All You Could Ask For: A Novel (29 page)

She pulled a chair beside the bed and fell into it, lifting her feet so they were resting on mine, like two girls having a sleepover.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s start with an easy one. He speaks to his mother on the phone every single day.”

“Is his mother ill?”

“Perfectly healthy.”

“And he’s how old?”

“Mid-thirties.”

“Absolute deal-breaker!” Samantha exclaimed, and we burst into hysterics.

“I think my problem is that every person in my life is male,” I said, when we caught our breath. “If I had girlfriends like in
Sex and the City,
they would have warned me about that.”

Samantha rustled about in her seat, wrapped her lower legs around my feet and squeezed. “Give me another one,” she said.

I thought for a moment. “Okay, how about if he has a little dog and he refuses to have her fixed because he’s afraid it will hurt her, so the dog gets her period and he is constantly putting her into these little shorts and changing her maxi pad.”

“You’re making that one up,” Samantha said.

I laughed. “I swear I’m not.”

She jumped out of the chair and put her face by mine. “Are you kidding me? You dated a man who changed his dog’s maxi pads?”

“I did. The first time I slept with him he said he needed to stop at a pharmacy on our way back to his apartment. I assumed he was buying condoms.”

“But he was buying maxi pads?”

“That’s correct.”

Samantha was pacing the floor. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You were on your way to his place and he stopped at a drugstore to buy maxi pads for his dog, and that’s the night you slept with him for the first time?”

“Yes.”

“That is such an absolute deal-breaker I don’t think I can take any more. Nothing could top that.”

I smiled. “Sweetie, get back in that chair. I’m just getting warmed up.”

SAMANTHA

ABSOLUTE DEAL-BREAKER BECAME ONE of our favorites immediately. We laughed for hours that day—and so many others, too—over outrageous scenarios, some of which we’d lived, some we made up, the crazier the better. Through those weeks, seeing Katherine laugh was the most rewarding thing in my life.

We have expressions like “laughter is the best medicine” that we use over and over, but we don’t realize they are actually true until we need them. That one is true, for sure. When Katherine was laughing, she was healthy, she was whole. It didn’t happen enough because it isn’t always easy to find space to laugh when you are fighting for your life, but on the occasions you do, it makes all the difference in the world.

She was only in the hospital for three days. I was excited when we moved her back home; in fact, I think I was more excited than she was. We had wonderful, deep, far-ranging talks in her apartment in those days, we talked about her life and mine. We talked about men and work, about fashion and about family. And we talked about cancer, in a way that only those of us who know it can talk about it. Because until you know it, there is no good way to explain it so anyone else can understand it. It’s sort of like trying to recount to someone who wasn’t there the details of an event where you
almost
got killed, like the time the engine caught fire and your flight had to make an emergency landing, or the time you were camping in the woods and you came across a bear and you had to lie down and play dead and pray the bear sniffed you and strolled away rather than mauling and eating you. Any experience you are recounting to anyone can never be as scary as it was when it happened, because the very fact that you are the one doing the talking means you survived, when what made the whole thing scary in the first place is that you didn’t know for sure you would. So no situation can ever be as scary in the retelling as it was in the moment.

Except for cancer.

Cancer doesn’t just land like a plane, or walk away like a bear. Even for me it didn’t, and for Katherine it wasn’t ever going to. Knowing that makes every moment a little like the one on the plane before the landing when you are crossing yourself and holding the armrest so tightly you emerge with bruised fingers, or when you are lying silent on the ground while the bear sniffs your hair. Not that every moment I had with Katherine was like that, but those feelings are always there, no matter how hard you try to pretend they aren’t.

When she talked about cancer, she seemed more sad than scared; I think because she was so filled with regret. It’s one thing to fear illness, to fear dying, and another entirely to wonder why you did the things you did and didn’t do the ones you could have. I think when Katherine thought about the end of her life, she thought about how differently she would have lived it if she could have done it over, practically every minute of it since Phillip, and that made her sad.

But not nearly as sad as when she talked about Stephen.

“All my life,” she told me, “I never believed in love at first sight.”

“But you were wrong,” I said.

“I was.” She smiled. “The instant I saw him I knew. It was like being struck by lightning, except the feeling was warm and gooey and wonderful, like my insides turned to hot fudge. In one day I realized nothing in my life was what I wanted it to be. And, more important, I acted on it. I told him I’d be back in two weeks and I was really going to do it. I left my job, I was going to put my apartment up for sale, I was
all in
on this man. And then . . .”

Her voice trailed off there. Cancer does that sometimes, too. It makes it hard to finish your sentences.

“I’m going to go to Aspen and find him,” I said. “If you won’t tell me his last name I am just getting on a plane.”

