The Girl in Times Square

by Paullina Simons

  “Sammy!” The mother was redder than Lily’s overloaded head.

  Lily smiled. She didn’t glance at Spencer, next to her at the dinner table.

  “Lily, I didn’t say that, please forgive him,” said the mother, throwing livid looks toward a son she had apparently once loved.

  “Don’t worry.” Lily was amused. “Really. And Sammy, your mommy is right, your uncle did only bring me because I have cancer.”

  A terrible silence followed before everyone laid in to the turkey and yams. Spencer stayed quiet. Lily ate cheerfully, and asked for seconds, and thirds, and then threw up everything in Spencer’s seventy-seven-year-old mother’s white and clean bathroom.

  “He’s just a child,” Spencer finally said to her after they’d been on mute in the car, driving home. “And it’s not true.”

  “Oh, like I care about that.”

  “What then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, it’s Christmas.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me. Thank you for your Christmas charity, Detective O’Malley.”

  “Ah. So you do care about that.”

  “Not even remotely. But it is true.”

  “Lil, what’s the matter? Something is the matter, what?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “What?”

  “You know, I would’ve gone to Andrew’s today, where my whole family is. You know why I didn’t? Because they didn’t invite me. In fact, what Amanda said, was, ‘Lil, in light of the circumstances it’s really best that you not come. You understand. Have this all die down a bit.’”

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

  Yes, Lily wanted to say. It is your fault. And my fault. When Spencer didn’t speak, she said, “They’re so upset with me.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know. You don’t understand anything.”

  “No?”

  “Of course not! They think I’m selling them out.”

  “To who?” Spencer looked at her so sharply he nearly drove off the road. “To me? You’ve got to be kidding me. Have you told them that you are the most reluctant sell-out, you are a failure as a sell-out, you are the worst witness, you have the worst memory, you remember nothing, and what you do remember you keep from me anyway. You tell me nothing, have you told them that?”

  “They don’t care and they don’t believe me.”

  “How is that your fault?”

  “Oh, Spencer. It’s not about them.” Lily fell quiet. It’s about you. She thought they were right. Her mother was right. On Christmas Day, Lily felt unholy for being in the company of an Irish Catholic who wanted to put her brother away. How did this happen? How did her brother turn the family upside down and it was Lily who was on the guilt rack?

  “I don’t know why they’re getting their panties in a twist,” said Spencer. “I haven’t talked to him in a month. I have not called. I’ve done nothing. I’m wrapped up in a dozen other things. Christmas is the worst time for the missing. Too many of them, and their families want them back.” He paused. “Most families want their loved ones with them on Christmas.”

  “Oh, stop it. Stop judging my family. Look, you want me to tell you something about my brother? Is that what you want?”

  “No! What I want is for you to make peace with your family. Make peace with yourself.”

  “You want to hear it or not? It won’t help you, but here it is.” Lily’s voice was shaking and low. “Years ago when he was in college, every other weekend, he would come home from Cornell and on the Sunday before he went back he would take me to New York City. He was twenty and I was three. He took me to the Museum of Natural History and to the Met and to the Guggenheim. He took me to the movies, for ice cream sodas at Serendipity’s, to the Cloisters, to Battery Park, to the Empire State Building, and to the Twin Towers. I learned to love New York City because he showed it to me for four years of Sundays, holding my hand on the subway and on the way back home to our apartment he carried me. He was in law school and I was seven the last time we went out and he carried me. Then he got married, and got busy, and I saw him less frequently, but still he took me to lunch, to the movies, to dinner. He called me; we spoke. It’s never been like this—this complete shutout of me.”

  Lily saw Spencer’s hands tense around the wheel. He was staring grimly at the road.

  “Can’t you understand that I worshipped him? Amy being involved with him, it’s like incest. She may as well have been my sister having an affair with my father. And Andrew knows it’s a brutal betrayal. He can’t face me. That is why he hasn’t been to see me, and not because of the vicious things my mother says, and not because of your stupid and completely wrong suppositions!” Lily’s whole body was trembling. Her nose started bleeding.

  Spencer raised the palm of his hand at her. “Okay, Lily.”

  “Okay, what?” she yelled.

  His palm was still up. “You are sick, you are sick with cancer, and I am not, simply not going to have this out with you. It’s impossible. That’s what I mean by okay, Lily. So calm down.”

  And what did Lily say to him when she calmed down and cleaned herself up? “Oh, cancer, shmancer,” said Lily.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, and when Spencer tried to help her up the stairs, she said she was going to be fine and didn’t need his help anymore.

  He took her by the shoulders. “You know what—after I get you upstairs you might be fine, but there is no way you’re getting up there without me, so just stop the nonsense.”

  She stopped the nonsense. She couldn’t get up to her fifth floor walk-up without him. She let him help. Spencer had to carry her the last flight of stairs.

  When they were inside the apartment, he asked if she wanted him to stay.

  “No!”

  “Merry Christmas,” said Spencer and walked out.

