Ask Bob: A Novel Page 14

  I thought about this for a few seconds and then said, “Antoine, here’s my thinking. As far as I can tell, snails have two basic states of being: fine and dead. Speedo’s alive, so he’s got to be fine. I should also point out that I’m not charging you when I examine Speedo.” Before Antoine could protest, as I knew he would, I hurried to add, “Not because I think this is a charity case, but because Speedo’s such a great snail. I just love to see him.” That quieted Antoine down instantly, and I was able to complete my little spiel: “If I really poked and probed, I’d have to charge you. And if you started paying, you might not bring Speedo in so often and then I wouldn’t get to see him, not to mention you, nearly as much as I’d like. If I thought there was anything wrong, I’d poke and probe. But believe me, your snail’s fine. He’s going to live a long and productive life as long as no one smothers him in butter and garlic and eats him.”

  Antoine spoke often about his love of Paris. Although he’d been coming to the clinic for years, he had a thick-as-tarte-tatin accent. I assumed, quite naturally, that this was because Antoine was from France. But one time, after my quick look-see at Speedo, Antoine got a bit expansive and started talking about his first pet, a spider monkey named “Peep.”

  “Peep?” I asked.

  “Peep,” Antoine said. “P-i-p. Peep.”

  “You had a spider monkey?”

  “Ah, oui,” Antoine said. “’E was a lovely monkey. Smart as a wheep.”

  “Was this in Paris?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, was this before you left France?”

  “I never left Frahnce.”

  “I don’t mean emotionally. I mean, was it before you moved to New York?”

  “But I was born in New York, Doctaire. In ze Bronx.”

  Sure enough, Antoine had never been out of the tristate area in his life. And he didn’t speak one word of French. When he was eleven years old, he saw an Inspector Clouseau movie and began imitating Peter Sellers. It started as a joke, but he grew so comfortable in the role that he has maintained the accent for over thirty years. Antoine’s been coming to the clinic at least twice a month since I started working here, and I’ve never heard him—not even for one word, not even when caught off guard—speak in anything but his thick French accent. I don’t think he knows any other way to speak at this point. I don’t think he knows any other way to be.

  * * *

  For some reason, my thirty-first birthday made me feel old. Thirty hadn’t done it for me, but the following year Anna and I celebrated at home with champagne, grilled cheese sandwiches—with bacon! A special birthday treat!—and pecan pie from Anna’s favorite bakery, on West Fourth Street, with six animals in various positions on or near the dining table (we’d added a small, three-legged black-and-white Havanese we’d cleverly named Che). Biting into my second sandwich, I began to feel the stirrings of a midlife crisis. There was no rhyme or reason for it. I did not feel as if I had reached midlife; nor was there a crisis of any kind. All I knew was that I suddenly felt as though I would wake up the next morning and be celebrating my fortieth birthday, and then a week after that my fiftieth. I sat there, sipping champagne, looking adoringly at my wife, thinking that I didn’t want to change anything at all in my life. Simultaneously, I found myself thinking that I wanted to change absolutely everything.

  We made love that night—we were trying to have a baby and we were on a strict schedule, all geared around the fertility calendar—and for the very first time since I’d met Anna, as soon as the lovemaking was over I wanted to jump out of bed. She knew it. She knew everything I was thinking; it was a little unnerving. I felt guilty that I wanted to do anything but stay wrapped around her, so we lay in bed until she smiled and said, “Okay, I’m a big girl. I can take it. Go.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief, rolled over, and hopped out of bed. Joined by Che and Rocky, I sat at the kitchen table, ate some ice cream, and read until Anna was asleep. When I got back under the covers, she stirred and muttered, “Happy birthday.” I kissed her lightly on the shoulder. She fell back asleep instantly and I stared at her back, admiring her, wishing I could be like her, loving her, deciding I had to be insane to want to be away from her for even a few seconds, until I, too, fell fast asleep.

  About two months later, Rocky and I went away on a weekend corporate retreat in Miami—the real Miami this time, in Florida—for the Starling Insurance Company. I got there late Friday night and had room service in my mini-suite (all courtesy of Starling; I ordered a sirloin steak with French fries, and Rocky had a lovely roast chicken, which I cut up and let him eat off the hotel plate instead of his portable food dish). Late Saturday morning I gave my speech, with Rocky at my side, and got a very enthusiastic response. Saturday night—part of the deal—I had dinner with two hundred and thirty insurance agents from around the country. I was as charming and entertaining as I could be, although not as charming and entertaining as Rocky. I received special attention from the myriad women agents. It was the first time it occurred to me that a boy and his traveling, well-behaved, very handsome cat made for an irresistible combination to certain members of the opposite sex. It was fun and a little exhilarating, as I’d never mastered or even had the chance to master the art of flirting.

