A Season in Hell Read Free

Toronto Star . Michele, a friend of Esther Broner’s, has become a friend of mine as well; she joined me for dinner, bringing a group of lively, warm people. Dinners like this, with intelligent, engaging conversation, were major joys in my life. I briefly forgot my dread.
    On Mother’s Day, my kids took me for brunch in SoHo, but the dread was back. I knew I was not well. The sense that I had cancer hung upon me like an invisible black veil that only I was aware of, even though it occasionally occurred to me that I was inventing it. I said nothing; I was just silently terrified, unable to explain the malaise that permeated my being. Since I did not feel legitimate in speaking about it, I hardly spoke at all. Like a lover obsessed with someone married or otherwise unsuitable, I could not talk about what occupied me, but could think of nothing else. I walked through interviews and speeches like a zombie. I gave a talk at the YWCA in New York, did some interviews, and then flew to Chicago for more readings and interviews. At the end of the week I received an honorary degree from Hofstra, my undergraduate alma mater, and gave a speech; even there, I felt isolated with my terrible secret, enervated. The next week, there were more interviews, and a book party at the lovely town house of my agent, Charlotte Sheedy. A week later, I flew out to the West Coast for more promotion.
    Early in June, I went to Boston for the semiannual meeting of the Harvard Graduate Society Council, an informal body intended mainly to keep graduate alumni involved with the university. As I was dressing for dinner at my Cambridge hotel, for some reason I placed my fingertips on the soft tissue just above the clavicle on the left side of my chest. I felt two small, hard lumps. The dread leaped up, then fell still. What had been only a feeling was now fact.
    This trip being at my own expense, I could take some time for personal pursuits. I wanted to see Barbara Greenberg, a close friend for almost thirty years. Barbara, a poet who lives in Boston, offered to drive me around Lincoln, where I had set Our Father , the novel I was writing. I had often visited that beautiful town during my years at Harvard, but I needed more detailed background for the novel. Barbara and I spent a grand day visiting churches and gazing at mansions.
    Barbara’s husband, Harold, is a surgeon, and over the decades of her marriage she has picked up considerable medical knowledge. So as we relaxed over drinks at her house, I asked her to feel the lumps and tell me what she thought. She did; she frowned and said, “Show them to Harold tonight.” Harold came in as we were about to go out to dinner, and I repeated my request. He felt them, frowned, also said, “Show them to your doctor.” The concern and dismay they tried to hide reinforced my sense that the lumps were cancer.
    As soon as I returned to New York, I made an appointment with the ENT physician I had seen before. He ordered a CT scan. As I was leaving his office, he said, “I am very sorry for you, Ms. French.” I deduced he didn’t need a CT scan to know cancer when he felt it. The scan, taken on Thursday, June 11, showed a growth on my esophagus. I was given the results on Friday.
    Sick at heart, I flew to Dublin on Sunday, to give the keynote address at the Joyce Symposium. I love Ireland, and I’ve walked through Dublin often, on Bloomsdays and other visits; and this was to be a special visit—President Mary Robinson was to introduce me. But after giving my speech and attending the Bloomsday Banquet (at Trinity this year, rather than Dublin Castle), I left. I did not stay to enjoy the city or the rest of the symposium, as I usually do. I was too anxious and frightened, and I needed to make plans for treatment.
    The day after I returned, I went to St. Luke’s–Roosevelt for a biopsy conducted by the ENT specialist. He called even before the sample had been biopsied. There was no question in his mind: the mass