Love and Miss Communication (12 page)

“Nothing’s really new with me. I read about an opportunity at McQualin, which I may pursue, but I’m not sure. I don’t think I took one fully calm breath my entire time at Baker Smith. There was always some client drama or deadline hanging over my head. And all the jockeying for position was just exhausting. I need to convalesce.”

“Makes sense,” Winston said. “What about in-house counsel?
The folks in my shop seem to have decent hours.” Winston worked as a financial planner at a midsize commercial bank. Evie had seen many of her colleagues transition to similar positions, offering better hours and less pay than Baker Smith. These exits were usually billed as “lifestyle” moves, something she’d once balked at but now was coming to comprehend.

“Maybe. I don’t want to jump into anything, though. But actually, I do have something interesting to report. It has to do with why I’m not at Baker Smith anymore.”

Fran and Winston leaned in more closely.

“I’ve given up using the Internet.” She waited for a dramatic reaction to her announcement.

Fran and Winston just looked confused. “How does one quit the Internet?” her mother asked.

“And why?” Winston added.

“The Internet was dominating my life. Not in a good way. I was wasting endless hours looking up people who meant nothing to me, checking out wedding and baby photos. Trying to find out where people lived and where they went to school and who they knew. It was a stupid waste of time. And depressing. So I stopped going online. I don’t check my e-mail or even text anymore. No Facebook or JDate either.”

“Why was it depressing?” Fran asked, sounding alarmed. “Evie, you’re amazing, and I’ll be damned if you can’t see that.”

“But, Mom, just think about it. What do people put online? All their best stuff. Their glamour shots, fabulous vacations, pictures of them with celebrities or at cool events. Videos of their kids riding their bikes in Izod shirts on sunny days. Nobody chooses a fat photo for Facebook. None of my friends would dare post their marital spats on YouTube. No, they post clips from cheery surprise parties. There have to be ten Tweets about job promotions for every one about getting fired. It’s not reality. And
while intellectually I know it’s not reality, it still bummed me out every time I went online.”

Winston and Fran continued to look puzzled. They were clearly from the wrong generation to understand the gravity of her announcement.

“I think I get it,” Winston said finally. “I wish the girls would get off their stupid phones once in a while. Bunny wants to throw them out the window.” He smiled. “The iPhones, that is. Not the girls.”

Bunny was Winston’s ex-wife. Evie had met her only a handful of times. Barbara, as Fran called her because she refused to use her pretentious nickname, worked as a real estate broker in Manhattan. Fran told her Bunny cheated on Winston with her now-husband, Albert, whom she met at an open house. Between the time of contract-signing and closing, Bunny left Winston and shacked up with Albert in the apartment she sold him. A few years later they moved out to Rye so the TWASPs would have more space. The girls were skittish about the divorce when they were small, but by the time they became teenagers they overlooked the fact that Albert broke up their family because he was a top executive at Ralph Lauren who got them steep discounts and tickets to fashion shows.

“Winston gets it!” Evie said excitedly. “Not to mention that I was constantly updating my seventy-five different online dating profiles with new pictures. I would change my list of interests or favorite movies regularly, like some guy would suddenly notice that I like Woody Allen movies and contact me for a date. Well, you can see where that got me.”

Fran reached across the table and laid her hand on Evie’s arm. “Evie, like I said, you’re going to meet someone very soon. Men are just intimidated by you because they think you’re out of their league.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be sure to list you as a reference. But that’s not the point. There’s more to the story. There was a catalyst for my Internet strike. But I don’t feel like getting into it right now.” The day had been strenuous enough without having to bring Jack into it.

“But what’s this got to do with your job?” Fran asked.

Evie sighed deeply. “Suffice it to say the partnership committee was displeased with the number of personal e-mails I was sending. And frankly, they were right. But I really don’t want to talk about that either. I’m embarrassed enough.”

Luckily Winston and Fran didn’t push her. They just stared at her, surprised, befuddled, and concerned.

“Enough about me. Winston, are you still attempting your renovation of the basement?” Evie said, resuscitating the conversation.

Winston happily obliged the shift.

“Yes, though I had a minor home improvement injury from my new electric sander,” he said, showing Evie a bandage hidden beneath his sleeve. “I think your mom is going to lose it if she has to clean another one of my self-inflicted wounds.”

