People Who Knew Me (17 page)

“Now hurry up before I have shaving cream running down my face.”

“Okay, okay,” she says.

I close my eyes, relax. This is the closest I'll come to the meditation recommended by the hippie-dippie holistic medicine people. I've researched it all, clicked through hundreds of websites and blogs. I read myself to sleep with online message boards, other patients sharing their treatment regimens, their supplements, their yoga routines, their chemo time-passers. Chemo takes hours. I don't know how people tolerated it before smartphones. Claire and I play Scrabble. She wins and I'm not even letting her. I used to scroll through Facebook, looking at the vacations other people were taking, the birthdays they were celebrating, the family time they were “cherishing.” That started to piss me off so I just play Scrabble now.

“I think I'm done,” she says.

“You think?” I say. “It should be pretty obvious if you're done.”

She wipes off my head with a towel, walks a circle around me to inspect her work.

“Then I'm done. You're bald as can be.”

I watch as she takes in the new me, this alien life-form that is her mother.

“Do I look weird?” I ask.

“Yes.”

This is one of many reasons I love my daughter. She's smart enough not to say something cheesy like,
It works for you because you have such a pretty face
. Is anybody's face really
that
pretty? Pretty enough to distract from a shiny, bald skull? I don't think so.

I touch my hands to my head. The skin is thinner than I expect, pulled tight around bones that bear the responsibility of protecting my brain. It all seems very vulnerable.

Claire takes out her phone again and snaps the “after” photos—one of just me, and one of me and her, her arm stretched out long to get both of us in the frame.

I take the towel, shaving cream, and razor inside, preparing myself for what I'll see in the hallway mirror. Claire follows on my heels—anxious, antsy, ready to counteract all the criticisms that come out of my mouth.

There are no criticisms, though. I stand there, before the mirror, and I laugh—loudly. Because I look ridiculous.

“It wouldn't be so bad if I still had eyebrows and eyelashes,” I say.

I laugh so hard that I start to cry, tears rolling out of their ducts easily—no eyelashes to stop them. And then I collapse to my knees.

“Mom,” Claire says. “Are you okay?”

“I don't know,” I say, because I really don't. I'm hysterical.

Claire rubs my back with her palm, saying, “It's okay,” over and over again until I catch my breath.

“Sorry,” I say. “More emotional than I thought it would be, I guess.”

I give her a weak smile, the same weak smile I give her when I come home from chemo and she asks how it went. I always say, “Fine,” even though I feel like shit. It does no good to give her insight into my pain. She'll just want to dedicate her existence to taking it away. And she can't. She has a life. She's running for class president. She's playing soccer. She's hanging out with Heather and Riley and Tyler and whoever else.

“Mom,” she says, as I make my way to the bedroom, completely done with today even though the sun hasn't set. I remember that I need to make her dinner and change my direction to the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me now?”

“Do what?”

“Me. My head.”

She runs her fingers through her long, wavy hair to show what she means.

“Oh, no, Claire. Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Your hair is beautiful, sweetie,” I say. “This isn't your battle. It's mine.”

“I'm pretty involved,” she says, hands on hips with mock sass.

“How are you going to feel at school as the kid with no hair?” I ask her, convinced this will change her mind. It would have changed my mind when I was her age. Ostracism was my primary fear between the ages of ten and twenty-five.

“I suppose I'll feel cold sometimes. I might have to wear a beanie,” she says, deadpan.

“If you want to do it, you'll have to get someone else to help you. I can't be responsible for removing all that hair from your head,” I say.

She breaks into a smile. “I'll consider that permission.”

Before I can counter her, she takes the shaving cream and razor from the floor, where I dropped them mid-breakdown, and marches to the bathroom.

“Claire!”

When she doesn't turn around, I follow her. She already has the faucet running, rinsing the razor like a shaving pro.

“I should probably just chop it off first, huh?” she says.

