I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (13 page)

“And you’ll do what? Tie me up and carry me into the doctor’s office? Because that’s the only way you’re getting me there.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get. You’ve got it. They told you so. But it’s like you’re going to believe what you want to believe, and no one’s going to convince you otherwise. And that’s just stupid.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“Fine, but with cancer. What’s fine in that? What’s fine in any of this?”

“He’ll call me when he needs to. Doctors don’t just forget to call, David.”

“You’re deluding yourself if you think this is going to have a happy ending the way you’re going with this thing, Mags. Sooner or later you’ve got to have to have something done, and I pray to God that when you come to your senses it’s not too late.”

He was right, of course. Every single word he shouted in frustration made perfect sense, and the only thing that didn’t make sense was . . . her. Her reaction. Her procrastination.

Procrastination . . . she’d loved that word ever since she’d learned it in the fifth grade. Procrastinate: to put off intentionally and habitually. Intentionally or habitually, either way she was screwed, and Maggie knew that as sure as she knew she was stuck in a place where the defense mechanisms go on overdrive and buffer out the immediate shock of cancer, of death, of anything bad. As detrimental as it sounded, though, Maggie found it a great place to hide, a place she didn’t want to leave. It was safe there. It was where the bad things didn’t touch her. Couldn’t touch her.

No phone calls from the doctor meant she could stay in that place, and that suited her fine.

But that place was dark. She’d had her husband cover up the mirror in the bathroom with a towel, and the one over the dresser as well. Why? Because she didn’t want to see the face of cancer. So maybe people thought that was crazy. Maybe even Maggie thought that was crazy, but it got her through until that night, seven weeks after diagnosis. It was after one A.M., David was asleep, and Maggie was not, as had become her usual -sleeping in dribs and drabs. Minutes here and there, but nothing lasting long enough to be considered healthy. Come to think of it, the psychology behind not sleeping was probably just as crazy as the no-mirror policy, but nobody said much of anything to her about it. Then that morning, at one twelve, to be precise, it hit her. All of it did.

“I have cancer,” she whispered at the dark ceiling. “I have cancer.” It wasn’t just something that was going to go away. And it wasn’t something to be ignored any longer. “Cancer.”

“What?” David asked groggily.

“I have cancer.”

He didn’t reply to that. But he didn’t go back to sleep either, and those who knew David also knew that nothing short of a tornado kept him from his appointed eight hours.

“Why?” she whispered. “What did I do shrugged. “ their your that caused this?”

“You didn’t do anything,” he finally said, reaching over to take her hand. For the first time in seven weeks, she let him hold it. “It just happens.”

“But why me? And why now, when the business is going so well?” In a downwardly spiraling real estate market, their sales were actually up.

He chuckled. “Because it’s no respecter of its choices. It just chooses, and to hell with everything else.”

Cancer chooses. What a profound thing to say. But it was true. “David, I have cancer,” she said, sitting up.

“Yes, I know,” he said, siting up with her. And for the first time in the whole ordeal, Maggie cried. Sat there silently, cross-legged in her bed, and let the gentle sobs that came first turn into racking sobs that shook her body with such a vehemence it robbed her of all strength at the same moment David scooted over and pulled her into his arms. And let her cry until the tears were dry, and the sobs were hiccups, and her chest hurt, and her throat hurt. And her soul hurt.

“I can’t stay here,” she finally managed to say, after expending half-a box of tissues and soaking through David’s t-shirt. “In this house. It’s . . . too small. I can’t stay here.”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked, noting that it was well after two by now. “IHOP is open, I think. And Denny’s. Or a McDonald’s drive-through, if that’s what you’d rather do.”

But she didn’t want food. Didn’t want anything. Couldn’t think. “Let’s just go out for a few minutes. I don’t care where.”

So David pulled on pants and changed his wet t-shirt, although Maggie didn’t bother to get out of her pajamas. It didn’t matter how she looked. There were no mirrors visible in her house so she couldn’t see herself anyway, and at a little after two in the morning, who cared? She had cancer. “Cancer,” she said again as she headed to the passenger’s side of the pick-up truck.

