Two Sisters: A Novel

by Mary Hogan

  Over and over since Dr. Payton had looked up from that sickening manila folder, Pia replayed different scenarios in her mind. What if she’d never answered the phone when Dr. Rushkin called with the bad news? If she’d been away with Will, or at her parents’ house in Queens, she would be perfectly fine now, absolutely alive instead of on an elevator to death. If Will had bypassed her breasts that night at the Greenbriar when they made love, and every other time since, she’d be at the organic dry cleaners right now. Easily, she could have ignored the lump she felt in the shower. Easily, she had! It’s not like she’d felt that sick. A nap in the car? What’s the big deal? Fatigue is a national malaise. She’d heard it on the evening news. All she had to do was alter her lifestyle somewhat. Blanca could pick up Emma from school while she napped. They could have the windows tinted on the SUV so none of her gossipy neighbors could ever see her curled up on the backseat. If no one had told her she had cancer, perhaps her body would forget it, too. Didn’t she once hear about a woman who outlived her husband because he never told her that the doctor told him she had only months to live? How could one early morning phone call destroy a whole life?

  “The new wing is nice.” Will watched the numbers descend into letters on the digital display over the elevator doors.

  Pia nodded, but she didn’t agree. The very name was wrong. Wing. It was absurd. Wings were uplifting. They gave you flight, took you elsewhere, not down to the basement level where human beings were irradiated and injected with poison. That wing, with its mini Starbucks and laptop stations in the lobby, was a farce. Who were they trying to fool? Coffee aroma only slightly masked the fact that they were in a hospital that smelled the way all hospitals do: disinfectant, Betadine, latex gloves, and rotting flowers for people who never did get well. Plus, the infusion unit—the final hope for the sickest of the sick—was closer to hell than heaven. Of course her treatment was in a basement. There would be no means of escape.

  When the elevator went bing and the doors opened, Will sounded pitiful with his overcheerful, “Here we are!” Pia followed him off, but turned to leap back into the elevator when she saw a gray-faced man and a Vermeer woman: white lipped and lashless. Quickly, Will grabbed her arm.

  “This is us.”

  Suddenly weak in the knees, Pia gripped her husband’s strong shoulder. Why had she answered that damn phone?

  “EVERYTHING OFF FROM the waist up.”

  Each morning was the same routine. Will and Pia dropped Emma off at school together, then Will left his wife at the hospital entrance, a few yards from the elevator leading to the infusion unit.

  “I can stay,” Will offered each day, even as they both knew he didn’t mean it. Like Pia, he’d rather be anywhere else.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Go be a master of the universe.”

  They kissed good-bye. A bittersweet connection. Each morning’s kiss was numbered in their minds, though neither would dare utter such an unthinkable thought. Pia was careful to walk fully upright and wave cheerfully as Will drove off. As if chemo was college and Will was a proud parent.

  At first, it was true. She was fine. This isn’t so bad, she thought. The wide pink leatherette recliner was comfortable enough. The IV needle only hurt a little as it punctured the bouncy vein on the back of her hand. It felt like any other shot or the sharp prick of donated blood. With her iPod buds in her ears, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the soft chair, listening to the party favorites Will had downloaded for her. It was the music they played when they made love—all pulsing beat and memory of dancing drenched in sweat and abandon. The sound of freedom.

  “All done.”

  That’s what the nurse said after the first full dose, her hand gently shaking Pia’s shoulder.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Pia sat up, took a deep breath expecting a wave of nausea. She reached up to stroke her hair, bracing herself to feel a clump let loose in her hand. But there was nothing. She felt fine. When Blanca picked her up, she didn’t go to bed when she got home. Instead, she called the salon to see if Tara had time for a full-leg wax and a paraffin manicure. Her nails were a mess. She drove herself to the appointment and made it home without the slightest desire to park beneath the tree at the far corner of Ann Taylor’s back lot.

