Chapter Two
An hour later, Judy reached Kennett Square, a small town in semi-rural Chester County, and she pulled onto the gravel driveway in front of her aunt’s small brick house, cut the ignition, and checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were still wet from crying, but her skin wasn’t as mottled as it had been when she’d first heard the horrifying news.
I have breast cancer, her aunt had said, and Judy hadn’t heard anything else. She sniffled, reached for a crumpled Dunkin’ Donuts napkin, and wiped her eyes one last time. She pulled her key out of the ignition, got her purse, jumped out of the car, and hurried down the driveway past the garage. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, and the October air unseasonably warm, the lovely weather incongruous given the heartbreaking news. Judy couldn’t imagine losing her aunt. Her aunt was too young to die.
She broke into a jog as soon as she saw her aunt, who looked so different from the last time she had seen her, only five months ago. Barbara Elizabeth Moyer was a tall, strong woman and had always been on the huggably beamy side, but no longer. Her fisherman’s sweater and jeans drooped on a much thinner frame, and her long, thick silvery hair had vanished, replaced by a red bandanna knotted at her nape, over a newly bald head. She was only in her early fifties, but her face had acquired the gauntness of an older person, emphasizing the prominence of her cheekbones and her large, deep-set blue eyes. She sat alone at her wrought-iron table with a glass top, surrounded by the fading reds, pinks, and yellows of her beloved roses, now past their season.
“Aunt Barb!” Judy called out, tears returning to her eyes. She threw open her arms just as her aunt stood up and gave her a hug.
“Honey, don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right.”
“No it’s not!” Judy blurted out, burying her head in her aunt’s bony shoulder, knowing that she was saying the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time.
“Yes, it will, you’ll see.” Her aunt clucked softly, patting her back. “Don’t worry.”
“What happened?” Judy sobbed. “When did this … happen?”
“About nine months ago. Don’t cry, really, sweetie.” Aunt Barb gave her a final pat on the back. “I’m going to be well again, you’ll see.”
“You will be, I know you will be,” Judy said, her words slightly blubby, but her tears subsiding. She let her aunt go and wiped her cheeks with her hand. “So, I mean, can you explain? How did I not know? I mean, what’s going on? And where’s Mom?”
“In the kitchen. Here, sit down and I’ll catch you up.” Aunt Barb pressed Judy into the wrought-iron chair opposite her, her eyes glinting in the bright sun. “So … I found a lump in my left breast, a puckering, kind of. Turns out, it was stage II breast cancer.”
“Oh my.” Judy swallowed hard, trying not to cry again. Stage II sounded terrifying, though she wasn’t about to ask what was the highest stage. She would look it up later online.
“We thought we could get it with chemo, and it melted the tumor considerably, but they still found abnormal cells in my left breast, in my ducts.” Aunt Barb paused but didn’t tear up, strong and in control. “My cancer isn’t encapsulated, which means it’s not contained in one tumor, but throughout the tissue.”
Judy tried to stay calm. She knew she was about to become familiar with terms like encapsulated, which she would look up later, too. She noticed for the first time that her aunt no longer had eyebrows and that her fair skin had a grayish tinge.
“The good news is it’s not in my lymph nodes, including my sentinel node, so my prognosis is good. Everybody’s cancer is different, that’s what I’m learning. My doctor expects the mastectomy will do the trick, and I might not even need radiation.”
Judy knew radiation was a cancer treatment, but it horrified her to think about irradiating a human being, especially one she loved so much.
“The mastectomy is scheduled for Monday.”
“This Monday? In, like, two days?”
“Yes, but don’t let it scare you. It doesn’t scare me. Frankly, after seeing what your uncle went through with blood cancer, I feel lucky to have a surgical solution.” Aunt Barb paused, her forehead etched with grief that was still fresh. “So I try to look on the bright side. I have to lose my breasts, but what I really care about is my life. And after all, every plant needs pruning, so that it can thrive as a whole. I’m just getting pruned, that’s all.”
“There you go,” Judy said, pained. “You’re a rose, Aunt Barb.”
“Exactly.” Aunt Barb smiled. “Besides, I know a lot of women who have had mastectomies, so there’s no mystery. It should last about a few hours, and they’ll discharge me on Wednesday, with a few drains.”
Judy hid her fear. She didn’t know a person could have a drain. Showers should have drains, not people.
“A lot of people have reconstruction, implants, or have expanders put in, but I decided not to.” Aunt Barb set her mouth, a Cupid’s bow, albeit determined. “I don’t want to put myself through that. I hate the idea of more surgeries, or longer recovery, or spending more money. I mean, what’s the point? I’m already so flat, and I can deal with padded bras.”
“I see that,” Judy said, meaning it. She couldn’t imagine a more personal decision, and she didn’t know what she would do, but she knew it was so like her aunt. “Why didn’t you tell me, or Mom?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” Aunt Barb frowned with regret. “That’s why I canceled dinner on you, last month. Sorry.”
“But on the phone, you never said anything.” Judy talked to her aunt at least twice a week, checking in.
“I hid it.”
Judy tried to think back in time, bewildered, as if understanding the chronology would lend her any comfort. “But I saw you on my birthday. You looked fine. You looked great.”