The first night of Maggie’s insanity took them to the Wal-Mart parking lot, about two miles from home. David stopped at his favorite gas station and re-filled his beat-up old plastic cup with sixty-four ounces of diet Mountain Dew, probably because he was expecting a rough rest of the night. Maggie just got a cup of ice to chomp on. Why just ice? Because she had cancer and that seemed right. No other explanation necessary.

“I’m good to go home,” she said, after that stop. But apparently, she wasn’t. Because as they drove through the shopping center parking lot on their way back to the road, she asked him to stop. “Under the parking lot light, please. Just for a minute.”

He didn’t ask why, maybe because he knew she didn’t know why. But he stopped, took a few swigs of the dew, and reclined his seat back a couple of notches. “Want to talk?” he asked her.

“No,” she said, knowing that if she did talk, she’d {
margin-top: 1.125em;
”d start crying again.

“Want me to talk?”

“No,” she said again.

“I’ve got some CDs . . . ”

Another no to music. Not even a good tear-jerkin’ country tune where his wife left him, his
dog up and died
and after fifty years he still grieved
, then
let go of life
a little bit the way Maggie just had. Because all she wanted was . . . nothing.

And four hours later, when the sun finally began to come up, David turned on the truck, they left the Wal-Mart parking lot, and went home. Where Maggie was finally able to sleep better than she had since that first day.

Anger is a funny thing, though. It came on her, probably even while she was sleeping, and she woke up ready to kill something, or someone. “I hate my office,” was the first thing she said when she finally got up. “Can’t stand it. Too much clutter. Hate the color.” A nice, tranquil ocean blue they’d put on the walls on a year earlier. “Don’t like the bookshelves where they are, don’t want anything on my walls . . . want it all white. Now, David! We’ve got to do this now, because I’ve got to work in it, and everything is . . . closing in.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” he asked, glancing up at her over his cup of coffee.

“Change it. I’m going to Home Depot for paint.”

“We’ve got two houses to show today, and a closing at noon.”

“Fine!” she snapped. “Since that’s more important than my cancer . . . ”

“Whoa,” he said, setting down his coffee cup. “You’re the one who’s not treating it as important since you won’t find a doctor to cure it. So if it’s not important to you, why should it be to me?”

She threw an English muffin at him and stormed out of the room. And that night she slept in the truck, in the street in front of their house, David in the driver’s seat, Maggie at his side. Neither of them saying a word. And only the occasional gurgle coming from the sixty-four ouncer diet Dew in the cup holder between them. Then it was the next day when David, and a couple of his friends disassembled the bookshelves in Maggie’s office and started taking down the plaques and pictures.

“It’s looking better,” she admitted, two days later. Then to David’s friend, Ted, she said, “Did he tell you why we’re doing this?”

“He just said you need a change. My wife gets crazy at her time of the month, so . . . ”

“I have cancer,” she said. Except to David, and a couple of her close friends, this was the first time she’d said it to someone else. And said it so casually.

“I-I’m sorry to hear that,” Ted replied, backing away from her. Clearly this was the reaction she was going to get with most people.

“Diagnosed seven weeks ago.”

“Uh-huh.” Backing even farther.

“Going to have surgery, as soon as the doctor calls me compassiond fas back.”

“That’s . . . um . . . hope it goes well for you.” Turning, practically running out the door.

In spite of her bad mood, Maggie actually laughed, positive that’s how she’d reacted when Judy, an old sorority sister, had announced she had breast cancer and when Maggie’s grandfather had talked about his prostate cancer at the Thanksgiving dinner table like it was a dreaded distant third cousin.

Seven weeks of denial, two days of anger, and suddenly it was like the damned thing was finally hers to own. “I, um . . . I need to make an appointment with an oncologist,” she said to the scheduling secretary an hour after the first coat of white paint went up on her office walls and she knew, surer than anything, that she hated white walls. “I had another oncologist who diagnosed the cancer, but it’s been almost two months now, and he’s never gotten back with me. So I need to start over, and make an appointment . . . ”

No procrastinating this time. Twenty-four hours later, as a coat of lavender was going up over the white, Maggie walked into the office and said to the waiting surgeon, “I have cancer. Now I need to see about having surgery.”

