The Post-War Dream Read online

  They were sent home on the fifth day, departing St. Mary's with a prescription for pain pills and their own uncertainty about what lay ahead. But upon returning to Nine Springs, Debra soon realized she didn't need the pain pills after all, simply because there wasn't any continual ache left to drug; in fact, other than the initial discomfort immediately following surgery, she suffered most in the minute or so that it took for the drainage tube to be removed—pulled from her stomach through her chest, through her throat, through her nostril, making her cough and gag. Eventually, it struck Hollis as being odd that the cancer hadn't immediately manifested in a clear-cut manner—no wasting away, no feebleness, no cinematic swift demise—odd, too, that the obvious signs of infirmity Debra had displayed were brought on by what was meant to help her: the surgery and, subsequently, the side effects of chemotherapy.

  However, the presence of the cancer itself remained elusive, even as it continued to mutate, increase, and spread like dust motes transported in an afternoon breeze. Under such circumstances, though, she often conveyed greater energy on her worst days than Hollis did on his best days—driving herself to the library, shopping for wigs and eyeliner, refusing to let him do her laundry or fold her clothing. “I'm fine,” she told him. “I'm not an invalid, you know.” As if to underscore her resolve, Debra wouldn't allow herself an ounce of self-pity or a tearful outburst, although Hollis had succumbed to both emotional states on four occasions, always reserving his solitary breakdowns for his garden and the confines of his tiki hut.

  Perhaps it was the absence of tangible death which bolstered Debra, to the point where she decided her sister in Texas shouldn't learn of the illness unless, of course, all her options had been exhausted and the endgame became imminent. But her innate fortitude was also tempered by the situation's undeniable gravity, not to mention the chemotherapy, and everything else she had researched at the library or was told about stage-III ovarian cancer. She knew, for example, the prognosis was far from good: seven of every ten cases were diagnosed after the cancer had already spread beyond the ovary; with stage III only one out of four women survived beyond five years. But—as Dr. Langford had repeatedly suggested—there was at least reason to believe Debra might join that 25 percent grouping.

  Even so, nothing Dr. Langford said seemed real to Hollis, none of it seemed possible. The data and medical jargon, the new expressions and unheard-of treatments, the frightening odds of survival—all of it felt like some elaborate hoax at their expense, and a very cruel joke. There were a few other things which nagged his mind, things he was too ashamed to admit, not the least of which was his own ignorance about the purpose, exact physical location, and function of a woman's ovaries. So during one of Debra's library excursions, Hollis joined her on the ride, claiming he needed to do research for his autobiography. But rather than find books relating to Korean history, it was a long-out-of-print hardcover with a plain maroon cover which preoccupied his time, keeping him seated at a table away from where Debra read; when a page was turned, he glanced around to make sure she wasn't coming toward him, and then, discreetly, resumed studying the book he cradled against a forearm, hunched low over the text as if he were guarding answers to a test.

  It was, in fact, the sole book found on the computer catalog which corresponded to the keywords “ovaries” and “female reproduction”—although the title raised an eyebrow, for it was called The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sex, written quasi-anonymously by Dr. A. Willy, Dr. L. Vander, Dr. O. Fisher, and other authorities, published in 1950, with its almost bare cover using bold white letters to state: an important contribution to the cause of sexual enlightenment featuring a unique and unprecedented series of illustrations representing every aspect of sex. Nevertheless, the book provided the information he had sought, doing so with a graphic series of antiquated drawings which looked more like 1950s science fiction than science fact. Spermatoza enlarged a thousand times. Fibrous coverings of testicles and epididymis. Sperm damaged by distilled-water irrigation. Sperm paralyzed by vinegar irrigation. Breast of a virgin. Breast of a woman who has had children. Menstrual blood in uterus due to obstruction. Six causes of painful menstruation. And then, on page 59, a woman's pelvic and sex organs shown in a transparent body, with the following page displaying a cross-sectioned ovary.

  While staring at the ovary drawings, Hollis thought: So this is what you look like. This is what you are, and this is where you were hiding inside Deb.

