October 2000
Until Marilyn called, I had no thought of being flung back into the warm and rushing stream of my own youth. I was having enough trouble with the present. Staring out at the sea without really seeing it, I had spent the last hour mentally snatching petals from a daisy — he loves me, he loves me not. Subtract fifty years, add an actual flower, and I might have been eight. I hardly heard the phone. Two rings. Three. The answering machine could take it. Then I got curious and picked up.
"Well, it's back," Marilyn announced. Pert and casual. Not even a hello. Her same peppy self.
"What's back?" As if I didn't know. "The decent fall weather's back?" My heart always skipped a beat or two when I lied, but as much as it scared me, I fibbed on. "Washington's always pretty in the fall."
"No, no. Not the weather. The beast."
Slay the Beast had been our motto.
"Oh, Marilyn, no. When did you find out?"
"They told me for sure this morning. I swear, I always get cancer on Thursday and then I have to wait the whole damn weekend for the test results."
"But Thursday! That was a week ago yesterday. Why didn't you call me?"
"I wanted to. I just couldn't." The cheery tone drained to a whisper. "Don't be angry, Barbara. It was such a seesaw. The doctor found the lump on Thursday, they did the mammogram Friday, all weekend I was catatonic, and on Monday they told me it looked suspicious. Tuesday they did the biopsy. I kept hoping they'd say it was a false alarm and I'd be able to call you and we'd have a good laugh about it." She ran out of air, took a long breath. "Then I got the diagnosis this morning."
I opened my mouth, but my voice had left me. I willed it back. "It must have been a nightmare," I rasped. "I hope Bernie was with you. I hope he held your hand through all this."
"You kidding? My paramour and protector? He wouldn't have missed it. My sainted husband says —" Marilyn imitated his low growl " — You beat it before, so you'll beat it again."
"Well, he's right. You did and you will. I bet you already have a plan."
"I do. For starters, I want you to come up here."
"Sure. Done." I spoke without thinking. A trip to Washington? Now? No possibility. "Are you going to have —"
What was left? Marilyn had had surgery; she had had chemo. The drugs had made her sick and thin and bald, but after three years we were convinced the poisons had done their job. When Marilyn's hair had begun to grow back, I had driven up from North Carolina to help her celebrate, if you can call it celebrating when you accompany someone to her first Hadassah meeting in a year.
"Look how much the treatments have aged me," Marilyn had complained then. "Look at these jowls!" But though Marilyn's jaw seemed a bit fleshier than before, I thought she looked marvelous. On the day of the Hadassah luncheon, Marilyn's fine new cap of hair (mostly chestnut, not much gray) had been slicked flat, a fashionable inch and a half long all over her head, accented by long silver earrings and a formfitting navy suit that glided over her slimmer figure. Neither of us had ever been a great beauty, despite the plastic surgery we'd believed would transform us. But Marilyn had sometimes felt like one, after her charms had captured Bernie Waxman's heart when we were only fifteen. Marilyn still swore she didn't return Bernie's affection for another five years, but his love, from the beginning, gave her the confident, radiant loveliness only a sea of caring can confer. If some of that early luster dimmed as we aged, we told ourselves looks didn't really matter anymore — a maxim neither one of us believed.
Lord, no! Women of our generation knew from toddler-hood that beauty was the coin of the realm; women of our generation never recanted even after the world declared us "liberated." So when Marilyn and I stood in the ladies' room outside the Hadassah meeting, two ordinary women in our midfifties telling ourselves once again that psychological well-being rather than comeliness was the issue, we were nevertheless applying lipstick and combing our hair in preparation for the kosher lunch.
A white-haired matron in an expensive suit emerged from a toilet stall and planted herself beside us at the sink. "So, Marilyn. You really like your hair that short?" Flaring her nostrils, wrinkling her nose, the woman signaled unspeakable distaste.
Unfazed, Marilyn flashed a brilliant smile. "Mrs. Katz, this is my friend Barbara Cohen."
Mrs. Katz nodded without diverting her attention from Marilyn.
Marilyn regarded herself in the mirror, ran her hands all over her head to smooth her new coif, preened in an exaggerated way. "It's the style. You don't like it?"
Mrs. Katz shrugged.
"Well, it'll grow," Marilyn said.
Bursting with merriment, Marilyn and I contained our-selves until the woman ambled out, then let loose with uncontrollable laughter — absurd laughter, uncalled-for laughter, very nearly hysterical. Marilyn had faced the fire, survived her ordeal, and the old buzzard was none the wiser. Tummy-tucked (to provide tissue for the breast), breast-reconstructed (no nipple yet; that would come later), she was back among the living, working part-time, eating without throwing up, going to Hadassah. Victorious!
But cured? We didn't know, and pretended not to care.
Now, three years later, I clutched the phone with sweaty hands while Marilyn posed my unspoken question. "Am I going to have more chemo? Right now I'm still looking at options." I cringed. Marilyn adopted her spunkiest tone. "The last couple of years we've been at the age of dying and hardly knew it, did we?"
"Don't talk like that. What about a macrobiotic diet? What about acupuncture?"
"No. I think you have to believe those things before they work. Listen, when can you come? You can't refuse a dying friend."
"Stop that, I said!"
"And I have things to tell you. Things I don't want to take to my grave."
"One more morbid comment and I'm hanging up."
"I'm serious, Barbara. I don't want to discuss this on the phone."
"You think my line is tapped? You think you can't trust me unless you whisper it personally into my ear? This is Barbara Cohen you're talking to. We've known each other over fifty years."
"Good grief, we have, haven't we?"
Continues...
Excerpted from Riggs Park by Ellyn Bache Copyright © 2005 by Ellyn Bache. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.