“Come on in.” Judy took the bags from her aunt and mother, setting them down in the small entrance room while Penny bounded into the living room, heading for the carbohydrates.
“TOUCHDOWN!” Frank yelled, raising his good arm. He had evidently recovered from his trip to the hospital, and was sitting in the middle of the couch, his bare feet on the coffee table, amid the clutter.
“I smell overtime!” shouted his chubby friend Eric Gordon, jumping to his sneakers. They called him Cartman because of his unfortunate resemblance to the round kid on South Park, and he demonstrated the same wardrobe choices, namely a T-shirt, blue jeans, and omnipresent knit cap.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” shouted Adam Dalrymple, a tall, thin, crazy straw of a hipster, who taught music at a city high school by day and played guitar with an indie rock band by night. All three men had been friends since high school, and though Cartman and Adam were married, Frank would never be, at least not to Judy, because he hadn’t even noticed that she and her family were standing in the room.
“Frank?” she called out, and he turned, then did a double-take.
“Oh, hi everybody.” Frank grinned, set down his beer, and came over, with a glance back at the television, undoubtedly to see if they got the extra point. The game went to commercial, and he did a double-take when he spotted Judy’s bump. “Whoa, babe, what’s that on your face?”
“It’s a long story, I’m fine,” Judy answered, testy. “Say hello to my mom and aunt.”
“Hello, Delia, long time, no see.” Frank hugged her mother warmly.
“You, too, Frank,” her mother said, with a smile. “I heard you hurt your hand. What a shame!”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Hello, Barb, great to see you!” Frank gave her aunt an obviously heartfelt hug. “Listen, I heard you’re not feeling well, but I know you’re going to pull through this, I just do.”
“Thanks, Frank.” Aunt Barb released him with a weary smile, her knit cap askew. “I’m sorry to put you out. I promise I’ll keep this stay as short as possible.”
“Stay?” Frank asked lightly, and behind him, Cartman and Adam started cheering and jumping up and down again.
“They got it!” Cartman yelled. “We’re going into overtime, baby!”
“Yes!” Adam slapped him five. “I beat the spread! Woohoo!”
“Penny, no!” Judy shouted, trying vainly to stop the dog from grabbing a pizza crust.
“Excuse me, honey.” Aunt Barb touched Judy’s arm. “Can I use the bathroom?”
“Me, too,” her mother chimed in. “We’re middle-aged women, remember?”
“Sure, go ahead, I’ll be up with the bags in a minute.” Judy gestured to the stairwell.
“Thanks,” Aunt Barb said, heading to the stairwell with her mother.
“Frank, meet me in the kitchen, okay?” Judy headed for the kitchen, but when she looked back, he was heading back to the living room. “Frank, can you come with me a second?”
“Right now? The overtime’s about to start.”
“Please, it’s important.” Judy went ahead into the kitchen, which was a mess. Open takeout containers of Chinese food dotted the counter, dirty dishes sat stacked in the sink, and the entire room reeked of chicken curry.
“I’m going to clean it up, so don’t worry.” Frank hurried in with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t know you were coming home, and we didn’t get the chance. But don’t worry, you know I’m going to do it.”
“Why don’t you just clean it up as you go, Frank?” Judy couldn’t keep the irritability from her tone.
“The guys brought the takeout over for the first game, but now we’re on the third game. I’ll do it before we go to bed.”
“Also, please tell me you’re not chasing Percocets with beer.”
“I had one beer, and my wrist feels a hell of a lot better.”
“Forget it.” Judy knew she was giving him a hard time, but she couldn’t help it. She was still frazzled from the confrontation with Bennie. “I called you but you didn’t call back. I texted you, too.”
“Sorry, I forgot to plug in my phone and the battery wore down.” Frank glanced back to the living room, impatiently. “The commercial’s over. What is it you want to talk about?”
“It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? My mother, my aunt?” Judy gestured upstairs. “Remember, I told you today that my aunt is having a mastectomy tomorrow. I had to bring her in town to stay with us because tonight, at her house, there were two men—”
“FRANK, GET IN HERE!” Cartman hollered from the living room. “IT’S STARTING! YOU’RE GONNA MISS IT!”
