I take off my heels and hitch up my skirt. Jumping over, I land amid soggy garbage bags and old bike parts. This neighborhood is so quiet; it’s spooky. I unlock the gate, and we run down the side of the house to a concrete patio. A sliding glass door. I peer inside.
Bee is lying on an old brown sofa, eyes closed. Her chest and stomach are both bandaged, the two sites of her surgeries: her stomach where they removed tissue, and her breasts where they inserted it. Through the white gauze, yellow and brown stains. A bottle of pills lies scattered on the mottled beige carpet, amid empty take-out containers and plastic bags of trash.
“Bee!” I try the door. It jerks open. Inside smells like cigarettes and something sweet: flowers. A colorful bunch on the kitchen counter, absurdly cheerful in the messy kitchen. The ones I sent. What a stupid gesture. “Bee!” I lightly slap her face. “Bee, it’s Lace. Wake up, babe, it’s Lacey Whitman.”
She comes to, eyes fluttering. Immediately, she winces, exhaling harshly. “Pills.” She tries to swallow. “I knocked them . . .”
“Down? Or back? Bee, how many of these have you had?”
She shakes her head. “No—none.”
Thank God she’s not OD’ing. “Water, get a glass of water,” I snap at Cooper. The bottle reads, Two every four hours, as needed. I lift the glass to her lips, help her swallow two pills. Every movement is causing her pain, spasming across her face. “What happened?” I ask, staring at her chest, the bandages. Two plastic drains the size of grenades are fixed to the left and right side of her body. The drains collect postsurgery fluid. I know from the forums it should be pale pink. Bee’s is dark red. The insertion site is swollen with puss.
She speaks with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly. “Think I—have an infection—can’t move—passed out from the pain.”
I smooth the hair away from her eyes. “Where’s your brother?”
“Had to work. Been gone—a few days.”
“You’ve been here on your own?”
“Thought I could . . . take care of myself . . . but something . . . went wrong.” She flutters her eyes open. “Need to . . . empty the drains.”
I look around for my purse. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“No,” she says immediately. “Copay’s . . . fucked. Please—Please don’t. I can— We don’t need—”
“Okay, no ambulance. What about your doctor?”
“In my . . . phone.”
I find the number she was given for an on-call doctor when she was dispatched from the hospital. A nurse puts me through, but the number rings out and it transfers back to her. “He must’ve stepped away,” she says. “He’ll call back.”
I explain the situation and convince the nurse to talk me through emptying the drains and changing the bandage. In a kitchen sink piled with dirty dishes, I wash my hands and take off my jewelry. Cooper hovers behind me, pale, unsure. “Can I do anything to help?”
This question has always annoyed me: routinely offered by men apparently incapable of starting to help of their own accord. I hate that he’s here, seeing Bee in pain and me unhinged and panicky. I hate that our lovely night has ended here, and I hate that I’m having all these feelings in the first place. I make myself smile at him. “Help me with the drains.”
Kneeling next to Bee, I take hold of the plastic drain and unplug the small stopper on top, like the nurse explained. Bee winces: it’s definitely infected. With as little movement as I can, I empty the contents of the drain into a measuring cup to record the amount.
“Oh.” Cooper covers his mouth. “Shit.”
He disappears down the hall.
“Hope he . . . finds a bathroom,” Bee says.
I’m embarrassed for him; it’s bad, but it’s not that bad. I pour out the second drain, and knowing this is a house with only one bathroom, head in his direction.
He’s kneeling over a toilet, glasses in one hand. “Sorry,” he pants. “I’m so sorry, Lacey.”
I tip everything down the sink and rinse it away. Splash back from the tap splatters my tank top and a stupid part of my brain tells me I’ll have to get it dry-cleaned. I need to change. Back in the living room, I refit the drains and crouch next to Bee. “Do you have hydrogen peroxide?”
She waves a hand, eyes still closed. “Bathroom . . . cabinet.”
Cooper is wiping the toilet seat down. He looks how I feel, which is completely mortified. “Lacey, I’m so sorry. I’m not usually like this.”
