Talk Before Sleep Read Free Page A

“I was sitting there the other day,” she says, gesturing toward the balcony, “watching the sun set. And I was thinking, I am so happy now. I love being alive. I just want to
be
here. I want to stay. All that terrible anguish I went through, it’s gone! I’m happy now! Why can’t my body catch up to my head?” She looks at me. “Is it really too late, do you think?”
    We have both heard the same information from her doctor. We have both asked questions every which way, trying to change the answers. They are always the same. “Weeks to months, depending on what ‘fails’ first.” And yet.
    “I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t. I mean, it’s a mystery how you got this, right? Nobody knows how you got this. And nobody knows how those miracle cures happen. They
do
happen!”
    She nods, examines her hands. “I know they do.”
    “Have you been doing any of that imagery stuff?”
    “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I’ve been seeing myself as strong and healthy. I see myself rowing, and running, and dancing. And screwing, of course.”
    “You’re supposed to see the bad cells getting attacked by good cells, too.”
    “Really?” She is sitting up straight, paying careful attention.
    “Well, I mean, remember that book we read, that said you make your good cells killers of some kind?”
    “Oh. Yeah, I remember. But that seemed so … negative. Violent. I thought you were supposed to begentle. Positive and loving. You know, love yourself. Forgive yourself.”
    “Well, that’s true, too,” I say. I listened with Ruth to a tape that someone had mailed her. We pulled her curtains, lay down on her bed, closed our eyes, turned it on. A woman spoke about envisioning yourself as a child, about holding yourself on your own lap and rocking yourself. We tried to be serious, but about halfway through we started laughing. I think it was the background music, all this silly tinkling, and then the insult of harps.
    “Oh, I don’t know what works!” I say now. “I mean, sometimes I sort of believe that stuff and sometimes I just don’t.”
    “Me, too,” she sighs.
    “Wait,” I say, “I’ll do it. I’ll cure you. What we need here is something custom-made. You’ve never been a made-for-the-masses type.” I stand up, hold my hands over her head, one above the other, make a low singing sound. It sounds sort of Native American. Maybe I’ve tapped into something I didn’t know I knew. I squeeze my eyes shut, imagine walking in suddenly on Ruth’s cancer. It is caught now, frozen like an animal in headlights. Now that it is seen, its plans spread out and revealed before it, I can tell it to stop, that’s all. I remember meeting a man with cancer who told me that when he was diagnosed he came home, stood naked before his mirror and wept. Then he screamed, “Come out where I can see you! Let me
see
you!” And I do this now, see Ruth’s outlaw cells, all of them, everywhere. They are asymmetrical, ragged-edged, leering. Their colors are dark red and purple, the colors of abuse.They are slippery and quick and divide and divide and divide. But now I see them and I tell them to stop. That’s all. Just stop. Why not? Why can’t an ending to all this be subtle and arbitrary, when the beginning was that way? Her, sitting at a restaurant with me, with her bacon cheeseburger halfway up to her mouth, saying, “Oh, I’ve got another lump. Want to come with me to have it biopsied? Don’t worry, they’re never anything.”
    I open my eyes. Then I hug her. She is so thin now, like a suggestion of her former self. You have to be careful. I don’t squeeze too hard, but I push a lot of feeling across the space between us. “There,” I whisper. “Now you will start to heal.”
    She looks up at me and smiles and I see that she believes this might actually help. It is there as a slice of light in her eyes. She thinks this might actually help! And there’s more: I believe it too, because it is all we have left. Oh,