And just like that, she was on the schedule for a week later. And she wasn’t surrounded by gawking med students, nurses and scribes this time. No, it was just the surgeon and her surgical nurse. “Can we discuss the timeline?” Maggie asked tentatively since every time she’d asked before she’d been ignored.

“We can discuss anything you want,” Dr. Snider said, and pulled up a stool and sat down across from Maggie, quite obviously ready to talk. “Take your time. Make sure you’re clear on everything we’re about to do.”

“Did I wait too long?” Maggie asked. “I mean, it’s been weeks, and since Dr. Campbell wasn’t calling me back . . . I know I should have been more aggressive, but I couldn’t. So, did I wait too long?”

“I think you got to me at just the right time,” Dr. Snider said. Then she smiled. “This is going to be okay, Maggie. I’m going to get you through this. Can’t promise it will be easy, can’t guarantee the outcome yet. And you’re probably going to need some chemo and radiation afterwards. But we’re going to take those things one step at a time.”

“How long will I be down?”

“In the hospital about four or five days, probably another couple weeks of leisure time at home, and after that . . . ” The doctor shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes, but I should think you’ll be ready to get back to some semblance of your normal life pretty soon. Just a watered-down version for a while.”

In time to have that hideous lavender on her walls painted over. “I’m having my office re-done,” Maggie admitted. “Went a little crazy for a while.”

“You’ve got cancer. You’re entitled.”

Prayer wasn’t one of the thin compassiond fasgs that came naturally to Maggie, but the closer she got to surgery day, the more she wondered if she should be praying. She wasn’t religious, per se. More like a believer who didn’t let herself get confined by the trappings of buildings and dictates.
Live a good life, be a good person
. That was something an old Buddhist monk had said to her once, and it stuck. Probably because it was so simple, packed with so much meaning. “Will that get me everything I need in life?” she’d asked him, intending to be cynical.

“Spiritually, yes. The other things . . . they’re not so important unless you want to make them important.” He’d given her his best placid smile and maybe that’s what she most remembered. The man was totally at peace with his world, which was something she desperately needed now. Peace with her world. She’d thought about asking for it, praying for it, maybe even begging for it, because nothing about the past couple of months had been peaceful. In fact, life had been a turmoil of crazies, a bumpy ride full of more ups and downs than the sum total of all the roller coasters in Florida. Simply put, she needed to get off, and fast!

But how? That was the question. Surgery was less than a week away now, and her head was spinning from all the ups and downs, with no apparent way to make it quit.

“Just relax,” David told her.

“Easy for you to say,” she snapped back at him. “You’re not the one who’s sick here.”

“You’re not sick, Mags,” he reminded her. “It’s cancer. They’re going to remove it, you’ll get some treatment, then you’ll be ad;

“Are you being purposely obtuse to make me angry? Because if that’s your goal, you’re succeeding.”

“Are you purposely trying to pick a fight when I’m trying to make you feel better?”

“Feel better? What you’re making me feel is alone, David. Totally isolated, because you don’t have a clue. By now I’d have thought you’d have some feeling for what I’m going through. Real feeling, not platitudes. But to sit there and tell me I’m not sick . . . ” She gave her head a vehement shake. “If you can’t do better than that, do me a favor and don’t do anything at all.”

“What do you want from me, Mags? I’ve painted your office three different times it’s been white, then it was lavender, now it’s some shade of orange.”

“Peach,” she snapped at him.

“Peach, orange! I don’t give a damn what it is. I painted it, and I’ll paint it again if I have to. And I’ll drive you around town again or sleep in the damned Wal-Mart parking lot with you if that’s what you want from me. I mean, I’m doing everything you ask and I don’t know what else you expect from me.”

“That’s being dutiful, David. But not understanding. And there’s a difference.” It was breakfast, the time of day when the seemed to be having most of their fights lately. Who knew why? Maybe left over anxieties from a long night full of bad dreams, when she was able to sleep. Or the exhaustion that came from tossing and turning when sleep eluded her altogether. ou. Whatever the case, breakfast wasn’t compassiond fas a good time for them any more, and this morning was no exception.