I shuffled into the dressing room and slowly unzipped my wool cardigan, folding it neatly on the velvet bench that sat beside the full-length mirror. I tugged my turtleneck over my head and dropped my jeans to the floor in one smooth motion: All I had to do was unbuckle my chunky brown belt and they fell to the ground. There was nothing there to hold them up—no hips, no waist, no thighs, which just last summer I’d willed to be two inches smaller in circumference.
The light in the dressing room was designed to make you look good from any angle. No fluorescent bulbs to illuminate under-eye circles that turn you into an eerie incarnation of a character from Dawn of the Dead or to spotlight the backs of your legs in such a way that they resemble your grandmother’s Jell-O mold. So because I was given an early advantage, you’d have thought that I would have looked better.
I’d stopped examining myself in the mirror about two months back, just after my second chemo treatment. I found it too depressing to stare at my dollhouse-size waist and make bargains with God to do something, anything to get my old body—really, my old life—back. So I stopped looking. When I stepped out of the shower, I’d avert my eyes. When I’d disrobe for bed, I’d simply drop my clothes by my nightstand and crawl under the covers.
“Can we peek?” Sally asked and pulled the curtain back. Before I had time to stop her, she and Lila stepped into the room. I watched them try to hold their faces steady, but Sally’s eyes popped unintentionally and the corners of Lila’s mouth twitched the way that they always did whenever she was upset.
“Oh sweetie,” Sally said and moved toward me, resting her hands on my shoulders, then running them down my arms until she interlocked her fingers in mine.
“It’s okay.” I shrugged, before my eyes filled with tears.
I stood there, nearly naked, and exposed the skeleton of my former self. I turned toward the mirror and ran my fingers over my ribs and moved my hands lower where they rounded over my protruding hip bones. My legs looked like kindling, like the twigs you’d toss into a fire to stoke the ambers that weren’t hearty enough to get the fire started in the first place. I turned to the side and felt paper thin. From the rear view, I craned my neck and could see that my back dove into my upper thighs; it no longer bothered to stop at the curve of my butt.
“Stop,” Lila said, waving her hand in front of her. “Enough. Enough of examining yourself and of us gaping and making this much more horrible than it has to be.” I turned to look at her. “I’m serious,” she said. “This is all too heavy. Too melodramatic. There have to be some positives here.” She pleadingly looked at Sally for help.
“True,” Sally agreed, picking up on her lead. “Let’s see. You are as thin as the tiniest of supermodels. Heidi Klum best watch her back.” I tried to force a smile, but my face refused.
“Oh, okay,” Lila continued. “And you never have to worry about going to the gym anymore!”
“Good one,” Sally said, raising her finger in the air. “And if you so choose, you can live on bonbons and éclairs for the rest of your chemo and not gain a dime.”
“Lucky bitch,” Lila grunted with a smile, at which I had to laugh.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Now get out so I can finish getting dressed. I thought we were pressed for time.” Lila had to be back uptown in order to make a 6:00 train to Delaware for her father’s sixtieth birthday party.
They shuffled out into the showroom, and I felt my smile falter. I turned again and faced forward, staring myself down, willing myself to look away yet remaining paralyzed in the horror of it all. I was a ghost of my old self. A ghost with a fabulous bridesmaid dress but a ghost, nevertheless.
“I NEED SOME pot,” I announced to Sally on the subway ride home.
She did a double take at Lila and practically spit out her Diet Coke.
“You need some what? Did I hear you correctly?”
“I need some pot,” I repeated. At my last appointment, Dr. Chin had casually mentioned, in a I’m-not-recommending-this-because-it’s-illegal-but-should-you-choose-to-do-this-it-mightbe-a-wise-thing sort of way, that many cancer patients find that smoking marijuana helps both their pain and their appetite.
