Chapter Nineteen

“When did you first become aware of it?”

Dr. Pavlik was looking at Flora the way her father would look at her or her sisters when they were children and had done something well worthy of punishment. Like the time Flora snuck a baby rabbit into her bedroom and fed it lettuce for a week before the smell of its output alerted Delia. Flora felt the same shame and inability to respond in the face of the doctor’s stern question.

It didn’t help matters that Flora was shirtless. Not only was she exposed in such a humiliating way, but there was no option of running away. Her blouse was hanging on the back of the door, and the doctor stood between her and it. He had just removed his fingers from her left breast where they had been manipulating it, and now his hands hung, clasped, in front of his crotch, as he leaned forward, into his question and toward her, his brow furrowed. He was such a handsome man. Flora wondered how his wife managed the thought of him touching the most intimate parts of other women all day.

“Flora.”

She knew it wasn’t normal—the thing or her reaction to it. She had probably known that since the first time she noticed it, when, she must now admit, it was not as noticeable. But it wasn’t even a lump, the word that was so frightening to women, the ones that told each other about theirs or about the lumps of others. The phrase “found a lump” was a scythe. No, hers was a divot, a pucker, so it didn’t seem like the worst thing. She can’t even remember when that was that she detected this not-terrible thing. A year ago? It was the sort of thing where she registered it, thought a little something of it, then filed it away as a thing she knew about but never deliberately considered. It bothered her in the semiconscious way that the cupboard underneath the bathroom sink, warped from a decade of sauna-like conditions, didn’t close all the way and pressed against her knee while she completed her nightly beauty rituals. Over time it morphed from something she knew she ought to do something about to simply something familiar.

“We’ll do a biopsy,” the doctor said. “Then we’ll know more. Whether it’s something we can take out and not worry about, or whether it’s malignant.”

“Malignant” was one of those words that Will used excessively, though rarely in relation to tumors and cancer. Personalities and relationships were malignant. Only occasionally when she could tell he reveled in delivering the news about someone’s—a friend’s or associate’s—diagnosis, did he use it in the appropriate context. He would not be pleased about the reported illness, but rather about the opportunity for his authoritative medical use of the word. He was in the habit, perhaps unconsciously, of expressing himself with accuracy when talking to their friends. For instance, he would say, “He had primary cancer of the liver” instead of “he had cancer” or “he had liver cancer.” And some people, Flora noticed, did enjoy being the bearer of bad news. She struggled to understand that motive in people and the best she could come up with is that they were, in a sense, saying, “I am special.” But Flora thought it should be obvious to everyone that when people receive bad news, they are only able to pay attention to the news and don’t take the time to think about, much less be impressed by, the rarefied position of the messenger. But Will was oblivious and egocentric in a more straightforward way than that.

The doctor’s shoes were tan suede with brown, leathery laces. They didn’t seem like regular doctor shoes. They went up the ankle a bit, like short boots. They gave the vague impression of being hippieish, something that Steve Levy or Kevin might wear. These shoes on the doctor made the reprimand smart less and reduced the urge for Flora to grab her blouse and run through the waiting room and into the parking lot without even acknowledging any necessary dealings with the receptionist. So she finally spoke.

Dr. Pavlik had turned away from her and began opening and closing drawers. With his attention reduced, she felt relief. And courage.

“So I have breast cancer.” She said this to his suede boots just as they swiveled toward her once more.

“No. I don’t know, Flora. But we’re going to find out. Let’s not worry unnecessarily.” He put his hand on her bare shoulder briefly before leaving her alone in the room.

Driving home, Flora thought of Pat Nixon, who as of a few days prior was no longer living in the White House. She admired Mrs. Nixon but kept that opinion, like so many others, to herself. Pat’s life had probably been rife with things that she had never imagined when she was a little girl. That she would be First Lady. And when she became First Lady and began to settle into it, she could never have imagined that she would leave that post prematurely and would be standing loyally by her disgraced husband who had kept secrets from her. But on some level, Flora was sure, she must have sensed that something was rotten in Denmark.

When Flora pulled into the driveway, Will was just opening the garage door. His green Imperial idled. He saw her and opened her side of the garage. They had never arrived in the driveway at the same time before, though there had been well over a decade for such a potential occurrence. In the car with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on, the coincidence made her laugh out loud. It occurred to her that the Nixons’ marriage—cold on the outside and warm on the inside—was rather the reverse of the Roses’.

The edition of Little Women available in Scrivener’s had a cover that Flora found grim and fusty. She preferred the one that Bea had borrowed from the school library. But she took a copy of the one available to her then looked cursorily around the store for the table that had featured Our Bodies Ourselves. Six months earlier, she would have felt self-conscious leafing through a book called Rape or Women and Madness. Today, though, she felt curious and bold. But the women-centric display appeared to have been supplanted by a back-to-school theme. She picked up a copy of The Dogs of War for Will’s birthday two months away, though she wasn’t confident that she had accurately read his tone in “Forsyth does it again” after reading its review. She also glanced toward the stationery counter to see if she could spot Steve Levy, but seeing no males nor redheads, she paid for the books and returned to her car. Fear of Flying and The War Between the Tates, unearthed from the lingerie drawer and thus inadvertently scented by a lavender sachet, lay on the already broiling hot passenger seat. Flora removed the war novel and bound the other two, along with Little Women, with a long strand of white curling ribbon she had brought with her. With the cuticle scissors in her purse manicure set, she curled the ribbon ends and placed them in the Scrivener’s bag. Satisfied with her motley assemblage and its understated presentation, she walked towards Woolworth’s.

