Good Harbor (17 page)

He looked at her breast from every angle and laid a finger gently against the scar.
“I think it is not so bad that we can’t continue.”

Marcy clucked her tongue. “You’re not using any new lotions or soaps are you?” Kathleen
glared. “Of course you’re not,” Marcy said quickly, handing her samples of two thick,
unappealing creams.

The techs were sympathetic. “It’s pretty bad,” Terry agreed. For the first time, she
looked at Kathleen’s breast as if it were entirely separate from her.

“Sometimes it comes on fast like this,” Rachel said. “But it can clear up fast, too.
Try keeping a few damp washcloths in the refrigerator. That feels good.”

The clinic-wide chorus of reassurance didn’t help. Kathleen took it personally. These
symptoms were just nasty reminders so she wouldn’t forget — not even for a few hours
— that she had cancer. As if she
could
forget.

Lying on the treatment table, her arm above her head, her breast exposed, Kathleen
chewed on it. Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer. It never became a meaningless noise
the way almost any other word did when you repeated it endlessly. There was something
about the way the letters hung together that was oddly malignant.

There’s another terrible word, she thought,
malignant
. The machine moved into place and Terry’s voice sounded over the speaker. “You all
set, Mrs. Levine?”

“Malignant,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?” Terry asked.

“Yes,” she said. No, she thought.

When Joyce called later that morning, Kathleen told her what had happened. “No fuckin’
fair,” Joyce said, and showed up two hours later with a carton of lemonade and a bag
full of cotton sports bras with the tags still on.

“I can’t believe you went to this much trouble,” Kathleen said.

“Hey, this is exactly the least I can do.”

It was the first time Joyce had been to Kathleen’s house. She admired the built-in
bookcases in the living room and stopped to study the chronology of family pictures:
from Hal and Jack as smiling infants to Hal and Jack as smiling adults.

When they reached the deck, Joyce marveled at the garden, where Kathleen’s daylilies
were in full bloom. “What’s that one called?” Joyce pointed to a lush stand of deep
red flowers.

“I think that one’s College Try.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I could go look it up.”

“Don’t bother. You go sit under the awning, and I’ll bring you a drink.”

They sipped their lemonade, not saying much. Joyce thought Kathleen looked worn-out.
Had her arms been this skinny yesterday?

“Buddy was upset with me,” Kathleen said after a long pause.

“Because you were late?”

“Yes. And I know it’s stupid, but I feel like I’m being punished for yesterday.”

“For not calling?”

“For having a good time.”

“Don’t do that to yourself.”

Kathleen didn’t say anything, and for the first time, there was awkwardness to the
silence between them.

“Can I get you anything else?” Joyce asked.

“No. I think I’ll try to nap.”

“Okay. I’ll come by tomorrow and pick up the bras that don’t work.” At the door she
gave Kathleen a hug and thanked her for saying what she was really thinking. “Call
me if you need anything.”

The next day was worse. Kathleen woke up feeling as if she’d been hit by a load of
bricks or flattened like the coyote in those Road Runner cartoons. She felt encased
in cotton wool. She felt like their old dog, Kirchel, on his last shaky legs before
Buddy had taken him to the vet, to have him put to sleep. She came up with one image
after another, lying in bed, trying to marshal the energy to stand.

It took all her strength just to get dressed. Reluctantly, she asked Buddy if he’d
drive her to the clinic, where she asked to speak to the doctor again. She felt guilty
about taking his time two days in a row, but he walked in wearing a sympathetic face.
“I will order some blood tests, but I suspect there will be no explanation for your
exhaustion there,” Dr. Singh said after listening to her heart and lungs. “I do not
mean to imply that your fatigue is not genuine. This is a well-documented side effect.
But it, too, shall pass, Mrs. Levine.”

On the way home, Kathleen closed her eyes and replayed the doctor’s accent. “Pahss.”
What would it be like to be kissed by a man who spoke so beautifully? she wondered,
and dozed until Buddy leaned over and whispered that they were home.

She revived a little, straightened up the kitchen, read the newspaper, did the exercises
for her arm. But then everything drained out of her and she lay down on the couch.

Kathleen opened her eyes three hours later, feeling stiff, groggy, and sweaty. She
must have been dreaming because her heart was pounding. Buddy had left a note on the
kitchen table, saying he was sorry he’d been angry with her the other day, and that
he’d be home early. Kathleen felt abandoned.

“I hate this,” she said out loud, disgusted by the sour smell of her body and the
unfamiliar taste of self-pity in her mouth. “I refuse to live like this.”

She went to the computer, dialed into the library system, and searched for
Final Exit
. The subtitle, “The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance,” struck her as creepily funny,
and she laughed out loud at the message line: “Copy lost.” That’s a good one, she
thought. I guess someone used it and forgot to return it. Joyce would get a kick out
of that.

But she didn’t mention it to Joyce when she called to ask about walking. Kathleen
begged off: “I’m so tired, I just want to read and nap all day. I hope you don’t mind.”

From the chaise on the deck, Kathleen worked through the box of children’s books from
the temple. She was appalled at the quality of the writing and illustrations from
the 1960s, but also ashamed by how little she knew about some of the basic Jewish
concepts they contained. She wrote the rabbi a note saying that nothing in the “collection”
was worth keeping but added that she really wasn’t feeling up to meeting with Brigid.

