A Window Opens: A Novel (22 page)

“Is there a new plan for displaying the first editions? I think it would be a mistake to put them behind glass, but I guess I can see the rationale . . .”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer your question at this time.” Genevieve’s face remained impassive. And I don’t mean she looked bored or angry: the expression was total absence of interest to the point where I wondered if I’d imagined my own end of the conversation. It seemed possible that she was still waiting for my response. I was familiar with the many countenances of Genevieve, but that morning was the first time I saw The Mask. It gave me the same feeling I had when I first saw the clown in
Poltergeist
, a moment I remember vividly: sleepover, fourth grade, Beth France’s basement aglow with the horror. That night, I went straight to the olive-colored rotary phone and asked my dad to come walk me home. Now I clutched my notebook as if my life depended on it.

“Well, anyway. I came by to let you know I’ll need to miss the technology meeting this afternoon. I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Oh?” Meeting attendance was of paramount importance to Genevieve, especially when the assemblage would be broadcast in Cleveland.

“It’s a personal matter. I . . . well, my dad had cancer a while back—”

“Yes, you mentioned that at the sales conference.”

“Yes. That’s right. Anyway, so the cancer is back and the prognosis is not great and—”

“Where?”

“Oh, well this appointment is at Sloan Kettering, but my dad lives—”

“No, I mean, where is the cancer?” The Mask melted into an expression of pure compassion and Genevieve now leaned toward me in the pose made famous by Judd Hirsch in
Ordinary People
— elbows on knees, legs apart. But her responses were bloodless. As Gertrude Stein said, there was no
there
there; it was as if she was following the stage directions for a character described as a sensitive, in-touch boss.

“Throat cancer. We’ll find out today if it’s spread.”

“Did he smoke?”

“He did. Yes.” We were now in my least favorite part of any conversation about my dad’s health. I watched for the invisible light to go on in Genevieve’s head:
I don’t smoke, so I’m safe
. But she threw me a curveball.

“Man, smoking is a
bitch
. My dad died of lung cancer when I was nine.” She said it matter-of-factly, the same way she might have said, “I have brown eyes” or “
The One Minute Manager
is my bible
.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Genevieve. I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well. It is what it is.” She shrugged. The conversation was about to be over. “Do what you need to do. And good luck this afternoon.”

•  •  •

The hospital was exactly as I remembered it: same scrum of people in scrubs, huddled outside the front door with their cigarettes; same interminable elevator ride from the dark entryway to the cheerful main lobby. You couldn’t help but feel that you were ascending into an alternate universe when you arrived. Not heaven, by a long shot, but at least somewhere safe, where the people in charge would get to the bottom of your problem. That had been my experience in the past.

I found my parents in the tasteful waiting room, which was furnished in blond wood and soothing colors. They were sitting side by side, faces slack—not visibly agitated or worried, simply present but preferring not to be. My mom wore a long, lacy dress and a marcasite choker; my dad
wore khakis, a blue button-down shirt, and a navy blazer. They believed in dressing nicely for doctors, Sunday mass, and airplane travel. Now they were like nervous fliers on standby, awaiting news of available seating and also the exact destination of their plane.

“Hi, guys.” I gave them each a quick hug. They smiled briefly and my mom murmured thanks for coming; the room was as quiet as a library, so we kept our greetings short. Then we settled into our soft leather chairs, where we feigned enjoyment of Sloan Kettering’s impressive collection of magazines. Unfortunately, we were transferred almost immediately to the inner sanctum of exam rooms, where there was no decent reading material and thus no way of keeping up a pretense of relaxation.

We waited a long time for Dr. Davis to come into the exam room, and you could cut the tension with a scalpel; there are only so many times a trio of nervous people can pick up a little plastic model of a head and pretend to find it interesting. My mom kept offering Chapstick, Kleenex, hand lotion, and Certs. I refreshed the home page of the
New York Times
so many times, there was nothing left to read except news from the AP and Reuters.

