Suzanne Davis gets a life

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  YOU’D THINK THAT my condition would have made me sink into total despondency. Truth be told, it did not. I wept and wailed, don’t get me wrong, but when I was done, I was OK, a fact that I put down at first to finally having something concrete to complain about. I mean when you’ve been complaining that your life sucks every day of the year but can’t put your finger on exactly what it is that bums you out, it helps that now, when someone asks, “How ya doing?” you can say, “Not too good. I have cancer.” No one is going to begrudge you a little complaining about that.

  But I also realized that it wasn’t only that I finally had something substantial to complain about; it was that I could see, for the first time, how much I didn’t have to complain about. Sappy as it sounds, it was the perspective thing that Eleanor had predicted; it was kicking in. Confronted with my mortality, all those routine, everyday activities that had weighed on me took on a certain lightness, even piquancy. This is my life, I told myself. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, granted, but it has its points. I can feel the wind on my face as I walk down Broadway, eat a bowl of buttered popcorn while watching CSI (to which, thanks to the recommendation of the Rosenbaums, I had become addicted), stretch out on Eleanor’s couch and listen to her berate the sociopathic Ronnie, and regale the boys at I-ACE with the stories of my life, which now included some colorful ones about the ins and outs of cancer treatment. It was amazing how a suspended death sentence can bathe one’s world in a softer glow. I even started thinking that, cancer or no cancer, we all have to die eventually and should therefore relish being alive for the short time we are allotted. If, prior to my diagnosis, someone had voiced this idea in my presence, I would have judged said person to be an annoying goody-goody, but since the idea was now mine, I found it profound. There’s a lesson in that.

  Along with the philosophical stuff that I’d started thinking about, I’d also gotten into the habit of enumerating more specific things for which I was thankful: 1) that I had health insurance; 2) that I had a friend who was supportive without being lachrymose; 3) that my prognosis was pretty good.

  On the down side, of course, there were a couple of issues that I felt obliged to face, first and foremost the cancer itself. I mean, you can’t entirely sugarcoat that. From this fact, a number of unfortunate corollaries followed: 1) that I would now have to spend lots of time getting treatment (which, along with possible pain and discomfort, would mean sitting in waiting rooms watching the television positioned on some unreachable perch and perennially tuned to The View); 2) that my hair would fall out; and 3) that the treatment might impede my ability to procreate.

  But even these negatives had a silver lining, as it turned out. Going for treatment, for example, didn’t really bother me. What else had I got to do anyway? I also happened to like The View, and where, in the past, I felt guilty watching it, I now had no choice—everyone getting chemo had to watch it, almost as though it were part of the treatment.

  As for my hair falling out, I decided to see this as a cosmetic opportunity. I had never liked my hair. It was bushy and unmanageable, and I had often envied Orthodox Jewish women who struck me as having their looks improved by glossy, good-quality wigs. I looked forward to going with Eleanor to a wig store she knew in the West Village where she was prepared to buy me an early birthday present. There was also the promise that, if everything went according to plan and my pretty good cancer didn’t turn out to be less good than was thought, my hair would grow back and, according to the oncologist, be softer and more manageable than it was now. In other words, one of the perks of having cancer was that you could end up with better hair.

  Admittedly, Number 3 on my negatives list, the fertility thing, struck me at first as a real bummer. How had I managed to contract my pretty good cancer at the worst possible age? By the time I finished taking the tamoxifen, I would be forty years old, the end of my childbearing years. “It is a case of unfortunate timing,” as the hirsute oncologist put it, which seemed to imply that there were people who managed to time their cancer well. Yet the fact is, I didn’t feel as bad about my timing as I would have expected. It had the value of taking the responsibility for my biological clock out of my hands. That clock had, for the past few years, been ticking very loudly—so loudly, in fact, that it had given me a splitting headache. To have the ticking stop was something of a relief. I could hear again: the cars honking in the stalled traffic, the garbage men throwing the cans around outside my window, the deafening clatter of the subway pulling into my station—all that cacophony of life that had been drowned out by my infernal biological ticktock. It was such a pleasure to hear the world again, and my sense of relief was so great, that I even bypassed the chance to freeze my eggs. If having a child of my own was not meant to be, then it was not meant to be. There were all those starving children in Africa, not to mention all those potential genius children in China who, once I had kicked my pretty good cancer, I could adopt.

  I had decided not to keep my cancer a secret, given that I have a hard time keeping secrets, and anyway I figured I might as well reap the benefits of my condition. There are very few instances in life when you get a free pass, and having cancer is one of them. I mean if I’d won a Pulitzer Prize, been elected to a high office, or finished a stint in the Peace Corps, I imagine that people would treat me well—but such things require a good deal of effort. Here, with no exertion whatsoever, I found myself in an elevated position that garnered me a tremendous amount of goodwill. Friends suddenly seemed inclined to pick up the check (this struck me as mildly illogical, since if I am going to die soon, I am the one with the greater disposable income).

  When I announced my condition during one of my irregular visits to I-ACE headquarters, the response was beyond my expectations. Walt took out his dirty handkerchief and began furiously wiping his eyes. “This is too much,” he muttered. “You are the light of my life, Suzanne.”

