The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (5 page)

Tess says something cute about Fred Astaire, and then the two of them chat about the storm in tonight’s forecast and how fun that’ll be for the kids who received sleds for Christmas as they walk down the institutional hallways lined with pastoral prints to give them a little pizzazz. When they reach a door marked Mammography, Ginger ushers her in, nods toward a stack of green paper gowns on the metal counter, and tells her that it was nice to meet her and that someone will be in shortly.

Tess changes into a gown and passes the time paging through a seven-month-old
Glamour
magazine. Just like her younger sister had, her 110-pound daughter wants to emulate those starving-for-dollars models. My friend hadn’t made Haddie self-conscious about her weight the way Louise had Birdie’s when she called her, “Tubby-tubby-two-by-four” and “Two-ton Robin,” so it was a shock when she first learned of her daughter’s disorder on their way home from an art show in Madison two summers ago. One of Haddie’s shots of Garbo sailing through the air with her Frisbee in her mouth had won best in state.

Ice cream had always been a go-to treat, so Tess suggested they stop at Dairy Queen. She ordered a Coke, but instead of asking for her usual hot fudge sundae, Haddie backed away, pushed through the scruffy end-of-the-day kids and the end-of-their-rope parents, and fled out the door.

Tess shrugged, and said to the counter woman, “Teenagers,” and ordered the sundae anyway.

When she returned to the car, it was to find her then-seventeen-year-old daughter huddled up in the passenger seat, her hands cradling her face, and her blue ribbon splotched with tears. This was not an immediate cause for alarm. Haddie wept everyday about one thing or another. She was having trouble with her skin, her hair was falling out, and…she was so fat!

It had been a long day that had gotten under Tess’s skin in more ways than one. She grew more anxious in crowds like the one at the art show. It’d been exhausting to not only deal with her panic, but hide it from her daughter. Keeping her problems on the down-low was Tess’s most important parenting policy. She couldn’t let her children know that she was nuts. Wouldn’t let Haddie and Henry down the way she and Birdie had been let down by their mother. And on top of all the usual stuff she dealt with on a daily basis, another problem had been thrown into the mix. She and Will had been fighting about the loan he’d taken out to build the party room at the diner. They’d had another knock-down, drag-out fight that morning.

Tess was in no mood for any adolescent guff.

“Eat. You’ll feel better,” she said as she wiggled the hot fudge sundae under Haddie’s nose.

She pushed the cup away and gagged out, “I can’t, Mommy.”

Tess thought it a strange choice of words. “What do you mean you
can’t?
”

When her daughter lifted her face…there it was. The same haunted look that had come over her Birdie when she’d begun to struggle with her eating.

“Good morning!”

Tess’s sad ruminations are interrupted when a lovely young woman with luxurious dark hair secured atop her head with enamel red chopsticks bustles into the mammography room. Tess is glad she’s of the Asian persuasion. She feels more comfortable with people of color, the darker the better. (She thinks it’s because the non-white set their expectations a lot lower, which gives them something in common right off the bat, but in actuality, it’s a little more complicated than that.) “I’m Rhonda Lee. You know the drill. Let’s do the left one first.” She smoothes down Tess’s breast like she’s petting a finicky cat, then twists the knobs that’ll lower the Plexiglas. “Deep breath and hold,” she says before she runs and hides behind a wall that she comes out from behind a few seconds later. “Other side.”

Tess is doing what’s asked, but in a robotic way. She’s not aware of it, but she’s dissociated, which is a defense mechanism she uses sometimes when the going gets tough. (It’s something like unenrolling from an organization whose practices you don’t approve of. Thing is…you’re the organization.) Her mind is not engaged in the screening, it’s running off one of her many To-Do Lists in her head. After she’s finished up here, she needs to head to the grocery store to pick up broccoli for Haddie, who will eat it steamed and torn into pieces that make Tess think of guillotined leprechauns. The usual pepperoni pizza for Henry, and Garbo was low on Milk-Bones. Nothing special for Will. He’ll grab something at the diner; he’s been doing that on Wednesday nights. Coming home late too. “Busy,” he tells her. “With what?” she asks. “The books,” he tells her.

