by Jean Stone
“Do you want to tell me about this?” he asked.
P.J. pulled her legs in under her. “Yes. No,” she stammered, but knew it was too late to change her mind. “I don’t know. Shit.” She tried to examine her manicure, but the candlelight was too dim.
“It was a long time ago,” she began, “in another life. Same old story. Boy meets girl. Girl falls in love. Girl gets pregnant. Boy dumps girl.”
“Jesus.”
She looked up. “Will you please stop saying that?” She stared into his eyes, trying to read what was in his thoughts. It didn’t work; the night sky was growing too dark.
“How old were you?”
“Twenty.”
Bob stood up and paced around the chair. He put his hands on his hips and drew in a long breath.
“Why didn’t you have an abortion?”
“Bob. It was 1968.”
“Oh. Right.”
P.J. pushed herself off the lounge and went to stand beside him. “I have a chance to meet him now.”
“You’ve never seen him?”
“No. Never. Not even when he was born.”
“Didn’t you want to?”
“No.” P.J. realized how terrible that sounded, how unmotherlike, how unwomanly. “I had to get on with my life,” she justified. “Besides, they said it was ‘better that way.’ ”
“Jesus.” He turned back to her. “Who’s ‘they’? And why are you going to meet him now?”
P.J. closed her eyes. Suddenly she couldn’t bear looking at him. Then she told him of Larchwood, and of Jess’s visit.
“So you’re going to meet him.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Jess is tracking everyone down. None of us will know until we get there which of our kids will show up.”
“Jesus.” Bob walked back to the chaise and sank down. “P.J.?”
“What?”
“Are you telling me you won’t marry me because you have a son? Is that why you’ve never married anyone?”
“God. No. I don’t know.” She sat beside him. She had told him this much, but the pressure in her stomach still hadn’t eased.
Bob rubbed his hands together, then let out a deep sigh. “Hansen and Hobart are going to have a shit fit,” he said.
She looked at Bob. Even in the darkness she could see that the lines of turmoil had returned to his face.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.
“I wish I was.”
“My God, Bob, this is the nineties! You don’t honestly think the fact that I had an illegitimate child almost a quarter of a century ago would jeopardize my work!”
He shook his head. “Your work, no. Of course not. I’m only telling you how Hansen and Hobart might react. They’re pretty straight, you know that. They take pride in running a respectable agency.”
The tone of his voice had become stiff and distant, and P.J. didn’t like what she was sensing.
“Are you talking about them or about you?” she asked.
Bob rubbed his beard and spoke softly. “I am part of the agency, P.J.”
The sounds of the crickets suddenly ceased, as though they, too, were awaiting the next dialogue.
“You don’t want me to meet my son,” P.J. said. “Why do I get the feeling it’s not simply because of the agency? Would you feel any differently if we didn’t work together? Or is it just that you don’t want the world to know the woman you asked to marry you not six hours ago has a tainted past?”
“You’re being sarcastic.”
“No, Bob. I’m being realistic.”
“I’m only thinking of your career.”
“And what about my life? What about me as a woman? Did you want to marry me or my ‘image’?”
Bob stood up and began pacing. “Look, P.J. You’ve worked hard to get where you are today. I hate to see you throw it all away on some whim from the past. Jesus, I thought being a mother was the last thing someone like you wanted. Ties, responsibilities. All the trappings and all the problems that come with having a family.” He paused in his stride, then looked at her. “But I love you, and I will stand beside you, no matter what your decision.”
“Will you back me up with Hansen and Hobart?”
He thrust his hands in his pockets. “As best I can.”
But his words were unconvincing. Would he really stand beside her? A whim from the past. Ties. Responsibilities. Then the sick feeling that had crept into her warned P.J. of something else: Maybe Bob was right.
“I’d like to go back to the city now,” she whispered. “I’d like you to take me home.”
She did not—could not—tell him about her biopsy. She needed to think, she needed to be alone. And she did not want his pity on top of his anger.
For the past two hours, her breast squeezed into the cold grid of the mammogram machine, P.J. had been poked and prodded by a large-handed radiologist as he jammed a wire into her, trying to pinpoint the lump within. “Needle localization,” he’s explained. “A guide for your surgeon.” Then he had laughed. “It helps us direct him straight to the proverbial needle in a haystack.” He motioned in a way that reminded P.J. of the old Maypo television commercial—where a father uses a spoon to reenact an airplane and zero in on his kid’s mouth. But the radiologist’s attempt at humor had done nothing to ease her discomfort.
P.J. looked at the film clipped to a lightbox on the wall. “It doesn’t look like a lump at all,” she said. “It looks more like a starburst.”
“Oh, it’s one of those little bugger lumps all right,” he said, and poked her again. “Take my word for it. Those spots around it—those are probably calcium flecks.”
She winced, not at the prick of the needle, but at the relentless pressure of the grid. It was hard to take a deep breath, it was hard to concentrate on anything, to divert her thoughts through mental imagery, or any of the other relaxation techniques she’d learned. They’d worked in boardrooms a hundred times, but here, in this sterile cubicle, her thoughts kept whirling back to one: By tonight, I might be mutilated.
