The Golden Willow

by Harry Bernstein

  I tried not to show any expression on my face. But if one had been there, it would have shown the immense burst of relief I felt. The first thing I did was rush for a telephone, and I called Ruby.

  “I've been turned down,” I said. “I'm four-F.”

  “What does that mean?” she said in a tremulous voice.

  “It means that I don't have to go into the army.”

  I heard her give a great sigh.

  I knew she felt the same way I did. There is nothing heroic about this, but that is the way I felt.

  Chapter Six

  2002

  THE ONCOLOGIST'S OFFICE WAS CROWDED. THERE WERE NO MORE seats available in the waiting room, and some had to stand. We were lucky. We had come early enough to get three seats together. Adraenne had come, of course. She had taken time off from the hospital to be with Ruby for the bone marrow test, and even though the doctor with whom she worked had objected strenuously, nothing could have kept her away.

  Our elation over the rise in Ruby's hemoglobin count had been short-lived. It had taken a sudden, dramatic drop, and not only that, but the platelet count had dropped too, and that was always a danger sign. A bone marrow test would determine just what was going on, the doctor had said. So here we were waiting our turn to see the oncologist, but all three of us were quite cheerful, with Adraenne assuring us that the test would be negative.

  “And if it isn't?” I asked, too late to catch the warning look that came from Adraenne's eyes.

  She resembled her mother a great deal. She was of the same height, with the same oval-shaped face and large dark eyes, except that the dark brown hair had a slightly reddish tint to it. She was quick to answer my question. “If is isn't,” she said, with a carelessness to her tone that I knew was feigned, “then the worst it can mean is more Procrit. Mom has the kind of anemia that you don't have to worry about.”

  We didn't discuss it any more, and Ruby hardly seemed to have been listening anyway and seemed little concerned over any outcome. We were chatting over various other things not medical when Ruby's name was called by a nurse.

  The two of them went in together, and I remained there waiting. It must have taken about thirty minutes before Adraenne came out alone. I could not tell from the expression on her face what the result of the test might have been.

  “Where's Mom?” I asked.

  “She's dressing. She'll be out soon.” She sat down next to me.

  “So what happened?” I said. “Did they take the test?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how did it go? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything went fine. It wasn't an easy test to take. The doctor had to stick a large needle into her hip bone, but he knew his business and it all went quickly and Mom had very little pain.”

  “And you got the result?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what is it?” I asked impatiently.

  Adraenne drew closer to me. She put an arm around my shoulder and her head close to mine and said softly, “Mom has leukemia.”

  My heart froze. I sat still for a moment, then bent forward and put my face in my hands and cried. She held me tightly, and I recovered enough to ask, “Does she know?”

  Adraenne shook her head. “No, the doctor didn't tell her. He just told me.”

  “Then she mustn't know,” I said.

  Adraenne thought for a moment. “Not yet, perhaps.”

  “Not anytime,” I said firmly, angrily. “I don't want her to ever know.”

  She shushed me then, for Ruby was coming out, smiling, evidently happy that it was all over, and seeming to take it for granted that there was nothing wrong with her. My daughter and I put on a good act of believing the same thing. We went out, all three of us, in a seemingly lighthearted mood for lunch at a nearby restaurant, and as far as Ruby was concerned, it might almost have been a celebration; she knew nothing of the misery that was inside the other two of us.

  But there was trouble later with Charlie. I told him of the diagnosis and our determination to keep it from his mother, and he was furious. He said it was wrong. We had no right to keep it from her. But I was just as angry. What good would it do to tell her? I wanted to know. Would it cure her leukemia? Would it make her feel better to know that she had an incurable disease and might die soon?

  “Yes,” he shouted. “She would reconcile herself to what is going to happen and it would give her peace of mind.”

  “Nonsense,” I shouted back. “It would put her in a nightmare of horror with that hanging over her. She would be more peaceful not knowing. And that's the way it's going to be. You're not going to say a word to her about it.”

  Fortunately, Ruby was not in the house when we were discussing this. Adraenne had taken her out shopping when Charlie came from his home in Pennsylvania. When I told Adraenne about the argument later, she was silent for a moment, then said, “Perhaps Charlie was right. Mom should know. But I want to tell her myself, and there's something else I will tell her that will help a good deal. You too.”

  She had done a good deal of investigation with doctors and had learned of a study that was being made of cases like Ruby's at Mt. Sinai Hospital. They were experimenting with a new form of chemotherapy that had none of the side effects of that in use now, and thus far the results had been promising. The study was only open to a certain number and all the slots had already been filled, but Adraenne had pulled strings and Ruby was to be admitted.

  “So you see,” she said, “I'd have to tell her that she has leukemia in order to explain to her why she has to go into this study.”

  I no longer had any objection. It had changed the whole picture for me. I now had hope. And after Adraenne had her talk privately with her mother, I felt better yet. Ruby had taken the news calmly and with her usual intelligent understanding. Actually, she was no stranger to leukemia. Two of her cousins had died from it when they were very young. I worried that this might have had an adverse effect upon her, but on the contrary, she dismissed it lightly.

