Eternal Journey (9 page)

The second biopsy on the opposite breast had been performed when she turned forty. This time it was done as an outpatient
procedure, a testament more to the ever-rising cost-consciousness of medical care than to significant advances in technique.
However, she had had a different surgeon, a slightly better-looking scar, and no cancer. She had gone alone to the hospital,
had taken no medication except for the local anesthetic during the procedure, and had gone against hospital policy and the
nurse’s judgment by driving herself home.

Anna had struggled for more than a decade trapped in that limbo of uncertainty suffered by so many women. Like most in her
shoes, she courageously endured and faced the ever-present reminder of her mortality utterly alone. She never talked about
it, rarely thought about it, but all the time she was conscious of the threat. Every once in a while, Anna would find herself
in a restaurant or a department store, mentally calculating the numbers of people present who were struggling or suffering
with cancer. That reality infuriated Anna more than it scared her. She told herself it was morbid and unnecessary to entertain
such thoughts. So she pushed those thoughts out of her head, except for the one morning each month when she slathered her
hands with soap and carefully examined each breast for lumps.

Despite it all, Anna always figured the odds were in her favor. When the ovarian tumor was discovered during a routine doctor’s
visit, she wasn’t so sure. Of course, it didn’t help matters any that two of her friends had died from ovarian cancer in the
previous ten months. It was now round three for Anna. Her mother had not said that
good
things happened in threes. More importantly, her mother was dead, so Anna had no one to ask.

Anna had always been more terrified of cancer of the ovary than she was of breast cancer. It made no sense, really; she just
was. Perhaps it was because of Gilda Radner. Both Anna and Beth had been devastated when Gilda died. It was almost as if they
knew her, maybe because in a way they did, and Anna, in particular, felt it was so unfair for someone like that to die so
young.

Beth had been the only one who knew how terrified she was of ovarian cancer. Beth certainly had more than Anna’s fears on
her mind at the time, leaving Anna to sort through her feelings on her own. Anna felt it was the strangest week of her life,
that week between tumor detection and tumor removal. Despite all her practice with living with dread and fear of cancer, this
was different. If someone like Gilda could die from this silent killer, at so young an age, then so could she. Again, Anna
thought, cancer changes everything.

“It won’t be malignant, Annie,” Beth had said over the phone, “you have too much left to do.”

Beth had been right. Anna ended up having painful abdominal surgery and she lost all her reproductive organs. But she did
not have cancer.

It wasn’t that Anna didn’t think about her good fortune; she did, all the time. She still couldn’t imagine going through all
that surgery and having it be only the beginning of treatment. It was that she never focused on the hysterectomy part at all
until after Beth died. Anna figured the odds had been in her favor three times now, but, as any woman who has experienced
this surgery will tell you, it hurts. It hurts like hell for a while, and it hurts in your heart for a long time.

People say the stupidest things, Anna thought to herself. As a psychologist, she figured she had the right and the credentials
to believe this to be true. After all, she had spent years counseling victims of stupid, hurtful, even cruel, verbal attacks
from mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, children and siblings, teachers, bosses and co-workers, nurses, doctors, and
religious and political figures. As she got older, Anna was less and less convinced that people were really as stupid or clueless
as they tried to appear when caught hurting another person, or a group of human beings, with their words.

She knew in the scheme of things she had been pretty lucky. So when some of her very educated, quite intelligent friends,
colleagues, and even her family rendered their unsolicited opinions about the uselessness of the organs she had just lost,
Anna pretty much dismissed it as anxiety over the situation, or relief that she did not have cancer. But now, as she stood
full face looking at her body with its scars, Anna started to feel quite angry, then hurt, and finally very, very alone. No
one could ever know the meaning of this event in her life. That was not what bothered her. But were they really so stupid
that they thought there was none? As she traced the scar with her fingers, tears fell like raindrops on the cold white tile
floor.

“Beth, you never did tell me what it is that I have left to do,” Anna said through her tears.

A loud ring penetrated the silence and, since Becky and Michael had a phone in the bathroom, Anna instinctively reached for
the receiver. By the time she picked up, the answering machine had kicked on, so Anna very carefully replaced the phone back
on the hook. She didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway.

Anna blew her hair dry, then pulled on a pair of blue tights and her favorite baggy, fleece-lined sweatshirt. By habit, she
put back in the small white pearl earrings she always wore, and went downstairs to fix herself something to eat.

The message light was flashing on the answering machine on Michael’s desk. She made a mental note to check it before she went
to bed. She changed the discs in the CD player, and started toward the kitchen when the sounds of Smokey Robinson filled the
room. Some people never age, she thought as she began moving along with the rhythm.

As she opened the refrigerator to get the wine, the bottle of capers caught her eye. That was when she knew what she’d make
for dinner.

“What would you like for dinner, Annie?” Beth asked, once they had been seated at the restaurant recommended by the young
American tourist. They relaxed on bistro-style chairs with bright blue-and-white-checked cushions. The menu was posted on
a blackboard directly above Anna’s head.

