Cures for Heartbreak (8 page)

July was the carcinogen issue, with its never-ending list of foes: burnt toast, shampoo, cleansers, grilled meat, peanuts, water, air. One article ended by stating: “People everywhere are unwittingly
causing their own diseases
—staying out in the sun too long, eating the wrong foods, being exposed to unfortunate chemicals.”

Right after my mother died, my father took us to a dermatologist to have our skin checked, just to be sure the bad genes we'd inherited weren't already wreaking havoc, that it wasn't already too late. I lay on the dermatologist's table as he removed an atypical nevus (aka a weird-looking mole) from the skin over my stomach. I could feel the blood dripping painlessly (he'd shot it with anesthetic) and felt almost comically lackadaisical:
Eh, who cares. Whatever. If I die, I die. So what.
Dying didn't look all
that
bad.

Because, then, for a very brief period after my mother's death, when I thought of that specific nanosecond in time, it had seemed almost calm. It had seemed strangely quiet or peaceful, in retrospect—it seemed, really, like
passing
. She was there, and then she wasn't. Her body was hers, and then it was something she'd left behind.

Bashert,
my mother used to say to comfort herself when someone died of natural causes, like our elementary school principal, Mrs. Kouliadades, who had breast cancer, or Mrs. Hamish across the street, of diabetes. It was Yiddish for “fate,” for “meant to be”—something there was no point arguing about since there was nothing you could do, she'd said. It seemed like a word for coming to terms with things and accepting chance. Not to dwell. To move on and forget.

I said
bashert
to myself after she died, but it didn't make me feel any better. And that feeling of calmness surrounding her death hadn't lasted long—the memories of the horrible parts won out. Her suffering and vomiting, peeing the color of coffee; my sister screaming and crying; the feeling of machines grinding inside me—that's what was most vivid to me now. What were the stages described in that grief book? I couldn't remember, but I was sure that worry should be one of them.

The mole turned out to be benign, but I got scared. I started examining my moles closely and keeping detailed notes on them, as the dermatologist had instructed, on the lookout for suspicious growth or changes. I memorized the
ABCD's of Melanoma
pamphlet he'd given me.

Then I met the cancer guy, and my worries increased. “He was tired—that was the first sign. He had to lie down in the middle of the day. Then he had these red spots on his legs,” Gigi told us in the hallway one afternoon, remembering. “It happened when he was fifteen. I called the doctor and he said to come in right away. He knew what it was off the bat, I could tell from his face. But he ordered tests before he said anything. The tests came back, and sure enough: acute lymphocytic leukemia. Next thing I know we're in the hospital.”

Now, leafing through my father's Green Springs brochure, I felt tired. I checked my own legs for spots.

I was afraid that something could be in me too, ticking away, ready to strike at any moment. Or if not a disease, then an accident, coiled in the future like a cat waiting to spring. I'd lived all my life not worrying at all—never once had I worried about my mother having melanoma and dying in twelve days, or fifteen-year-olds catching fatal diseases. What an ignoramus! What a naive, unknowing, sheltered newbie.

The cancer guy had spoken to me once. It was in the solarium, the day after his birthday party. He said, “I like your dad. He's funny.”

“Thanks,” I said, and stared down at my book. The cancer guy was talking to me. To
me
. Why me? I tried to see myself in his eyes. It would probably make him happy to have
a healthy, regular girl talk to him. I mean, what girls did he meet in here? Cancer girls?

A wave of shame engulfed me. Shame that I was thinking these thoughts, that I kind of
liked
him, and I was afraid that the thing I liked was his cancer.

I'd watched too many TV movies—I'd always felt sorry for those young main characters—and now here was one in front of me. Dying. He was
dying
. Of
cancer
. I couldn't even wrap my mind around it. He was only four years older than me.

He was kind of cute, though, despite the baldness and pale skin.

He hovered beside me, waiting for me to say something. I forced myself to speak. “Did you, um, have a good birthday?” I asked. My voice sounded like an ad for Cheer laundry detergent.

