A Season in Hell (11 page)

In our attempt to distract the poor waiter, Esther discovered that he was an aspiring singer and encouraged him to sing to us, which he did, beautifully. Unfortunately, he was ignorant of the reason for our celebration that night, and he sang about death and graveyards. I asked Esther to stop encouraging him, and he retreated into the dark kitchen, where he sat with his head in his hands, near tears. The stoical delivery boy simply gazed at him, expressionless.

I gathered the chimney candles that were scattered around my house. Being a writer-reader and having endured many electrical storms, I have learned that you can read by candlelight only if the light stays still—which requires a chimney. We lit candles in the kitchen and the study, although the study, where we sat, was already fairly bright, its large window facing Central Park and the rising moon.

We talked late, laughed a great deal, and lamented when Gloria called to say she was giving up and going home. I made sleeping arrangements: there were enough beds (and rooms) for three women and the waiter; the delivery boy could lie on a couch. Out of blankets, I gave him my fur coat to keep him warm. But the waiter was afraid to sleep, and he sat up on another couch in the same room. Esther and I went to bed. But Carol sat up all night long to stand guard over Esther and me, to protect us from anything that threatened. Later, when everything was over, Carol said, “There has to be a force field protecting you. Otherwise, why were you the only person in the building whose phone worked?”

The next morning, Isabelle, my assistant, appeared for work as usual, and no one stopped her, although she had to use the stairs. She responded to my guests’ pleas by going all the way downstairs again, fetching coffee for everyone from a restaurant on Broadway, and carrying it back, climbing twenty flights again. Inspired by her example, the waiter and the delivery boy plucked up courage and left. Yura, the caterer, never sent a bill, although I urged her to: none of what had happened was her fault, and she had provided a fine dinner (which went bad, of course, the refrigerator being off). Catastrophes, even minor ones, do tend to illuminate character.

We three of the coven had had a wonderful time, as people often do in crises that are not seriously threatening, and my fellow witches often retell the story of that evening with great gusto. This may be the reason that I never took action against my building, the Ardsley, for its negligence during the crisis. No one ever offered an explanation for the events, and the next morning, during one of poor Isabelle’s treks up and down the dark, stifling back staircases, she encountered a bent-over, aged woman peering out of her kitchen door. Quaveringly, she asked what was going on.

Because of the EPA’s involvement, the matter took weeks to resolve. There was no electricity, and therefore no way to live in the building, until well into October. I had to call the doormen every day to ask if the electricity had been restored yet: no one took responsibility for informing the residents about that, either. And although I put in a claim, the building’s insurance never repaid me for the nights I spent in a hotel. I stayed at the Mayflower for one night, then the kids drove me to the Berkshires for the weekend; on my return, I stayed at Gloria’s for a night and the next day, September 29, reentered S-K for my third course of chemotherapy. Released on October 4, I returned to the Mayflower, but was able to go home the next day.

The day after the fire, Isabelle helped me move to the hotel (chosen because it was near my home and garage) with some clothes and my laptop, books and the bag I kept packed for the hospital. I was able to help her: I could still carry things and walk with energy. I felt buoyant, high on my friends’ laughter the night before and on my latest CT scan. There was a PEN board meeting that evening, the first of the season, and I made the long trip downtown to attend. I felt confident that attending this meeting would mark the resumption of my old life, that now I would be stronger between hospitalizations.

But it was a sorry meeting for me. A couple of women made nasty cracks about my mousy hair color, not realizing I was wearing a wig. I was incredulous: did they
want
to hurt my feelings? If so, why? I must be showing vulnerability (something I’d managed for years to avoid); nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I’d heard girls in school talk of other girls’ cattiness, and I was familiar with supposed female cattiness from movies and plays, but in my sixty-two years, I had never encountered it firsthand. I didn’t understand why they found it necessary to say anything.

Then I saw Sibyl. I was so happy to see her, I rushed toward her. We had not seen each other since February, and she wanted to know how I was—she knew I, too, had cancer; Grace Paley had told her. I told her the chemotherapy had made me quite ill but had also made my tumor disappear, though the doctor promised it would recur. She wished me luck, but her mind was elsewhere. She had been a connected, gracious woman, and she looked at me while we talked, but I sensed she was not seeing me.

