by Neil Hetzner
Without checking her rear view mirror, Bett braked abruptly before swerving into the breakdown lane. She pulled the car half off onto the verge while being careful to avoid a patch of blooming fireweed, its hot pink flowers somewhat muted by a thin covering of dust, and a large clump of gone-by lazy susans whose burry heads were crooked over as if in hung in shame.
First things first.
First things and second things and third things had rarely been a problem for Bett Koster. A million things could need doing and, invariably, she would know which should come first and next and last. When she was no more than a child of five she had been praised for her common sense by Oma. Often during their marriage, Neil had thrown up his hands in surrender at some project, such as assembling a gas grill or baby crib or repacking boxes of Christmas ornaments. He would step back, shrug his shoulders, then, nod his head in encouragement as he said, “C’mon, help me, you’re the expert.” Bett could almost believe that it was true. She instinctively knew how to hold a baby or a bazaar for the church. She knew how to graciously seat a dinner party of ten and, just as graciously, unseat a short-sighted PTA committee member. Without knowing how she knew, she could to adjust the brake on a bicycle and the choke setting on a lawnmower. The many details of her daughter Dilly’s wedding had settled into her head in their natural order. The timing of a Christmas dinner would come to her without any prompting. It was easy to believe that she had been born competent. And, it was that long natural familiarity with competence which made the scattered, topsy-turvy feelings that she had been having as she drove through the rippling mirages of a heated highway so disquieting.
Bett rubbed her calluses against the ridge of the steering wheel. This was too quick. Falling in love with Neil had taken many months. There had been no sudden infatuation, but rather a comfortable friendship that had gradually transformed itself into a different kind of intimacy. The birth of each of her children had taken three seasons. Oma and Opa had had years of declining health before they died within four months apart. Only her parents’ deaths, when their month-old Buick collided with a truck loaded with hay on the curve of a graveled road, had been quick, but she, just turned three, had been just as quick to recover. With the exception of her parents’ deaths, all of the momentous events in her life had taken much longer than a moment to occur.
Dr. Maurer had called it a mass. He had lifted her right breast and made her feel its spheric presence deep inside her flesh. She had gone in for an eleven o’ clock appointment to have her yearly check-up. It was past eleven thirty before Dr. Maurer and the nurse who had weighed her and taken her blood pressure had come into the examination room. As Dr. Maurer looked through her file, he had teased her about whether eighteen months between visits qualified as a yearly exam. She had teased back that whenever she was free, his dance card seemed to be full. They had conducted the polished question and answer routine of a busy doctor and a healthy patient. No. No, no, yes, no. Yes. Yes. Each answer was barely out of her mouth before the doctor’s next question began. As the physical exam began, Dr. Maurer made small murmurs of approval which reminded Bett of the noises Queenie made when she was sleeping. She pushed away the thought, which made her want to snort, by concentrating on the warm dry fingers of Dr. Maurer.
The doctor looked into her eyes and ears. Mmmmm. He touched a mole on her deeply tanned cheek. Yes, she knew that so much sun wasn’t good. Mmmmm. He depressed her tongue. Mmmmm. He rolled his fingers against the nodes of her neck. Mmmmm. He asked her to lie back. In the process of kneading the flesh of her right breast, his sounds of contentment stopped. His fingers pushed harder into her as he worked the same area over and over. With his head bent down close to her breast as if he were trying to see through the skin to what he was feeling, with his head bent down so far that Bett could not see his eyes, Dr. Maurer said, in a voice so soft that it took her a moment to realize what it was that she had heard,
“You have a mass. Did you know you have a lump? We’ll need to have that checked out. It’s not a big one. Most lumps are nothing to be worried about, but we need to be sure.”
Bett wondered why Dr. Maurer chose to use the first person plural pronoun. Why did he think that he also needed to have this “mass” checked out? How would it affect his life? When he stood back up, she tried to read what was in Dr. Maurer’s eyes, but she could see nothing more than a direct gaze of calm good will. He reached down for her hands which had knotted themselves to the sides of the examination table.