  Then he couldn't help but smile, especially as the book and its drawings were published the year before he had met and fallen in love with Debra. Those intricate drawings of male and female forms—the colorful sex organs, the facsimiles of naked and dissected bodies from a different era—belonged to their generation, striking him as lost representations of his and Debra's younger, healthier shapes and body parts. Only later, after leaving the library and heading home, did something else tug at his mind, a notion of humans as little more than cells in a larger social superorganism; and, as such, it stood to reason that individuals, like cells, might outgrow their usefulness, eventually withering and dying off. Maybe, he wondered, it was a myth about our evolutionary instincts being fully geared toward the survival of ourselves and our own kin—because if that were truly the case there wouldn't be cancer swarming within so many people as a preset, intrinsic suicide program. But if you remove the human disposition for war and destruction, he imagined, our cells would have no choice except to mirror such a change; they would adapt, evolve accordingly, shunning any self-destructive impulses. There would be, under those circumstances, a real end to sickness and human misery.

  “We're the cure for cancer,” he suddenly told Debra on the drive home. “People are.”

  “What?”

  “We hold the cure—the human race, I mean. We need to change how we behave. I think it's important to reprogram ourselves, don't you? I mean, if we reprogram our way of thinking and behaving I'm certain we'll reprogram our cells, too?”

  “Hon, I don't know what on earth you're talking about.”

  “I'm just trying to figure how we can get out of this mess we ‘re in. And I'm thinking maybe if we alter our evolutionary patterns as a society—if we do that, in a positive direction—it seems like our cells will follow along.”

  “That's all well and good,” she said, “but that kind of evolution takes a long time, more time than I've been given, dear. More time than any of us have. It's a nice idea, though.”

  “I prefer to consider it a concept,” he said. “A new concept, not really just an idea.”

  “Well, you better write it down then, put it in your book.”

  “You know, honestly, I feel like I'm onto something here. I believe it might be the key to solving this problem for the world, Deb.”

  “You never know,” she said, grinning to herself.

  “At least it's something, right?”

  But soon another new concept came into play—the notion of living with cancer as opposed to dying from it. A bizarre definition for living, Hollis felt. How better, though, to provide the hopeless with hope than with a useful oxymoron. And so it was hope he clung to, as surely as it was hope which fueled Debra's determination. And, too, it was a kind of singular belief in herself as an individual—as someone apart from those also suffering with the disease—which gave her focus. Shrugging off Dr. Langford's advice, she had little interest in looking into organizations such as the Well-ness Community or Gilda's Club, in having her sickness treated like an analogue for the ovarian cancer of others. This was her fight, her life; she would manage.

  “Who wants to be with a bunch of sick bald women anyway?” she balked, after Hollis mentioned he thought the support group named for comedienne Gilda Radner sounded encouraging. “Trust me, I don't need another thing to remind me I've got ovarian cancer. The chemo is bad enough.”

  “You're right,” he said. “The chemo is bad enough.” So was the disease, he thinks now. So was the leaden, oppressive feeling which had consumed his gut
—like holding his breath for months, like waiting for the other shoe to drop—and only relieved by a single refrain, those words Dr. Langford had spoken without expression: “We're not looking at a cure, just control. But there's still hope.”

  Now scooping away the slush which has settled among the cacti, Hollis can feel the pull of better months; tending to his garden here—discarding what the cold night had dropped upon it—he can bring to mind more recent days, when the sun blazed high, the ground burned hot underfoot, and his skin was of a darker tint. Then he smiles at what presents itself to him: a commemorative American Legion National Convention pineapple-shaped decanter, a 1962 Southern Comfort turquoise-and-gold jigger measure, two vintage Fabulous Las Vegas shot glasses—all curios purchased by Lon while on their monthly pilgrimages into Tucson, intended for use and displayed inside the hut, each item having been found the previous summer at the Tanque Verde Swap Meet.

  “How much you think it cost me?”

  “I don't know. Five bucks?”

  “Are you kidding? The guy wanted seven, but I got it for four.”