And how was
she
feeling? This aroused no greater interest in her. She was all right, she said indifferently. She had gone to a hospital on the Cape for treatment three times a week and had the rest of the time to herself. She’d played tennis all summer. The chemo had not made her sick. I wondered why her treatment and mine were so different, and our responses too.

Sibyl said she felt great bitterness toward her body for inflicting this terrible disease on her. She hated her body for it. And the chemo wasn’t working; her tumor had grown and spread. It was in her lymph nodes now.

I knew she must have oat cell cancer, the type that develops in the lungs, which is fast-growing; whereas I had squamous cell cancer, a slower-growing type, found in organ linings. But it was also true that hers had been detected when it was tiny, whereas mine had metastasized widely before it was discovered. Yet mine had vanished, and hers had grown. I did not understand why.

Mine had also been in the lymph nodes, I said.

“Was yours like this?” she asked, taking my hand and laying it on the flesh above her clavicle, where someone as thin as Sibyl would normally have an indentation. Instead there was a hot huge swollen mass. I was appalled and must have shown it.

“Oh. No. I didn’t have that. Is it painful?” I asked, trying to hide my dismay.

“No,” she said tonelessly, gazing at no one.

“Sibyl,” I urged, “I don’t think it’s good to see your body as the enemy. Can you try to forgive it? Can you put yourself on the same side as your body? You and your body against the cancer?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I think maybe I don’t really want to live.”

“Oh, please live, Sibyl,” I said, my eyes tearing. “We need you. Grace needs you.” When Grace lived in New York, the two women saw each other every day.

She smiled wanly into the distance, seeing her dead husband, her dead son—or so I imagined. In November she died.

I
N OCTOBER, MY CREATININE
count was so low that they could not give me the cisplatin. This was a relief, but it also unnerved me. It meant that the first two doses had damaged my kidneys, perhaps irreparably. Nobody told me. That month, I met the radiologist Bruce Minsky, to whom I expressed my worries. He told me that only rarely can the whole protocol be given to any patient, and that the fluorouracil is if anything more potent than the more toxic drug. He insisted that radiation plus chemo should knock out any cancer that was left—he knew the tumor had disappeared. He also said I was a rarity, for in his many years of practice he had given radiation to only one or two people whose cancers had metastasized.

I did not know why my oncologist chose to break the pattern with me—he never spoke of it, and I forgot to ask him until 1997, when I ran across Bruce’s statement in my notes. It was as I had guessed. An article in a medical journal I had read stated that a few patients with esophageal cancer survived more than a year when they received what the article called extremely severe treatment. “Severe” meant simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation. Although the article described only people whose cancers had not metastasized, it was decided to treat me this way.

The decision was based on the facts of my cancer. Cancers are rated by T (tumor), N (node), and M (metastasis). Tumors are rated by size between 1 and 4: mine was called a 2–3. Lymph nodes affected are rated N–0 or N–1: my affected lymph nodes were at some distance from the tumor but within the range the radiation would reach, so they were considered 0. Metastases may be 0 or 1, again depending on distance from the primary site. The metastasis of my tumor (apart from the lymph nodes) was very close to the original site and would automatically be affected by radiation. I therefore had a chance of living a little longer without my body being subjected to excessive radiation.

My October hospital stay was normal, except I was endowed with more guests than usual, all bubbling with optimism at my good news. The first day, Charlotte came, and that night, the coven appeared, complete with magic wands, eagle feathers, and candles I worried might set off the S-K smoke detectors. As she did each time she came, Gloria massaged my feet, something she excelled at. It was wonderfully relaxing. My old college friend Perry came the same night; the next day, I was visited by my three kids, my sister and her companion, Fred Baron, and my father (who lives near my sister), whom I had not seen since the Christmas before. Though eighty-six, he looked much younger; he was (and is) busy (he works several days a week) and relatively content despite his loneliness for my mother, then six years gone. He embraced me but could not speak. He kept shaking his head from side to side. At some point he muttered that he, not I, should be the one dying. I remember hearing my children’s eighty-odd-year-old great-grandmother say the same thing when her son, their grandfather, died at fifty-nine. “It should have been me,” she moaned. But whatever they say—and mean, at least consciously—those with the life force to survive to great ages cling to life with every pulse and breath of their bodies. Ida Demarest French lived well into her nineties; my father is now ninety-two.

