“The priest who ran the ranch is dead now,” Iris said. “Died in a plane crash. One of the promotional points for the ranch was that it had an airstrip and the boys could learn to fly a plane. The priest would take boys on weekend trips and fly them in the plane to conventions to raise money for the ranch. God knows what happened to those boys during those trips. Alumni of the ranch have come forward and filed lawsuits against the ranch for sexual abuse, which the ranch has quietly settled.
“That priest had boys on board when he crashed the plane,” Iris continued. “Everyone was killed. The ranch sanitized that, too. But when I was poking around, I found the coroner’s report and the priest’s blood alcohol count was high.
“It kills me that the ranch is still open,” Iris said. “The place is like a shrine to that fucking priest. There’s even a statue of him. I want to get that place closed down. I just don’t know how to go about it.”
Tracy poked her head into the great room where Iris and I were talking. “Come into the kitchen and grab the rest of these cookies,” she said. “Almost everyone’s gone and there are a lot left. Take them home or I’m throwing them out.”
Iris and I followed Tracy back into the kitchen, where Stella and Tanya were loading up on more cookies. Stella was telling Tanya about her recent relapse.
“My friend and I were out trying to find more crack,” Stella was saying. “We were combing this bad neighborhood and stumbled into a dealer we didn’t know.” Stella started laughing hard. “We bought fifty dollars worth of what turned out to be crunched-up saltine crackers.”
“I got sold grass clippings instead of pot on my honeymoon in Maui,” I said. “Charlie and I were driving the Road to Hana and a couple of guys were standing on the side yelling, ‘Smoke.’ I made Charlie stop—he didn’t want to—and I smoked some awesome weed with those guys. I bought a bag and when Charlie and I were back in our hotel room, I discovered it wasn’t even dirt weed; those assholes had sold me grass clippings.”
“I used to be a coke dealer and I had a kilo go missing on me,” Iris said. “I was lucky because my supplier was understanding and chalked it up to a business loss. About a year later, a friend of mine was helping me move and we found it stuffed between towels in a closet. God, did we have a party.”
“I have one for you,” Tracy said. “One night, some friends and I were sitting around my coffee table doing coke. My wasted husband was passed out on the couch. We’d just dumped an eight ball out and I was about to do a line when Ken woke up. He snatched the rolled-up bill out of my hand and said, ‘I’m going first.’ He bent over the mirror and sneezed a huge sneeze, blowing coke everywhere. He laughed and passed out on the couch again.”
Tracy folded her arms across her chest and got a far-off, pissed-off look on her face. The incident happened more than ten years ago, but Tracy is still very ticked off about it.
[Friday, December 5]
I picked up Max from school, took him to Walter’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, bought some tokens for Van, and played a few arcade games with him before he ran off to climb around in the slide maze. I spotted an empty booth, sat down, and called my mom to find out how my dad’s appointment with Svengali went.
“We gave Dr. Barren the report from the needle biopsy and he said, ‘What did you go to this guy for? He’s a nothing little pulmonary doctor. This report tells me nothing. I don’t know what kind of cancer this is. Why didn’t you go to the guy I told you to see? You just wasted valuable time. Go and get this done like I told you to.’ I know you’ve been trying to help, but we’re going to stay with Dr. Barren and do what he says. So thanks for your help, but we’re done with running around.”
I sat in the booth, stunned. My mother had just told me to piss off. Ron, Fay’s jobless husband, walked into Chuck E. Cheese and sat in the booth behind me. We sat sideways with our legs stretched out in front of us separated by the booth back.
“How are you?” Ron asked.
“Eh,” I said shrugging. “You?”
“Eh,” he said and laughed. “The upshot of being unemployed is it’s freeing. It’s allowing me to open my mind and look at all sorts of options around the country, but Fay’s freaking. She doesn’t want to leave her family.”
“We’re spiritual beings having a human experience,” I said.
