“Detective O’Malley, I need your advice,” said DiAngelo.
“What’s going on? How was her biopsy?” It was the first week of the New Year, and Lily had just finished her last round.
“Biopsy was fine. Excellent. Her bone marrow’s clean. Her blood is clean. Her blood counts are still low, but I’m not too worried about that. She did great, she really did.”
The doctor should have looked happier telling Spencer this. “So why the long face?”
“There’s this…” DiAngelo coughed. “She tested positive for a protein marker on her malignant myeloid cells called the CD56 antigen.”
“What does that mean? Testing positive for this, is it good, bad?”
“Well, this genetic marker causes a resistance to the chemo drugs by working extra hard to build up an immunity to them. A quarter of all myeloid leukemia patients test positive for this protein.”
“It builds up immunity to the chemo?”
“Yes. Though the cancer cells have been eradicated, the presence of CD56 signals likely problems with remission.”
“What kind of problems?”
“A short remission, a prolonged relapse, a worsening prognosis.”
Spencer stood silently in the hall, looking at the doctor’s face. “You just learned this?”
“I knew it for a little while, a month. No point in saying anything when the last weeks have been so difficult.”
“So what advice do you want from me?” Spencer said.
“Should I tell her? I’ve been so frank with her about her treatment. She expects nothing less, but she’s been through so much.”
Spencer interrupted. “Under no circumstances tell her. You go in there, walk toward her with a big smile on your face, and you send her home and treat her in all ways as if she is going to live forever.”
DiAngelo stretched his lips over his teeth. “Got it,” he said.
Lily had been chatting with Marcie when DiAngelo came in with a big smile on his face. “Well, Lilianne Quinn, you’ve done it. Look.” He showed her something on her chart. She tried to draw importance from what he was showing her. She was seeing double—that always made life infinitely more interesting. Double numbers. They were even more impressive double. Platelets 74 he was saying. Double that was 148—much better.
“What’s left of me?”
“Surprisingly little,” DiAngelo said cheerfully. “But turns out just enough. Platelets at 74, up from 48 last week. It’s very good. You’re all clean.”
“I passed the biopsy?”
“You passed the biopsy. Spencer is waiting to take you home. Marcie will help you get dressed.”
Marcie kissed her head. “You see, Spunky. I told you, you were gonna do just great.”
“I go home and then what?”
“Good question. Then you come back every Tuesday for blood work.”
“For how long?”
“How long what?”
“How long do I have to come back for?”
“Five years.”
Lily did a double take to see if he was kidding.
“Once a week for five years?”
“No, once a week for the next six months. Then once every two weeks. In a year, once a month. In three years, once every three months. Got it?”
Lily didn’t know if she got it.
“Any questions?”
“Why Tuesday? Why not Monday?”
DiAngelo grinned. “In case you live it up too much on the weekends. I want your body to recover from revelry before we test your blood.”
Marcie pinched her. “I’ve seen that Rachel friend of yours. You two are definitely going to be getting up to no good.”
“When am I going to feel better?” Lily wanted to know.
“That’s not the question you should be asking,” DiAngelo said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why do I feel like shit, pardon my language?”
“You’re cleaned of all the bad stuff, but cleaned of all the good stuff, too. Don’t worry. Give yourself a few weeks, a month. You’ll grow yourself a whole new Lily. In the meantime, be careful of public places. They carry germs.”
“Will I grow some new cancer, too?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking yourself,” DiAngelo said quickly.
“I can’t guess what I should be asking myself.”
“Well, let me illustrate by answering the question for you.”
“I don’t know what the question is.”
“Bear with me,” the doctor said. “Did I tell you that I had a quintuple bypass last year? No? Well, I did. No one can believe I’ve gone back to practicing medicine. My doctors didn’t think I’d ever walk again.”
“But you’re always coming in from the running track!”
“Yes, I’m busy proving them wrong.”
“I don’t know…”
“Prove
me
wrong,” said DiAngelo. “Prove the statistics wrong. Do the unthinkable. Even now, you’re lying in bed because you can’t move. You can’t imagine moving. Move, Lily. Prove yourself wrong.”
“I would except I can’t move.”
“Ha. I have to move slower these days myself. Can’t take on as many patients. Can’t be as involved as I once was.” He tapped on his chest. “The old ticker just can’t take it anymore.”
“An oncology doctor with a bad heart?” Lily found that humorous. She smiled.
“Laugh all you want but tell me something about yourself. Do you like jogging?”
She stiffened, recalling Amy. “No. Is that the question?”
“No.”
“Doctor, you’re perplexing me.”
“You want me to tell you something about myself?”
“If you like.”
“I write in my own candidates at every general election. In the last one I voted for George Burns. How was I supposed to know he’d been dead nine months? What else? Wife number three thought I was too sensitive. Wife number four thinks I’m a heartless bastard, right, Marcie?”
