Chapter 21
chapter
twenty-one
“Why would you do that?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“You’re a writer, right?” The hand on my shoulder has the gall to squeeze. “This should be a piece of cake.”
I grimace and hope it looks like a smile. Lucy is watching us with rapt attention.
“It will be fun,” Lucy declares. “I’m going up there, too.”
“First up,” Maddy says into the microphone, silencing the din of the cafe. “We have Mark S.”
As Mark S makes his way to the microphone, where a stool sits in true open mic fashion, I pull Eitan to me by the collar to growl in his ear. “I don’t have anything prepared to read.”
“I bet you have something.” His confidence in me, while endearing, is misplaced. I’ve barely made it through the first act of my manuscript all summer.
“My book is in shambles.”
“It doesn’t have to be from a book. You can read anything. Even if it’s a half-formed thought from your Notes app.” His eyes sparkle. “Or a shitty Instagram poem.”
The joke only softens my gnawing panic for a moment.
I have to remember I’m mad at him. Unconsensual open mic participation is a new low.
The cafe laughs at whatever Mark S is saying, and I turn away from Eitan, pretending to tune in, but actually cataloguing every wisp of a thought I’ve written down in the last four months.
Sure, I’m always filling my Notes app, expelling the dark thoughts as some form of catharsis so they don’t add to my already pathological level of bitterness.
But they’re not fit for public consumption.
The few I’ve tried posting on Instagram are proof of that.
No one wants to hear a cancer survivor complaining about the gift of life.
“Thank you Mark!” Maddy returns to the mic.
“I’d like to remind everyone that the Carson Cancer Center offers a once-yearly stand-up comedy class, with a showcase at the end, in case anyone is feeling inspired.
” Maddy checks her clipboard. “Next up, Lucy D.” Lucy stands up.
“Let’s give Lucy a hand!” Lucy thanks her and steps up to the mic, preparing to read something off her phone.
“Thank you.” Lucy smiles. She’s at ease, standing at a mic in the center of a room full of people. Uncaring that she looks sick. “I’m going to read a poem called ‘The Same.’”
The cafe waits, silent other than a few coughs.
“My friend died a few weeks ago.
We are—were—will be?—the same.
Same diagnosis. Same prognosis.
What do I do with that?
It’s meaningless.
Some live, some die.
And no one can tell me why.
I thought we were getting smarter?”
Lucy takes a breath and looks out, toward our table. To Daniel, I realize. Her anchor in the swell of a storm.
“Is this living? This in-between space?
Alive but brimming with loss.
Missed birthday parties.
Organ function.
Life expectancy.
It’s a state of falling
But is it a well, or a rabbit hole?
Maybe there’s something waiting at the bottom
Something fantastical and mad and unknown.
My friend died a few weeks ago.
We all will one day.
Where the meaning leads me, I go.”
Lucy looks up, her eyes shining under the cafe lights.
Daniel is the first to start cheering, the rest of the crowd’s trance breaking and cheering too.
Lucy smiles, takes a small bow, and makes her way back to our table.
Daniel wraps her in a tight hug. They’re in their own world, experiencing this together. Making something meaningful out of it.
Most days, it’s difficult to comprehend the magnitude of what I lost with Grant.
Believing a partner is someone who sticks by you.
Someone who wants to take care of you. Someone who doesn’t look at you differently even though you’re sick.
It’s only when it’s staring me in the face, taunting me with what could have been, that I feel the loss, a crater in the shadows of my heart.
“Ruby?” Eitan shakes me. “You’re up!”
“Ruby H?” Maddy calls again.
“You’ve got this.” Eitan nudges me to stand up.
“Ruby?” Maddy calls one more time.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Eitan whispers.
The cold sweat breaking out on my forehead would beg to differ.
I’m supposed to get up in front of a room full of strangers and bare my soul?
I can barely make conversation with people I’ve known for years!
What if they don’t understand my specific brand of dark-humor-meets-cosmic-nihilism? None of these people know me.
None of these people know me. I could be anyone. I could be someone brave enough to stand up and get on that stage.
As if he can hear the thoughts and anxiety buzzing around me, Eitan reaches for my hand. And squeezes.
None of these people know me. I can be anyone. To prove it to myself, I stand up.
“Come on up!” Maddy waves her hand for me to come forward.