You should know that in college, pot was not my thing. In college, everyone has their “thing.” For me, that was white wine. Brandon preferred rum and Coke. Lila was a fan of vodka shots. Sally? She knew where to score a bong hit without having to actually pay for the pot itself. Sally wasn’t the only one. In fact, an entire posse of our friends would disappear to the “flight deck” (where, ahem, one might take flight) of Brandon’s fraternity house and emerge forty minutes later enshrouded by a plume of smoke and with a somewhat glassier look in their eyes. I didn’t judge. It just wasn’t for me. I worried it would put me too far out of my control. Chardonnay I could monitor—I knew exactly how much I could handle before the blurry line between tipsy and so-drunk-the-paper-gossip-column-might-write-you-up crept its way into my impaired cerebrum.
So understandably, today on the subway, Sally was caught off guard.
“Nat, I stopped smoking after college, you know that,” she said, and I raised my eyebrows. “Okay, but really, I totally quit when Drew and I started dating. You know he can’t stand it. Besides, don’t you get tested for work? Couldn’t this go on your permanent record or whatever you politicians have?”
“Work’s sort of a nonissue right now.” I sighed. “The senator bailed on the birth control bill I was pushing, so now she has me researching some stem cell stuff from home. Other than that, I’m just treading water.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to admit that the senator had demoted me due to the hooker debacle. “It’s a slow time until the start of the term and all. Anyway, back to the issue at hand,” I continued. “I’m quite certain that you have to still know someone,” I said, as the subway operator overshot our station, sending our balances out of whack and propelling us into one another. Lila grabbed my arm and steadied me. “I’m okay,” I said, as the car finally lumbered to a stop.
“Let me make some calls,” Sally said. “I might know someone who might know someone.”
“That’s what I thought.” I reached for the handrail on the stairway and forced myself up toward daylight.
IN A STRANGE turn of fate, we ran into Dr. Zach on the walk home. In the largest city in the world, chock-full of, oh, I don’t know, a gazillion nameless faces, it figured, given the strange karma that had blown my way in recent months, that while standing in front of Gristides, mulling over whether to stop for a cup of tea, Zach would walk out of the revolving door and practically trip on our huddle.
“Ladies!” he said, and he leaned over to kiss me hello on the cheek. “Lila.” He nodded in her direction and forced a dimpled smile. They hadn’t seen each other since she split from him, though I’m pretty sure that he called her twice in the weeks right after, but she didn’t bother phoning back.
“Just doing my Saturday grocery shopping. I have quite the whirlwind life! Big-time doctor plus milk and cereal purchases equals Hollywood movie.” He laughed, trying to shed the tension. He looked at me. “How are you feeling? I planned to call today.”
Lila cast her eyes toward me, and I felt my ears redden beneath my scarf. “I’m hanging in there.”
“She’s toying with the dark side,” Sally interjected with a laugh. “Looking to score some pot. Did you ever think? I mean, our Natalie, part of the stand-up citizens’ brigade for Senator Dupris. Ready to get stoned out of her mind.”
I shook my head and looked at my feet, mortified that my gynecologist might catch wind of my new to king habit.
“Still nauseated?” he asked. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s just say that, hypothetically, I know how to get you some of what you need.” He dropped his bags and put his fingers into air quotes, emphasizing “you need.” “How would you girls like to join me for a home-cooked meal tonight? Natalie, I promise, we’ll get you high enough to scarf down an entire cow.”
I looked at Lila to take my cue. Zach picked u
p on it, so he nodded in her direction and said, “Lila, you’re more than welcome to come. All four of us. Helping Natalie put some meat on her bones.” But I knew that Lila was off to Delaware, and I knew that it killed her that she was.
“I can’t make it,” she said, waving her hand in the air and putting on a stoic face. “But you two. Must go. No doubt about it.”
She said it with such gusto that we didn’t even have to formally accept. Zach just said, “Great, I’ll see you at 7:30. I’ll take care of everything. Seventy-eighth and Columbus.”
All three of us turned and watched him saunter north, a grocery bag on each arm, and I’m fairly certain that if a bubble were to inflate over each of our heads, you know, in the way that they do in cartoons, the only thing that each of us would have shown was a big fat question mark.
I’D NEVER ACTUALLY been inside of Zach’s apartment. When he and Lila were dating, we always met out—that is, when I could actually get out.
