by Neil Hetzner
When Bett finally rose from her reverie, she realized how cold the night had grown. She rubbed her cheeks against the warmth of the shrug as she walked up the dew slick grass toward the lights of the house.
As they lay next to one another in the dark Bett and Neil both regulated their breathing so that the other would be encouraged to fall asleep. After many minutes of unmoving alertness, Neil reached across the expanse of cool cotton sheet to take the tips of Bett’s fingers in his own. She wiggled her fingers in thanks as she whispered, “It’ll be fine.”
Neil squeezed her hand.
“It always is.”
Simultaneously, without speaking, Neil and Bett rolled onto their sides. As she had done for four decades, Bett wormed her way backward across the bed until her back touched his chest and her buttocks fit into the warm saddle of her partner’s pelvis.
* * *
Neil started to reach his arm over Bett, as he had done a million times, to hold a breast in his hand. His hand hovered in mid-air as he realized that she might think that he was examining her. His breath caught as he realized that he couldn’t remember which breast she had touched as she had told him that something was growing inside of her. He settled his hand on Bett’s upper arm and concentrated on breathing in the warm smell of the woman he had lived with for forty-two years.
Despite all of his efforts to focus on nothing but her sweet smell, his concentration was broken by a series of questions. How differently would holding Bett feel after the biopsy? What would he be feeling in a week if the growth were malignant? What would he be feeling if her breast were gone? What would he be feeling if in the close future—rather than in the long future where thoughts of death had always been kept before—what if the spot next to him, which was filled with warmth and the smell of forty years, should be empty of everything but the wound of loss and the weak palliative of memories?
Neil Koster didn’t know whether to hold on tighter on to his wife’s arm or whether to loosen his grip.
Chapter 8
Bett stood in the middle of the walk-in closet looking at the luggage. It was hard to decide what to take.
Despite Dr. Maurer’s recommendation to have the two-stage procedure, Bett had opted for the one-stage. She would go to the hospital that evening, have blood work done, go under general anesthesia in the morning, and have the mass removed. During the surgery, while the operating team waited, a frozen slice of the lump would be analyzed by a pathologist. If no cancer cells were found, the incision would be stitched up and she would be wheeled to the recovery room. Depending upon how she recovered from the anesthesia and how her vital signs and the wound responded, she could be released later that day. If the doctors’ divinations said the biopsy results were normal, the small leather bag would be adequate for the nightgown, underwear, robe, slippers, toothbrush, hairbrush and a Van Gulik mystery that she would need.
Bett couldn’t stop thinking about the biopsy. She kept imagining the thin, pink icy slices she cut from half-thawed eye of round when she was preparing to stir fry beef and broccoli. The closet filled with a low hiss as she shushed herself.
If the pathologist found cancer, the surgeon would continue his work by cutting off her breast. He would slice away the lining over the muscles of the chest and, after pulling back their covering muscle, dig out the lymph nodes from her armpit. Depending on how her wound drained she might have to remain in the hospital for a week or even longer.
If it were cancer, she would need a larger suitcase to hold more books, a second robe, her shrug and, if Dr. Maurer were proved right about the quick restoration of mobility of her arm, her knitting.
Bett stood in the closet’s murky light of sunshine filtered by old paper blinds trying to make a decision. If she took the smaller brown bag was she being unreasonably hopeful? Dr. Maurer had assured her that only a small percentage of breast abnormalities were malignant.
During the dozen years Nita had waited to learn whether the DES was going to give her cervical cancer, Bett frequently had told her daughter that the odds were greatly in her favor she would reach twenty-five without harm. However, despite her calm reassurances to Nita, Bett herself had flopped from worry to prayer to anger to guilt during those years. There had been times when she had known with utter certainty that Nita would be just fine and other times when she had been convinced that her daughter’s body was going to explode in sickness.
Throughout the previous week, in the midst of making a sandwich or folding a beach towel, Bett had wondered about cosmic good will. Was it expecting too much for neither the daughter nor the mother to be diseased? Was there a limit to prayer? Knowing that it was foolishness as soon as she thought it, she could not help wondering if prayers were not unlike grocery coupons. They could be used to redeem a person or a situation, but once the boon was granted, the coupon was used up. Bett pushed back on that thought. God’s grace was inexhaustible. She knew that. She had only doubted for a second. And a second second and a third.
Bett studied the larger suitcases. If she took a bigger one, it would indicate her willingness to accept that life might change. There had been much health and joy in her life. She should be willing to accept something different. Bett hefted the weight of the Pullman bag and made her choice. She would take a large one. She put the bag back down. She couldn’t take it. What was she thinking? She had told Neil that she was positive the biopsy would come back negative. Taking a large bag would frighten him. She sat down on the smooth tan leather. What changes. Not two weeks before she had been digging out her children’s old sleeping bags for her grandchildren. Her biggest concerns had been sleeping arrangements and ripening tomatoes and hiding the six pounds that she recently had gained from Dilly’s inquisitional eye. By this time tomorrow she might be waking up with a large mass of her flesh just chopped off. She might be a cancer victim. What a terrible word. Victim. It sounded so hopeless.