  A penultimate chemo five days before New Year. Joy had time off for the millennium. A relenting Grandma invited Lily to come to Brooklyn and stay over, but Lily declined: she was too sick, her nose was constantly bleeding, and besides, she couldn’t stand one more word about Spencer, who himself was not available on the Saturday the millennium ended. Lily didn’t know where he was. He didn’t offer, and she didn’t ask. On New Year’s Eve, Rachel and Paul came over with champagne, begging her to come with them to a blowout party at the Palladium, but she couldn’t get up off her made bed. They stayed for an hour and at ten went without her, leaving her with a glass of champagne by the bedside.

  Lily slept through midnight 2000, though she left her windows open to hear through black dreams the cork-popping joy from other windows, other rooms.

  39

  Larry DiAngelo as Imhotep

  “Detective O’Malley, I need your advice,” said DiAngelo.

  “What’s going on? How was her biopsy?” It was the first week of the New Year, and Lily had just finished her last round.

  “Biopsy was fine. Excellent. Her bone marrow’s clean. Her blood is clean. Her blood counts are still low, but I’m not too worried about that. She did great, she really did.”

  The doctor should have looked happier telling Spencer this. “So why the long face?”

  “There’s this…” DiAngelo coughed. “She tested positive for a protein marker on her malignant myeloid cells called the CD56 antigen.”

  “What does that mean? Testing positive for this, is it good, bad?”

  “Well, this genetic marker causes a resistance to the chemo drugs by working extra hard to build up an immunity to them. A quarter of all myeloid leukemia patients test positive for this protein.”

  “It builds up immunity to the chemo?”

  “Yes. Though the cancer cells have been eradicated, the presence of CD56 signals likely problems with remission.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “A short remission, a prolonged relapse, a worsening prognosis.”

  Spencer stood silently in the hall, looking at the doctor’s face. “You just
learned this?”

  “I knew it for a little while, a month. No point in saying anything when the last weeks have been so difficult.”

  “So what advice do you want from me?” Spencer said.

  “Should I tell her? I’ve been so frank with her about her treatment. She expects nothing less, but she’s been through so much.”

  Spencer interrupted. “Under no circumstances tell her. You go in there, walk toward her with a big smile on your face, and you send her home and treat her in all ways as if she is going to live forever.”

  DiAngelo stretched his lips over his teeth. “Got it,” he said.

  Lily had been chatting with Marcie when DiAngelo came in with a big smile on his face. “Well, Lilianne Quinn, you’ve done it. Look.” He showed her something on her chart. She tried to draw importance from what he was showing her. She was seeing double—that always made life infinitely more interesting. Double numbers. They were even more impressive double. Platelets 74 he was saying. Double that was 148—much better.

  “What’s left of me?”

  “Surprisingly little,” DiAngelo said cheerfully. “But turns out just enough. Platelets at 74, up from 48 last week. It’s very good. You’re all clean.”

  “I passed the biopsy?”

  “You passed the biopsy. Spencer is waiting to take you home. Marcie will help you get dressed.”

  Marcie kissed her head. “You see, Spunky. I told you, you were gonna do just great.”

  “I go home and then what?”

  “Good question. Then you come back every Tuesday for blood work.”

  “For how long?”

  “How long what?”

  “How long do I have to come back for?”

  “Five years.”

  Lily did a double take to see if he was kidding.

  “Once a week for five years?”

  “No, once a week for the next six months. Then once every two weeks. In a year, once a month. In three years, once every three months. Got it?”

  Lily didn’t know if she got it.

  “Any questions?”

  “Why Tuesday? Why not Monday?”

  DiAngelo grinned. “In case you live it up too much on the weekends. I want your body to recover from revelry before we test your blood.”

  Marcie pinched her. “I’ve seen that Rachel friend of yours. You two are definitely going to be getting up to no good.”

  “When am I going to feel better?” Lily wanted to know.

  “That’s not the question you should be asking,” DiAngelo said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why do I feel like shit, pardon my language?”

  “You’re cleaned of all the bad stuff, but cleaned of all the good stuff, too. Don’t worry. Give yourself a few weeks, a month. You’ll grow yourself a whole new Lily. In the meantime, be careful of public places. They carry germs.”

  “Will I grow some new cancer, too?”

  “That’s not the question you should be asking yourself,” DiAngelo said quickly.

  “I can’t guess what I should be asking myself.”

  “Well, let me illustrate by answering the question for you.”

  “I don’t know what the question is.”

  “Bear with me,” the doctor said. “Did I tell you that I had a quintuple bypass last year? No? Well, I did. No one can believe I’ve gone back to practicing medicine. My doctors didn’t think I’d ever walk again.”

  “But you’re always coming in from the running track!”

  “Yes, I’m busy proving them wrong.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Prove me wrong,” said DiAngelo. “Prove the statistics wrong. Do the unthinkable. Even now, you’re lying in bed because you can’t move. You can’t imagine moving. Move, Lily. Prove yourself wrong.”