“I was just starting chemo, and I didn’t tell you then because I didn’t want you to associate your birthday with news like that.”
“Oh no.” Judy almost burst into new tears, at the memory. They had celebrated in this very backyard, sharing a double-cheese pizza and a few cold Miller Lites among the lovely roses, in full bloom. Her aunt was an expert rosarian, and her heirloom Gallica rosebushes drooped now with the last of their massive crimson blooms, shaped more like a peony to the untrained eye.
“Right before I saw you, I had my first treatment. I hadn’t lost my hair yet, that happened on day seventeen, just when they said it would. Chemo was awful, I felt tired and foggy. Chemo brain, they call it. It made my nails weird, dried my skin, and obviously, I’m prematurely bald. I’m going for a Pirate Queen look.” Aunt Barb patted her bandanna. “Not bad, huh?”
“Very Gilbert and Sullivan.” Judy managed a smile, because they both loved G&S operettas.
“My friend gained weight during chemo, but I lost twenty-five pounds. So there’s the good news.” Aunt Barb chuckled ruefully. Then she sighed, tilting her face to the sun. “Anyway, enough. It’s a beautiful day, you’re here, and we’re in the presence of Reine Victoria.”
“You mean the rose you were trying to grow? You did it?”
“Yep, go take a whiff. There’s still one or two blooms left, in the middle, the pink.” Aunt Barb gestured to the rosebushes on her right. “Reine Victoria is a Bourbon rose, one of the most fragrant. It can smell like pears.”
Judy got up, crossed to the bushes, and smelled a rose with pinkish blooms. Its perfume filled her nostrils with a fruity sweetness. “Wow, that’s so cool. Aromatherapy.”
“Also, its thorns aren’t that bad. I hate thorns. Who needs attitude from a flower?”
Judy heard her phone ringing in her back pocket, reached for it, and saw that the screen read Linda Adler, the client she’d been trying to reach. “Oh, damn.”
“Feel free to get that, honey,” Aunt Barb called to her.
“Nah, I’ll get it later.” Judy let the call go to voicemail because her conversation with Linda would have been a long one, and her aunt deserved her undivided attention. Judy went back to the table and sat down.
“So how’s work, honey?”
“I’m not going to complain, in the circumstances.”
Aunt Barb touched her hand. “No, please don’t act differently around me. Tell me. I’m sick of talking about lymph nodes.”
“Okay, well, I have a cool sex-discrimination case for this woman who just called me, but I also just got dumped with seventy-five new cases, all damages trials.” Judy didn’t add that her goal in the damages cases would be to diminish the value of a lost human life, a heartbreaking thought right now.
Suddenly Aunt Barb turned to face the house, where Judy’s mother was coming out the back door, carrying a floral-patterned tray. Judy didn’t call to her because it was too far away, but she was struck, as always, by her mother’s beauty, even in her late fifties. Delia Van Huyck Carrier had round blue eyes, now slightly hooded, and a squarish face and high cheekbones that bespoke her paternal Dutch heritage. She kept in trim shape and had great style, even in her standard airplane outfit: an oversized gray sweater, black leggings, and black ballet flats. She crossed the lawn toward them, her lips pursed and her head tilted slightly down, showing the top of her head with its loose, lemony blonde topknot.
“Hi, Mom!” Judy stood up, went to her mother, and gave her an awkward hug, around the tray, a pitcher of iced tea, glasses, napkins, and a platter of chocolate chip cookies.
“Hello, honey.” Judy’s mother set the tray on the tabletop, and the glasses clinked. “You might want to wipe your nose.”
“Oops, sorry. How are you?” Judy plucked a napkin from the tray and blew her nose, sensing that her mother seemed oddly cooler than usual. Aunt Barb stiffened as soon as her mother came over, and Judy realized that the two sisters had been fighting, which wasn’t atypical, though she would have guessed there was an exception for breast cancer.
“I’m good.” Her mother’s Delft-blue eyes narrowed in the sunlight, which caught the golden strands of her fine, smooth hair. “Dad says hi. How are you, all right?”
Of course not, Judy wanted to say, but that wasn’t the right answer. “I guess so, but I’m worried about Aunt Barb. You didn’t know about this, did you?”
“No, she kept it from us. I took the red-eye as soon as I found out. Sit down, please.”
Judy sat down. Taking the red-eye was code for showing concern, even though her mother seemed completely pissed off. “Mom, is something bothering you?”
“No, I’m just determined to get my kid sister through her operation. I’m staying for the duration.”
“You make it sound like a war.”
“It is a war,” her mother shot back, meeting her eye. “And we’re going to win.”
“Delia, it’s not a war, to me.” Aunt Barb shook her head, frowning. “We work on visualization in group, and I don’t see it as a war, or ‘my battle with cancer,’ like the obits say. My cancer is part of me, and I have to work on it to heal myself, the same as my faults or my dark side.”
“You don’t have a dark side, Aunt Barb,” Judy said, her throat thick.
“Nonsense, dear,” her mother interjected. “We all have a dark side.”
Judy recoiled. “Mom, what gives? Play nice.”
Aunt Barb cocked her kerchiefed head. “Your mother and I had words, and now we’re at an impasse, agreeing to disagree.”
“About what?”
“Speak of the devil,” her mother hissed, turning toward the house, as the back door opened.