The Post-War Dream Page 13
Then while sitting for hours on end at the Arizona Cancer Center—relaxing in an open, brightly lit space, tended to by a small staff of attentive clinical and research nurses—she and Hollis had been relieved that the Patient Treatment Suite wasn't like the place they had secretly imagined. Without saying so, they had each shared a similar fantasy of a sterile yet archaic ward, a cramped environment lined with stretchers which were partitioned off by white plastic curtains—where stoic nurses strolled from patient to patient, filling out charts as the very ill grew sicker following the administration of chemotherapy. But, in truth, the cancer center had four modern treatment areas (three with reclining lounge chairs and a television mounted on a wall, one with stretcher beds for those who wished to rest throughout the therapy). Instead of voicing discomfort or writhing from pain, the other patients around Debra passed the hours in relative peaceful-ness—eating potato chips and pizza slices and hamburgers, watching afternoon talk shows, listening through headphones to portable CD players, flipping the pages of newspapers or magazines, talking and playing board games with family members, napping—while the drugs went into their arms as if dripping from a leaky spigot, the chemicals burned up their perfectly good veins, and the IV bags hung above every seat.
It was, for Debra, like a large communal living room, or a weigh station occupied by people who were replenishing themselves amid the dubious journey none of them had asked to embark upon; although what was evident to her during the first rounds of chemo—what she could easily discern from her lounge chair—was that while all of them were there together, many had been on the journey longer than she had (her husband didn't need to help her to and from her seat, the nurses hadn't yet begun searching her arms for undamaged veins in which to stick the IV needle). Still, there was something calming about the suite, boring even. The drugs, too, weren't much of an ordeal; she had assumed she would feel the chemo entering her system, except, as it happened, she felt nothing whatsoever—other than the slight prick of the needle breaching her skin.
And so—with Hollis sitting beside her, his chin tilted upward at the television—she read a Nero Wolfe mystery novel, or worked crossword puzzles. In those weeks when chemo brain finally hampered her ability to concentrate on words, she would choose a chair near the wide, expansive windows, surveying the mountains and sky, often studying the patients and staff who came and went across the center's parking lot. She and Hollis also took walks, bringing the portable IV along with them as they stopped at the nurses’ station to chat, or headed down the hallways, or, on occasion, paused inside the clinic's quiet, simple, and usually empty chapel (the two rarely ever speaking there, preferring instead to keep silent beneath the vaulted silt-cast ceiling, the stained-glass window, a cascade of bells). Yet after months of chemo, Debra had never lost sight of the fact that the twenty-nine other chairs in the suite displayed the various shapes of men and women who were praying for the same outcome; as a result, she knew she wasn't alone, and from that understanding she had gleaned a modicum of solace. For just like her, they had left their daily routines behind, and, once a given round of treatment was done, they could again resume a fairly normal existence.
Hollis, too, had been mindful of the patients which filled the suite with Debra—several he had grown fond of encountering, others he recognized but hardly acknowledged. More striking to him, however, was the diversity of the continually changing group. Aside from retired, middle-aged, or university material—male or female—there were white and black patients, mainland Chinese and Mexican locals, a Japanese housewife and a Saudi Arabian graduate student. A handful of different languages were spoken in that room, a cross section of the world had somehow found its way into the desert and past the sliding doors of the cancer center. But over time—as Debra's illness progressed, as the chemo only slowed its advance—new patients began appearing in the places where familiar bodies had previously sat; then it felt like a lethal game of musical chairs was being played out, one in which the names of the winners and losers weren't divulged. Yet few, if any, it seemed, would be spared the ravages of the disease; fewer and fewer were bound to circumvent its wrath, and so everyone, he now believes, will have their lives altered at some point by the infernal lottery of cancer.
Even so, there were no conversations of possible death at the Patient Treatment Suite, no end-of-life issues brought up during commercial breaks or between bites of food, as if an implicit vow to avoid the subject had been sworn by the patients, their families and friends, and the nurses. The treatment alone reinforced the idea that cancer wasn't an automatic death sentence, and as long as therapy continued, both the afflicted and their loved ones might survive with the disease for months, sometimes years (the end result—that final act where the chemo had either succeeded in eliminating the disease or failed altogether—was more akin to an abstract concept than a certainty). In this way, death refused an obvious personification; it wouldn't hang about in the form of an archaic, lingering, black-hooded specter, nor would its onset produce crucifix-like stigmata upon the flesh of the doomed. Instead, it was a kind of death which had an intangible presence, manifesting by degrees rather than all at once—covertly building upon itself like a creeping paralysis, spreading here and there—with the telltale signs becoming cumulative and, to those expecting its imminence, undeniable.
