achingly important. I felt relieved to be in the clear, yet oddly guilty about dodging the breast cancer bullet this time, while others in more difficult circumstances—a neighbor down the street with three young kids, for instance—hadn’t been able to beat it.

  Now, scarcely six months later, there was nothing left to show for my experience on the outside but this ugly scar: a raised line half as long as my palm and still red, like a dogwood branch laid against the side of my left breast. Inside, however, I felt that I might never be the same.

  When it was all over, Peter wouldn’t touch that breast at all. He simply treated me as if I were the one-breasted woman we were both afraid I’d become. What had prompted me to leave Peter in the end wasn’t boredom or the fact that he wasn’t as interested in me physically, but the idea that, if he couldn’t handle this kind of scare, what would happen to us if the breast cancer returned and a surgeon couldn’t tell me to pop the champagne?

  I explained this to Peter as I broke off our engagement. He accepted the ring I returned with a curt nod, no argument. He was probably relieved.

  I had told Karin all of this through weekly phone calls coast-to-coast. Her response was as pragmatic as I had expected—one reason I loved Karin was that she always, always told the truth, as boldly as possible.

  “I understand that you’re upset, but really, Jordy, did you think you’d be the one person in the whole world who never got cancer?” she had asked. “Don’t you dare wallow! The surgeon says you’re clean, which is as good as medicine gets. It’s a lesson in mortality, sure, but use it to toss the dead-wood and get on with your life.”

  I knew that, by “deadwood,” Karin was referring to Peter. I also knew that Karin was busy with a single woman’s preoccupations, just as I had been before. Love, work, and everything else in Karin’s future still stretched before her like a straight, smooth highway.

  Despite being my best friend, Karin had yet to realize what I now knew: each of us carries a sleeping tiger inside, and we can’t predict when that cat will wake, stretch, and sharpen its claws. Having to face the tiger’s presence inside myself was what made me finally leave Peter. It was also what drove me to seek out Cam and Karin: I felt an intense need to reconnect with what little family I had, and to live a bold, truthful life that went beyond the carefully orchestrated domestic existence I’d shared with Peter.

  Karin was still talking about Cam. As far as she remembered from their last conversation, my little brother was working a part-time job in Berkeley and sharing a house with a group of people she’d never met.

  “Cam always was different,” she said, reaching into the medicine chest for a pair of tweezers. “He’s nothing like my three brothers, all gung ho about sports and money.”

  It was true. Cameron was the family dreamer and video gamer, while I carried the itchy mantle of Responsible Oldest Child. Cam had earned better grades than I did in college, but he dropped out senior year to travel and work odd jobs.

  Meanwhile, I went on for my master’s degree and found a job, preparing to marry, provide grandchildren, and show up for Sunday dinners. Eventually, I would be called upon to puree my parents’ dinner in a blender and push their wheelchairs around the block. I didn’t resent Cam, exactly; I only wondered why he’d turned out one way, while I was another.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake! Stop thinking! Leave yourself alone! I commanded, and sank into the bath water until I wore a crown of bubbles in my hair.

  Karin made me leave her apartment an hour before the party. “Take a walk or grab a coffee. You can’t be both the guest of honor and the first arrival.”

  “I’m not just the honored guest,” I reminded her. “I’m also the cleaning crew and caterer.” Still, I humored her and left the apartment, aimlessly wading into the inky purple night. I wore the outfit Karin had loaned me–tight black leather pants, high black leather boots, a turquoise leotard top, and beads that clacked against my breast bone–only because she had hidden my suitcase.

  I followed Dolores to 24th and then turned left into Noe Valley, where I was soon mingling with the wine bar crowd. The feathery tops of the palm trees were etched black against the sky. A few lights glimmered in the houses, and I saw a woman moving about in her second-floor kitchen. A man read his newspaper by kerosene lantern on the rooftop garden just to the left of her.

  From Noe Valley, I continued up a hill so steep that it made my calves ache, then descended into the Castro, where the gay bars were buzzing and the windows were flung open to the night. The sight of so many beautiful men snuggled together on the benches in one ferny bar sent me into a deep gloom.

  What was I doing here, walking alone in someone else’s ill-fitting clothes, with only a plastic tourist map for comfort? I wondered where Cam was, and fervently wished that my brother would miraculously appear to save me from showing up solo at the party. I checked my text messages again, but still nothing.

  I stopped to catch my breath in front of a diner surrounded by drag queens in fantastic wigs, long eyelashes, and short skirts. Their horsey muscular legs tapped impatiently on the sidewalk as they waited in line on the sidewalk for dinner booths. No doubt about it, they had more fashion sense than I did. Better make-up, too. And where did they get earrings that size?

