Siobhan was thinking about her breasts. This was no good.
In the books she edited, women thought about them all the time. Or if not all the time—these women were also much concerned with dimensional portals, untrustworthy cyborgs—far more often than Siobhan did. They compared these breasts (busts, bosoms, mammaries, and once, alarmingly, fronts; she’d kill, she sometimes thought, for a simple pair of tits, though saying so wasn’t worth the trouble it would cause) to fruit, other foods, geographic features. They noted gravity’s influence or predictable lack of influence. They—Siobhan knew not to conflate author and character within earshot of author, but in her own head this was allowed—demonstrated a mix of deep interest and suspect knowledge that reminded her of medieval artists offering up their best guesses at a rhino.
Medieval she could do on her own time. The job, as far as most people took it, was to winnow out egregious typos, sniff out plagiarism and brand names, and generally ensure that brave new worlds (less new in the sixth or seventh of a series) came reasonably free of potential litigation or other trouble. But her title was editor, and she insisted on being literal. She edited. She was, as nobody had requested, a hard-ass.
This proved useful during the publishing industry’s periodic and then constant crises. A hard-ass stood out among the refugees of rightsizing, women and a very few men who’d believed student loans and an abstract love of the written word were enough to guarantee a career. She’d migrated from translated masterworks to English-language masterworks to books a few people might actually buy. She’d then leapt into one of the few genres not yet regarded as a charity, built a rapport with her boys: authors who, before she got to them, had spoken of bras that left no mark, bras unworn even in active battle, and breasts, breasts, breasts.
It seemed to her she’d had a lifetime of laser-soaked sequels; it had been twenty-four years. And now here she was, thinking about her boobs (permissible also, with a sigh) like a common deep-space heroine. Though unlike that heroine—whose betrayal, when it came, would be at the hands of a rakish starfreighter pilot—she was possibly undone by them. In space, your breasts always had your back.
“It’s normal, it happens,” said the doctor after the mammogram, reassuring or troubling in her boredom. “People freak out, but the machine’s so good it sees stuff that isn’t there.”
Siobhan said, “Like Michigan J. Frog.” She’d thought this was a reasonable sentiment, a recognizable name, but the doctor frowned and, normal or not, scheduled a follow-up.
At home, Jean only looked up from her iPad when Siobhan said she’d have to return. She had a satchel full of pages, a ream of notes in her mind, no time; she waved this new appointment away as soon as she mentioned it. “Something wrong with the machine. Typical.”
“Maybe they just want another look at those puppies.”
Jean called Siobhan’s breasts puppies, girls, maracas; she called Siobhan Cookie, Dar, Babe. Siobhan reciprocated as demonstratively as she could, by not objecting.
“I wouldn’t be too worried,” said the second doctor, a specialist.
“Well, sure,” said Siobhan, ultrasound gel oozing into her clothes. “Why would you worry? You’re not the one getting prodded.”
Again, she’d misjudged; the joke got a headshake, a full silent minute as the doctor read the chart she should have read already. When she finally looked up, she nodded at reality according to her guess. “You’re in good shape, no risk factors. We’ll just do a blood test, a biopsy, and rule out anything worrying.”
They’d taken a scant thimble of blood, a portion of flesh so minor that Jean said nothing about the wound. Maybe she hadn’t noticed, or thought it was from a pimple. Jean could be tactful.
“Well, I don’t like this,” the second specialist said, as if the results were an affront she through sheer maturity would not take personally. Her machineless diploma-heavy office implied that her medicine took place entirely in the mind. Siobhan had half-hoped her vestigial insurance would balk before this point, but the referral had gone through. “I don’t like this at all.” Just like that, they were done with reassurances and on to solutions.
Siobhan had read too many novels where illness was hidden with unlikely ease and uncomfortable symbolism. It was disappointing to discover that the world really could work this way, and to locate in herself the unsuspected squirrelish instinct to hide. It occurred to her, that she could have turned down the poking and prying. Other editors didn’t go looking for what she did and so didn’t find it; perhaps medicine worked like that, too. What did she know? She was no doctor.
“There are many options,” the second specialist said, shaking her head. “Surgery’s best.” Surgery got a nod. “It’s your choice.” Another head-shake. “We can discuss.”