Now without the advantage of much hindsight, Debra's cancer months had already relegated a number of the recently deceased to memory, acquaintances met early on at Gilda's Club—five or six faceless women to Hollis—which his wife mentioned only after each had passed away. “We lost Dianne this week,” she'd tell him, saying so in a direct, unemotional tone—as effortless and nonchalant as if she had just uttered, “We're out of toilet paper again.” Since Debra began attending the meetings, the club had also lost a Rebecca, an Alice, a Martha, a Kelly, and—because Debra always referred to her by her full name—one Tina Archuleta. With the exception of Tina Archuleta, the women died from complications brought on by their advanced ovarian cancer (bowel obstructions, fluid collecting in the lungs, tumors pressing on key organs). Ms. Archuleta, on the other hand, was a stage-I survivor who had been free of the disease for six years; a seemingly healthy, muscular woman, an avid cyclist and jogger, she frequented the meetings whenever possible, encouraging newcomers to “thank Mother God and surrender yourself and the temple of clay you live in to Her care,” while giving everyone a good look at the overly enthusiastic, beatific face of remission.
But it was Tina Archuleta's unexpected demise which altered Debra's normally impassive response to such losses, dismaying Hollis with a sly grin even as she somberly explained that Tina had been killed in an off-road accident (thrown from an open Jeep when the vehicle lost control, her body sent tumbling down a prickly pear–covered hillside before coming to rest at the rocky edge of an arroyo). “It's pretty tragic,” Debra said, shaking her head. “I guess her temple of clay got busted to pieces.”
They were driving back to Nine Springs from Tucson, and Hollis—right hand on the steering wheel, left hand turning the radio dial to his favorite country station—glanced at her, discerning then from her expression that it was sarcasm he had heard and not simply a bad choice of words. “That's awful,” he said, returning his stare to the road. “Why'd you say that?”
She shook her head again, as if she wasn't so pleased with herself. “Who knows what's gotten into me,” she said, maintaining the same somber tone yet doing nothing to suppress her grin. “I think I'm in shock. It must be shock. At least she's with Mother God now.”
“Stop it. Why are you talking like that? Why are you smiling?”
She shrugged her eyebrows once, and with that the slight grin disappeared for a moment—only to reemerge seconds later as a full-blown smirk: “You know, we all die someday of something, dear. It's not like getting past cancer means you'll live forever. But promise me one thing, will you?”
Somewhat hesitantly, he answered, “What is it?”
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�Considering everything I've gone through with this disease—it doesn't matter if I get flattened by a bus or crushed under a boulder—you better make sure my obituary says ovarian cancer is what did me in, okay?” She half chuckled at her own request, but her levity was unnerving to Hollis.
“Deb, don't talk like that,” he immediately responded. His forward gaze drifted across an abandoned strip mall and the parking lot of a Tony Roma's. “And please stop smiling. It isn't funny.”
This is how you're coping, he had thought afterward. This is how you're dealing with what's happening to you, and us. She would tell him again and again that Gilda's Club had been a blessing, that its support had lifted her from the melancholy and haze of her ordeal (even as her cancer remained, even as the treatments had failed to bring beneficial results). The other Gilda's Club members she joined every week—those who were sharing her fears and sickness—had instilled the importance of positioning one's self to be a survivor; they had, in fact, added color to her life under the bleakest of circumstances—not just with humor, or counseling, or reliable information, but also in a more literal fashion: she was advised to avoid muted shades, encouraged to wear clothing which was vibrant, warm, and positive.
Then gone were the gray sweatpants, the black sweaters; gone, too, were the black ceramic dinner plates, and the light-gray bedroom walls and ceiling (a color she had originally picked for their room, a color Hollis had blotted out over the course of a weekend by covering it beneath a thick, smooth veneer of pale yellow). Soon the bedside table was lined with a row of small, brown-tinted bottles, each containing a different oil and scent which—according to the aromatherapist who had visited Gilda's Club one week—were excellent for activating the olfactory nerve cells in the nasal cavity, sending impulses to the limbic system (the part of the brain commonly associated with emotions and memory), as well as relieving various physical maladies by stimulating the immune, circulatory, and nervous systems. At any given hour, the bedroom became fragrant with eucalyptus and wintergreen (aiding congestion relief), jasmine (calming depression), lavender (reducing anxiety and improving sleep), citrus (elevating mood and increasing mental sharpness), peppermint (helping with digestion while reducing nausea), rosemary (easing pain and providing muscle relaxation), or the single best oil for evoking a surge of happiness: cherry. At last, Debra would take it upon herself to symbolize happiness with her own hand, using Hollis's paints and brushes, climbing a stepladder in order to design a bluebird on the bedroom ceiling—its wings widened amid a flat yellow sky, its arrow-like beak aimed at the doorway. “It's our bluebird of happiness,” she had told him while lowering herself from the stepladder, blue paint spattered on her fingers. “Everyone should have one, don't you think?”
“Of course,” he answered. “Of course,” he repeated, his voice suddenly trembling, watching as the bluebird became diffused with the welling of tears and seemed to flutter above him.