“Babe, let me just go see what’s going on.”
“Penny, no!” Judy said, forgetting who she was talking to. “Frank, no. Don’t go. Wait a minute.”
“Can we talk when the game is over, honey?” Frank’s brown eyes turned pleading.
“No, because you can’t stay here until the game is over. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“What are you talking about? The game will be over any minute, as soon as somebody scores.”
“No it won’t. Football time is different from normal time.” Judy had learned the hard way that sports had its own time zone. “In football, two minutes means ten minutes, ten minutes means twenty minutes, and a single overtime can turn into double overtime, right?”
Frank’s eyes lit up. “Your lips to God’s ears.”
“No, that’s the problem. You have to leave the apartment. That’s what I would’ve told you if you’d called me back.” Judy skipped the part about her getting attacked, because evidently it wasn’t as important as a stupid football game. “My aunt needs to get to bed, and she’s going to stay with us. She and my mother have to sleep in our bed because that’s the nicest, and I am going to stay on the daybed. You have go to your grandfather’s for a few weeks. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped—”
“What, why?” Frank looked at her like she was crazy, and Judy was losing track of how often that had been happening lately.
“Because, randomly, her house isn’t safe. A friend of hers was stowing all this secret money in it, which we put in a safe at work. It’s an emergency, and I really need you to work with me on this.”
“On what?” Frank edged to the right so he could still see the TV, and Judy was beginning to lose patience.
“Are you listening to me? She has to be at the hospital at six in the morning, and she needs to get to bed. She obviously can’t sleep with this noise level. You guys have to go somewhere else to watch the game.”
“No way!” Frank’s eyes flew open. “We can’t leave now. We’ll miss the overtime.”
“Go to Cartman’s. He lives close.”
“But his car’s parked all the way over on Arch Street. He couldn’t get a space any closer. We’ll never make it in time.”
“Then go to that sports bar on Pine.”
“There’s no time for that either. What are we supposed to do, run?”
“I don’t know, DVR the end of the game and don’t watch it till tomorrow.”
“What are you, kidding? It’s not Glee, it’s a football game.” Frank snorted. “Let her go upstairs to bed. We’ll keep it down. We can be quiet.”
“FRANK YOU EFFING DOUCHE!” Cartman shouted, cackling. “GET IN HERE!”
“Like that?” Judy shot him a Meaningful Flare, but he didn’t speak the language. “Frank, it’s not even the Eagles, is it?”
“No, but we need to know who wins because we have a shot at the wild card and—”
“Forget it,” Judy snapped, cutting him off. She had long ago given up trying to understand the complexities of NFL playoffs, which made the United States Tax Code look like a cakewalk. “Can’t you work with me on this?”
“Babe, you need to chill. Let us watch the overtime, then we’ll go.”
“Frank, have a heart!” Judy raised her voice. “It’s almost midnight. My aunt, whom I love, is exhausted and scared. She’s going through hell.”
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“I know, and I love Barb, too. She loves me. She’ll understand.” Frank frowned, testy, and he glanced over his shoulder again.
“I don’t want to ask her to understand. I want to put her first. She’s been understanding all day long, and she needs us to take care of her now.”
“FRANK, THEY’RE AT THE FORTY! THEY’RE SENDING IN THE KICKER!”
Frank threw up his hands. “I know, and I will. She’s welcome to stay in the apartment, even in my bed. I’ll stay away as long as you want me to, if you give me fifteen more minutes.”
“Frank, don’t you get it? The woman needs to sleep! She’s having a mastectomy tomorrow!”
“I know that!” Frank shouted back. “What’s the big deal? It’s fifteen more minutes!”
“What’s the big deal? The big deal is she has breast cancer! The big deal is she could die.” Judy shouted back, but suddenly she looked over. Standing in the shadows near the kitchen threshold were Aunt Barb and her mother. And from the stricken expression on Aunt Barb’s face, she had obviously heard every word.
