Chương 3
I stood in the doorway holding my duffel bag.
“Tell me this is temporary.”
Gwen sat on the edge of the mattress.
Her hands rested between her knees.
“They needed the other room.”
“Who is they?”
“Your mother uses one for sewing.”
I stared at her.
“Mom doesn’t sew.”
“She started.”
“Who uses the other?”
“Paige.”
“She already has a bedroom.”
“She needed an office.”
I put the duffel down.
“Gwen.”
She closed her eyes.
Not dramatically.
More like somebody who had been trying to hold a door shut and had finally run out of strength.
“Please don’t yell.”
“I’m not yelling.”
“You will.”
I sat beside her.
The mattress sank almost to the floor under my weight.
For a while neither of us spoke.
Upstairs, Paige laughed at something on television.
Water moved through the pipes.
The dehumidifier clicked off.
Gwen began unbuttoning her blouse.
Her fingers shook so badly that I nearly reached to help, but something stopped me.
She needed to do this herself.
When the blouse opened, I saw the dressing near her breastbone.
Then the healing incision beneath it.
My mouth went dry.
“What happened?”
She stared at a spot over my shoulder.
“They found a mass.”
I did not move.
“When?”
“Five months ago.”
My voice came out wrong.
Too flat.
“What kind of mass?”
Her chin trembled once.
Then she looked at me.
“I have breast cancer.”
The room became very small.
I heard every mechanical sound in it.
The refrigerator compressor through the wall.
A car passing outside.
The faint buzz of the ceiling bulb.
I put both hands on my knees because I did not trust them anywhere else.
“Say that again.”
She did.
This time I heard every word.
“I have breast cancer.”
I bent forward until my elbows touched my thighs.
For four years, I had trained myself to receive bad news without giving it the satisfaction of changing my face.
That discipline failed me in a storage room behind my own laundry room.
Gwen touched my shoulder.
I flinched.
She pulled her hand back.
That was when I started crying.
Not loudly.
I covered my face, furious at myself for reasons I could not explain.
Gwen whispered my name.
I turned and pulled her against me.
She felt frighteningly light.
“I’m sorry,” she said into my uniform.
I held her tighter.
“For what?”
She did not answer.
I asked again.
“For what, Gwen?”
“For not telling you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her body went still.
Then, from upstairs, my mother called down that we should get some sleep because we had “a big financial day tomorrow.”
Gwen closed her eyes.
And in that instant, before she said another word, I understood that whatever had happened to my wife had not happened in secret from my family.
It had happened in front of them.
I kept my arms around her until the muscles in my back began to ache from holding myself still.
Gwen was the first to pull away.
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and reached for the buttons of her blouse.
“Who knows?” I asked.
She missed the first button twice.
“Your mother.”
“Paige?”
Gwen nodded.
“Anybody else?”
“The clinic.”
“What clinic?”
“County women’s health at first.”
Her voice had gone quiet again, but not evasive now.
It sounded exhausted.
“They sent me for imaging, then the biopsy.”
“And treatment?”
She looked down at her hands.
“I haven’t started.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“You know why.”
I did, and I hated that answer before she explained it.
Five months earlier, Gwen had found the lump while showering.
At first she had told herself it was nothing because nothing was cheaper.
She waited two weeks.
Then another.
When the pain began, she asked Margaret for money from the account I used to support the household.
Three hundred dollars.
Not three thousand.
Not thirty thousand.
Three hundred.
“She said there wasn’t enough available,” Gwen told me.
I looked around the storage room.
There was a new dehumidifier beside my boot that probably cost that much.
“What happened after that?”
“I asked again.”
“And?”
“She said you’d already complained about expenses.”
“I never complained about expenses.”
“I know that now.”
Something in the sentence stopped me.
“How would you know that now?”
Gwen rubbed the seam of the blanket between two fingers.
“Because I found some of your emails.”
My breathing slowed.
“What emails?”
“The ones you sent to the family account.”
I had sent dozens.
Sometimes short.
Sometimes stupid.
Pictures of bad cafeteria food.
Complaints about sand getting into everything.
Messages asking whether Gwen needed anything.
Messages telling Margaret to use whatever money was necessary for repairs and medical costs.
Gwen had answered some of them.
At least I had believed she had.
“Who had the password?” I asked.
“Your mother.”
“And you?”
“At first.”
She gave a small shrug.
“Then it stopped working.”
I pictured the last year of messages.
Margaret answering that Gwen was sleeping.
Paige saying Gwen’s phone was broken.
Gwen supposedly writing that she was tired and did not want video calls because she hated how she looked.
A cold line moved through my stomach.
“Did you send me messages from that account?”
“Not after last Christmas.”
I looked at her.
We had exchanged messages in March.
At least I had exchanged messages with someone.
“What did you send me at Christmas?”
She frowned.
“I told you the neighbor’s dog kept digging under the fence.”
That message existed in my memory because I had laughed in a transport truck when I read it.
I had replied that the dog had more commitment to escape than half the privates in my unit.
“What else?”
“I said I missed you.”
Her mouth trembled.
“And I asked if you could call me directly.”
“I never saw that part.”
She nodded as if she had expected it.
May you like
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Then I took out my phone.