  On Sunday morning, I spent a couple of hours by the resort’s pool, soaking up the rays and recuperating from having to be so charming for such a long stretch. While I was lolling on my chaise longue, Anna called my room, but I’d already checked out, so I didn’t get her message. She called my cell phone, but I must have had it on mute or maybe the reception was bad, because I didn’t hear it ring. On my way to the airport, I picked up the cell to call her and saw that she’d beaten me to it. Her voice mail message to me said only this: “I tried the hotel and your cell. Call me when you get a chance.” Her voice sounded terse and tight, as if it were painful for her to even manage that short sentence. I quickly called the apartment and Anna answered, her voice as tightly controlled as it was on the message.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. I didn’t even say “hello.”

  She didn’t answer at first. She seemed to be gathering herself to speak. “I wasn’t sure when you were landing,” she said. “That’s why I called. To find out.”

  “My plane leaves in about an hour. So I’ll be home around five. What’s going on?”

  “It’s probably nothing,” Anna said.

  “You sound horrible.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “You know what I meant. You sound like something’s wrong.”

  “I have this pain.”

  I felt my throat tighten and my stomach clutch. Years ago, after I’d known Anna for several months, I’d told her my definition of love. It was that whenever I knew something bad was happening to her, I always wished it were happening to me instead. The idea of her being in pain made me dizzy.

  “What kind of pain?” I asked.

  “Stomach. All around there.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad.”

  “Have you ever had it before?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Anna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Often?”

  “Not all the time.”

  “Not all the time? That means a lot of the time.”

  “Some of the time.”

  “When did it start?”

  “About six weeks ago.”

  “Six weeks! Jesus Christ, why didn’t you say something?”

  “You’ve been so busy. And because it’s just pain.”

  “‘Just pain?’ Anna, for god’s sake.”

  “Okay, because you would have made me go to the doctor.”

  “You’re fucking right I would!”

  There was a silence. My silence said: You’re not your mother. You’re too old to have to prove over and over that you’re not your mother.

  Her silence said: I know everything you’re thinking is right, but I don’t want to hear it. I
don’t even want you to keep thinking it. I just want you to concentrate on me and make me feel better.

  It’s strange how people who know each other so well can communicate without words or facial expressions. Love is its own kind of telepathy. It is both a wonderful and a scary thing.

  Anna broke the silence, letting me hear the resigned tone in her voice, her way of acknowledging that I had a point. “Okay, okay. I’m saying something now.”

  “Look,” I said, slowly. “I’m not angry. I’m sorry if I sounded angry. I just can’t stand it when you sound like this. And I know you hate doctors and I understand all the weird reasons you hate them. But you have to go to a doctor. Go to Alfredson. I’ll call him right now and—”

  “It can wait until you come home.”

  “Anna—”

  “I’m sorry I called you. I know you worry about me more than I worry about me.”

  “I do.”

  There was another silence. I couldn’t interpret this one. She wasn’t just tamping down her own pain or fear. She was holding something back, something she wanted to ask or reveal. This was typical Anna; she thought sharing anything complicated—anything she hadn’t yet defined or understood on her own—was somehow unseemly. I once had a friend who was too embarrassed to speak Italian until he could speak it fluently, which of course meant that he never spoke a word since you can’t become good at anything without practice. He understood the language better than any non-Italian person I knew, but he wouldn’t use it to communicate, so his knowledge was basically useless. Anna was similar in her approach to people. She wouldn’t let you inside unless she’d already decided it was safe to let you in. I could often guess what was there, or intuit it. But not always; love has its limits. This time I was pretty sure what she wanted to say, but I absolutely didn’t want to face it. Denial can also play a big part in love.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ll call Alfredson now and make an appointment, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus.”

  Almost in a whisper, she said, “What?”

  “You agreed without any argument. You must really feel like shit.”

  Silence.

  “Can you go to sleep?” I asked.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Try. I’ll call you as soon as I get in, okay?”

  More silence. All I could hear was light breathing on the other end of the phone.

  “Okay, Anna?”

  “Okay.”

  We hung up. As soon as I was disconnected, all I wanted was to hear her breathe again. I put my hand inside Rocky’s bag, let my fingers gently stroke him, and felt his tiny breaths pulse into my palm, and that calmed me down. He started making these sweet little whistles and snorts that he made when he slept, and I felt some of the tension go out of my body. Not all, but some. For the first time since I’d heard that Anna had called the hotel, my own breathing returned to normal.

  * * *

  The plane landed at four o’clock and I called home as soon as the wheels touched down. Anna sounded a little better, or at least better enough to fight me for a few seconds about going to the doctor. But I didn’t back down. When my cab pulled up to our brownstone, I had the driver wait while I went upstairs to get her. There was a lot of barking and meowing and a few “Hello, cocksucker”s while I let Rocky loose and made my way to our bedroom. Anna wasn’t sleeping. She was lying in bed, not propped up but flat on the mattress, with no pillow under head, curled into a kind of S shape.

  I kissed her lightly, kissed her again a little less lightly, and then helped her up. She was wearing her favorite pajamas; they were goofy as hell, with flowers all over them, and made her look as if she were eleven years old. She wanted to get dressed but I told her no, I just wanted to get her to Dr. Alfredson as soon as possible. She didn’t resist. So all we did was add some slippers to her outfit and throw on a robe and get outside as quickly as we could manage.