Bett rearranged her thinking as carefully as if it were a drawer of linen. She might be a patient, a cancer patient. But, she reminded herself, if she were a cancer patient, at least, she would be a recovering one. It had been that reassuring thought—that the very moment the disease was diagnosed would be the same moment that the treatment would begin. It was that notion that had led her to decide to have the one-stage operation. She would wake to learn that she had, she corrected herself, had had cancer and that it had been removed.
Dr. Maurer had taken a lot of time to describe Bett’s options. He had gone into great detail to explain the advantages of the two-stage procedure. The pathology report would be more useful to any treatment. If the biopsy found cancer, then, the short delay between diagnosis and surgery would give her time to prepare her family. Choosing the two-stage process would give her ample opportunity to research her options. Dr. Maurer told Bett that she could consider breast reconstruction or even schedule a plastic surgeon to rebuild her breast as soon as the general surgeon had finished the mastectomy. He had given her pamphlets. He had shown her the 1990 National Institute of Health recommendations that lumpectomy and radiation were as effective as mastectomy in many situations. Bett recalled how she had listened to most of what Dr. Maurer had said without really hearing it. Opa had always said that if she saw a weed, pull it. There was something. It could be a weed. If it were, it made sense to her to pull it immediately. The time to dig out dandelions was before the blossoms turned to seed, before they could be scattered by the wind.
At the end of Dr. Maurer’s consultation, Bett has chosen the one-stage option because the cancer would be removed before she, or Neil, or Nita, Lise or Peter, or, especially, Dilly knew that she had it. She could be home recovering before anyone, except Neil, knew that she was, or had been—it was hard to know what tense to use—sick.
Bett grabbed the small bag off the shelf. She would make up a pile of books and other things that she would want if there were to be an extended stay. She would cache them in her closet. If she needed them, she could tell Neil where they were.
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The Kosters ate an early supper at the picnic table. Although Bett had planned on grilling chicken thighs that were marinating in lemon, garlic and winter savory, she put them aside when Neil walked into the house holding a pound of boiled lobster tail meat. They sat quietly eating lobster salad, fresh tomatoes with basil leaves and vinaigrette, and cantaloupe. They watched the sky get finger-painted with long strokes of salmon and something pinker, but not pink. Each was relieved that the sky was so magnificent that it could be the focal point. Sitting at a warm, worn picnic table, each next to the other as they always sat when watching the sun set, surrounded by the familiar, stuck in a scene so placid it could have been an image for a silver anniversary card, Bett and Neil were swept with emotions. Even as the colors deepened and the lower clouds became backlit and outlined in molten gold, the theatricality of the plunging sun and the drama of the efflorescing night, could not match the emotions they were feeling.
Methodically chewing a lump of lobster, Bett was rocked with the nearness of loss. The loss of her breast, the loss of their familiar life, the loss of her life. She was buffeted by all the possible pain. The bother. The ungiving tightness of healing flesh. The tingling of a nerve-damaged arm. The distancing of disease.
Bett knew they both wanted to believe that in twenty-four hours they would be out here again looking at another red-washed sky, eating grilled chicken legs and sharing an overwhelming sense of gratitude. They wanted to believe, but each had doubts. Doubts led to lists of things that should be discussed. As Bett tried to savor the lobster’s sweetness, as she watched the sunset colors intensify, she knew they should talk about losses—of a day, a lump, of a breast, of hair and weight, of appetite, of rhythm, of pattern, of the familiar, of life, or lives. She knew she should talk of all those possible losses but already, disease or no disease, one loss, that of finding the right words, had already occurred. The feelings that were surging up and sweeping through her were too dramatic for the kinds of words that she and Neil used between themselves.
Bett thought that the feelings boiling inside her were better suited to being expressed by Dilly. Looking out over the carmine stained water and, then, upward to the molting sky, she thought of the thousands of sunsets she and Neil had seen in the years they had lived on Clarke’s Cove. They had seen ash black thunderheads and evanescent wisps of the palest orange; they had watched the sky fill with more shades of purple than there were irises. There had been evenings where the sky overhead was black but the horizon was a darker, reddish orange than could be found in any foundry. They had seen beauty so striking that it made their bodies tingle and their breaths catch. And on those nights when nature was painting something as miraculous as life itself, they would say to one another, “Nice sky, huh?” or “Sure is beautiful”. Unnamable colors and indescribable shapes would fill them with emotions so strong that it felt like electric current inside their skins. They would reach out, hold hands and share the buzz of that empyreal electricity. And, fully charged with that energy, one would say, only say, “Nice sky.”
Cute baby. Fun day. Nice Christmas. Great movie. Nice music. Good tomatoes. Nice breeze. Pretty sunset. This was their lexicon. It had been serviceable for the forty years of their life together. Bett wondered if it would be adequate for their, her future.
Bett involuntarily moved enough that Neil turned to look at her.
“Kind of scary,” she said quietly.
