And he was right; she was surprised to feel a confidence that matched his own. Why couldn’t the competition start tomorrow? Or in five minutes?
He led her onto the floor as he’d described, and she almost pranced with eagerness.
As they were dancing, she watched Helen glide through a series of waltz pivots. She decided she could do them better.
For several measures all three whirling couples swept across the floor, rising and falling in unison on invisible waves of sound. It all clicked into place for Mary, as it had been doing lately, and she felt beautiful, whole, and without care. It was what dancing was about, finding oneself by losing oneself.
When they stopped, Mel told her everything would be fine if she danced that way in Ohio.
He walked over to the drinking fountain, and she followed. She felt so close to him at that moment, and had an overwhelming compulsion to confide in him. Right now, he might understand and be interested in her as a person, a woman as well as a student.
“I broke off my relationship with the guy I was living with,” she began. Just making conversation, her tone suggested; how ’bout those Cardinals? Playing great baseball!
“That whatsizname? Jake?”
It encouraged her that he remembered Jake’s name. “Yeah, he wasn’t treating me the best.”
“That so?” Mel leaned down and sucked water from the stainless steel spout’s feeble offering. She waited while he straightened up and wiped his forearm across his wet lips.
“It was what I needed to do,” she said.
“What we need to do,” Mel said, “is put our problems aside and practice some more.” He grabbed her hand and led her to the center of the studio, looking beyond her.
They assumed dance position.
Later that night, though she was exhausted, Mary practiced tango before the mirror in her apartment. She was beginning to feel as if the image in the glass were someone else, a very real other Mary whose body she controlled, and whose smoothness and precision far surpassed her own.
She was interrupted by the telephone. She seldom used her answering machine to screen callers these days. There was the slim possibility Rene might call. Of course, it might be Jake on the phone, but she was sure now she could handle that.
She quickly lifted the receiver, hoping as always.
Not Rene. Not Jake. Fred.
“I thought you better know Angie’s back in Saint Sebastian,” he said. Something in his voice. Bitterness? No. Fear?
“Alcohol again?” Mary asked. She knew the answer.
Only thought she knew.
“Cancer,” Fred said flatly. “They removed some polyps or something from her cervix that turned out to be malignant.”
Mary’s insides went cold. This was completely out of left field, the place this kind of news always seemed to come from. “What? Whoa? Are you telling me my mother’s got cervical cancer?”
“I’m afraid that’s what it is, Mary.”
“I’m driving down there,” she said, as distant as if the woman in the mirror had spoken, the other Mary who didn’t have to feel.
“Now, Mary, there ain’t much point in that. Angie might even be asleep by the time you get here. I think they gave her a sedative or something.”
“I’m leaving right now, Fred.”
He sighed. “Room four-oh-five, Mary.”
She hung up, feeling dizzy, and grabbed her blue windbreaker from the closet, hearing the wire hanger ping against the floor. Then she walked directly out the door without bothering to turn off the lights or the music.
Cancer. The dreadful word. She didn’t want to say it, or even to have it unsaid and crawling around in her mind.
With a rush of guilt, she realized her sense of impending doom was for herself, not Angie. Loneliness was gathering around her like a cold fog, affording only glimpses of a terrifying future.
Selfish! she admonished herself.
As she descended the creaking stairs, she repeated Angie’s name softly, each utterance rending her heart. “Angie, Angie. Mother.”
A terrible apprehension had taken form in her breast, an organic, destructive engine racing and fueled by fear.
She couldn’t stop trembling.
33
Though visiting hours were over, the nurse on duty allowed Mary into Angie’s room.
Angie wasn’t asleep. Her eyes were half closed, but she was propped up in bed, and when Mary entered she smiled at her.
The room was almost exactly like the one Angie had been in for detoxification two months ago-same drab, institutional green walls, same black vinyl chair near the bed, same blood-pressure testing equipment and mysterious, many-dialed gadgetry mounted on the wall. But the other room had smelled of iodine, and this one had a musty scent about it, as if rain had blown in through an open window days ago and nothing had quite dried out.
On the windowsill was a small wilted flower arrangement, probably from the gift shop in the lobby. Fred’s scrawled signature was visible on the card, but Fred seemed to be nowhere around.
Mary sat down in the black chair, hearing it sigh as the cushion was compressed. “So. When’d you find out about this, Angie?”
“About a week ago. One of Doctor Keshna’s tests picked up something was wrong, then I came in and had more tests. After they removed some polyps from my cervix they did a biopsy and it came up positive. I didn’t mention it to you ’cause there was no sense you knowing. Nothing to be done anyways.”
“Nothing to be done? What’s that mean?” Mary asked, with a mingling of anger and fear.
“Means my blood’s spread the cancer and I gotta go through this chemotherapy business.”
“So what do the doctors say? Will chemotherapy do it? Will that cure you?”
“They say it might. I’ll be in here a few days, to start treatment, then it’ll be outpatient stuff till a few weeks pass. They tell me I’ll get weak then and probably have to check in and stay for a while. I tell you, Mary, I’m lucky; thank God for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.”
Mary stared at her. She’d known people who’d undergone chemotherapy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Cervical cancer. Oh, Christ! You might be dying, Mother, and your reaction is to thank God for your insurance.
“Don’t take all this too hard,” Angie said. “I told you I got great medical coverage, and it might be nothing.”
“Nothing? Cancer?”
“Don’t say it, Mary. I don’t like hearing the word.”
“I sure as hell don’t like saying it.” Mary wiped her eyes, which had welled with tears the second time that evening. These tears stung. “Dr. Keshna taking care of you?”
“No, not her specialty. Brainton’s my doctor. Yuppie type, looks about twenty-two. Cervical cancer’s his game.” Angie shook her head weakly. “You know, this didn’t have a damned thing to do with my drinking. Ain’t that ironic?”
“That’s supposed to be a comfort?”
“Worth drinking to.”
“I’m gonna talk to Dr. Brainton.”
“Go ahead, Mary. Maybe you can convince him I’m well and they’ll tell me to go home.”