  The cab was still waiting when we got downstairs, and we made it to the doctor’s office, in SoHo, by six o’clock.

  Dr. Stephen Alfredson had been our doctor since we’d arrived in New York. Recommended by a friend, he was just a few years older than we were. His office was relatively close by, but since Anna never went to the doctor and I went rarely, we didn’t know him particularly well. Still, he seemed competent and nice, and he was very polite to me the one time I went to him for a physical and he had to do the bad thing, so I liked him.

  Dr. Alfredson—I just can’t bring myself to call a doctor by his first name when we’re in a professional situation—knew me well enough to keep me out of his examining room while he took a look at Anna. She was in there for half an hour or so while I sat in the waiting room, biting my fingernails to the nub and reading a three-week-old Sports Illustrated.

  When she came out, she looked better and said she felt a lot better. Dr. Alfredson said it was because he’d given her a strong pain reliever. He had a perfect bedside manner; he was quiet and calm and his voice had a deep timbre. In fact, he was so calm that when he told me we needed to go straight to the emergency room, I didn’t panic; instead I just nodded as if going to the ER were the most natural thing in the world.

  Anna protested but it was pretty weak as far as protests go. We found another cab; Anna half-dozed against my shoulder while we drove to a hospital on the Upper East Side. It was a large, impersonal place, but they were exceedingly nice to us because Dr. Alfredson had told them to be. After Anna was rushed in, we wound up waiting there until morning before we got any information. During the night, the nurses helped her onto a gurney that was parked in the hallway. Three different orderlies came at three different times and asked the exact same questions. A doctor came by around two in the morning and took Anna away for an MRI. When she was brought back, we both fell asleep—Anna in her bed, me in a chair—periodically disturbed by the occasional scream and angry outburst and urine test. A few feet away from us, partially hidden behind a curtain, was a guy handcuffed to his bed. An armed guard sat nearby.

  Inevitably, I kept comparing everything in the hospital to my own clinic. My patients waited in a room decorated with photographs of animals, and the floor was strewn with pet toys. I encountered plenty of human beings who were nervous and sad; often their animals were in pain. Yet where I worked there was a sense of hope. Most people and their pets came to me for mundane ailments, and they walked out into a world of sunlight and cappuccinos and brownstones. But there was nothing mundane about this emergency room. The people in here would walk out into a world of gunshot wounds and drug addiction and wheelchairs.

  Around six in the morning, Anna was taken into a small room with an actual door. Dr. Alfredson was there, along with another doctor, Dr. Barry Liebowitz. Taking turns, they gave us the following news:

  Dr. Liebowitz told us that Anna was pregnant.

  She lit up with joy, and I asked if that’s what had been causing her such extreme pain.

  Liebowitz said, “Partly,” then turned to Dr. Alfredson as if they were a well-rehearsed vaudeville team.

  But they needed to work on their act: Alfredson looked directly at me and said, “Anna, you also have stomach cancer.”

  I said, “That’s impossible.”

  Alfredson turned to look at Anna now. His voice kept the same calm tone he’d used the previous evening. And while I wanted to believe he was lying or making a terrible joke, his eyes belied the lack of emotion in his voice. Their deep blue color had faded, as if hope itself had passed from them.

  “It’s spread very quickly. We’d like to operate as soon as possible. Dr. Liebowitz has arranged for you to be taken in this morning. He’s one of the best oncologists in the country. You’ll be in very good hands.”

  I moved to stand next to Anna. I grabbed her hand; she squeezed mine as hard as she could but didn’t say anything.

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked. “I mean … I don’t really know wh
at I mean. But what are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to do our best to remove as much of the tumor as possible. It looks like it has spread beyond the stomach, but I won’t know how far until we get inside.” This was Liebowitz.

  I shuddered at the word “inside.” Anna felt my tremor. I tried to cover it up with an encouraging look, but I was a lot closer to tears and despair than encouragement.

  Alfredson said, “Anna, you’re going to lose the baby. It won’t survive the operation.”

  I didn’t flinch at this news. I didn’t care about the baby. I only cared about my wife, the thirty-year-old woman in the hospital bed who still hadn’t said a word since learning she had cancer. I didn’t know if the news about the baby had registered with her. Her expression hadn’t changed since Dr. Alfredson had first spoken.

  I asked a few more questions, none of which I really remember. And I don’t have any idea what the answers were. I had dealt with cancer, had performed operations on a variety of animals to remove tumors. So the two doctors gave me dispassionate, clinical appraisals, as they would with any other doctor. I understood the technical aspects of what they were about to do, but I couldn’t begin to express the emotional turmoil churning beneath my attempt at rational conversation. I do recall that at some point Liebowitz said, “If you’d come to us when you first started feeling the pain…” But then he stopped. There was no point in finishing the statement.