  The idea that I was the light of Walt’s life gave me pause. First of all, I come in on a very irregular basis, which means that Walt must spend most of his time in the dark, and second, when I do come in, I rarely say more than two words to Walt. Yet those two words, uttered very sporadically, obviously meant a lot to him. This was flattering, and buoyed my spirits for the rest of the day.

  Dave, too, looked shaken. He told me that his sister had succumbed to breast cancer, and for me to have it too was hard for him to bear. He looked at me as though I were already dead, but with so much compassion that I felt that it was he not me who ought to be consoled.

  Even Roy seemed disturbed by my news, and Roy is an absolutely even-keeled person who, you have to assume, is at least borderline autistic. He said that he would have his mother cook me some of her strudel—for Roy, strudel was the height of sensual pleasure, given that all other sources of pleasure were entirely forbidden in the maternal home.

  I had to assure the guys that my prognosis was pretty good but that if my work was a bit more erratic than usual, it was only because the regimen of treatment was taking its toll. I-ACE work was not, as you may already have gleaned, particularly taxing, but the national convention to be held in Parsippany was approaching, and I had a sheaf of technical papers on my desk at home that were waiting to be translated into press releases to be ignored by the media. I figured I might as well take advantage of my diagnosis and ease whatever strain this task might place on me.

  The guys were extremely supportive. I was told that I shouldn’t think twice about work. “It’s only air conditioning,” said Walt in a philosophical aside.

  “Concentrate on getting well,” said Dave. “That’s your job now. We can handle the indoor-air-quality press releases, if necessary.”

  “I’ll have the strudel for you next week,” said Roy, as though this, more than chemo or any expert medical care, was sure to cure me.

  A SUBSTANTIAL OUTPOURING of sympathy also came from the playground mothers, several of whom had had relatives with breast cancer, not to mention run-ins of their own with the dis
ease, and were therefore full of advice. Everyone seemed genuinely concerned, since no taint of competition regarding children, income, or work versus home was present in my situation to muddy the waters. Indeed, one saw the best in these women as they rallied to my side. Suddenly I felt that they were all my new best friends.

  In no time, an entire assembly line of meals had been organized by Pauline to be delivered to me every night for an indeterminate period. I told them not to bother—that I didn’t usually eat dinner in any formal sense and lived primarily on salad, leftover Chinese food from dinners out, and Lean Cuisines. This, however, only intensified the sense among the mothers that I needed to be taken on as their overgrown new child. It was everyone’s conviction that a three-course cooked dinner was absolutely necessary to help me beat my pretty good cancer.

  I also got a call from my friends NateandClara—I think of them this way because they met during their freshman year in college and sort of became one person. NateandClara had moved to Edison, New Jersey, about a year ago so they could live in something bigger than a shoebox and maybe start a family. They liked to call me from time to time to discuss how much they missed New York and whether they should finish their basement. Possibly in order to avoid the latter topic, I told them about my pretty good cancer, which meant that they immediately informed my friends Miriam and Carlos in Westchester (who, since he was in hedge funds and she was in arbitrage, had already finished their basement and even had a few kids rattling around in it). Miriam told Meredith in Hoboken, so that somehow Yuri and Dustin, who live in not-very-nice parts of Brooklyn, not to mention a few other people who live in relative squalor on the Lower East Side, got wind of it, with the result that one day all of the above showed up at my apartment with a jar of jelly beans, a large moose-like stuffed animal, and a Kindle loaded with what NateandClara informed me were my favorite books. How could I not be touched? I had no idea these people liked me enough to come up with such an exceptional triumvirate of gifts. I mean the jar of jelly beans even had the black licorice ones in there, which you don’t see much of nowadays and which I happen to be partial to, and the moose was really cute (you may be surprised that I like stuffed animals, but I happen to keep a bunch of them under my bed, a fact that I thought only Eleanor knew). As for the Kindle, although I had just bad-mouthed this device to the playground mothers as the death of civilization, I secretly wanted one, and was impressed to see that NateandClara actually knew some of my favorite books, though they were dead wrong on others, excuse the pun. (I am not, I repeat not, a David Foster Wallace fan.)

  Faced with these people at my door, I had to hold back tears and assure everyone that their gifts were unwarranted, especially since I was going to have to disappoint them and not die—a statement that got even more of a laugh than it deserved.

  Pedro, who learned about my illness via Pauline, also informed the old Jews. I was still making my rounds with these individuals, even though, technically speaking, I was no longer needed; the urinating dog having been identified, Pedro had resumed his former schedule. Still, I decided to keep up my own visits, since everyone knows that the elderly need continuity, and I didn’t want to be responsible for having them go into a tailspin of depression or disorientation if I suddenly stopped appearing in their lives. I had also become mildly curious about the next outlandish thing that would come out of their mouths.

  Anyway, when the old Jews learned about my plight, I received their version of sympathy. The Rosenbaums lent me the first season of The Wire, which, they said, with all its shooting and drug dealing, would help take my mind off my own death—it had worked for them. Only I should be sure to return it.

