My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet)

by Toby Devens

  I had to jog my memory. “Oh, Fleur. No, no. As a matter of fact, Fleur’s staying over too. No, it’s a different friend. Her name is Katherine, Kat.”

  “Well, tell Kat I’ll be thinking good thoughts.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Better yet, how about I come over later and bring you gals some Chinese food? You have to eat. And I’m sure no one’s in the mood to cook.”

  “Wants to bring dinner,” I mouthed to Fleur who nodded an enthusiastic yes.

  “That’s very kind of you, Harry, but I think this is a no-man’s land for a couple of days.”

  “Ah, female problems. I understand. Maybe we can reschedule.”

  “Right.”

  After I hung up, Fleur said, “Wasn’t that nice of him to think of bringing food? He’s such a sweet man. And you’re trading him in for a limey you’ve meet twice who lives two hundred miles away.” She tapped her forehead. “Sharp, very sharp.”

  “Who’s trading? Am I trading? It’s much too early to trade,” I said.

  “Look how excited she got,” Kat said, winking at Fleur. “The woman is most definitely trading.”

  ***

  That night, Kat downed three-quarters of a bottle of wine all by herself. By ten we were all quite squiffed and very giggly.

  Fleur entertained us by reviewing her latest e-men.

  “I’ve been online a lot with the Whiz, who’s an aerospace engineer, and with Rocketman, who’s not. Rocketman has a problem with premature ejaculation, hence the name. Stop that cackling, the two of you! There are worse afflictions and at least he’s honest about it upfront.”

  The hysterical eruption that burst from Kat probably had more to do with her own situation than Fleur’s inadvertent pun. All her emotions were very close to the skin. Fleur was providing a fine diversion. For a while, anyway, the patient’s mind was teased from thoughts of doom.

  “Seriously,” Kat choked back her laughter, “I admire you for putting yourself out there with all these men. In your place, I couldn’t do it.”

  “Aren’t you lucky you’re not in my place, then,” Fleur answered. She didn’t know Kat had broken up with Lee. But now Kat gave us the details. She’d told him their relationship was getting too serious too fast and they ought to take a hiatus to cool things down. To his credit, Lee hadn’t given up without a fight. He argued against a separation. They could slow down for a while. See each other every other week. No, she insisted, she needed time and space.

  “He said he cared about me and he thought I felt the same way. He felt we had a future. He was so surprised. And hurt.” Kat’s eyes clouded with the memory.

  “Sure. He’s crazy about you. And you’re just crazy. I can’t believe you gave up your wonderful Lee. And for what? To satisfy your daughter’s outrageous demands. When did you have your backbone surgically removed?” Fleur asked, then looked shocked because the word “surgical” bounced us back into the frightening present. The loss of Lee, painful as it was, paled in comparison to losing a breast or your life.

  Kat got there even before we did. “I’m comfortable with that decision. Especially now. Lee is young. He has his life ahead of him. Let him spend it with a healthy woman.”

  Fleur sprung to her feet. “That’s ridiculous. Jesus! You’re going to be fine. Right, Gwyn? She’s going to be fine.” She folded a slightly resistant Kat into her arms. “I am such an idiot. I didn’t mean to upset you. You have enough to deal with. Shit. You’re a surgeon, Gwyn. Why don’t you sew up my mouth?”

  ***

  Tuesday morning passed with no lab results for Kat. That afternoon, I attended a baby shower for one of our nurses in the boardroom at which Mindy, Seymour’s new hire, made her debut. Brunette, fluffy, cusp of thirty, legs like a thoroughbred colt. She licked frosting from her fingers with scientific concentration. Another one with a prehensile tongue. Speaking of which, Bethany bobbed in for a minute to grab cake and shot a troubled glance at Seymour. He declined to register her entrance with as much as a blink, continuing his conversation with Neil and Ken Dempsey in a testosterone pocket near the window. But as he left, he touched my shoulder and rasped, gangster-like, out of the side of his mouth, “A word?”

  We ducked into the empty snack room. He spoke quickly, as if we were about to be arrested by the thought police.

