The Department of Lost & Found (21 page)

don’t know how I didn’t see it, but I guess when you’re doped Iup on Vicodin and confined to an adjustable bed (which I actually sort of enjoyed: with the press of a button, you’re in any position desired! Just like they say in the commercials!), things can get overlooked. So it wasn’t until my mom was doing a last-minute check to ensure that I hadn’t forgotten anything in the hospital room that she found it. It had fallen underneath my bed; it must have floated off the swivel tray where Carol placed my food and Sally stacked sundry magazines.

“Do you need this?” My mom waved the sheet of paper in the air while still crouched down. I’d never actually seen her do anything even remotely like housework, so I just sat in my wheelchair and stared, mouth agape.

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“What is it?” I asked.

She stood upright. “It looks like a note. From Zach.” Her eyebrows rose higher. In a momentary lapse of weakness (which were steadily increasing these days), I’d confided in my mom about the debacle of my stoned phone call. She handed it over to me.

Natalie,

I stopped by but you looked so peaceful sleeping that I didn’t
want to wake you. Figured you could use the rest. Dr. Chin has
kept me updated, and it sounds like we’re in the home stretch. I
couldn’t be happier for you.

If you need anything, please call. Really. Please do. Whatever weirdness came between us certainly isn’t worth you not allowing me to help.

I know that you’ ll be back on your feet and running the world
in no time.

Love,

Zach

I tucked it into my purse that was wedged beneath my arm in the wheelchair, then told my mom that I was ready. I surveyed the room: its view of the river, a crumpled gown near my desk, empty water bottles that never seemed to quench my thirst. And I decided I’d never be back.

“Let’s go, Mom. Please take me home.”

ja k e k i s s e d m y parents hello like he’d never been gone. Like two years hadn’t passed, and like, until three months ago, another
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man hadn’t taken his place in my bed. He supported my weight as I slowly rose from the wheelchair and hobbled into bed.

“Dr. Chin told me that I should feel better by Monday,” I said, already offering up excuses for my own flimsiness.

“I’m in no rush,” he replied while pulling back the covers.

“And I dig your new method of transport. Can you do wheelies yet?” He smiled.

I groaned and leaned into my pillows. I hated the damn wheelchair, what it stood for, how it made me feel. “Don’t get used to it.

I’m ditching it after the weekend.”

I closed my eyes and overheard him talking to my mom in the living room. My parents were staying at a hotel in midtown, but he assured her that he’d look after me. I listened to him and wondered if he’d really do that this time: give me what I needed, even when I hadn’t asked. I saw that my closet door was open and noticed that he’d already hung up some of his shirts. I check into the hospital and two days later, my ex-boyfriend has slid back, not just into my closet, but into my life as well. Who’s in need of a doctor now?

Jake still had a studio apartment in the East Village where he’d crash when he was in town, but I’d agreed to let him stay with me so that someone would be there in case I literally fell.

My dad came into the bedroom and kissed me, saying that they’d stop by in the morning. My mom straightened up the towering stacks of research on my desk, chastizing me under her breath for working when I should have known better, and when she was satisfied, both at the guilt she’d laid and her cleaning job, she handed Jake an itemized list of precooked meals that she’d stowed in the fridge. And then, just like that, he and I were alone.

“I wrote a song for you,” he said, as he sat on the edge of the bed.

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Back when I was twenty-five and my boyfriend was a budding rock star, I used to think that this was the ultimate love letter: I mean, seriously, like the chick who inspired “In Your Eyes” wasn’t totally psyched when Peter Gabriel penned that one. Could there be anything more romantic? Like a promise etched in a high school yearbook or initials carved into a tree. What Jake did was make music, and if he could make music about me, surely, it would have sealed our fate. Every few months, I’d ask him, “Write a song for me.” He would always nod and swear that he would. Eventually, I grew too embarrassed to keep asking. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the fact that I was quietly desperate for lyrics inscribed with my name or the fact that he never got around to writing them.

“Why now?” I asked, leaning back into my pillow, years after I’d lost my romantic idealism. “Is it because of the cancer?”

“I wrote it long before the cancer,” he said. “You just weren’t around to hear it when it was finally done.”

“What took you so long?” I sat up and stared at him.

“I started it on the last road trip before we broke up. But you ended things before I could ever play it for you. And it’s funny—

once you were no longer there, writing it became the most critical thing in the world.” He smiled slightly at the irony.

“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” I said wearily, my eyes drooping under their own weight.

“Something like that,” Jake said. “Something pretty close to that exactly.”

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Dear Diary,

It’s been nearly two weeks since Jake has been back; I’m sorry
that I haven’t written sooner. It’s all been a little overwhelming,
if I’m being honest.

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The good news is that the doctors are really happy with my
progress and recovery. And though there are no guarantees—

after all, we still have a few more rounds of chemo—for the first
time, they feel confident that I can beat this. Dr. Chin said that
he doesn’t want to get my hopes up, but it’s too late. They’re up.

And maybe it’s having Jake here or maybe it’s just that my body
is fighting back, but either way, like the nurse, Carol, said, I’m
feeling like sunnier skies are heading my way.

Which, of course, brings me to Jake. It’s strange, Diary. How
you can live without someone for so long, and then how once he’s
woven his way back into your life, once he’s proven himself in-valuable, you wonder how you ever lived without him. Because
that’s what happened with Jake. I tried to take it slow. But Jake is
like the quicksand in my dreams: Even if I try to fight it, I’m
pul ed in deeper. It’s a strange thing for me, the col ision of the
two things that I can’t control. This cancer and Jake.

