Chapter 4
chapter
four
Before cancer, I was a woman with a plan.
I used to wake up at six without an alarm, make a cup of pourover, and open my laptop to write.
Three hours would pass in a blink. It was the best part of my week, after beating my head against the wall at my remote tech marketing job.
I even published a couple short stories in real literary journals.
With editors and everything! Two years ago, I would have said with complete confidence that by now, six months from turning thirty, I’d already have an agent and have sold my first book.
I’m healed, physically. My mastectomy scars are barely there, in the right lighting. The chemo drugs have long left my system. I’m supposed to be better. I should be Ruby Hirsch, impending thirty-year-old, former tumblr girl, master of styling awkward pixie growing-out phases.
But that’s not how it works.
When you make it to the other side of cancer treatment, the sun rises on a world that is practically unrecognizable from the one you came from.
Everything you used to do before the diagnosis becomes tainted.
Everything scratches this unquietable itch: is this the thing that gave me cancer?
Was it the scented candles? The unfiltered water?
The makeup? The sugar? And then it slowly hits you, like a frog being boiled, that you will have to live with this every day for the rest of your life.
It’s a fear that lives in your cells. Ubiquitous.
Infinite. A fear that hovers over you for the rest of your days, like the sky itself.
There’s this life waiting for me, out there.
I know it. I’ve got a book deal. I go home to a partner who loves me and doesn’t mind taking care of me when I’m sick.
My social calendar is brimming, replete.
My body feels like mine again; like it did before.
That life is just sitting there, at the top of a hill, waiting to be claimed.
And I just haven’t found a path to the summit yet.
I open the manuscript at my kitchen table for a late-lunch-cum-writing-break.
Chapter One in Times New Roman stares at me.
The words are small worms crawling over the page, obscuring any semblance of a story.
The plot is dark, full of gory medical imagery.
Ironic to write as someone who had never gone through surgery or chronic illness.
I wanted to build up to the renewal and healing of The Secret Garden—in my sci-fi world, a secret greenhouse on the space station my characters live in—but now it’s too much.
It reminds me of the person whose greatest nightmare was having to shelve this manuscript.
Who wanted to write a story about healing, never realizing how much she would actually have to heal.
I slap the manuscript closed and lean back to find one of the myriad notebooks that litter every surface of my apartment.
A blank composition notebook page is a fresh start.
A story whose ending has not been written yet.
My Pilot G2 is infused with the rage of twelve paclitaxel cycles, two twenty-eight-year-old breasts, and sixteen frozen eggs as I write on the college-ruled paper:
My body is scarred, but it feels like essential pieces of my spirit were cut away, and I don’t know how to get them back.
How do you live in a body that tried to kill you?
Could decide at any moment to try again?
Has betrayed you in the most fundamental way a physical body can betray the soul that resides in it? Where do you go from there?
I pause to check my handwriting, only plagued by a couple missteps in the half cursive.
It’s as nice as any handwritten fever-dream snippet anyone has ever posted on Instagram.
I tilt my head, trying to find an angle where it looks visually pleasing.
My iPhone photographer’s eye flits to the window on my right, my monstera next to it, and the midday sun streaming in.
If I hold up my notebook and capture a wedge of the leaf behind it, it’s not half bad. I snap the picture and add a filter.
What do you caption something like this? Do I go for witty, irreverent, cool-girl-apathetic? I type out and delete captions until I land on something mysterious: xx. That’s something cool Instagram girls caption things. I nod, pleased with myself.
My thumb taps Post.
Like my post summoned her, the screen is taken over by an incoming call. Penelope flashes, as well as an old picture of us while we waited in line for an Old Town bar. My stomach drops with nerves, yet also possibility.
I hustle to answer it. “Hello?”
“Ruby! I’m so glad I caught you.”
“Hey,” I say, swallowing my adrenaline. Play it cool. “It’s great to hear from you, what’s—”
“Tragedy has struck,” Penelope barrels on. “My wedding planner is bedridden with the flu.”
“Oh, that’s, um, awful?”
“I know! The wedding is in four months and we’re entering crunch time!”
“Right…” I pull the phone away from my ear to look at it. Why is she calling me about this? She said it herself—she has bridesmaids for this exact scenario. There must be at least five people higher on her roster to vent about this.
“Anyway, Miri was supposed to lead this meeting I’m having today about the wedding, and now I’m completely hung out to dry.”
I clear my throat. “But don’t you have a maid of honor?”
Penelope growls into the phone. “Calliope is such a c-word! You know I don’t use that word lightly.
” I hold back the joke that saying ‘c-word’ isn’t the same as actually using that word.
“She’s an absolute pill. The only reason she’s the maid of honor is because my great aunt is paying for the wedding on the condition that she and I plan it together, and include Calliope.
I normally wouldn’t even bother, but the old bat is very rich and has given us basically an unlimited budget. ”
“I’m sorry, that’s…frustrating.”
“It is! Isn’t it? Aunt Lou wants everything to go through her. And she literally lives in the Stone Age, like can’t do it over email or Zoom, so I need to hold her hand and walk her through the photographer, florist, and band in person today to get her to put down the deposit.”
“That sounds straightforward?”
“See, here’s where you come in. The only reason I hired Miri is because she specializes in Jewish weddings, and I do not have time to find a replacement planner—”
“She’s just sick, right? She’s not, like, dead—”
“But I figure, hey! My great friend Ruby is Jewish too, and just offered to help! I bet she’s free and can take Miri’s place—just for this meeting of course. You know, like you can tell my aunt about the chair thing, and the wedding tarp and all that. Right?”
Wedding tarp? “Are you talking about…a chuppah?”
“Yes! Exactly. That. See? This is why I need you.”
“Can’t Josh help you?”
Penelope laughs. “Oh God no, of course not. He’s such a momma’s boy.
If he gets involved, his mom gets involved, and you know how Jewish moms are.
I can’t deal with that.” I instantly feel defensive of Josh’s mom and my own mom.
But I reason that she doesn’t mean anything by it.
She’s just trying to prevent too many cooks in the kitchen.
“You’d be able to help me, right? As one of my closest friends?”
A staticky pause. I didn’t realize I still qualified as a ‘close friend,’ considering that before Izumi’s wedding, we hadn’t seen each other in six months. But who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I want to reconnect with friends, and here is one of those friends knocking on my door.
“Yes, of course, I’d love to help—”
Penelope squeals so loud I have to move the phone away from my ear. “You’re the best! I knew I could count on you. Tea is this afternoon. We’re going to cover wedding planning, and then Joshie is bringing his best man so that Aunt Lou can meet him.”
“Great, when—”
“It’s at four o’clock. I’m coming from a mani in Highland Park, so I’ll have to meet you there.”
I look at the clock on my microwave. It’s 1:54 p.m.
“That’s not a problem, right?”
“No, it’s” —I scramble to reschedule the meeting I have at four— “fine, I can totally make that work.”
“Great, I’ll send you the Google Doc Miri has everything organized in, so you can get up to speed. Thank you so much, Ruby!”
“No problem, I’m happy to—” The phone call ends. “Help,” I say to the silence of my apartment.