  “They were just kids when they got it, not even married, and here I am, an oldie, with a full life behind me, and a good life, and a husband I love, and a marriage of many years that many other women would envy, with children and grandchildren. So I am not complaining. If I died now, I would be satisfied. I have had everything that any woman could want.”

  “You are not going to die now,” Adraenne said, and told her about this new program at Mt. Sinai Hospital that she could go into. It would not require her to stay in the hospital. She would have to go there once a month to be checked, but otherwise the treatments, consisting simply of injections of the chemotherapy, could be given at home, and Adraenne herself would give them. “But you don't have to do it, Mom,” Adraenne said. “There is no guarantee that the injections will help, but there is a chance that they will. It's up to you.”

  Ruby sat quietly for a while, thinking, then said, “I'll try it. I want to live. I'll fight this thing.”

  SO FOR A WHILE it seemed as if the nightmare was over, and we were jubilant over the results of the first few treatments. Adraenne came every week to give them. It required the mixing of two different chemicals to make the solution that she injected, a process too complicated for even Blake to have handled, and certainly not me.

  In addition, in order to maintain the proper blood count, Ruby had to receive blood and platelet transfusions at the local hospital, sometimes as often as twice a week. I would always go with her and sit beside her bed while the blood or the platelets would drip slowly into her arm. She would lie back comfortably and read a book or magazine, and I would read too. It would take several hours and a pleasant, smiling nurse would bring us both lunch, and we would chat as we ate. This was how we spent a good part of the months that were left to us, and I would sometimes hold her hand and we would look at each other and smile, as if this whole thing were just another one of those excursions we used to take together in strange places in various parts of the country, enjoying it all m
ostly because we were together.

  I loved her then as much as I had before, and perhaps even more because of the threat that was hanging over her and her helplessness lying there, with the slow steady drip of the blood into her body the only protection against losing her completely. And yet, coming out of the hospital after each transfusion, she was in a joyous mood, refreshed and strengthened, as if, she once told me, she had drunk a gallon of wine.

  For a short while more we were a happy couple again, enjoying our walks around the lake, holding hands like a newly married couple, as one admiring neighbor told us. And always Ruby found strength to give her yoga lesson at the clubhouse. Every Wednesday morning we would be up early, and as Ruby put on her leotard I would watch her and marvel at her figure and its youthfulness, which she had retained into her nineties, and I would have to restrain myself from going up to her and taking her in my arms.

  Then there was that last time when I drove her to the clubhouse and picked her up and she looked tired, so tired that I was worried and called Adraenne.

  She was at work then, at the hospital, but she left immediately and rushed right over to us. She took Ruby's temperature. To our relief, it was just a bit above normal. A high temperature could have indicated an infection, and Dr. Silverman, in charge of the study, had warned that in her condition she would have great difficulty fighting off an infection.

  Adraenne stayed over with us that night, despite the fact that she had to be at the hospital early the next day. She could barely make it if she took an eight o'clock bus to New York, and that meant getting up not later than seven. But we were awakened even earlier than that by Ruby. She was not feeling well. Once more Adraenne took her temperature, and this time it was 102 degrees, well above normal.

  Alarmed, Adraenne called Dr. Silverman. He instructed her to bring Ruby into the hospital immediately. We called Charlie, getting him out of bed. He lived in Pennsylvania, more than an hour's drive away, but he made it in less time than that. Ruby didn't want to go to the hospital. I remember how she looked up at me as she lay in the bed, her eyes begging me not to take her away, and said in a whisper, “I have a premonition.”

  I was angry. “Nonsense,” I said. “You have to go. There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You'll probably only have to be there a day or two until your temperature goes down, and then you'll be home again.”

  I think often of that morning, of the gray light creeping into the room, and of Ruby there in the bed and looking up at me with that imploring look in her eyes. Had I done the right thing? Would it not have been better to let her stay home and to heed what she was saying? Was there such a thing as a premonition? And why did I have to be so angry with her?

  Adraenne and I have talked this over, because we were both conscience-stricken later, but Adraenne has convinced me that what we did was right. Otherwise there would have been no chance at all, and we would not have had the doctors and the equipment and medications that were necessary in the battle that took place to fight the infection that had occurred.

  It took ten long agonizing days. I don't know how many doctors came in to see Ruby, to bend over her, to touch her here and there, to ask her where the pain was, which she could never answer coherently. We had a private nurse for her day and night. Nevertheless, Adraenne and I took turns staying with her nights. They had put a cot in the room for us, and we took turns sleeping there. When it was my night off I would go to Adraenne's apartment in Brooklyn Heights to sleep, and then I'd come back early to relieve her so that she could go to work.

  For a while, for just one little while, it seemed as if the battle had been won. A miracle had taken place. Her temperature dropped to near normal. Doctors clustered around her, amazed. Ruby was smiling. I bent down to her, jubilant, and said, “Darling, how would you like to go home?”