  When I visited Brodsky, he responded in character. “What’s this about your having cancer?” he asked. “I’m the one who’s supposed to have cancer.” “Excuse me for dying,” I said.

  This caused Brodsky to say nothing, a behavior so unusual that I felt constrained to add, “Actually, I’m not dying. My cancer happens to be curable. I’ll be fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Brodsky huskily. Then, rallying, “I hope they don’t have to cut off your boobs.”

  “Unlikely,” I said, “but you don’t like them much anyway.”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth. I only said they were OK, not great. Of course, if they cut them off, you could get better ones.”

  “That’s true,” I admitted.

  “Not that the ones you have are bad.”

  “So you’ve explained.”

  “But there’s always better. You could get a size or two bigger. Bigger is always better.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Though I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”

  “Good.” This, to my mind, was both a huge compliment and an outpouring of sentiment where Brodsky was concerned.

  As for Mrs. Schwartz, she told me that she’d had the Big C fifty years ago. “Lopped off both of them,” she said pointing to her chest area, which was swaddled in a house dress and a cardigan—maybe two cardigans, it was hard to say; the effect was very layered. “In those days, they didn’t think twice about it. Just cut you up. Typical capitalist brutality. Especially when it came to women. We were a dime a dozen. Mort, God bless him, said I was woman enough, even without them.” She peered at me a moment in what I construed as some semblance of sympathy. “But you’re not married yet, are you?” she asked. “Not all men are like Mort.”

  I told her that that was true but that the point was not really relevant since I didn’t need a mastectomy.

  “The men these days may be better,” said Mrs. Schwartz, ignoring what I’d said. “Though I doubt it. Men like Mort don’t come around very often.” She again looked at me thoughtfully. “You’re better off without a man, especially if they cut them off.”

  I repeated that I doubted this would be necessary, the cutting that is, but that I’d take her view of men under advisement.

  “There’s a talk on Emma Goldman at the 92nd Street Y next week,” she noted in an abrupt transition. “I thought we could go together.”

  Mrs. Schwartz almost never went out, and that she would propose such a thing meant that she either was very interested in the topic or very sorry for me.

  “It’s impressive that she wants to go with you,” Pedro said when I told him. “But you might want to take a rain check, given your cancer and all. Mrs. Schwartz is kind of hard to maneuver.” Frankly, I think he was jealous. He was her boychik.

  “Of course, I’ll go,” I said regally. “I’m not incapacitated, you know. And besides, I’m very interested in Emma Gold-man”—though actually, I had no idea who she was until I looked her up on Wikipedia.

  A WEEK OR SO after the diagnosis, I also got a call from Derek.

  “I heard about your breast cancer,” he said. “I thought maybe I could do something.”

  I wondered what it could be he thought he could do, given that he was neither a doctor nor a social worker. Having shown himself to be strikingly inept in dealing with his children, it seemed unlikely that he could deal with me should I find myself in extremis—but I let it pass. I assured him that I had a pretty good support system and a pretty good cancer.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said wistfully. “Bathsheba had a scare a few years ago, so I’ve been through it, at least hypothetically. As you know, she and I are no longer together, so I’d have time to help you out if you need it.”

  I assured him that I didn’t.

  “I know I treated you badly,” said Derek, “and that it hurt you a lot, but I’m ready to make it up now.”

  I assured him that there was nothing to make up. I harbored no ill feelings. I was, however, busy right now, with the chemo and the upcoming air-conditioning-engineers convention.

  “Maybe in a while, when you’re feeling better,” he said. “We’re hoping that your job will be approved soon. There’s a delay, you know, because of the budget shortfall, but in a few months, things should be on track again.”

 
I said that sounded good. By then, my cancer treatment would be near completion and I’d be able to devote myself to ending the sanitation strike that would undoubtedly be in full swing.

  “It’s OK if you need time off for your treatment,” Derek assured me. “We have a very good disability plan.” Apparently, I could take off even before I had been hired. “I should tell you,” added Derek hesitatingly. He now seemed intent on broaching a delicate subject: “Breasts aren’t that important to me.”

  I told him I was pleased to hear it—obviously, Mrs. Schwartz was being proved wrong—but that this was not an issue for me since a mastectomy would not be necessary. If things changed—with my breasts or anything else—I would keep him in mind.

  NOW THAT I had gone under the knife, it was time to move on to the next phase of treatment, which was the chemo. Frankly, I would have liked to skip this phase. Didn’t I have a good-sized dent in my left breast to prove that the cancer had been cut out, and hadn’t the wild-eyed surgeon, who was nothing if not thorough, promised me that he had gotten it all? But when I asked Dr. Farber if maybe I could bypass the chemo, he said no, absolutely not; the chemo was non-negotiable. You had to have it because you couldn’t trust the cancer to accept that it was out of the picture just because someone had gone after it with a knife. No. The cancer was stubborn and sly. You had to zap it with toxic chemicals and deadly radiation, and even then you couldn’t be sure it got the message and wouldn’t wheedle its way back—sort of like those guys who break up with you but then end up calling you in the middle of the night a year later. You think that maybe they’ve realized that you are the love of their life and that they can’t live without you, but really they’re just bored and enjoy knowing that they still can make you miserable.