48. Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Five
A ngie headed out to her support group at the hospital sporting the Victory headscarf, the one her grandmother used to wear at the aviation plant before her accident. She felt it was appropriate. Arriving in the education room, she found a seat near Floyd and Nena, if only for the comic relief.
Nena nodded to the scarf on Angie’s head and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Welcome to the club.”
“Sadly, yes,” Angie said.
“Don’t be sad, little lady. There’s a lot of perks,” Floyd piped in.
She stared at him blankly.
He turned to Nena. “Tell her about the bonuses of being bald.”
Nena held up her hand and ticked things off on her fingers. “First, you don’t have to wash and style your hair anymore. Time saver. Second, no trips to the salon for expensive cuts and colors. Third, some people look better bald.” She looked at Floyd and joked, “With you, we can’t tell the difference.”
Floyd laughed. “I never have to carry a comb with me anymore.”
“And most of all,” Nena said, “you never have to worry about a bad hair day again.”
“Because every day is a no-hair day!” Floyd said, crossing his arms over his chest.
As Angie expected, she ended up smiling and laughing.
“What is that on your arm?” Nena asked Floyd.
Floyd lifted his arm to show a patch of duct tape on the elbow of his rust-colored cardigan. “I’ve got a hole.”
Nena pursed her lips and scowled. “Throw that out.”
“I can’t. It’s my favorite sweater, and it was a Christmas gift.” He turned to Angie. “I think it brings out my eyes, what do you think?”
Angie shook her head and said, “I don’t know what to think.”
“A Christmas gift from what year?” Nena demanded.
Floyd looked up to the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. “1980?”
“What does your wife say?”
“Let’s just say she picks her battles.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Nena said. “Angie, do you see what I’ve had to put up with for the last few months?”
Floyd chuckled. “Humor is the best medicine,” he said, and he waggled his eyebrows.
“I’m not so sure,” Nena said, but she was laughing.
Katharine proceeded to get the meeting going, and tonight’s topic was dealing with well-meaning family and friends. She used air quotes around the term.
Nena got the ball rolling. “My sister-in-law, who’s an airhead on the best of days, said to me, ‘Well, at least you’ll lose weight on the chemotherapy.’ As you know, I’m never at a loss for words, but I was speechless.”
“You, speechless?” Floyd interrupted. “I would have paid to see that.”
Lisa, the young mother, spoke up next. “What’s worse is when people don’t acknowledge it. When they say nothing.”
There was a chorus of agreement.
Lisa continued. “I think it’s because I’m young and have little kids.”
Nena gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s happened to me. I think people don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. Or they’re afraid they’re going to put their foot in their mouth. And it turns your diagnosis into the elephant in the room.”
“Angie, what about you?” Katharine asked.
“My biggest gripe is that although my family has been wonderful, they want me to ‘rest’ all the time. Sometimes, I feel okay, and I want to go to work. I love my job.”
An elderly man across the circle nodded and added, “Same. Everyone wants me to nap. Or sit in the recliner. I was pretty active until my diagnosis, and I hardly ever sat down. Now they want to put me to bed.”
“Let’s discuss ways we can deal with these situations,” Katharine said. She passed around a pile of worksheets.
By the end of the week, Angie had developed ulcers on the inside of her mouth, another side effect of chemotherapy. Christmas was bearing down on them, but she wasn’t in the mood. At the back of her mind was the thought that she had another chemo treatment scheduled only days before Christmas, and she wondered what kind of condition she’d be in for the holiday. She’d informed everyone in her family that they’d be given gift cards, and they all told her that she didn’t need to buy any gifts at all. But she’d ignored that.
Currently, she sat on her sofa with Debbie, who’d brought over some vanilla ice cream Angie was eating right out of the carton with a spoon. The mouth sores hurt so much she had to be careful, but the coldness of the ice cream helped.
They were waiting for Angie’s mother and two of her sisters, who insisted on coming over to decorate for the holidays. Angie had almost protested, but decided to save her energy for more important things. While they waited, Debbie had retrieved Angie’s dusty old box of Christmas decorations from the basement and assembled the brand-new artificial tree Maureen’s husband had dropped off, which now stood in the front window. It had been many years since Angie had bothered with a tree. She was never home to enjoy it.