“It was splendid,” he said.

More shame, hot and sickening. I was such a doofus. To think that I found his cancer appealing, that I felt attracted to his horrifying tragedy like a gnat to light. A rubbernecker, that's what I was. I'd been so mad at Melody Bly and those who'd wanted to crash my own grief party, and now I was doing exactly the same thing.

I was disgusting. My face flushed; I gazed at my book.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

It was a romance novel entitled
Larissa's Love Royale,
which I'd bought in the gift shop. It wasn't one of those romances
with a subtle cover that try to pass themselves off as ordinary books, either. No. This was all luscious bosom, gold embossed letters, and tanned male chestage, set on a Renaissance pirate ship. Why hadn't I brought
The Canterbury Tales,
which we were reading in school, instead?

Perhaps because it was hard to lose myself in
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
in the death ward.

“Um,” I said, “nothing.” I kept gazing at my open book, maneuvering my arms to shield the page from his view. I was afraid to look at him. I tried to think of how to slip the novel into my book bag smoothly and non-embarrassingly when he said, “Well. Bye.” And he walked back toward his room.

That was it.

I didn't even say bye back. I didn't call after him,
Wait! Sorry!
Or
Get well soon!
Or
Actually, I really like you!

I replayed, rewrote, reimagined the scene in my head many times after that, developing it into further interactions with plot twists and revelations. In one version the cancer guy said he was in love with me and wanted one last hurrah before death. In another, he helped me with my homework while I consoled him with understanding Florence Nightingale-esque gestures and an assured knowledge of the afterlife:
I've seen death too. Don't worry. It didn't look all that bad, really.
After a while I almost believed we'd had this connection, that I'd helped him. I wanted to help him, I told myself. Secretly, though, I was nervous every time I stepped out of the elevator
and walked toward my father's room, afraid to see an empty bed, to find out that the cancer guy had died. I was relieved when, the next day, my father was transferred to another room.

My father and I packed our suitcases. I used a flowered one that my mother had bought but never used; I clipped the Bloomingdale's tags off it.

“Alex is on the phone!” my father shouted just before we left. We phoned her in Ithaca every day; usually she was out. She'd sent us a postcard that said Ithaca Is Gorges. She seemed to be having a grand old time without us.

“What's up?” she asked me.

“Nothing. I'm a little nervous.”

“I know—a vacation with just you and Daddy. Sort of weird.”

“Also, on long drives you're at risk for deep vein thrombosis, which could lead to pulmonary embolism and you could die. The only symptom is an achy calf—and sometimes there are no symptoms at all.”

“Huh?”

“Deep—”

“You're insane. Stop reading Mommy and Daddy's disease books. I have to go,” she said. “Have a good trip.”

“Do you miss us?” I missed her—the house felt too empty without her sulky presence in it. We were soldiers in the
combat field of our disintegrating family, and I wanted to be the one who'd deserted, not the one who'd been left behind. Sometimes I would go into her room and just look around; I'd pick up the stuffed animals she hadn't taken with her, examine the earrings left in her jewelry box. I caught my father in there once too, sitting on her bed, staring at her old sneakers.

“Yeah. Everyone's leaving for breakfast—gotta run, see you!”

We loaded up our blue Zephyr. My mother used to criticize my father's driving—he drove too fast, too close to trucks, he passed too much on the BQE—and now he seemed to drive more cautiously, out of a sudden regretful respect. He also seemed curious about me in a new way, as if I was an odd foreign being. “Who are these musicians?” he asked when I popped in my Go-Go's tape as we drove over the Verrazano Bridge. I told him their names.

“Belinda.” He nodded. “She has a nice voice.”

He glanced at the
Beauty and the Beat
tape case resting on the dashboard. “What the hell's all that paint on their faces?”

“It's not paint! It's a mud masque!” I shook my head. “Haven't you ever noticed me in mud masques? I've been using them since I was twelve!”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

I watched New York Harbor go by in a blur. I didn't want him to like my music—it felt as if he was peeking in my journal. A few minutes later he belted out, “Everybody get on
your feet, we got it!” in his gravelly, off-key voice.

I pressed the stop button.

“Don't turn it off,” he said.

“No more Go-Go's. But we're not listening to any country.”

I picked up Depeche Mode, but after imagining him crooning
All I ever wanted, All I ever needed,
I put on Judy Collins instead. My mother had been crazy about Judy Collins; she had all her records. I liked her voice—it was strong and sort of soothing and reminded me of my mother.

We cruised past Staten Island. My father said, “When Greta and I were courting”—Courting? I pictured a horse and carriage bouncing down a country lane, my mother in a hoop skirt—“I gave your mother a Judy Collins record. I forget which one it was.
Golden Apples
? I can't remember. Anyhow, I gave her the record, and she loved it—it wasn't an easy one to find. She was almost in tears, she was so happy to have it—she said it was the nicest gift she'd ever gotten. Later, when we moved to Queens, I see she has two
Golden Apples.
She didn't want me to feel bad that she already had it. That's the kind of woman your mother was.”

A part of me wanted to roll my eyes as usual and snap:
Thanks. That's really illuminating.
But it was. How had I not heard this story before? My mother was nice enough to lie effusively when given a double gift—that's who she was, a tiny piece to attach to the sprawling, incomprehensible puzzle of her. I envied my father for these secret nuggets of
knowledge, for knowing so much more of her than I did. Sometimes I imagined that if I could stick a key into his chest it would open up like an armoire and reveal all the secrets of her life, all the stories and memories, and I could page through them and know her, really know her. My memories weren't enough. I wanted his. I once asked him, “Tell me stories about Mommy,” but his face was as blank as mine when Ms. Poletti asked me to recite Sonnet 38 from memory. I had to wait for these things to come out on their own.

We drove on and I did my ankle exercises when I remembered. The city evolved into trees and towns and farmland. After we'd exhausted three Judy Collins tapes we decided to stop for lunch—we wanted to find something healthy to eat, to start our week off on a good footing. When we saw a Wendy's sign I yelled, “Pull over!” He headed into the exit lane. “They have a new grilled chicken sandwich I read about in
Health Now,
” I said.

We parked, waited on line, and ordered two grilled chickens with dry baked potatoes on the side. “No fries,” I instructed.

“She's the boss,” he told the cashier.

We settled into a shiny lacquered table by the window—my father wanted to keep an eye on our car in the parking lot. He took a bite of his sandwich. “Not bad,” he said.

“Kind of yummy,” I said.

“Could use some butter,” he mumbled over his potato.

“I should've brought the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.”

“The I
Can
Believe It's Not Butter? That stuff is
bleh
,” he said.

I'd bought it after reading a
Health Now
feature on it. “It's not
bleh.
It tastes just like butter.”

“Bleh.”

“You need to change your attitude,” I said.

A man at the table beside us eavesdropped and laughed.

I glanced around the Wendy's and wondered what these people thought of us. Who did they see, looking at us?
This isn't us, really, the two of us alone,
I wanted to tell them.
We don't know how the hell we ended up here by ourselves.

We took our iced teas to the car, but as soon as my father started driving again I fell asleep. An hour after I woke up, we approached the Green Springs driveway.

“I guess this is it,” he said.

The driveway was lined with stone walls; a guard poked his head out of a wooden booth in the middle of the road. “Healthy Heart check-ins?”

“That's us.” My father told him our names, and he compared them to a list.

“Straight ahead.”

The resort looked like a mansion that had hired the cast of the Golden Girls to decorate. Inside was all big pastel flowers and gilt moldings and overgrown ficuses.

We registered at the front desk and received two green
folders and Hello My Name Is stickers to put on our shirts. The receptionist pointed us toward a banquet room, where an entire Golden Girls convention seemed to be taking place.

My father and I hovered by the food table, wallflowers at a school dance. I filled a plate with grapes and what looked like a hunk of cheese but tasted like an eraser.