The Golden Willow (6 page)

I tried to reassure her. “I doubt very much if I'll be called,” I said. “They rarely take married men with children.”

But I was wrong. One day a letter beginning “Greetings” came, summoning me to Grand Central Station for my physical examination. I had to be there at eight in the morning. It took an hour to get there, so I was up at six, and Ruby was up with me, and she was trying to hide the way she was feeling. I had been told that if you passed the exam you were inducted immediately into one of the military forces. You did not go home. So this could be the last time I saw her and the children. It was not with pleasant feelings that I ate the breakfast Ruby made for me, and I'm sure she was repressing tears. This could be the first time in our married life that we would be separated
for an extended time. The early morning light was thin and gray. I had not wanted her to turn on the light. I did not want her to see my face. She ate a little with me, then it was time to go.

I went into the kids' rooms. Both were asleep. I bent down and kissed them, and Ruby came to the door with me. I took her in my arms, perhaps for the last time, and felt her warmth against me, and when I kissed her I felt the wetness in her eyes. I turned back once as I walked from the house, heading for the bus. She was still standing there in the doorway. In the thin light her figure was shadowy, but I saw her wave to me and blow a kiss. I blew one back at her.

T
HE ENTIRE HUGE WAITING ROOM
at Grand Central Station had been taken over by the military for the physical examinations, and it was packed with men when I arrived. Some were already standing in the line that had to pass through a battery of doctors, and they were all naked. I was directed to a room where I could take my clothes off, and then I came out and joined the line at the end, though it was not the end for long. In my hand I carried a form that listed all the various parts of the body to be examined and that would be checked off as good or bad by the examining doctors, who sat at desks in a long assembly line.

The line moved slowly, and the hours dragged on. I finally reached the first doctor. He tested my heart, my lungs, and my pulse, and he checked these off with one of the two pens he had in readiness. One had red ink, the other blue ink. If it was checked in blue, it was favorable; the red was unfavorable. For the next hour as I moved slowly from one doctor to another my chart showed all blue checks. And then came the eye doctor.

He couldn't have been much older than I was, and he didn't
seem to be in an agreeable mood. He barked, “Look at the chart and read it off to me.” I had been troubled lately with watery eyes, and they were watering then, so I was having a bit of trouble reading the chart. I told this to the doctor, but he brushed it aside irritably and said, “Go on reading.”

I did, stumbling my way through it, and managed to complete everything except the last line, which was in very tiny letters.

“Keep trying,” he insisted.

I did, and guessed my way through haltingly. He stopped me and asked abruptly, “What kind of work do you do?”

“I'm a reader,” I said.

“A what?”

I'd had trouble with this before. Who knows what a reader is? I explained to him what I did, reading books mostly for a moving picture company to determine their cinematic possibilities.

“How many books do you read in a week?” he asked.

“An average of five,” I said.

He stared at me. “Five books a week?” he said with a touch of incredulity. “You've been reading five books a week? For how long?”

“I've been doing it for about seven years,” I said.

His stare grew wider. He shook his head several times, then bent over my chart with a pen in his hand. The pen that he wrote with was the one with red ink.

I came finally to the end of the line. It had taken all morning and well into the afternoon to get through all the examining doctors. Now I had reached the desk where the last doctor sat. He was the judge. He read the chart, and we held our breath as he did so. There were two rubber stamps in front of him, one of which would say
ACCEPTED
, the other
REJECTED
. Which one would he use? My fate was in this man's hand.

I watched him as he studied my chart. He seemed to be at it for a long time, as if he could not make up his mind. I saw his eyes fasten on the note in red ink that the eye doctor had scribbled. And then with my heart thumping I saw his hand reach toward the two stamps. It touched one and then it touched the other. He could still not decide. Finally, his hand clasped over the one on the left. He crashed it down on the chart. In big letters it said
REJECTED
.

