by Anita Shreve
The cancer had taken Bridget by surprise, and shed been slow to accept its reality. She remembered the routine appointment for a mammogram in late August, her third since shed turned forty, and the way she'd casually whined to Bill beforehand about how tedious and uncomfortable the process was. After the mammogram, Bridget had waited in a claustrophobic cubicle at the radiologist's, feeling naked in her hospital gown. She'd half read an article in Family Circle about how to stretch three meals into nine, all the while expecting to be dismissed as had happened on her two previous visits. This time, however, Bridget was summoned back for another set of pictures with the reassurance that it was the technique itself that had failed. She waited once again in the cubicle, unable to read, the magazine tightly clasped and leaving a smear of red and black on her fingers. A technician announced that a sonogram would be necessary, the diagnostic test presented without fanfare, suggesting no reason for alarm: it was more a matter of Bridget's having cystic breasts. Bridget lay in a darkened room, gel spread upon her right breast, while the technician ran a paddle around and over her nipple. Again and again, the technician made the circuitous journey, finally putting down the paddle and fetching the radiologist. Bridget's questions — Is everything all right? Do you see anything? — went unanswered as the physician and the technician spoke in hushed tones about a "shadow."
Lights snapped back on, and Bridget was asked to get dressed and to meet with the radiologist in his office. Even though her hands trembled as she buttoned her blouse, Bridget still thought she would be told essentially good news. Removal of a cyst or even a biopsy might be necessary, though one expected a routine result.
In the darkened and cramped office of the radiologist, Bridget was asked to look at her X-ray. She was shown a spot that looked, in the doctor's words, "suspicious." A code word, Bridget would later learn, for "bad."
"You see the star?" he asked, pointing to a shape but looking straight at Bridget. And it was only that afternoon, as she was telling Bill, that she realized that "star" was a euphemism for "crab," for she had seen the crab, the oval with the tentacles reaching into her flesh. Still, even as she said the dreaded word to Bill, she did not believe in it. The tumor would turn out to be benign.
In the weeks that followed, Bridget absorbed the increasingly dismal bulletins as a series of shocks: first the biopsy (malignant); the findings after the lumpectomy (the tumor slightly larger than anticipated); the decidedly bad news about the lymph nodes (five of them implicated); followed by the realization that radiation and rigorous chemotherapy would be necessary. And even the messy reality of those treatments had not fully registered until Bridget had attended a grisly orientation session with a nurse who spoke of anal hygiene and sexual atrophy until Bridget had put up her hand and said, quietly, Stop. She did not want to hear another word, fearful of the power of suggestion. Denial, she was learning, was not only effective but sometimes essential.
Bridget returned home to face a difficult task: Matt needed to be told. Though he'd been vaguely aware that his mother had had some kind of procedure done earlier, he did not know yet about the cancer. She asked Matt to come with her to the living room, the request itself disturbing since Bridget seldom asked for a formal sit-down.
"What?" he asked. And again as he sat down, "What?"
"I have breast cancer," she told her son, knowing that the word "breast" and the word "cancer" might, initially, carry an equal charge, his mother's breasts and cancer being entities Matt would not, at fifteen, want to think about.
Matt, who'd had a unit on cancer the year before in science and who knew all about the disease, cried out, "I don't want to be there when they tell you it's come back!" He then went rigid with shock and fear, and Bridget had had a time of it reassuring her son that, against the odds, all would be well, a physically arduous task that had ended with the two of them eating tacos and watching Sports-Center at 10:00 that night.
Bridget put a foot up on the dashboard and rested her right arm on the windowsill. The few weeks following that night with Matt had been difficult, her son growing increasingly withdrawn, refusing to discuss what was bothering him, as if he, too, knew that to talk about a thing was to make it real. Though Bridget and Bill had decided that for Matt's sake Bill would not move out of his Boston apartment and into Bridget's house (a nostalgic and illogical decision given any teenager's understanding of broken and blended families), Bill took to spending more evenings and nights at the house in order to get Bridget through the treatments and to cook and help Matt with his homework. Bridget was sleeping odd hours and sometimes had to go to bed before 8:00. It comforted her to know that Bill was in the house, even if Matt did not actually need him.
