Lily didn’t want to ask because she didn’t want to know but finally she said something like, “Is that forty-two platelets in my whole body?”
And the doctor smiled and shook his head. “It’s short form. Add three zeros, then you’ve got something.”
And Lily smiled in return, so hopeful, so encouraged. “Forty-two thousand is a colossal amount!”
“Sure, Lil. Compared to what? To normal? Normal on the low side is two hundred thousand.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
Third day with no visitors. The hospital staff wore masks around her, and in the night when she had the strength to wake up and retch, Lily thought she saw angels with wings in her room, and the angels were all wearing masks, too.
“This is the worst of it,” DiAngelo said. “It’s intense, no doubt about it. It gets better, and you get better. Just buck up, Lil, you’re doing great. You really are, I’m proud of you. Just keep going.”
She kept going. “How much longer?”
And the doctor paused and then said portentously, “How much longer for what?”
And Lily said, “Before the pizza comes.”
“Just one more day. Then you’ll rest, a quick biopsy and you go home. Just one more day, Lil.”
But one more day was more than she could take. She couldn’t breathe on her own. They took her off the drug and put her on an oxygen machine instead, and Lily wanted to ask if the oxygen could just go into her little port, like everything else, but she didn’t have enough breath to say it.
And so she lay and imagined dying.
She stared at the dark ceiling and imagined herself getting sicker and sicker, imagined the black mass amassing at the corners and the borders of her body, moving in, marching through all her organs on their way to her heart. What was it like to sleep and not wake, to fall into the blackness and never come back?
She wouldn’t like being alone at the moment of her death. No, she would die in the hospital with her family around her, holding her hands, stroking her face, her head, crying over her, and then she would slip away and still hear them, but fainter, hear them cry and see them bent over her, but dimmer.
There was no pain anymore, no cancer.
And they would sing for her, sing in a beautiful church, and her mother, bent with grief, would stand at the altar of her daughter and sing “Panis Angelicus,” and the church would echo with her lovely voice, and she would make everyone cry even more—
Wait right there.
Hold on right there to those colorful horses.
Even the dream was having a hard time believing itself. Her mother at the church?
Lily’s mother wouldn’t be at the church! Her mother would still be in Hawaii, and she would call Grandma and say, I want to come, really I do, but I can’t, I’m very sick, I can’t even move off the bed. I don’t have the strength to go to the bathroom. George is doing everything for me, bless him. That’s why he can’t come either.
Ugh. Suddenly breathing on her own, Lily struggled up from the bed. Unbelievable. Her mother ruined death for her even in fantasies. Even in fantasies, Lily’s death couldn’t be about Lily, it was all about Lily’s mother. She couldn’t even die the way she wanted to.
The next morning, feeling better and off the oxygen, Lily asked Anne to go to the art store for her and buy her some pastel-colored pencils, which when wet turned into pastel watercolors. She spent the afternoon drawing. When Spencer came to see her later that day, Lily was sitting propped up in her bed, and he said, “What in heaven’s name are you painting on your mouth?”
She picked up a small make-up mirror. Around her chin, her tongue, her lips were lavenders and lilacs and pinks. She smiled and showed him her small painting of…“Spring,” she said. “I’m redecorating.”
“Yourself?”
“Yes, I’m redecorating myself. Here, do you want it for your apartment? You haven’t got a blessed thing on your walls.”
From then on, Lily no longer fantasized about the hour of her death.
DiAngelo wrote out the discharge papers, telling Lily she would have a week at home, and then would come back on the first Monday in October to start thirteen weeks of consolidation. She would have chemo drips Monday and Tuesday, and then recuperate at home Wednesday through Sunday. She would be done by New Year. Just in time for the new millennium.
Was the cancer all gone?
“No, but I told you not to expect it to be all gone after induction. We just expected to kill the existing cancer cells.”
“Did we?”
“Most of them.”
“Most of them? Does almost even count in a cancer treatment?”
DiAngelo laughed. “That’s the new adage: almost doesn’t count in hand grenades, pregnancy, or cancer.”