“Here, let me show you.”
Bett unclenched her fingers and allowed her hands to be drawn to her breast. Even before she touched herself, she thought she could distinguish the foreignness of the thing inside her. It seemed so separate from who she was that she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before. It felt as though there was a gap between it and the flesh around it, as if her normal cells were trying to make way for the stranger. When Bett’s fingers found the resistance it did not feel as she thought it would. She had expected it to feel more like a crocus bulb. She thought “mass” was a good name for the amorphous otherness she was feeling. She could envision a bunch of fibers all clotted together. She could imagine it looking like the kind of thing she had often pulled from a clogged drain, except that it would be red. Her fingers massaged the resistance for a long while with the same inquisitiveness that a tongue has for the rough edge of a crumbling filling.
“Feel it?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t we see if we can get you in for a picture today? Jenny can call Rhode Island Radiology, just down the road, to see if they can squeeze you in.”
As she stared at Jenny, who was smiling and nodding her head in agreement, Bett wondered whether Dr. Maurer had intended the pun. As he felt her other breast, Dr. Maurer kept up a conversation as if he needed to keep himself busy.
“You don’t strike me as a worrier, but even non-worriers have been known to worry about a lump. Sometimes if they find the lump themselves, they worry so much that they put off doing anything about it. Do you have some time today?”
Flipping through magazines in the waiting room Bett had been peeved that her appointment had not started on time. There were very few days in Bett Koster’s life that were not filled with things to do; however she could accept that things didn’t always go according to plan.
“Some of my tomatoes expected to be canned today. I guess they’ll just have to understand.”
“Good. That’s the spirit. You didn’t notice it before?”
Although she knew that it was more her guilt than his tone, Bett felt that Dr. Maurer was accusing her.
“No. I’m not one for avoiding an issue. If I had found it, I would have called you immediately.”
“Well, sometimes people don’t. Have you been doing a breast self-exam?”
Bett wished that Dr. Maurer hadn’t asked that question. She knew that if he were to look at her at that moment, she would have a difficult time meeting his gaze.
“When I remember, I do.”
“Do you remember the last time that you examined yourself?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I really don’t. I think it’s been a long time.”
Dr. Maurer heard the self-accusation in her voice. Without looking up, he said, “Sometimes, these things are hard to spot. This one’s pretty deep and not that big. Even if you’d given yourself an exam, you might have missed it.
“Let’s finish up. Then, while you’re dressing, Jenny can make a call. We’ll find out what their schedule is. Even though I’m one of the partners over there, it doesn’t always mean very much until it’s time to pay the taxes or replace some equipment.”
As he continued with his probing, Dr. Maurer kept up a monologue rather than the murmuring that he had done before.
“We doctors aren’t so privileged, you know. Do you know Dr. Willette? He’s a G.P. Practices in Ashcoheag? His wife, she’s a Betty, too, is a nurse who became a beautician. What’s a beautician, now? A stylist. S
he became a stylist after nursing wore her out. Now, don’t get any funny ideas, Jenny. He told me last week that he has to make an appointment with her at her shop to get his hair cut. If you know this man, it’s only cut, not styled. His wife told him that she doesn’t like to bring her scissors home. He told me that he reciprocates. He doesn’t make house calls, even at his own.”
Holding the first two fingers of each hand together, the physician made a series of small gestures to indicate that it was time for Bett to pull her knees up. She preferred Dr. Maurer’s silent signaling to the method that of Dr. Pearlman, who had been her obstetrician during the years in Massachusetts when she and Neil were having their four children. Dr. Pearlman, in his best Bronx accented version of a western drawl, would say something along the lines of “C’mon, cowpoke, there’s cattle to drive. Get them boots back in the stirrups.”
It seemed to Bett that Dr. Maurer was especially careful about making sure that the speculum was warm; however she was so tense that it took some time and pain before it was in place.
As she had done during many previous exams, as a tired mother would a child, Bett pushed her mind out the door to wander until the pelvic exam was over.