  On day two she felt fine, as well. That whole first week, in fact, made her question chemotherapy’s frightening reputation. Perhaps other patients were less strong? Less fit?

  “I’ll take my own car, darling,” she told Will.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m meeting Mama in the city for lunch.”

  Hiding her illness from Lidia would be easy, she thought, relieved. Why had Dr. Payton been so glum? Was it his healing strategy? Prepare his patients for the worst so he would seem like a miracle worker? Payton over at CG is the best. Was his dire diagnosis merely a means of enhancing his reputation? Surprising herself, Pia felt hopeful. She brought homemade antioxidant muffins for the nursing staff.

  “Blueberry, pomegranate, and flax seed,” she chirped. “Try this one with chia seeds.”

  “You’re the best,” they replied, which of course Pia believed. God had selected her for extraordinary things, given her phenomenal strength. Her mother had taught her as much from the very beginning. Why, look at Emma. How many women could produce such perfection? Clearly, God had decided her time wasn’t up. Her very life would be testament to the fact that prayers were not only heard, they were answered, too.

  “Love the hat, Jareesha.”

  Pia waved to her “bosom buddy” in the neighboring recliner, the ashy woman at the end of the row who wore a baseball cap with fake Pippi Longstocking braids springing out comically from the sides. At least it wasn’t a turban, Pia thought. No one looked good in a turban, not even Greta Garbo or Lana Turner, no matter what the movie magazines said. Nestling into the recliner, Pia inserted her iPod earbuds and turned the music up loud.

  Then it hit.

  When the nurse tapped her shoulder that day, Pia’s hand moved slowly to pull the buds out of her ears, to turn the music off. Suddenly, she felt as if the recliner had been dipped in quicksand.

  “Let me help you up.” The nurse took her arm.

  “I must have fallen asleep,” Pia replied, confused. A knowing look on her face, the nurse slipped her strong arm around Pia’s back and said, “Lean on me, honey.”

  Uncomfortable leaning on anyone, Pia swung her leaden legs to the side as a wave of nausea overtook her. She slapped her hand over her mouth. In one expert move the nurse grabbed a vomit tray with her free hand and placed it under Pia’s chin just in time.

  “I’m sorry,” Pia sputtered, mortified.

  “Rest here a minute or two.” The nurse tucked Pia back into the recliner. “I’ll be right back with some water,” she said, replacing the full vomit tray with an empty one. Before she returned, Pia had thrown up again.

  That day—really, she could pinpoint the exact minute—cancer abducted her. The pink poison running through her veins held her life hostage. She was powerless to stop it. Though she tried not to, she pictured the shifting color of her organs in her mind. They darkened around the edges, the way hamburger meat turns purplish if left out on the counter too long. She imagined pus-filled lesions bursting open in soft tissue, frayed strings of muscles that were no longer able to stick to bone. She could almost smell the rotting of her own flesh. In one awful moment, Pia became a cancer patient. No longer God’s blessed messenger, Pia Winston would soon be one of those women in a scarf, the type people looked at, then looked through.

  While she waited for Blanca to pick her up that day, Pia glanced around the infusion unit and thought, Thank God the hospital had the sense not to paint the new cancer wing pink. Her disease was black, not the color of newborn girls.

  Chapter 21

  DAZED, MURIEL DESCENDED the escalator in the vertical mall with her sister close behind her. Head down, she gripped the rub
ber rails with both hands and watched the metal teeth flatten and mesh together at the bottom before sliding beneath the ground. As the first floor approached, she barely had the energy to step up one inch to avoid getting sucked under.

  On the way down, Pia rested her chin on Muriel’s shoulder the way she had in her apartment. Again, Muriel inhaled her sister’s scent—pressed linen, botanical shampoo, expensive elegance. It was a fragrance she’d smelled all her life. Muriel wanted to reach back, encircle her sister’s head in the crook of her arm, and announce, “I love you,” but the escalator hit bottom and they broke apart. Besides, saying those three words now would only highlight the fact that she’d never uttered them out loud before.