Dawn was already sitting in one of the booths. Flora felt a flood of tenderness upon seeing her head bent over the menu. She looked like a child. Flora was only going to Paris for a week but she would miss meeting Dawn and might not be able to keep up the regularity once her piano students returned for the school year and the few new ones that were bound to spring up. Did Dawn have other friends? How did Flora not know? She should. Abby should be Dawn’s friend. Not Flora. She shoved the thought away.

Flora handed Dawn the Scrivener’s bag. “Just a little something to help fill your bookcase,” she said, moving her attention to the menu while Dawn peered in the bag and made polite sounds of surprise about receiving an unexpected gift.

“Oh! Little Women,” she pronounced with animated sentimentality. She wriggled the ribbon off of the small bundle to reveal first the Fear of Flying—“Oh this book! I kept hearing about it!”—and then the Lurie, which she silently inspected, scanning the blurbs on the back. “Don’t know this one. Is it a favorite of yours?”

“No, not really. Those two are hand-me-downs I read earlier this year and you might enjoy them. You can let me know. Actually, I’d love to know what you think, if you get around to reading them. And Little Women, well, it just belongs on every girl’s bookshelf, doesn’t it?” Flora returned to the menu to underscore the professed insignificance of the gift.

Dawn put her hand on top of Flora’s. “You are so dear, Flora. Thank you so much. It was so thoughtful of you.” The look on her face was earnest and sincere which didn’t do anything to tamp down Flora’s already emotionally susceptible state.

“Oh, it’s nothing. We just have so many books in the house and these just don’t quite fit in with Will’s library, if you know what I mean.”

“You don’t have a female section, you mean?”

They laughed, and Flora thought that it wouldn’t be beyond imagination for Will to want to curate a token women’s studies area in one of the built-in bookshelves flanking the fireplace. He had a burgeoning collection with Margaret Mead’s and Zelda Fitzgerald’s autobiographies, which he had read, and Maya Angelou’s, which he had not. “No, not yet!” She relaxed a bit, allowing the laughter to serve as a release.

“I have a bit of exciting news,” said Flora. The words felt false and scripted.

“Oooh! What is it?”

“I’m going to Paris in a week. With Abby and Bea. To visit my sister Lillian.”

Dawn clasped her hands and brought them up to her chin in a show of excitement. “Paris! That’s so cool!”

Flora immediately wanted to temper her boastful announcement. If the mention of any city sounded more glamorous or grandiose, Flora didn’t know what it was. And even more ostentatious, to be going abroad so imminently and that she hadn’t shared the news earlier, as if it were a prosaic trip to the Thousand Islands. Dawn had likely never been to Paris—though maybe Svengali had taken her?—and would probably love to go. Flora allowed herself to briefly envision swapping Dawn in for Abby. Guilt slashed the image instantly. She nearly blurted her other news, to further downplay her good fortune, that she was having a breast biopsy even sooner than that. She wasn’t sure that by the end of lunch it might not come out. She hadn’t told a soul and had no plans to. While she knew it would be selfish to worry Dawn, she was greedy for a response that would make Flora feel lighter. She could climb onto Dawn’s fading Baptist coattails and extort some maxim that would help Flora by the mere fact of Dawn’s genuine belief in it. It was a self-serving and presumptuous thought, and she tried to suppress it as they ate.

“Did you ever think about leaving? Moving somewhere else altogether?” Flora asked, a strategically diverting ballast of a question just as their coffees arrived. And then added boldly, on whose behalf she wasn’t sure, “You could start a new life somewhere else.”

“I have started a new life,” Dawn said cheerfully. “And I didn’t have to go to the trouble of figuring out or deciding where to go. Who’s to say something is better anywhere else.” No place feels like home. Isn’t that what Will’s notes had quoted?

“This place is as much my home as any other place.” Flora flushed at Dawn’s omniscience. But here she was, in the flesh, redefining the statement. “People are people everywhere, for better or worse. I’ve lived in different places, and I feel like it doesn’t really matter. And I like it here. And I wouldn’t be pretending to take piano lessons with you if I lived in some other place.”

Where Will would have denounced and thwarted their friendship, even if she had not been his one-off patient, and would diminish it by declaring that Dawn was merely searching for a maternal stand-in, Flora would readily admit the converse. She would declare that it was she who looked up to Dawn, a person who addressed her life and walked toward people instead of away from them and who spoke her mind and shared herself instead of clamping herself shut so nothing would get in or out.

As they waited for the waitress to bring their change, Flora explained to Dawn that she might not see her again until after her trip to Paris.

“I have a doctor’s appointment next week at this time, I’m afraid. And I’ll be busy getting ready to travel.”

“Oh, nothing’s wrong, is it?” Dawn looked at Flora searchingly.

She had already put so much onto Dawn, information that her other friends or her sisters would be elated to be privy to. She couldn’t add this one, which felt simultaneously like taking it away from the others. The skewed scenario suddenly made her want to lie on her bed with a cool compress on over her eyes.

“Everything’s fine.”