“FRANK, YOU DOUCHE! THEY SCORED!”
Chapter Twenty-two
“How do you feel?” Judy asked, at her aunt’s bedside at the hospital, waiting to be called to surgery. Her mother sat on the other side of the bed holding a plastic Patient’s Belongings bag, and the room was rectangular, containing several other rolling beds, all empty. Nurses in blue scrubs and covered shoes padded noiselessly back and forth, carrying clipboards and plastic trays of medication and supplies, evidently getting ready for the day’s procedures.
“Please don’t worry,” Aunt Barb said, but her face looked drawn, her cheeks hollow, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had changed into a wrinkly hospital gown and a transparent blue plastic cap. A light cotton blanket was tucked underneath her legs, and compression socks and booties covered her legs and feet. A plastic port taped to the back of her hand hooked her up to an IV bag hanging above the bed, and a sensor on her index finger wired her to a monitor that tracked her vital signs.
“I love you, that’s all,” Judy said, then stopped herself from saying more, because it was hard to say something comforting when she was so scared. Seeing her aunt in hospital garb, attached to tubes and monitors, made Judy sick to her stomach with fear. She had barely slept for worrying about her and feeling guilt-ridden for what she’d said in the kitchen, within her earshot. They had all glossed over the awful moment last night, but Judy knew that it must’ve terrified her aunt, in addition to infuriating her mother.
Her mother glanced at her wristwatch. “The anesthesiologist said the surgeon is supposed to come in and talk to you. I wonder what’s keeping him. You have to sign the consent forms, and we want to make clear that you’re not consenting to residents or fellows performing the procedure.”
“He’s probably busy.” Aunt Barb rested her head on the thin pillow.
Judy’s mother sniffed. “You’re the first surgery of the day. What can he be busy with?”
“Getting ready for me, I assume.” Aunt Barb shrugged her knobby shoulders, and her hospital gown slipped slightly, revealing a collarbone that was too prominent to give Judy any comfort. She adjusted her aunt’s gown, but didn’t know whether she was hiding the collarbone or keeping her aunt warm.
“Aunt Barb, he’s probably mixing your gin and tonic as we speak. Did you tell him you only like Tanqueray?”
“My court jester.” Her aunt smiled, patting Judy’s hand.
“Ha!” Judy smiled back. “You should see me at work, I provide comic relief.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Don’t.” Her mother lifted an eyebrow. “Did you see when she dyed her hair orange, Barb? Enough said.”
“Mom, be nice,” Judy said, stung.
“Delia, don’t be so crabby.” Aunt Barb patted Judy’s hand again, and a mischievous twinkle appeared in her eyes. “Now, if I croak in this operation, you two better start getting along.”
Judy gasped. “Aunt Barb, don’t even joke about that. That’s not going to happen.”
Judy’s mother pursed her lips. “Of course not. I read online that this hospital performs more mastectomies than any other in the tri-state area.”
Aunt Barb burst into dry laughter, and Judy joined her.
“Mom, way to miss the point.”
Aunt Barb’s smile faded, and she looked at Judy. “Don’t you have to be at work, honey?”
“No, I don’t. The dep doesn’t start until nine o’clock, so I have time. By the way, I had emailed opposing counsel telling him I had a family emergency and asking him to postpone the deposition, but he said no.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
Her mother glanced at her watch again. “It’s already seven o’clock. This is ridiculous. I don’t know why they had us here at the crack of dawn if they were going to make us wait. There’s nothing I hate more than hurry-up-and-wait.”
Aunt Barb looked at Judy with concern. “Feel free to go, when you need to, if you have to prepare. I’ll see you at the end of the workday. That would be great.”
“No, I’ll come back after the deposition, no worries. It should be by mid-afternoon, at the latest.”
“One last thing.” Aunt Barb’s expression fell into grave lines, deepening the folds that draped her mouth. “There’s something important I want to talk to you about, what you said last night, to Frank. When you said I could die.”
Judy shuddered, especially in this grim context. “Aunt Barb, I’m so sorry. Really, I feel horrible.”