  “I would except I can’t move.”

  “Ha. I have to move slower these days myself. Can’t take on as many patients. Can’t be as involved as I once was.” He tapped on his chest. “The old ticker just can’t take it anymore.”

  “An oncology doctor with a bad heart?” Lily found that humorous. She smiled.

  “Laugh all you want but tell me something about yourself. Do you like jogging?”

  She stiffened, recalling Amy. “No. Is that the question?”

  “No.”

  “Doctor, you’re perplexing me.”

  “You want me to tell you something about myself?”

  “If you like.”

  “I write in my own candidates at every general election. In the last one I voted for George Burns. How was I supposed to know he’d been dead nine months? What else? Wife number three thought I was too sensitive. Wife number four thinks I’m a heartless bastard, right, Marcie?”

  “Right, Doctor.”

  “Wife number one…ah. She was something. Her legs were too long. I married her thinking I’d be lucky to keep her through the honeymoon, and I was right. She met someone at the health club while we were in St. Croix.”

  “What about wife number two?”

  “Who?”

  “I see,” said Lily. “If you’re so rotten, why did your current wife marry you?”

  “I don’t think she herself knows. She’s divorcing me for my money.”

  “Oh. You’re getting divorced?”

  “For the past two years. Even the divorce is not working out.”

  Lily laughed.

  “My time was up last year,” he said. “It’s my bonus round. And this is yours. Here are your two questions. The ancient Egyptians asked themselves this to determine what kind of an afterlife they would have.”

  Lily couldn’t take one more question. “Afterlife?”

  “The first question was, ‘Did you bring joy?’ And the second question was, ‘Did you find joy?’”

  Lily stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I came into philosophy quite late,” said DiAngelo. “Until now my only other hobby was fishing. Transcendental in itself, by the way, but never mind.” Getting to his feet he zipped up his tracksuit and held his Yankees cap in his hands along with her chart. “Get up off the bed, Lily. You’re going home. I don’t care how sick you are. Get up and go live your bonus life. Go find some joy. Go bring some joy.”

  PART III

  THE END GAME

  And therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find

  entrance not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well

  fortified, if watch be not well kept.

  FRANCIS BACON

  The effort by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own

  being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself.

  BENJAMIN SPINOZA

  40

  Lily as an Ancient Egyptian

  Joy left. Lily had found Joy, but now that Joy was no longer needed she packed her few things, took her paycheck, hugged Lily’s shrunken body, and left. Lily was alone in her apartment, alone with her little bag from the hospital and her little charcoals. No more chemo on Monday, no more chemo on Tuesday. No more missing days of the week.

  No more comedies with Spencer? After Christmas, things had been tense with him. They didn’t speak about things that made them tense; much better that way.

  It was two in the afternoon. Was Lily hungry? Was she thirsty? Was she sleepy? Did she need a shower, a movie, a coat? It was January and freezing.

  What now?

  What now?

  What now?

  Lily lay on her bed, but that wasn’t satisfying. She went and lay on Amy’s bed, but it had turned into Joy’s bed. Lily went back to her own bed, opened the windows for some cold air, and looked to see the couple she used to sketch, the couple that got up to coupling with the shades up.

  The shades were drawn, the cat was gone.

  She went and made herself a cup of tea, the first cup of tea she had made for herself in four months, sat down on the couch, turned on the TV and aimlessly flicked through the da
ytime channels. There was nothing on except news and low-minded but spirited melodrama.

  She got involved in the story of a married woman pregnant with another man’s child. Should she tell her husband? Apparently he was usually very understanding—but the woman wasn’t sure if he’d be understanding about this sort of thing. Before Lily learned how it turned out, she fell asleep. On the couch, sitting up, with the empty cup of tea on her lap.

  When she awoke it was dark, the TV was still on but low and Spencer was sitting by her. “Spencer?” Lily whispered. “Joy left.”

  “I know. She’s been hired part time by someone else.”

  They sat. He had taken the tea cup from her hands, had covered her with a blanket.

  “Is your family going to help you, Lil?”

  “I don’t need them to help me anymore. I’m going to be fine.”

  “I don’t want them to be angry with you on my account. I am completely not worth it.”

  “I know. I keep telling them.”

  “Funny, Harlequin. But tell them I’ve stopped coming around. Tell them it was just because you were sick, but now you’re all better, and you’re fine on your own.”

  If that was true, why did Lily feel so utterly and completely dependent on him and on Joy?

  He was sitting on her couch, quietly watching John Goodman on an old Saturday Night Live rerun, and she was drifting in and out of sleep.

  “Spencer?”

  “Yes?” He lowered the TV. “What can I get you?”

  “I’m fine, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to ask you something. Do you think you’ve found joy?”

  “What?”

  Lily told Spencer about DiAngelo the philosopher.

  Spencer was quietly contemplating. “Well, look. The answer is a measured yes. I’m in the wrong line of work for joy. Like your Egyptian doctor. He sees too much.”