“Did she say how big the lump was?” The beauty of a mammogram is that it can pick up tumors small enough to be cured.
“You won’t believe this,” Rainey says, her voice a whisper, “but she told me and I’ve forgotten. Something like four centimeters or six.”
If I remember what I’ve read, that number can make a huge difference in her chances, assuming the tumor is malignant.
I look across the lighted kitchen to the darkness in the den. I feel myself becoming angry. Rainey knows enough to get all the information she needs.
“Maybe it’s just a cyst.”
“I’ve been going to Connie for years,” Rainey says dully.
“I know when she’s worried.”
I feel like I ‘m suffocating and reach over with one hand to push up the window across from the table. It has finally turned cool this week. A gust of air rushes over the window sill through the screen as if it were being sucked in by a pump. Rosa’s doctor had been certain she had a malignancy.
“What day is it?” I ask, knowing my own voice sounds like a computer recording. I have to give more than this, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to.
“Wednesday morning at ten,” Rainey says, her voice a little brighter.
“Have you heard of a surgeon named Alf Brownlee? Connie swears by him.”
There is no way the trial will last until then. Wednesday morning is free, but there is no way in hell I’m going to be there.
“Yeah,” I say.
“He’s supposed to be superb.” Of course, he couldn’t save Rosa, but he gave it the old college try.
“Why didn’t you write down some of the things she told you?” I sound like the world’s greatest asshole, but I can’t stop.
“I don’t know,” Rainey says, beginning to cry for only the second time since I have know her (the first was when she broke up with me at a point in the relationship when I was about to propose to her). “I guess I was in shock.”
She is waiting for me to say I will be there with her, but that’s not going to happen. I just can’t do it.
“I’ve got to be in court Wednesday,” I lie. She has a lot of social-worker friends at the state hospital. They’ll know what to say to her.
“Maybe Edna can go with you.”
There is silence at the other end. Finally, I think I can hear her sigh.
“Maybe she can.”
“I’m sorry for you, Rainey,” I say. I’m sorry, all right.
But I just can’t do it.
A couple of minutes later I hang up, but working on the case is now out of the question. I stare at the mass of paper in front of me, but all I can think of is the nightmare of Rosa’s last year. Was it as bad as I remember? I get up to pour myself a glass of water. Yes and no, I think. Afterward, I began to think of it as paying for all the good times we had had together A bill coming due much sooner than we expected. I would have preferred to pay as we went instead of having a big balloon payment that we couldn’t quite make at the end.
At the very end, Rosa saw her death as a release a part of God’s Grace. Maybe she was right, and I am wrong, but I do not want to repeat the class. I knock on Sarah’s door. “Come in,” she says primly, as if she is living in her own apartment. I go in and feel the sense of dismay that always accompanies me when I see her room: clothes, books, tapes, magazines, Coke cans, candy wrappers, and other debris litter the floor. How can she stand it? Seated cross-legged on her unmade bed with her European history book between her knees, she is not happy to see the old man.
I blurt, “Rainey may have breast cancer!”
“What?” she gasps, the thick book snapping shut as her legs jerk together.
I nod, “Her gynecologist has referred her to a surgeon.”
Unable to stand the pain on my child’s face, I let my eyes go out of focus and look at the dozens of pictures of her friends she has mounted on a board behind her.
“Oh no!” Sarah cries, her tears released as suddenly as tap water.
I wade through the junk on the floor and sit on her bed and put my arm around her.
“She’s going to the same surgeon as your mother did.”
Against my shoulder, Sarah shakes her head.
“It’s not fair!”
I close my eyes, wishing that fairness had something to do with life. But maybe I shouldn’t.
“No, it’s not,” I agree, tasting salt in my own mouth.
“Is Rainey by herself tonight?” Sarah asks, clearing her throat.
Her face against my shoulder feels as warm as a heating pad.
“I guess so.”
“You can’t let her stay by herself tonight. Go on over there. I’ll be fine,” she says, drawing back from me so she can look me in the eye.
Sarah’s mascara is smeared, and I wipe her left cheek with my knuckle. How can I tell her that I don’t even have the guts to go to the doctor’s office with Rainey?
“I’m not going to leave you alone tonight,” I say.
Sarah wipes her eyes on her bedspread, making me wonder when she last washed her sheets.
“I’ll be fine.”
Brave words, but I know if I leave her alone, she won’t sleep five minutes. She’s not as old or strong as she thinks she is. Besides, she loves Rainey… probably as much as I do.
We compromise. I tell her that I will go over to Rainey’s and try to persuade her to come spend the night with us.
“I
can sleep on the couch,” I say, never having done so. After a fight with Rosa one night, I spent five minutes on it sighing as loud as I could before she came and got me.
“It wouldn’t horrify me,” Sarah says dryly, “if she slept with you.”
I stand up. I guess it wouldn’t. Sarah probably thinks Rainey and I have slept together before when she has spent the night with a friend. It doesn’t seem the right time to admit otherwise.
In ten minutes I am standing at Rainey’s door. When I see her face, I’m glad I have a daughter who is a better person than her father. Whether Rainey spends the night or not, I will be there for her Wednesday.
22
The county’s largest courtroom has been set aside for the trial, and it is packed until Judge Tamower announces that in her court prospective jury members in capital murder cases are interviewed in chambers by the judge and lawyers to determine bias. As Judge Tamower, her hands as expressive and lively as a symphony conductor’s, apologizes for the limited parking around the courthouse, I notice that she has had her hair done for the trial. Her usual mass of blond curls, a slightly lighter color today, sits higher than ever on her intelligent head. All is vanity, and why not? We all want to look good for the TV cameras that are parked outside the door. When the elevator doors popped open this morning, the first face I saw was that of Kim Keogh, who, unless I wholly imagined it, winked as if to say that if my fly is unzipped, the cameras will not lie.
I think of Kim, and the picture of Rainey, lying in my bed asleep this morning when I went in to get my clothes, forms an overlay in my mind through which I am still filtering all other thoughts. Yet why should I have been surprised that she would accept my offer to spend the night? The fear etched in her voice when she first called and then gratitude imprinted on her face when she came to the door needed no explanation. Like a eunuch who is uncertain what his job entails, I offered to sleep fully clothed in my bed with her, but perhaps out of deference to Sarah, she asked me to sleep on the couch. No matter. Her face asleep on my pillow when I came in