“Are you sure you don’t want a spoon?” Angie asked Debbie, holding up the carton of ice cream.
“Nope.”
“How’s it going with Po?”
“Good news. I’ve managed to litter train him, and he no longer has to wear a diaper!”
“That is good news, indeed,” Angie said, spooning ice cream into her mouth. A cat walking around wearing a diaper was something she’d never be able to unsee.
“Now to get his weight down,” Debbie said with a sigh.
“Challenging?”
“He eats out of all the other cats’ dishes and I hate to segregate him, but I might have to. He’s only lost a pound since he’s been with me.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. It makes me wonder what you could do with my cat,” Angie said.
“ Your cat?”
“My stray. I’m thinking when I’m finished with chemo and radiation, I might bring him home to live with me.”
Debbie practically jumped off the sofa. “Really? That’s wonderful! When you’re ready, let me know. I’ll help you.”
Angie smiled at her. She could always count on Debbie.
They were interrupted by the side door opening and Angie’s family trailing in: Louise, Maureen, and Nadine, with Herman the dog bringing up the rear.
Angie hunkered down on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, the ice cream put away, content to watch her mother, her sisters, and her friend do everything. After a walk-through of the house, Herman settled down at her feet.
“Are these all your ornaments?” Louise asked, holding open the flaps of the cardboard box and peering in.
“What more do I need? I’m hardly ever home,” Angie explained. “Besides, I have a ton of decorations down at the café.”
“But you don’t live at the café,” Nadine started and then backtracked. “Never mind, you do spend more time at the café than your home.”
Maureen began draping colored lights around the tree. Louise and Debbie sorted through the box. “There won’t be enough to cover the tree.”
“Why don’t you decorate the front part and leave the back of it bare,” Angie suggested. It’s what she used to do when she actually put up a tree.
The three of them stared at her, decided it wasn’t worthy of comment, and returned to what they were doing. What little ornaments she had, they hung on the tree.
“I’ve got some things at home,” Maureen said, fetching her purse and keys from the coffee table. “I’ll be right back.”
“Maureen, don’t go to all that trouble,” Angie pleaded. But it fell on deaf ears.
“It’s no trouble at all,” she said, and disappeared.
Angie wanted to ask, Does it matter? but figured that would not land well. Her mother and sisters took Christmas seriously, and there were no half measures.
Maureen soon returned with a box of decorations including a red and green tartan table runner that Angie took a liking to. Her sister laid it out over the coffee table and topped it off with a small centerpiece, a bayberry candle surrounded by a wreath.
Nadine turned the television on to a station that played Christmas music all day long.
After they left with the promise to return the next day with more decorations and ornaments, Angie settled back on her sofa, looking at all the holiday decor and listening to Celine Dion singing “So This Is Christmas.”
So this was what people did on their days off during the month of December.
When Wednesday rolled around again, Angie headed over to the hospital for her support group. She made her way to the meeting room on the second floor, happy to see Nena and Floyd already there. She took the seat next to Floyd. She admired Nena’s turquoise, purple, and fuchsia-colored headscarf and told her so.
“Hello, little lady,” Floyd said to Angie.
“New cardigan?” she asked with a nod to his navy blue sweater.
He waved his thumb in Nena’s direction. “Nena shamed me into buying a new one.”
Beside him, Nena piped in, “Now you can wear this one for forty years.”
Floyd laughed.
Grimacing, Angie said, “I’ve developed mouth sores.”
Nena winced in sympathy. “They’re very painful. But they do go away after treatment.”
After treatment? Angie deflated.
Nena and Floyd bombarded her with suggestions.
“Use a straw,” Floyd said.
“Popsicles, cold water, ice cream,” Nena suggested.
“Avoid citrus. I learned that the hard way,” Floyd said, his expression pained at the recollection of it.
“No hot drinks. No coffee and nothing rough like raw vegetables or granola. Nothing that could irritate.”
“Jell-O’s nice,” Floyd said.
“Thanks, that helps,” Angie said.
When Katherine called the meeting to order she announced, “I do have one piece of news before we start. Lisa has gone into the hospital. There’s been a complication.”
That sobered them up quickly. Even Floyd looked shaken at the news. It cast a pall over the rest of the meeting.