“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s not, exactly. I find some Neosporin and Walgreens antiseptic skin cleanser. “I’m going to change her dressing and make sure those painkillers kick in. When the doctor calls back, we can make an appointment for tomorrow.” Fresh water, pillows, soothing music, a damp washcloth: there’s a million tiny things I can do. None of them essential. All better than nothing. “We could probably knock over the kitchen tonight.”
“You’re going to stay?”
“You’re going to leave?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice; he hasn’t helped at all.
“No,” he says, quickly changing tack. “No, I was just— I’ll help. What can I do?”
I know this isn’t an easy situation, but c’mon, dude. Step up. “Nothing. You should go, it’s an hour back to Brooklyn.”
“No,” he says. “No way. I’ll start on dishes. Then I can . . . do a grocery run. Pick up supplies—”
“Cooper, it’s fine,” I say. “Seriously, you should go.”
“But—”
“I want you to go. I’m asking you to leave. Please.” Because if he stays a second longer, he’ll see just how much I wanted this. Just how much I needed him. And just how much he disappointed me. “Seriously. It’ll be easier if I’m on my own.”
45.
* * *
August
I stay with Bee for a week. She’s in so much pain, she can barely move, even doped up. After a lot of wrangling and red tape, I set up a video call with a doctor, who diagnoses inflammation, not infection, related to dead fat cells because of a blood-supply problem. It may mean more surgeries. Bee breaks down when she hears this. I hold her hand as she cries. She’s only embarrassed about this later, as we sit side by side, watching the upstairs-downstairs adventures of the Crawley family.
“Sorry,” she says. “About all the”—she mimes crying—“boo-hoo, earlier.”
I pause the show. “You don’t have to apologize for that. You don’t have to apologize for anything.”
Her face is flushing pink. She looks atypically uncomfortable. “God, you don’t even really know me . . .” She can’t finish.
“I know that you need my help,” I say. “I’m happy to be helpful. Honestly.”
“You’re a saint,” she says. “You’re a goddamn angel.”
“I’m just doing what anyone would do.” Or, remembering Cooper, ought to do.
At first, it’s hard for me to see the brutal distortion of her splendid chest. Bee did not have nipple-saving surgery because she’s going to a smaller cup size and losing too much skin (if she kept them, her nipples would’ve ended up somewhere under her armpits). Red, angry scars run horizontally across where her nipples used to be, and lower across her stomach. She’s planning to have nipple reconstruction—tattooing and a skin graft—but she’ll never get sensation back in the reconstructed area. It won’t pass as “normal” ever again.
At times, she is lucid and funny. But more often, she is tired and sad, crying even though she can’t say why. This doesn’t make me uncomfortable. In a way, it reminds me of being with my sister and her mercurial mood swings. I make the connection as I shop for groceries in old denim shorts, with greasy hair and no makeup. Just like I used to shop for groceries back in Buntley, when no one gave a crap how I looked and the chances of running into anyone from Fashion Land were approximately zero.
The store is the exact opposite of the well-lit everything-organic shops in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. There are bins of knockoff DVD
s next to the plastic-wrapped asparagus, the tips turning mushy. The shelves are narrow and crowded. The radio plays one song for every nine ads. The air smells vaguely like someone’s lunch. My fingers graze the candy selection, selecting a Snickers. Mara and I used to shoplift chocolate bars, slipping them up our sleeves or in the waistband of our pants. It was the only time we ate name-brand chocolate. I wonder . . . I glance around “casually.” Immediately, I lock eyes with the hardy-looking shopkeeper, who is watching me as if she knows exactly what’s on my mind. I smile blithely, drop the bar in my basket, and ask where the Velveeta is.
She bags my groceries into plastic because I forgot to ask Bee about a tote. I have the feeling this is the kind of place where they’d find totes a little . . . precious. We make stilted small talk, but the second I mention Bee’s name, her face lights up. How is she, how was the surgery, who am I, how do I know Bee?
“I’m Lacey,” I say. “I met her through a cancer-support group.”
