Chapter 17 #2
Cancer is abundance. My oncologist said this, the first time I met her.
It’s a part of life. Sometimes DNA gets damaged, and wonky cells don’t die when they’re supposed to.
That’s all it is. One deranged cell born without the proper death switch can kill you.
A lot of things have to go wrong, both in your body and in your treatment, for that to happen.
But, hey. What’s that old saying? Miracles happen every day.
Which must mean that whatever the opposite of miracles are—disasters? —happen every day too.
“You’re not avoiding the seminal cinema franchise of our generation, are you?” Eitan’s head pokes out of the entrance, tone playful.
“It’s just too good,” I say, my voice thick.
He steps out fully. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I say. The word is probably see-through, at this point.
When he catches me in these moments, it feels like he sees me.
Really sees me. It’s comforting and confusing.
I don’t trust myself to speak and not say something stupid or desperate sounding, like Do you see me? or Will you dance with me again?
I take a deep breath of air that smells like stale popcorn and polyester carpet, and push all my messy thoughts down.
Eitan sits next to me on the floor. “It’s okay to be sad,” he says softly.
“What do I have to be sad about?” Because, truly, what right do I have to be miserable? I’m alive. “Are you sad?” I ask.
“All the time,” he says, the words slow and considered. “I wish I was better at it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Better at being sad?”
“Yeah. Sometimes being empty is easier than feeling sad.” Eitan rests his head against the wall.
“I think about my dad every day. It’s the reason I started traveling in the first place.
I wanted to go to all new places so that nothing would remind me of him.
So that I could escape having to feel everything all the time. ”
“I can understand that.”
“He would have liked you,” Eitan says. “He learned his English from old movies, so he loved finding women he could confidently describe as a ‘broad’ or a ‘pistol.’ Mom was a broad. He would have called you a pistol.”
“That’s a new one.” I laugh. “Do you—” I falter, and take a breath. “Do you mind talking about it?” I ask.
He tilts his face down so our eyes are almost level. “No, I don’t mind talking about it. With the right people.” His hands clasp and unclasp. “I was his full time caretaker for the last year of his life.”
My eyes widen. “Shit, that’s…hard.”
“I switched my job to be remote and moved back in with my parents.” Eitan exhales.
“It was exhausting. Physically, emotionally. I was doing all the cooking and the cleaning because all my mom’s time had to go toward keeping her job and taking care of my little sister.
The chemo kept him alive for a while, and I put us on a whole food, plant-based diet.
It worked for a bit, but…yeah. Nothing worked, at a certain point.
” He smiles softly, but it’s a smile made of sadness.
“So you’ve been on the subreddits.”
“Oh, I lived on those subreddits.” We laugh.
“I read every miracle protocol, every semi-quack study that someone said had worked for a friend of a friend. But the cancer progressed. When he was in treatment, it felt like a battle. Like we were fighting for his life. But when he got the news that the cancer had still progressed, he decided to stop. He wanted to enjoy the days he had left. It was hard—” Eitan’s eyes are glassy.
“I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to keep fighting.
All he had to do was stay alive long enough for them to find a drug that could be the one to save him.
But—” His voice catches. He rights himself, shaking his head. “It was his life, his choice.”
Suddenly, I’m on the other end of the equation, where someone is saying something that, to me, sounds tragic. But I don’t know if he wants to hear me say sorry. Pity is a barrier. It puts people on unequal footing.
“I was angry for a long time that there weren’t answers. There was no reason why the fasting and vitamin C worked for one person, but Dad’s tumors grew.”
“What stage was he diagnosed at?” I ask.
“He had symptoms for years that he wrote off, and the doctors misdiagnosed. He was young—forty-four. It took going to the E.R. to finally get diagnosed.” Eitan swallows.
“I had been living in the city, so I wasn’t home as much.
I didn’t know the extent of what he had been dealing with.
We had to wait another week for the oncology team to confirm the full diagnosis. Colon cancer. Stage IVc.”
My heart aches at the pain in his voice.
It’s the unspoken shadow that looms over both of us.
The persistent whisper that this could all disappear as quickly as it came back: our health, our peace of mind, our prospects for a full life.
The bridge being built between us is too heavy to bear.
Its girders are sinking into the Dark Place, and I can’t break down again.
“Five year survival rate of 13%,” Eitan finishes, voice heavy. “He passed away four years ago on June 6th, actually.”
“Wait a minute. June 6th, as in…Izumi’s wedding?”
“Yeah.” He wipes his face. “It wasn’t my finest showing. Most days I’m okay, but those days are hard. It makes me a little…reckless.”
“I get it,” I breathe. “I have hard days, too.”