They had never expected to find such a delightful café on the ground floor of the Louvre. But they had, after an exciting
but exhausting afternoon meandering through the west wing. It was one of those times when Anna wished she had paid better
attention in college. She and Beth had taken an art history course in their last semester at the University of Maryland to
fulfill some requirement, and Anna had relied on Beth’s notes and memory for detail, as she’d rarely attended the lectures.
Springtime was not to be wasted, Anna would tell Beth as she went off to the driving range to practice her swing.

Unfortunately, the final exam consisted of slides, not questions, and most of the photographs the professor showed were his
own and not from the text book. The credit was all Beth’s. It was totally due to her extraordinary eye for detail and gift
for description, and her dedication and insistence on making her friend study at all, that Anna got a C. At the time, Anna’s
only concern about getting a decent grade had been to ensure her entry into graduate school.

Back then she had never anticipated having an interest in, let alone a passion for, art. But here in Paris, the City of Lights,
how could she not? Anna now regretted that she was so ignorant of the culture, the background, and the artists’ stories that
lent color and life to each masterpiece.

It had been Beth’s suggestion to tack Paris on to that special British retreat the two had enjoyed just three years ago. They
had weathered the hectic drive on the M-2, pausing to ramble through the sites they had read about in
The Canterbury Tales
as they hurried on their way to the hovercraft that would take them from Dover to Calais.

Anna and Beth rode the train from Calais to Paris, where they would be staying in a very posh hotel on the Right Bank. Neither
of them had been to Paris before, and Anna had been prepared not to like it. So many stories about the French people, from
both her British and American friends, made her wary of the trip. Once they were settled in at the hotel, however, and started
walking down the Champs Élysées, Anna fell in love with Paris. No matter that it was bitter cold and overcast, hardly the
April in Paris depicted in all the brochures; Anna absolutely adored the city. While London had theater, Paris had—well, everything
else.

Anna and Beth wandered around Paris from dawn to midnight for three days, seeing more in that time than most people do in
a week. They were debating whether their legs would carry them a few more hours so they could venture to the top of the Eiffel
Tower. It was six o’clock on their last evening in the city. As they sat in the small café in the Louvre, they acknowledged
that it was a bit early to dine by Parisian standards, but as Beth reminded Anna, who cared what people thought?

That morning Anna and Beth had gone to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was magnificent. They’d spoken in whispers, or not at all,
as they walked on their tippy toes like the two ten-year-old Catholic schoolgirls they once had been. Beth took off on her
own while they were there, and Anna saw her kneeling at the foot of the statue of the Virgin. Neither one of them practiced
Catholicism anymore; in fact, Beth had raised her girls Episcopalian. As for Anna, well, she meditated instead of prayed,
and had her own concept of how and what to believe. But inside Notre Dame, Anna thought, everyone must feel Catholic. Anna
found an alcove harboring the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi. There were no candles lit in front of his altar, so Anna
settled in a chair and looked up and into the eyes of the towering figure. “I don’t know if I’m here to keep you company,
or because I feel badly that no one has lit a candle in your corner, or because you were my favorite saint when I was in the
seventh grade. But I’m here, and that’s all that matters,” she told him.

Fumbling through her purse to find a coin, Anna continued her dialogue with the saint. “See that girl—I mean woman—over there
having a conversation with the Blessed Mother? Well, she means close to about everything to me, and she has cancer. She is
going to need a lot of help in the coming months, so please do what you can to see that whatever she’s asking for, she gets.
Thanks.”

Anna dropped the ten-franc coin into the box and lit her candle. As she turned to leave, she looked into the eyes of Saint
Francis and whispered, “I could use a little help too, if you can spare it.”

As they walked outside and around the massive structure, trying to take it all in, Beth pointed up toward the spires of the
cathedral.

“Look, Annie, look, there they are. The famous gargoyles.”

Anna figured Beth thought she’d forgotten the significance of gargoyles in Gothic architecture, but she had not. She turned
to her friend and said, “They are to keep the evil spirits away from the church, remember, Beth?”

Beth looked sadly at her friend and said, “I could use one or two of them looking out for me right now.”

“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that,” Anna said. And Anna had made sure two gargoyles were perched on the headboard
of the hospital bed before Beth was returned to her room following her breast surgery.

Although Beth tried valiantly to translate their choices from the menu on the wall, both of them were so tired they ordered
with only a marginal comprehension of what they eventually would be served. The meal was delicious, outstanding actually,
and brimming with capers. So, warmed by wine and food, they walked from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower and caught the elevator
to the top of the century-old landmark.

Looking out over the sparkling lights of the city, Beth turned to Anna and gave her a hug. “Please help me beat this thing,
Annie,” she whispered in Anna’s ear. Anna nodded silently as the two women held on to each other like two little girls bravely
facing unseen monsters. As the friends stood together in the brisk air, Anna hoped that the tears she felt stinging her eyes
wouldn’t freeze on her face.

It was close to nine o’clock when they left the spectacular tower and walked until they found a Metro station. Beth and Anna
ran to catch a train back to the hotel, laughing all the way. How was it possible that two forty-five-year-old women with
all those letters after their names had no clue what a caper was?