  “Bethany came to me the other day with some cockamamie story that you think that she and I are…grmph…having some kind of inappropriate relationship.”

  I let him sweat. It was a pleasure to see his forehead glaze over like a petit four.

  “Let me assure you, there is nothing untoward happening between us.”

  I snorted, but daintily. “Well, you might want to tell that to Bethany. She seems to think there is. Actually, she’s under the impression that you two are in love.”

  Which elicited a cartoon smile. Wiggly at the edges. Like when Woody Woodpecker is about to go splat!

  “Love?” he repeated. “She can’t be serious. Now that proves we’re talking about an unstable person. I’m no psychiatrist, but this is clearly a case of wishful thinking combined with vivid imagination. You need to consider the source.”

  I dearly wanted to smack him. “Sources, Seymour. Me among them. I suppose I hallucinated her foot creeping into your crotch under the boardroom table. Look, what you do on your own turf is your own business. When you bring it into the office, it becomes mine.” And Neil’s was the unspoken threat.

  “Gwynnie,” he said, as if we were pals, “I don’t know what you saw or think you saw, or what the rumor mill is churning out or what crazy supposed confession you heard from Bethany McGowan, but she and I are not involved. Never have been, never will be. That’s the truth, take it or leave it.”

  Before I could say, “Leave it,” Barbara poked her head in. “Dr. Berke, a Kat Greenfield on line two.”

  “Send it into my office.”

  All this carping suddenly seemed petty and frivolous with Kat’s life on the line.

  “Dr. Sukkar just called. He got the lab results.” Kat sounded calm, almost lighthearted. Relief washed over me. Then she said, “It’s cancer.”

  Rocked back, I managed to stammer, “I’m so sorry, Kat. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine actually.” I heard a quivering intake of breath. “All right, maybe not fine, but okay. Now that we know.”

  “Uhmm.” My patients had taught me how to listen.

  “The third shoe has fallen. You know I’ve been waiting twenty years. With my mom and Melanie getting hit, I figured it was just a matter of time for me. So now it’s happened, and Dr. Sukkar can cut it out and if I’m lucky, I can get on with my life.”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. “Did he say anything else? What kind of tumor? What he has in mind for treatment?”

  “Yeah, he talked about the tumor stuff. I wrote it down.” She shuffled through papers. “I don’t know where I put it now. You can call him. Actually, I have two little tumors.”

  An alarm buzzed. Multifocal tumors are disease multiplied. I said, “Little is good.”

  “He says they’re really close together so he can take them both out in one scoop. I’d lose a lot of tissue but keep the breast. Then I’d have to have radiation. The other option is a mastectomy.” She slurred the word as if to soften its serrated edge. We inhaled at the same time. Then Kat said, “The more tissue he takes, the better the chances of getting it all, right?”

  “Actually, a study just crossed my desk...” I groped for papers, feeling around for my comfort zone. But Kat didn’t want to hear any more and interrupted me.

  “That’s okay. I have time to think this through. Dr. Sukkar says it’s not life threatening if we hold off a week. I need to get a second opinion for the insurance company anyway. You’ll give me a name. And I have to call Joel and Dirk. The
gallery guys. To postpone my show. What do you think?”

  Life is so seductive, we rush back to it as soon as we can. Kat was worried about reprinting invitations even as the bad cells nibbled up the good cells.

  “Let me talk to Abe and see what we’re dealing with.”

  “We,” Kat said, her voice softening. “You’re in this with me, right, Gwyn?”

  “Shoulder to shoulder. To the barricades.”

  “How seventies.” She forced a laugh. “To the barricades, sure. But to the end? I mean, to the bitter end? If worse comes to worse, I don’t want to suffer like my mother and Melanie.”

  I was pretty sure what she was asking of me. In that event, I would help her, but not the way she wanted.

  “Which won’t happen,” I said. “Have you called Summer?”

  “I’m at Summer’s. She’s having terrible morning sickness. Ugh, what lousy timing for this cancer crap. Summer hasn’t needed me since she was ten or eleven and now she does and I can’t even be there for her.”