The spade acts as a snowplow, clearing the precarious spaces between golden barrels, succulents, and old man cereus. The funneling system which Hollis designed along the rooftop gutters—a series of black plastic tubing and sheet-metal rivulets—is hampered by blockages of ice. Below the funneling system—close to where he is working—the fifty-gallon tub which normally collects rain during the summer monsoon season now contains slush, as does the five-gallon bucket he uses for retrieving water from the tub to irrigate his flowering plants (scarlet betony, yellow bells, columbine). The trailing rosemary near the back patio is nowhere to be seen—lost beneath a melting stratum of white—yet a single cottontail rabbit sniffs at the ground there, unconcerned by Hollis's proximity while it searches for something to gnaw on. Taking a break to stare beyond his property, Hollis is aware of the rabbit but gives it little notice, for he has previously encountered more impressive kinds of free-roaming wildlife behind the house—a covey of quail, solitary coyotes, a pack of javelinas, a hawk, and an owl.
As no walls or fences enclose the yards of Nine Springs, he can peer into neighboring gardens, observing the mini-oases growing around his own refuge—backyards which, in warmer months, showcase bougainvillea and cape honeysuckle vines, wide-spreading palo verdes and hybrid mesquites for cool summer shade, creosote bushes, prickly pears, cholla cacti, and red yuccas whose clusters of bright flowers entice both hummingbirds and butterflies; he can, when surrounded by such subtle desert shapes and colors, perceive this gated community as a kind of barren paradise, a well-deserved reward for almost forty years of service to the Dusenbury-Soper Lumber Company (that majority of his lifetime spent overseeing cutting rights, production, and processing in Pennsylvania and, then, Southern California).
In truth, Hollis's thoughts concerning Nine Springs rarely waver, nor do his concerns usually align with Lon's mixed feelings about the place; he has never been able to equate his retirement here with some exclusive theme park for the aged, a present-day dystopia built from antiquated, homogenous ideals. Instead, he feels the community is not so different from the valued destinations of his youth, holiday retreats like Palm Springs or Lake Tahoe—unique getaways which allowed couples to leave the steady drone of urban motion and, for a brief period, find peace in wide-open, slower-paced environs; without such halcyon alternatives made available, he believes many decent people might find their twilight years to be somewhat less fruitful.
Debra, too, had sought contentment here, while also embracing the motto of “living with cancer” as a personal mantra. Shrugging off the cruel timing of her illness—the late stage of her disease, the exhaustion of chemotherapy, her declining health—she, like Hollis, was still determined to enjoy what was supposed to have been prolonged recompense for those laborious, gainful decades. As she saw it, his retirement signaled her retirement, at least to some extent; so it wouldn't be all pain and sickness for her, nor did she continue to play the role of a restive and childless San Gabriel Valley homemaker, or that of a part-time sales associate at Mervyn's. Rather, she quietly redefined herself upon leaving California, seeking an appropriate analogue to her husband's almost daily rounds of golf, finding her answer inside the meeting rooms of the Funtivities Center—where she attended a weekly lecture series on the religions of the world, engaged in several lively debates regarding current events, and learned how to research the genealogy of her family tree.
Immediately following her surgery and prior to becoming too weak to participate, Debra often passed entire days at the Funtivities Center: mornings practicing tai chi, afternoons doing ceramics, and, for a short while, evenings rehearsing with the Ol’ Settlers Drama League (the effects of chemo at last preventing her from performing as Mrs. Gibbs in Our Town, or realizing the dream of tackling Rosie DeLeon in Bye Bye Birdie). And although she had once fostered a desire to raise her own children—a desire left unfulfilled due to the double-edged revelation that her body had been overloaded with androgens and her husband's sperm were abnormally shaped—Debra tended to herself at Nine Springs in the manner which, Hollis imagines, she might have done for a child raised under her supervision: balanced meals, regular exercise, hours devoted to reading or studying, and plenty of extracurricular distractions to keep negative influences and ennui at bay. Nevertheless, with the disease's progression, she couldn't help but view her premenopausal infertility—the abundance of male hormones complicating her system, the irregular periods, the difficulty she had had ovulating—as being, in hindsight, a clear warning for what lay ahead.
Yet only after Dr. Langford's diagnosis did Debra learn about the studies which suggested a connection between ovarian cancer and never having children. Still, she had remembered sensing minor pangs while ovulating, that mid-cycle sensation her gynecologist at the time had called Mittelschmerz—that moment when a single egg expanded, bursting beside the ovary, awaiting either fertilization or to be flushed away with menstruation. Not until her cancer was discovered, though, would she consider the damage inherent to such a routine, commonplace function: for with every egg which ruptured near the
ovary came a division of cells—a shifting, a multiplying, a regrouping along the surface lining to seal the gap; and it was that mechanical, automatic dividing and subsequent repair which could allow rogue cells to go astray, producing the microscopic starting point for cancerous beginnings.
“You know what I really hate, what I really can't stomach?” she'd said to Hollis, as they paced the hallways of the cancer center. “It's knowing my body is operating on its own internal clock. Early on it decides I shouldn't have a baby. Then it decides to change my hair color. Then it decides to wrinkle me all over. Now it wants to kill me, and there isn't a damn thing I can do to reset it, or make it stop tick-tocking my life away. That really pisses me off.”
But at least she had her mind, he countered. At least she could control her thoughts, in spite of what her body was doing.
“You're right,” she said. “I guess I can still evolve in a positive direction, even if the rest of me is rapidly decaying. So if nothing else, my brain is on my side.”