Winston’s voice faded as Evie zeroed in on a piece of paper lying on the table. It was a letter from Yale, addressed to May, explaining how the class “shopping period” worked and directing her to the website where she could read descriptions of all the courses offered. Evie thought back to the days when her course catalog arrived. Back then it was a thick blue book, stuffed with possibilities. She remembered dog-earing it to death. By the time school started, her catalog was a mess of yellow sticky notes and highlighter streaks. The result was a class schedule with no early-morning classes and Fridays off. Despite having many more years of experience in her armor, the present Evie still wasn’t far from that hopeful girl starting freshman year. She
chose Columbia over Harvard for law school because she thought New York was a better place to meet men, something she’d never admitted to anyone. When she did work out, it was at the Reebok Sports Club, an extra ten blocks from her apartment, but it ran a number of amateur sports leagues that drew lots of young, professional types.

It made her feel like a traitor to feminism, all this strategizing. She enjoyed how good it felt to do the very opposite for once. Even if only in the virtual world, she was proud to take herself out of the path of men for a change.

The nameplate on the door read
EDWARD GOLD, M.D., PH.D., AMA, ASA, CDC, MPH
. He certainly seemed qualified alphabetically. Evie tapped gently on the door to announce her arrival.

The tall, sandy-haired doctor rose to greet her. His tan skin was dusted with light freckles, the kind that looked gifted from a recent vacation. Blue eyes framed by a noticeably thick spread of dark lashes punctuated his face. She estimated he was about forty. She had been expecting to see a much older man, and definitely not someone so good-looking. He wore a white coat with his name stitched on the pocket in red. It was
buttoned up so that all she could see of his outfit was the knot of his orange tie and the bottoms of his brown trousers. She despised her own outfit, a pilled knee-length cashmere cardigan draped over a mismatched tank and cropped yoga pants. If the appointment hadn’t been set for 8:00
A.M.
, she might have had a prayer.

When they shook hands, Evie felt comforted by his grasp. His handshake was firm and steady, like a surgeon’s should be, but his hands were larger than she expected. She would have thought a surgeon would have thin and delicate fingers.

“Where’s my grandmother?” Evie asked, surprised not to find her in one of the two chairs opposite his paper-strewn desk, which Evie immediately wanted to organize. Besides the voluminous stacks of files, his office was sparsely decorated save for basic office furniture, numerous diplomas and certificates, and a single baseball encased on a shelf. She found two picture frames—one in his bookcase housing a picture of a cherubic little girl, probably about four years old, in a white dress with alligators on the smocking and an oversize headband. She was in a swing, laughing. Evie assumed it was his daughter. The other picture, framed on the desk, was turned toward the doctor so that Evie couldn’t see it. Probably his wife.

“Bette said her stomach is out of sorts so she and I spoke over the phone early this morning to discuss the surgery in more detail. How she should prepare and what she can expect in terms of recovery,” Dr. Gold said.

“Oh, so should I go?” Evie asked, taking a few steps back toward the door, where she noticed one of the framed certificates said Dr. Gold was a lecturer at Mount Sinai Hospital, the same hospital where Stasia’s husband, Rick, did his residency.

“No, no. Please stay,” Dr. Gold said. “Let me fill you in.”

“Okay, thank you,” Evie said, taking a seat. She self-consciously tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Your grandmother is a very admirable woman. She’s certainly not led an easy life. I heard about your father. That’s not the way things are supposed to happen, though in medicine we see it more than most. And she seems to be taking this latest challenge in stride.”

“She’s incredible,” Evie agreed.

“She told me about you. You two are obviously extremely close.”

Dr. Gold gave her a half-smile, revealing laugh lines shaped like commas and a dimple in his left cheek big enough to store an acorn. His expression made Evie wonder just what Bette had shared with him about her. If anyone else was going to sum her up in a nutshell, they’d probably say she was attractive, smart, neurotic, maybe even funny. But if Grandma Bette had thirty seconds to describe her, well that was a whole other story. Evie feared the conversation went something like: “Dr. Gold, I know I have cancer, but if you really vant to help me, can you please find someone for my granddaughter? You must know some single doctors looking to settle down. Ideally, no children or previous marriages, but I’m flexible.”

“Well, hopefully she didn’t say anything too embarrassing.”

“All good things, I promise,” Dr. Gold said, this time offering a fuller grin. Evie must not have looked convinced, because he went on. “She told me how smart, witty, and sweet you are. You know—typical Jewish grandmother stuff. My grandma told everyone I was the valedictorian at Princeton, which was not remotely true.”

“I guess they’re all the same,” Evie said with a laugh. “What can you tell me about the surgery and the treatment plan? Will she get through this?” She noticed her knee shaking and tried to steady it.

