Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me through the Toughest Journey of My Life (20 page)

The window.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and pray to God for sleep.

After my dad brings Aliyah and Jacob into my room and asks me to tell them that I’ve decided to jump out the window to my death, things start happening fast.

First and foremost, I commit to staying alive.

Which is not easy with cancer-killing poison coursing through my body, my face eternally hovering an inch above the toilet bowl, and my body feeling either as cold as Antarctica or as hot as the surface of the sun.

Not to mention the overall
pain.
Just picture yourself stepping out into the street and being hit by a car.
Wham.
And by a Hummer, not by a Mini Cooper.

Nope. It’s not that easy staying alive.

But I’m not going anywhere. That’s a fact. A certainty. I have now morphed into my dad. I am walking on my own miserable march, taking it step by painful step, teeny baby steps, some of them barely noticeable, but I’m always,
always
moving forward. I am going to make it. I am determined.

Slowly, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, I start to improve. Day three my fever fades and I can stand up unaided for a couple of minutes without keeling over from vertigo. Day four I can take a few steps without clutching my middle to quell the crippling nausea cramps.

By day seven, I’m able to sit up, focus on the TV, channel surf with the remote, and eventually lower myself out of bed and walk to the end of the room. A couple of days after that, my headache settles down to a low thrum, and I am, overall, fairly coherent.

Finally, Dr. Mehldau informs me that I can return home and gear up for my last chemo treatment. At last I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I begin rooting myself on.
One more treatment. Just one more. You can do it.

But I have changed. Enormously, deeply, incontrovertibly. The change takes the form of a constant gnawing pain in my gut that now grips me and holds on as if it has claws. The change has me twisted in knots. I know what it is, but I am afraid to speak its name aloud.

I decide to write about it. My support group recently suggested taking a personal inventory of our lives as a way of getting in touch with what really and truly matters. When you’re staring eyeball to eyeball with the Grim Reaper, you’d better feel as if you’ve dealt with the important stuff. What’s the point of going to your doom with a bunch of loose ends or unfulfilled dreams lying around? When else am I going to deal with my change, if not now? What am I waiting for?

One afternoon before I return home, my mother sits in my hospital room knitting a shawl or wall-to-wall carpeting and I sit up in bed, my reporter’s notebook propped open between my knees. I scratch a few random lines across the top of the first page and say to myself,
Okay. I’m going to take a personal inventory of all the really important things in my life, listed by priority. What and who is really worth it? Who counts? Which people in my life are indispensable?

Number one. That’s obvious.
Family.
I carefully print my children’s names, starting with the oldest, Jessica, ending with Jacob, the youngest. Then I write down my parents, Otto and Betty.

And then, without thinking, as if a Ouija board is powering the pen, I spell out: “M-E-L-I-S-S-A.”

Yeah.

Melissa.

Okay, there it is. Right there. In black and white.

The instant after I write her name, I know that she is my number one priority. I have to see her. It’s not important. It’s
necessary.
I have to see Melissa if I live, or if I’m going to die. Either way.
I have to see her.

Because here’s the change within me that I dare not name:

I’m in love with Melissa.

Well, okay, again, full disclosure.

It’s not really a change.

The truth is, Melissa has dominated my thoughts and taken up permanent residence in my heart since the day I broke up with her. I cannot stop seeing her face, hearing her laugh, smelling her perfume, her shampoo . . .

I believe that part of the pain I feel every day is the pain of losing Melissa.

So
here
is the real change:

I have to see her and tell her how I feel.

See, that’s what cancer does. It shakes you up, then sifts out all the unimportant crap and leaves you facing only the highest priorities. Sounds eerie, but it’s really not. It’s what we should be doing every day. It’s how we should live our lives. It’s how I vow to live mine from now on.

Okay. Simple. I’m gonna tell Melissa how I feel.

I put down my pen and rub the top of my head. I count two major roadblocks blocking my way.

One. I haven’t spoken to Melissa for six months. She doesn’t know where I am or that I’m sick. She probably has a boyfriend. Or she might even have a husband.

“Holy shit,” I say aloud.

Two. I have cancer. I look like hell. I feel like crap. Forget about a future with Melissa. I might not have a future, period. She’s young. She has her whole life ahead of her. Why would she want to spend it with me?

“What holy shit?” My mom, speaking with a knitting needle in her mouth. I start to climb out of bed. I groan as I lower my legs to the floor. “Robert, where are you going?”

“Ma, you know what I’m thinking?”

“God knows.”

“I’m thinking I want to go for a ride.”

“Yeah. It’s a beautiful day.”

“It’s a hundred and seventeen and it’s noon.”

“Let’s go for a ride. Come on. You can drive.”

“No. Really? You can barely put your shoes on.”

“That’s why you should drive.” I somehow make it to the closet and manage to pull the flimsy plywood doors open. “A hundred seventeen. I guess I could wear shorts.”

My mother rolls up her knitting and stares at me. “Robert, are you all right?”

I turn to her and put my hands on my hips. “Actually, Ma, I’ve changed.”

