by Charles Bock
—
Vintage board games dug up from obscurity; metal lunch boxes celebrating science-fiction shows; odd dolls manufactured to monetize a moment’s quirky breakout star. Each item miraculous, preserved against time. Love Saves the Day. Alice and Oliver let the window display distract them. The passing sounds of the East Village vague behind them, the air thick and cold. She laid her head against the warmth of his shearling. From the stroller, the child reached toward the finger puppets and stuffed animals on the other side of the glass.
Doe would be every bit as entertained by the tumbling clothes in the dryers of the launderette next door, and the family would continue—meandering on the lightly frosted pavement of Second Avenue, passing into the junkies, hoodlums, and creative entrepreneurs who’d started laying out a veritable thieves’ market. Oliver picked through record albums and cassettes that lay next to a disemboweled car stereo. Alice enjoyed guessing at the logic behind a tapered leather jacket with hugely padded shoulders, a lining of cowboy fringe. “The eighties,” she said.
Their trek was incremental, but steady. Doctors’ orders be damned, she wanted her last meal outside to be special. And no way Oliver was going to stop her from sitting at the common table at the vegetarian restaurant where she’d been ordering since freshman year. Soon, long deep breaths allowed Alice to ingest the steamy swirl of hot green tea. She managed to down the entire cup. For old times’ sake, she and Oliver shared a dragon bowl of piping hot tofu, sea veggies, and rice.
Without prompting, she asked: “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
—
One immediate way to provide an answer was to satiate an appetite. Another was to walk, unwind your thoughts along the way. And, too, there was home, wrapping yourself in the safety of dim conical lighting, the refuge of a boxy sofa sectional, designed with the elegance of fifties modernism. The little one may have been months away from possessing the balance to stand, but she was giving it her best shot, grabbing at the couch, using its far arm to pull herself vertical, wanting to get up there with Mommy and Daddy. Such a good sport.
Alice smiled toward her child. “I’d be crazy to think of this as a spa,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t treat this stint as therapeutic, take care of things a more competent person would already have done.”
She continued with her arrangements: first the small boxes of thank-you cards wrapped in plastic, then the calligraphy pens. Now those slips of paper and napkins with contact info that had to be added to her newest organizer; now a Moleskine notebook with virgin pages. Alice picked up the thick paperback of Emma she’d been meaning to read for a while. “Last time I read a book for pleasure?” She ignored Oliver’s uninterested shrug, jammed the book into the secondary pouch of her Himalayan climbing backpack, and stretched herself across the length of the sofa. Resting on the breadth of Oliver’s chest, Alice wondered if he’d seen her Discman.
And felt him flinch. And went cold herself.
The answer to her question lay where it had been since their return from New Hampshire: with all the other stuff from that room, untouched inside a backpack, thrown into the back of their closet.
Lifting Doe onto her chest still was effortless, Goddess be praised. Alice started with the opening letter of the alphabet. Oliver joined, a shaky harmony. The infant latched on to a strand of Mommy’s wig. Alice’s voice cracked, but she would not stop, even as the child dislodged her wig, ice-cream-orange hairs going askew.
“Next time won’t you sing wii-iith mee-eeeeee?” The final vowel sounds stretched.
“That was nice.” Alice shifted, dislodged herself from Oliver’s shoulder, lifted her way back upright, and rocked her child, transporting herself again, heading now to a place where she could not hear Oliver’s remarks about the hospital visiting schedule, how well prepared he felt they were.
“I don’t want to lose my eyelashes,” she said.
“Look at me,” he answered.
“Being bald is horrid enough. And eyebrows don’t matter so much. But I always had pretty eyelashes.”
“Alice, just—please look at me.”
“Your mommy’s going to be a tree,” Alice told Doe. “Or how about a smooth bald butterfly with no eyebrows?”
After a few more moments, she gave in, and turned toward him. His hand went to the underside of her chin.
“You still have your eyelashes,” he began. “They’re—”
“They’re thinner. When I put on eye shadow I can tell.”
“You are gorgeous beyond words.”