“Really? You seem so well-adjusted,” he says, fighting a smile.
I debate buying a ten-dollar tub of popcorn just to throw it at him. “I am very well-adjusted, actually. I’m here. That’s all the Universe can expect of me.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “That’s how it feels for me too.” Our eyes connect and I see the same thing that I saw in that bathroom, then again at the engagement party. I know what it is now. The aftermath of randomness, like a bootprint from being stomped on.
A loud crashing noise, followed by shouting, comes from the theater. We laugh at it, in sync. I decide that I like having inside jokes with him.
Eitan’s hand raises, grazing my neck and settling around my jaw. Every nerve ending in my cheek sparks, and I want nothing more than to close my eyes and nuzzle into his palm. It’s a bulldozing of boundaries, but I can’t step away. He’s reminding me what it’s like to be touched.
The sensation is euphoric, and if he’s not careful, I’ll get hooked.
“You say that your life isn’t a tragedy, but it doesn’t always have to be a comedy either.
You don’t need to hold the world at arm’s length with jokes for the rest of your life.
” His thumb strokes the apple of my cheek while my brain parses through what he’s saying.
I try to remember what the word friend means, if it can include a moment like this.
If this is complicated, or the simplest thing in the world.
Touching, and being touched. Connecting.
Our lips are only an inch apart. What’s stopping me from leaning in? Why does it have to be so complicated? Maybe the thought of not being able to do this is scarier than the thought of doing it.
I lean in.
My lips brush his, and his breath stops.
He doesn’t kiss me back. His hand jolts away from my cheek.
I scramble back, my palms hitting the scratchy movie theater carpet. “Oh my God,” I say, panicking. “I can’t believe—I’m so sorry.”
“Ruby—” He looks confused. “It’s okay.”
Did I imagine the moment? His hand stroking my cheek? It had to have been real. Even my overactive imagination couldn’t manufacture the feeling of sunlight reaching out to touch me.
“You just took me by surprise,” Eitan says, standing up too.
I pause and wait for him to say more.
“I’m not really—” His hand scrubs behind his neck. “I’m not in a good spot to…” He sighs. “I’m not the kind of person you should—”
I shake my head, every one of his words hitting me like buckshot. “If you’re going for the I’m no good for you routine, you can save it. I get it, okay?” I hold the back of my palm to my forehead, desperately trying to cool myself down. “Message received, loud and clear.”
“This is not a routine,” Eitan says, voice gravelly.
Thank God I brought my purse with me. This is a conversation I don’t need to have.
I thought, for a moment, that there was something happening between us.
But apparently Eitan just strokes the cheek of every girl in his life.
And it doesn’t mean anything. I might die of embarrassment.
Signals have never been more egregiously misread.
I stand up in a flurry.
I’m no good for you. It’s for the best. All different ways to say that you are better off alone. Who’s ever actually better off alone?
Unbidden, the memory of the last time I was brushed away showers me like tiny pellets of hail.
“It’s for the best,” Grant said, holding my hands.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I just finished chemo, finally had my second surgery. This was the part where things were supposed to go back to being good. I’d grow my hair out, build out a wardrobe that suited my new body.
“You know I love you.” He put a hand on my shoulder.
“I love you too,” I said back, a reflex.
“I just don’t think we’re in love anymore.”
“I’m in love with you.” My voice wobbled. Threatened to give out completely.
“You don’t even know what you want,” Grant told me. I do! I want this, I thought instantly. “How can you? After everything you’ve gone through.”
“I’m still the same person—”
“Look, Ruby, I’m so glad I could be there for you during this, but this hasn’t been working for me for a long time.”
It hasn’t been working for you? A voice in my head parroted. Exactly how many infusions did you come with me to? How many surgical drains did you empty? How many follicle stimulation shots did you inject into my belly?
I shook away that indignant voice.
“It’s going to be different,” I assured him. “It’s nowhere but up from here,” I said, as a tear escaped the corner of my eye. I wanted the words to be true, but even then I knew they were a lie.
“I’m sorry, Ruby.” He stood, then. Like he had seen what he needed to see.
“Please,” I whispered, not letting his hand go. “Don’t do this. It will get better. I will get better. I–I promise.”
He shook his head and deposited a chaste kiss on my forehead. “I hope we can stay friends.”
How much lower can you get? Begging someone to love you? To take care of you?
The memory is ice water on my nervous system.
My anger at Eitan—and Grant, and myself, and the Universe—snowballs. I walk toward the exit.
“Wait,” Eitan calls. “What about dinner?”
“Tell them I’m sick,” I say over my shoulder, genuinely feeling like I might throw up on the way home.