Licorice black dirt cascaded from the back of a rusted red dump-truck with the sheeshing sounds of brushes sliding on cymbals. Clots of mushroom smelling loam made thumps and mushroom shaped clouds of dust under the May, Monday after Mother’s Day, cirrus-streaked blue sky. Twelve yards of screened soil, a gift of three yards from each child, to build up the thin, taffy-colored earth of their new cove-side home. A hot spring sun baked deep into cheeks stretched tight in joy. No flowers for Mother’s Day. But, the means for unending flowers. Draw deep the fecund yeast that will raise up petals of every shape and hue. Drive a dull-edged spade, banged too long against meager, ochrous clay, ten inches deep into dirt as dark and fine and heady, as exhilarating, as Italian roast coffee. Drive it as deep as a spade’s blade would reach into Opa’s bottomland. Wave the truck away impatiently. Fill full the gimp-legged wheelbarrow. Roll it toward the starving beds. Nurse Bett. Nurse Bett. Here. No, here, first. Me, first. Dump the swaying load. Lavish it on as thick as birthday cake icing. No niggardly powdered sugar sprinkling. Wastrel. Spendthrift. Pile it on. Feed the tangled roots self-strangling in their search for sustenance. Tug and tug the coiled rope until blackened sweat slides down your winter white nape. Pull and choke and choke and pull until life roars in the roto-tiller. Drive deep the shiny tines into the cemented clay. Crumble it. Crush it. Ravage it. Raze it. Break down this fortress trying to protect its pittance of remaining wealth. Break down its paltry glue. Hold fast with freckled fat arms until new black and old tan muddle into rich chocolate brown, until soil fills your boots and nostrils, until the air is blue with oily exhaust, until a baptism of spring sweat christens your brow and wets your lips, drips off your face and collects and cools in the glen of your heaving breasts.
The vacuum as Dr. Maurer withdrew his finger from her rectum pulled Bett back into her examination. She heard a galoshes sound as he removed the latex gloves. She lay still as her examiner pulled the extension out from the end of the table. After Bett removed her heels from the stirrups, Dr. Maurer felt her knees and rotated her ankles before pulling on each of her toes. When he asked her if any of her many varicose veins ached more than usual, Bett replied that she had not noticed any difference. As soon as she said it, however, she wished she hadn’t. She thought that it sounded as though she were chiding him for questioning her about the breast self-exam.
“We’re done. Everything seems fine. We’ll be back in a minute. Go ahead and get dressed.”
Dr. Maurer went through the door at a rapid pace. Jenny smiled at Bett before following him out. As soon as the door closed, Bett touched her fingers to her breast to feel the thickening. She felt a queer need to talk to the lump as she would to a baby or to any obstreperous life—a whining child, Queenie tugging on her leash at the beach, a cormorant shrieking that it should have the highest point of a small rock to dry its wings, a morning glory pushing through the palisade to open its blossoms on the far side of the fence. Bett whispered as she dressed herself.
“You want a life. Of course, you do. We all do. But you didn’t pick a very good spot for a home. You should think about a move. A nice move. How’s that sound? Sssshhhh. Stay sleepy. Don’t waken. Be good. Stay sleepy.”
In the many minutes between the time she finished dressing and when Dr. Maurer returned, Bett listened intently to the muffled sounds from the rest of the building in order to crowd out the silence of the examination room. A toilet flushed; a faucet ran; two women’s voices resonated back and forth in imitation of cicadas’ drone. As the minutes passed, Bett began to feel better. She was sure that if Dr. Maurer thought the mass were cancerous, he would have been too solicitous to have kept her waiting. After more waiting the thought began to form that the wait was occurring because Dr. Maurer was insisting to someone that her condition dictated she be seen immediately.
Bett started when the door burst open.
“Jenny got you in. You can go over now and they’ll squeeze you into their schedule. You’ll have to wait awhile, but they promised to take care of you. After you’re done over there, come back here and we’ll take a look. Okay? Any questions?”
“Will the mammogram tell you definitely what’s going on?”
“No technique gives us all the information that we’d like. But everything helps.”