She doesn't wait for an answer. She goes to the kitchen, rifles through the junk drawer, and comes back to the bathroom with a pair of rusty old scissors. She doesn't hesitate—she just starts cutting. Chunks of her gorgeous hair fall to the floor. I find myself straining to catch all of them, like they're hundred-dollar bills flying out the back of an armored bank truck. There is no point in telling her to stop now.

She stops cutting when the hair is up to her ears, jagged and haphazard. She looks like a crazy person, someone in an insane asylum.

“Okay,” she says. “Here goes nothin'.”

I sit on the toilet, looking down at my feet because I can't bear to see her do this. She's finished in twenty minutes. I know she's done before she says so. I can tell by her sigh.

“I could get used to this,” she says.

I dare to look up. She is turning her head from one side to the other, analyzing the angles. In that moment, I realize that, yes, it is possible that a face is pretty enough to distract from a shiny, bald skull. And that realization brings tears to my eyes.

She reaches out to me, takes my hands in hers as I stand up off the toilet. She grabs a few squares of toilet paper and jams them into my fist.

“Mom, seriously, stop with the tears,” she says. “You're killing me.”

*   *   *

I'm startled by the bald person in the kitchen. It takes me a second to remember that's my daughter. She's beating eggs in a bowl, making breakfast, making me feel guilty. She's taken on the responsibility of preparing meals on the days I have chemo treatments. She keeps track of those days by writing
Kill Cancer
on the appropriate calendar squares. She's got her pink Converse sneakers on, specially ordered online when she took on this breast cancer campaign in my honor. She pins a pink ribbon to her shirt every day she goes to school. She says other kids are doing it, too. She sends me pictures of them, huddled together, puffing their chests out like proud pigeons to display their support of me, this woman they don't even know.

“You know, I don't need a hot breakfast. I'm more than capable of putting cereal in a bowl.”

“I know,” she says, pouring the beaten eggs into a pan. “The protein is good for you.”

My fear is that she'll get burnt out on this. Or she'll convince herself that doing all these things will contribute to the “Kill Cancer” goal. If the chemo doesn't work, if I die, I don't want her to feel like she failed.

I expect her to wear a hat or something, but she doesn't. I drop her off at the curb, as usual, and she marches into school, the sun reflecting off her bald head. Kids stare. A few of them, when they recognize it's her, come up and talk to her, mouths agape. Without hair, her smile takes on even bigger proportions.

*   *   *

“I like the new 'do,” the infusion center nurse says in reference to my baldness.

When I started coming for chemo, I didn't make eye contact with anyone. I wasn't there to make friends. But after several weeks of seeing the same people over and over again, I can't help but smile or give a nod of recognition. I still don't talk to them, despite there being just a few feet between us. I don't want to know their stories.

I do talk to my nurse, though. I figure I should get on her good side, be one of her favorites. It's childish, really. She administers the drugs, but she has no control over my cancer. I want her to. I want someone to.

“Thanks, my daughter styled it herself,” I say.

Her name is Amy, the nurse. She goes through the usual motions, taking off the bag of Adriamycin, putting on the bag of Cytoxan.

“Impressive. How old is your daughter?”

Up to this point, we have shared basic facts about ourselves with each other. She's thirty-two. She has a cat—a fact she revealed when I inquired about the black pet hair on her white scrubs. She knows I'm forty-four, that I have “the weird kind of breast cancer,” that I have no pets.

“She's thirteen going on forty-five.”

“Oh, I know the type,” she says with a knowing laugh. “Mine's six. Audrey.”

There we are—two mothers just talking about our children, like mothers do, while a cancer battle is under way beneath my skin.

Once I'm all hooked up, she gives my hand a kind pat and says I should call her if I need to. I have a couple hours of sitting ahead of me. I have to pee, but I command my bladder to wait. I'm on wheels, I'm mobile, but it's a hassle to roll across the room, in front of everyone, my IV bag swinging from its hook.