“Do you think this is weird?” Sally asked, when we met up outside of his building.
“Uh-hum,” I said, nodding in agreement.
“Oh man, though, you look fab,” she said and made me turn around for her. Sally had forced me into a shopping excursion the weekend before for a few wardrobe pick-me-ups. My old jeans had grown so baggy that when I held out the waist, I looked like I belonged in one of those cheap weight-loss ads. (You know the ones: These are my old jeans, and thanks to this super-duper little pill, I’m now thirty-seven sizes smaller!) We headed to Bergdorfs, and when Sally saw me in the pair of deep-hued low-riders she had nabbed for me, she deemed me reborn.
“You look like a freaking model with that body,” she said. I reminded her that my noncurves were hardly something I desired.
“True,” she agreed. “But since you have it right now, why not make the most of it?” I looked in the mirror (I was dressed, it was acceptable) and agreed in spite of myself that skinny did look pretty okay. Tonight, I paired those low-riders with a black cashmere crewneck, and as I was pulling on my Via Spiga boots, I realized that I might have been nervous.
“I hope he realizes that I’m engaged,” Sally said, as his doorman waved us in.
“Stop being such a twit,” I said. “I’m sure that he does.”
I didn’t mention that somewhere in the back of my heart, I might have had a teensy-tiny-eeny-weeny crush on him, but that I stomped out that minuscule feeling I heard in the distance because (a) he’d dated my second-best friend, (b) my second-best friend may or may not still pine for him, and (c) (and this was the one that really mattered) I had cancer. Certainly, no one could be attracted to the bald, spindly version of me, and even further, I don’t even think that you can have sex when you have cancer, even though Janice had assured me that I could. I made a mental note to ask Dr. Chin. Not that I had a sex drive. The chemo sapped that one, too.
“Fear not,” I told her after I pressed the elevator button. “I’m fairly certain that he won’t put the moves on you.”
“Then why the invite?” I saw a flicker of realization in her eyes. “Oh my God, he totally likes you!”
“Okay, first of all, we’re not ten. Second of all, no, he doesn’t. He’s just been a good friend. Walking Manny, bringing me ice cream. I’m hardly going to turn away the help these days.”
“Fine,” she said. “I just can’t wait to say ‘I told you so.’”
Zach’s apartment was perfect. And by that I mean that most New York apartments feel like a thousand square feet of leased space that the renter never truly inhabits. The living room might be half done, or the closet in the bedroom overflowing into the sleeping area, or the bathroom so minuscule that your knees touch the sink when you pee. There’s a tangible sense of movement in New York: People are always moving up, moving on, moving toward something bigger, richer, better. So we never stop to fully embrace where we live because we know that circumstances might arise that call us onward. A two-year lease feels like handcuffs; actual ownership is a prison sentence.
I ran my fingers over the cool granite countertops in his kitchen, which wasn’t one of those miniature kitchens designed for the Keebler elves, but a quintessential gourmet kitchen, complete with stainless-steel appliances and a small wine refrigerator. I stared out at the view of the Hudson, lost in thought, so I didn’t hear him come up behind me.
“This is why I bought the place,” he said. “For this room. And for this view.” We both looked out over the lights for a minute before he broke our silence.
“So, I got the pot.”
“Zach, you’re a doctor.” I turned to face him and tried not to gasp. He was in perfectly rinsed jeans and a green checkered button-down that brought out the hazel specks in his eyes. I looked at him and wondered if a speculum could be considered a sex toy. I shook my head as if to snap out of it. “Really, should you be giving your patients drugs? I mean, can’t you get your license suspended?”
“Nah, I’ve actually recommended this to patients myself.” He reached for the bottle of wine on the counter. “So I know a guy…I mean, I haven’t done it since, God, like before med school, but if it gets you eating, light me a fat one.”
I laughed. “Well, I’ve never done it, period. You and Sally will have to show me the way.”
He pointed toward the Ziploc bag on the coffee table and ushered me to the faded chocolate leather couch in the living room. “Your tutorial awaits, my dear.”
Sally sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, and Zach and I plopped down on the couch.
