100 Days of Happiness (5 page)

“We'll decide about the children later; for now I'll tell them that you've been working late and sleeping at the gym.”

That strikes me as reasonable. Confident that this is just a passing tantrum, and considering that I'm not exactly a wealthy man, I decide to stay in Umberto's studio apartment, given the impracticability of Corrado's place. But I soon discover that my veterinarian friend likes
to bring his work home, specifically a dozen cats and dogs that often clutter his 450 square feet of space. All I can do now is open my computer and start looking for a little one-star pensione not too far from the gym.

Then help comes in the form of an unexpected offer. From someone who by all rights ought to be on the opposite side of the barricades: my father-in-law.

 * * * 

Oscar offers me a place to stay in the back room of his pastry shop, at least until his daughter makes up her mind to forgive me, which by the way, just for the record, is not something she seems to have any intention of doing. Obviously, he's giving me a place to stay without telling Paola, who's convinced I'm staying in an imaginary and very affordable bed-and-breakfast in Trastevere.

So there I am, with a duffel bag shoved into the corner, doing my best to get some sleep while the Sinhalese assistant pastry chef bakes croissants, fills beignets, and decorates cakes. In the morning, I wake up wrinkled and oily. Every day I promise myself I'm going to find a new and more fitting place to live, but then, partly because of how close it is to the gym where I work and also because of Oscar's kindness—he really does treat me like a son—I remain there, sleeping between a tray of flake pastries and a bag of superfine baking flour. I'm only allowed to see Lorenzo and Eva a couple of evenings a week and on Saturday afternoon, but I'm hopeful the situation will stabilize soon.

So, this was the perfect time to find out that I now had a new buddy by the name of Fritz.

A
ctually, warning signs had started cropping up nearly a year before my affair with Isabella Moroni but they'd been roundly discounted and ignored. I remember very distinctly the first time Fritz rang my doorbell loud and clear. That afternoon, I was in the pool with my boys running some plays. Water polo is a demanding and manly pursuit, and my job as a coach is pretty thankless—just take a look sometime at a picture of the skinny weaklings who make up my team. We bob along, as I was telling you, midway down the rankings. My goalie Alessio, better known by his nickname Soap-on-a-Rope, never seems able to stop a shot, even by accident, while the center defender Martino, our team striker, is fast but cross-eyed. My assistant assistant coach, Giacomo, an autistic thirty-year-old who knows all the matches in the history of water polo by heart, isn't much help in improving the performance of my ragtag team. Still, he manages to win the affection of one and all and he fits in perfectly in this Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. It's not just a metaphor, my team is actually named the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. A name that says it all.

 * * * 

When I felt the first stab of pain to my belly, I was in the water and trying to teach Soap-on-a-Rope a play and I'd just shot the ball into the net when I felt a bolt of agony cut through me for a second. I file this passing pain away as a muscle cramp or a minor hernia and months go by before I think about it again. I've never really been sick
in my life and the last thing I would think is that it could be anything truly serious.

How many times in your life have you heard words to that effect?

 * * * 

The fact remains that I start to feel sick more and more frequently; the sporadic stabbing pains are transformed into an almost constant minor pain; I'm no longer able to swim the way I used to. I stuff my face with analgesics and anti-inflammatory medicines, convincing myself that it's nothing more than an annoying and extended cramp of my abdominal muscles (or what's left of them). I tell Paola about it, and she insists on scheduling an abdominal sonogram, but I tell her that I've always had little lingering pains like this throughout my glorious athletic career, and that they always go away in time, as long as I rest up. To tell the truth, my affair with Signora Moroni isn't really something I could describe as resting up, but the pain is still tolerable even during sex. I often think back on the abdominal sonogram I never got as a scene from the movie
Sliding Doors
.

What would have happened if I'd taken Paola's advice?

Would I have lived for another ten, or twenty, or thirty years?

Or would I have been hit by a bus at the hospital entrance and killed instantly?

My personal sliding door slid shut right in front of me that day.

I just didn't know it at the time.

 * * * 

Little by little I talk myself into believing that it's not a muscular problem but rather an insidious and minuscule hernia. A simple operation would take care of everything, but I still decide to go on waiting, hoping against hope that one morning I'll wake up just healthy. In the meanwhile, the symptoms just go on proliferating: I start to feel more tired than usual; one afternoon I throw up; and another
time I go for weeks with an annoying low-grade fever. And each time I manage to find a logical explanation: “I'm just under a lot of stress lately”; “I shouldn't have eaten what I ate last night”; “I must have gotten a chill in the pool yesterday, and 98.9 isn't really a fever at all.” I still don't connect the warning signs to that single lethal enemy.

