We stop at a small brick building, and I go out and talk to a nun. Peggy and I are now both mad to locate this grave. The nun confirms that Hugo is buried here.
We park the car and begin our search.
There are many big trees. Up and down we go. Up and down again — and a third time. She’s at one end and I’m at the other. We yell to each other, the dead be damned.
Hugo wrote: I don’t want to admit / It’s cold alone in the ground….I’m sure he wants to be found. I say they put the dead / here where north and east gales can find them. But we can’t find him.
We finally give up, and she takes me to the Milltown Union Bar — a place where he spent a lot of time. He wrote a poem there that begins, You were nothing / going in and now you kiss your hand. We sit at the long bar and order beer. It’s late afternoon. Peggy points out the elk head.
She tells me that when her mother died, she drove her mother’s ashes in a box in the front seat of the car for four weeks to all the places her mother’d been and loved. She drove through Wyoming, Ghost Ranch, Taos — where her parents were married — Arizona, and finally up through western Colorado. She spread her mother’s ashes in the wilderness meadow on the Flat Tops where her dad’s ashes were spread twenty-five years earlier. She went home by way of Moab and the Canyonlands, her father’s favorite place on Earth. What a wonderful way to grieve, I thought.
The day darkens. We didn’t find Hugo’s granite stone, his dates 1923–1982, and the words written there from one of his poems: Believe you and I sing tiny / and wise and could if we had to / eat stone and go on. But he’s still here with us now, all over Missoula, not contained anywhere. I found him in our talk and drink and walking the rows and driving the roads with big sky over us and the Clark Fork River running through.
If I stay alive long enough, I’m coming back. I want to place my own small stone on the site where he’s buried and complete the honoring of how much he means to me.
8.
CANCER WAS TEACHING me how to carve out and live in a small space. I had to narrow my vision to stay on top of the drugs, the appointments, the weird changes in my body. The world shrunk to what was in front of me, to my immediate needs. Zen all along was trying to teach me to pay attention: this single sip from this cup of green tea — green tea was supposed to be a cancer preventative. This button on my shirt — unbutton it, it’s too hot. Even the screech of car brakes out the window — this, too. I’m still alive.
On a book I signed for a friend, I wrote the date. I did not take the date for granted. I got to live this hour, this day, week, month, this summer. How many more summers would I have? The night crickets, the late evening light. Sleeping with windows open, slam of the screen door, the ripening of green plums, the holiness of peach flesh, the thick shadow of trees full with leaves, my own skin exposed in short sleeves, capri pants, no socks.
Over the time of the infusions, I weakened. Too tired to go anyplace, I sat in the garden in a fading Adirondack chair an old friend from Minnesota bought me twenty-five years earlier. The cherries ripened on the tree in the corner. I did not jump up to weed, turn over the compost, tie up a protruding branch of a rose plant. Too spent to do anything, I listened to the aspen leaves tinkle in the breeze. I closed my eyes for a moment, taking in the sound. It was something familiar. My eyes jerked open. I have cancer. I must be on guard.
* * *
—
One afternoon in mid-June, Yu-kwan quietly lay down in bed and did a self-exam of her breasts. She had not had a mammogram in eight years. Without mentioning it, she made an appointment for a test.
She told me two days later on the phone, “I’ve felt a hard lump.”
“Yu-kwan,” I said, “you don’t have cancer. I have cancer.” Maybe she was sick of caretaking and wanted some attention?
Wendy was still with me. When I got off the phone I turned to her. “Great. Now my girlfriend might have cancer.” I kicked over a book on the low table. “Who’s going to take care of me?” I was not on my best behavior. “With all this cancer talk she probably got nervous that she might have it, but that’s impossible.” I opened my arms wide.
Yu-kwan’s mammogram results were negative, but she told the attendant, “No, I feel a lump,” so they automatically gave her an appointment for an ultrasound. She had to wait a week.