“Got it!” the radiologist finally called, as though he’d just caught a pop fly to left field. “Off to the OR with you, and don’t let me see you in here ever again.”
At the movies P.J. had always turned her head from operating-room scenes. Now, as she lay on the stiff gurney staring up at the ceiling, she was paralyzed with fear. She had been in this situation only once in her life: in 1968, outside the delivery room. She had been alone then; she was alone now. She longed for someone to take her hand, to tell her that everything was going to be fine. For the first time that day she wished she’d told Bob. She wished he were here. She wondered why it was so cold in here.
A nurse appeared beside her. “Time to go downstairs,” she said.
The last thing P.J. wanted to do was cry. It’s only a biopsy, she told herself. Eighty percent of breast lumps are benign, she remembered hearing Dr. Reynolds say. She took a deep breath and held it to the count of three. Then she envisioned Dr. St. Germain’s stern face: Nonpalpable lumps can be just as malignant as those you can feel. She stiffened again.
“You’ll feel a little pinch,” the nurse was saying now.
“Will it put me to sleep?”
“No.” The nurse smiled down at her. “It’s just a little Demerol. Downstairs they’ll start you on Valium.”
Valium. P.J. had taken that many times in the eighties. Before a presentation to a big client, before her mother came into the city for Christmas one year, before her first interview at Hansen and Hobart …
She felt the pinch. It wasn’t a pinch; it was a stab.
“Ready when you are.” A male voice over her head startled her.
“Ready,” the nurse replied.
“Hold on,” the man said to P.J. with a smile.
God, P.J. thought, why is everyone smiling?
The gurney jerked, and P.J. felt it start its roll toward the operating room. She swallowed and closed her eyes. She wanted to ask for another blanket,
but instead gave herself over to the motion. It’s almost over, she told herself. It’s just a stupid lump. And this was just another way medical advancements succeeded in terrorizing patients needlessly.
The gurney stopped.
Oh, God. Are we here?
She heard the whish of doors opening, then the gurney started again, jerking across a lump in the floor. The gurney stopped. The doors squished closed. She felt the floor beneath her descend. The man holding the rail of the gurney started to whistle. P.J. stared at the ceiling, a fluorescent tube masked by a plastic grate. She was enveloped by an airless scent of stale urine.
The elevator jogged to a stop. The man stopped whistling; the doors whished open. He steered the gurney across another bump, then turned left and guided the bed close against a pale yellow wall. Outside a door he stopped.
“Good luck, lady,” he said, then vanished down the white-tiled hall.
She heard sounds. People talking. Instruments clinking. Music. But from where she lay, P.J. could see no one. She tried to remember what would happen next. She tried to remember what it had been like in 1968. She had been in pain, that she knew. But it had been different. P.J. had known then that when she awoke the torture would be over; her life would begin again. Now she had no pain, but her life might be ending.
She thought about her son, the infant she’d never seen. She wondered if he’d ever thought of her; she wondered if he would be at Larchwood on October 16. P.J. closed her eyes. How could she meet him? Wouldn’t it be better if he simply never knew her? Wouldn’t it be better to have not known her than to meet her and have her die?
“Ms. Davies?” The voice was distant.
She opened her eyes. A nurse stood beside her. She was holding some type of rubber tube. P.J. closed her eyes again. Suddenly she was very tired.
“We’re going to start an IV,” the voice said. “You’re going to feel a pinch on the back of your hand. Try to keep still.…”
P.J. didn’t pay attention to the rest of the nurse’s words. Part of her mind was realizing she was about to become trapped, stuck with a needle, linked to a tube, hooked up to God knows what, God knows where. That part of her mind wanted to escape, wanted to run. The other part of her mind felt fuzzy, and so tired. It was that part that began to take over as she felt the gurney being wheeled once again, this time to a place even colder than the hall. She heard murmurs around her; they were closer now. She felt hands underneath her.
“Lift!” The word bolted through her brain, then P.J. felt her body being raised, moved, then set down again. The surface was harder than the gurney, and more narrow. She opened her eyes and saw green hats, green face masks.
“Good morning,” came a sound from what appeared to be lips moving behind a mask. “It’s Dr. St. Germain.” The lips moved again. “Remember me?”
She thought she saw his eyes smile. She closed her own and tried to concentrate on … anything.
She felt the breath of someone’s face close to hers. “I’d like you to count backward from one hundred.”
She remembered. They had said that then. In the delivery room.
“One hundred.”
The memory flooded back in a rush of nausea.
“Ninety-nine.”
My baby, she thought.
“Ninety-eight.”
My son.
It was out of focus, but P.J. was sure it was a face.
“Hi,” a voice said.
It was Bob’s.
The haze lifted. He smiled down at her.
“Is it over?” P.J. asked. He didn’t answer. She must not have said it loudly enough. “Is it over?” she repeated. She wanted to ask him what he was doing there … how he knew …
He nodded. “You’re out of surgery.”
“What …?” She wanted to ask what had happened, but something distracted her. Another face had appeared next to Bob’s, this one with tense muscles and a stiff jaw. Mother.