“It’s horrible to feel vain about these things, but I can’t help it.”
“With or without hair, with or without eyelashes, I still and completely want to bend you over this couch.”
“A charming nondenial.”
“We’re going in there and we’ll take care of this. All this shit’s going to get behind us.”
“I know.” Her voice soft.
“We just have to go through it—”
“Yes.”
“If there was any choice—”
“Yes.”
—
Her plan was to read bedtime stories, feed her baby bottled formula, and lie with her in the darkness until Doe’s restlessness stilled. Check-in was at six, in case she needed surgery for a central line. Then that would be at eight. Alice planned on listening to her child’s breaths and snores for as long as she could bear, lying with her sleeping Doe and staring some more. Then Alice was going to come back out into the living room. Entwining on the couch with Oliver, she was going to finish packing, pick up their conversation again; talking deep into the night, confiding in Oliver and assuring him at once. She hated herself for how agitated her disease made him; she knew it was stupid, but nonetheless felt guilty. Before her physician-mandated moratorium on the digestion of food and drink kicked in at its mandated midnight hour, she planned on unzipping his jeans, releasing from his underwear that gorgeous prick of his, and, even if it was all sweaty and smelly, even if Alice’s body may have looked like something beamed down from a mothership, she planned on giving Oliver one hell of a reminder of her womanly charms. But her plan was even bigger, extended even longer, into the healthy life she planned on having. Whenever entitled young men and gorgeous women would not give way as she pushed her monstrosity of a stroller down the street, Alice planned on remembering what it had been like to feel that young and beautiful and invulnerable. On Friday afternoons when the child was being impossible and the weekend was looming—all those empty hours with little childcare, few moments of rescue—Alice planned on recalling this particular moment, how afraid she was. She planned on appreciating Doe’s amazement at blue and red mixing into purple. On some freezing day in that kindergarten school yard, as Alice tried to halt Doe’s supreme shitfit about not being able to share some other kid’s toy, she planned on being that much more patient. She planned on soaking in the sight of her young little lady, all elbows and knees and sparkly taffeta princess dress, Doe climbing brownstone steps, ringing doorbells, and letting loose: Trick or treat. Sneaking her growing child up the secret entrance that got you onto the roof of the Plaza hotel; telling her about the summer night she and Doe’s father—back when they were first dating—had climbed up and sat with their feet hanging over the edge of the roof, and between bits of good cheese and sips from a bottle of cheap red, they’d leaned into each other and sweetly made out. The plan was to strike the right balance—sixty percent fury, forty compassion—when her teenaged daughter experimented with all the things a teenaged Alice had experimented with. For sure Alice planned on being in the front row with a camcorder when her child graduated from an Ivy, one of those good ones, where undergrads had majors that actually let them earn a living. It was a goddamn law of nature that she was going to walk that little girl down her matrimonial aisle.
Alice was the sun. A groggy sun, a sun who had just enjoyed an evening of walking and laughing and wonderful food, but who still had enough ener
gy, she was sure, to enliven the thick blanket of darkness that covered the Meatpacking District. Enough light to fill the arid compartments of the yellow cabs parked along the side streets. Wake the drivers catching up on their needed sleep. And the ones waiting for relatives to get to the designated changeover spot and relieve them after a twelve-hour shift. She watched the men in industrial jumpsuits spraying water through the grooves between cobblestones on the street, washing away the blood and excess and pink slime. The sky wouldn’t light up for a few more hours yet; this sun was justified in her sleepiness.
—
Oliver brusquely lifted the black boxy object out of the cab and set it to the ground. He pulled on the suitcase’s roller handle. The rag doll that was their dozing offspring hung wanly from the straps around his pecs. Alice murmured another apology. She’d lasted as long as she could, hadn’t meant to doze off, hadn’t wanted it to be that way.
He did not make eye contact, said it was fine.
Pink hues crept along the high-rise silhouettes, the sides of the canyon that was Sixty-sixth Street. Thick clouds hung, low and heavy, over midtown. The night air thinned into a hue of tarnished silver.