  The swap-meet ritual became a kind of game, one in which the individual spending cap was twenty dollars (not including the steakhouse dinner which was always eaten prior to starting the return drive to Nine Springs). Parting ways, they had an hour and a half before rendezvousing again at the front entrance; during that time, both of them hunted rare deals to take home to their wives—antique picture frames, custom-made lampshades, collectable wall plates—with the month's winner determined by whatever was deemed the best buy for the least amount spent (the loser, then, required to pick up the dinner tab). Regardless of whether Hollis won a given month's hunt or not, he knew early on he had already discovered the greatest bargain the swap meet offered—something he didn't have to haggle over, something he couldn't carry home or claim as a victory purchase: a fifteen-minute, $6 massage from the expert hands of a blind Taiwanese masseur. So while Lon shopped elsewhere—exploring the dirt lanes of the swap meet, rummaging through milk crates—Hollis took a seat in Ah-Chun's little booth, waiting for his chance to stretch across the table.

  Hollis had encountered Ah-Chun last May, when he observed the blind masseur sweeping the mat-covered floor around a massage table—tanned feet embraced by well-worn sandals, long gray-white hair tied into a pony-tail, taut weathered skin covering a skull which looked large in relation to the small body it sat upon—whisking bits of trash, creating a pile the man couldn't possibly see. Frank Sinatra's recording of “Send In the Clowns” began playing from the swap-meet loudspeakers, and Ah-Chun paused, clutching at the broom handle, apparently moved by the melancholy and defeat expressed in the song. Wearing a white smock which was big on his slight, compact frame, the man remained completely motionless for a moment, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Then Hollis noticed the cardboard sign propped against the booth, its handwritten message fashioned by a black Magic Marker, stating:

  TRUE BODY RUB, NO COMPARISON!

  $4 ten minute/$6 fifteen minute/$8 twenty minute

  RELAX BY GREAT BLIND MASSEUR ALL WAY FROM TAIPEI

  That roughly made advertisement was enticing enough to lure Hollis onto the man's table—where, for ten glorious minutes, his skin and muscles were pulled, tugged, pounded, loosened. The following June he paid the fifteen-minute price, and those extra five minutes lulled him into a sublime, tranquil sleep which, after waking, left his body invigorated and limber for perhaps the first time since Debra's illness was discovered. It wasn't until July, however, that Hollis actually made an effort to learn about the blind man, asking his name and talking to him as one might do with a barber.

  “How do you say it? Ash-hen?”

  “Ah-Chun—”

  “At-ch-ung.”

  “Ah-Chun—”

  “Ak-chun—like action?”

  “No, is Ah-Chun—my name very easy, you see, not hard. Ah-Chun—”

  “Ah-shun—”

  “Maybe—it's closer—”

  Straining to comprehend the man's broken English, listening intently while pliant hands pressed against his spine, Hollis discovered Ah-Chun, like himself, had migrated to Southern California decades ago, and, as it happened, they had lived a few miles apart in neighboring San Gabriel Valley cities (Arcadia for Hollis and Debra, Rosemead for Ah-Chun and a now deceased wife).

  “So how'd you end up way out here, Ah-Chun? What brought you to the Old Pueblo?”

  He explained that his oldest daughter worked in Tucson for Raytheon Missile Systems. Another daughter was a university professor in Michigan—in Lansing—but the weather there was too cold for him. “I like hot,” he said.

  “Makes two of us,” Hollis said, as Ah-Chun's fingertips changed course and slid toward the curves of his shoulder blades. “I've got a home out at the Nine Springs development.”

  With that Ah-Chun's hands paused. “It's Nine Springs where you living now?” he said. “Someone really call it that?”

  “Yeah, just north of here, past Oro Valley.”

  The hands began moving again, and Ah-Chun spoke from above, mentioning that, in Chinese legend, another nine springs also existed, functioning as a gateway to the underworld. “Except no one wants to go there too long, you see.” Because, he said, agitated spirits occupied that nether region in limbo, seeking justice for whatever wrongs might have contributed to their deaths, and wouldn't leave until recompense was made on their behalf.

