Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I hadn’t even noticed I’d stopped breathing until Doris’s wail startled me to take a sharp breath.
The world seemed to spin back into motion in fast-forward, my mind struggling to catch back up.
Cancer. Alice has cancer.
The words bounced inside my mind as I stared at her. At Alice. My friend. My family. The woman who seemed unshakeable had…
Cancer.
Doris’s sobs were the only sound filling the room, her shoulders shaking as she covered her mouth, big blue eyes filled with tears pouring from them like Niagara Falls.
Marge rose from her seat, her jaw locked tight as she turned and marched toward my front door.
The strange behavior shook me from my trance. “Marge, what—where are you going?”
“To get my chainsaw,” she said simply, her little slacks swishing together as she picked up the pace.
Alice and I shot each other wide-eyed stares, then together shouted, “What?”
Marge spun around, her face not filled with sadness that had Doris still in a puddle, or shock and terror, the emotions coursing through me. It was rage flickering in those oversized orbs.
“I’m going to get my chainsaw and hack off those traitorous titties right now! The faster they’re gone, the safer Alice is.”
I choked on a breath, coughing out, “Marge… you can’t…”
“I’m a nurse. Saw worse in ’Nam. She’ll be fine. Better than letting her run around with cancer in those bastards.”
“Marge, come back,” Alice said quietly.
Marge furrowed her brow. “I’ll give you enough whiskey to make you pass out. You won’t feel a thing.”
“Marge,” Alice soothed again, patting the couch beside her.
Marge stared at her for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped forward, and she sauntered over and sat down beside Alice like a scolded child.
Alice, in a very unnatural gesture, rubbed Marge’s back. “It’s okay. I know this is a shock.”
The anger returned to Marge’s face as she spun and looked at Alice’s breasts.
“How? How in the hell is there even enough room for cancer to grow in your tiny titties? If anyone should be getting it, it should be me.” She gestured broadly at herself.
“My boobs are down to my knees. Plenty of real estate. Yours are like”—she pinched her fingers together—“postage stamps. Barely enough surface area for a tumor to park on. It’s statistically improbable for you to get breast cancer. ”
Alice scoffed. “Hey, they may be small, but they are nice. Proportionate to my frame. Dancer’s breasts.” Then her face dropped. “Well, at least, they were nice. Now… I have no idea what they’ll look like soon… or if I’ll even have any.”
Alice. Beautiful, proud, vain Alice. I realized in that moment how hard this must be for her.
Cancer is scary enough to face, but I knew her well enough to know it wasn’t just the threat to her life that she struggled with; it was the assault on her beauty.
We knew, of course, Alice would be beautiful with or without boobs, but I knew with certainty my friend was as terrified about her appearance after this battle as she was about her life.
Doris wailed again from beside us, still sobbing so hard I was sure she would pass out.
Marge spun toward our hysterical friend. “Cripes, Doris! She’s gonna have cancer and be deaf if you don’t get it together!”
“Doris.” Alice looked at her. “Doris. I need you to breathe.”
She sobbed harder.
“I know this is scary news, but I need you to stop. Please.” Alice reached for her whiskey and took a swig.
“I have had approximately three weeks to adjust to this information, and I have not cried once, and I need everyone in this room to match that energy. I’m not crying, so you’re not crying. Capisce?”
Doris pressed her lips together and nodded hard, her chin wobbling with the effort. Her face immediately turned an alarming shade of pink.
I got up and moved to the couch beside Alice, and my legs managed to hold me upright despite the way they felt like Jell-O beneath me. I settled beside her, reached over, and put my hand on her arm. Internally, my heart pounded so hard I was fairly certain everyone in the room could hear it.
I wanted to do what Doris was doing.
I wanted to do what Marge was doing.
I wanted to cry and pace and locate a power tool.
Instead, my voice came out calm and steady.
“Tell us what you know,” I said.
“They caught it early,” she answered. “That’s the good news, and there is good news, so I need you all to hold on to that before you do anything else dramatic.
” She aimed this last part at Marge. “I have a small tumor. Very early stage. Stage 0 ductal carcinoma in situ, or as they call it, DCIS. The options they gave me for treatment are a lumpectomy—they take the tumor and some surrounding tissue—or a mastectomy. And for me, it would have to be a double mastectomy because I don’t want them uneven. ”
“Take them off,” Marge said immediately.
Alice looked at her. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“What’s to decide? Off. Both of them. Done. Boom.”
“It is slightly more complicated than that.”
