Blues for Beginners: Stories and Obsessions (7 page)

Was there anything I could do to make this
magic moment move a little faster?

“It destroys brain cells, sniffing glue in
windowless space,” she said.

I wished she’d just get it over with.

“I can’t take it anymore. You think you could
maybe get us both on welfare?”

There was a god after all. He had an exacting
sense of humor.

When I woke up next it was dark out, and
Brian sat next to me. The touch of his hand on my forehead was so
cool.

“This has to stop,” I said.

“You’re not well,” he said.

“Too much guilt and not enough B’s.” The room
swam when I tried to sit up. “What day is this?”

“It’s still Tuesday. It’s nine o’clock and
you’re running a fever, old girl. You need to be on
antibiotics.”

“Oh God, I’ve missed Group!”

.

It was the flu, I explained a week later.
Group wouldn’t buy it. They let Bonnie, the newcomer, lead the
charge.

“You’ve been doing a number on us for months
now,” she said. “We’re not going to let you get away with it any
more.”

Nine hostile pairs of eyes turned on me the
way I’d always dreaded.

“ Because we care,” said Eva, who couldn’t
eat in public.

I cowered in my corner of sofa.

“You’re so cut off, you’re like a thing, you
know?” said Lucy who only ate foods that were white and didn’t make
noises when chewed.

“You can run but you can’t hide,” said Harvey
the seminary drop out, like he was reading my mind.

There would be no way out, just an infinite
variety of shoddy accommodations to municipal reality.

Bonnie attacked with renewed vigor. “If I
woke up one morning and found out I was you I’d just kill
myself.”

“She’s not even here,” said Eddie, who still
lived with his parents in Borough Park.

“I hate this,” I said. “I really hate
this.”

“It sounds like someone is talking,” Harvey
said, “But she’s not being honest with the Group so we can’t hear
her.”

“I hate you!” I said to Harvey, who looked
gratified.

“ I HATE ALL OF YOU!” I screamed,” EACH AND
EVERY ONE OF YOU!” Then I burst into tears.

Eva handed me the Kleenex box and Harvey
wrapped me in the Group blanket. Everyone took turns hugging me and
sharing their feelings. For no good reason I felt better. The
headache was gone.

.

Emily’s skin cleared up and her hair got
shiny once she and Brian got on welfare. They took yoga classes
together. Sometimes I saw them on the street holding hands like
teenagers. When they went out of town on weekends Emily left me the
key to their apartment so I could feed the cat. In June, Western
New England Law School told me I was accepted off the waiting list,
which seemed like a mistake. Group said go any way and don’t ask
questions.

That was more than twenty years ago.

.

Going blonde was my hairdresser’s idea. My
hair turns pale yellow in summer, and I wear it piled on top of my
head. The bangs droop over my forehead like frizzy tendrils.

I have lots of shoes.

Cats never apologize and never explain.

Dogs let it all hang out on Oprah.

Dogs are hot, but cats are cool.

Dogs get in your face; they leave nothing to the
imagination.

John Travolta, Demi Moore, and Bill Clinton are
dogs.

Lawrence of Arabia was a cat.

Cats do not play well with others.

Favorite teachers are dogs.

Teachers you get crushes on are cats.

Opera singers are dogs.

Ballet dancers are cats.

People who need people are dogs.

Louis Armstrong and Dizzie Gillespie were dogs.

Any jazz musician who doesn’t shoot heroin is a
dog.

Cats have the killer instinct.

If you put your cat on a vegetarian diet she will go
blind.

Dogs let others do the killing and hang around for
the leftovers.

Dogs are natural born shoppers.

Dogs are shameless, but easily guilt-tripped.

Cats are guilt-free but sometimes you can embarrass
them.

.

Dogs are resilient, courageous, and sentimental.

They buy vacuum cleaners for their wives, and
neckties for their boyfriends.

Dogs hang their children’s artwork in their
cubicles.

Cats despise cubicles.

If they bother with gifts it’s always what you wanted
but never thought to ask.

Cats are the ones who break up first.

Cats can handle high fashion but dogs look better in
the classics.

That means no spandex, and no see-through.