P.J. closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Dusk was settling over the room when P.J. awoke again. She had a quick where-am-I fright, then she remembered. She reached down. She felt a large piece of gauze, strapped to her chest.
“P.J.?”
She turned her head. “Bob?”
“You’re awake.”
“Mmm. I’m thirsty.”
He held a plastic cup to her and bent the straw toward her mouth. The side of the cup was moist; it must have been sitting there awhile. She struggled to take a sip.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Bob smiled. “Easy. When you didn’t come in to work, I went to your building. Walter said you told the cabbie to take you to St. Mary’s. The rest”—he winked—“was elementary.”
“The biopsy’s over?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I was angry with you about …”
Bob pressed a finger to her lips. “Sssh. Let’s not talk about that now. There are more important things happening.”
More important things. Yes. Bob was right.
“Is it gone?” she asked. “Did they cut off my breast?”
A figure crossed the room toward her bed.
“Pamela.”
“Hello, Mother.” She turned her gaze back to the straw and took another drink.
“I thought your mother should know,” Bob said. The look on his face was a plea for forgiveness.
“I wish you had called me, Pamela,” her mother continued.
P.J. rested her head on the pillow. “I didn’t think there was any need. Not until I knew something.”
Flora Davies tightened her lips. “Nonetheless, I’m here now. Although it seems as though I’ve been on a train all day.”
All day, P.J. thought. A four-hour trip from the Berkshires.
P.J. turned back to Bob. “Did the doctor …?”
He ran a hand through her hair. “I’ll go tell the nurse you’re awake.” He set the cup down on the over-the-bed table and left the room.
P.J.’s mother stepped closer. “Are you in pain?”
“No.”
Flora sat on the edge of the bed. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”
“They cut it off, didn’t they? They took my breast.”
Flora knitted her hands together. She looked older—old. Even though P.J. hadn’t seen her in nearly two years, she could read the answer on her mother’s face.
“There’s no need to talk right now,” her mother said. “Let’s wait until the doctor comes.”
P.J. stared at her. God, she thought, oh, God, they did it. They cut it off.
The door to her room opened. Bob’s tall, sturdy frame was silhouetted against the harsh corridor light; beside him stood another figure, taller even than Bob, and thinner. Dr. St. Germain.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked as he stepped into the room.
“Fine. A little groggy. A little sore.”
The doctor nodded and walked to the side of her bed. Flora quickly moved back to her chair. He pulled back the sheet and checked the dressing. He nodded.
“So, Doctor, what’s the verdict?” P.J. tried to sound light and unconcerned. Inside, her stomach lurched.
It was his turn to sit on the edge of the bed. Bob stood over him.
“As we suspected, the tumor in your breast was about five centimeters in diameter.”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry to have to tell you, it was malignant.”
The room seemed to grow darker. P.J. closed her eyes again. “You cut it off.”
“I’m sorry. Yes.”
The only sound in the room was the beating of P.J.’s heart.
Bob spoke quickly. “Where do we go from here?”
P.J. forced herself to open her eyes. The doctor folded his hands on his lap.
“Well, I still don’t know the status of the axillary lymph nodes.”
She thought of her white bathing suit. She’d never wear it again.
“Once the
complete pathology report is back, we’ll consider chemotherapy.”
My hair. God. My hair is going to fall out.
“Then you feel certain it’s spread?” Bob asked.
“Fairly certain. It appears to be a comedo type of cancer. Radiation therapy won’t be required, but chemo should help. And with aggressive action, P.J. will be able to resume a full life. After her recovery.”
They were speaking as if she weren’t there, as if she were an elderly patient who was deaf, or a child who would not understand. She didn’t mind.
“When can you start?” Bob continued.
P.J. turned her head on the pillow, away from them all. It didn’t matter if Bob took charge. She simply didn’t care.
“In a couple of weeks. Luckily there don’t seem to be any nodules on her chest X ray.”
“How long will she be hospitalized?”
“A few days. We’ll arrange a schedule for the treatments; she’ll have them done on an outpatient basis.”
“Will she be sick? Will she need to have someone stay with her?” P.J. looked back at Bob. His head was turned toward her mother. She couldn’t see her mother’s reaction.
“A little nausea maybe, a little diarrhea a day or two after the treatment. Other than that, she’ll feel pretty well, once the surgery has healed.”
Feel pretty well. God. Why hasn’t anyone asked if I’m going to die?
“Will she be able to work?”
“That’s up to her. We’ll start with a six-month program. When she feels up to it, of course, there’s no reason why she can’t continue working.”
“Good. Because she’s a partner in an ad agency now.”
P.J. heard Bob’s words, but somehow they seemed meaningless. So she had the partnership. Did it matter now?
“Doctor?” P.J. asked. The room was quiet, blanketed with anxious anticipation of her next words. “Am I going to die?”
The doctor stole a quick glance at Bob, then looked at his patient. “Many patients respond positively to the chemo, even with tumors larger than yours. There’s no need to overreact.”
I’m going to die. My breast has been cut off, and now I’m going to die. Maybe it’s for the best. She closed her eyes again, wishing everyone would go away.
“Let’s take it a step at a time,” the doctor continued.