Family Dancing Read Online Free PDF Page B

told herself. Broil the chicken. Chicken for dinner. The Lauranses’ party tonight. Everything is the same.
    Then the horror swept through her again. Six months ago she had been planning to be dead by this day. Her children on their way to a new home. But it had been a long time.
    Things dragged on. Radiation therapy, soon chemotherapy, all legitimate means of postponement. She lost quite a bit of hair, but a helpful lady at the radiation therapy center directed her to a hairdresser who specialized in such cases as hers, could cut around the loss and make it imperceptible. Things dragged on. She made dinner for her children.
    She went to one meeting of a therapy group, and they told her to scream out her aggression and to beat a pillow with a hammer. She didn’t go back.
    “Hello, Anna,” Dr. Sanchez said, coming in, sitting at the opposite end of the table. He smelled of crushed cigars, leather. “How’re things?”
    He obviously didn’t remember. December 17th.
    “Fine,” she said.
    As if she didn’t notice, he began to feel around her thighs for lumps.
    “The kids?” he said.
    “Fine,” she said.
    “You’ve been feeling all right, I hear,” he said.
    “Fine,” she said.
    “And you aren’t finding the results of the radiation too trying?”
    “No, not bad.”
    “Well, I’ve got to be honest with you, when you start the chemotherapy in January, you’re not going to feel so hot. You’ll probably lose quite a bit of weight, and more hair. Feel like you have a bad flu for a while.”
    “I could stand to lose a few pounds,” Mrs. Harrington said.
    “Well, what’s this?” said Dr. Sanchez, his hand closing around a new lump.
    “You know, they come and go,” said Mrs. Harrington, turning over. “That one on my back is pretty much gone now.”
    “Um-hum,” said Dr. Sanchez, pressing between her buttocks. “And have you had any pain from the one that was pressing on the kidney?”
    “No.”
    “That’s good, very good.”
    He went on in silence. Every now and then he gave grunts of approval, but Mrs. Harrington had long since realized that rather than indicating some improvement in her condition, these noises simply signified that the disease was following the course he had mapped out for it. She lay there. It no longer embarrassed her, because he knew every inch of her body. Though there were certain things she had to be sure of before she went. She always made sure she was clean everywhere.
    “Well,” Dr. Sanchez said, pulling off his plastic gloves and throwing them into a repository, “you seem to be doing fine, Anna.”
    Fine. What did that mean? That the disease was fine, or her?
    “I guess I just keep on, don’t I?” she said.
    “Seriously, Anna, I think it’s marvellous the way you’re handling this thing. I’ve had patients who’ve just given up to depression. A lot of them end up in hospitals. But you keep up an active life. Still on the PTA? Still entering cooking contests? I’ll never forget those terrific brownies you brought. The nurses were talking about them for a week.”
    “Thank you, Doctor,” she said. He didn’t know. No more than the woman hitting the pillow with the hammer. All these months she had been so “active,” she suddenly knew for a lie. You had to lie to live through death, or else you die through what’s left of your life.
    As she got dressed she wondered if she’d ever be able to sleep again, or if it would be as it was at the beginning, when she would go to sleep in fear of never waking up, and wake up unsure if she were really alive.
    Lying there, terrified, in her flannel nightgown, the mouthpiece firmly in place (to prevent teeth-grinding), her eyes searching the ceiling for familiar cracks, her hands pinching what flesh they could find, as if pain could prove life.
    It had taken her many months to learn to fall asleep easily again.
     
    She was one with the people in the lobby now. She had been aloof from them before. One she knew,