People Who Knew Me Read online

  “No,” he said, “I wish that was it.”

  I turned on the lamp to get a better look at him. It was as if he’d taken a carefree dive into the sidewalk, reminiscent of the dives I’d taken as a kid onto the Slip ’N Slide during summer.

  “I got in a car accident,” he said. “Looks worse than it is. The window broke when the car hit the pole—cut up my face a little.”

  He was totally composed about the whole thing. My ears rang.

  “The car hit a pole?”

  “It was stupid. I was almost home. Ran a light, like an idiot. There was another car coming. I swerved hard to miss it. Hit a pole.”

  His level of calm was eerie. He must have been in shock. He grabbed onto the back of his neck.

  “May be hurting later,” he said.

  “Is the other person okay?”

  “He’s fine. Like I said, I swerved to miss him.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  I’d heard stories of people bleeding internally without even knowing it, or having concussions that made them forget their names a day later.

  “We have to go to the hospital,” I said.

  He got into bed defiantly. “I’m fine,” he said. He closed his eyes and I watched him, wide-eyed, convinced he’d fall into a coma if I blinked.

  “The car is totaled,” he said, eyes still closed.

  I swallowed hard. I had so many questions about this—How are we going to afford a new car? Will our car insurance payments go up? If you can’t drive to your mom’s house, are you going to bring her here?—but it wasn’t the appropriate time to ask them.

  “Did the police come?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The other guy stopped, called them.”

  I swallowed hard again.

  “Were you drunk?” I asked, my voice weak and small again.

  He groaned. “I was over the legal limit. Barely. It’s bullshit. I was fine to drive. It was just a stupid accident. I hadn’t had a drink in over an hour when it happened. I would have gotten into the accident if I was sober.”

  “Did they take you to jail?”

  “Yeah, Em. That’s procedure. That’s what happens.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding, trying to tell myself it would be all right. But, again, I had so many questions—How much was bail? Do we have to hire a lawyer? How much does that cost? Will they take away your license? Will this be on your record? Will it affect you getting a job?

  “I need to get some sleep,” he said. “Can we talk about this later?”

  “I guess.”

  I kept vigil over him while he slept, watching his chest move up and down, confirming he was alive. I did love him, immensely—a realization that shocked me more than it should have. The thing is, I wasn’t sure love was enough.

  ELEVEN

  When Claire was six years old, I was in an accident on the 405 freeway. It was a multiple-car situation. Mine was the least involved car, an innocent bystander sideswiped by a truck after it plowed into a little two-door sedan. The driver of the sedan then plowed into the center divider and died. After talking to the police and calming my nerves, I was able to drive away from the scene. There was some damage to my side door, but I didn’t have a scratch on me. I went straight to the bar. I didn’t have to work that day, but I had to talk to someone. And considering I had a limited number of someones, Al would do.

  “I don’t even want to think about if Claire had been in the car,” I said, still reeling.

  She was at school, thank God.

  “Then don’t think about it,” he said.

  “What if I had been the one in the sedan?” I said to him.

  He popped the cap off two Blue Moons—one for him, one for me. It wasn’t even noon yet.

  “You can’t think shit like that, Con,” Al said.

  I had a feeling he relied pretty heavily on this not-thinking-about-shit policy in his life.

  “What would happen to Claire?”

  That was more distressing to consider than my own death. Up to that point, I hadn’t really thought about what would happen to Claire if I was gone. Just another example of my stupidity, I suppose.

  “I’m telling you Con, you can’t go there,” he said.

  “It’s a practical matter. I should have someone to look after her, in case something happens to me.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to you,” he said.

  We each took sips from our beers.

  “And if somethin’ did, I’d watch after her,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He was using the towel that was usually affixed to his belt to wipe down the counter.

  “You would?” I said.

  Al had no experience raising children, but he loved Claire. Earlier that same year, he’d stepped in to fill the dad role for a Girl Scouts father-daughter dance. When I thanked him profusely and got teary-eyed watching him put the corsage on Claire’s tiny wrist, he told me to shut the hell up.

  “Damn it, Con, I said I would, so stop talkin’ ’bout it.”

  I obeyed and tucked away his promise in the back of my mind for safekeeping.

  * * *

  Usually, on the anniversary of 9/11, I make sure I’m working at the bar, for the distraction. The first few years after I moved to California, people talked about the anniversary. The event was still fresh in their minds. Then, after the five-year mark, the date kind of passed without much attention. People posted things on Facebook with the “Never forget” message. I always found that appalling. Never forget? As if that directive is necessary, as if some people have a choice to remember or not. I don’t.

  This year, the anniversary of 9/11 is the day I meet with my oncologist. And even though my mind spins with the what-ifs of my cancer, I still think of those buildings falling. Some hippie in Topanga would say this is poetic.

  My oncologist is a woman named Dr. Richter. She’s in her fifties, her graying hair pulled into a peppy ponytail on top of her head. It bobs when she nods, which she does a lot when listening to me ask my seemingly never-ending questions. There is a picture of two girls—her daughters, I presume—on the bookcase behind her desk, facing patients like me who sit in the chair, listening to our fates. The girls are around Claire’s age, their smiles as big and life-loving as hers.