“We’re discussing now. Isn’t this the discussion?”
“Donna?” she leaned over the intercom on her desk, Siobhan’s participation now done. “Do you have my schedule open? I’m trying to arrange something for Miss—” and smiled up at Siobhan, as if forgetting her name were a benediction.
“You like reading?” asked the receptionist, presumably Donna, as Siobhan was leaving. “Here, something to read.” In her hand a pamphlet, judging by its cover Jesus-related. She smiled and kept smiling, moved the pages through the air, trying to entice, “It’s free. For you.”
Siobhan never wore clothing that was bright, silk, or pocketless. Nobody got her jokes or references. She felt herself uncomfortably filling the role of reactionary lesbian, a dutiful reversal of what the world expected. But she really did like ease, pockets, language. It wasn’t her fault, was it? And what did the world expect these days, anyway? Free trade coffee, hygiene, memes; it didn’t care about the rest. People could do their own thing.
Of course that was a lie. Elsewhere and sometimes not elsewhere, the world killed people; nothing was new about that. Possibly Siobhan, not being killed, was nonetheless dying, now and here, four blocks from the office to which she’d decided not to return, though her appointment had been at noon.
She needed no excuse for her boss, was free and trusted and anyway cell-phoned, fortunate in some ways, in others apparently not. “It’s good you came to us when you did,” the second specialist had said, pecking details out on a hidden keyboard. “Lucky.”
“We define that word differently,” said Siobhan, expecting no laugh. Things happened; why look for patterns, reasons? She couldn’t imagine a scenario where these thoughts were interesting. “How much do you think you’ll have to cut? Ballpark?” Colloquial as anything.
“We’ll see.” The doctor had spoken to her then as to a child: slowly, clearly, absolving herself. “It’s normal to be scared, but a good attitude helps. There are studies about that.”
Possibly, Siobhan thought, she didn’t care that much, though this was another way of saying she did care. To be opened, cut, reshaped was no small thing. Even examination was larger than nothing. She understood how deeply authors felt at even minor excisions and queries. It was a terrible, pretentious comparison; Siobhan felt bent and bullied by the truth of it.
She foresaw Jean bringing her cups of carefully-sourced green tea and binders of research, burning sage because it couldn’t hurt, ordering special pillows and declaring that they didn’t have to go to the Wellfleet weekend, everyone would understand. As though their feelings figured in Siobhan’s consideration. They hugged Siobhan in greeting, maintained startling eye contact, invited her on dune outings when Jean was otherwise occupied, but there was no mistaking that the weekenders were Jean’s, that Emma, MeShelle, and Kat were kind to Siobhan because Jean was.
She foresaw blurting out that she just didn’t like whale-watching and dance-partying and potlucking, certainly not with women who thought that repeating jokes from TV or points from an op-ed was the same as having humor and opinions of their own. And Jean didn’t want to hear that, did she?
She foresaw being made to wait while Jean prepared another cup of unasked-for tea and then put a cool hand on her cheek, said, “Of course I want to hear it, let’s talk about it, why would you think we couldn’t?”
Surely, this marked her as lucky. What kind of person suspected such kindness?
She’d been walking the perimeter of a little park, in her hand a hot dog gone cold, an indulgence she didn’t remember making. Down the sidewalk came a woman aggressively multitasking, phone at ear, dog-leash sharing a hand with coffee, offering Siobhan a quick sympathetic smile to tell her she wasn’t hiding her troubles as much as she imagined, and that this was alright. Where did they come from, these overfamiliar women in men’s hats and poncho-sweaters; when had they overtaken the city? “I know, I know,” she said into her phone. “She’s always like that, but it’s not our job so just leave it.”
The square-nosed puppy made a spirited, incompetent leap for her hot dog. The walker lost her leash, held onto her coffee. Freed, the dog found a new distraction: the street.
Without thinking—she would recall this, how her body proved itself capable of surprise—Siobhan launched after him, slipping over the curb but managing to bring herself down around the puppy as a heedless truck rumbled by.
Her elbows propped her over a puddle. Her head was hit hard by the bumper of a parked car. Her feet were on the curb. At her middle, the dog barked in excitement at this new game, whipping its head and pulling the loose leash this way and that. Somewhere nearby, someone honked; after a moment, someone else joined in.