Lily said nothing, stuck on the word pregnancy. DiAngelo quickly stopped laughing and went on. “It does look like we have slowed down the production of new cancer cells. That’s extremely significant.”
“Slowed down?”
“Oh, look, Lil. This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. This is just the end of the beginning.”
“That’s all I need—my oncologist quoting Churchill.”
September 22 came and went. Lily cancelled her twenty-fifth birthday.
29
Spencer Stuck Twice
Complicating matters of intuition for Spencer, a subpoena of registration records from the Four Seasons Hotel did not yield Andrew Quinn’s name. Certainly it didn’t produce Amy’s. Yet the 57/57 matchbook remained. Perhaps the four-star diamond hotel was too rich for Andrew, and he took his young lover to the Sheraton on Seventh. There were three thousand hotels in mid-town New York City. What a fruitless search it would be.
He was stuck on the Four Seasons Hotel because the full essence of it matched Amy’s empty shopping bags. One did not bring Prada purses home from 57th and Frederick Fekkai mousse home, also from 57th, and Mont Blanc pens, also from 57th, and then traipse to Seventh and 51st to fuck at the Sheraton.
And Spencer was stuck on May 14, because Amy told her mother she would be home that Friday night. She told her mother she would be coming, she never came, never called, and there were no phone calls made from her apartment after Thursday May 13. She had been at the soup kitchen on the morning of May 14. It seemed highly probable that this was the day Amy disappeared.
And now there was Milo.
Police went to every homeless shelter in New York City to look for an average-size man in rags with freaky eyes and possible facial tattoos who answered to the name of Milo.
He had Harkman call Riker’s, Sing-Sing, Attica, asking if there had been a man named Milo released from prison recently. He had no luck.
Spencer didn’t know what this Milo was up to on Friday, May 14, and so he concentrated his efforts on what Andrew Quinn was up to on Friday, May 14. Andrew was easier to track.
Andrew’s schedule told Spencer that Andrew was in D.C. on Thursday, to which five hundred or more people could testify, and came back to New York City on the early train on Friday, to which sixty-three people who were on the train with him could testify. He was home by 8:30 that evening, according to his wife. A little late for a Friday night? Not at all, Miera said. He usually came home around then.
Was he upset, preoccupied, normal, odd when he came home? Miera icily said into the phone she did not remember.
Before he came home, Andrew stopped at the bank and at his Port Jeff office. He took out money for the weekend from an ATM in the Port Jeff Main Street branch of Chase Bank at 7:22 p.m., and carried a receipt to prove it. Was that odd? Carrying on his person a receipt from four months ago for an insignificant ATM transaction? Spencer didn’t keep ATM receipts from a hundred minutes ago.
Andrew’s bank statements showed that indeed he took out five hundred dollars at 7:22 p.m., but also showed that he had taken out two thousand dollars at Penn Station at eleven that morning. That was a lot of cash to carry in his p
ocket. Why the two ATM trips?
A look through Andrew’s bank statements going back to the beginning of 1999 showed Spencer that on a regular basis, on a Thursday and Friday, vast amounts of cash moved out of Andrew’s account and into Andrew’s hands, explaining perhaps some of the Prada shopping bags. Did he pay for the Four Seasons in cash? Even so, he would still have to register as a hotel guest.
The staff at the Four Seasons could not corroborate one way or another if Andrew Quinn had used their concierge or bellman services. Perhaps they had seen the congressman, but they couldn’t be sure. Perhaps they had seen Amy, but they couldn’t be sure of that either.
Andrew’s train from D.C. arrived at Penn Station in New York at 10:45 a.m., yet he didn’t alight in Port Jeff until seven that evening.
Train from Penn Station to Port Jefferson took about eighty minutes. Where was Andrew in the intervening six and a half hours?
Andrew’s office manager in Port Jeff confirmed that he came into the office just after seven, as she was about to go home, signed a few documents, dictated a letter that she was able to show Spencer, regarding new parking regulations on Main Street, and checked on his schedule for the following week.