Ron looked at me like I had rocks in my head. “Did you hear that from one of your yoga friends?” he asked. We laughed.
Fay was shooting me a “what’s wrong?” look while running around doling out game tokens to Walter and his friends. I felt guilty not helping her, but I had to keep an eye on Van.
As the boys and I were leaving the party, Fay asked, “What’s going on?”
“Just more Dad stuff,” I said.
“You wanna get together for coffee tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “How about after my yoga class?”
I took the boys home and after they were in bed, Charlie, who’d been in San Francisco since Wednesday, arrived home. Charlie and I lay in bed in the dark and I finally told him what was going on with my dad, even though he didn’t ask.
“I just know they’re going to cancel those appointments I made,” I said. “They’re going to stay with that freak and they don’t want me butting in.”
Charlie lay silently. He moved his hand over to my hip and I turned away, curled up in a rigid little ball, and lay awake thinking about my father and resenting Charlie for being nothing but horny.
[Saturday, December 6]
I worked out a lot of my anger and resentment in yoga, then met Fay for coffee. As I told her about my dad and Svengali, my anger came surging back.
“I always thought you do a needle biopsy first and if you can’t get a good sample, you do surgery,” Fay said.
“Svengali has my parents’ minds bent,” I said. “He’s scared them to death. He actually told them he’s the only doctor who can cure my dad. He yelled at them for wasting precious time seeing other doctors. He cursed my dad out, swore at him, for getting a second opinion. This is a nightmare and my hands are tied. My parents basically told me to fuck off.”
“You should write them a letter or send them an email pointing out all the red flags this doctor is waving,” Fay said. “Even though you’ve told them your worries, it’s often effective to look at them in writing.”
I drove back home and began stewing about how my mother huffs and puffs any time I ask her to get slides or CT scan reports, or to do anything that requires a little work. I decided if she wants me to piss off, I’m going to piss off.
[Sunday, December 7]
The phone rang and I was surprised to hear my mother’s voice.
“Your father came back from Florida with a lot of mahimahi and wants you to make it on Christmas Eve,” she said. “Do you want to talk to him?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She handed the phone to my dad.
“Did you have a good time on your trip?” I asked.
“I had a great time,” he said. “Had a lot of fun. You know that Christmas fish you make? I’ve got a lot of mahimahi, and I’d like you to make it Christmas Eve.”
“That recipe is for sea bass,” I said. “I’m not sure if it’ll work with mahimahi. I’ll check it out. One way or the other, I’ll make your fish.”
“Good.”
“You know, I hope you’re still going to see those doctors at Northwestern,” I said. “It’s really important to hear what they think. Keep those appointments, Dad. I’m begging you.”
“I suppose so,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I said. “Why don’t you put Mom back on the phone so I can make sure she gets all the right stuff for your appointments.”
My dad handed the phone to my mother and she agreed not to cancel the doctor appointments. “Make sure you track down the slides of the prostate biopsy,” I told her.
My mother sighed disgustedly. “I guess,” she said. “I don’t know why
I have to do all this running around. I think all of these doctors stink. I don’t think any of them know what they’re doing or that any of them care.”
[Tuesday, December 9]
I was up until eleven last night making lemon drop cookies for the cookie exchange with book club tonight. My family is now up to its ears in homemade Christmas cookies. Yum!
We were discussing the book Keeping Faith at book club and, as usual, our conversations veered off topic. Nosey Rosy, who was pretty lit, loudly made herself the center of attention.
“I was watching Dr. Phil,” she announced. “There was a couple on his show who had two kids, and Dr. Phil told the husband that the wife had two full-time jobs taking care of those kids. I called my husband,” Rosy continued, waving her finger at everyone sitting around her, “and I told him, ‘I have three full-time jobs! Three full-time jobs!’”
It was typical Rosy. I pray I was nothing like Rosy when I was drunk. It’s often said that the flaws that annoy you in others are flaws you have yourself. It makes my skin crawl to think people looked at me like I was looking at her.
