‘Right. I will.’
We both lapse into silence, and then Heather rises from the table. ‘I probably should get back. The girls…’
‘Of course.’ I realize, with humbling suddenness, how much time and effort she’s taken out of her day to help me. ‘Thank you so much, Heather.’ I sound merely dutiful but I mean it. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you. You’re a lifesaver.’
‘Anytime.’ She gives me a crooked smile and then goes to wash her mug in the sink.
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I don’t mind.’ She leaves the clean mug on the dish drainer and turns around. ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else…?’
There are probably a million little things, but I have the weekend to catch up. I need to go food shopping, but I can do it online and it’s not as if I’d ask Heather for something like that. Not yet, anyway.
‘We’re fine,’ I assure her. ‘Really.’
‘I’ll just say goodbye to Isaac, then.’
I follow her out to the living room, where Isaac is still absorbed in his game on the iPad. My rules about screen time have gone right out the window, but I can’t feel guilty about that now.
Heather turns to me suddenly, a look of alarm on her face. ‘Does Isaac…?’ she whispers, and I shake my head almost frantically.
‘No.’
She nods and then kneels down, resting one hand on Isaac’s shoulder, to say goodbye to him. He mutters a farewell without looking up, and I don’t have the energy to insist on good manners. Heather grabs her purse and makes for the door. I follow her out.
‘I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Grace,’ she says in a low voice. ‘But breast cancer has a good, you know, survival rate, doesn’t it?’ She looks uncertain, as if she’s not sure this is the sort of thing she should say. What is the etiquette for talking to cancer patients?
‘Yes, it does,’ I say. ‘Generally.’
After she’s gone I lean against the front door, feeling lonelier than before, already missing the company. The weekend looms ahead of me, three long days to drag myself through, and somehow keep Isaac occupied throughout. I’m too tired to savor the time with him, even though I know how precious it is, and that is another burden, another hurt. I need to cherish every moment, suck the marrow out of it, because who knows how many I have left? Except I hate thinking that way. I’m going to beat this. Of course I am.
Then on Tuesday it all starts again – the chemo, the nausea, the pain. I also have to answer an email from Lenora in HR, who informed me, quite briskly, that I need to give ‘sufficient information’ for my request to take leave. How much information is sufficient, I don’t know. I know I qualify, and can tick the ‘serious health condition’ box, but will that be enough? Is Lenora going to make me spell it out? And why don’t I want to?
Telling Heather was a relief, but it also felt like opening a wound, leaving myself vulnerable. I hate that. For my whole life I’ve been contained, closed. Even my father, beloved as he was, didn’t get the whole me. I’ve always shown him my best side, Grace the straight A student, Grace the wunderkind at college, Grace the promising Wall Street intern, Grace the successful career woman. Now I’m none of those things. A side effect of cancer that I didn’t expect – I no longer know who I am.
At least I am Isaac’s mother. I walk slowly toward him. ‘Enough screen time, bud.’
He looks up reluctantly, and then surprises me by tossing the iPad aside. ‘Do you want to play Hungry Hippos?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ I say, and I sit gingerly next to him on the
floor. As he loads the marbles into the center of the board, I feel a pang of bittersweet longing. Such a simple moment, and yet I want to hold onto it forever, despite the nausea and pain, the fear and uncertainty.
Of course you can’t hold onto anything. I know that all too well, but I do my best over the long weekend, managing to find the energy to walk around the Central Park reservoir with Isaac. My steps are slow and he runs ahead, kicking a soccer ball; the sky is so blue it almost hurts to look at it, and everything is in bloom in the park, the buildings of Fifth Avenue soaring above, pointing toward the horizon. The beauty steals my breath and hurts me deep inside, a wound that grows bigger with every passing day.
I’m falling prey to the classic cancer patient shtick of feeling so thankful. A couple of months ago I would have rolled my eyes at it all, at the subtle bragging of a so-called life of gratitude, all the posts on Facebook, hashtag blessed, of picnics and presents and gap-toothed children. Now I want to gather all the beauty in my arms, like sheaves of corn, a bounty of blessing I know I possess, despite all the hardships in my life, all the loneliness.
Why did I not see it before? I sit on a park bench while Isaac runs and plays on a stretch of verdant green grass and I practically shake my head in wonder.
Of course that passes too, just like the rest. By the time we get back to the apartment, Isaac having dragged his feet for the last half hour, I am feeling tired and nauseous and decidedly unblessed. I wish there was someone I could call to come over and make dinner, entertain Isaac for a few hours. If Stella were in the city… but she’s not, and she still doesn’t know. When am I going to tell her? When am I going to admit to myself that every part of my life is going to change? Then I think of Heather; she would come if I called. She would always come.
I end up lying on the sofa, half-dozing, while Isaac watches TV. Eventually I summon the energy to order pizza over the internet from a local place. I fall asleep when the doorbell rings, and then Isaac answers it, shaking me awake.
As he eats three slices of pepperoni pizza and I merely push it around my plate, I wonder if I should tell him the truth about my sickness. Cancer, the word, the concept, is completely off his radar. Does he even know what it is?
I’ve resisted having one of those serious conversations because my parents had one with me, when I was Isaac’s age, and my mother was first diagnosed. I didn’t understand the big words; I had no concept of what cancer was. But I remember my father’s grave tone, my mother’s pale face, the overwhelming seriousness of it all, and how it terrified me. I didn’t want that for Isaac, especially when there is no back-up adult to stay reassuringly healthy.
The lack of that backup remains on the fringes of my mind, a niggling worry in case the worst happens. Who will take care of Isaac? It’s the first thing I thought of when Dr. Stein told me my diagnosis, and the question continues to torment me now, even though I keep telling myself it’s not going to come to that. It just can’t.