And she said, “Listen, I’m going to level with you. I do have a problem. It’s a lump in the left breast and they have to x-ray it to find out what it is. And I hope it’s not malignant.”
And he said, “The odds are pretty good, aren’t they?”
And she said, “Yes. They are pretty good. My mother didn’t have breast cancer and neither did my sister or my aunts. It doesn’t run in the family and that makes the odds better. And I’m not menopausal. That helps the odds.”
He didn’t seem too shaken. In fact, she thought, he looks a little relieved to know the truth.
And he thought: Lots of people survive breast surgery. Look at Happy Rockefeller. Look at Betty Ford. If she’s got it, it doesn’t mean shell die.
He said, “Everyone assumes if they have something it’s the worst. It’s not that it’s so likely, it’s that it would be so terrible. I do too. But that doesn’t mean it is the worst. It’s just as irrational to assume it’s cancer as to assume it isn’t. All you have are odds, and the odds are good.” He knew he was saying the truth, but the part of him that didn’t care about knowing, that part felt numb. ‘Rose, thou art sick,’ he thought. ‘The invisible worm that flies in the night.’ But he hung on to the numbness. It forestalled panic, and there was in him a consciousness of that and a deliberate commitment to the numbness. At least for now.
She said, “I know that. I’m handling it. I’m all right.”
And he patted her on the backside, as he did perhaps fifty times a day. It was a gesture characteristic of their relationship, equal parts camaraderie and love. She went to make the beds. He went to the package store for beer and wine. There would be people back after the speech and they’d drink.
The day organized them and carried them along. The speech at a local restaurant went well. The ladies were responsive, and the ham in him rose to their response. He enjoyed himself, getting laughter mixed with nervous ohhh’s, as he made insulting remarks about his wife. “Life has no narrator,” he said, “unless perhaps you’re married to Joan Parker,” and he looked over amid the laughter and saw her face bright and animated and thought about the lump. She was smoking, although she’d quit for more than a year. He knew why.
I can smoke a couple of cigarettes, she thought. You’re allowed a couple in this kind of trauma.
“It comes at you random,” he was saying, “haphazard. And the writer’s job is to take the random happenstance and order.”
It’s good, she thought. It’s damn good. Am I sitting here listening to it with breast cancer? Is it possible I have cancer? Cancer. Cancer. Impossible. People with cancer are sick. Really sick. She remembered her father who died of prostate cancer when she was nineteen. The circles under the eyes, the dry heaves. The skin-and-bones body. That’s what cancer is. Look at me. I’m Harriet Health for crissake. How can I have cancer?
As she thought this she heard the speech and watched the ladies respond and felt good for him and was struck as she had been and as she would be so frequently that spring by the capacity to separate out the things that frightened her and the things that pleased her and to respond simultaneously to both.
The speech ended and they went back and sat in the sun-flooded family room and drank some beer and wine and had a good time. Later in the afternoon Joan and Eileen went shopping. Bill and Ace stayed with the beer.
As they shopped Joan went through the fantasy of telling Eileen. My friend Eileen. I will say, ‘Hey listen, Eileen, I have something to tell you. I have a lump in my breast’... Eileen is not ready to hear this. She has to shop. She’s busy. What does she need from breast cancer? She’ll have to dredge up the proper feelings and respond the proper way. She’ll have to say, ‘I’ll help you through this. I’ll stay by your side.’ They are in Marshall’s and Eileen is trying on clothes. Joan looked in the mirror and thought, maybe Jude, maybe I should tell her. That was even more enticing. Jude is a nurse. Maybe she knows something. Maybe she can tell by looking. Maybe she has a magic way. Eileen comes out of the dressing room with a denim jacket.
“What do you think?” she said and turned slowly.
“Too big,” Joan said. “It’s nice but it’s too big.”
I can’t tell Jude. I don’t want John to know. I don’t want any males to know. Especially I don’t want any men to know. Don’t think about it. Wait for the mammogram.
The Marshes came for dinner with the Ganems and it was ten-thirty before they were through cleaning up. Joan was exhausted. Ace lay on the living-room floor, talking to Daniel. The phone rang. Joan answered.
“Mrs. Parker, this is Sharon Taylor, in your Child Development Class?”
“Of course, Sharon. How are you?”
“Oh, Mrs. Parker, I’ve got a terrible problem.”
Welcome to the club.
Chapter 6
Sharon Taylor had to come and talk. “This is a terrible problem, Mrs. Parker. I can’t talk on the phone. I have to come tonight to see you. You don’t know what it’s like. This is so awful.” And Joan said, “All right, come over.” And went down to tell her husband. He’ll be bullshit, she thought. He hates intrusions like this.
“Don’t get mad at me,” she said. He was lying on the living-room floor, talking to the boys. “I’ve had a rough day and I’m exhausted. I’m begging you to let me do this without having a fit. I need to do this.”
He knew why she needed to do this. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I won’t be mad at you.” He thought. Why the Christ can’t she keep it separate? Why does she let the goddamned kids get at her? She’s their teacher. She didn’t hire on to be their goddamned mother. “I’m betting pregnancy,” he said. David at sixteen agreed. Dan at twelve thought it would be a school problem, and Joan agreed with Dan.
“The Dean’s been mean to her,” she said, “or she’s been kicked out, something like that.”
“Knocked up,” Ace said.
“Pregnant,” Dave said.
And they were right. Sharon Taylor arrived with four friends in a red-eyed flurry of anxiety and Joan took them upstairs to Dan’s bedroom because it was more secluded.
Christ, here we are, sitting on the bed, we girls, smoking — I shouldn’t be smoking — and talking about Sharon who’s knocked up. It’s like twenty years ago at Colby when we girls would sit on the bed in the dorm and smoke and talk about someone who was knocked up or thought she was.
Sharon wanted to abort the fetus. She had already decided that. In fact she had decided everything. She’d been to the pregnancy clinic; she’d made an appointment in Boston for an abortion Saturday morning. What she wanted from Joan was approval.
“We only did it once, Professor Parker. Just one time.”
Shit luck, kid. You and me both, we have shit luck.
“You said in class that ovulation takes place twelve to fourteen days after the last period is over. But it didn’t. We only did it once and it was just before my next period. You said it wasn’t supposed to happen then.”
“Don’t get mad at me, hon. You either had a hell of a long-living egg or he had a hell of a viable sperm. Or you counted wrong. The point is, you’re pregnant, whether you are supposed to be or not.”
“Yes.”
What is my function here? She’s already decided to do the abortion. I’m supposed to give an adult okay. To tell her that she’s still a good person even if she is pregnant. I’m supposed to say if I were she I’d abort. Well, I would.