I clutch my phone and snake through the tables full of people.
“There she is! Let’s give her a hand!” The crowd claps, and the sound startles me.
“Good luck!” Maddy whispers away from the mic, before handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I mutter. A shaky finger pulls up my most recent Notes app note, filled with ephemera.
The crowd is quiet, waiting for me to begin. A sudden burst of noise pulls me out of myself. Eitan howls a cheer, the same as when we swam in Lake Michigan. I’m alive. I’m here.
The sound makes me feel brave enough to read.
“This is an untitled, unfinished piece,” I say into the mic. My words expand and fill the room.
I take a deep breath.
“Why are we getting cancer? They don’t know, but they’ve gotten better at treating it.
It just causes heart disease, infertility, and sometimes, another (new!) type of cancer.
We can cure all the diseases in the world, but there’s no escaping suffering.
Joke’s on us. It’s a part of life, an exchange we are all forced to make at the instant our little lungs first fill with breath.
An agreement that you can experience the kaleidoscopic euphoria of being alive, but you have to suffer.
Otherwise you’re not living. And sometimes you’re the specific person caught in the crosshairs of this divinely mandated need to suffer.
You’re the one without hair, strapped to an IV pole, medicine that feels suspiciously like poison being pumped through your body. ”
I pause. Wait for people to start booing.
I’ve never considered these palatable thoughts.
It’s an emotional rant absent of answers.
I should be replete with answers. Nuggets of wisdom gleaned from this gauntlet.
How do you live? You keep going! You’ve got a tank full of gratitude and an invisible tattoo of ‘carpe diem’ on your forehead!
But people are listening. I keep going.
“Did you know the concept of survivorship didn’t exist until 1985?
Before that, they cut you open, pumped you with experimental drugs, sewed you up and sent you on your way.
‘You’re good!’ I imagine the doctor saying with a glowing chuckle and a pat on the back.
Some women didn’t even know they had cancer before the surgeon removed their breast. They would go under general anesthesia for the biopsy, and if the doctor found cancer, they would do an immediate mastectomy.
More efficient, cheaper for the insurance companies.
” I pause, and swallow. “They didn’t want that breast anyway, right?
Why would they? It had cancer. It was poisoned. Nothing left to save.
“What even is survivorship? What is illness? How do I name myself after going through something like this? Do I knight myself? Anoint myself so that when I walk through the world, people see me as I am, as everything I’ve gone through, everything I have become?
Survivor makes it sound like I lived through battle.
Like I experienced something brutal. But this is my body, my cells.
What if I don’t want to be at war with my body? What do I call myself then?”
My phone drops to my side. I look out, unable to read the room.
Someone begins clapping. Then, more people join in. Soon, applause rebounds throughout the room. Eitan stands, clapping his hands way out in front of his chest, sending the ovation directly to me. I walk back to the table, smiling, tears falling, a bit of weight lifting in the process.
“You are incredible,” Eitan says. His hands are restless, like they’re fighting the urge to hold me.
Or maybe that’s just what I wish they wanted to do.
I want to thank him, somehow, for encouraging me to do that.
To show in some way that they were my words, but it was his bravery that made me share them.
I grab his cheek and lean forward, planting an urgent kiss.
Eitan has seen the poised and unraveled versions of myself. And he doesn’t spook or pull away. It seems to bring out his own frayed edges. And there’s something immeasurably comforting about that.
He pulls me closer and wraps me in a hug that feels like home.
I’m okay with now, I lie.
Eitan and I stand outside the cafe, an hour later, feet inches apart and pointing directly toward each other.
“You were right,” I say, glancing back at the cafe door as everyone finishes pouring out. My phone is glowing with the addition of a new contact: Lucy Diaz. “I did like that surprise.”
Eitan’s fingertips drift up to stroke the side of my face. I lean into the touch like a cat. “You’re pretty easy to please.”
“I’m normally very picky, actually.”
“Really,” Eitan says, smiling. He leans infinitesimally closer.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m very difficult. Very needy, I’m told.”
“I don’t believe you.” His thumb finds the apple of my cheek, his hand cradling my jaw.
I hold my breath, not daring to move. This isn’t a fantasy, or a delusion, and the reality of it is threatening to short-circuit my brain.
“I like you, Ruby Hirsch.” His head tilts, like he’s trying to admire me from every angle.