To his credit, he’s been nothing short of wonderful. Ned never
could have done what he’s done. Each morning, we change my
dressing—the first few days, it was bloody and gooey and truly,
fairly sickening, but he didn’t flinch. My new breasts still look
like a porn star’s: swollen and engorged, and though I’m a little
freaked out that I might look like a circus act for the rest of my
life, Jake just smiles as he reapplies the gauze and tel s me that
with that cleavage, I’ l certainly get the senators to do whatever
the hel I want. Fly you to the moon, they would, he said yesterday. Just one look, and they’ d be putty.

Of course, even if my boobs don’t deflate, these senators
would still most likely be terrified of them in their present state.

You see, dear Diary, I’m currently nipple-less. And yes, it’s as
strange as it sounds. Where my small but pert breasts and rose-pink nipples once lay, now reside two hulking bald masses. But
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none of this seems to faze Jake. He tel s me that I’m beautiful,
even though I don’t think it’s true. I still try to wear my wig
around him as often as possible.

And it’s not just in tending to my wounds that he’s proven
himself. He’s essentially been like a servant, which I realize sounds
like a strange term to use when describing an is-he-or-isn’t-he
boyfriend, but at this moment, at this exact time, that’s what I
needed. He indulges me in my
Price Is Right
fixation, even
hopping off the couch and rushing to the computer to frantically
look up an average price of a barbecue grill or lawn chair or
power drill just in the nick of time before the contestants place
their bids. He’ ll go to the grocery store when we’re out of food,
he’ ll walk Manny when he needs fresh air. Last night, I was
so bored that I suddenly had a ridiculous urge to watch
Top Gun,
and he even ran out to the video store to grab the DVD.

I watched him leave and thought that he’ d be the perfect husband to have around when I was pregnant. (If I ever could be, I
should note.) Pickles and ice cream at three in the morning? Yes
ma’am!

Sal y, always the skeptic, is a little less enthused. “Remember that they call it ‘winning you back’ for a reason,” she said
one afternoon when he’ d run out to Citarel a to pick up some
mint chocolate chip, right before I lit up a joint. “It’s a challenge
at first for him, to see if he can pul it off. What really matters is
if he can keep his game face on once the thril of the game has
worn off.” Maybe you should write an article on that, I told her.

“Please.” She sighed wearily. “Like I haven’t a hundred times.”

She then eyed me and said dryly, “Clearly, the advice doesn’t
rub off on readers.”

I should probably also tel you that Zach has cal ed twice.

I returned his cal the first time but got his voice mail, and I
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haven’t yet called him again. I know. I should. But Sally told me
that he and Lila are still hanging out, and for whatever reason
(and really, Diary, I’m not sure of the reason or else I’ d try to
explain it because Janice tel s me that that’s the real benefit of
having a diary to begin with), I’m still pissed off about it. Any
t

h

e

o

r

i

e

s

as to why? Yeah, I know. Me neither. I’ve asked Manny to contribute his brilliant thoughts, too, but he wasn’t entirely helpful,
either.

Sally told me that I wasn’t being fair. That Jake was back in
my life, and if Zach wanted Lila back in his, then who was I to
begrudge him? She’s probably right. No, she is right. But I sort
of figure that I’m a charity case, so I’m allowed to take the help
of whomever offers, even if it just so happens to be the ex-boyfriend who was the only person I ever truly loved. I’m not so sure
what Zach’s excuse is.

R o u n d S i x

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February

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s i x t e e n

got to work early enough the morning of my first day back.

INot as early as I would have liked to, and certainly not as early as I would have six months before, but 8:45 was pretty damn good for me right now. Jake wanted me to stay in bed with him.

Don’t get me wrong: I still had the physical desire of a dead whale and he’d only recently moved back in with me. Still though, I’d wake in the middle of the night and watch his chest rise and fall.

And I’d gotten used to lingering in bed with him—sometimes, I’d smoke a joint so I could stomach breakfast, other times, we’d just lie around, spinning our worlds together after they’d drifted so far apart. At night, he’d pull out his guitar and sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed, the comforter puffy around his legs, and sing to me. I hadn’t yet asked to hear the song he’d written for me, 200

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but I knew that I would one day. And I hoped that I would one day soon.

But this morning, my first morning back, I pushed back his hand from around my waist that tried to tie me to the sheets like an anchor and rose with a purpose. I, Natalie Miller, was going back to work. Regaining control. Getting back in the saddle. I tore the plastic from the dry cleaners off my perfect black Calvin Klein pantsuit, steamed up the mirrors in the bathroom from a long, hot shower, and even took the time to apply the earth-toned eye shadow that Sally insisted I buy during a recent venture to Sephora.

The finishing touch was, of course, the wig. I secured it in place and gave myself a once-over. If you didn’t peer too closely, you could barely see everything that cancer had changed about me.

The security guard to our building barely recognized me. In fact, he asked me for my ID, something he hadn’t done in at least four years. I chalked it up to my brunette Farrah Fawcett locks and pressed the elevator button to the thirty-first floor. The office was just getting warmed up for the day. Junior aides were sipping coffee and picking at bagels in their cubes, and the phones were building a slow roar before reaching their fever pitch. I pushed open the door to my office, my revered office with the window view, the one that I earned from putting in countless and thankless late-night hours with and for the senator when everyone else had gone home to get some sleep or to see their kids or to catch the Knicks game. And what I saw was not my immaculate desk, piled high with pictures of diplomats with their arms slung around me and various charitable plaques that had been dropped by the office as a thank-you for Dupris’s support. What I saw instead was Kyle with his feet propped up and his borderline tenor voice blaring into the earpiece on my phone. He waved me in, and I sat sulking on the leather chair that I’d bought at Pottery Barn until he finally hung up.