  “I’ll go with you to the train station,” Muriel said instead, awkwardly taking Pia’s arm.

  “Just because I’m dying doesn’t mean I’m an invalid.”

  Pia laughed and Muriel tried to. Then Pia stopped and said, “Before I got sick, I never thought about that word: ‘invalid.’ Pronounce it differently and it becomes invalid. As if being ill means you’re no longer legitimate. You’re void. There’s some truth to that.”

  Muriel wanted to tell her sister that she was the most valid person she’d ever known. That feeling invalid had zero to do with being sick. But it felt wrong to say anything even close to that, so she said nothing at all.

  A line of cabs idled in the shaded curve of Columbus Circle. Pia walked toward the front of the line and handed her sister the shopping bag with the gray satin dress in it. Her look said it all: I’m counting on you.

  “I won’t let you down,” Muriel said. “I promise.”

  “Mama already senses something is up. I’ve avoided her for weeks. You have to be strong for me, Muriel. I’m begging you not to tell her.”

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  Knocking on the cab window Pia said, “Grand Central,” to the driver. He nodded. She opened the cab door and gracefully folded herself in. Muriel stood there with her shoulders slumped, the shopping bag dangling from her fingertips.

  “What else do you need?” she asked, helpless. “What can I do?”

  Pia shut the door and rolled down the window as the driver inched into traffic. “There is one thing,” she called out to her younger sister.

  “Tell me. Anything.”

  “Forgive me.”

  With that, the cab lurched into an opening in the lane and took off. Muriel stood like a block of wood and watched Pia roll the window back up. Through the rear window she saw her wave good-bye over her shoulder, then pull the seat belt across her chest and snap it in place. Muriel noted how the outline of Pia’s perfect hair grew smaller as the cab disappeared around the corner. She wanted to shout, “Of course!” Had she known it would be the last time she saw her sister with any semblance of life, she surely would have. She would have chased after the cab, caught it at a red light, slapped her palm against the window until Pia rolled it down again. Ignoring the grime ridge it would create on her white dress, she would have reached both arms into the hot car to hug her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she would have said. “Siblings are cruel sometimes.” Even as the driver grew impatient and angry honking blared around her, she wouldn’t let her sister go. “I forgave you years ago.”

  Earlier, in her apartment, she would have returned Pia’s kiss in the kitchen, hugged her even, used the tight space between them to inhale her, to memorize her face and the way her collarbone created two deep hollows at the base of her neck. In front of the mirror, she would have pressed their cheeks together and compared features, freckle by freckle. “My nose is wider,” she would have said, “and your jawline is more defined.” She would have searched for their parents’ genetic contribution.

  “You got Mom’s hips; I got Dad’s height.”

  Lifting her sister’s hand, she would have placed its flat palm against hers, measuring the width of each finger, counting the folds in each knuckle. She would have traced the life line on the fleshy inside to see how long they had together. Then, she would have held that same hand up to her beating heart and told Pia how much she meant to her, how she’d wanted to be exactly like her for as long as she could remember, from the very beginning of her consciousness, the first moment she discovered she wasn’t enough the way she was.

  “I’m sorry I never was the sister you wanted,” she would have whispered, letting that sentence hang aloft so Pia could feel its sincerity, the breaking of her heart. When Pia scoffed, she would have admitted, “I tried. Honestly, I did.” Then she would have asked, “Can we start over? Right here? Right now?”

  Yes, that’s what she would have said and done. If only she had known or been another type of person entirely.

  Chapter 22

  EACH MORNING, FOR the briefest second between the fading of her Ambien and the dawning of her day, Pia felt normal. In bed, for one blip of time, she forgot her fate. Nausea, her constant companion, was still asleep. Time, her enemy, was suspended. The feeling was as luscious—and fleeting—as the final moment before anesthesia knocks you out. That ecstasy, the lifting of burden. You try to grasp it even as you long to melt into it. It’s a glimpse of heaven, a preview of the way you’ll feel when God finally greets you.