  “How about that,” Hollis said. “And it's called Nine Springs, too?”

  “Maybe not really same,” Ah-Chun answered. “For me Huang Quan—something like Yellow Springs, you know—so not really same.”

  “That's good.”

  “Yes, yes, very good, I think.”

  But no sooner had Hollis become well acquainted with Ah-Chun than the heat of summer abated, as did the monthly swap-meet adventures. In late August, he entered Ah-Chun's booth for a final time—except the man never knew he was waiting there, nor did Hollis have an opportunity to rest upon the table (four customers were already ahead of him, each paying for an $8 rub). He took a seat on a foldout chair anyway, using his allotted massage minutes to finish a Diet Pepsi, watching as Ah-Chun was hunched beside the table—meandering digits at the corpulent, freckled neck of a young woman, faint Chinese utterances half whispered beyond understanding.

  The vast, passive woman on the table seemed almost unaware of Ah-Chun's presence, and the man's mumbled speech was consumed by the evening crowds, the music and announcements piped from loudspeakers, the hawkers proclaiming specials, Tucson's tongue like a family's incomprehensible argument: Hispanic and Anglo voices melding—a cacophony of tones, though somehow not unpleasant, soaring upward above everything; it was that flow of language, life's currency, which Hollis believed Ah-Chun savored the most. Previously, the man had mentioned that his daughter's wishes to drive him were usually declined, and instead he opted to walk the sidewalks and the streets, to wander among the din of people. He also enjoyed riding transit buses, the portable table crossing the city with him to then stand inside the booth. The only blind man, Ah-Chun had proudly pointed out, offering his services at the weekend swap meet—the only blind Taiwanese man, he was positive, to caress and grasp local skin.

  Ah-Chun quickly gyrated his fists between lax shoulder blades, warming flesh, and the woman on the table exhaled deeply, saying, “Mmmm—oh, that's good—yes—” How odd, Hollis suddenly thought, that one could give such pleasure to a woman he wouldn't ever know, an intimacy shared as teenagers, couples, and baby strollers streamed past his booth. “Right there—yes,” the woman said limply, and never revealed more of herself than those short responses. How strange, an elderly man probably older than her father and prowling hands along her surface for cash—hands like a calming wind she could feel but wouldn't contemplate, hands which had traveled an ocean and throughout the years to relieve her body, pummeling rhythmically against her while something in Mandarin was spoken underneath his breath. Then how alie
n it must have been for Ah-Chun—ending up in a desert where dryness weathered faces, the ebbing fever of August hung like a vaporous gauze of wool, yet he couldn't discern the many phallic-shaped saguaros or accurately envision the island he had abandoned so long ago.

  Still, the man ambled surely from bus to bus—slender cane tapping the ground, folding massage table held at his side—venturing twice a week to his booth, touching multiple forms which didn't usually address him with interest or wonder aloud about where his life had originated, where specifically he had gained the gift of softening hard muscles and pacifying tendons. But if asked, he explained as best he could, mentioning the narrow roads of the Taipei night market, the cheap tile walkways fractured by buried asphalt and, in spots, cupping puddles of rainwater. Hard to comprehend, he would still say, “Always work for me—I work there since I was small,” and perhaps a body would find his story unusual, saying as Hollis once had, “Tell me more.”

  Then Ah-Chun's memory crossed the Pacific again, returning home; he inhaled the swap meet, steeping his nostrils with what lingered there—that carnival fragrance transporting him, placing him as a boy near the snake shops, the snake wine, the pickled snakes, the snakes hanging lengthwise at storefronts. About fifty years ago, it had been revealed, he was an apprentice masseur kneading bodies in front of a snake shop, pouring snake oil on shoulder blades and spines. Or maybe it was yesterday, he had said and chuckled—swallowing humidity, breathing a fusion of rain, fish, blood, noodles—hearing water slither into drains, flip-flops on the march, voices haggling; he could smell and recall it easily, could draw its vicinity there.