The shopkeeper’s face softens. Her eyes are a lovely periwinkle blue. “Beatrice is a good girl, a real good girl. She feeds my cats when I go visit my son.”
When I try to hand over my credit card, she waves it away.
“No, no, no. You tell her Irene said to get well soon. We’re all thinking of her. We’re all sending our love.”
I walk home along sidewalks that are cracked, past houses with sparse flower beds and sun-faded American flags in the window. Some people would see this and think “poor.” But to me, it looks like a community, the kind of place where you get your groceries for free when you’ve been in the hospital. Where it’s in your best interest to get along with everyone because everyone knows your business and you’re better off being friends than enemies.
This was not an insight my father took to heart. His businesses—and his family—failed because he was a flake. When I was a kid I believed him when he said he’d be home for dinner, just like all his business partners believed him when he said a check was in the mail: he was too magnetic, too sincere to be a phony. I think he really thought he could make his promises happen, through spontaneous good fortune or the way the universe seems to work things out for a kid. There’s only so many times you wait for hours after soccer practice for a lift home before you just stop asking. At about the same time, he and I realized that everything coming out of his mouth was untrue. He gave up on me and Mara, and we gave up on him. And every time he made less effort to even pretend to parent us, Mara’s resentment for being the one left in charge grew.
I was in high school. The idea of trend forecasting in New York City felt like the most perfect sort of future one could imagine. New York: a city framed through television shows and breathless anecdotes of star spotting and skyscrapers. Trend forecasting: predicting the future, understanding how it works. And all approximately one thousand miles away from my disappointing hometown; a sister simmering with bitter rage, a father who’d failed us both and never even apologized for it. But in a way, that was the fuel I needed to rocket myself out of there, to land my ass where I wanted it to be. As I round the corner to Bee’s house, my feet slapping the hot concrete in a pair of old flip-flops, I feel a sudden gush of pride at how far I’ve come. And yet, how close to home I am here, with my friend who needs me.
“Did you get my Velveeta?” is the first thing Bee calls when I walk through the door.
I laugh and fish out a packet of individually wrapped neon-orange slices. “You know it’s not even cheese. It’s pasteurized prepared cheese product.”
“Who cares?” Bee says. “It’s delicious.” She sings, perfectly in tune, “Make it with Velveeta, it cooks better.”
“You really need to cut an album.”
“Right. Commercials from the Eighties: my big break.”
“I’d buy that.” I hand her a slice, making a show of wrinkling my nose.
“You want one,” she says, eyeing me.
“I don’t.”
“You want that sweet cheese product in your mouth, girl. Stop fighting it.” She starts chanting. “Eat the cheese. Eat the cheese. Eat the—”
“All right, fine! I’ll eat the cheese.” I plop down on the carpet and peel the sticky plastic away from a slice. It’s salty and smooth and reminds me of going to friends’ houses after school, where they had big decadent fridges full of junk food and five kinds of pop. My mouth is watering. “Okay, it’s pretty good.”
We giggle. For a moment, I wonder if I’m pulling my mirroring trick with Bee: turning chameleon in order to fit in and make her comfortable. No. I’m not. I can be myself around Bee. The self that’s a little different from the Lacey who Steph and Vivian know. The Lacey who’s a tad less concerned with maintaining the persona I’ve made for myself in this city.
I don’t need to be anybody but myself around Bee.
* * * *
Cooper sends a gift basket of fruit, a huge delivery that barely fits in Bee’s small kitchen. I text him a sincere thank-you. He calls. I screen. I still feel confused about what happened. Who acted worse: me, him, or both of us? I’m so inexperienced when it comes to a real relationship. I know it’s not all hot sex and great dinner dates, but I have so little practical experience of navigating romantic disappointment and human vulnerability.
I cook and I clean. I do laundry, monitor Bee’s meds, empty her drains. I buy a detachable showerhead so I can wash her hair. We watch all of Downton Abbey and a lot of very bad reality television. Neighbors drop by; one with a homemade casserole, another with a bag of apples and tomatoes from the garden. They are chatty and comfortable around Bee, even as she’s swaddled in bandages. I say I’m from Illinois. Not Williamsburg. Certainly not that I work at Hoffman House.