A week later, the radiologist told her, after looking at the ultrasound, “Cancer is on top of the list.” She pointed out the rough edges of the mass.
Yu-kwan had to make an appointment for a biopsy and wait three days.
When Yu-kwan told me what the radiologist said, I was irate. “How dare she tell you ahead of time! She doesn’t know! She should have let you have a few more days of peace.”
I called Wendy, who was now back in California. “She might really have it. What am I going to do?” And I began to sob. I heard Wendy’s sobs on the other end.
Yu-kwan got her biopsy on a Friday, then waited until Wednesday for the results. The waiting was the hardest part. I watched her pace the living room, even take out the garbage when it was only half-full. She sat down with a magazine, then popped up to open a window. My body was so drained all I could do was just watch. I’d never seen her like that. My heart ached, but still it was unimaginable — how could she also have it? And at the same time?
I did not go with her to any of the appointments. A friend offered or she went alone. Already we were separating out our cancer territories.
On Wednesday morning my friend Bill Addison, who came to see me from Atlanta, and I were in the kitchen when the phone rang. I ran to pick it up, calling to Bill over my shoulder. “It’s probably Yu-kwan with the results.”
“I have it. I have to find a surgeon. They’re giving me info. I’ll call you back later.” And she hung up.
I placed the receiver in the stand. “Bill, she has it.” I’d been dumped into freezing water. I couldn’t move. My body was gooseflesh. I couldn’t absorb, take in this information. How can this be?
Bill took us both out that night to the fanciest French restaurant in Santa Fe. He insisted on treating, though I knew his money was tight. I understood this was a sweet gesture in his need to do something, but I hated the restaurant. Every mouthful was rancid, sour, unappealing.
Bill, who is a food critic, thought it was good. So did Yu-kwan, who ordered escargots and calf’s liver in onions. Nothing stopped that girl from eating. She also had a big dessert.
I thought they had no taste, that they’d gone crazy to like the food. I was sick with worry, stunned in horror. Yu-kwan was going to get a mastectomy and lose a breast?
I’d read about heads, arms, feet, hands, cut off for punishment. Now, right in front of me, it was about to happen. Yes, for a different purpose — to save a life — but the civilized world couldn’t conjure up anything better? The world that could create bombs that turned corners, cars that could parallel park without the driver’s assistance, could not do better than this approach to breast cancer?
Yu-kwan wanted to act fast. She traveled down to Albuquerque almost every third day, getting tests, meeting with oncologists.
A woman from the literacy board she was on — I’d never met her — stepped forward. She had recently had breast cancer and knew all the doctors, medicines, choices. She drove Yu-kwan down to Albuquerque regularly, waited for her, discussed her options, gave her books to read.
I was relieved. No way could I listen to another type of cancer’s ins and outs.
Yu-kwan decided on a severe, young, precise surgeon at the University of New Mexico Medical Center. We didn’t discuss her choices. She announced them. She would get a mastectomy, so she did not need radiation. There seemed to be no involvement of the lymph system, only that damn tumor, so she might even get away with no chemo.
She was hoping for a low oncotype score. For this score they analyze the genetic makeup of the tumor. The tumor has its own genetics. If
the score was below 17, she wouldn’t need chemo. If she had a score in the 20s, she should consider chemo. If the score was higher, she shouldn’t take a chance. Yu-kwan was hoping for as little intrusion as possible. Losing a breast was enough.
Mostly I agreed with her, but I was also preoccupied with my own cancer.
We were aware that we were both on our own.
* * *
—
Yu-kwan, now retired for ten years, drew on the skills, power, and determination she had used to become an executive vice president on Wall Street for three decades. Starting in the late seventies, she was a woman of color when only men worked in those competitive information technology jobs and with those room-size computers. Even with her cancer, she was able to absorb enormous in-depth research. Whoever she talked to in the medical profession thought she was either a doctor or a scientist.