I got home around eleven thirty and Sturgis, my sweet old dog, was acting weird. He was panting anxiously and pacing by the sliding glass door that leads to our backyard deck. I let Sturgis out and he stayed in the backyard for twenty minutes, which is unusual for him. He pretty much comes right back in as soon as he finishes doing his business. When Sturgis came back in, I followed him as he slowly limped upstairs on arthritic legs. I love that dog. It makes me so sad to think of him dying, too.
[Wednesday, December 10]
Charlie got Max out of bed this morning and found a bloody spot of urine on Max’s bedroom floor. I looked at Sturgis panting on our bedroom floor. After taking the boys to school, I drove Sturgis to the vet. On our way into the office, Sturgis took a bloody whiz on the sidewalk. He never pees in the house or on the sidewalk. We walked into the building, and Sturgis lay at my feet as I talked to the receptionist. After a couple of minutes, Sturgis got up and I noticed a bloody smear on the floor. An older couple sitting in the waiting room with their cat noticed, too.
“Oh, the doggy cut himself,” the old man said.
“He’s peeing blood,” I said, making a worried face.
“Me, too,” the old woman said.
A veterinary assistant came out from behind the counter and handed me a small plastic cup and asked me to get a urine sample. I took Sturgis outside and he immediately lifted his leg and let out a stream of blood-clotted urine before I could get the cup under him. We walked around the yard and Sturgis lifted his leg here and there marking territory. Each time he lifted his leg, I stuck the cup under his penis but not much came out. What did come out sprayed erratically, mostly on my hand and coat, but I did manage to get a couple of drops into the cup.
“Here,” I said handing the cup to the assistant with my blood-and-urine spattered hand. The assistant frowned and tried to suck up a clot off the floor with a syringe. I walked Sturgis into an examining room. The vet felt all over Sturgis’s body and took him in the back to see if he could get more urine out of him with a catheter.
“I’m going to snake the catheter into his bladder, inflate it with air, and take some X-rays,” he told me.
After twenty minutes, the vet walked back in with Sturgis.
“I took two X-rays,” he said with a grim look. “The first one wasn’t good. You can’t see anything. The second one …” The vet clipped the X-ray to a light panel. “See this whole area?” He traced a blob on the X-ray with his pen. “That’s his bladder. And see this?” He pointed to a small triangle in it. “That’s what we were able to inflate, which leads me to believe the rest of the bladder is tumor. I had a really hard time running the catheter up. I kept hitting obstructions and I couldn’t get past the prostate. Your dog is thirteen years old. I could put him under and try to get a better picture, but I’m pretty sure what I felt is a tumor around his prostate that entered his bladder.”
“How sure are you?” I asked.
“Seventy-five, eighty percent sure,” he said. “There’s not much we can do.”
“I want you to put him under and get a better picture,” I said. “I want to know what’s up there.”
“Okay, you can bring him back tomorrow,” the vet said.
“What about now? We’re here now.”
“Uh, yeah, I could do it during my lunch hour.”
I hugged Sturgis and gave him a kiss before the vet led him out and into a back room. I walked out of the office, sat in my Jeep, and cried. I called Charlie.
“The vet said he’d call around one o’clock with the results,” I sobbed. “But it seems likely I’ll have to put Sturgis down.”
I was supposed to go to the hospital this afternoon with my parents to meet the surgeon Svengali recommended. I drove home, called my mother, and told her I couldn’t make it.
At noon, I called the vet to see if there was any news and a veterinary assistant told me the vet was able to get a smaller catheter into Sturgis’s bladder and there was no tumor; Sturgis just had a severe bladder infection that could be treated with steroids and antibiotics.
I was a wreck, but a happy wreck. I picked up Sturgis a few hours later, took him home, made dinner, and began eating with the kids. Charlie was going out to dinner with his boss, Neil, whom we’d had dinner with in Savannah. While the kids and I were eating, the phone rang.