“Do I carry the film back with me?”
“That’s the easiest way. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Touching Bett’s shoulder, Dr. Maurer said, “I’m glad that we can get this taken care of today.” With the lightest of touches, he propelled her toward the door. As he opened the door for her, he handed her a small piece of paper.
“Here’s the order. I’ll see you later. Be patient. The wheels of medicine tend to grind a little slowly.”
Outside the door, Jenny smiled unwaveringly when Bett thanked her for her help.
She reached for the ignition key. She needed to get home. There were a million things to do. First things first. After looking at the film, Dr. Maurer had suggested that, given the holiday, there might be a good chance to schedule a biopsy for later in the week. She had told him she didn’t have a free moment until Labor Day was past. Children and grandchildren would begin descending in a few days.
Although Bett had not known it when he first guided her fingers to the lump, nor had she quite known it when Dr. Maurer pointed out its ghostly outlines on the mammogram, now she was sure, in the reassuring storm of passing cars, in the steady warmth of the drifting sun, in the unchanging smell of her car, in the steadiness of her brown sausage fingers that the mass meant her no harm. Bett was sure that if the mass were trying to hurt her, some aspect of her world would have changed.
From the time she was a tiny girl riding a tricycle up and down the elm-lined sidewalks around her grandparents’ home, Bett had known which barking dogs were threatening and which were not. She always knew which cats could be held and which could not. She had never been bitten or scratched. Nothing had changed. The mass was benign. She was fine. She was sure. The eggplant needed to be picked. Bett started her car. First things first.
Chapter 2
Why was it that, each day, a child’s growing competence caused a loss in a mother’s freedom? Each day her child grew and each day a mother’s freedom to hold, to hug, to kiss, to clean, to feed, to cool or warm, to bed or wake shrank. The freedom to teach, to inform, to shape, to pad and prod grew smaller. Each day, ties going, gone. A child learned to loop a shoestring, to make a little knot, and a mother’s life unraveled. Why?
As Dilly Koster-Phelps flipped clean underwear onto five piles with the precision of a blackjack dealer, she tried to push away her maternal fears. She and the kids would leave for her parents’ waterfront home early Friday morning. The children would need an extra pair of underwear on Friday, two pairs each for Saturday
and Sunday and Labor Day, and one additional pair in case they went swimming more than once on one of those days. Her husband Bill wouldn’t leave Massachusetts for the Rhode Island shore until Saturday or, possibly, even Sunday. For Bill, work was more important than family. Three pairs for him. Dilly wasn’t really sure how many pairs to take for herself, but it really didn’t matter. If she ran out, she’d do as she’d always done and borrow a pair from her mother.
Dilly and Bett were the same size—short, and the same shape—zaftig. They had the same golden brown eyes, smudged nose, heavy jaw and wattled neck. Dilly’s hair was cut in the same short, curly, no-bother style that Bett had worn for decades. Although they shared many physical characteristics, their mouths were different. Bett’s was mostly welcoming; Dilly’s was mostly determined. As her hands flew back and forth from the laundry basket to the piles on the bed, sorting underwear and balling socks, Dilly planned her campaign.
Her father was overweight and overworked. His blood pressure must be too high and his fiber intake too low. The blood pressure could give him a stroke or heart attack in seconds. Without the fiber he could develop diverticulosis, have it flare up into diverticulitis, perforate his intestinal wall and be dead from peritonitis in hours. Dilly could almost see the triglycerides floating through his body looking for a natural narrowing of an artery to begin a blockage. He ate eggs and cheese and red meat and butter as if he had not read a newspaper or watched television in twenty years. She knew that if she were to show up unannounced on a winter evening she would catch her parents eating plates of pork hocks and kraut, or boiled ham and cabbage, or beef tongue and spaetzle in cream, or roast pork or veal with kartoffelkuchen—a pudding made up of potatoes, cream, butter, ham, ground sausage, embolism, infarction and death. Eating a serving of kartoffelkuchen was the same as ripping a month from the calendar of life.