A Little Hope(4)

But he can still do an hour at the gym after work most nights, and he swings Addie around when they’re playing the space ejector game, and except for his wife’s pitying looks and her “Now can we start addressing this?” prods, he’s holding his own. Sometimes in a whisper, in a quick hiss, he hears the name of his disease rush through his head: multiple myeloma. Cancer of the plasma cells. He hates the name: the double m’s, the way some hospital staff members trip over the pronunciation. He hates his plasma cells that failed him. He hates that his disease is mostly unknown—it could be like anemia or high blood pressure for all anyone knows. None of the serious name recognition of brain cancer or heart disease.

“I would call it a bone marrow defect,” his doctor said that first day.

“Bad bone marrow,” Greg tsked, mock-slapping his thigh.

“It would do you well to not minimize this,” the doctor said.

“Will it make my bone marrow less defective?” Greg shrugged after he said this—yes, yes, he knew he was cracking, and he could feel Freddie’s tearful eyes glaring at him. The oncologist with his white hair and starched gingham shirt reminded him of a doctor in a Hallmark Channel movie. If he stops for a moment, he can list the titles on the doctor’s bookshelf. He can describe the exact turpentine-and-lemon furniture polish smell that the office had. But he hasn’t stopped, and he doesn’t plan to. A rolling stone and all that. But he felt something that day about Freddie, some confession in her crying that she loved him and needed him so much. He always knew this, but it was validated in that moment. He remembers leaving the doctor’s office and thinking I am loved before anything else.

Now it’s Alex, his boss, in Greg’s office doorway, leaning to the side. Alex, with his face tanned from golfing, thinning hair, thick gold wedding band, an air of expensive cologne, shining cuff links. He hates these new eyes Alex has for him, and the way he never suggests the club anymore, or a long lunch at Martin’s Steakhouse—the way he tries not to dump too much on Greg’s plate. Some days he wears suspenders or a bow tie. When Alex bought Greg a Mercedes when he promoted him to VP, he said, “Once in a lifetime, kid. Don’t get too used to me buying you stuff.” Alex who can’t do half the push-ups Greg can, but he will probably live to be ninety.

“Mr. President,” Greg says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Just checking on you.” Alex clears his throat. He steps in slowly and crosses his arms. He pretends to be looking at the black-and-white photo on Greg’s wall of Addie and Freddie—Addie riding the carousel a year ago at Woodsen Park, the ballet dress she insisted on wearing that day, her soft bangs, eyes squinting from the sunlight. Freddie standing beside her grinning, long blond hair looking so beachy then, gold hoop earrings, her expression carefree. When was the last time his wife grinned? When have her eyes sparkled like this? Not for two months, at least. Greg thinks of how he just wants to tell her to relax, let me worry about this. He used to be able to make her happy so effortlessly (tickling her sides when she was making a salad, or coming out of the bathroom in his silky black robe), but now with all this, he has to worry about her constant fear.

He is weary already, and he hasn’t even started fighting this thing. And now Alex is worried, too? Greg feels like some tragic man in a Greek myth who saddens everyone he meets.

“Checking on me? What am I, a soufflé?” He selects compose on his email. “I’m just in the middle of writing Edie at Home Walls.”

“Greg, what does Freddie say?”

Greg stiffens. He looks up from his computer screen. The empty email window beams at him. “About what?”

“Are you going to keep doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Doing what,” Alex says. “Avoiding your illness.”

“Illness.”

“Yes, your illness.”

“You make me sound like Emily Dickinson in a white nightgown.” For some reason, he always pictured the poet in bed in a nightgown, scribbling on parchment.

“Oh stop.”

“You stop.” Et tu, Alex, he wants to say. Don’t you know me better than this? Nothing has happened yet. He’s still trying to figure things out. Until then, can’t Freddie and Alex call the dogs off and let him be? He feels betrayed. Haven’t I proven myself to be more than a quivering sick man? Didn’t I oversee a huge merger less than a year ago? Didn’t I save clients who were all but signed off on leaving? Haven’t I kept Freddie and Addie wanting nothing? Just over a year ago, he ran two marathons in one summer. Can’t Greg be the one to tell them when to worry? Don’t they know he will wrestle and clobber this thing? That is who he is.

Alex goes to the door. “Pamela, Mr. Tyler and I are going to have a quick meeting.”

“Sure, Mr. Lionel. Anything you need?” she says outside.

“We’re fine,” Alex says, and closes the door softly.

“Thanks for not broadcasting my illness.” Greg pushes back his desk chair and looks out the window. The leaves are that fully awake color that will only last a day or two. A woman below pushes one of those horrible double-jogging strollers, and he wonders if he will lose the ability to move something like that, to lift the dog into the car, to carry fence posts on his shoulder.

“I want to know what the doctor says, and what we’re going to do. The doctor doesn’t say to do nothing, I assume.”