Bill had not been there, however, when the incident with the alcohol had occurred. That was how Bridget thought of it now: The Incident with the Alcohol.
Bridget had woken on a Monday morning with the intention of making French toast for Matt and Lucas Frye, a friend of her son's who had slept over the night before. Lucas's parents — and Bill as well — were traveling. Feeling peppier than usual, Bridget had gone into the kitchen in her bathrobe, set out the ingredients, and then climbed the stairs to rouse the two boys. She called from the open door into Matt's bedroom, Lucas answering groggily. Bridget thought, with some relief, that Lucas would get Matt up and into the shower without her having to do anything, an unexpected boon on a Monday morning. But it was Lucas alone, sheepish and bleary-eyed, who appeared twenty minutes later at the breakfast table. Bridget chastised herself for not having stayed up to make sure the boys got to bed on time.
"Where's Matt?"
"He won't get up."
"Seriously?"
"I can't get him up" was all Lucas would say, trying not to look at the frying bacon.
"You feel okay?" she asked, and Lucas shrugged. Bridget assumed that Lucas was simply as intractable on school mornings as her son.
Once again, Bridget mounted the stairs and walked into Matt's room. He was not in the bed. She called his name, left the bedroom, checked the bathroom, and then returned to his room. It was then that Bridget noticed, in the center of a tangle of jeans and T-shirts and video games, an oval of vomit, orange colored and dried, on the carpet. Bridget called her son's name again and walked further into the room so that she could see between the twin beds. Matt was lying on his side, wearing a pair of mesh basketball shorts and a T-shirt, his feet ensnared in his jeans as if he had made an effort to get dressed. Frightened, Bridget shouted his name. She knelt beside her son and tried unsuccessfully to rouse him. She sat back with a jolt that ran from her throat to her stomach. Had Matt had a seizure?
She ran to the top of the stairs and called Lucas's name, in hopes ol discovering what the boys had been doing, but, as she later discovered, Lucas had already let himself out of the house and was walking to school. Bridget dialed 911, returned to Matt's room, and felt for his pulse, which, alarmingly, was racing. Oddly, her son did not smell of alcohol, which both the EMTs and the police commented upon, asking her repeatedly if her son was prone to seizures. Bridget thought of all the reasons a fifteen-year-old boy might have had a seizure, none of them good. The EMTs put Matt on a stretcher and carried him down the stairs and out the door to the waiting ambulance. Bridget thought, as she pulled on jeans and a sweater, This can't be happening.
Two police cars and an ambulance were in her driveway, the lights of all three vehicles flashing, a small circus certain to bring every neighbor to the window. A mild drizzle fell, and Bridget, though shaking now, worried about Lucas. She told one of the policemen that he should try to find the boy.
Bridget took a seat in the front of the ambulance. No sirens wailed as they drove to the hospital, a silence that alternately alarmed and soothed her. She peered through the narrow opening to the back of the vehicle and saw an EMT rub hard on Matt's sternum, rousing her son long enough for him to utter a word Bridget had never heard her son say and which nearly caused her to demand th
at he watch his language, despite the ludicrousness of the reprimand. Before they got to the hospital, news reached the driver via the radio that Lucas had been found on his way to school and had confessed: the boys had together drunk a fifth of vodka that Bridget had had in the freezer for months, the bottle left over from a small summer dinner party she and Bill had given. She hadn't even remembered the vodka was there. It had become, like the boxes of frozen peas and the Ziploc bags of unidentifiable meat, simply part of the refrigerator's furniture. Lucas, strenuously questioned, insisted that both boys had drunk the same amount, and Bridget wondered how it was that Lucas had been able to walk to school. She thought the vodka had to have been Matt's idea, because his friend wouldn't have known it was in the freezer. Well, he might have seen it on a hunt for an ice-cream bar, but what boy would presume to ask for it? On the other hand, anything was possible. Who'd have thought two fifteen-year-olds would have wanted to become blind drunk on a Sunday night?
