The Glass Factory (13 page)

I flop down on the couch and stare at the TV screen for half an hour with the cat on my lap. Billy’s watching
Viva Zapata!
which ought to be great, but it’s a disappointment. Why? They’ve got white guys from Brooklyn playing Mexicans with horsehair moustaches glued over their lips. I know it was made in the fifties, but I mean, it
was
produced in Southern California and filmed in Texas, Colorado, and Mexico—it’s not like there weren’t any real
mexicanos
around! Anthony Quinn’s just spilled taco filling on the Mexican Constitution when Colomba comes in and asks me in Spanish how it went. I tell her lousy, and when I show her the crayon list with all six names checked off she says, “How about Reggie Einhorn?”

And I ask, “Who?”

“Reggie Einhorn. He lives three houses down.”

“And he works for Morse Techtonics?”

“Fifteen years.”

“I’ll go see him right now.”

“Uh, Filomena—”

“Yes?”

“A doctor called.”

“Dr. Wrennch?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He got your biopsy results.”

“And?”

“He wants to see you first thing tomorrow.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“Cuñada—”
First time she’s called me that.

“Yes?”

“It didn’t sound good.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Oh so young so goddamn young.
—Patti Smith

I WATCH HER SLEEP.

I watch her, thinking about before I left Solano, in the high
sierra,
how my uncle Agustín broke a freshly baked cross-shaped sugar cookie in two and made me eat half of it, then buried the rest out in the cornfield, saying, “Now you have to come back, to eat the other half. Half your soul will always be here.” For years I made my cousins smuggle in a few ears of Solano corn in their flight bags, just so I could get a taste of that food grown in the earth that made me.

She wakes up when I’m putting on my business clothes. She knows what that means.

“Don’t go again,” she pleads, in an irresistible childish whimper.

“But I have to, Toni, I have to go to the doctor.”

She starts crying. Not a serious cry, but it requires treatment. I hug hug hug her.

“It won’t be much longer,” I explain.

“Then we’ll be together?”

“Yes.” And suddenly I’m holding back tears. No. No. No. I’ve got to keep control. I can’t lose it. Not yet. Not before I can get back into the Morse Techtonics Billing Office.

I give the die a spin and thereby survive the ride up to the University Hospital. For whatever good it does me. The doc tells me straight out:

“It’s a malignant chest tumor, Ms. Buscarsela. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? What does that mean? Aren’t you going to do anything?”

“Of course there are options. Most cancers are treatable, but not curable.”

“And what about mine?”

“I can’t be sure yet. I mean—I don’t know. We can schedule some chemotherapy, but I think your case calls for more severe treatment.”

“Which is what?”

“Radiation. You’ll have to spend the next several weeks in the hospital—”

“No.”

“What?”

“No.”

“I don’t think you understand, we need to contain this tumor immediately. I’m recommending an implantation of radium needles in the flesh around the tumor to isolate and cauterize it for removal,
then
we’ll see if chemotherapy will inhibit the spread.”

“Radium needles?”

“Let me show you.” He brought a catalog with him. He flips it open to a four-color photo of gold and platinum needles arranged in a symmetrical battery of missiles but before he can begin my eye falls on the corporate logo in the bottom right corner: Sprilling. A division of Morse Techtonics.

Well, I see that and I guess I go a bit insane. I think I accuse him of something ridiculous like trying to kill me but I know I push the catalog away so hard it fans out noisily, flaps to the floor, and I am already out of the office and on the highway before I realize I’d better slow down below 70 mph if I want to see Antonia, like I promised.

Hours later, when I’ve finally cooled off, I realize that I must have made quite an impression on young Dr. Wrennch. I can just see him writing in his log: “Very peculiar patient today. Absolutely
refuses
treatment. Almost became violent at the suggestion of using radium needles. Must have the staff psychologist observe her the next time she comes.”

“Why are we looking at the sunset?” asks Antonia.

“Because the sky is beautiful when it’s sunset.”

“After the sunset is the sky going to be ugly?”