“Right, Doctor.”
“Wife number one…ah. She was something. Her legs were too long. I married her thinking I’d be lucky to keep her through the honeymoon, and I was right. She met someone at the health club while we were in St. Croix.”
“What about wife number two?”
“Who?”
“I see,” said Lily. “If you’re so rotten, why did your current wife marry you?”
“I don’t think she herself knows. She’s divorcing me for my money.”
“Oh. You’re getting divorced?”
“For the past two years. Even the divorce is not working out.”
Lily laughed.
“My time was up last year,” he said. “It’s my bonus round. And this is yours. Here are your two questions. The ancient Egyptians asked themselves this to determine what kind of an afterlife they would have.”
Lily couldn’t take
one
more question. “Afterlife?”
“The first question was, ‘Did you bring joy?’ And the second question was, ‘Did you find joy?’”
Lily stared at him. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”
“I came into philosophy quite late,” said DiAngelo. “Until now my only other hobby was fishing. Transcendental in itself, by the way, but never mind.” Getting to his feet he zipped up his tracksuit and held his Yankees cap in his hands along with her chart. “Get up off the bed, Lily. You’re going home. I don’t care how sick you are. Get up and go live your bonus life. Go find some joy. Go bring some joy.”
And therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find
entrance not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well
fortified, if watch be not well kept.
F
RANCIS
B
ACON
The effort by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own
being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself.
B
ENJAMIN
S
PINOZA
Joy left. Lily had found Joy, but now that Joy was no longer needed she packed her few things, took her paycheck, hugged Lily’s shrunken body, and left. Lily was alone in her apartment, alone with her little bag from the hospital and her little charcoals. No more chemo on Monday, no more chemo on Tuesday. No more missing days of the week.
No more comedies with Spencer? After Christmas, things had been tense with him. They didn’t speak about things that made them tense; much better that way.
It was two in the afternoon. Was Lily hungry? Was she thirsty? Was she sleepy? Did she need a shower, a movie, a coat? It was January and freezing.
What now?
What now?
What now?
Lily lay on her bed, but that wasn’t satisfying. She went and lay on Amy’s bed, but it had turned into Joy’s bed. Lily went back to her own bed, opened the windows for some cold air, and looked to see the couple she used to sketch, the couple that got up to coupling with the shades up.
The shades were drawn, the cat was gone.
She went and made herself a cup of tea, the first cup of tea
she had made for herself in four months, sat down on the couch, turned on the TV and aimlessly flicked through the daytime channels. There was nothing on except news and low-minded but spirited melodrama.
She got involved in the story of a married woman pregnant with another man’s child. Should she tell her husband? Apparently he was usually very understanding—but the woman wasn’t sure if he’d be understanding about this sort of thing. Before Lily learned how it turned out, she fell asleep. On the couch, sitting up, with the empty cup of tea on her lap.
When she awoke it was dark, the TV was still on but low and Spencer was sitting by her. “Spencer?” Lily whispered. “Joy left.”
“I know. She’s been hired part time by someone else.”
They sat. He had taken the tea cup from her hands, had covered her with a blanket.
“Is your family going to help you, Lil?”
“I don’t need them to help me anymore. I’m going to be fine.”
“I don’t want them to be angry with you on my account. I am completely not worth it.”
“I know. I keep telling them.”
“Funny, Harlequin. But tell them I’ve stopped coming around. Tell them it was just because you were sick, but now you’re all better, and you’re fine on your own.”
If that was true, why did Lily feel so utterly and completely dependent on him and on Joy?
He was sitting on her couch, quietly watching John Goodman on an old
Saturday Night Live
rerun, and she was drifting in and out of sleep.
“Spencer?”
“Yes?” He lowered the TV. “What can I get you?”
“I’m fine, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to ask you something. Do you think you’ve found joy?”
“What?”
Lily told Spencer about DiAngelo the philosopher.
Spencer was quietly contemplating. “Well, look. The answer is a measured yes. I’m in the wrong line of work for joy. Like your Egyptian doctor. He sees too much.”
“Like you?”
“Hmm.”
“But still?”
“Well, yes. Still. At the baptisms of my godchildren. I’m godfather to six of my thirty nieces and nephews. I used to have a good time at the weddings of my sisters, my brothers.” Spencer paused before continuing. “When playing tackle football on the lawn of our house in Farmingville with my older brothers and getting clobbered by them. Playing soccer every Saturday for the Hanover Police League. I guess I feel all right when I’m home for the holidays and my mother fusses and frets and my father and I sit and watch a football game, and the kids are climbing all over me, and there is noise. Happy noise. My apartment is so quiet all the time that sometimes I like a little good noise. I like the summer. I hate winter. I’d like to live somewhere where it’s summer all year round. Let’s see, when else? I don’t entirely hate bachelor parties.” He grinned. “And I’ve been to some, how shall I say, joyous ones. Police bowling tournaments. They’re hilarious, too. The guys get trashed and then bowl. You really have to see it to believe it.”