It’s more fun to design for cats, but the money lies
in making products for dogs.

No one wants a cat for a lawyer.

Dogs have sexual energy, which is not the same thing
as sex appeal.

“I just made love to a million people,” Janis Joplin
said after one of her concerts, “but I’m going home alone.”

Only dogs can sing the blues.

From the inside my breasts looked like cloudy
weather against a black sky. Unusually dense, the surgeon said.
Dense clouds, no rain. And in the northeast corner of my left
breast, a spot of emerging order that looked like the dim
beginnings of a snowflake. I remembered the description in Time
Magazine of how breast cancer grows, how it re-routs the
capillaries. Those little driveways become all roads that lead to
Rome.

“It could be a radial scar”, says the
surgeon. (They tend to be upbeat, can-do types, not introspective
melancholics with bad attitudes.)

I hate suspense.

“What about Cancer Stage One?”

“Let’s hope not,” he says, “but it’s not a
cyst like the last time. “

.

I spend the evening before the biopsy in
Friendship Animal Hospital with my cat. The waiting room is full of
vacationers boarding their pets over Memorial Day Weekend, and
those of us with sick animals. I was supposed to be on the other
side. I was supposed to go to the mountains and ride horses with
Max and his daughter. Instead I wait on a bench between the old man
with the sick Persian cat and the young woman waiting for her
Rottweiler to come out of major surgery. With sharps barks, the
Rottweiler, still groggy from painkillers, dashes out from one of
the recovery room, drawn, no doubt, by the sound of his owner’s
voice, and collapses in a heap on the waiting room floor.

No matter how dire your situation you can
always find someone worse off, but it seems indecent to take
comfort from it.

I resent the vacationers, so thoughtlessly
healthy. I was supposed to be one of them. Siamese cats like Spike
are traditionally long lived and healthy, like most of my
relatives. Neither of us are supposed to be here. We were here a
few weeks ago, the last time Spike turned listless. The initial
diagnosis was Hairball from Hell, which has turned into chronic
constipation.

“Not uncommon in an older cat”, the vet had
said.

What do you mean older cat?

Spike is only ten, I’m just 51.

.

This is so unfair. After years of combat
dating I met Max, and my life turned from an Anita Brookner novel
into a situation comedy. Single Woman with allergic reaction
towards family life falls in love with guy from the suburbs who’s
the custodial parent. I like his kids and they don’t hate me.
There’s even a cute dog. All my life I’ve been a conspicuous
failure at conventional femininity, but now I seem to be
overcompensating.

Max takes off from work so he can take me to
the hospital for the biopsy. The surgeon tells Max he is almost
certain that my lump is benign but we’ll still have to hear from
pathology. The rest of the day is heaven. I’m on painkillers and my
boyfriend is serving me dinner in bed, telling me there’s nothing
to worry about. I’ve never had anyone take care of me before, not
in my adult life.

The surgeon calls the following afternoon
with the lab results.

Turns out I’m right about the cancer.

Such a sentimental disease. Those wretched
pink ribbons, those Runs for the Cure. Maybe breast cancer doesn’t
really exist and is really a Stepford Wife conspiracy to demoralize
middle aged women .

“Come in tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your
options,” the surgeon says as though there were interesting choices
ahead for me. Interesting for him, perhaps but there are only two
of them. Mastectomy or lumpectomy.

I wanted to leave a mark on the world and
visit Paris with a lover.

.

“Contrary to your belief, most women don’t
die of this,” the surgeon tells me, with a touch of asperity, but
he didn’t go to Mary Jo’s funeral. Mary Jo, whose tiny lump was
discovered early, as was the one on her other breast, and so on.
She was so optimistic, had such a positive attitude.

Went for the mastectomies, gratefully.

Not me.

Lumpectomy with radiation is no riskier than
a mastectomy. Or rather, mastectomy for the most part is no better
safeguard against recurrence in the case of a small, first time
malignancy.

“We will go though this together,” Max
promises me. “There will be bad times, but there will also be good
times, and we will be together.”

It is one of those late spring days where the
sky looks like Renoir’s Paris, wouldn’t you know it.

.