  “Of course you can. And you will. You’ll dance at your grandchild’s wedding.”

  “Only if it’s the waltz, the fox-trot, or the funky chicken. Those are the only dances I know. Do you remember how it used to irritate Ethan that I couldn’t lindy? He was such a good dancer. He...oh God. Poor Ethan, he must be so worried about me.”

  “Cry it out,” I urged as she gave in to sobs. “Cry it out, baby. It’s good to cry.”

  I could have used a good cry myself, but Mindy was waiting to set up shop in my office for her first shot at sorting through my files and when I fled to the staff ladies room, I found Bethany camped out on the lounge crying hard enough for the both of us.

  Actually, from a clinical standpoint the news about Kat wasn’t all bad. Ibrahim Sukkar told me she had an infiltrating ductal carcinoma in her right breast. Very close by sat a ductal carcinoma in situ, a tiny noninvasive DCIS that also needed to come out. He could remove the breast, but he saw no need, nor did I. He’d do a lumpectomy, targeting both sites and removing plenty of surrounding tissue to make sure she was free and clear, after which she’d require radiation to kill off of any stray cells.

  Not two minutes after I hung up with Abe, Simon called, unusual for midday.

  “I miss you,” he said, out of the blue, his voice all warm and toasty.

  “I miss you too,” I said with a sigh.

  “You needn’t sound so sad. It’s good we miss each other. It bodes well for the relationship.”

  “It’s not that. Kat, the friend I told you about? Her surgeon just phoned with the lab report. Malignant.”

  “I’m so sorry, Gwyneth,” he said. Then his voice went from sympathetic to colleague-to-colleague as we discussed her prognosis.

  Winding down, I said, “Thanks, it was good to be able to talk it out. It’s nice that we speak the same language. I’m really looking forward to this weekend with you.” An understatement. The prospect of two days with Simon was the bright light at the end of this dark tunnel of a week.

  “Ah, about this weekend. The reason I called. I was wondering if we might postpone my visit. Just for a bit. I’ve got an article coming due for Cervix.” One of the more fetchingly named of our academic journals. “And I need time to smooth out the bumps by my Monday deadline.”

  “Damn.” I bit my lip against the disappointment, then stiffened it. “Well, business before pleasure, I suppose.”

  “Oh, dear. It sounds monumentally depressing when you put it that way.”

  “Unless...” I pulled a fast switcheroo. I invited him to the beach house. I hadn’t been to Rehoboth since August, but Drew had stayed over recently and he was the tidy twin so it would be in fine shape to show off. Simon could work on his paper in Stan’s study, which overlooked the sea. “Very inspiring,” I assured him. “I know what it’s like to be under the gun so I’ll stay out of your way. But if you want to take a break, the beach is really lovely this time of year.”

  “How can I resist such an offer?”

  “You can’t,” I answered, pleased with myself.

  “Sold,” he conceded with a laugh.

  Chapter 25

  With Kat’s diagnosis, I crashed head-on into my own mortality. My patients didn’t sound the same grim alarm in me, but there was nothing like a little cancer in your own circle of friends to make you feel you had fifteen seconds to live. The warning prompted me to book an extra hour with my personal trainer. Twice in three days, I called my sons on some hokey pretext, really to tell them how much I loved them, and I made an appointment with my attorney to update my will.

  Fleur approached danger from a different angle. She pushed harder to get hitched while she could still make it down the aisle without a walker.

  The Plan hadn’t stalled out, but it wasn’t exactly zooming down the road to the wedding chapel either. Many men, nothing in platinum with baguettes to show for it. Nonetheless, Fleur was convinced that all she could do was play the odds. The more potentials she met, the more likely she’d find husband material.

  Within hours of Kat’s mammogram, in a death-defying frenzy, she signed up for a dating service called Cocktails for Two and its spin-off, Supper at Seven. If a slippery old codger escaped those two nets, she could catch him at Linen and Silver, a dinner plan for the over-fifty crowd. All this eating and drinking would be hell on her diet, but she was determined to lasso a date for New Year’s Eve. And she held me to some promise she said I made to go with her to Hannah Pechter’s, a matchmaker from Pikesville, a Jewish area in the suburbs.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember saying you’d go with me Thursday night.”