With that out of the way, she turned on the television and watched old sitcoms. That
night, Buddy sat with her while she watched news programs that seemed intent on terrifying
their audiences: doctors made terrible mistakes without remorse; supermarkets sold
spoiled meat and poison vitamins; the police were vicious.

Kathleen slept badly. When Joyce called the next day, Kathleen put her off again.
In the evening, she watched a report about automobile manufacturers cutting corners
on safety equipment; about teenage murderers; about how the Internet was a minefield
of pornography and hate-mongers. The phone rang.

Buddy put his hand over the receiver and said it was some lady from a breast cancer
support network. Would Kathleen like to talk? She shook her head.

“Are you sure, Kath?” Buddy asked.

She stood up and, without a word, walked past the TV and out the back door. Buddy
followed and fell in beside her.

“I got a nice-sized striper today,” he said as they reached the end of the block and
looked out at the water in the moonlight. He talked too quickly, about how one of
his suppliers was going out of business, about how much Miguel, his assistant manager,
liked the striper Buddy had caught for him and how his mother had fried it in spicy
cornmeal. Kathleen knew Buddy was making an effort, but she couldn’t rouse herself
to ask the questions that would have eased the conversation. She took his arm, and
they walked back.

The following morning as the lights went down in the treatment room, Rachel said,
“We’re half-done, Mrs. Levine.” The laser cut the room in half. Kathleen closed her
eyes, but the red string of light remained before her.

I’m half-done and July is winding down, she thought. Is the summer going quickly or
slowly?

“You all set, Mrs. Levine?” asked Rachel.

“Mrs. Levine is as set as she can be at the moment,” Kathleen said.

“Well, that’s honest,” said Terry. Rachel laughed softly behind her over the intercom.
The machine hummed its fifteen-second song, and then it was time to go home.

That afternoon, Kathleen got a call from Jack. Hal phoned during dinner and said he’d
be home for a visit soon: “Maybe by the beginning of August, if I can get it together.”

Kathleen thought about having her sons at home. Acting as if everything were fine
would take a lot of effort.

“When did you call them?” she asked Buddy.

“What do you mean?” he said, turning away.

“Never mind.” She switched on the television.

JOYCE TRIED NOT
to take Kathleen’s daily rejections too much to heart. She called an oncology nurse
she’d once interviewed, who reassured her that severe fatigue in cancer patients was
normal. So Joyce took to sending silly postcards and tried to be funny and entertaining
on the phone, turning her thin scraps of news into low-key shtick: the latest offering
to the Madonna of Forest Street was a bunch of sorry-looking orange-dyed carnations;
the smelly boy who mowed the lawn for Joyce had hidden some
Playboy
s in their garage. Joyce concluded their conversations with a progress report on her
painting. “You’ve got to come and see my ethereal bathroom,” she said, hoping to sound
intriguing, but Kathleen didn’t rise to the invitation.

“I could come over there,” Joyce offered.

“Let’s talk in the morning,” Kathleen said.

After she finished Nina’s room, Joyce painted the hallway and then her office. She
worked slowly, meticulously. She spackled and sanded even the tiniest hairline cracks
and primed the fresh plaster before painting it. In the bathroom, she sponge-painted
a layer of white over the blue, suggesting clouds on sky. She got so skillful with
the smaller brushes she didn’t even bother taping the windows and barely smudged the
glass.

She was on a first-name basis with the hardware store clerk who had the starfish on
his wrist. Ralph had a girlfriend, Linda, who brought him a peanut butter cookie every
afternoon, but Joyce put on mascara and lipstick whenever she went in for joint compound
or a new brush.

Frank called every morning and every evening, with a new addition to his litany of
work-related excuses. After a week, she stopped asking him whether he was coming up
and he never asked her to drive down. She was mad at him, but also back into a comfortable
routine. She got up before eight and walked through the house, running her hands over
yesterday’s project, studying her brushwork, planning the next task.

Joyce didn’t even bother turning on the computer. She wrote postcards to Kathleen
and letters to Nina, who sent back a series of breathless notes. She was having an
awesome time. The kids were awesome. She needed socks. Could Joyce please send frosting-in-a-can?
She’d been chosen cocaptain of a coed soccer team. Could they send extra money for
candy at the canteen?

Joyce’s days became more and more stripped down. Frank called. She called Kathleen.
She wrote to Nina. She painted, and by four in the afternoon she could recite the
day’s top stories, verbatim, with the announcer on National Public Radio. She bought
prepared dinners at the supermarket and ate them while she read the newspapers and
drank two glasses of wine. She kept her mind off Frank, the way she kept her tongue
off the chipped filling in her right rear molar.

She fell asleep after the eleven-o’clock news and dreamed of painting enormous walls
in a palace by the ocean. “I’m like a nun, or something,” she thought, looking at
herself in the bathroom mirror.

“Me and my BVM.”

One afternoon, she managed to get herself to Good Harbor but walked only partway across
the beach. It felt too lonely without Kathleen.

After five days alone, she drove home to Belmont, feeling a little like a thief as
she unlocked the door to her own house. She left the rooms dim behind drawn blinds
as she looked through the mail. Only a few things required her attention. Frank paid
the bills and threw away the junk. She stuffed the last of her underwear into a plastic
bag. She lay down on Nina’s bed and inhaled the lingering scent of strawberry shampoo.