  I studied my map in order not to stare, and was suddenly reminded of the Treasure Map game that Cam and I had played as children. We drew our treasure maps on white construction paper, elaborate scrawled illustrations in smudged pencil, then deliberately chewed the paper’s edges to dampen it before we rolled the maps into scrolls and left them to yellow in the sun for that authentic treasure map look. I always felt slightly bored during this game, but my brother leaped into full character every time I agreed to play. He’d pretend to hobble along on a wooden leg as a pirate, or sneak like a stowaway b
ehind the kegs of gunpowder disguised as living room furniture.

  Whatever his role, Cam’s mission was to steal the treasure map. And I was always the captain of the pirate ship, except for the one time we convinced our father to play this game with us. Our father had roared and swung an egg beater inside his sleeve like a fake metal arm. Cam and I fled, shrieking, into the garage.

  Just as my father came flying out the back door, the screen slamming behind him like a musket firing, Cam yanked me to safety into the dark space behind the furnace. We hid there in the oily smelling dark, hearts pounding, until our father tired of looking for us and retreated.

  “We fooled the Captain,” Cam had giggled. Where my brother was concerned, it was always us against the scary outside world.

  “Well, brother,” I whispered, pocketing my map and turning back towards Karin’s apartment. “Where are you hiding now, in this scary, scary world?”

  Chapter two

  I’d worked myself up into such a state of anxiety by the time I arrived at Karin’s that I nearly ran back down the stairs when she opened her door. I had to remind myself that a party is just a sandbox for grownups.

  This particular sandbox was already crowded. It pulsed with people and music and flashing lights that made the guests look like jerky marionettes. I certainly would have retreated if Karin hadn’t caught me by one arm.

  She wore a thigh-length black satin dress that revealed the pale tops of her breasts. Around her neck, Karin had wrapped a white scarf studded with gold stars, and her earrings were enormous gold moons. She embraced me in a musky hug.

  “No hiding,” Karin whispered in my ear. “You look too fabulous. Now listen: there are at least a dozen single straight guys here. They’ve all got good jobs, and I’ve tried two of them out personally, so I know they’re hot.”

  “Jesus, Karin.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or call Animal Control.

  She giggled and led me into the living room, announcing my arrival with the subtlety of a talk show host. “Hey, everybody! This is my best friend from back home, Jordan O’Malley!” Karin elicited a cheer from the crowd, then left me while she greeted more guests at the door.

  I had a strategy for surviving any party: graze. There was plenty to nibble. I’d seen to that myself; I even knew where to find the extra bags of tortilla chips if we ran out. I gravitated towards the dining room table, but Karin reappeared before I could fill my plate. A man followed in her wake.

  “This,” Karin said, docking in front of me, “is a friend of mine from the hospital, David Goldstein. He’s a pediatrician and you’re a teacher, so you both must like kids, right? That should be a good ice breaker.”

  Certainly, nobody could ever accuse Karin of procrastinating. I shook hands with David, the first contestant in Karin’s private Dating Game, wondering whether she’d had the chance to, as she put it, “try him out.” The only thing I knew for sure was that he was employed.

  Karin embraced us both, pulling us together like salt and pepper shakers, then zoomed off. David shifted his feet. He wasn’t much taller than I, which made him short in a man’s world, and he had the slightly stooped shoulders and slender frame of an academic. I could have looked him in the eye if his gaze hadn’t been focused on the floor. Instead, I studied his hair. The curls were as silver and metallic as my mother’s favorite brand of kitchen scrub pads. He was probably about my age, but his hair made him look older.

  And what was he looking at? My boots? Or, rather, Karin’s boots. I had the urge to squat down and peer into his face, which is what I did with students whenever they felt too overcome to look me in the eye. But no. Let him rise to the occasion. I waited him out.

  Judging from David’s wire frame glasses, baggy jeans and pocket t-shirt, he was the sort of boy who had coached the high school math team. He had been laughed at in gym class. And he had probably gone straight from college to medical school, then completed a residency in a clinic for the poor.

  I deduced this last bit from David’s shoes, which were the thick leather sandals worn by teachers I knew who had done Peace Corps stints in countries with more dust than rain. They were the shoes Moses must have worn to lead the way through the Red Sea, and David Goldstein wore them with frayed socks. All in all, David looked like someone I could talk to. I was sorry he couldn’t possibly think the same thing of me, since I was dressed in Karin’s Whore of Babylon ensemble.

  It was too loud to talk in the living room. I led him out onto Karin’s porch, where at least there was a decent breeze. We leaned against the railing and David told me that he did work in a clinic for the poor, as I had suspected. He also served as a pediatric emergency physician in the same city hospital where Karin worked. He’d recently spent a year working abroad, he added, and was having trouble readjusting to life here.