With this kind of scrutiny, how did the congressman manage to have an affair at all? Still, there were six-and-a-half unaccounted hours. He couldn’t take money out of the ATM without someone checking the time on the receipt. Didn’t anyone notice Andrew Quinn with a young attractive redhead on his arm? How did Amy escape such scrutiny? Andrew said he and Amy had ended their relationship mid April, yet here it was the middle of May and he was missing on a Friday afternoon.
The alibi hours were narrowing. It was time to talk to Andrew Quinn one more time. But apparently, in an attempt to save his marriage, Andrew and Miera were spending two weeks in Oahu, Hawaii, even though Congress was in session. Andrew had asked for a leave of absence.
30
Advanced Chemotherapy
Joy appeared at Lily’s doorstep, courtesy of Spencer, in the form of a thin, cranky fifty-year-old woman, who looked inside, took a sniff, and said, “You live here? Your…” She waved in the direction of down the stairs, where Spencer was supposedly and invisibly lurking. “…The man who hired me, he said you had money.”
Taken aback, Lily said, “I do, I do have money, but what does…excuse me, what does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. Just thought you’d live better, that’s all.” She smiled. “I was expecting a Park Avenue-type apartment.”
“On Avenue C?”
“You’re right, wasn’t thinking.” Joy stepped in.
Lily had gotten home three days earlier, and in a week had to go back to the hospital for her first round of outpatient chemo. Was there going to be gentleness, compassion from Joy? And is that what she needed? Truth was, Lily didn’t know what she needed.
Her apartment was a foreign space to her. Five weeks gone was five centuries gone. It seemed odd to Lily that the president was the same, the year was the same, the deli was still selling peaches, the pizza place around the corner was still having a two-for-one special on Tuesday nights. Her grandmother and her sisters with her four nieces brought her home. Very soon it got too loud with the little ones.
Before they left, Amanda said “Paint something, Lil. You’ll feel better.”
Lily didn’t know what to make of that. Paint something and you’ll feel better? Did Amanda mean physically? All Lily had to do was paint and the cancer would go? Then why did it come in the first place? Did it come because Lily liked to sleep, was not dedicated enough in her painting? Or did Amanda mean feel better psychologically? Paint something, and you’ll feel better inside. Feel better that you have cancer at twenty-four. Twenty-five now.
Lily stood in front of the full-length mirror in Amy’s room. She stood for mere moments, divided into smaller moments where her memories flashed—of wearing Friday night club clothes, school clothes, of seeing naked bodies with tan lines from bathing suits. Amy’s body in front of that mirror in her matching bra and panties, and Amy saying, I got to lose me some weight, sister, if I’m going to have a prayer of getting a man, but as Lily was remembering Amy saying it, the memory of that moment was tinged with the disingenuousness of it all—Amy was already seeing Andrew then, already had a man, already had Lily’s brother.
Anne grumbled about it but did as Lily asked: she removed the mirrors from the apartment, all three of them, dragging them out on the landing. The bathroom mirror was attached to a bathroom cabinet and could not be removed, but Lily covered it with masking tape and paper and then painted the paper black. Perfect in its lack of reflection and therefore thought.
The Mickey Mouse sweatshirt Amanda had bought her hid the emaciation of her body but couldn’t hide what had happened to Lily’s face in the five weeks of lying on her back or bent over the toilet bowl—the sunken-in cheeks, the skin stretched over bone, the gray, turned down, slightly shaking lips, the bald head.
She took a bandana and tied it below her jaw like a babushka and suddenly she looked sixty, seventy and felt it, suddenly she looked older than Grandma and felt it. Now in a juxtaposition of souls, Grandma had left her house, was taking cabs and subways to get herself to the hospital to look after Lily. Lily’s cancer made Grandma young again! Free again! Lily is diseased and Grandma, cured of agoraphobia, is taking subways. Yippee. Meanwhile Lily is under strict orders not to venture from the house. Marcie and Dr. D don’t trust her bones not to break from brittleness, for her skin not to tear, for someone not to sneeze on her.
