Three Weeks in Spring

Chapter 11

She walked across the street and into the Marshes weathered-shingle Cape and said, “Jude, I need to talk with you alone.”

Judy sent the kids to another room looking befuddled. In ten years Joan had never said, “I must speak to you alone.”

I wonder if she knows, Joan thought. She worked last night. I wonder if she knows, and is having the good taste not to mention it until I do.

“Jude,” she said, “do you know what’s wrong with me?”

“No. Is something wrong with you?”

“A week ago—” My God, only a week ago — “I discovered a lump in my left breast and, Jude, they tell me it is malignant, that it’s cancer and I’m walking around with breast cancer.” As she spoke she began to cry again. Judy didn’t cry. She held together. She’s not a crier. Joan thought. I don’t usually cry in front of people. She doesn’t cry, period. But her face seemed to pinch in and get smaller. She was very fair with blond hair and blue eyes. As Joan talked her skin got paler and the eyes seemed to occupy more and more of her face. But she didn’t cry.

What a terrible thing to do to her day, Joan thought in the uninvolved corner of her brain, which had been calmly observing the rest of her since the lump appeared. But I don’t care. I have to tell her, I have to let down with someone.

Judy didn’t assimilate it all at once. “You had the mammogram?”

“Yes.”

“But, Joan, you always too such good care of yourself. You have tests done regularly.”

“I know, Jude, I know.”

“And you’ve been examining your breasts?”

“Yes, but since the first of the year, for the last three months or so, I haven’t been doing it as carefully, and, my God, Jude, this thing is huge, where the hell did it come from? It’s like a walnut.”

“And you’ve had the mammogram?”

“Yes.”

“Joan, we just have to think it’s going to be okay. Even if you have the mastectomy, we just have to assume it’s going to be okay.”

Joan was beyond worrying about the mastectomy, and didn’t try to pretend with Judy. Joan was worried about dying. “If this is in the rest of my bod, Jude, and we have to go through a series of operations to stop the onslaught...”

“It won’t be that way, Joan. Don’t think about that. It will be all right. It hasn’t had a long time to grow. It hasn’t had a long time to spread. You have regular checkups. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be in time.”

“Norma suggested that you might special me, Jude.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think it will be all right to have you special me?”

“Why wouldn’t it be all right?”

“Well,” Joan said, “it might be embarrassing. What if I were a terrible patient, Jude? What if I were yelling and screaming and out of my head? Or if I’m mean and horrible? I wouldn’t want you to see me that way.”

“Oh, God, Joan, you’re not going to be like that. You’ll be fine. I’ll be right there. I can give you your medication as soon as you need it. People are okay after surgery; there’s no screaming and yelling.”

“I’ve never had surgery, I don’t know what I’ll be like.”

“You’ll be like you are,” Jude said. “Like you were after the babies.”

Joan was well past worrying now if she’d lose her breast. She was worrying about postoperative behavior. “Will I be a good patient?” she asked. “Will I be out of my head? Will I be ashamed of myself? What does the anesthesia do to you? Do you get cuckoo? Are you in extreme pain?”

“There’s medication,” Judy said, “to carry you after surgery. There’s no screaming and yelling. You don’t get crazy. I’ll be right there.”

I can’t believe Jude and I are having this discussion, Joan thought. Sitting here in her living room and talking about recovery from cancer surgery. God, it’s hard. But harrowing though it was it was also a release. Joan was glad to have gotten it done, and to know that Judy knew and that when the time came Judy would be with her. She needed the support of a woman. Since her trial had begun she’d found to her surprise that she needed the support and care of other women. She’d always been a man’s woman. She’d preferred the company of men, found them more interesting, found most women duller than the men. As she had moved into a career in her middle thirties, returning to school for graduate work, and going on to become a professor, she’d found women more interesting, and as the feminist movement had progressed she’d realized more and more that some of her preference for men was an assumption of their superiority. Her tastes had been changing over the last five or six years. But never before had she sensed the need for women that she had now. Other women knew. Men, even Ace, didn’t know.

“Don’t tell John,” she said.

“Joan, I...”

“I don’t mean ever. I know you have to tell him. But not tonight. Not until we’ve been to dinner and come home and you and he are alone. Just that. Just this one thing. Okay?”

And Judy said, “Of course.”

“It’s just that it’s the last night out for a while and I don’t want it spoiled with thoughts of death and cancer hanging in the air. You and I and Ace can pretend. And John doesn’t have to deal with it till tomorrow.”

It was probably more than that. There was still the sense that men would think of her as maimed. That once John knew, he would no longer be able to think of her in sexual terms. He could no longer find her desirable. He could no longer imagine that she might be fun to sleep with. She sensed that very strongly, and she never swerved in her conviction that the men who knew could never again look at her with desire. Except Ace. She knew with even more certainty that he would feel exactly the same about her. She never doubted that he would desire her with the intensity that he always had. She knew it would never matter to him. But to everyone else, she knew it would.

And so for one final evening she wanted to still be sexy. She wanted to be whole and desirable and unscarred in John’s imagination. Of these feelings she was inarticulately aware. They were less an idea than a sensation at the time. But she knew that one more time she didn’t want John to know. One more evening.