Logically, you’d think that we would commiserate, since we both had the cancer. But it wasn’t like that. We each longed for caretaking, and neither of us had the energy to do anything but handle ourselves.
Any time we did try helping each other, we ended up fighting.
“You don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
I did intervene one time. Yu-kwan’s best friend, who used to be her girlfriend fifteen years earlier, was going to fly in for the surgery. I liked Nelsie a lot. I knew she and Yu-kwan talked often on the phone, sharing tips about day-trading. Yu-kwan once told me, “If Nelsie says buy, I sell. If Nelsie says sell, I buy.”
The plan was for her to come for five days.
“Yu-kwan, that’s not enough,” I said. “Ask her to come for ten days.”
“No. Nelsie has cats. She can’t leave her cats.” Yu-kwan paced the bedroom. “Besides, I can really do it on my own. No one needs to come.”
I was lying in bed, watching her hands open and close in fists.
“Not long enough,” I said. I knew it was hard for Yu-kwan to ask for help. “I’ll call Nelsie myself.”
To my amazement the little titan did not protest but walked across the room to get the phone and handed it to me.
The phone rang in the evening dark of the East Coast. “Nelsie, Yu-kwan needs you longer than five days.”
Yu-kwan grabbed the receiver and heard Nelsie’s response. “Okay, I’ll figure it out.”
“Can you?” Yu-kwan asked in her soft English accent.
When they hung up I said, “Feel better?”
She pursed her lips, which meant I can still do it myself, but then she added a nod. “Yes, thank you.”
In nine days Yu-kwan’s left breast will be removed. I counted down the days in my mind as mornings and afternoons passed. Then my brain would stop. The air felt thick, ponderous. It felt as though we were carrying heavy sacks on our backs and had trouble moving toward each other. Time itself became awkward.
“Should I try to come down for the surgery?” I asked one morning.
“No, your infusion is right before. Even though you’re handling it now, you’re so weak.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can come afterward.”
She shook her head. Yu-kwan was not being tough right then. More resigned. Nothing would help.
Everything was moving so slow — and so fast. Any energy we had was poured into practicalities: “What will you bring? A toothbrush, toothpaste? I hope you can get out after one night. Do you want to bring some food with you? Those almond butter packs?”
“I don’t think I’ll be hungry.” She attempted a small smile.
I reached out my hand and ran it along her arm. I leaned over and kissed her, but it had such a different resonance than it did before. Instead of passion, I could hear way in the distance the low sound of a bell tolling.
Two nights before the surgery I asked again, “Are you sure I shouldn’t come?”
“No, didn’t Ann say she’d drive you down the next day? But only if you feel up for it — and only for an hour. Who knows if I’ll even be awake.”
Nelsie did come for ten days, flying in the night before the surgery. They stayed in an airport hotel to be at Yu-kwan’s 7:00 a.m. appointment the next day.
Days later I asked Yu-kwan if she slept that night. “I had to. We were getting up at five a.m.” They went to bed at nine.
I thought for the thousandth time, That girl can sleep. Even when she was getting a breast removed the next day.
I lay in bed all morning, exhausted by the recent eight-hour infusion of Oh Fat Tuna Man, waiting for Nelsie’s call that it was over, imagining my dear girlfriend’s beautiful breast being removed.
The call came. Nelsie said it went well, whatever that meant in this situation. Then she handed the phone to Yu-kwan, who was sobbing uncontrollably. She had girded herself to take care of all the details, determined to rid herself of the tumor, to do what was necessary. Now she was in shock.
She was also drugged. She’d leave the hospital the next day. “Don’t come,” she told me.
My good friend Ann came over anyway, and we sat in the red chairs in the living room having a rich time writing together. How was that possible? Partly because I was in my own drug and cancer daze. Also, both Yu-kwan and I developed a fierce selfishness during that time. We grabbed any small pleasure we could get.
I said to Ann, “Do you think this is okay?”