“It really isn’t. Your tiny titties have turned on you. Traitors. And traitors face execution. Off they go.” Marge pulled her thumb across her throat like a threat, then crossed her arms with the confidence of someone who had just solved the whole thing.
Alice pressed two fingers to her temple. “It’s harder to decide than that, Marge.”
“Not for me. If it were my boobs trying to murder me, I’d hack ’em off in a heartbeat.
Hell, I bet life would be better without these big swingers weighing me down.
I could swim faster with a new streamlined figure.
Skydive better with no wind resistance since I’d be aerodynamic.
Like a freaking Marge missile. Want to shoot me out of a cannon?
Bring it on. I’d be unstoppable without these big beasts flappin’ in the wind.
Yep. Mine would be gone in an instant. Yours should be too. ”
“Everyone has different feelings about mastectomies, Marge,” I answered before Alice could.
“Some women are happy to have them gone. Some want to rebuild. Others don’t want to go through it and prefer the lumpectomy.
This is Alice’s journey. Now we have to give her space to figure out what she wants. ”
Marge opened her mouth to argue back, but I shot her a look. She seemed to get the hint that now wasn’t the time to argue and went quiet.
“Go on, Alice,” I encouraged.
“I don’t know yet if there will be chemotherapy.
I don’t know which surgery I’m choosing.
I have appointments in two weeks. Right now...
” She paused, and for the first time since she’d said the words breast cancer, something moved behind her eyes, and for a split second, I caught the slip in the armor and the fear residing inside them.
Then in an instant, she was back. “Right now, I just wanted to come here and tell you, and to say that I can’t come on the trip this year.
But you should all still go without me.”
The silence that followed was shorter than a breath.
“No,” Marge said simply.
“Marge—”
“No. Absolutely not. No woman left behind. That’s not how we operate.”
“I’m not saying abandon me. I’m saying—”
“I heard what you said and the answer is no.”
Alice looked to me, then to Doris, clearly hoping for a more rational ally. Doris was still sitting on her hands with her lips pressed together and her face an increasingly alarming shade of red.
Alice tipped her head, brows furrowing with concern. “Doris. Are you alright?”
Doris gave a very tight nod and said nothing.
“She’s trying not to cry,” I explained. “You said no crying.”
Doris made a small, strangled sound of confirmation.
Alice turned back to me. “Sylvie. Be reasonable. This is the annual Wilder Widows trip. I won’t have you miss it for me.”
“You’re a Wilder Widow,” I said. “I agree with Marge. We all go together or not at all. We skip this year, we beat this cancer, and next year we’ll just go bigger and better than ever before to celebrate.”
Alice’s eyes softened as she looked at me. We’d been friends long enough that words were no longer needed. I could see it—that silent hope that she’d beat the cancer and be around next year to celebrate, and the guilt that we’d all miss this year because of her.
“I just don’t want everyone missing out because I, you know, have cancer.” She waved a hand at her breasts.
Doris’s hands flew to her mouth as she struggled to suppress her sobs.
Alice shot her a warning stare.
Marge pulled a face. “Doris is at more risk of dying from suffocation than you are of cancer if she can’t breathe. Doris… breathe.”
Doris shook her head, her mouth covered behind her hands, and I knew if those hands moved, if she took a deep breath, the sobs would come rolling out.
I let out a sigh. “Okay, Alice. I get that you want us all to react to your news exactly how you want us to react to your news, but Doris is a crier. You know Doris is a crier. Doris weeps at the drop of a hat. And she’s going to actually pass out if you don’t just let her… cry.”
Doris pressed her lips together.
“I’m the one with cancer,” Alice said plainly. “I get to set the emotional tone. And the emotional tone is fine. We’re fine. I don’t want a big emotional thing here. We’re not crying.”
Doris nodded vigorously, squeezing her eyes shut, her hands over her mouth to suppress her cries, clearly trying with everything she had.
The trying made it worse. Her face scrunched. Her chin wobbled. She changed to a new shade of pink.
“Uh, guys,” Marge said. “She looks like she’s going to crap her pants.”
“She might,” I agreed. “And this is a new couch. Alice, please. Just let her cry. People process how they process. This is how Doris needs to process.”
Alice looked at Doris’s face, at the heroic, losing effort playing out across it, and let out a long sigh. “Fine. Get it out.”
Doris dropped her hands and let out an ear-piercing cry that made the rest of us cringe.
“Maybe I need to get the chainsaw anyway. If I cut off her head, she won’t cry anymore.”