Ten minutes into my two-hour wait, the empty seat next to me is occupied by a guy I haven't seen before. He looks to be about my age, mid-forties, maybe a little younger. He doesn't have eyebrows, either. He's a regular.

“I've never seen you here before,” he says. I can tell immediately, by just the curiosity in his voice, that he's one of those overly chatty people. He befriends people at bars and on planes on a regular basis—or at least he used to until people got scared of his hairlessness, the obviousness of his disease. People with cancer, we're feared. We are walking reminders of what nobody wants to think about.

“That wasn't a pickup line,” he says in response to my curt smile.

Who the hell is this guy?

“I should hope not.”

“It could be. You're attractive. No wedding ring. Maybe your fingers are just swollen, though. From the chemo.”

I'm flattered and confused and annoyed all at once.

“I'm not married,” is all I say.

Nurse Amy hooks him up to whatever drug regimen his doctor swears by. The bag is bulging. He'll be here for hours.

“Name's Paul,” he says. “Prostate cancer. Six weeks into chemo.”

“Connie,” I say. I don't offer any more details. Amy looks amused at this interaction of ours.

“I used to come in the mornings. That's probably why I've never seen you.”

“Probably.”

“With work, afternoons are better.”

I nod. He probably wants me to ask about his work, his life, but I have no interest. Thankfully, he goes radio silent for the rest of my time there. I say good-bye to him on the way out, to be polite. And then I say good-bye to Amy. She takes me by the forearm and pulls me close to her.

“Don't mind Paul,” she says. “He's lonely. That's all.”

“Aren't we all?”

“Well, he's harmless, just so you know,” she says. “This place sucks. It wouldn't be the worst thing to make a friend.”

 

FIFTEEN

Less than a month after Drew's mom's choking incident, on the eve of the year 2000, everyone was talking about Y2K. Extremists said the world was going to end. I kind of wished it would.

But life went on as usual. Drew's mother continued to live with us. We—or Drew, rather—started supervising all of her feedings. I kept running, stopped meeting up with Nancy. I spent as much time at work as I could. Until, one day, even that was taken away from me.

This is going to change everything
. That's what I was thinking as I packed up my desk at Mathers and James. I didn't know how everything would be changed, but I knew it was inevitable, as ominous as dark gray clouds in early February.

Everything fit in one box. My personal belongings were few. Most of my desk was occupied with work folders: one for each project, older drafts at the back of each folder, most recent at the front. I'd become obsessively organized since Drew's mom moved in with us. A shrink would say something like,
You're creating neat piles at work because home life feels so messy. You're struggling to maintain a sense of control
. I didn't see a shrink because I already knew that.

I had a lame motivational calendar with majestic photos of mountain ranges paired with quotes like,
Aspire to climb as high as you can dream
. I threw that away. I had a
Seinfeld
coffee mug someone gave me—I can't even remember who—that read,
Top of the muffin to you
. I threw that away, too. There was an empty vase on the windowsill behind my desk. Drew had sent roses for Valentine's Day, and when they died I saved the vase they came in, harboring aspirations of filling it with fresh flowers every week. I never did that. I tossed the vase at the trash can. It hit the edge and shattered, the noise alerting my work neighbor to rush in and say, “You okay?”

I had one framed photo—of Drew and me on the day we got married. We looked so young and, frankly, dumb. I was staring at the camera straight-on, holding the bouquet of carnations his mom had brought for me. My smile was big and cheesy, the kind kids give for ice cream cake or Disneyland or puppies. Drew wasn't looking at the camera; he was looking at me, as if he was so enamored that he couldn't turn away, even just for a second.

I put the picture in my purse, pushed it down as far as it would go, irritated with the corners of the plastic frame sticking out the top. Then I took out my phone and dialed Marni's number.

“I need to meet you for a drink,” I said as soon as she answered.

“Now?”

It was four o'clock on a Friday—close to the end of a work week for many people, but about five hours from the end of Friday for her. There is no end to the week in the advertising world of New York.