At first, I tried to engage my dad in conversation about the headlines, but he shook his head slowly and lay back on the paper-covered table and closed his eyes. I hated seeing him like that—his face slack, his still-tan skin taking on a gray cast in the fluorescent light. From where I was sitting on a small, round stool, I could see straight down the hole in his throat. Thinking about what was down there made me queasy.

Dr. Davis finally breezed in on a wave of white coats belonging to four fellows in otolaryngological oncology. “Joan, Ed.” He gave them each a firm handshake, warm as a hug, and then turned to me. “What, no babies anymore?”

“Not this time.”

He introduced us to the fellows, who were attentive but eager to get down to business. My dad was an interesting case: not only had he had his larynx removed, he also had a replacement esophagus made from a length of his own intestine. One of the fellows rifled through his chart with an
expression of naked curiosity on her face. She shook her head and said under her breath, “Such a shame.”

I thought, here we go again with the smoking.

“Karen?” Dr. Davis glanced sharply at the fellow, who wore an immaculate pink cardigan under her white coat—two articles of clothing whose high maintenance simply blows the mind of a slob like me.

“It’s just, I’m looking at Ed’s history here—”

“You mean Mr. Pearse.”

“Yes, sorry, Dr. Davis. I’m looking at Mr. Pearse’s history and realizing that if he presented with the same tumor today that he had ten years ago, he most likely wouldn’t have to undergo such a radical surgery. Now we have alternatives to the total laryn—”

“
Karen
. That’s enough.” Dr. Davis rolled his stool to the edge of the exam table so he was roughly eye-to-knee with my dad, who was now sitting up. I couldn’t bear to look at his face. Of course, I knew there had been advances in the treatment of throat cancer since my dad lost his voice, and of course, if any hospital were the front-runner in offering them, Sloan Kettering would be the place. But in that particular moment, when we were already bracing for the worst, the idea of a near miss was too painful to contemplate.

I kept my eyes trained on Karen, willing them to shoot daggers across the tiny room. She didn’t seem to register my scrutiny or to be taken down a notch by Dr. Davis’s admonition. Her own dad was probably slaloming in Aspen or developing arty black-and-white photos in his personal darkroom. Karen had all the facts at her fingertips but she wasn’t fluent in the root words of her profession: worry, regret, anger, fear, and hope. Always hope.

The doctor took my dad’s hand in his, not in a patronizing way but in the manner of two old comrades who root for rival Big East teams and respect each other immensely. It was as if they were alone in the room and the rest of us were watching through one-way glass.

“Ed.”

My dad nodded, mouthing, “Howard.”

“Your tumor is not responding to radiation.”

My mom took notes so she could relay all the information to Will. I glanced at her, expecting to see tears drop on the page or at least a droop in her shoulders. But she was already in battle position: ramrod straight, pen poised, steadily nodding her head like an attentive student.
Fortune favors the prepared mind
. If she was the kind of woman who was inclined to cross-stitch sayings, Louis Pasteur’s words would have hung over the mantel in her living room.

The fellows shifted from foot to foot, politely admiring the seams on my dad’s neck and his ingeniously created and immaculately maintained stoma, a joint collaboration between Dr. Davis and my mom. I just sat there, blank as a piece of paper, letting the words land:
out of options at this point
,
questionable spots on the lungs
,
make you comfortable, palliative care, pain scale, hospice
. They never really tell you to get your affairs in order, but that was the gist of the conversation.

My dad listened quietly, eyes wide behind his thick glasses.

Dr. Davis explained that it would become more difficult for him to use Buzz Lightyear as the tumor grew. Swallowing would become difficult, too. Dr. Davis would have his GI guy install a PEG in my dad’s stomach—a simple outpatient procedure—so my dad could feed himself through a tube. Eventually we would do it for him. He would require a special formula for diabetics, and a special pump to clear out mucus and bile from the stoma when his immune system went into overdrive.

In conclusion, “Of course, this will all take time. I’m just giving you the big picture.”

My mom put down her slim aqua pen. “It doesn’t sound very big.”

“What doesn’t sound very big?”

“The picture, I mean. How much time are we talking, Doctor?”