  “The good news is it’s stage three,” she says. I must look pleased, because she feels the need to temper my relief by adding, “For now.”

  Forty percent survival rate after five years. Sixty percent of people die.

  “It seems to be isolated to your right breast and lymph nodes.”

  “The bad news is I still need chemo?” I say.

  “Oh, no, that’s not bad news. At least there’s something we can do. At least you’re not a lost cause.”

  Chemotherapy is good news. This is the beginning of how cancer changes perspective on everything.

  “You should think about getting tested for HER2,” she says.

  I’ve read about this online—the infamous cancer gene.

  “About one in three of my breast cancer patients have it.”

  “Oh,” I say. You would expect my mind to be racing, but it’s frozen still.

  “The regimen I’m prescribing for you would be the same whether you have the gene or not. But some patients want to know for the sake of their children.”

  The sake of their children.

  I stare at the girls in her picture frame. They smile back at me, totally oblivious to all this.

  “You have a daughter, right?” she says, glancing at my chart.

  “Yes,” I say, my voice shaky. “Claire.”

  * * *

  I still haven’t said a word to Claire about the cancer. She’s been abuzz with her presidential campaign at school. The election is in November, “just like the real one.” Her campaign starts in October. Four other kids are running. She is working on her “platform.”
r />   “I was thinking some of the vending machine profits should go toward feeding the homeless,” she told me.

  I don’t know where she gets these ideas.

  “You have a good heart, Claire.”

  My eyes got a little watery and she said, annoyed with my sappiness, “Geez, Mom, what’s wrong with you?”

  * * *

  My first chemo treatment is a day away, so I have to tell her. That’s all I think about on my morning run—probably the last run I’ll be able to do for a while. Running has been my stress reliever, my sanity saver. Without it, I may go crazy. Time will tell.

  Claire is one of those rare kids who doesn’t need to be woken up for school. She’s already in the kitchen, popping freezer waffles in the toaster, when I come back from my run. I have to tell her. Today. I’ll be tired from the chemo. I might vomit. There’s baldness in my future. Claire wants to feed the homeless with vending machine profits; she’s not an idiot.

  “How about you skip school today?” I say.

  It’s a Thursday.

  “We’ll go to the Santa Monica Pier. We’ve never done that.”

  She looks unenthusiastic. Claire hates to miss school. Like I said, she’s one of those rare kids.

  “Come on,” I say. “It’s just one day.”

  She considers this.

  “I guess I don’t have any tests or anything.”

  “Well, then, it’s meant to be.”

  There’s this ice-cream parlor—Soda Jerks—in the historic Carousel Building on the pier. It’s a throwback to the thirties and forties, when things were supposedly simpler.

  “Why’s it called Soda Jerks?” Claire asks, reading the sign as we cross the threshold of the store. It smells like waffle cones. A few stereotypical tourists—cameras slung over their shoulders—sit at the counter. They have accents like Al’s.

  “That’s what they used to call the people who worked at the soda fountains—because they had to jerk the lever for the soda to come out,” I say, pointing to one of the guys behind the counter doing just that. He’s dressed in all white, with a white hat and black bow tie.

  “Like a bartender for ice-cream drinks.”

  “Exactly.”

  We sit at the counter. She orders the Will Rogers Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae and I choose the Route 66 Banana Split, convincing myself that a banana is a fruit and fruit is cancer-friendly.

  There’s a little sign on the counter, featuring a cartoon character from the 1950s. It reads LIFE IS UNCERTAIN, SO EAT DESSERT FIRST.

  “I want to talk to you about something,” I say.

  She’s only just dipped her spoon into her sundae. When she lifts it to her mouth, the chocolate sauce drips off in a thick stream. She gets chocolate in the corners of her mouth and I can tell by the way she looks at me—with seriousness—that she doesn’t know it’s there.

  “What?” she asks. She puts down her spoon.

  “You have a little chocolate,” I say, indicating on my own mouth where it is on hers. I miss the days when she was really little, when I’d use my thumb to wipe away her food mishaps.

  She licks off the chocolate.

  “You got it.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” She knows I’m stalling. She’s worried. I don’t usually take this tone with her.

  I’ve thought up different ways to tell her—from the inappropriately jokey (Hey, guess who has cancer?) to the boringly clinical (The doctors have discovered cancerous tissue in my breast and lymph nodes) to the morosely serious (I’ve been diagnosed with a possibly terminal cancer). Nothing sounds right. And, when it comes to telling your daughter that you—her mother, her everything—has cancer, nothing will ever sound right.

  “I have cancer,” I say.

  My ears start ringing immediately. I see the guy behind the counter, the soda jerk, out of the corner of my eye. Is he eavesdropping?

  She puts her spoon on the counter deliberately, stares into her sundae.

  “You should have at least waited for me to finish my ice cream,” she says.

  My ears stop ringing.

  “Sorry,” I say, for ruining the ice cream, for the cancer.

  “What kind?” she asks, cool and collected.

  “Breast.”

  She nods—once, slowly.

