Two Sisters: A Novel (19 page)

That was a lie. For the past several months, Pia felt almost crippled by exhaustion. Her body ran out of gas by noon. She’d never been like other women who dragged their asses through life. Always, Pia had energy to spare. Will had married a domestic CEO, she often told him, who ran Winston Corp. with ease and confidence. Until lately, she had been great at her job. Never once needing an afternoon nap or a fortifying cappuccino. Balls were never dropped. For the past few months, however, she’d felt energy drain right out of her body the moment she pulled herself out of bed. And she never told a soul that she’d once parked in a far corner of the lot behind Ann Taylor to sleep in her car one afternoon because she feared driving home. The mere energy it took to concentrate on the road seemed beyond her. Is that what cancer felt like? A punctured fuel tank? A deflated balloon?

“There’s no mistake,” Dr. Payton said. “Cancer affects everyone differently. Clearly, you have a high tolerance for discomfort.”

Pia straightened herself in the soft chair.

“What’s the plan?” Will said, leaning forward.

As she watched Dr. Payton’s lips move, Pia heard only buzzing in her ears. How many times, she wondered, had he delivered this same bad news? Surely, it was the worst part of his job. Patients probably slumped over in their chairs, sobbing. Did they scream, “No, no, no!” Did black mascara run down their faces in two long tread marks? She noticed a teak tissue box on the patient side of Dr. Payton’s tidy desk. In her mind she pictured the scene: An interior designer dressed in a Chanel suit sat in this very chair and reached her hand forward. “The box should go
here
,” she said. “Within reach.” Fumbling for a tissue would never do, not at a moment like this. And she would advise against leather upholstery. (“Too impersonal.”) Though she would urge regular cleaning of the wool fabric. Smelling a previous patient’s desperation would be insensitive, at best.

“. . . aggressive round of chemotherapy. Commencing immediately.”

Pia glanced about the room noting the soothing wood tones, taupe carpeting, filtered overhead lighting. Had it all been on the designer’s blueprint? Decor to soften death’s blow?

“Mrs. Winston?”

She turned her head. “Pia, please.”

“There is no easy way to deal with news like this, Pia. Breast cancer research is well funded and moving forward daily. There have been remissions at your advanced stage. All we can hope is—”

Remission
, she thought. The very word itself hinted at impending doom. As if cancer were merely on the run and would eventually turn itself in.

“What about surgery?” Will asked.

“Surgery is not a viable option.”

“We want a second opinion.”

“Will.” Pia looked apologetically at Dr. Payton. Death was no excuse for bad manners.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Payton said, to which Will replied, “
Nothing
is okay about this.” There was no time to be polite. That morning, as they sat in Marc Payton’s waiting room, Will had been shocked to see so many sick patients. Eyebrowless ladies in turbans, sallow-skinned men with portable oxygen tanks, caregivers wearing surgical face masks, lamppost-thin women hugging themselves into layers of thick cabled sweaters. If Payton was the best, why did his waiting room look like death’s foyer?

“A second opinion is entirely understandable.” Dr. Payton lightly pressed his fingertips together. “I would advise you to schedule a consult immediately, however. These cancers spread at an alarming rate. I’ll messenger the scan results to whomever you choose. But, please, Mrs. Winston—Pia—get treatment as soon as you can. If this were me, or my wife”—for the first time he spoke directly to Will—“I’d start today.”

Pia lifted her perfectly pointed chin. “That’s not possible. Emma has a soccer game.”

T
HE SECOND OPINION
was
worse
than the first.

“Quality of life is a consideration here,” they were told. “Some of my patients choose palliative care at this point.”

“
Palliative?”
Will tensed up, as though he was about to punch the doctor in the face. Pia rolled the word around and around in her head like sheets in a dryer, until her thoughts were a giant knotted ball.

“Thank you,” she said politely, holding her purse with both hands to steady the shaking. She then stood up and walked out of the room without looking at a soul. After finishing the consult on his own, Will found his wife sitting in the car, staring blindly out the windshield.

“Sweetheart—”

“Take me home.”

“We’ll go to Sloan-Kettering in New York.”

“Please, Will. I want to go home.”

In silence, Will drove his wife to their beautiful Connecticut house, its four dormer windows embedded in the pitched slate roof. A fieldstone facade extended all the way to the three-car garage. Glossy white shutters trimmed each French window, and, of course, a gently sloping emerald-colored lawn rolled down to the street. Anyone driving by that home would think the inhabitants had it made. Not a care in the world.
How stupid people are
, Pia thought.
Utterly clueless.

Inside, Blanca was drying her hands on a kitchen towel, her thick eyebrows pressed together. “Okay, Miss Pia?”

“Fine,” said Pia with a sad smile. “Would you please put the water on for tea?”

Alone, Will climbed the staircase to their master suite. Blanca had already made the bed, opened the drapes covering the gleaming glass doors leading to the sundeck. He peeled back the comforter on Pia’s side of the bed, arranged it in a neat triangle, fluffed her down pillows, and smoothed the soft linen sheets with both hands. Then he walked into the huge closet on his side of the dressing room, shut the door behind him, and wept.

Chapter 20

I
MMEDIATELY
, P
IA WAS
sucked into the cancer vortex. Her body ceased to belong to her; it was now the property of Connecticut General’s shiny new cancer wing. What Pia needed to do, the white coats told her, was
fight
. The very cells that gave her life had become enemy invaders crouching in dark corners, reloading ammo. Battling them on their own turf was her only means of self-defense. But they were wrong. For the first time in her life, Pia Winston understood that
surrender
was her only option. If she stood a chance at all, it would be because she released herself to the ugly machinery of cancer—hard plastic scanners with doughnut-hole entrances; robotic arms shooting burning, disfiguring radiation; thick IV needles attached to cloudy tubing; saggy bags of hideous pink fluid.