“Not knowing usually is.”
He put his fork down to reach for her hand.
“Anything I can do?”
“Just what you’ve always done. Love me.”
“I do that. What time do you want to be at the hospital?”
“I’m all packed. Let me get the dishes; then we’ll go.”
Neil shook his head.
“Always competent.”
“At dishes, anyway.”
As her hands finished the few dishes, Bett’s mind raced with the details of what should have been done if she had to stay in the hospital for a week or more. She should have prepared a number of meals for Neil and frozen them. She should have laid out a dress and shoes in case there was a problem with the anesthetic. She wondered if she should leave a note somewhere saying that donations should be made to the American Cancer Society. What if she was to die from the anesthetic and, afterward, it was found that she did not have cancer? Should donations go elsewhere? The Children’s Fund?
Bett fought to brake her thinking. There was no reason to make herself upset. She had a lump. Period. They would take it out. Successfully. She would be home. Tomorrow. In twenty-four hours she would be standing where she was, at that very moment, rubbing a glass with a red and white checked dish towel. The only difference would be that tomorrow there would be more dishes because they would have a celebration. Bett looked forward to using the splayed toothbrush to brush clean the raised grape leaves on the good china.
The Kosters rode to the hospital with few words other than those from the radio announcing Rhode Island’s own Dave McKenna playing piano on “Dancing in the Dark.”
After going through the paperwork of admission and finding Bett’s room, Bett and Neil both remained silent as she unpacked her bag and put away her few things. Finally, after she had run out of things to arrange, she turned to Neil.
“Will you keep your promise?”
“Yes, if you really think it’s the right thing to do.”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know why, Neil, but I’d just rather the kids not know until it’s over.”
“And over is when?”
“At least until I’m out of here. I’m sure that everything is fine and that I’ll be back home tomorrow night. But, if I’m not, if I have to stay, then let’s keep it quiet until I do get home.”
“And if someone calls? Not even if, but when. Bett, if you’re in here for more than a day or two, someone’s bound to call.”
“It shouldn’t be that bad. They were just here. If they call, can’t you say that I’m not there? Then, you can call me, and I’ll call them from here.”
“Bett, I’m not a good liar. You know that. I don’t know why you’re doing this. I don’t know why you didn’t tell all of us over the weekend…or, when you first found out.”
“Please, Neil, don’t. I’m sorry to have to ask you. I don’t want to worry them. That’s one reason. If everything is fine tomorrow, then it’s over before they know. If I had said anything, then, it would have been several days of unnecessary concern. Hovering. I can’t imagine the last two have been fun for you. Secondly, if it ends up that I have to stay, then, I’d rather be alone. If anyone knows, then, Dilly will know, and if Dilly knows, she’ll be here in two hours, and, Neil, you know, if she’s here, it’s not going to leave either me or the doctors much energy to work on getting better.
“I’m better off alone when I’m sick. You know that. Remember how we used to farm the kids out when I would get sick? Being sick takes a lot of energy, and getting well takes even more. If I’m alone, then I can concentrate on what I have to do. That’s the whole reason for spending the extra money on a private room. If the kids know that I’m here, I lose the private room.”
“I understand. I’m different. I’d want everybody here. At least the time would go by. I’ll try. I’ll do my best. But, you know, if Dilly suspects anything, if she gets going, I’m bound to crack. Our best spies couldn’t hold out against that interrogation. She’s the one that should have been a lawyer, or, maybe, a cop. Her investigative skills are too good to be wasted on the small crimes of childhood. I’ll try.”
“I know you will, Neil. Anyway, I don’t even think that it’ll come up. I’ll be home tomorrow, and we’ll give them all a call and tell them the good news.
“You better leave.”
Neil nodded his head in agreement. He pushed himself up from the chair in which he was sitting.
“I’ll be back in the morning.”
“I’ll be right here.”
“Our
bed’s going to feel pretty empty tonight.”
“Save my place.”
Neil opened his arms and Bett stepped into their hug. He bent his back so that he could bring his mouth to her ear.
“I love you.”
Bett freed one arm from his embrace and used it to draw his head down so that she could whisper back, “I love you, too, Neil Koster. Always and ever. My only pash.”
Neil’s eyes moistened when he heard her call him her passion. It was a word that she used only for special occasions in the same way someone else might get out the family silver for a birthday dinner. Each tightened his hold on the other in reassurance.
“Sleep tight.”
“You, too.”
“Drugged, I expect.”
“I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Bye bye.”
* * *
Bett awoke as if the sound of voices drifting under the closed doorway had been smoke—instantly and intensely alert. But, disoriented. She thrashed herself up to a half-sitting position for a moment of heart-pounding wariness before falling back. The room was awash in amber as the lights from the parking lot seeped through the orange curtains. Wisps of sound—muted voices, the one-note chime of an elevator, the susurration of the air conditioner, a car engine starting up—wandered aimlessly in through her ears and out, around the densely shadowed room, into her ears again, once around her lightly medicated mind, and out again.