  Sometimes I thought Fleur made these things up. She dug around in her wallet and handed over a business card.

  “Shidduchs and Sheitels,” I read. “What’s a shidduch?”

  “A shidduch is an arranged match. A sheitel is a wig the orthodox women wear. Some sex-crazed rabbi invented the myth that a woman’s hair holds the power to distract men from holy things. And this was way before conditioners. So only a husband can look upon his wife’s natural tresses. For the rest of the world, the religious babes tuck their own hair under a wig as soon as they say ‘I do.’ They’re really very good quality, these sheitels. All natural hair. Hannah sells them on the side.”

  At the last moment, she persuaded Kat to join us. “Come on,” Fleur urged, “you need a good laugh. This should get an 8.6 on the Rickles scale.”

  Before Kat could change her mind, Fleur and I zipped by to fetch her. The evening was mild for mid-October but Kat was dressed for the chill December in her soul. Her skirt was one of those Mexican striped things she favored, longer than Hannah Pechter’s modest midi, and she’d wrapped a fringed shawl tightly around her. Over that, a jacket.

  “Welcome to Shidduchs and Sheitels, where the elite meet and greet.” Hannah shooed us in, then backed up to take Fleur in with a measuring gaze. “I wish I had a hundred like you. They’re going to batter down my door.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears,” Fleur said, and the matchmaker stared at her as if she were something edible smeared with cream cheese.

  Then she said, “For you, Fleur dear, I’ve got ten hand-selected prospects on video. You’ll look at those tonight. If nothing appeals to you, next week you’ll look at ten more, and if you don’t like any of those, I’ll send you to my brother-in-law the optometrist to check those beautiful blue eyes of yours. Come, let’s get started.”

  Following her tiny figure down the hall, we passed a room lined with shelves of wigs on disembodied, featureless foam heads. “That’s my other business. Mostly it’s for religious women, but we also have some for cancer patients. For when they undergo chemo.”

  I heard Kat’s tread hesitate behind me and reached back for her hand.

  Hannah’s viewing room wa
s dominated by a big-screen TV. On the coffee table, she’d arranged a carafe of coffee, four mugs, a large plate of strudel, and a manila folder. Fleur automatically reached for a piece of strudel and Hannah automatically moved the plate towards Kat and me.

  “This is my middle son, Yossi,” Hannah announced, as a thin, prepubescent boy entered the room. “One day, he’ll take over the business and then it will be third generation.” She spat twice in her hand, saying, “Poi poi,” which Fleur explained was a shield against the evil eye that could steal your good fortune. “Why am I so successful? Because I provide a personal service, not like on the Internet where you could be talking to a convict for all you know. Here everyone fills out detailed questionnaires. Fleur described herself to a T. Then you make a video. Yossi will video Fleur tonight and, just as I show you videos of them, they see a video of you.”

  “You’re going to make a video, Fleur? You never told us,” Kat said, obviously tickled. I was glad she’d come with us. Shidduchs and Sheitels was just the right medicine for her troubled heart.

  “Do we have to do this?” Fleur groaned.

  “Please, you’re going to be wonderful. The quality will shine through. Now let’s take a look at the cream of my over-fifty crop, selected personally by me for you. Yossi will pop the videos in and out.” Hannah handed Fleur the folder which contained a profile and photo of each candidate. “I recommend you make notes or you’ll never remember the nuances. And please, don’t write someone off just because he has a mole or a lisp. We’re all made in the image of Hashem, but that doesn’t mean exact. No soul on Earth is perfect. Kat, there’s a rheostat above you to dim the lights. Yossi, shove in Milton Rosenthal, please.”

  Milton, sixty, bald and baby-faced, led the video parade. He’d lost his wife the year before. Most of Hannah’s men were widowers. “At least you know these are not fly-by-nights or love ’em and leave ’ems. These men were happily married and they want to be again.”

  Fleur nodded somberly. She’d had her fill of fly-by-nights.