“Have you talked with your mother?”
“Oh, God no, I couldn’t tell her.”
“Father?”
“They’re divorced. I couldn’t...” She shook her head. The other girls murmured and nodded. No one could tell one’s mother or father.
“And Mike?”
“He wants to have the baby, get married right off and have the baby.”
“You don’t want that?”
“I love him, but I want to finish school. I don’t want to get married yet. I don’t want a baby. I want to keep going to school for another year.”
Joan nodded. This is grotesque, she thought. No, not grotesque... Ludicrous. Here I am up here at eleven-thirty at night smoking away — which I shouldn’t, and the more I smoke the worse I feel — talking it over with the kids about pregnancy, and I’m walking around with breast cancer... Christ I’m almost ready to say it — breast cancer. I have said it. But I can’t think about it. I have to think about Sharon and her pregnancy and how to make her feel okay about whatever she wants to do.
“So,” Joan said. “You’re in a situation where there are no perfect solutions. But abortion seems the least imperfect to you.” Me and Carl Rogers. Restate for her.
“I know, but we only did it one time.” It was a litany. She wasn’t old enough yet to accept imperfect solutions and problems that didn’t solve, and she kept invoking her bad luck as if reminding the gods that her slip had been minor.
“But once was enough this time. It’s down to a reasonably clear choice.” Joan kept trying to refocus the discussion. The cigarette had gotten to her and she felt sick. For the first time since she discovered the lump she felt sick. It’s just the cigarettes. It’s not the... lump. It’s the smoking, it always makes everyone feel lousy when they’re not used to it. “You either marry Mike and have the baby, or don’t marry Mike and have the baby, or you abort.”
“But I don’t want to marry Mike, yet.”
“The baby won’t wait.”
“Oh, Professor Parker...”
It went on, mostly in a circle, until after one. Sharon left, committed to her abortion, and Joan stumbled into the bedroom exhausted. Dan was asleep on her side of the bed and she had to wake him and walk him, somnambulant, upstairs to his bedroom, which still reeked of cigarette smoke and anxiety. The exhaustion was valuable. She fell asleep at once and didn’t wake until morning.
Thursday, April 17
Mammogram day. What a sappy name for such an important occasion. Mammogram. Sounds like something you send on Mother’s Day. Hello, Ma am, here’s your mammogram. There was some tension in Ace’s eyes, but not bad. There’s no Oh-my-God look there, she thought. He’s okay.
She went to Huckleberry Hill to supervise. He went to Northeastern to write.
Her supervision was a blur. She told Ruth Lenrow that she had a doctor appointment that afternoon.
“Is it anything big?”
“Ruth, it may be something really big. And I’m really scared about it.”
“Oh, my God,” Ruth said. “I hope it isn’t bad.”
“I hope it isn’t, Ruth, but, Jesus, if it is bad, it’s really bad.”
What in hell am I doing? Why am I saying this? How can I say that and not tell her? It’s worse than telling her the facts. But she didn’t tell her, and Ruth’s face showed the strain of compassion and uncertainty for the rest of the morning as Joan supervised.
As Ace checked his mail in the English Department, Ivy Derosier asked him if anything was the matter.
“How come no singing and whistling?”
“I’m thinking,” he said. “It’s very hard for me.” It was a question he would hear and an answer he would give often that spring. It bothered him that it showed. If Ivy had noticed, how about Joan? Grace under pressure, he thought, as he rolled a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter. In the upper right-hand corner he typed Parker-Stakes-3. Me and Santiago. He had nowhere near her capacity for linear thought. His mind was always full of images and allusions. Pictures and scenes. But he was clearly aware of the surprise he felt that here in the crisis of his life he was thinking about Hemingway. Sonova bitch, he thought. Me and Santiago. Or Dilsey. They will endure. Faulkner and Hemingway and me. Amazing. He concentrated on the story he was writing.
The last time Joan had been to Union Hospital was when Daniel had an emergency appendectomy. That was also the last time she had seen Gladys Carter — in the waiting room as they waited for the diagnosis on Dan and found he’d have to have emergency surgery. Last December.
When Joan walked into the waiting room at X-ray to wait for her mammogram, Gladys Carter was there.
Chapter 7
She had to tell Gladys why she was getting x-rayed. Gladys promised to say nothing. From the beginning Joan’s impulse had been secretive. Gladys would do what she said, but it was scary for her to be there again. It means something bad is going to happen to me again. Dan’s surgery had always been something that had happened to her as much as to Dan. The nights sitting all night in a chair in the hospital, getting disapproving looks from some of the nurses, whose territoriality was impaired. The fear. I’m headed for worse. Superstitious, very superstitious. But I am superstitious. And yet it was good that Gladys was there. Gladys talked with her. It helped.
The mammogram technician was earthy and intelligent and informed and warm. The procedure was innocuous and painless. Wearing the inevitable johnny, Joan laid both breasts on a horizontal plate, between two perpendicular plates, and the pictures were taken from all sides. The technician took extra pictures of the left breast.
“When this is over with,” Joan said, “will we know? Will somebody be able to say it is or is not malignant?”
“Yes. It’s a wonderful diagnostic tool. You get a really clear idea of what you’re dealing with.”
“It will be good to know finally. Even if it’s bad news, it will be good to be certain.”
The technician nodded. “I know. Remember something like eighty-five percent of all lumps are nonmalignant. Your odds are very good.”
In five minutes it was over. Painless, unembarrassing, easy. The results would be in tomorrow. Joan went home.
In the Cabot Gymnasium at Northeastern, Ace, in a gray T-shirt and white shorts, was lacing his sneakers. They were faded blue Adidas Varsities with one of the white stripes missing. Working out when Joan maybe has cancer? Do what instead? I could go home and sit around and stare at her and say ohmigod a lot.
He walked to the cage to the indoor track and began his daily twenty-two laps around it, two miles. He counted the laps by switching pebbles from one hand to another, and his mind was thus free to roam. That had always been useful to him in the past. He could work out plot complications, try out dialogue, imagine character as he ran. Today he thought about himself and Joan. As a concession to the steady low-grade ache in his stomach he’d had since she told him, he didn’t run today against the clock as he usually did. Today he just did the twenty-two laps.
If she dies, I can make that. If she dies I will have the boys. I won’t fold. I can do that. I can do whatever I have to do. I can do that. But, Jesus Christ, who will I talk to? Who will I screw? I’ll want to. In a while I’ll want to and who? I can’t stand to do that dance again. Hi, my name’s Bob Parker, what’s yours? Do you have any hobbies? Shit!