I tried not to show any expression on my face. But if one had been there, it would have shown the immense burst of relief I felt. The first thing I did was rush for a telephone, and I called Ruby.

“I've been turned down,” I said. “I'm four-F.”

“What does that mean?” she said in a tremulous voice.

“It means that I don't have to go into the army.”

I heard her give a great sigh.

I knew she felt the same way I did. There is nothing heroic about this, but that is the way I felt.

T
HE ONCOLOGIST'S OFFICE WAS CROWDED
. T
HERE WERE NO MORE
seats available in the waiting room, and some had to stand. We were lucky. We had come early enough to get three seats together. Adraenne had come, of course. She had taken time off from the hospital to be with Ruby for the bone marrow test, and even though the doctor with whom she worked had objected strenuously, nothing could have kept her away.

Our elation over the rise in Ruby's hemoglobin count had been short-lived. It had taken a sudden, dramatic drop, and not only that, but the platelet count had dropped too, and that was always a danger sign. A bone marrow test would determine just what was going on, the doctor had said. So here we were waiting our turn to see the oncologist, but all three of us were quite cheerful, with Adraenne assuring us that the test would be negative.

“And if it isn't?” I asked, too late to catch the warning look that came from Adraenne's eyes.

She resembled her mother a great deal. She was of the same height, with the same oval-shaped face and large dark eyes, except that the dark brown hair had a slightly reddish tint to it. She was quick to answer my question. “If is isn't,” she said, with a carelessness to her tone that I knew was feigned, “then the worst it can mean is more Procrit. Mom has the kind of anemia that you don't have to worry about.”

We didn't discuss it any more, and Ruby hardly seemed to have been listening anyway and seemed little concerned over any outcome. We were chatting over various other things not medical when Ruby's name was called by a nurse.

The two of them went in together, and I remained there waiting. It must have taken about thirty minutes before Adraenne came out alone. I could not tell from the expression on her face what the result of the test might have been.

“Where's Mom?” I asked.

“She's dressing. She'll be out soon.” She sat down next to me.

“So what happened?” I said. “Did they take the test?”

“Yes.”

“Then how did it go? Is everything all right?”

“Everything went fine. It wasn't an easy test to take. The doctor had to stick a large needle into her hip bone, but he knew his business and it all went quickly and Mom had very little pain.”

“And you got the result?”

“Yes.”

“So what is it?” I asked impatiently.

Adraenne drew closer to me. She put an arm around my shoulder and her head close to mine and said softly, “Mom has leukemia.”

My heart froze. I sat still for a moment, then bent forward and put my face in my hands and cried. She held me tightly, and I recovered enough to ask, “Does she know?”

Adraenne shook her head. “No, the doctor didn't tell her. He just told me.”

“Then she mustn't know,” I said.

Adraenne thought for a moment. “Not yet, perhaps.”

“Not anytime,” I said firmly, angrily. “I don't want her to ever know.”

She shushed me then, for Ruby was coming out, smiling, evidently happy that it was all over, and seeming to take it for granted that there was nothing wrong with her. My daughter and I put on a good act of believing the same thing. We went out, all three of us, in a seemingly lighthearted mood for lunch at a nearby restaurant, and as far as Ruby was concerned, it might almost have been a celebration; she knew nothing of the misery that was inside the other two of us.

But there was trouble later with Charlie. I told him of the diagnosis and our determination to keep it from his mother, and he was furious. He said it was wrong. We had no right to keep it from her. But I was just as angry. What good would it do to tell her? I wanted to know. Would it cure her leukemia? Would it make her feel better to know that she had an incurable disease and might die soon?

“Yes,” he shouted. “She would reconcile herself to what is going to happen and it would give her peace of mind.”

“Nonsense,” I shouted back. “It would put her in a nightmare of horror with that hanging over her. She would be more peaceful not knowing. And that's the way it's going to be. You're not going to say a word to her about it.”