The months fly past and in the meanwhile, as you know, my family life collapses and I wind up sleeping in the back room of the pastry shop. One rainy night in early March, I try to do my part and help Oscar as he places a large tray of chocolate muffins in the oven, but without warning, a stronger jab of pain than usual makes me double over. I drop the tray to the floor and let out a shout. Oscar and his Sinhalese assistant both prop me up, confused, and help me to a chair. I tell them that these pains have been bothering me for eight months now, recurring frequently, and that I've been doing my best to coexist with this damned hernia. For too long.

“Go have a specialist take a look at you,” Oscar suggests.

“Thanks, Oscar, but you'll see; I'll be all better in a couple of weeks.”

“That wasn't a suggestion,” my father-in-law explains. “It was an order: go have a specialist take a look at you. It might even be an ulcer. A customer of mine died of an ulcer—it's no laughing matter. One day he was sitting here eating a sweet roll with whipped cream and talking about A. S. Roma's latest win, the next day he was in the cemetery, six feet under.”

Direct strike, ship sunk. Oscar managed to be both clear and direct, as always. The word “died” is a cold shower, and it finally persuades me to see a doctor, certain by now that it's actually an ulcer. So I go and see Umberto. A veterinarian is, after all, a doctor of sorts.

Umberto's waiting room is full.

Around me are sitting a little old cat lady, on her lap a carry crate containing a Persian; a thirteen-year-old boy with his mother and a chameleon; an austere man in his fifties with an obnoxious collie who
resembles him to a T; and a pretty young tattooed woman in her early thirties with a mysterious basket on the seat next to her.

The cat lady stares at me curiously, then gives in to her overwhelming curiosity: “What kind of animal do you have?”

“I have ticks,” I reply with a sunny smile.

She can't tell whether I'm joking or I mean it. In any case, she moves a seat away from me.

I'm the last one ushered into the doctor's office. I immediately ask Umberto just what was in the tattooed woman's basket.

“A python. Very fashionable these days,” he answers nonchalantly. Then he asks me the reason for this surprise visit. It's the first time I've come to his clinic for professional reasons.

I explain to him about the abdominal pains I've been experiencing for almost eight months now. I haven't been to see a doctor in years and years. I've been avoiding the public health doctor whom I share with Paola to keep from alarming her excessively. The doctor is a friend of Paola's and certainly would talk to her about it. I'm practically certain, I explain to Umberto, that it must be an ulcer.

My friend tells me to lie on my back and he palpates my stomach with expertise. I feel a sharp stab of pain. I can see that he's a little worried.

“Does it hurt right here?” he asks.

The answer is clear from the grimace on my face.

As I get dressed, he explains that in his opinion this is neither a hernia nor an intercostal muscle strain, much less an ulcer.

“It's a small lump,” he explains, “between the liver and the stomach; it's hard to say with such a generic examination. It might be a lipoma, which in layman's terms is an anomalous but benign clump of fat. I'd immediately order an abdominal sonogram. These days that kind of equipment can do a quick and accurate analysis.”

“In fact, Paola recommended the same thing a couple of months ago.”

“And she was right. As she almost always is, I should add.”

He scolds me for a while, the way only doctors and high school teachers know how. He's right, I should have listened to my wife and kept that sliding door from slamming shut.

“I'd do a blood test too. You'll see, it's probably nothing,” Umberto concludes. “You almost never drink, you don't smoke, and you're even a former athlete!”

I have no difficulty understanding that he's trying to keep from freaking me out.

I don't like the smile on his face one little bit.

 * * * 

Skipping over the boring parts, here's the report from the sonogram of my abdomen that was done two days later in a specialized medical clinic. I read the results while waiting for the doctor who's going to go over them with me, and I immediately consult Wikipedia on my smart phone. I look for the two words that appear in bold after the phrase “the patient was found to present a . . . .” Those two words are
hepatocellular carcinoma
.

Wikipedia is efficient as always.

A carcinoma is a malignant tumor.

Tumor. Malignant.

Two words, are each unpleasant enough taken alone.

Hepatocellular, on the other hand, means that the organ affected is the liver.