“Everything off from the waist up.”

Without question or comment, Pia had to do what she was told. Surrender to a team of strangers. Giving
in
was the only way not to give up.

But surrender had never been her style.

“This way, honey.” Will gently cupped Pia’s elbow as he guided her to the hospital’s elevator. He spoke in a reverent whisper. She wanted to elbow him in the sternum.

“I’m not an invalid,” she said icily.

Looking like a lost child, Will shifted his hand to his wife’s back. Pia felt the warmth of his flat palm. It took all her strength not to whip around and glare at that hand until Will returned it to his own damn body.

“We’ll need to sit down with Emma,” she said. As soon as the elevator doors opened, she stepped inside and nestled in the far corner. Will stood woodenly beside her.

“Level C, please,” he said to the woman in scrubs nearest the buttons. She nodded and darted a sympathetic glance in Pia’s direction.

In that slowly descending elevator, Pia’s heart beat so hard it hurt. She wanted to jam the red emergency button, kick open the doors. What good was all that Pilates if she didn’t have the strength to pull herself out of an elevator stuck midfloor? If she kicked off her shoes she could probably outrun Will, what with all that pizza he ate at the office. Outside she would hide, then call a taxi. She’d have the driver drop her off at the Sound. Will would never think to look for her by the water.

Over and over since Dr. Payton had looked up from that sickening manila folder, Pia replayed different scenarios in her mind. What if she’d never answered the phone when Dr. Rushkin called with the bad news? If she’d been away with Will, or at her parents’ house in Queens, she would be perfectly fine now, absolutely alive instead of on an elevator to death. If Will had bypassed her breasts that night at the Greenbriar when they made love, and every other time since, she’d be at the organic dry cleaners right now. Easily, she could have ignored the lump she felt in the shower. Easily, she had! It’s not like she’d felt
that
sick. A nap in the car? What’s the big deal? Fatigue is a national malaise. She’d heard it on the evening news. All she had to do was alter her lifestyle somewhat. Blanca could pick up Emma from school while she napped. They could have the windows tinted on the SUV so none of her gossipy neighbors could ever see her curled up on the backseat. If no one had told her she had cancer, perhaps her body would forget it, too. Didn’t she once hear about a woman who outlived her husband because he never told her that the doctor told him she had only months to live? How could one early morning phone call destroy a whole life?

“The new wing is nice.” Will watched the numbers descend into letters on the digital display over the elevator doors.

Pia nodded, but she didn’t agree. The very name was wrong.
Wing.
It was absurd. Wings were uplifting. They gave you flight, took you elsewhere, not down to the basement level where human beings were irradiated and injected with poison. That wing, with its mini Starbucks and laptop stations in the lobby, was a farce. Who were they trying to fool? Coffee aroma only slightly masked the fact that they were in a hospital that smelled the way all hospitals do: disinfectant, Betadine, latex gloves, and rotting flowers for people who never did get well. Plus, the infusion unit—the final hope for the sickest of the sick—was closer to hell than heaven. Of course her treatment was in a basement. There would be no means of escape.

When the elevator went
bing
and the doors opened, Will sounded pitiful with his overcheerful, “Here we are!” Pia followed him off, but turned to leap back into the elevator when she saw a gray-faced man and a Vermeer woman: white lipped and lashless. Quickly, Will grabbed her arm.

“This is us.”

Suddenly weak in the knees, Pia gripped her husband’s strong shoulder. Why had she answered that damn phone?

“E
VERYTHING OFF FROM
the waist up.”

Each morning was the same routine. Will and Pia dropped Emma off at school together, then Will left his wife at the hospital entrance, a few yards from the elevator leading to the infusion unit.

“I can stay,” Will offered each day, even as they both knew he didn’t mean it. Like Pia, he’d rather be anywhere else.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Go be a master of the universe.”

They kissed good-bye. A bittersweet connection. Each morning’s kiss was numbered in their minds, though neither would dare utter such an unthinkable thought. Pia was careful to walk fully upright and wave cheerfully as Will drove off. As if chemo was college and Will was a proud parent.

At first, it was true. She
was
fine. This isn’t so bad, she thought. The wide pink leatherette recliner was comfortable enough. The IV needle only hurt a little as it punctured the bouncy vein on the back of her hand. It felt like any other shot or the sharp prick of donated blood. With her iPod buds in her ears, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the soft chair, listening to the party favorites Will had downloaded for her. It was the music they played when they made love—all pulsing beat and memory of dancing drenched in sweat and abandon. The sound of freedom.

“All done.”

That’s what the nurse said after the first full dose, her hand gently shaking Pia’s shoulder.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Pia sat up, took a deep breath expecting a wave of nausea. She reached up to stroke her hair, bracing herself to feel a clump let loose in her hand. But there was nothing. She felt fine. When Blanca picked her up, she didn’t go to bed when she got home. Instead, she called the salon to see if Tara had time for a full-leg wax and a paraffin manicure. Her nails were a mess. She drove herself to the appointment and made it home without the slightest desire to park beneath the tree at the far corner of Ann Taylor’s back lot.

On day two she felt fine, as well. That whole first week, in fact, made her question chemotherapy’s frightening reputation. Perhaps other patients were less strong? Less fit?

“I’ll take my own car, darling,” she told Will.

“You sure?”

“I’m meeting Mama in the city for lunch.”

Hiding her illness from Lidia would be easy, she thought, relieved. Why had Dr. Payton been so glum? Was it his healing strategy? Prepare his patients for the worst so he would seem like a miracle worker?
Payton over at CG is the
best. Was his dire diagnosis merely a means of enhancing his reputation? Surprising herself, Pia felt hopeful. She brought homemade antioxidant muffins for the nursing staff.