“Better than stress and worry,” she assured me.
Ann was right, but still it haunted me. How far had I gone from normal human reactions? I’d been taught we weren’t allowed to be okay while someone we loved was suffering. I don’t know what rule book this was written in, but certainly in my childhood, chaos and hysteria were the proper responses to distress.
I called Wendy to tell her the surgery was over. “Wendy, have I become dead, evil, comatose?”
“No, Nat, you are out of it. You and Yu-kwan are smart. If it were Peter, I would have crawled on my belly along the highway to get there. Who would that have helped?”
Nelsie dropped off Yu-kwan at my house when she left the hospital, then went off to pick up groceries and fill a pain prescription, which Yu-kwan refused to take.
“All I need is some Tylenol,” she said.
Standing in the front doorway, she looked old and defeated. Her posture was askew, her left shoulder leaning far to the right from the lost balance that two breasts provide.
I helped her off with her black coat. As I slung it in the closet, I sensed a hug was out of the question — her whole chest was bandaged.
I took her by the wrist and led her to one of the red chairs in the living room. “Tea? A cookie?”
She shook her head.
“I know, how about if I run a bath?”
“No bath!” she screamed.
Of course, the raw wound — what was I thinking? I swung my head around and looked at her again. I hid a gasp and hoped I covered the horror I felt.
* * *
—
A week later her onco score came in. She was hoping for 20 or less. Instead the score was in the 50s — so high even the doctors couldn’t believe it. They sent it back to be redone. The second score returned. Still in the 50s.
She had been lucky. She noticed the cancer early, before any lymph node involvement, but it was growing fast. It was over an inch in size when it was removed. She needed chemo.
Not only her breast — now she’d lose her straight, pageboy-length black hair too.
9.
I WAS IN LOVE with Yu-kwan’s loveliness. Her small ankles in the short gray socks with the gorillas at the anklebones. Her black Spanish shoes with heels clicking across my cement floor. The perfect narrowing below the calf. The pout of her thick lips. The graceful arch of her neck. Her shoulder bones jutting out of a thin sweater.
We rarely argued. Whenever I carried on about how she needed to exercise more, make friends more, eat less sugar, she simply respo
nded, “Yes, dear.” It oddly satisfied me, the older, bossy sister in my family, as though I were only searching for an agreement — the hell with what she actually did.
Occasionally, I’d snap my head around and say, “You’re not listening to me.”
“No, dear,” came right back. The absurdity stopped time and we both giggled.
Here I was, an American, grandchild of Eastern European immigrants, in love with an Asian woman. For the last forty years I’d been studying Eastern mind, dedicated to Zen practice. But Yu-kwan, an immigrant herself from Hong Kong via England, had no innate interest in Buddhism. She delighted in the opportunities America afforded her. She felt an eagerness and care for her new country, just like my grandmother did — enthusiasm, imbued with hope for a better future.
Our first meeting was simple. Yu-kwan was the partner of a writing student I had fifteen years ago. Because they both worked full-time, when I taught a weekend writing retreat in New York, my student insisted Yu-kwan come along.
I’d heard about Yu-kwan in earlier retreats Alice had attended. She wrote about the commitment ceremony they planned, the bowls of roses, the designer dresses. She told me at lunch about her new girlfriend’s beauty. I was happy for Alice and half-curious.
The New York retreat had eighty students, most of whom I’d never met before. As I walked from the back of the room, Alice waved her hand, and a small Asian woman stood beside her. She’s not that pretty, I thought to myself.
Yu-kwan was quiet in class, but she grinned a lot, and when she did, her face lit up. She wrote a ten-minute timed writing about being a pig — eating too much. This surprised her, her first attempt at creative writing — and she was delighted, beamed throughout the morning.
I surmised she understood deeply what I was teaching, with its Asian roots.
During a break, I went over to her. “Tell me, what do you do for a living?”
“IT” she whispered.