Three Weeks in Spring

Chapter 24

Friday, May 2

John Eliopoulos came to examine her. She was lying in bed, wearing her robe with a gauze pad sewed inside it over the proper spot.

“What the hell is that?” Eliopoulos said, when he pulled the robe back to look at the incision.

“My sister’s coming,” Joan said.

“My question stands,” Eliopoulos said.

“We have given new meaning to the term sibling rivalry, my sister and I. She’s coming in from the West Coast tomorrow and when I found that out I sent Eunie and Norah chasing around for padding. She’s not going to see me with one boob.”

Eliopoulos looked at her incision. “She’s not going to see you here,” he said. “You look too good. Get the hell out of here.”

“Today?”

“Yes. Do you want to stay?”

“No.”

“Then beat it.”

“How soon can I leave?”

“Right now. Get going.”

Nine days after surgery, Joan thought, I’m going home nine days after surgery. She had thought it would be more. It buoyed her that she was going early. I’ve got to get organized. I’ve got to pack.

“I’ll have one of the nurses come down and remove the drain,” Eliopoulos said.

Joan nodded. Her mind was busy with going home. I’ve got a bra okay, and I can wear my flowered blouse with the beige wrap-around skirt.

Eunie and Norah came in. “Okay, Joan, time for the drain to come out.” Eliopoulos was gone. Joan rolled onto her right side and Eunie undid the johnny in the back and let it fall open. She could feel Norah snap off a small piece of tape near her hipbone, on the left side. She’d never really paid much attention to the drain. It had not bothered her. She hadn’t really felt it much on the left side. Parts of the left side were still numb. She glanced down to see where it left the incision. It didn’t leave the incision. It emerged from her body above and slightly back of her left hip.

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

“What is it?” Eunie said.

“Where does that thing go to?”

“Up to the incision.”

“But Jesus, it’s inside me.”

“Yes,” Norah said, “didn’t you know that?”

“No. You mean you’re going to pull that whole long tube down out of my body?”

“It won’t hurt,” Norah said.

“It really won’t,” Eunie said.

“I can’t stand it,” Joan said. “I can’t. I’ve taken everything else, but I can’t stand this.”

“Joan,” Norah said. “I promise it doesn’t hurt. It is nothing. Don’t look and you won’t even know.”

“It’s got to come out,” Eunie said.

Joan shook her head. “It makes me sick to think of it.”

“Joan, we haven’t told you anything since you came in here that wasn’t so,” Eunie said. “This is nothing. I’ll take hold of your hand and Norah will take out the tube. It will be over in two seconds and it won’t hurt a bit. Come on. You’ve come this far. Once more. Just once.”

Joan nodded. Eunie took her hand. Joan pressed her face into the pillow, she felt nauseous. Her whole body clenched in on itself. And as she pressed her eyes tight, the little kaleidoscopic patterns moved in the darkness behind her eyelids.

“Okay,” Norah said. “It’s done.” The nausea settled. They had been right of course. It hadn’t hurt. The big C doesn’t let go that easy, does it.

Ace showed up after class in his normal state of irritation that he had to teach her classes on his sabbatical. It was an irritation intensified by his dislike of the college and modified by his knowledge that it made her happy.

“I’m going home,” she said.

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

The house is clean. A vision of himself and the boys picking up the house last night appeared in his head. ‘It’ll take two days to pick up this goddamned armpit,’ he heard himself say to them. ‘So we’ll start tonight.’ — ‘But she won’t be home for two or three days’ — ‘We’ll start tonight anyway.’ And so, with some grumbling, the boys had helped and the house had been put in order. Once begun they had carried beyond getting a start. They had finished. He smiled at the image he carried of Daniel pushing a vacuum cleaner, the handle at eye level, vigorously about his room.

“Let us begin,” he said to Joan. “I’ll start carrying plants and stuff out to the car.”