“Neil would really like to see everybody, so I’m bringing him over,” Charlie said. “We’ll be there in half an hour. We’ll just stay for a little bit, then head out for dinner.”
About a month ago, Charlie told me Neil was flying in for meetings and asked me to make a nice dinner for him tonight. The appointment with the surgeon came up, and I asked Charlie to take Neil out to dinner instead.
“The house is not picked up for company,” I said. “Neil will see a mess.”
“Uh, that’s okay,” Charlie said. “See you in a bit.”
Bastard! I thought as I quickly picked up the downstairs but not the upstairs. Half an hour later, Charlie and Neil were at the door. As soon as Neil walked in, Van invited him up to his room. Neil smiled and shrugged and followed Van upstairs where the beds were all unmade and the hamper was overflowing. I didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Charlie got home at ten thirty, pumped up with wine and ready for action. He grabbed my ass and said, “Hey baby, I have to get up early tomorrow. Neil and I have to be at a meeting downtown at nine.”
“You said only Neil was going to that meeting tomorrow,” I said.
“Neil wants me to go now.”
“You know I have to be downtown at nine,” I yelled. “I have to be at Northwestern for my dad’s doctor appointment! You knew that.”
Charlie stood there with a sappy look on his face saying nothing. I pushed past him and called Liv and asked if I could bring Max to her house before school. She said yes. I crossed my fingers and hoped Van’s preschool wouldn’t mind if I dropped Van off two hours early. I went to bed and turned my back on my horny prick of a husband.
[Thursday, December 11]
The preschool let me drop Van off early, and I drove downtown to the urologist’s office. My parents and I were taken into an examining room and Dr. McCreevy, an attractive guy in his early forties, walked in.
“What brings you to see me?” he asked my dad with a friendly smile.
My dad told McCreevy his medical story and told him he was seeing Svengali.
“Dr. Barren told me he could cure me and no one else could,” my dad said.
McCreevy raised his eyebrows, gave my dad a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look, took a deep breath, and put a hand over his mouth to pull down his smile.
“Dr. Barren told me not to see any other doctors, to stick with him and I’d be fine,” my dad continued.
McCreevy tipped back in his chair and groaned. I held out my arms, met my father’s gaze, and said, “See? Do you see how he’s reacting?” I turned to McCr
eevy. “My dad went to Dr. Barren after he found out he was terminal. Dr. Barren told him, ‘You just did the two worst things: You had surgery, I never would have done surgery, then you had radiation, and radiation feeds cancer. But the good news is you’re back with me and now I can take care of you.’”
McCreevy shook his head, rubbed his face, and groaned again.
“Do you see?” I said to my dad. “Look at the doctor.”
“That’s just wrong,” McCreevy said, still shaking his head. “You did the right things.”
My dad told McCreevy about the invasive biopsy Dr. Barren still wants to do and the needle biopsy he already had done. “Dr. Barren screamed at me for seeing that other doctor and getting a needle biopsy,” my father said. “Yesterday, I saw the surgeon he wants me to see. I’m scheduled for a biopsy on the sixteenth and I’ll be in the hospital for two days.”
McCreevy looked at my dad’s needle biopsy report, which said “suspicious for prostate cancer.”
“I want you to take the biopsy slides to our top cytologist,” McCreevy said. “If she says it’s prostate cancer, it’s prostate cancer. If she doesn’t know, no one would know and you’ll have to have the other biopsy. But why have it done if you don’t have to?
“Up until now, you’ve done all the right things,” McCreevy assured my father. “But now you need a quarterback to manage things for you, you need a good oncologist.”
“I’ve got an appointment to see Dr. Newhart on Monday,” my dad said.
“Great,” McCreevy said. “He’s a really good doctor. Get the CT scans of your lungs for Dr. Newhart.”
We walked out of McCreevy’s office and my mother hugged me.
“Thank you for being persistent,” my mom said. “I feel really good about this. I like him.”
Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife Page 29