I laugh, and when she asks what’s funny I tell her, so she keeps repeating the phrase the whole walk back to the house. I put her to bed and go downstairs to sit at the kitchen table so I can do some serious staring into space. Without asking, Colomba prepares an
agua de remedio
for my nerves. I tell her nerves are not my problem, but she dismisses that with an authoritative wave of her hand. By the time I’ve put myself around two cups of the stuff she’s got me telling her things I didn’t even know were on my mind.

I’ve been so single-mindedly pursuing my one questionable goal of trying to destroy a leech named Morse that I haven’t been planning for what’s going to happen to Antonia after—

“—after I’m not around any more.”

“We all face it,
cuñada,”
Colomba tells me in Spanish. “At one time or another.
Así es
.”

“Because I
know
that sometime in her young life someone’s going to try to make her believe some lies and if I’m not there to intercept it—at first, I mean—later on, I’m sure she can judge for herself, but ’til then—”

“The Lord will protect her.”

“Some person is going to hurt her and I’ve got to be there to say, ‘It’s all right, Antonia, it’s all right. I’m here …’“

And I find myself cradled in Colomba’s arms, tears purging my eyes while I recite a litany of prayers for the protection of my child, bargaining with God to please, please just let Antonia live a long and full life.

And just let me boil Morse’s ass in a vat of hot tar and smear him across the Long Island Expressway.

The next day when I’ve recovered some of the sensation that’s supposed to distinguish the living from the dead I take Antonia with me back to the hospital where we catch Dr. Wrennch unexpectedly.

“Oh, uh—” He’s at a loss for words.

So I say, “Sorry. It’s kind of long story. It’d fill a couple of books. Can we talk?”

“Sure.” He closes the medical journal he was reading.

I explain: “Facing death is rough enough without being told you’re dead before your time.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“I guess you know I used to flirt with death rather openly.”

“You mean the smoking?”

“Yeah. And other things. Cop work revealed to me the humbling fact that the inside of a dead human smells pretty much the same as the inside of a dead rat. But now that—now that I’m trying to be a responsible parent to this wonderful daughter of mine—”

“That’s me,” says Antonia.

“Yes, that’s right, Tonia. Now that—I’m a mom—the prospect of—”

I can’t seem to find my tongue. It was there this morning, too. I don’t know why, but suddenly I find myself unable to go on. It’s nervous energy. Yeah, nerves. Tension. I’ve got to stop. Suppress. Ignore.

But I can’t.

“Nobody really knows why you die of cancer,” he’s saying.

I’m back. “So tell me about the chemotherapy.”

“I urgently recommend the radiation treatment—”

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“It’ll weaken me, won’t it?”

“For a few weeks.”

“I don’t have a few weeks.”

He moves his chair closer and puts his hand on my knee. “Let me be the judge of that.”

I’d like to kick him through the window. Instead the perverse imp of free-floating emotion puts my hand on his. This human contact is good. And we are not ashamed.

I should take the chemotherapy via a catheter, but that would lay me up longer, so he’s willing to try injections. Twenty to thirty treatments, twice a day for two weeks.

“What about exercise?” he asks.

“I’ve been running around like crazy—”

“Panic and aerobic cardiovascular exercise are two different things.”

“Thanks. I know that.”

“Do you jog?”

“I used to. Can’t anymore. Shreds the hell out of my lungs.”

“Have you tried bicycling?”

“Not really. You need a car just to get a gallon of milk in this town.”

“Please think about it.”

“It’ll mean an investment in helmets, a baby seat—”

“The nice weather’s here, just in time for Memorial Day.”

“I imagine your business doubles during the holidays.”

“Not mine—by the time they get to me they’re beyond help.”

I cringe. And me, who used to haul bodies to the morgue on a weekly basis.
Other
people’s bodies. He shifts the topic. “Now July Fourth is another story. Every year we get kids with hands, fingers blown off, glass shrapnel in their eyes, third degree burns—”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Well frankly, Ms. Buscarsela, I think we should begin your chemotherapy immediately. What do you say to that?”

What do I say?

“Call me Filomena.”