“Okay, so you’ve smoked a cigarette before, right?” he asked. I shook my head no, and he dropped his jaw in mock horror.
“I know, I’d be, like, the very picture of health if it weren’t for this fucking cancer.” I laughed dryly at the irony.
“Well, then, this is probably going to burn a bit. Go slowly. Don’t overshoot what you can handle.” He and Sally had me practice first. I took deep, deep breaths, then held the air in for ten seconds. When I’d mastered that, Zach grabbed a joint from the baggie, flicked a lighter until the flame caught hold, and inhaled languidly, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth so it didn’t float my direction. I watched him and wondered why he’d do this, why he’d sit around getting high with a friend of a former girlfriend, a patient who conceivably could be just another chart. He saw me looking and gave me a grin. I was pretty sure that he wasn’t stoned yet, so I smiled back.
After Sally took a hit, she passed it to me. I held the joint awkwardly between my thumb and pointer finger and brought it up to my lips, peering down on it the way that a dog examines a new toy.
“Just inhale slowly, not too much,” Zach reminded me, and before I could think otherwise, I did. I felt a burning in the back of my throat, and I fought the urge to cough as Sally counted in the background, telling me when to push the smoke out.
“You’re a pro!” Zach declared. “Are you sure you aren’t a closet pothead? Because with that lung capacity, you should be.”
We passed around the joint until it was finished. At one point, Zach got up to put Duke Ellington on the stereo and pour me a glass of water. I hadn’t even asked, he just did it because he suspected I needed it. He was right.
When the stub grew too small to salvage, Zach declared that dinner would be served in fifteen minutes and to make ourselves comfortable in the meantime. My head was lighter than it had ever been, and my eyelids felt as if they’d been weighted down, but I followed him into the kitchen, offering to help.
“So what’s on the menu?” I opened and closed the refrigerator door, just because it seemed like a fun thing to do.
“Roasted chicken, salad, a side of risotto, and some homemade rolls,” he said, as he took plates down from the glass-door cabinets.
“God, that all sounds fantastic. Wait, you make your own bread? Seriously? Are you from, like, the 1800 s?” I shut the Sub-Zero door and let it stick.
“Nope, I just love to cook. I know, go figure. A heterosexual man in Manhattan
who doesn’t have Empire Szechwan on speed dial.” It was true. Ned was on a first-name basis with the delivery guy.
“Where’d you learn?”
“My girlfriend in med school,” he said, as he lifted the lid on the pot to check on the risotto. “Come taste this. Will you be able to stomach it?”
I slid between him and the stove and dipped in the spoon.
“Perfect,” I declared, rolling the pesto-flavored granules over my tongue. “I swear, I’ve never been so famished in my life.” From behind me, he put his hands on my shoulders, and quietly said, “I’m glad,” as he let his palms slide down my arms until they dropped away. I felt as if I’d stuck my fingers in a light socket, but I tried to suppress the tingle. Sally yelled in from the living room, looking for the remote control, so Zach excused himself and returned a minute later.
“So. This girlfriend. What happened to her?” I leaned back against the kitchen island.
“She wasn’t the one,” he said simply, moving toward the oven. “Although she could whip up a mean batch of pasta Bolognese.”
“Come on, it’s never that simple. Really, what happened?”
He stopped stirring the risotto and looked out the window. “Well, I guess the people who we were when we met—which was just out of college—and who we ended up being by the time we split—we just weren’t the same. She wanted me to be something I wasn’t, and I wanted the same of her.” He shrugged. “Sometimes the math just doesn’t work out, even if you think it will.”
It must have been the pot talking because I pressed him for more. “So how’d you know? I mean, you loved her, right?”
“Oh, I really loved her. Natasha. That was her name. She’s a pediatrician in Ann Arbor now. How did I know that we weren’t going to live happily ever after? I don’t know. She knew before me. I had a position lined up in Michigan; I was going to follow her there. But right as I was making my final decision, she asked me not to come. Over a bowl of pasta on a Thursday night. She just said, ‘I think you should take the residency in New York,’ and kept eating.” He started stirring again.
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