  She looked up at me with hope and wonder in her eyes and said, “Oh, yes, yes, yes. When?”

  “Perhaps even tomorrow,” I said.

  I was quite serious. I believed then that such a thing was possible. Charlie was there, ready to drive her home. The doctors thought perhaps we should wait a bit longer. And then by nightfall it started to go the other way and our hopes were dashed. The pains had come back, the temperature had risen.

  It was a different kind of infection, a new kind in the colon, and they let us know there were no drugs for it. Only an operation on the colon could save her, and an operation was out of the question. Ruby knew little of what was happening. She was in constant pain, and they began giving her morphine, and she slipped in and out of consciousness. I sat there beside her bed holding her hand, barely conscious myself, dazed and not believing what was happening.

  Once, during this time, I heard Adraenne talking to the doctor she worked for over the phone. She had stopped going to work entirely and was in the room with Ruby day and night, and now she was trying to explain it to him.

  “I can't come,” she was saying, keeping her voice down even though Ruby was in her drugged sleep. “My mother is dying.”

  I could not hear his voice, but Adraenne told me later that he said, “I have my practice to think of.”

  “I have my mother to think of,” Adraenne said, and hung up. Afterward, after this was all over and she was able to go back to work, the pressure continued, and she had to resign.

  Occasionally, for a brief period, Ruby would awaken, and there was some recognition in her eyes as she looked at me. I was holding her hand and bending close to her, and she whispered something to me. It was barely audible but I heard it.

  “Darling,” she whispered, “don't forget to take your vitamin pills in the morning.”

  “I won't,” I promised, and forced myself to keep her from knowing I was crying.

  These were the last words we would ever speak to each other. She did not come awake again. Adraenne and I both spent that night in the room with her, taking turns during the night to lie down on the cot. The morphine dosage had been increased, and Ruby was in a heavy sleep, her breathing noisy. Both Adraenne and I were awake when dawn came. It was a gray September morning and I went to the window and looked out. Curiously, the hospital overlooked Central Park. I could see the trees and bushes beginning to emerge out of the shadows, and I remembered how much this place had meant to us, and how important a part it had played in our life together.

  I was thinking of that when suddenly Adraenne let out a cry. “Dad, she's stopped breathing. She's dead!”

  I swung around, shocked and disbelieving, and then I rushed to the bed. There she was, lying very still and white, and I kneeled down and took her in my arms and kissed her and held her.

  I was crying hard and didn't want to let go of her when the doctor and nurse came into the room. But they finally made me go out when they came for her with a stretcher. I went into the corridor and stood with Adraenne at my side, both of us crying. Charlie had arrived, and the three of us watched through our tears as they wheeled her out of the room, her body covered with a white sheet. They went past us and down the hallway to the elevator. There was a pause while they waited for the elevator to come. Then the door slid open and they wheeled the stretcher into it, and the door closed, and that was the last I saw of her.

  Chapter Seven

  1950

  WHEN WORLD WAR II ENDED, BIG CHANGES TOOK PLACE IN THE country, and these changes affected my life as well as many others. The most noticeable change was in the rooftops of houses and apartment buildings. Suddenly, they began to sprout forests of what might have been modern metal sculptures but were actually antennae for the newfangled television. People were buying sets all over the country, and as a result, movie theaters were practically deserted.

  For the first time in its existence, the movie industry was hard hit. Audiences were staying home glued to this new magic form of entertainment, and it was because of this that my long career as a reader came to an end. I walked into the story office at RKO, the company I had been working for during the last four years, and found everyone
in mourning. Word had come from Hollywood that the office was to be closed. Everybody was to be let go, from the editor on down. I was out of a job for the first time in many years.

  Only this time I was forty years old. I had two children to support and soon to be put through college. We had taken another mortgage on the house, after the first one had been paid off, to help with mounting expenses. Who would hire me now? There were no more reading jobs. I went from one studio to another. They were all waiting for orders to close up. It looked very much as if the movie industry were a thing of the past. What in hell was I going to do?

  “You can write,” Ruby said to me when I told her the situation. She was as sympathetic and understanding as she had always been, and comforting, and with no less faith in my writing ability than ever. “You'll earn some money from your writing, and if you don't, we'll manage. Just don't worry.”

  She was right about our being able to manage. She also confessed to me later that she considered what had happened a blessing, as now I could write my own things instead of reading what others had written.

  We were not broke. We had managed to save money, and a short time before this Ruby had left her federal job to become a school secretary at a much higher salary.

  Just the same, I struggled hard to make my own contribution. I did not want it to be a repeat of the time when we were first married and I was out of work for months. I wrote, but not a novel this time. I wrote potboilers to make quick money, articles for Popular Mechanics and the Sunday supplements of newspapers. “What Men Won't Do for a Thrill” was one of my masterpieces; “A Day in the Life of a Strip Tease Artist” was another that I did for American Weekly, the Hearst papers' Sunday supplement. I even wrote scripts for comic magazines, and that made money for me also. But it was a toothache that brought me the bonanza I never expected.