The liver.

Outstanding.

Even newborn babies know that a tumor to the liver is the most dangerous kind.

Two lines down is the size of the intruder.

It's six centimeters long.

In my cozy tummy I've been hosting a hepatocellular carcinoma
6.0 centimeters in length, with a diameter of 0.7 centimeters, as my guest.

More or less the size of a French fry.

Even newborn babies know that French fries aren't good for you.

I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. My blood tests also confirm the excessively elevated values of the tumor markers that show the undesired presence in my organism. There's no chance it's a mistake.

I don't even wait for the doctor who is scheduled to come break the news to me. I head out onto the street.

I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver.

I wander aimlessly.

I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver.

I repeat the words over and over aloud, like an obsessive mantra.

I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver.

I can't seem to stop.

I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . . I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . . I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . . I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . . I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . . I have a six-centimeter tumor in my liver. . . .

I take a few seconds off from my impersonation of Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
and I finally have a glimmer of intelligence. I wonder to myself: “So is six centimeters very big for a tumor in the liver?”

According to the oncologist, who frowns as he studies my sonogram, that really is a very respectable size for a tumor. A handsome flourishing robust tumor. The first thing he prescribes, in fact, the first thing he orders me to do is to get an immediate and complete CAT scan of my upper body.

I schedule one, and in the meanwhile, I spend the night surfing the Web. I go back to doing something I've always hated. I study. I don't feel like doing anything else—eating, drinking, or sleeping. All
I want to do is spend hour after hour Googling the words
tumor, liver, cure,
and so on.

In the course of the next few hours I become the world's greatest living expert on carcinomas. I even discover that the first operations to remove tumor masses were done by the Egyptian scientist and polymath Imhotep, a sort of Nilotic Leonardo da Vinci, capable of designing the immortal pyramids and founding Western medical science, and ultimately actually venerated as the god of medicine. At the time, nearly all his patients, operated upon without anesthesia, either died during the procedure or else bled to death immediately afterward. I skip four thousand years of medical history and focus on more recent studies of my buddy Fritz.

I read a Web page on the subject: “Hepatocellular carcinomas are the most common type of primary liver tumors.”

I've come down with an illness that isn't even particularly original.

“It develops in the liver cells and damages the other healthy cells.”

Great.

“The uninterrupted growth of the tumor cells can result in a malignant form of tumor.”

Outstanding.

“At first, this kind of tumor doesn't cause any particular disturbance and is very difficult to identify.”

What an asshole.

“Once the tumor has reached a certain size, various symptoms may manifest, such as abdominal pains, bloating, weight loss, nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, and a yellowish tinge to the complexion and the eyes.”

I've got every one of them.

“Men are more likely to develop this type of tumor. Depending on the nature and stage of the tumor, a different array of treatments can be utilized. Surgery or liver transplant are viable alternatives only if the tumor is small and contained within the liver. If however the
tumor has spread and expanded, chemotherapy or radiation therapy can extend survival times, but will not cure the pathology.”

They will not cure the pathology.

The words echo like one of Pavarotti's high Cs in the back of the pastry shop. I sit there staring at my laptop, locked into a freeze frame.

They will not cure the pathology.

They . . . will . . . not . . . cure . . . the . . . pathology
.

The findings from this search are unequivocal.

Nothing has changed since Imhotep's day.

I'm going to die.

Up till now, that's a verb in the future tense that we've all known since we were kids. We're all going to die. It's just that I'm going to die a little sooner than expected.

A little sooner than I would have liked.

A little sooner than seems strictly fair.

I'm going to die a little sooner. Period.

 * * * 

I still haven't said anything to Paola. Partly out of shame, partly because she never answers my phone calls, but chiefly because I still don't really believe it. I don't want to believe it, and really, I can't.

At breakfast, I tell the news to the other two musketeers: Umberto and Corrado. I meet them in a little café we've frequented since we were in high school, where neither the furnishings nor the pastries have changed since then. I even recognize a stale but optimistic brioche that's resided behind the glass display case on the counter ever since 1979.

It's a very complicated breakfast. Super complicated.

Someone ought to urgently publish a guidebook titled:
How Should You Act at Breakfast When One of Your Best Friends Tells You He Has Liver Cancer?
It's the most difficult conversation you can have, out of all the billions of possible conversations. The main problem is nailing the correct tone for the dialogue.