“Changed? How?”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

I’m buzzed, goofy from the remnants of my medication and my new insane game plan. But that’s what I’m thinking as I start fumbling through the closet, sliding hangers, searching for a shirt that might remotely fit, something that won’t make me look like I’m wearing a tarp.

My mother drives, hands squeezing the hell out of the steering wheel at two and four o’clock, eyes squinting with unshakable focus into the desert sun. We don’t say much. Two reasons. One, I’m too weak to speak. Two, I’m trying to fig-ure out what I’m going to say to Melissa.

I rehearse a couple of opening lines in my head. Nothing seems right. Everything seems canned and forced.

“Where are we going?” my mother asks. Across her forehead runs a gulley of sheer, brutal concentration.

It suddenly strikes me:
My mother driving me to L.A.? This is not a good idea.
I cough and throw this plan out the window. I go to Plan B. “I have to make a phone call,” I say.

“Out here? You have a phone in your room. We had to drive thirty miles for you to make phone call?”

“You can’t call long distance from my hospital room.” This is the truth and I realize now that it was the plan all along. I pause and pretend to look at something outside my window. “I have to call Melissa.”

“Melissa.” My mother’s voice is matter-of-fact, without judgment.

“Yeah. See, here’s the thing.” I cough again, then clear my throat. When I speak now, my voice is low and gravelly, as if I’m channeling Tom Waits. “Ma, I miss her.”

“That’s natural. It’s been a while since you’ve seen her or even talked to her, no? And you two were close—”

“No. I
really
miss her.”

My mother raises an eyebrow. Great thing about me and my mom. We have a kind of shorthand. I don’t have to say much. She gets what I mean after a very few words and sometimes just after a look. She keeps her eyes locked on the road. She spots something ahead, a desert mirage. “Look. Arrowhead Outlet Mall. Neiman Marcus has a pay phone. I’ve used it.”

“Damn.” I pat my pockets, then remember that they’re empty. “I don’t have any change.”

“You can use my calling card.”

She guns the car, speeds up toward the mall. She swoons. “I love this place.”

“I know. It’s your idea of Disneyland.”

To confirm and annoy, she begins humming the tune to

“It’s a Small World.”

The phone rings once, twice, and then right before the third ring, Melissa says, “Hello?”

Her voice is just as I remember—soft and tentative, bordering on shy. It’s the most beautiful, sensuous voice I’ve ever heard, and just hearing her say that one word
Hello
has me practically clawing my way through the phone.

“Hi,” is all I say.

Melissa pauses long enough to make lunch, to write a letter, to go to the store and come back. It is an
endless
pause. A gaping crater of a pause. For a second I think she has gone away or passed out. And then finally she says, “Robert?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t—where are you?”

“Phoenix. At a pay phone.”

I switch ears. I sit down on a bench outside the department store and suck down about five gallons of oxygen. I need to gather my thoughts and, honestly, I just want to hear her breathe.

“Robert, how are you?”

She knows. Somehow she knows. She must’ve heard about my cancer on Stern.

I say, “Well, you know, up and down. But the good news is I only have one more chemo treatment and—”

“Wait.
Chemo
?”

“Melissa, I have cancer.”

“Robert, you—”

Her voice sails off. For what seems like forever I hear nothing, not her breathing, nothing. I panic. I’ve lost the connection. I’ve lost
her.

“Melissa?”

“I’m here.” Her voice is a tiny echo.

“I thought you knew,” I say after another mother of a pause. “I don’t know why I thought that. I just . . . I don’t know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, so, yeah, that’s the story. That’s where I’ve been. At the Mayo Clinic here in Arizona. I haven’t been on an island cruise on the Love Boat or anything, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” she says.

“I have one more treatment,” I say.

“And then, what, you know, what happens?”

“Toss of the coin,” I say, then add quickly, “but the doctors are optimistic. I feel good. And I look fantastic. Really buff. The chemotherapy agrees with me. I’ve put on weight. I’m up to one twenty, one twenty-five.”

She actually laughs.

“I really do weigh about a hundred and twenty,” I say.

Melissa doesn’t speak, but now I can hear her breathing again. I close my eyes and imagine the mist from her breath brushing my face.

“I really miss you,” I say.

It must be my imagination but I think I can hear her heartbeat. I hear
thump-thump-thaa-thump
and then I realize that it’s not hers at all, but mine. I’m hearing my own heart. My pulse is pounding and my armpits are soaked, my head is flushed, and I hear myself blurt out everything that’s been swirling through my head: “I’ve never stopped thinking about you. Ever. Not for a second. Every day, morning, night, no matter what I’m going through that day, all I can think about is you. I can’t stop myself. I can’t help myself. I don’t know what to do. But I can’t imagine getting my last treatment and living the rest of my life, no matter how long that is going to be, without ever seeing you again. It just can’t be like that. It can’t. I can’t allow that to be. The thought that I’ll never see you again is killing me.”

Thump-thump-thaa-thump
.