After putting up with her for almost thirty years, had Will finally grown sick and tired of her and all her problems? Because he rubs his finger under his nose when he lies, Tess knows he’s not doing the books on Wednesday nights. She’s fairly certain that he’s doing Connie Lushman, the hostess at Count Your Blessings, who also happens to be his former fiancée that he dumped almost thirty years ago soon after he met Tess.

The mammography technician checks her Hello Kitty watch and says, “Got what I need. Back in a few minutes. Wait to get dressed,” and rushes off.

Tess rummages around in her purse for a pen. She’s made To-Do Lists her whole life, but she’s stepped them up lately because her everyday memory has grown worse. “The Change” has hit. She found her car keys in the refrigerator yesterday, which was fine, because she wasn’t sure where she’d parked her car.

Unable to find a piece of paper, my friend rips a piece off the bottom of the paper gown, which causes her breasts to peek through the crack. She thinks back to when they’d first begun to bud, and how she would sneak into the bathroom, lift up her nightie, and get to work. Fiercely pressing her palms together—an exercise she’d watch buxom Debbie Drake perform on her TV show—she’d chant, “I must, I must, I must increase my bust. I must…I must…I must.” She runs her finger across the pale stretch marks that beam out from her nipples like a kindergartener’s version of the sun. Like the ones her children drew when they still thought their mom hung the moon and the stars.

Rhonda Lee must’ve made a stop in the ladies’ room, because when she returns, Tess can smell mouthwash—Listerine—and newly applied deodorant—Secret. Spring Breeze. (Like most people with PTSD, my friend has a nose like a hound, German shepherd hearing too, both of which enable her to sniff out danger either real or imagined.) She waits to be assured that everything looks great, but instead, Rhonda Lee, who’s already late meeting Laurie from physical therapy to dish on the new resident in radiology over coffee, says grumpily, “We have to take a few more pictures of the right one.”

“But—”

“Maybe you moved or didn’t hold your breath long enough.”

The need for a redo would be a red flag to most women, but Tess puts it down to either a tech error or glitch in the machine. Like she told Haddie this morning, “Nothin’ to worry about, honey. Cancer doesn’t run in the family.”

She’s back working on her new To-Do List when not Rhonda Lee, but the head of the Women’s Center glides back into the room a few minutes later.

“Please dress and come into my office,” Ginger Baestock says in a voice that is not as carefree sounding as it was on their walk to the exam room. She’s making Tess feel like she’s a dozen eggs being inspected for cracks. “It’s two doors down on the left.”

This
is
concerning. This has never happened before and Tess isn’t equipped to deal with things that have never happened before. As she wrestles on her bra, it finally crosses her mind that they might’ve found something in her right breast that’s not supposed to be there, but only fleetingly. Even in her bleakest, most-depressed times, she has not once imagined having breast cancer. Too far-fetched. More out of line even than that curare foolishness she has not entirely shaken off. So she decides that Ginger must want to talk to her about something else. The bill? Will has been so preoccupied. Had he forgotten to pay the health insurance premium?

She’s embarrassed by her husband’s potential oversight when she sets herself in the proffered tweed chair on the other side of Ginger’s shiny gray desk. A translucent breast paperweight—a snow globe without the fun—sits atop a stack of charts next to pictures of two children in golden frames. “What’s up?” she asks.

“Dear?” Ginger extends her age-spotted hands toward her. “I’m afraid there’s no easy way to tell you this.”

Tess agrees, these types of moments are always uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to hold hands with Ginger. She says, “I know. I’m sorry. My husband has been so busy. I’ll make sure he gets that insurance payment out today.”

“I don’t think….” Ginger regroups. “We’ve found something in your right breast.”

Certain that a mistake has been made—you read about that happening all the time in hospitals—Tess gives old Ginger, who must’ve mixed up the results of her mammogram with another patient’s on account of her failing eyesight, a deadpan look and says, “Huh.” (Wait for it.) “It’s probably just a piece of Juicy Fruit. I heard that stuff never really gets digested.”

“How about we take an ultrasound to make sure?” the head of the Women’s Center says with a pained smile as she reaches behind her and slips a rust-colored cardigan across her narrow shoulders.