On the sidewalk near the hospital, a dowdy figure was lumbering toward the revolving entrance doors with that recognizable, troubled gait. Alice welcomed the distraction. “Oh, Tilda,” she said, allowing herself some distress and drama. “We bought that coat together. The most lovely, fine cream you ever saw. Like it’d been whipped to that shade.”
Now the coat was the color of lentils. Oliver knew better than to respond. However Tilda’s pheromones might transform wool and rayon and polyester, the woman had risen at this horrid hour, made her way from a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up in Hoboken—a trip that had encompassed not just the PATH but across this city. None of her de rigueur grumbling, or her usual under-the-breath disagreements. Tilda had volunteered for this thankless task, out of simple goodness, because having a friend keep Alice company was aeons easier than finding a sitter at this hour, which otherwise would have been their task. (Anything you need, Tilda had said before the request was even finished.) A woman worth her weight in brown gold.
“Stay,” Alice told him.
Obedient, Oliver allowed his wife to lean in, nuzzle, and kiss her child on the crown. Alice inhaled, Doe’s vanilla scent expanding through her lungs.
“I just have to get on with it,” she said, but sat awhile longer.
Somewhere a driver was pressing on his car horn, not letting up, right until the moment he surrendered. Alice remained motionless, holding her child. Oliver promised that as soon as Jonathan’s wife came to take care of Doe, he’d be back. When Alice knew her schedule, they’d figure out the right time for the baby to visit. These were the confirmation numbers he’d gotten from the insurance people, the name Alice was supposed to use in case they gave her any problems.
He caught himself. “Everything’s going to be great.”
Now he put a hand on each of her cheeks and held her motionless body. “Tu est ma préférée.” And pressed his lips onto hers with the momentum of a rumbling train, until his fervency eased, his force subsiding, his lips strong but also patient, assuring, ice cream melting inside the scoop of a spoon, so soft, dissolving Alice with them.
—
Behind a desk stacked with files and folders, a largish woman had a phone jammed between her tilted head and raised shoulder. Chewing gum, sweating lightly, breathing through her nose in short whinnies, she stared without engagement in the direction of a computer screen. Her index and middle fingers kept pounding at her keyboard. Alice noticed the majority of her fingernails were formidably long, painted to form a fluorescent rainbow; but her two typing fingers were naked, their nails nubs, furiously pounding those small plastic squares.
Alice followed Tilda’s directions and did a breathing exercise. She squeezed Tilda’s hand, concentrated on the solidity and mass around her fingers, let herself be encompassed by that strength.
When a light started blinking on the desk phone’s console, the woman rolled her eyes, punched at the light, and greeted whoever was on the other end—a throaty and doubting “Mmmmn?” that granted permission to speak. Receiver pressed up against an ear lined with tiny jewels, the engine of her jaw seeming to chew that much harder. The receptionist listened. Black braids—thick as electrical cables—remained coiled, cemented in place around her head, even as the large woman shifted in her seat. Her face suggested a profound understanding of the problems of this hospital. “What in sweet Jesus we doing have this lady check in at the early light if she going to wait till the middle of the afternoon for her room?” she wanted to know. “Oh, you going to do something about it, Geraldine. Come on down then. Bring your paltry ass on down and look at this lady the shape she in. You tell her she got to wait. Geraldine—Geraldine. What orderlies on the shift? Diaz? Tell that lazy fool I’m on the phone. This woman ain’t going through enough already and we can’t get a bed cleaned? Go get Diaz for me. Sí. Sí. Pronto. Pronto ahora.”
—
In an exam room on the fourth floor, once the nurse put the thin layer of paper on the bottom of the scale—yet another unneeded reminder of Alice’s delicate condition—the numbers showed that, since her last doctor’s visit—four days ago, at her primary care physician’s office—Alice had dropped three whole pounds.
“Wait until you read the book I’m going to do,” Alice said. “The Chemo Diet. Women will be lining up for chemotherapy.”
Behind large plastic eyewear, the nurse looked confused. In her line of work, three lost pounds were not reasons to celebrate.