“Like I said, Bette has been incredibly brave. Frankly, she’s more concerned with burdening all of you.”

“Sounds about right,” Evie said ruefully.

“I reviewed the ultrasound-guided core biopsy that Bette had done in Florida, and your grandmother has something called infiltrating duct carcinoma. It’s the most common type of breast cancer, but you probably already know that from doing research on your own.”

Evie was ashamed to have done no research, though it wasn’t for lack of concern. The breast cancer websites would have her reeling from information overload and all she would have seen were the potential complications and mortality statistics.

“She definitely needs to have the tumor removed surgically. I offered Bette the choice of having a lumpectomy, where I would remove the tumor and surrounding tissue, or a mastectomy, where the entire breast would be removed,” Dr. Gold explained. “The adjuvant treatments postsurgery are different, and many patients opt for the mastectomy so they can be assured that all affected cells are gone.”

“Bette chose the lumpectomy,” Evie said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Gold laughed, and when he did, the skin around his eyes crinkled in an endearing way. Evie liked that he laughed with his whole face.

“You are. I was surprised. Most women her age opt for the mastectomy, which historically has been considered a more effective treatment for preventing recurrence. Fortunately, there is new research showing that a lumpectomy plus radiation can be just as effective, with possibly even greater survival rates, than a mastectomy. I’m actually heading up a follow-up study that we hope will confirm these findings. Anyway, Bette was pretty adamant regardless.”

“Well, she does have a boyfriend. I just found out.”

“Sam?”

Jeez, she really was the last to know.

“Sam the Man. So, then what, after the lump is taken out?” Evie asked.

“Let me explain to you a bit about breast anatomy,” Gold said. He got up from his desk and took a few steps toward her. She didn’t know if she was supposed to unbutton her cardigan.

“The breast is surrounded by lymph nodes that drain fluid to the underarms,” he said, pointing at an anatomical poster on the wall behind Evie’s chair and motioning for her to look at it with him. She felt like such an idiot for even thinking he was going to use her body as his teaching tool.

As she rose from her seat, Dr. Gold’s phone rang.

“Sorry, let me just take this. I’ve been expecting an important call.”

“Of course,” Evie said, distancing herself slightly from the D-cup breast imagery on his wall.

“This is Edward Gold,” he said, phone nestled between his face and shoulder, his hands rustling through the tower of papers on his desk. He paused to put on the glasses that were resting next to his computer.

“Nice to hear from you so quickly,” he said. “Of course, of course . . . Yes, yes. I can get down to Washington next month,” he responded, with a huge smile on his face. “Well, that’s great news. I agree, I think spectral karyotyping is key.” Dr. Gold dug his free hand into his thick dirty-blond hair and mussed it into a crazy professor style. “The first trial was very successful . . . I appreciate that . . . Yes, the Tamoxifen study could be taken further. My team is going to be very excited . . . At NIH offices, absolutely. Thank you for calling.”

Dr. Gold put down the phone and rejoined Evie.

“Sorry about that. Anyway, like I was saying before, when I
remove the lump, I’m also going to remove the first draining lymph nodes and test them for cancerous cells. I hope very much that after the surgery we’ll conclude that the cancer hasn’t spread into the lymph nodes.”

He took the seat next to Evie instead of returning to his desk. She felt important in his presence, especially after that mysterious phone call, for which he offered no explanation.

“Evie, I’m going to help Bette fight this. She has a top-notch team at Sloan. I want you to relax and just be there to support her. And I’m always here for you. Don’t hesitate to call me anytime with questions,” he said.

He filled her in on more of the nitty-gritty details of the surgery and what Bette could expect recovery-wise. She hoped he appreciated that she just listened to what he had to say and didn’t try to outsmart him with her degree in Internet Medicine. She knew it drove Rick and Stasia crazy when people acted like insta-doctors after visiting mayoclinic.org.

“I really appreciate everything you’re doing.”

“It’s my job. Do you have any questions?”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you decide to go into this kind of medicine?” Evie asked, surprising herself with the completely out-of-left-field interrogatory. The guy had just mentioned the National Institutes of Health on a phone call. Why was she not more intimidated? Not to mention respectful of his time.

“My girlfriend in medical school died of breast cancer. I thought I was going to be a heart surgeon or maybe a neurologist. But when she died at the age of twenty-eight, I just felt compelled to change course. I’d also lost an aunt to breast cancer the year before. It affects women of all ages, from all backgrounds. Even men.”