Unnecessary testing—you read about
that
happening in hospitals all the time too. Tess grasps her lucky purse to her chest. “I’m sorry, I can’t right now.” She doesn’t want to embarrass Ginger by pointing out her mistake. “I need to go grocery shopping and…how about I call for an appointment?”

“As long as you’re here…,” Ginger says as she puts a firm arm around her shoulder.

A young man with a wind-swept look that had Tess wondering if he’d sailed to work this morning is waiting for them in a room down the hall. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Carl.” He’s wearing a lab coat and oddly, the same old-fashioned cologne her husband likes—English Leather. Shouldn’t he be wearing Old spice? she asks herself.

After Carl helps her onto the table and dims the lights, he smoothes a cool gel over her right breast, and proceeds to rub a wand up and down and all around. He’s not looking directly at her, but at an image that’s come up on his computer. It reminds Tess of an Apollo lunar landing.

“Look,” she says as she points at a glob on his screen. “Feel free to correct me, you’re the expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s Neil Armstrong.”

Carl is kind enough to grin, but his eyes remain riveted to the screen until he switches off the machine and hands her a few tissues to remove the gel. “Good luck,” he says.

She thanks him, and is shrugging down her gray T-shirt when Ginger pokes her head through the door a few minutes later. Per her suggestion, Tess follows her back to the office where she’s positive Ginger is about to offer her a butterscotch out of the pretty crystal dish she has on her desk before she tells her with an apologetic smile,
Sorry to have wasted your time.
It was a false alarm. But I’m so glad we went ahead and did the ultrasound anyway, aren’t you? Better safe than sorry.

But the head of the Women’s Center doesn’t offer Tess a piece of candy when she sits down across from her. She says, “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid the mass looks very suspicious.” Ginger opens a drawer and removes a thick packet that she slides across the desk. “I know this is a lot to take in. This literature will be helpful. Is there someone I could call for you?”

Tess brings her thumbnail to her mouth.

Only riffraff bite their nails
, Louise barks in her head
.

Tess lowers her hand and says, “No offense meant, but is there a doctor I can talk to?”

Ginger, who had grown concerned over Tess’s blasé reaction to the diagnosis, appears relieved by the question. (She has no idea of how terrified she is, that’s how great my friend is at hiding her feelings.) “Certainly,” she says as she quickly steps out of the office to search for a physician.

Tess forces herself to look down at the top pamphlet in the packet Ginger had given her. A woman with a pageboy is gazing up gratefully at a Marcus Welby look-alike. It’s unclear which one of them is wondering:

Told you there were a coupla stupid questions,
her mother pipes in.

“Dr. Blankenship,” Ginger announces when she returns moments later with a svelte man who’s raked his hair like a Zen garden. “Our radiologist.”

Tess is sure the doctor must’ve said hello and something else nice, but all she heard was, “We can’t be positive it’s cancer without a biopsy, and we don’t have the necessary equipment here. They’ll have to perform it at St. Mary’s City Hospital.”

When Ginger passes Tess a card with the information she’ll need to set up the biopsy appointment, her fight-or-flight response kicks in. Her heart begins beating against her ribs, her breath comes in gasps, her stomach cramps, and courtesy of the extra adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, she possesses enough strength to beat the hell out of Ginger and the radiologist with one hand tied behind her back. Or…she could run for her life.

She wisely chooses option two. “Thank you…nice to meet you both, but I gotta…,” she tells them as she flees out the office door, down the hallway, and out the hospital doors to the safety of the old Volvo, her home away from home.

“Cancer?” comes out on frosty breath. “But….”

She knows more about malaria than she does breast cancer. She’s gonna die? What about the children? Unable to process the tsunami of thoughts and feelings, she reminds herself to breathe. She’s in a full-blown, thought-ceasing panic, but on some level she knows she needs to restore equilibrium before she goes off the deep end. Crying would help, but she doesn’t do much of that. No, when the chips are down, Tess Blessing sings.

“I’ve got something in my pocket that belongs across my face. I keep it very close at hand in a most convenient place,” she wails in her flat voice on the way out of the hospital lot. “I bet you’ll never guess it if you guess a long, long while. So I’ll take it out and put it on, it’s a great big Brownie smile.”