  “At last, my child, we meet.”

  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

  Pia lived for that solitary moment between unconsciousness and waking, beneath the cool cotton sheets of her bed, where her satin slippers waited on the floor below like seraphim. God’s breath was a soft caress on her cheek. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, is what God has prepared for those who love him.

  Memorized Scripture comforted her like waves gently rolling onto sand. A meditative loop. In that split second, her existence was still the holiness of ordinary life: errands and motherhood and chitchat with her facialist, manicurist, the pharmacist, and the new guy at the wine shop.

  “Good morning, lovely. How are you feeling?”

  Poof. With the crash of a storm swell hitting the shore, it was gone. In its place was Will’s face. The love in his eyes was permanently shaded by fear. Propped up on one elbow, robust in his silk T-shirt, with his round cheeks and white teeth and Russian trapper hat of hair, Will gazed down at his wife and asked, “Need anything?”

  Slowly, Pia reached her pale hand up to cup her husband’s stubbled chin. She left it there a moment, feeling the warm prickle of his flesh. What can I say, she thought. The truth? That she wanted him to stop asking that question every morning. Both questions, really. The answers were always the same: she felt like crap and she needed a miracle. The hope in his eyes made her feel hopeless. She wanted things back the way they were. The careless way he assumed she would always be there, his selfishness. If she could, she would have rubbed the desperation out of his eyes.

  Is today our last day? Tomorrow?

  Pia wanted Will and Emma to stop tiptoeing around her. Leave her alone with a box of saltines and Vicodin. Not forever, only long enough to muster the strength to bear the most painful part of cancer: its reflection—in Emma’s young face when her mother missed yet another track meet, in Will’s panicked expression each time she started coughing and couldn’t stop. It was the way her hairdresser’s eyes went white when a clump of Pia’s hair came out in his hands. After that, they stopped gossiping about the latest celebrity Botox blunder. The newest Hollywood marriage to fall apart. “Can’t anyone stay married in that town?”

  Pia ceased being a person and became a disease. Hair appointments felt like wakes. Silence descended in the salon when she walked in.

  “How are you holding up?” the stylist would ask so solemnly Pia wanted to slap him.

  “I’m still in here,” she wanted to scream. “My body is dying, not me.”

  God give me strength. People forget that you’re alive until the very moment yo
u’re not.

  “Fine,” she said, instead. The word intended to shut everyone up. And out. To erase those pitiful sighs. Not that it did any of those things. Soon Pia stopped seeing her hairdresser at all. There wasn’t much hair to do anyway after her second chemo cycle.

  What did she need? Honesty. The uncensored facts about cancer’s collateral damage. How friends would lunge forward at the beginning bearing fruit baskets and stories about so-and-so’s sister-in-law who had such-and-such cancer. “She’s still alive!” they’d say, encouragingly, not realizing how that very sentence highlighted the improbability of it.

  “Have you tried acai berries?”

  “Meditation?”

  “Acupuncture?”

  “Organic grass-fed beef?”

  She needed a friend who had the courage to say, “Christ, Pia, you look like shit.” One who would show up without makeup or with a chipped manicure on her worst hair day so Pia wouldn’t feel so ugly. She wanted to see someone else’s dark circles, needed a friend who had the confidence to listen more than worry about what to say.

  “You don’t know what to say to me?” Pia wanted to shout. “Too bad. I didn’t invite you here. I’m going to die and so are you. Deal with it.”

  How was she feeling? That’s what Will wanted to know?

  Pissed.

  Cancer, she now knew, was like a recurring spousal argument.

  “You think I want to nag you?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What I want is for you to take care of things without me having to ask you to.”

  “You don’t feel taken care of? This house? Those shoes? Your life?”