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Aunt Barb kept her gaze on Judy’s face, her eyes steady and even serene. “It was true, and it’s something we should say to each other. I hadn’t known how to bring it up, but you did, so it’s time we talked about it.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” her mother said, averting her eyes.
“Delia, you don’t have to take part in the conversation. You can just listen or don’t, as you wish. I’ll talk to Judy.”
“Hmph.” Judy’s mother folded her arms, and Judy squeezed her Aunt Barb’s hand.
“What is it, Aunt Barb?”
“We say in group that the one with the cancer is never the one who has the hardest time talking about death, and that’s true.” A smile returned to Aunt Barb’s face, but it looked forced. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to talk about, which is why I hid it from you both. I realize now that I made a mistake. I regret that decision. I’m sorry about that. I apologized last night to your mother, and now I’m apologizing to you.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Judy said, from the heart.
“I do, because I think it made all of this”—Aunt Barb gestured to the examining room—“more shocking to you and your mother, more sudden. You’re both thrown for a loop, I can see, and it’s because I didn’t tell you about it before.”
“That’s okay, we’re up to speed now. We’re quick studies, and we love you.”
“You’re such a sweetheart, and I love you, too.” Aunt Barb’s eyes filmed, but she blinked them clear. “What’s important is the truth, and what you said last night was the truth. That’s why I’m grateful to you. The fact is that I don’t know if, after all of this, I’ll beat my cancer, or if it will beat me. I don’t know if I’m going to die, but I have to admit the possibility.”
Judy swallowed hard, trying not to cry.
Her mother tsk-tsked. “I don’t know what the point of this is. This talk is negative and morose. Morbid. Melodramatic.”
“Delia, it may be dramatic, but it’s not melodramatic. I’m talking about life and death. There’s drama in that, and I don’t apologize for it.”
Judy shot her mother a pleading look. “Let her talk, Mom. Like she said, if you don’t want to talk, then don’t talk, but don’t silence her. This is about her, not you or me.”
“It’s such negative thinking!” her mother shot back. “She’s about to go into an operation.
She has to believe she’s going to get better or she won’t get better.”
“Mom, that’s not true,” Judy said, though she could see fear, not criticism, flashing through her mother’s eyes.
Aunt Barb turned to Judy’s mother with a deep frown. “No, it’s not true. That’s what I hate the most, that burden. We talk about that in our support group, too. How we put that burden on ourselves, or our family does. I put it on myself for so long.”
“What burden do you mean?” Judy asked gently.
“The burden that if I don’t get better, it’s my fault.” Aunt Barb emitted a quiet huff of frustration. “That if I just tried harder, or thought more positively, the chemo would have worked. That I practically caused my own cancer, which I didn’t. My cancer wasn’t caused by my bad attitude, my poor decisions, my eating too many processed foods, or my past sins.”
“We know,” Judy said, trying to soothe her, but her aunt seemed not to hear, glaring at Judy’s mother.
“Delia, it’s okay for me to tell the truth, and the truth didn’t cause my cancer. My cancer was caused by bad luck, and no, I don’t carry some horrible mutation in my cells, like the BRCA mutations. You know, Delia, we don’t even have a family history of cancer.” Aunt Barb kept her gaze glued to Judy’s mother. “I’m trying my damnedest to save my own life. I don’t know if I’ll succeed. But if I don’t, it won’t be because I don’t want to. Trust me, I want to, and I’m trying to.”
“Mrs. Moyer, excuse me,” said a man’s voice from behind them, and Judy turned around to see a youngish African-American doctor with gold-rimmed glasses and a kind smile. “Good morning, I’m your surgeon, Jim Winston.”
“Oh, hello,” Aunt Barb said, recovering enough to manage a polite smile, and Judy stood up to let the doctor through. Aunt Barb introduced Judy and her mother, and the surgeon explained the procedure, answered everybody’s questions, and had Aunt Barb sign several informed-consent forms, which was when a nurse came in to start a sedative, Versed, administered through the IV bag. In time, her aunt began to doze, but Judy couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye.