Cancer

Cancer

“So it’s for sure, then?”

Paula nodded. The man, who sat across from her at a table in the coffeehouse courtyard, ran a hand through the thick sandy-blond hair that he was wearing a little shorter now, probably because of the gray she could see frosting the area right above his ears.

“That’s rough, I’m so sorry,” he said, looking her in the eyes and then away, over her shoulder and into the window of the coffeehouse. Her own eyes went downward, to the Kleenex she’d twisted into a series of tight little knots.

She wasn’t sure she’d done it right, or that there was a right way to tell a lover that one’s husband had cancer, that in a few months he would be dead; she would be a widow. So she had just said it, like that, as soon as he’d put the iced cappuccino in front of her with a gallant flourish that made her smile, despite what she knew she was going have to do in the next breath. “Cancer” had been the easy word to say. The hard part had been saying “my husband” – she hadn’t done that before, in this man’s presence.

He shifted in the cast iron chair and composed his face into new lines. Finally he looked back to her.

“Whatever you need, okay? I’m here for you, just ask.”

“Of course.” She brushed away his show of concern with a wave of her hand, searched for his leg with the top of her foot and began rubbing along his calf. “So tell me about the bank over at South Pointe. Did you land the project yet?”

He stared at her for a beat, unsure at the sudden shift, then grounded himself in the familiar terrain. “Yeah, after we got them to open up the budget another half mil. It just wasn’t happening otherwise, you know?” He took a drink and leaned back, stretching out his legs that were too long for him to keep them comfortably under the table, making it easier for her to reach him. He crossed them at the ankle, and Paula couldn’t help but admire the clean lines of his pressed, dark-blue jeans. She never could decide how she liked him better, in jeans or the suits he wore when he met her after work on Friday nights. “These guys, they come in wanting this and that, inlaid tile and oak banisters and enough marble to make the place look like a mausoleum, but they never want to pay for it. Good coffee, huh?”

“Always.”

“Yeah.”

Paula reached into her purse, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them across the table before taking one for herself. Usually they smoked with their afternoon coffees, on these once-a-month Saturdays they’d spent together for the last two years. She didn’t smoke at home, but always bought a pack at the Kwik Stop before leaving town for her “shopping trip” into Lincoln. It made her feel sensual and decadent to have an occasional cigarette, she’d told Sean once when he found a half-used pack in her purse. That had been the truth. She always told him the truth, just not the whole truth about what she did and where she stayed when she went away. That had never really eased her conscience but it had been something, a line she could say she hadn’t crossed.

Today Jared turned down the pack she proffered and stared as she lit up.

“What?”

“I don’t know, I guess I’m surprised you can do that with what – you know with what’s happening -- to him.”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“You’re right,” Jared said, hitting the table with his open palm. “Live today. Let’s talk about you. You look wonderful, you know. So sexy.”

They smiled at each other as he said it, she because she had known the compliment was coming. This was how she liked it; her body tingling at the thought of his eyes on her. She took another drag of her cigarette, laid her other hand on the table. His fingers laced with hers, rubbed her palm, moved up onto her wrist and back down. Paula felt herself responding to his touch.

“You’re pretty sexy yourself. So what do you want to do tonight?”

Beside them an unsmiling girl in a blonde ponytail bused a table and tried not to stare at their clasped hands. Glasses, cups and plates clinked like wind chimes as she threw them hurriedly into her tub, catching Paula’s attention. She’d been no older than Miss Ponytail when she first met Jared. Probably no smarter, either. They worked together her freshman year of college, a crappy job at campus publications but he’d made it fun. He was older – a senior architecture major – and he’d draw things during class when he got bored. Buildings, people, sometimes Paula. They were beautiful, these drawings, and when he’d give them to her the next day she would write stories about the drawings on the back, read them to him over breaks and at slow times.

It was all friendly, fun. The night he called and asked her to come over and watch TV, he could have just been asking one of his buddies. But Paula wasn’t surprised when he kissed her on his gold plaid couch. What did surprise her was how quickly the kissing moved into so much more, and how easily she moved with it. They made the decision to make love without her really noticing, and though she was pretty inexperienced it had felt like she was the one in charge the whole time.

Now she watched his long, tapered fingers wrap completely around his cup, hold it tightly and stare as if at something strange and dangerous he’d just caught. She tapped one of his feet under the table, lifted her brows when he looked up to remind him of the question he hadn’t yet answered.

“Hello? What about tonight?”

“I don’t know, maybe we might just want to stay in tonight. You know how crazy everything gets with the college kids back in town. Hey, maybe I’ll cook you some spaghetti.” His tone was almost shy. Hers was flippant, she hoped. Off-handed. The brave survivor focusing on life. It was the role she had decided on.

“I was thinking of a movie over at the Ross. They held over that film I told you about, the one we were going to see last time.”

He sipped his coffee, concentrating on a single blue tile in the middle of the table.

“I’m going to get some cheesecake,” he finally said.  “Want some?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“Yes, you are,” he growled in her ear as he went by, raising goosebumps all the way down her arm.

They bused their own table; he held the courtyard gate for her as they left, and once on the sidewalk they fell into walking with their arms around each other’s waists. There was too much difference in their height when they tried to hold hands, and hers always ended up cocked at a strange angle to make it work; this way they fit. The sky was clear and a delicate porcelain blue color; against it, the buildings were in sharp relief. It was the glass-and-steel, sharp-angled offices that stood out now. Paula could feel them taking over, pushing into the growing shadows whatever old-fashioned charm she still found in the city. Afternoon shoppers hurried to their cars, loaded with packages. Neon signs began to blink on in the windows of the bars they passed. Paula and Jared took a circuitous route back to his car, going three blocks up to pass by the theater. Even as they stood before the Ross, its marquee beckoning them, Paula knew there was no way they were going inside. The façade was too grand, the sparkling lights and art deco detailing obviously meant to make her step back and admire, not come closer. Still, she had to try. 

“See, it’s that Russian documentary still. The director was Chechnyan, I think. Remember I told you about him? The one who was killed before the film could be released?”

“Umm.”

“We can see it if you want to. I’m just thinking,” He put his arms around her. “God, you look so good right now.”

Paula leaned back into him, felt the grit of her hair against his shirt. His body heat came through the material and warmed her backside; his hands were on her waist and his hips pressed into her. She remembered their first night together after they met again, accidentally, on a real shopping trip she’d taken to get away from the stress that came along with being the mother of two teenage girls.

He was delighted to see her; she was surprised by how happy that made her. They had to catch up, he said, and she loved it that they could go to dinner as two old friends.  Just two people who cared about each other. That was nice. She told him the basics of what had happened since their last phone call; the one that ended when she told him she was engaged and he’d congratulated her. At the time she’d felt free, and when she hung up the receiver she went straight over to Sean’s place. She had put her arms around his neck, kissed him and for the first time she felt like she could do everything they’d been talking about doing together. Now, she’d thought, this is where life begins.

But over chimichangas and beer cheese soup at Tico’s, her words spilled out as if they’d been waiting for Jared to show up; as if nothing about her work, her home, her family was real until he knew about it. Then it was the two of them who were real, and everything else that had been made up. After dinner she had to go see his new house, one he designed and helped build.

Afterward, she stood outside that house and her body ached from their lovemaking. Her mind refused to think about what she’d done, focused instead on the fireflies that dotted the night, making the air around her sparkle. A breeze cooled her sweat, blew back the ends of hair that fell in her face and exposed the spot on her forehead where he had kissed her while they lay, she tucked under one of his arms like a package, balanced between hand and hip, her cheek nestled in the soft hairs of his chest.

Even then she thought she could walk away, because she knew she had to. It had been one night, she told herself, one crazy night that changed nothing for anyone as long as Sean never found out. And then he came to her, holding her just as he was now. His hands had circled her, moved up her waist and cupped her breasts while his lips hunted for her ear.

“I love you,” he whispered, and she knew she was a liar.

They kept their arms around each other as they walked away from the theater. Both looked ahead. Around them the air was thick with change. The city had shed its daytime self for a nighttime persona that opened up new windows into its soul, just as it warned people away from the old ones. A short Latino woman cranked the awning of her gift shop down as they passed; she smiled and nodded, wishing the couple a good night. Two girls in sports bras and running shoes passed them from behind, jogging as fast as they could with Starbucks cups in their gloved hands. A group of five or six college boys wearing Husker T-shirts were coming from the other direction, jostling each other down the sidewalk, making their way to Duffy’s and its famous fish bowls full of beer. They turned their heads to leer and shout as the girls passed, and one of them bumped into Paula. “Sorry Ma’am,” he said, then let out a loud “WHOOOO-HOOOO” about a half-block later.

“Stupid kids,” Jared said just loud enough for her to hear. “See, the town’s just lousy with them.”

Paula laughed because she was supposed to, and because the accident had been as much her fault as the boy’s. She’d been watching the girls too and thinking about her fight with Nicole.

Nicole, her oldest and fifteen now, was not old enough to date by the family rules but way past the age when she’d started noticing the boys around her, and they noticing her. She’d come home late last week, when she was supposed to be studying with a friend. Sean had tried to think the best, that maybe the girls had just lost track of time, but Paula knew better. She’d seen Nicole trading glances with a boy at the basketball games, found folded notes in her jeans pockets with hearts drawn on the outside. Notes from her to him, notes from him to her. This was how it was done.

When Nicole came home there were loud protestations, but not of her innocence. Yes she’d been with him, she said, throwing her head back and sweeping a mop of brown hair out of her eyes. She needed to be with him; she loved him. Whatever they had to do to be together, she would do. And yes, if her parents were going to be so Puritanical as to say she couldn’t date, then lying was what she had to do.

Sean never had patience for arguments – you’re grounded two weeks, young lady and then we’ll see how in love you are. That was her husband, always sure of what to do. Paula wished she could dismiss her daughter’s words so easily. They haunted her so she couldn’t sleep that night, and came back when she saw Nicole’s wan face at the supper table, the righteous martyr suffering for love.

And then the boy’s words made the biggest ghost. It was another note, folded the same way but without the heart this time:

I luv u but what your dad says goes with you

and I can’t do nothing about that.

You have a great body, don’t think you don’t,

but me and Lisa are going out now. Maybe later,

when your OK to date, we can go out again.

Luv,

Matt

Paula folded the note along its creases, put it back in the pocket and threw the jeans in the washing machine. Sometimes, she thought, people need help figuring out which truths they really need.

Jared opened the passenger side door of his Toyota. Before she slid in, Paula paused to wrap her arms around his neck. He hesitated just a moment before letting go of the door and returning the embrace. They kissed, long and hard and Paula felt herself heat at the core. A sob rose into her throat and she choked on it as she stepped back.

Jared rubbed his lips and looked her up and down, a wide-eyed look of naked admiration. Quickly he shifted his eyes, looked to the right and left of the street. “Let’s go,” he said, reaching out a hand to guide her into the car.

Paula’s hands stroked the leather seat. She breathed in the smell of cough drops and chocolate that she would always associate with Jared, when she thought of him. They pulled away from the curb, and she turned on whatever compact disc he had put earlier into the drive. Patsy Cline. Perfect.

Tonight they would make love, and she would fall asleep with her cheek on his chest and her hand wrapped around his waist. Tomorrow morning, they would make love again and she would make sure to touch every inch of his body, imprint him in her brain and her memory. Then she would drive home. She would leave him tomorrow standing in his doorway, or maybe out by the curb. Before she drives away, though, he will tell her how much he is going to miss her. He will say that he will think of her every day until they see each other again, and he’ll give them an out. He’ll say he knows she’ll be busy – doctors and whatever – and she shouldn’t worry if she can’t make it to town next month. Just call, he’ll say, if you need me.

She will get home in time to have dinner with Sean and the girls, and after dinner she will talk to Nicole. She will not tell her that she deserves better than this Matt, because Nicole would not believe that, and she will not tell Nicole that she’s going to forget Matt, because it’s not true.  Instead she will tell her to hold on, play her parents’ game for a few more years until she is on her own, and in the meantime try to find something else to do with her time. Nicole will not like this, but she will listen. After that Paula will go to bed next to Sean, wrap her arms around him from the back and they may make love or they may not. But they will be together the next night, and the night after that. After a few months, Sean will wonder why she has given up the shopping trips she fought so hard to maintain even when they didn’t have the money to spare, but after awhile he will decide to stop wondering. They will grow old together.