Joan packed all but the clothes she would wear home. When Ace came back from moving the last of the plants down to the car, Eunie was there helping Joan get dressed.

“Don’t look,” Joan said from the bathroom.

She had on her skirt and Eunie was helping her put on the bra. She didn’t have complete movement in her left arm yet and she had some trouble getting her arm through the strap.

“All right, good, okay.” Eunie murmured encouragement. “Now, I’ve got this gauze here. Well just stuff in enough to make the sides match.”

“That’s not going to use up a whole hell of a lot, Eunie,” Ace yelled through the half-open door of the bathroom.

“Isn’t he awful,” Eunie said. “Shut up and carry your plants.”

“I’ve got a Band-Aid here, Eunie, why don’t you just peel the gauze off it. That should be enough.”

Joan said, “Bob, go in the closet and wait there.”

The bra chafed a little. The way it does on a sunburn. Not intolerable, just a little rough feeling. Eunie helped her slip on her blouse. Joan buttoned it up. “Okay, Bob,” she said through the door. “Get yourself under control. Here I come.”

“Be still my heart,” he said. She came out of the bathroom and there she was. The same one he’d brought in. A little slimmer maybe, she’d lost five pounds, but the same one. Her makeup was careful. Her hair was in place. She appeared to have two breasts, and she was resonant with life. Technicolor, he thought, it’s like she’s technicolor and the rest of the world is black and white.

She stood still in front of him for a moment, inviting comment.

“Stay close to me on the way out,” he said. “In case a passion-crazed intern makes a move on you.”

He took the suitcase and she walked ahead of him. She looked fine except that she held her left arm bent a little and close to her side. It took them time to get out of the hospital. There were goodbyes to the nurses, to Benny, to other patients on the floor. It reminded him of when he’d come home from Korea, saying goodbye to people who knew a special thing that you knew, and the joy of deliverance was mixed with the sadness that a special sharing was over. He stood a little aside while she did all of this. He would miss them too. But not the way she would and this was her event.

They said almost nothing on the ride home. There was no need for it, retracing the route they had taken three weeks ago, driving home after driving so often to doctors and to hospitals, driving home with the knowledge that they had, after the knowledge with which they had driven for three weeks, the driving home itself was commentary and celebration. And they knew it. And they didn’t need to say so. The celebration was wordless and profound.

They drove up Canterbury Road with the maple trees in early buds. April’s first green is gold, he thought. For Joan it was a new street. The houses that had stood there since that March day sixteen years ago when she had moved here, thirteen months pregnant as a neighbor had remarked, were different now. The paint was fresher, the shapes sharper against the sky. The maple trees that had stood there since the road had been cut from the Lynn Woods forty years ago, had new grace to the arch of their branches and a new sleekness to the smooth bark on the youngest limbs.

The dog was in the front yard as they drove up. He hadn’t seen Joan in three weeks.

“I wonder what he’ll do,” Joan said. Ace pulled into the driveway and Joan sat for a minute looking at her house. The dog stood poised in the middle of the yard, his gaze fixed on the car, his head tilted slightly to the side. Joan opened her door and got out. The dog raced toward her and past her and jumped into the back seat and sat down and looked out the window.

“You got a real way with dogs,” Ace said. “We all missed you like that.”

Judy Marsh was in Joan’s house. Always, Joan thought, always when I need her.

“I called the hospital and they told me you’d checked out,” she said. “I thought I better get over here and see what the house looked like.”

“You imply I am a slobbo, Jude?” Ace said.

“He probably thinks the house is clean, Jude,” Joan said.

“It is,” Ace said. “The boys and I cleaned it last night. It is spotless.”

Joan said, “Is it, Jude?”

Judy said, “Ha.”

Joan went into the house. Without speaking she went from room to room and stood in each and looked at it. Her husband and her friend stayed outside. He didn’t dust, and he didn’t vacuum good. But he picked up, and by his standards it is clean.