Matt was taken from her at the hospital. Bridget sat in a waiting room with televisions in the corners, each showing perky early morning talk shows. When Bridget was finally allowed into the ER to see her son, she found Matt unconscious in the bed, dressed in a hospital gown, and hooked up to several monitors. An IV had been inserted into the back of his hand, an image that chilled her. This was, of course, the same hospital at which Bridget received her chemotherapy treatments. She asked a nurse if Matt's stomach had been pumped and was told that it was too late for that. Her son had already absorbed all the alcohol.
For seven hours, Bridget sat at the end of Matt's bed while nurses and doctors jostled against her in the cramped emergency room, its various smells identifiable and often unpleasant. In the next cubicle, not three feet from where Bridget sat, an elderly man complained of agonizing pain in his abdomen. A doctor came to tell Bridget that Matt's alcohol level was still remarkably high. The physician calculated that at 1:oo in the morning, it would have been nearly lethal. Her son, Bridget was told, had come very close to shutting down his kidneys.
Reeking of alcohol now, Matt occasionally regained consciousness, though he spoke incoherently. Bridget alternated between anger and heartache. What were you thinking? she would cry, and then immediately afterward would whisper, / love you so much. As long as her son was on the IV, Bridget was told, he would not have the terrible hangover she found herself wishing upon him, if only to allow him to feel the punishing effects of what he'd done.
Phone calls were made. To Bill (stunned). To Lucas's parents (stunned and baffled). And to Matt's school (they'd already been informed by the police). Gradually, what had earlier been terrifying — another two swigs of Absolut and might Matt have died? blown out his kidneys? inhaled his vomit? — became tedious as Bridget watched Matt's urine drip into a plastic bag by her knee. By 3:00 that afternoon, Bridget had to remind herself of the gravity of the incident, repeating the words "he almost died" to shock herself into a more alert state.
In silence, mother and son had driven home, Matt at first refusing to enter the house. For most of an hour, he'd sat cross-legged in the driveway, sobbing, and Bridget could not get him to say why. Away from the IV, Matt began to experience the nausea and headache of a hangover, and she could hear him vomiting from time to time in the upstairs bathroom. {Good, she thought.) Bridget, hyper vigilant, could not go to bed until after 3:00 in the morning, needing to check on her son's sleeping form, waking him briefly each time. Her final task, before she crawled into her own bed, was to pour out all the alcohol in the house: two bottles of red wine, one bottle of white, a small bottle of Chivas she hadn't even known was in the cupboard, and, finally, a six-pack of Sam Adams in the fridge, a silly and empty gesture since Bill would almost certainly replace it after his trip. Sam Adams wasn't the problem.
The next morning, Matt dressed willingly and, subdued, ate a full breakfast. When he returned home that afternoon, he devoured guacamole dip with celery sticks while he sheepishly told her what had happened. A dare had turned into a lark, neither boy having any idea how much alcohol was too much, until each had become thrillingly drunk. They'd passed the bottle back and forth, more of a good thing being a good thing. After the Incident with the Alcohol, Matt had gradually regained his more-or-less agreeable disposition, and Bridget sometimes wondered if the experience hadn't been cathartic for her son, if his nearly fatal binge and subsequent survival hadn't purged him of his fear of death (hers).
"Should we stop for coffee?" Bridget asked, lowering her foot from the dashboard.
"These guys must be starving."
"They're always starving," Bridget said, staring at Bill. She hadn't had a husband for almost a decade. Bill, she had discovered, was that rare man who had an extraordinary gift for bringing out the best in people. In herself. In Matt. And doubtless in the two hundred or so employees he had under him in his software business.
"What?" Bill asked, a smile beginning.
"Nothing," she said.
"What?" he repeated.
"I can't believe we're doing this," she said.
With his free arm, he pulled her toward him. She leaned briefly into Bill despite the awkward maneuver over the console. He kissed her quickly, taking his eyes off the road.
"You'll kill us," she said.
Bill pulled into the parking lot of a rest area, and the boys roused themselves. Dressed nearly identically in North Face fleeces and Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, they stepped out of the van and stretched. Each had grown half an inch while sleeping.