Saturday we pick up my cat. The vet at
Friendship doesn’t know what’s wrong with Spike, but he seems
better. His fur doesn’t clump, his blue eyes are clear, and he
howls all the way to Max’s house, a sure sign of health in a
Siamese. Sunday is a day of suburban grace. Cat and lover in the
same bed with me, along with newspapers, the New Yorker, and the
New York Review of Books. Spike nestles between my breast and
armpit, his long monkey tail wrapped around my wrist, the way he
always does when we sleep. Before Max there was Spike to keep my
heart from turning dry and shriveling up as a walnut. Noisy and
demanding, and he’d steal dinner off your plate if it’s something
he likes. If I spend more than five minutes on the phone he howls
like a baby with wet diapers. I have friends who’d never met Spike
but knew him from phone calls. He weighs as much as a healthy baby
and likes to be held.

Monday, he pukes up mustard yellow and hides
under the bed.

Back to the hospital for both of us.

.

I am in no shape to make tough decisions,
like whether or not to authorize expensive surgery. The last time I
had a cat sick as Spike I did not. I knew the cat was going to die
anyhow, why him predecess through the pain was the rationale. Maybe
it was the right decision to put that cat to sleep, but I would be
a liar not to admit that I didn’t want to spend the $400. My
neighbor Molly, who often takes care of Spike when I’m out of town,
agrees to be his guardian while I’m in the hospital . She is an
Emergency Room nurse and a convert to Buddhism so I trust her to do
the right thing, whatever that is.

.

In the waiting room with Max at my side, I
feel like royalty, Queen for a Day, in my awfu1 hospital gown.
Breast cancer is so much more socially acceptable than depression,
at east in Washington, is what I’ve discovered. If Hillary Clinton
had breast cancer she would have been the most popular First Lady
since Betty Ford. Thanks to good health insurance, a steady job,
and plenty of support I’m privileged class among cancer patients,
entitled to ask favors and make demands.

“If it turns out I’m going to die, Max, will
you marry me? I don’t want my retirement benefits togo to
waste.”

Joint and survivor annuity. Affordable health
insurance that will cover adventures like this.

Max says he will agree to anything if it will
put my mind to rest. He agrees to be my literary executor. He even
agrees to look after Spike.

And the operation goes well. Best possible
outcome, in fact. Clean lymph nodes, and clean margins, the surgeon
tells me. Max doesn’t have to marry me.

.

The vet discovers a tumor in Spike’s stomach.
Molly consults with her friends, some of whom are Buddhists and
some of whom are nurses. The woman at the Friendship reception desk
says that it seems to happen a lot, women and their cats having
cancer at the same time. They decide that what I would want is the
chance to say good bye, so Molly authorizes the operation. Some
cancer is negotiable, but as far as I know, no one survives stomach
cancer.

.

With the fur shaved off his flanks for
surgery, and the shaved spot on his paw for the intravenous, Spike
looks like an Auschwitz victim. When I bring him home, he heads
straight for the linen closet. $2000 down the tubes for an animal
who probably can’t make it through the night.

I spend the night in the linen closet, saying
good bye.

“Goodbye you old bag of bones. I’m sorry I
begrudged you Bumble Bee Water packed albacore tuna and made you
eat cat food. I’m sorry for leaving you alone sometimes, for
talking on the telephone when I should have been paying attention
to you. I’m sorry for calling you selfish just because when the
burglar broke in you hid in the closet instead of attacking him
like a dog would have. “

The sound of my own voice comforts me, makes
me less scared as I wait for him to die. But he opens his eyes.
Spirit in the dark.

.

The next morning he is in my bed, tail curled
around my wrist. The vet calls with what he thinks is bad news.
Spike’s tumor was big, and the cancer aggressive. He thinks Spike
won’t live much beyond three months, which is three months more
than I expected. I will have his company for one more summer. He
will see me through radiation. We can spend a whole summer napping
together.

.

What comes next is the mopping up operation.
Thirty-five hits of radiation, seven weeks of daily doctor visits.
Covering the face of death with a blanket of daily obligations so
the skull recedes. Cancer no longer a life threatening emergency,
has shrunk to the size of a second job. A crummy one with lousy
pay, but at the end I get my life back.