Katherine got deadly serious then. “Listen to me,” she said. “I know you are saying that for all the right reasons and you’d be doing it for the right reasons, too, and if I were sitting where you are I might do the same thing. But I’m not, and you aren’t lying where I am. I need to know you aren’t going to go to Aspen, or try to find Stephen on the Internet or anything. I need you to promise me that. Because if every time you walk in the door I have to worry that he’ll walk in behind you, I won’t be able to go on with this.”

I exhaled deeply. “I won’t go,” I said.

“I need you to promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. “But if I can’t then
you
need to. You have to tell him what happened.”

“I can’t,” Katherine said. “I instructed my assistant to tell him I was no longer employed and she had no further information. I just . . .”

She didn’t finish that sentence, either. She didn’t really need to. It was pretty obvious that she was
just
too many things to list them all.

The assistant she was talking about was a hilarious and charming woman from Brooklyn named Marie, a year younger than I am and quite possibly the most provocatively dressed person who was not a prostitute that I have ever seen. She was Katherine’s most frequent visitor aside from me, and she often accompanied us, or just Katherine, to the chemo center. Marie was cheerful and noisy in just the right way; it wasn’t impossible to be sad around her but it was hard. She maintained a stunningly upbeat attitude through even the worst days. I loved her immediately, and it was clear Katherine loved her too. And Marie loved her back, in the most selfless way. She was no longer indebted to Katherine for anything, she just cared, and I think that made all the difference.

Then came a Wednesday when I caught a cold. It was just a little cold, barely more than a sniffle, but I knew they wouldn’t let me stay with Katherine at chemotherapy. When you are undergoing treatments, your immune system is practically defenseless; if anyone so much as coughs in the center, he or she is politely escorted to the exit.

So I air-kissed Katherine good-bye, assured that Marie would keep her company, and then I was outside, by myself. It was a hot, sunny afternoon and I needed some air. I felt like I hadn’t been outdoors in a month. The fresh air did away with my cold immediately, so I jumped on my bike, rode to Central Park, and spent three hours cycling as hard as I could. Every twenty minutes I took a water break and did calisthenics, right there in the Sheep Meadow, dropping to the grass and doing push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks, with who knows how many college kids sunning themselves and sneaking sips and hits of various drinks and drugs all around. It felt great. It reminded me that I must not forget how important my body is to my mind. There was more than enough time to take care of my body while I cared for Katherine. I could be someone else’s health advocate and my own at the same time.

I cycled home as it was turning dark, and switched on my laptop. As it warmed up, I dropped to the hardwood floor and did twenty more push-ups. I wanted a good dinner, lean protein, with a hearty grain on the side, and fruit and water. And maybe one glass of wine, too, because life is short.

Then the screen on my laptop sizzled to life and I saw my message icon blinking, and for just one moment it made me think of Robert’s inbox, and my fingers trembled as they hovered over the keyboard.

“Stop it, Samantha,” I said aloud, as a bead of sweat dripped off my nose. “You can’t go through life thinking every e-mail you receive is going to change your life.”

Person2Person

From: Brooke B.

To: Samantha R.

BreastCancerForum.org

So, I saw Dr. Marks at Starbucks and I mentioned you.

(Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him you told me about the dance and the Bee Gees song and how he didn’t kiss you or any of that. I was very subtle.)

He’s single and totally interested in seeing you.

Let me know what you want to do.

KATHERINE

I’VE NEVER GIVEN THIS much thought to shopping.

Marie is finally getting married. She wants a fabulous, black-tie celebration, she wants it immediately, and she says she won’t do it if I don’t agree to be her maid of honor. I suspect the rush is because she is secretly pregnant, which she will neither confirm nor deny.

“I don’t want this party to be about me,” I told her. “If the whole bank is there and I show up, it becomes the ‘Katherine is still alive’ extravaganza, which is not what the most special night of your life is supposed to be.”

“If it’s the most special night of my life,” she said, “then I can’t have it without my best friend.”

“You’re not doing this for me,” I warned her. “I don’t need a party.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” she replied. “I’m asking you to do it for me.”

So, I’m going. Samantha and I are going shopping later this week, since none of my couture is going to fit properly right now. I have lost eleven pounds since I began the chemotherapy, and while my hair has hung in better than I expected, I have taken to wearing a flowing brunette wig anyway, a shade darker than my usual, at my colorist’s recommendation. He said the shade works better with my pallid complexion.

Marie buzzed my ear off about the arrangements all through my chemo, and then she walked me home and we sat and chatted for a bit, and she hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when the doorman’s station buzzed my phone. That made me smile nostalgically. In all the time she worked for me, Marie never managed to leave the office without forgetting something: a pair of sunglasses, a set of keys, the book she was reading. It was nice to know some things never changed.