“You know what I always say,” Tilda broke in. “Cancer, schmancer. Long as you’re healthy.”
Beams of delight radiated from Alice’s face. “I adore you.”
—
Through the hallways and waiting rooms, word was spreading: the new IV expert lacked her predecessor’s delicate touch. And maybe there was more than cultural jealousy and suspicion to the rumors, for during Alice’s first awful visit here, Fatima had needed three sticks to find a vein. Beneath her thick head scarf, the demure lady now was visibly concentrating, ignoring Bhakti’s suggestion to use a vein finder, kneading the inside of Alice’s forearm. She tapped at a vein with two fingers, pressed with her thumbs. “Wrists and forearm look good only…” Her voice petered out; she kept rubbing.
“Dr. Eisenstatt’s going to see you a little later.” Dr. Bhakti’s arms were crossed and she was grinding a fashionable heel—those same boots as at Alice’s first visit. Was Alice just lucky enough to come in every day that Bhakti chose to wear those gorgeous things?
“And we have all sorts of positive news,” Bhakti continued, her words traveling in a line over the scarved head of the concentrating nurse. “Your aspirate shows an absence of leukemic cells in your blastocysts. Meaning your remission is still strong. That’s what we want going into consolidation.”
Loose sleeves covered Fatima’s arms to her wrists. She kneaded the soft skin in the crook of Alice’s right arm. Her head shook. “Nothing worth going in for.”
“Plus your counts are high enough that we can take you off the Coumadin. So no more blood thinners for you.”
“Even this feels collapsed,” Fatima mumbled.
Aware of the nurse now, Bhakti spoke politely. “You tried the cephalic?”
A glare in return: What do you think?
“Could someone go to the trouble of bringing me more blankets, please?” Alice asked. “It’s chilly in here.”
“Well, we have to get this line started.” Bhakti tossed her hair behind her ear and was apparently oblivious to how such a maneuver might be taken by a bald chemo patient. Recrossing her arms, she lifted a pen to her mouth. “You’ve got a blood transfusion scheduled, then nutrition.” She bit, gnawing at the pen’s end, an action incongruous with everything Alice had assumed about her. Now Bhakti’s voice sounded like someone consulting with a waitress about unfamiliar menu items. “The
thing about the IV team, if we call, we’re committed. Then add two hours to whatever time they estimate for arrival.”
When Alice had been in New Hampshire, and it was time to remove the catheter from her clavicle area, the doctor had told her to hum. As soon as she started, he’d yanked. There had been a sting and it had been over, like that. “I had a central line the last time,” Alice said. “I’m sure you both know that.” She sought out Tilda, explaining. “First they tried to go into my wrist. This monstrous harpoon of a needle. I was horrified, but I don’t think I even had the energy to start shaking, that’s what kind of shape I was in. Oliver told me some stupid joke he loves—it doesn’t matter what, trust me, it isn’t funny.”
“Shocker there,” Tilda said.
“It makes him laugh,” Alice continued, “and that always makes me laugh, and so I love the joke. He brought it up because he knew I enjoyed his pleasure. And at that moment, it was so ridiculous, I couldn’t help be surprised. That helped me calm.”
Tilda’s eyes rolled upward; Alice recognized her skepticism. “I know you and he butt heads, Tilapia. But he’s always showing me new forms of love. It’s how we survived that horrid month.”
The overhead lights kept humming.
“Let’s just put in a central line and hook everything to that,” Bhakti said, shrugging at Alice. “I mean, you’re already scheduled for a port.”
—
She was rising, propelling herself upward from the bottom of the ocean, kicking against gravity’s pull, pressure on her face, her lungs burning, ascending through pockets of warmth, layers of freezing cold. Breaking out of the depths, into consciousness, awakening, gulping, taking deep breaths. Overhead light panels were graceless and harsh. Running across her clavicle, aftershocks were like electricity through thin aluminum bars.
It took some time, but, muddling through the thickest parts of her Percocet haze, she realized that the clear plastic tube was new, and this catheter was different, a new device had been placed in her body, but in the exact location as the one in New Hampshire.