My eyes wandered to the ceiling. One, two, three, four panes of light. They reminded me of our family, gathered around the square table in my parents’ kitchen. Ed, Joan, Will, Alice.

“We don’t put a number on it, Joan. I mean, look at him.” Dr. Davis grabbed the arch of my dad’s foot and swung it gently back and forth. “Ed
Pearse is not someone to be underestimated.” I was grateful he didn’t call my dad a fighter, a cancer image I abhor. “This guy amazes me. Always has.”

I pictured my dad walking up our hill in his summer suit—tall, smiling, funny in his dry Irish way, full of opinions and advice, easily persuaded to take a detour for an ice cream cone. When you’re a kid, you think you’re going to have this deep well of time with your parents when you grow up and you’re all on equal footing. When I had kids of my own, I thought that time would come when my kids grew up and I had a little more freedom. I imagined myself as a fifty-year-old woman, strolling around the duck pond with my eighty-year-old dad. I might have looped my arm through his.

Now I knew, this was not to be.

Oliver:
“A scientist came to our school to tell us about her job.”

Me:
“Really? What does he do?”

Oliver:
“She.”

Me:
“What?”

Oliver:
“The scientist was a lady.”

Me:
“Oh. So what kind of work does she do?”

Oliver:
“I don’t know.”

Me:
“I thought you said she told you about her job.”

Oliver:
“She did. She grows mold on plates. That’s all I remember.”

Me:
“Interesting. Think you’d ever want to be a scientist?”

Oliver:
“No. I’ll be too busy in the NBA.”

He pulled his Nike Elite socks all the way up to his knees. His calves had lengthened and slimmed since the last time I noticed. My chubbiest, chattiest toddler was now this lanky boy of few words, whose feet I could smell from across the room.

•  •  •

Jessie loved Nicholas’s trademark
five-alarm chili, so one night I invited her to stay for dinner when it was on the menu. The chef himself had a late meeting with a client, followed by drinks with another. Dom, the guy we met at the Lawyers for Justice dinner, turned out to be a connector in the New Jersey sense of the word—meaning he was a
macher
in the world of Filament lacrosse and had put the word out among his former high school teammates that Nicholas should be their go-to guy for bankruptcies, real estate closings, wills, and contract disputes. Suddenly, Nicholas was busy.

Jessie nodded brightly at Margot, who flipped her new sparkly retainer out of her mouth and placed it on a napkin so we could all admire it while we ate. “Did you tell your mom about your field trip?”

“Mom, we’re going on a field trip.” Margot lackadaisically stirred sour cream into her chili, telegraphing disapproval of the whole meal through her noncommittal grip on the spoon.

I tried to keep my tone light; Jessie and I rolled our eyes at each other. “Yes, I gathered that. Can you tell me
where
you’re going on your field trip?”

“The Edison Museum.”

“That’s exciting. When?”

“I don’t know. Next week, I think.” Margot looked pained. Was the chili
that
spicy?

“Well, we’ll have to ask Nan what days she’ll be volunteering so we can figure out if she can lead your tour!” I sounded like a perky mom from a peanut butter commercial, but my kids were too grouchy to be cast as Skippy fans. They slouched around the table, exhausted and bedraggled, which was exactly how I felt.

Margot took a long gulp of her water and her blue eyes met mine over the rim of her glass. “Mom, I’m pretty sure the days won’t match up.”

I didn’t push it. My mom had her hands full anyway, taking care of
my dad. Was she still volunteering at the Edison Museum? I realized I had no idea, then felt terrible for not knowing. What kind of daughter was I? Or mother, for that matter? Here I was with the very people I’d been looking forward to seeing all day, and I couldn’t wait for them to go to bed. I made a mental note to call my mom when the house was quiet. As if that would ever happen.

“So what else, guys? How was school?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

I tried again, channeling advice I expected I might find on a parenting website, if I had time to read parenting websites. Ask open-ended questions! “Did anything exciting happen?”

“I got a scratch-and-sniff sticker on my math worksheet.”

“My shoelace broke so I had to borrow sneakers for gym.”

“We learned about an artist who cut off his ear. Now can I be excused?”