“Wow, I’m so sorry. That must have been devastating.”

“It was awful,” he said. “You know, I deal with a lot of patients and their families, but so few of them ever ask me why I do what I do.”

“Oh,” Evie said, uncertain how he felt about her prying. “I hope you don’t mind that I did, Dr. Gold.”

“Not at all, I’m enjoying talking to you,” he said. “Please call me Edward by the way.”

“Okay, I will,” Evie said, not sure she actually would.

“Anyway, I really think the experience of losing a loved one helps me connect with patients a lot better than I would have otherwise,” he said.

“I totally get that. I just basically got fired and now I connect with unemployed people more than I used to,” Evie said. “It’s all about the human experience.”

What the fuck was she saying?

Edward nodded in agreement, possibly just to save her from embarrassment.

“So is that your daughter?” Evie asked, gesturing to the picture on his shelf.

“Yep. Olivia is four,” Gold said, visibly melting. “She’s adorable. And doing really great now.”

What’s with the “now”? Was she sick too?

“Well, she’s gorgeous. I see she’s got your dimple,” Evie said. “I love children,” she added, somewhat gratuitously. She really did love little kids though, babies too—especially chubby ones with ample thighs and wrists that spilled over onto their hands. Caroline’s younger daughter had cheeks like marshmallows, alabaster and soft and impossible to resist pecking.

“Best thing in life,” the doctor said, and Evie reveled in the simplicity of his views.

“Oh, I noticed from your wall of honor that you also lecture at Mount Sinai.” Evie pointed to the countless framed certificates
in Latin behind her. Edward visibly blushed. “My friend’s husband trained there. Do you know Rick Howell?”

“Yes. That was my first teaching job. I met Rick in my surgery seminar. He’s your friend’s husband? I didn’t realize he was married.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s been married to my best friend from college for like three years now. They’re the most perfect couple. It’s actually pretty annoying.” Evie didn’t think she’d ever said that out loud before, though the thought had taken up permanent residence in her frontal lobe. What a ridiculous time and place for her to come clean.

“I doubt they’re perfect.”

“No, they are, trust me,” Evie said, surprised by the detour their conversation had taken.

“You look like your grandmother, I think,” Dr. Gold said, changing course again.

“Really?” Evie asked, surprisingly flattered, considering she was being compared to an octogenarian.

“Yes, the green eyes,” Gold said, though he wasn’t even looking at her anymore. He seemed occupied sorting through patients’ charts that he had pulled from a file cabinet.

“Same genes,” Evie said, and then felt foolish for explaining to a medical professional that they shared DNA.

“Speaking of that, though,” Evie said, “I have been wondering if I should get myself checked out. You know, for lumps?”

Now Dr. Gold focused his eyes squarely on her face, almost like he was scared he would look at her chest after she mentioned her breasts.

“If you are feeling concerned, then yes. Though I think you can probably wait until you are forty. It could be useful to have a baseline mammogram done at thirty-five.”

“I’ve actually been pretty worried since Bette got sick. I tried
to give myself a breast exam but I had no idea what I was doing. Is that something you could do?” Evie asked. “I mean, I’d make an appointment of course.” She didn’t want Gold to think she was hoping for a freebie.

“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “But I can refer you to someone excellent.”

“Oh, okay. I understand.” Maybe asking him to give her a breast exam was like stopping Annie Leibovitz on the street to snap her picture. “I know you have much more important things to do.”

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “Let me give you the card of the doctor I typically refer to. But really, I wouldn’t worry. Given Bette’s age, I doubt there’s a genetic component to her illness.”

Evie relaxed, taking the card he produced from his desk and putting it in her bag, which was a giant tote from Columbia Law School that she used to lug her textbooks in. She hoped Gold noticed it because she felt like she’d said some pretty foolish things during their meeting.

“As I’m sure Bette told you, the surgery is scheduled for three weeks from today—October sixth. It’s my first opening.”

“So far away?” Evie asked, surprised. “There’s no one available to do it sooner?” Dr. Gold seemed quite competent, and he certainly was a pleasure to look at, but didn’t it make sense to get the tumor out as soon as possible?

“Bette interviewed a few surgeons, but chose to go with me. Unfortunately, I have surgeries scheduled back to back and I’m taking a week’s vacation in between. Don’t worry—Bette is perfectly safe to wait three weeks to have the tumor removed,” he said. “Patients often choose to wait if they want a certain doctor or even because of their own work schedules.”