Her first three days went by in a glacial blur. One thing she did do was pick up the phone. She knew her apartment would be like Penn Station at rush hour if she didn’t answer. So she picked it up to remain alone. Yes, I’m fine, feeling pretty good, yes, eating, yes, drinking fluids, yes, showering, even reading, and yes, watching TV, everything is good, thanks for calling.
And then Joy came. Joy had straight brown hair, a hippie bag thrown on her shoulder, a long, loose hippie skirt, and a large shirt, as if Joy were hiding herself. But the face was smart, the nose was smart. Joy kept her face, her hair, her clothes in such a way that she wouldn’t have to think about primping, or make-up, or fashion. Her skin looked as if it had been casually tanned many times, and her brown eyes had traces of old make-up. Days-old make-up.
Joy wanted to know where she would sleep and was pleased with the presence of a second bedroom. Lily wanted to say that she didn’t expect Joy to be staying overnight, but then remembered Joy was hired as a round-the-clock nurse. Uncomfortable with Joy staying in Amy’s room, Lily could not explain it, not even when the woman asked where her roommate was. “She’s been gone a while,” said Lily and to the question of when the roommate would be coming back, Lily replied, “Don’t know, and can we talk about something else?”
Amy’s bedroom was much larger than Lily’s, and Joy offered gladly to switch, but Lily declined, so Joy said she would sleep in the room until Amy came back and then she would take the futon. Lily asked how long Joy expected to stay. After all, she wanted to say, I’m not going to be sick forever.
“I will stay until you’re not sick anymore, how’s that? But if I’m not working out for you, you say one word and I’m outta here. I will need Sundays off, though. It’ll be your easiest day anyway. Can you swing that? And who’s paying me, you or your…” She waved again.
“Me.”
“Um, who is he anyway?”
“He’s the one who takes care of things.”
Lily felt better having Joy sleep in Amy’s room when she realized that most of Amy’s personal things had been confiscated by Spencer as evidence. Amy’s pictures, her clothes, her books, bags, knick-knacks all made exhibits A through ZZZ in the small evidence room at the precinct.
Lily gave Joy three hundred dollars and asked her to go get new sheets and new towels, and as soon as she was left alone she called Spencer and asked him if he thought Joy was a good choice.
“She is just what you need,” he said. “You’ll see, and trust me.”
Why should I trust you? Lily thought. You want to put my brother in prison.
Unfortunately Spencer was right about Joy. The woman never stopped moving, cleaning, cooking, shopping. She called Amanda and Anne and Grandma and told them all to stay home on Monday and Tuesday, as she would be taking Lily to the hospital for her chemo sessions. Somehow Lily’s being in protective, capable hands made everyone feel better, including Lily. And Dr. D seemed exceedingly pleased with Joy as a choice of nurse. Turned out he knew of her. A doctor-friend of his treated Joy’s husband for lymphoma. Joy still had a wedding band on her finger, but when Lily casually asked her how her husband was letting her stay with someone 24/7, Joy replied that her husband had died a year ago in August after a bone-marrow transplant left him with a raging pneumonia.
Lily didn’t know how to respond. She wanted to say, don’t they have antibiotics for that, but before she could speak, Joy added, “So don’t worry, I’ve seen plenty sicker than you.”
And to that Lily did respond.
“I don’t want to hear that other people have also suffered,” she said. “I don’t want to hear that other people had it worse than me, were sicker, felt terrible. That’s why I’m not rushing to any support groups. I’m sorry about your husband, but knowing about him only makes me feel worse because I can’t imagine anything worse than this. What makes me feel better is to think that I’m unique, that I’m unbelievably sick, and yet unbelievably strong, too, like my brother, a mighty Quinn. I don’t want to hear about other people. I don’t want to read about other people. I don’t want to read their cancer stories. I’m living my own, thank you. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” said Joy. “You’re surprisingly verbal for someone so weak.” They’d just returned home after Lily’s first chemo.
“Actually, I don’t feel too bad.” Just two plastic bags, one of VePesid, one of cytarabine dripped for two hours into her right atrium.