‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘So who’s going to stay with me?’ He looks even more anxious. ‘Yelena?’
‘No, not Yelena. She quit, remember?’
‘I didn’t like her.’
‘I didn’t like her either,’ I admit. I don’t feel guilty tarnishing Yelena’s memory. She was a terrible, if competent, nanny, all told. ‘No, actually, Heather is going to be staying here with you. Aunt Heather.’ The words feel awkward and forced. I never call her Aunt Heather if I can help it, even though she asked, right at the beginning, while she cradled Isaac in her arms.
‘Heather?’ Isaac wrinkles his nose, and then he nods again, accepting. ‘Okay.’
Two days later I am waiting for Heather in front of New York Presbyterian Hospital, having dropped Isaac off at the 92nd Street Y for camp. He clung to me, and I clung back, because as each hour has wound down I’ve become increasingly terrified.
I’ve tried to be reasonable about my fears, which is ridiculous, because fear isn’t reasonable. I don’t even know what it is I’m afraid of, not exactly. The unknown? The pain? The ugliness of the operation? Dr. Stein is hoping to do an immediate breast reconstruction after the surgery, but she won’t know if she can until she’s opened me up, a fact I find fairly horrifying.
I tell myself this is all progress. After the mastectomy, I’ll have several rounds of radiation to zap any lingering cancer cells and keep them from getting ideas. And then, God willing, I’ll be well. Healthy and whole, ready to take back my life and live it to the full. Healthy by the time school starts.
The thought is intoxicating, just the possibility of it makes me dizzy: normal again, able to eat, sleep, work, play. When days don’t drag by in agonizing minutes, when I can tilt my face up to the sun and simply smile, when Isaac and I will be a team again, ready to take on the world.
I shift on the sidewalk, feeling the heat wafting up from the concrete. It’s one of those muggy, stifling days in the city when everyone who possibly can has left. The air shimmers and people walking past me in their business clothes are already sweating through their shirts.
‘Grace.’
I turn and see Heather striding toward me, an uncertain look on her face. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she’s wearing a t-shirt and stonewashed capri jeans. For a second I recall the time I first met her, standing in the doorway of my apartment, wearing that same uncertain look, it morphing into a smile. It feels as if time is in a kaleidoscope, endlessly twirling.
‘Hey.’ Her smiles widens as our gazes meet, and then, to my surprise, she envelops me in a hug. Her body is soft and pillowy and she smells like Ivory soap. The contact is shocking; I can’t remember the last time I’ve hugged someone besides Isaac, and I’m usually the one hugging while he twists away. Eileen, maybe, in the hallway.
Hugging Heather feels strange but also deeply comforting in a way I didn’t expect. I find myself returning the hug, even clinging for a second, like a child with her mother.
Then we separate, both us seeming a little abashed by the surprising intimacy. ‘Hi,’ I say, and I brush tears from my eyes, quickly, so she doesn’t notice. I am amazed at how undone I’ve become; I’m so very raw right now, everything exposed. I breathe in and out in an attempt to restore my composure.
‘Should we go in?’ Heather asks, and I nod.
I’ve become used to hospitals since that first time, seven years ago, when just walking through the doors sent a shudder of memory through me. I’ve had to go to ER a couple of times with Isaac for minor injuries and accidents, the bout with pneumonia, and then of course since starting the chemo treatments I’ve had to get used to hospitals in a whole new way. Now, instead of remembering my father’s illness, I am remembering my own.
Heather glances at me, a faint smile creasing her face. ‘Okay?’ she asks quietly, as if attuned to my feelings and even my memories, and I nod. Gulp.
‘We need to go to the Breast Center.’
‘Sounds like the right place.’
I’m feeling weirdly disconnected from everything, letting Heather lead me to a place I’ve been dozens of times already, for the chemo. I don’t know why Heather being here has reduced me to this unsettling, child-like status; maybe I’ve finally reached the end of my fraying rope and I just need someone else to take control. To take care of me. And she is willing.
In the waiting room Heather goes up to the front desk to check me in while I sit on a chair and flip through a magazine, the pictures and words blurring in front of me.
She comes back with a couple of forms that I need to fill out; they never seem to end. Then it’s more waiting; we sit side by side, just as we did for Heather’s ultrasound, and the memory makes me smile. Heather, noticing, glances at me curiously.
‘I was thinking about your ultrasound,’ I admit. ‘How we were both sitting like this. And how absolutely ignorant I was about everything. Pregnancy, motherhood… I had no clue.’
‘I think there’s really only one way to learn,’ she says with an answering smile.
‘Yes… those first few weeks with Isaac…’ I shake my head. ‘That was a crash course in just about everything.’ I don’t know why exactly I’m talking about Isaac with Heather now. We’ve never really talked about him in seven years of this open adoption that I was, until a few months ago, trying to bring to an end.
‘You seemed to do okay,’ Heather says, and I can’t help but arch an eyebrow in disbelief.
‘I barely knew how to hold him.’
She winces at the reminder, but I’m past feeling insulted or hurt by that. Way past.