A Little Hope(40)

His mother was from a German family, and they prized cold air and honest work and not feeling sorry for yourself. He remembers how after his great-grandmother had a stroke she insisted they keep the lights off in her hospital room. “No television, no noise,” she said. “I am willing myself to get better.” Now, thirty years later he is doing the same. He feels there must be a benefit to the February air passing through his lungs, that the sun on his face must help in some way. He imagines his body is a factory, and good practices will make it produce what it needs—strong antibodies spilling out on a conveyor belt—to keep fighting this.

Even if he has to stop every so often. Even if his legs ache, and the site on his hip itches from the radiation, and he feels queasy sometimes. Through his pants, he thinks he can feel the tattoo where they marked him for the beams of radiation. He feels so sensitive lately—as though his brain notices everything wrong in his uncooperative body. He hears his own breathing, his blood coursing under his skin, his heart beating.

How many years did he just ignore his whole body as though it was machinery with a lifetime guarantee? He took it all for granted and assumed it could keep going and going. He wishes he had lain in a hammock more, resting his hand on his heart. He wishes he had enjoyed the freedom he had when he was well. He could have called in sick whenever he wanted and just sat in a café with Freddie and Addie, eating ice cream or french fries. Now everything is hard. Now the only thing he can do is walk to a doctor’s office. That is his outing. What was he thinking before?

With his hat on, with the sunglasses protecting his eyes, he almost feels normal. Just another guy turning forty next week, out for some exercise. “Hey there,” he says to the old man getting his paper three houses down. He looks at the sidewalk because there are uneven parts, and he doesn’t want to stumble. With the blood thinners, a fall would be a mess. Freddie would go crazy. She would wrap him up like a baby. He also is happy not to meet the man’s eyes. Bob something or other, owner of the theater in town. A complete grump. Yet he seems healthy as a horse. Bob nods and mumbles, “Good day.”

Marcia Peters walks her big Saint Bernard down Maple Street by Woodsen Park, and he notices that she pulls the dog closer. “Hey, Oliver,” he says, and purposely goes over to pet his head. I am not fragile, he thinks.

“You’re looking well,” Marcia says.

“Yup. Thanks.” He pats the dog’s side and keeps moving. No time to think that everything hurts—his knees, his joints, even his bones. He grits his teeth. That is probably why his jaw hurts now. He’s been doing that too much. But he’s alive. And it’s still worth it. Will there come a time where it won’t be worth it? He chases that thought away. He is a fighter. He will keep fighting. That’s what he knows.

Pain is nothing. If handling pain is all it takes, he will win this. He promised Freddie he would.

“I’m not going to die,” he said one night a few days ago as he lay awake an hour after they’d gone to bed. He wasn’t sure if she was still up. He said the words, and they echoed in the dark bedroom. She didn’t say anything at first, and he watched the slow movement of the ceiling fan. He saw the way their front porch light made glowing lines above their curtain. He shifted his legs, and the dog jumped off the bed. He heard the heat kick on and the rush of air to the vent on the floor. He figured she was asleep, but then he heard the small gasps, the sobbing she was trying to choke back. “Stop,” he said, nudging her leg with his knee. “I’m not.”

“Greg.” She whispered his name, and he could feel her body tremble as she tried to fight the tears. When he reached to touch her face, her pillow was damp, and he felt like a failure. For making her cry. For being this close to dying. He smoothed his thumb under her eyes, and tried to wipe her tears. He couldn’t undo what he’d started, and now that he’d said the words, the businessman in him couldn’t let them go.

“I promise I’m not.”

His pride had always done this to him. Made him grab that drunk guy at the Yankees game a few years ago who told him to hurry the fuck up at the urinal. Made him drive two and a half hours back to Boston after he’d just gotten home from a meeting there because a client had emailed him and was unhappy. His pride once had him take apart a clubhouse he’d built for Addie the day before—hours of unbuilding and rebuilding most of its parts (in the dark, so she wouldn’t see) because he didn’t like the way the floor buckled. Freddie said he was crazy, ridiculous. “Get to sleep,” she said. “Addie won’t even notice. She will love it because you made it and because you sit in it with her. She’s not putting a level on the floor!” But there he was sawing and measuring and setting it right. Where did this come from? Because he was an only child? Wanting, always, to be perfect, be a hero? His parents were lovely people. They never pushed him. But he always reached further than he should, always wanted more. Instead of running a 5K, he’d sign up for a marathon; instead of turning in a requested five-page report to Alex, he’d deliver fifteen pages with pie charts and color-coded data. Now, with cancer, one of the deadliest kinds, he can’t roll over. He can’t just try to survive. He has to promise he will. In some weird, competitive way, he is even happy his type of cancer is one of the most aggressive. When he survives, he will have survived the worst. What is that in him? Who did this to him?