Rob came again the next afternoon, and so did Carol; Gloria Beckerman visited on Friday, followed by Rosita Sarnoff and Beth Sapery—long-standing acquaintances who became friends during this period—and Linsey Abrams. On Saturday, Esther returned, and Jamie. It was—dare I say it?—almost too much. I need a goodly amount of solitude just to feel like myself. Still, my notes show that I revised twelve chapters of
Our Father
that week. They must not have needed much revision.

On Sunday, I was released—on time this month—and went back to the Mayflower. That night, I went out to dinner with the kids and Barbara’s mother, Ruth, and her sister, Donna McKechnie, the great dancer. I remember we went to the Mackinac, a home-style restaurant on the West Side, chosen for its name—the McKechnies had lived in upper Michigan for years. I ordered macaroni and cheese, hoping I could eat something that soft; but I could not. I could only drink, and only water, apple juice, and tea. (I had been a coffee addict before; every morning I drank two cups of it made with the very best fresh-ground beans I could find, usually Celebes kalossi. Now coffee upset my insides; also anything with bubbles tortured my esophagus, and anything alcoholic burned it, as did acidic juices. At home, I often drank iced aloe vera and chamomile tea. I thought that if I survived, all this would vanish, but in fact it never did.) The mouth sores had already begun, on the
fifth
day after chemo this time. But this time, they lasted only a little over a week.

On Monday, I went to S-K for the first in a series of sessions to be measured for radiation. This lengthy process is undertaken to assure that the radiation will hit the affected area and only that area. Measured according to a formula the doctor has drawn up, you are marked with tiny tattoos that will guide the technicians when they move the machines around you.

My friends and children continued their faithful appearances; someone stayed with me every night—Rob and Barbara, Jamie, Carol, and Esther; Barbara Greenberg spent a day and night. I must have been feeling good, because my calendar is filled with movies, plays, lunches, and dinners I attended with a friend or my children. I saw Jim Silberman, my publisher; Florence Howe, a friend and the director of the Feminist Press; a new friend, the playwright Janet Neipris; and my old friend Herb Weiss, as well as the coven and my kids. Someone drove me up to visit my friend LeAnne Schreiber in Ancram; we went to the jewel-box Ancram Opera House, which Melina Herring had turned into a successful theatrical enterprise. Despite all this, my memory of that time is permeated with dread and malaise; I was without joy in life. But perhaps I am projecting backward.

On October 26, I underwent the last preparation for radiation at S-K, and the next day I had my first session. The entire business is permeated with a sense of high seriousness: the technicians who work on you are pleasant enough but profoundly aware of the perils of radiation. A patient cannot but be extremely aware of the care they take, the anxiety that accompanies their placement of the machine, and the ceremony surrounding their swift evacuation of the room before the machine is turned on. You cannot avoid the realization that you are undergoing a procedure that is perhaps even more life-threatening than chemotherapy.

I was to have thirty sessions of radiation, altogether 5,000 rads. For the first segment of each session, I was instructed to lie on my back, while the technicians focused the machine directly on my esophagus, then angled in on it from the right, then the left side. The machine was angled this way so that the ray, shaped by the radiologist to spoon up, would not hit my spine. The spine cannot take more than 3,000 rads without severe damage. Then I was asked to turn over, and again the technicians moved the machine from one side to another. The whole process took about half an hour, and during it I felt nothing at all except anxiety—my own and that of the technicians. Indeed, when I first began to feel sick, I wondered if it was the atmosphere of that room that was affecting me. I thought it was all in my mind, because the radiation caused no sensation whatever. I felt nothing, or nothing I can describe: I felt bad but could not tell why. My experience was like that throughout the treatments—a creeping malaise that cannot be described because nothing in particular hurt, nor was there local debilitation beyond the burns. The next day, they started the chemo again.