I miss a showcase for new Scandinavian designers and the opening of a Fashion Week photography exhibit that everyone is talking about. “Sorry,” I say to Patricia, when I run into her in the kitchen one morning. “I had something I couldn’t get out of.”
“Your loss, darling,” she says, extracting a bottle of pomegranate juice from the fridge. “But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fabulous.”
It doesn’t bother me as much as I expect. The brief expansion of my life into the fifth borough has given me perspective. Plus, I get to enjoy my Melanie-Griffith-in-Working-Girl “Let the River Run” moment every morning on the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan. One morning as we’re about to dock, I get a call from the New York Cancer Care Center to schedule some presurgery appointments for my mastectomy. Which is, impossibly, in a few weeks’ time. The days are falling away. I can’t keep up.
At the end of the week, Bee’s brother, Frankie, returns. He is quiet, unsure how to behave around me and unable to grasp the severity of his sister’s condition. Not because he doesn’t care. Because he is exhausted. I was expecting someone charismatic and careless, blowing back in with a crappy present and overblown on-the-road stories designed to hide the fact he just fucking left. It’s only as I head back to Williamsburg the next day that I realize I was expecting my father.
46.
* * *
Cooper and I arrange to meet by the East River on Sunday afternoon. It’s sunny in the morning, but rain clouds gather over the city as the day wears on. You can smell the storm that’s coming.
After my week with Bee, I’m not sure what I’ll feel when I see him. Cooper seems a part of my life that’s a little foreign to me right now. But when he appears, in a faded red hoodie and Converse sneakers, my heart contracts. We hug hello. It’s a real hug: he holds me, and I let him.
“It’s going to rain,” he says.
“Let’s walk until it does,” I say. “We can always run for cover.”
Cold sweeps along the waterfront, whipping my hair across my cheeks.
“I want to say again how sorry I am,” he says. “I handled it all so badly. I should’ve stayed.”
“Thanks for saying that,” I say. “But it was my fault too. I shouldn’t have pushed you away so quickly. I should have let you
help.”
It feels good to be honest and direct. We’re realigning so quickly. As always, I feel safe with Cooper. There’s a solidity to him that has nothing to do with size. We fall in step. The cool air feels fresh against my skin, alive in a way the sluggish summer heat is not.
He asks how Bee is doing, and I give him a rundown of our week together.
“She was really lucky you could be there,” he says.
“I know. It shouldn’t be this hard to recover. But it is. I’m not really prepared for it.” I pull my cardigan around myself, unable to look at him. “I haven’t told my boss yet. Every time I think about it my throat seizes up.”
“You have to get time off work,” Cooper says. “You have to talk to your boss. She’ll understand. What about your friends?”
“Bee won’t be well enough, Vivian’s consumed with the app, Steph’s got her thesis. Mara has Storm, and hates the whole idea on principle.”
“But haven’t you been planning this with them?” Cooper asks. “Surely your recovery is a priority.”
“We haven’t . . . locked anything in. I haven’t . . . I just find it hard to . . .”
I replay something Bee said to me, late one night just before I went to bed. I’d said something about not wanting to bother Mara with playing nurse for me and that I didn’t feel comfortable asking my friends to step up, really step up. She looked at me. Curious, and a little sad. “If you think asking for help makes you weak,” she’d said, “am I weak to you?”
“No,” I’d said, “of course not.” But the point hung in the air like lead.
Why can’t I get past this? Why can’t I just change the way my mind works?
“Well, I’d be happy to help,” Cooper says. “If you need an extra pair of hands. I’m obviously not Doogie Howser, MD,” he adds, “but I’ll be there for you. If you want.”
I replay the words in slow disbelief, as if hearing them too quickly will make them pop like a balloon. I’d be happy to help. As if it was a given. I’ll be there for you. The backs of our hands brush and then with no effort, we are holding hands. We are holding hands like a couple.
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