  “This girl at school, her mom had breast cancer,” she says. “She’s okay now.”

  It’s likely her mom didn’t have the kind of breast cancer I have, but now is not the time for details.

  “Lots of women get breast cancer,” I say. The least I can do is contribute to her comforting storyline.

  I wish the chairs swiveled so I could face her more directly. As it is, our bodies are twisted awkwardly toward each other.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asks.

  “Yes, honey, I’ll be okay.” Dr. Richter’s parting words were, “Think positive.” All those years of med school boiled down to one corny motivational phrase.

  The ice cream is already melting, leaving behind a syrupy soup. Claire makes circles through hers with her spoon.

  “What’s going to happen?” she asks.

  I share the same question. That’s the most terrifying part of being a mother—the expectation of having all the answers.

  “My doctor has a treatment plan. I’ll start chemotherapy tomorrow.”

  “Wow,” she says. “Tomorrow.”

  “I’ll have that for about six months and we’ll see if that gets the cancer,” I say, noticing that I’m talking to her like she’s five and cancer is the bogeyman. I clear my throat.

  “Then what?”

  “They’ll remove my breast, just to be safe,” I say.

  This makes her eyes go big.

  “It’s not scary. It’s the best thing to do,” I tell her.

  “Then what?”

  “There’s radiation to get the last of the cancer,” I say, wrapping it all up in a bow. “I think that’s a month or two.”

  “So, by summer you’ll be fine again,” she says.

  “Right,” I say, withholding so many caveats—if everything goes as planned, if the cancer responds to the chemo, if the cancer doesn’t spread before we get it.

  She sits up straight, like she’s been electrocuted by some lightbulb going off in her head.

  “Is there a cancer charity?” she asks.

  “Many, I’m sure.”

  “That’s what the vending machine profits should go to.”

  She’s a far better person than I ever was or will be.

  “I liked your original idea, too,” I say. Because I don’t want this, my cancer, to become her life.

  She shrugs. “I like this one.”

  She slurps a spoonful of her melted ice cream.

  “And we should plan something fun for summer, when you’re back to normal.”

  Normal. I’m not sure I’ll define that the same way ever again.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Road trip. We’ll see the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, everything.”

  My heart skips a beat when she says “the Statue of Liberty.” I swore to myself, when I got in that cab fourteen years ago, that I would never go back.

  “Whatever you want,” I say again, because, really, what else is there to say?

  * * *

  We push our ice cream bowls aside and walk out to the pier. There’s a line for the Ferris wheel. We wait patiently behind a group of older teenagers talking way too loudly, the way teenagers do. Two of them are passing a cigarette back and forth between each other, taking puffs. If I die, if I’m not here to see Claire all the way through adolescence, I fear she will be one of them, taking puffs.

  “I had a feeling something was wrong,” she says, staring up at the gondolas. There are twenty of them. I’ve counted as we wait.

  “I know,” I say.

  “You’re no good at keeping things from me.”

  But, see, I am. There’s so much she doesn’t know.

  We get
to the front of the line.

  “Together or separate?” the Ferris wheel operator asks us. Greasy hair hangs in his face. He smacks gum with an alarming amount of apathy.

  “Together,” Claire says, before I can answer. And when we shuffle into our gondola and take our seats, she reaches over and holds my hand tight, out of love or fear or both.

  TWELVE

  Drew’s mom moved in with us a week after the car accident. We made our modest living space into her bedroom, filled our already-full closet with her clothes, covered our kitchen counter with the pills she hoped were magical.

  “It’ll be temporary,” he said, “just until I get my license back.”

  His license was suspended for six months. He could no longer drive to her house to care for her. During this time, I had dreams of dominoes falling, one after another, in a seemingly endless line.

  “Trust me, she doesn’t want to be out of her house any more than we want her in our house.”

  I got lost at the part where he said, “Trust me.”

  * * *

  I started staying late at the office or going out with Marni after work. I wanted to come home to find Drew’s mom already asleep. I wanted to close my eyes on the short walk from the front door to the bedroom and pretend she wasn’t there, curled up on the couch, drooling on my throw pillows.

  “I really don’t know how you and Drew are handling all this,” Marni said. We had just finished dinner at a Thai restaurant in the Village and were walking arm in arm to the subway station. It was one of those summer nights that had a hint of fall in the air—a brief chill, a preview.

  “We’re not. Or I’m not. Drew drinks whiskey to handle it. He’s become something of a connoisseur.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to escape in your own way.”

  “You’re my escape, silly.”

  “You’re gonna get sick of me,” she said.

  “Never.”

  We hugged at the station. She kissed me on the cheek and I got sad as I watched her disappear down the corridor to the train that would take her home.

  A few days later, Jade insisted I leave the office before six since I’d been doing so much overtime. Marni couldn’t meet for dinner—she had a date. So I was home by seven. Drew and his mom were watching Jeopardy!, sitting so close on the couch that an unknowing visitor might think them an odd couple. My favorite blanket was draped over the armrest, a blanket I’d had since I was a kid. There were nights my mom left me alone and I covered myself in that blanket and waited for sunrise. Now there was a large damp stain on it.