Lily was listening.
“Did I answer your question?”
“Hmm.”
“What about you?”
But she was falling asleep. When she woke up next, it was morning and he was gone.
It was Thursday, January 6, 2000. It was the first day of the rest of her life. Lily would have to learn how to live again.
All right.
So what now?
That chant became interspersed with I’m not broke, which was a bit of a revelation in the unquiet healing mind, in the
quiet unhealed body. I’m alive and not broke, so what now?
I’m alive.
Grandma called and said, “Well, it’s Thursday. Aren’t you coming?”
Lily said maybe she would come next week.
On Tuesday she had to go back to the hospital for blood work. Joy, though now belonging to someone else, came to take her. When Lily protested and said she didn’t have to come anymore, Joy said, “I want to come. I do it for you as a friend, like Spencer. You don’t have to pay me. You don’t pay him, do you?”
DiAngelo took her blood himself. That’s a hands-on doctor, thought Lily. Usually nurses take blood from patients. Where was that Marcie? But Dr. D. is so thorough, so involved.
And then she saw the nice new skirt that Joy was wearing, and the traces of
new
make-up on her face, and the slight breathlessness in DiAngelo that betrayed his unclogged heart. The blood test came back clean—though waiting for the results was the
least
pleasant thing Lily had to do in the first week of her new life. And Joy smiled, all flushed, and DiAngelo smiled—but not at Lily—and Marcie came in and gave Lily a hug, while Lily looked incredulously at all three of them.
The nausea persisted and there was no appetite, but there was no more retching, so that was something. Her abdomen still hurt.
Tuesdays were the worst days for Lily—she held her breath in her stiff fingers—but the first week, the second, the tests came back clean, and her platelets and red blood cells were rising and her white cells were remaining healthily low, her neutrophils were small yet growing, and Joy’s skirts were getting shorter, and Joy was getting thinner, and DiAngelo stopped wearing his track-suits, and the blood tests were still clean, and Joy was smiling, and it was still the dead of winter, and cold, yet some spirited melodrama was going on in the middle of Lily’s blood-testy January afternoons.
Spencer called on Tuesday to ask about the blood work. Lily asked if he could meet her for lunch.
“Spencer, you will not believe when I tell you this, but I think DiAngelo has a thing for Joy,” said Lily. They were having pretend lunch at the Odessa. Spencer was certainly eating. Lily was playing with her soup.
“Stop swirling your spoon, Lil. Eat. I can’t sit here all day. I still have to walk you back and then I’ve got to go to the shooting range.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
He raised his eyes to her. “Do me a favor—don’t go into detective work. Where have you been? DiAngelo’s had it for her since she first came in with you.”
“He has?” Lily said that a bit too loudly. Even the short-order cook came out of the kitchen.
“Shh. Yes.”
“Stop!”
“Would I lie to you about something like this?”
“I think you would, yes.”
“Since the first day, Lily.”
“I can’t believe it! I’m usually very good at spotting things like that.”
Spencer stared at her steadily, and she became keenly self-conscious until he said, “Lily, I find that
very
difficult to believe considering how blind you were to things going on in your own apartment.”
“Oh, no. Once again this.” Lily stood up, pulling her hat over her ears. “I’m done not eating. Let’s go.”
They walked back, slowly. She had little strength in her legs. Spencer offered her his arm.
“No, I’m fine, I’m fine,” she replied quickly—just false bravado. But she was done with his charity.
She found an old sketch in one of her books that afternoon, decided to re-sketch it and then fill it in watercolor on an eight-by-eight cold press board, and when Spencer came to see her the following Tuesday after the blood work, he looked at it for a long time, and finally said, “Lily, what’s this?”
“Do you like it? I did it last week.”
Lily could see he didn’t know what to say. “I am very confused by this picture,” he said. “When did you do it?”
“Last week, I just told you.”
It was a picture of Spencer with Mary clinging to his arm, in front of a row of flowers at Dagostino’s.
“Remember I ran into you last summer?”
“I remember,” he said slowly. “I can see how you might have been able to drum up my likeness, but what I want to know is how did you drum up Mary’s? You did only see her for those two seconds, no?”
“Yes, I did only see her for those two seconds,” said Lily, smiling. “I re-sketched an old drawing.”
“Hmm. Maybe you should do a little more of this re-sketching.” He didn’t take the picture.
“You don’t want it?”
“You know—I’m going to have a fine time explaining it, so no,” said Spencer. “Because I hate explaining anything.”