The phone rang. “This is Dr. Barry’s office. We have an appointment for your mammogram Wednesday at five P.M.”
“Thank you very much.” So it will be Wednesday.
Well, it’s late, I’ll be able to go to Ace’s speech. She felt he needed her there. He usually needed her there. The speech didn’t make him nervous, but he depended on her for the social bridge. His second novel was out, and he’d done some talk shows, but this was the big speech in the hometown at the women’s club luncheon. Billy and Eileen, their oldest friends, were driving sixty miles for the luncheon and speech. Others were coming, Judy, June, Embeth. There would be a group back at the house afterward. She’d have time for that. Good. And at around five she’d excuse herself and go down to Union Hospital and get mammogramed and be back in a half hour or so.
“Days of Our Lives” broke for a commercial and she realized it was time for her to supervise.
Jean was an undergraduate at Tufts, majoring in Early Childhood Education and placed for her practice teaching at the Huckleberry Hill School, with Ruth Lenrow as head teacher and Joan as her supervisor. Today Jean took over the kindergarten, planning the activities and directing the children.
Joan concentrated on Jean’s performance, on her relationship with the children, on her ability to redirect them, on her sense of the classroom dynamics. She sat quietly on a kid-sized chair and took notes. The children were used to her; she’d been there every week all term. There was a great deal happening in the classroom. It was relatively unstructured and the children moved from the doll corner and block corner to the math area and cooking projects in a boisterous tumble of movement and interest. It was late in the term. The children had gotten their place in the order of things worked out.
At snacktime Joan went into the other kindergarten to talk with Marcie Pitt, the teacher. Marcie was young, not long out of college, and Joan had helped her get the job. Joan had supervised student teachers in Marcie’s classroom often and they had become friends. Standing beside Marcie at the sink, looking at the kids swirling earnestly about the open room, Joan said, “Marcie, I have a lump in my left breast.”
“Oh, Joan,” Marcie said, “what are you doing about it? What’s happening?”
“I’ve been to the doctor and I’m having a mammogram tomorrow. No one is encouraging me to think it will be all right.”
“Well they are always cautious,” Marcie said. “My mother has had lumps and my aunt, and they were benign. Most of them are, you know.”
“I know, but I’m scared shit, Marce.”
“I know,” Marcie said.
Why in hell, Joan thought. Why in hell did I tell her? Were friends, hut there are a lot of friends I’m closer to. Christ, I’m nearly twenty years older than she is, I could he her mother. Here we are in a classroom full of five-year-olds and I’m telling her something I’ve told no one else. What time could he a worse time? She hasn’t got time for this.
But the time and the relationship were about right. The situation structured the discussion so it could not last long, and could not get out of hand. Uncontrollable emotions couldn’t well up and spill over. The work was there, and the children.
Marcie is a caring person, but it’s not like telling Eileen, or Jude. Or Ace — Jesus, telling Ace. Marcie wouldn’t care like they would, couldn’t care like they would. It wouldn’t devastate her. And Joan needed a woman to talk to. That was new for her. But now she needed someone female to bounce her emotions off of. She needed an outlet. She had told no one and now she had told Marcie. Someone has to know how terrific I am.
Joan saw herself, in part, as the central figure in a drama. And some of what she wanted from Marcie was audience feedback. She wanted Marcie to know that she was supervising and entertaining after tomorrow’s speech and teaching her classes and conducting herself with grace under great pressure and burdening no one with her problem. She wanted Marcie to think, What A Fine Human Being. What is the goddamn point of being terrific if no one knows you’re being terrific? Now someone knew. And tomorrow there was the mammogram, tomorrow I’ll be sure.
Chapter 5
There wasn’t a mammogram tomorrow. Tuesday night Norma Holloway, who worked in X-ray, called to say that the technician was sick and the appointment had to be canceled. Joan was frantic. Angry. Betrayed.
“You cannot cancel this, Norma. I can’t have this canceled. I must have it.” Norma was a neighbor. They had been friends for years. She felt her anger build, knowing as it built that it wasn’t Norma’s fault. She was just the messenger. And even in her desperation she was evasive. She still wanted her lump a secret. So she wouldn’t speak of her lump. “I have been led to believe that a mammogram is imperative.”
“Joan, what can I do? The technician won’t be in.”
Joan hung up and called Barry’s office. She is close to tears. The closest so far. She is betrayed. Gee, I’m really being a good kid. I’m doing it all. I’m keeping it to myself. I’m going through with the job and the speech and, goddamn, Norma calls me up and says it’s canceled. Is the technician sick as I am? How sick can she be?
She is teary on the phone with Barry’s office. The secretary is kind and prompt. “I’m sure we can get you another appointment,” she said. “Let me call and I’ll call you right back.” She did call right back. The appointment was Thursday; Joan would have the first appointment.
In a way it was good. Now Wednesday would be free and she could have her company and deal with Ace’s speech and all without complication. One more day. You could always do one more day. You could always get through one more day.
Wednesday, April 16
They got the boys off to school. And were in the kitchen drinking coffee when she told him that her doctor appointment had been postponed. She’d warned him that she would have to go for another cauterization of her vaginal bleeding today, and now she said it would be tomorrow. “Nothing serious,” she said.
He was leaning on the counter and she was sitting on one of the stools and he shook his head.
“What’s going on?” he said. “There’s too much hustling around to the doctor and too many little tests and too much oh-nothing-serious. What’s wrong with you?”
She said, “Just some breakthrough bleeding, like I told you.”
And he said, “No. There’s something more. We’ve been together too long for me not to know something’s up. Don’t bullshit me. It’s always better to know than not to know.”
Jesus, she thought, he thinks I’m walking around with vaginal cancer. He’s got the look. It’s now. Speech or no speech. I’m going to have to tell him. Later, looking back, she wondered why the speech had loomed so large. She felt so strongly that he should have serenity and stability before making it. Yet she realized now, it didn’t mean that much to him. She just thought it did. Things had different proportions for her that spring. The opportunity to fulfill responsibilities seemed to be somehow a stay against dissolution. For her to function, there had to be something that mattered other than the lump in her breast. Other things had to be important, so she could do them, otherwise the lump would consume her. But that she understood later. Then, in the kitchen, she knew only that the speech was vital, but that she had to tell him.