  “Where were you?”

  “Nepal,” he said, sounding wistful. “Right up until last month, I lived in a mud hut and practiced medicine in a converted cow shed.”

  I conjured up dirt floors, dung heaps buzzing with flies, and bloody sheets. “Why there?” I spun my mental globe and found Nepal: Land of Sherpas, yaks, Mt. Everest, and yetis, according to one of my fourth grader’s oral reports for social studies.

  “Not for the noblest reason,” David said. “I went for the mountains. Ever since I was a kid, I’d dreamed about climbing Everest.”

  “And now you’ve done it? That’s wonderful!”

  David shook his head and made a face. “Not quite. Weak knees,” he explained, pointing down at the betrayers. “The curse of being in my thirties and spending my whole life lifting books instead of weights.”

  “I bet you saved a few lives, though, even if you didn’t climb mountains.”

  “Not as many as I would have liked.” David set his beer bottle on the railing and turned to look out over the rooftops. I did the same, our shoulders comfortably touching. A jet flew overhead, silent and twinkling.

  “Once, a villager brought me into his house,” David said, “and begged me to look at his daughter. I went upstairs, where the whole family was gathered around a heap of wool blankets. The only light was from this smoky little fire, so it took me a minute to realize that my patient was actually under those blankets. She was a little thing and skinny as a stick. Her temperature was soaring, up to 105 degrees. She had a severe pelvic infection. A pelvic infection!” He shook his head. “In our country, sulfa drugs could snuff that out in a week, but that kid was on death’s door.”

  I could imagine it all: the shadowy figures, the smoky room, the moaning child, David huddled over her. “So what did you do?”

  I never found out. Our conversation was interrupted by a loud beeping from David’s pager. He grabbed it off his belt and grimaced at the number. “Sorry. I need to make a call.”

  “Karin’s room is quiet,” I suggested. “Down the hall, last room on the left.” As I watched David make his way through the dancers, I wondered whether he already knew where Karin’s bedroom was.

  I lingered on the porch, listening to the night sounds of the city. For the last party I’d gone to with Peter, I’d bought a tight little black dress, the sort that would give a dead man an erection. Peter had looked me over and only asked if I could please blow-dry my hair straight, just this once.

  Karin materialized at my side. “Why are you moping out here?” She took me firmly by the elbow, leading me back into the apartment.

  “I was waiting for David. We were having a nice talk.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That figures. Takes a nerd to know one. Listen, David’s as dull as dirt and piss poor besides.”

  “But you’re the one who introduced him to me!”

  “Just as a warm-up exercise. You said yourself that you’re through with nice guys. Peter was nice, remember?”

  “That’s mean.”

  “Look, David’s got a billion stories, every one of them sad to the bone. That’s the last thing you need right now. Besides, he had to leave for an emergen
cy room consult. If you really want to pursue things, I’ll give you his number later. Now mingle!” she ordered.

  Karin drew me into the brightly lit, crowded kitchen and pointed. Next to the table, which was barely visible beneath six-packs and wine bottles, stood a man whose freckled face was haloed by a cloud of blonde hair. We watched for several minutes while he performed tricks with a tiny Frisbee for several female groupies. He was tall, with a lanky runner’s build and a face that might have been handsome if it were plumped out a little. As it was, his small dark eyes, flat nose, and pert mouth looked stamped onto his skin. He was dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt, baggy green shorts, and running shoes.

  “What do you think?” Karin breathed into my hair. “Wouldn’t you rather frolic with a feral Frisbee player than ponder the world’s woes with a pensive pediatrician?” Karin waved and the man grinned, flexing one arm like Popeye. “Isn’t he amazing?”

  “He’s coordinated,” I said, as Surfer Boy shot a miniature Frisbee into the air and caught it on his forehead, where it balanced on edge.

  Karin elbowed me in the ribs. “You don’t know the half of it,” she moaned, fanning her face theatrically. “Come on, what do you really think?”

  I studied the guy more closely. “Sorry. There’s not enough beer in the world.”

  “Oh, give him a chance. Break loose for once,” Karin said, and abandoned me again to join the dancers in the living room.

  I wandered over to the dining room table, loaded down a plate with food, then hovered in the kitchen doorway, watching the object of Karin’s admiration spin a palm-sized red Frisbee across his shoulders. The man saw me watching and advanced. When we were scarcely a foot apart, he pulled an even smaller Frisbee out from behind my ear, rolled it down his arm, then balanced it on one finger. He lifted my hand to pass it to me; the Frisbee continued spinning on the tip of my forefinger.