Fortunately, Ruby was not in the house when we were discussing
this. Adraenne had taken her out shopping when Charlie came from his home in Pennsylvania. When I told Adraenne about the argument later, she was silent for a moment, then said, “Perhaps Charlie was right. Mom should know. But I want to tell her myself, and there's something else I will tell her that will help a good deal. You too.”

She had done a good deal of investigation with doctors and had learned of a study that was being made of cases like Ruby's at Mt. Sinai Hospital. They were experimenting with a new form of chemotherapy that had none of the side effects of that in use now, and thus far the results had been promising. The study was only open to a certain number and all the slots had already been filled, but Adraenne had pulled strings and Ruby was to be admitted.

“So you see,” she said, “I'd have to tell her that she has leukemia in order to explain to her why she has to go into this study.”

I no longer had any objection. It had changed the whole picture for me. I now had hope. And after Adraenne had her talk privately with her mother, I felt better yet. Ruby had taken the news calmly and with her usual intelligent understanding. Actually, she was no stranger to leukemia. Two of her cousins had died from it when they were very young. I worried that this might have had an adverse effect upon her, but on the contrary, she dismissed it lightly.

“They were just kids when they got it, not even married, and here I am, an oldie, with a full life behind me, and a good life, and a husband I love, and a marriage of many years that many other women would envy, with children and grandchildren. So I am not complaining. If I died now, I would be satisfied. I have had everything that any woman could want.”

“You are not going to die now,” Adraenne said, and told her about this new program at Mt. Sinai Hospital that she could go into.
It would not require her to stay in the hospital. She would have to go there once a month to be checked, but otherwise the treatments, consisting simply of injections of the chemotherapy, could be given at home, and Adraenne herself would give them. “But you don't have to do it, Mom,” Adraenne said. “There is no guarantee that the injections will help, but there is a chance that they will. It's up to you.”

Ruby sat quietly for a while, thinking, then said, “I'll try it. I want to live. I'll fight this thing.”

S
O FOR A WHILE
it seemed as if the nightmare was over, and we were jubilant over the results of the first few treatments. Adraenne came every week to give them. It required the mixing of two different chemicals to make the solution that she injected, a process too complicated for even Blake to have handled, and certainly not me.

In addition, in order to maintain the proper blood count, Ruby had to receive blood and platelet transfusions at the local hospital, sometimes as often as twice a week. I would always go with her and sit beside her bed while the blood or the platelets would drip slowly into her arm. She would lie back comfortably and read a book or magazine, and I would read too. It would take several hours and a pleasant, smiling nurse would bring us both lunch, and we would chat as we ate. This was how we spent a good part of the months that were left to us, and I would sometimes hold her hand and we would look at each other and smile, as if this whole thing were just another one of those excursions we used to take together in strange places in various parts of the country, enjoying it all mostly because we were together.

I loved her then as much as I had before, and perhaps even more because of the threat that was hanging over her and her helplessness
lying there, with the slow steady drip of the blood into her body the only protection against losing her completely. And yet, coming out of the hospital after each transfusion, she was in a joyous mood, refreshed and strengthened, as if, she once told me, she had drunk a gallon of wine.

For a short while more we were a happy couple again, enjoying our walks around the lake, holding hands like a newly married couple, as one admiring neighbor told us. And always Ruby found strength to give her yoga lesson at the clubhouse. Every Wednesday morning we would be up early, and as Ruby put on her leotard I would watch her and marvel at her figure and its youthfulness, which she had retained into her nineties, and I would have to restrain myself from going up to her and taking her in my arms.

Then there was that last time when I drove her to the clubhouse and picked her up and she looked tired, so tired that I was worried and called Adraenne.

She was at work then, at the hospital, but she left immediately and rushed right over to us. She took Ruby's temperature. To our relief, it was just a bit above normal. A high temperature could have indicated an infection, and Dr. Silverman, in charge of the study, had warned that in her condition she would have great difficulty fighting off an infection.