"Where are we?" Matt asked.
"I thought we'd get some lunch," Bill said.
Waking from hibernation, the boys walked across the parking lot and into the fast-food complex. Bill put his arm around Bridget. "You're sure you're okay?" he asked.
"Coffee," she said, trying to keep pace with his stride.
"Matt wanted to rent a tux."
"He did?" Bridget asked, surprised that her son thought the occasion merited the formal wear.
"So we did," Bill said.
"You and Matt are wearing tuxes?"
"And Brian, too."
"To a wedding with twelve guests?"
Bill grinned.
"You guys," Bridget said. "How did you pull this off? When did you get them?"
"That night Matt asked me to take him to get basketball sneakers? The tuxes were his idea, and he wants it to be a surprise. But I'm telling you now. Just in case you hate the idea, you'll have time to get used to it. Because, baby, we are wearing those tuxes."
"But I love the idea," Bridget said.
They found the boys in line for Burger King, and Bill joined them. Bridget, who had never been able to stomach fast food, even before she'd gotten sick, gravitated to the frozen yogurt stand. She asked for a medium-size cup of vanilla with nuts on it (no wonder the twelve pounds, she thought). She turned with her cup and saw Bill waving her over to a table where the boys were already deeply into their Double Whoppers with extra cheese. The fat! Not to worry, she thought. The combustion engines inside Matt and Brian would burn off all the calories before they'd even reached the Berkshires. As Bridget walked to their table, she pictured Nora's place, remembering the trip she and Bill had made two months ago both to visit their old friend and to see her new creation. In late October, when Bill and Bridget had decided to get married, Bill had thought of the inn and had written to Nora. There was romance in the idea of inviting old friends only, those who had known Bill and Bridget years ago when they'd been high school sweethearts. Bridget had told her friends from home that the wedding would be just family, a small white lie that bothered her only a little.
"Coffee," Bill announced as Bridget sat down, the boys reining in the clutter of waxed papers and plastic cups, packets of ketchup and straw wrappers. Bill slid the overlarge cup toward her, and, instinctively, she drew her head away. The smell of the coffee was offensive. Slowly, so that Bill wouldn't notice, she pushed the coffee to one side and dug into the yogurt w
ith her plastic spoon. The frozen pudding felt like silk on her tongue, the icy cold welcome, for she had suddenly grown overly warm in the rest area. She slipped her fleece from her shoulders, securing it with her back to the chair. She wiped her forehead and her upper lip.
"You okay?" Bill asked.
"A little hot is all," she said.
"Thanks for lunch," Brian said, a boy who remembered his manners at odd moments, sometimes an hour after the meal, running downstairs from Matt's room to thank Bridget in the kitchen after she had washed all the dishes.
"You're welcome," Bridget said, hoping that Brian would have a reasonably good time this weekend, that he and Matt would find activities to keep themselves busy until the wedding itself.
"What's wrong?" Bill asked quietly.
"I think I just have to go to the ladies' room," she said. "I'll be right back."
Bridget hated public bathrooms with their germs, the toilet paper on the floor, the blocked toilets. She loathed the automatic faucets that refused to produce water, the hot-air dryers that made her desperate for hand lotion. As she reached the door that said women, sweat beaded on her forehead, and she felt a familiar panic and dizziness. She searched for the last cubicle in the second row, a need to be as far away from others as possible.
She shut the door and bent over. She raised the toilet seat with her boot. She closed her eyes and braced herself, two fists up against the opposing metal walls, and waited. A wave of nausea overtook her. She coughed experimentally. Nothing. The sweat had soaked her hair under the wig and trickled down her spine.
Oh God, she thought. She would have to do this alone. Bill could not come in here. How soon would he begin to worry? Would he send someone after her? Another wave rose, and she bent further over. She should try to vomit, get rid of it, but she didn't dare put a finger in her mouth. She might have touched something dirty. She had to be particularly careful about germs now and had learned to wash her hands a dozen times a day. A third wave passed through her, and she tried once more to vomit.