“Oh god,” said the woman. “I have to go.” Then she was leaning before Siobhan, phone and cup vanished. “Are you okay? I am so, so sorry. Let me help you up. Bad, Toro, very bad!” All of this emerged in undifferentiated rapid fire; Siobhan had to remind herself that she wasn’t the one being scolded.
“I’m fine.” Astonishingly, she was. She waved off the woman’s hand and stood.
“Your coat—”
“It’s fine.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “So, so much.”
“It’s nothing. I’d do the same for my dog.”
The woman fussed with the puppy—perhaps too much, Siobhan thought; young Toro couldn’t yet have sunk into her bones as he would once he was wheezy and incontinent—whispering, “bad dog, naughty dog,” while petting him thoroughly. Then, she looked up sharply, suspiciously, Siobhan’s good deed receded in the face of an editorial correction. “Your dog? You’d do that for your dog? What? I mean—”
Of course the thing to have said was that this fussy stranger would do the same for Siobhan. But what evidence did she have of that? As if the question were entirely different, Siobhan smiled. “Clarence. He’s an ugly, dumb mutt. I really should get back to him.” Ridiculous, She thought, in the middle of the day. Then again, the woman was walking Toro.
“Let me at least pay for your dry cleaning.” She pulled bills from a wallet with practiced fingers.
Siobhan looked down. The water marks were drying, already vague on the coat’s textured gray. She laughed. “Dry cleaning? Lady, I wouldn’t want to make my other clothes jealous.” A good exit line, she thought; sometimes the universe offered a gift.
The woman stood perfectly still and came to some decision. She rested the money-hand on Siobhan’s shoulder for a moment, whispered, “Thank you.” Then, they continued in their own directions.
She made a list on her way to the apartment, as was her habit. She’d have to tell Jean. Also her family, who’d perhaps be disappointed; all those years they’d caused no trouble for one another, and now this. Cute Serena the grad student and barista came into her mind. But to tell her about this sickness, even if she had a George Eliot tattoo, was too much. If Siobhan’s luck was real, she’d be back at the coffee shop soon, nothing personal about her absence.
Tony and HR. Mark and Graham and Isaac, whose manuscripts she had and who would not take it well. Then again, they took nothing well.
Her knowledge was like a little gloating sun inside her, a warming secret. At home she woke delighted Clarence, took him on a long brisk walk with another hot dog to share. She’d never tell Jean that part, less forgivable than an eight-minute conversation and seven-dollar tip for Serena. They both tended fiercely to Clarence’s health.
“How’ll it be if I’m gone, buddy? What’ll you do? Who’ll take care of you like I do?” She held his ears, looked into his eyes, spoke in the childish faux-gruff voice reserved solely for him. How often she’d considered the opposite, Clarence’s decline, awfulness complicated by the knowledge that she could bear it, as she had before with Mika, Ranger, Sardine. There was a tiny pleasure in this new scenario, another surprise. “It’s okay, buddy, I’m fine, I’ll be fine.”
Clarence looked back with doggish tolerance. Hot dog or no, he knew she had treats in her pocket and would eventually give him one.
It was unimportant whether they went to Cape Cod, whether she called Jean or waited until day’s end. But then what was important? If she was determined to pare back everything inessential, as she imagined people in her unoriginal situation often did, unoriginally, what would remain? This was maybe the wheedling anxiety of her writers, that their efforts would be whittled until they were unrecognizable or vanished.
“You’re home early,” Jean said when Siobhan greeted her and handed her a glass of wine as though this were their routine and not a break from it. She frowned at the scratch on her elbow but said nothing; Siobhan had what she considered an undeserved reputation in the household for absent-mindedness, running into things with a book in her hand.
Her phone rang. It was not unusual for Isaac to call at night like this; it was not unusual for her to answer. Perhaps he’d been trying to reach her at the office, had grown irate and nervous. Her promise in demanding a lot was that she would also give it.
But she couldn’t answer. When she located the phone in her purse, its screen was thoroughly smashed. Jean clucked in irritation at the sound—how easy it was to forget that she could get annoyed too—and Siobhan laughed. She’d refused money, and now look; resolving this would cost far more than dry cleaning. Another joke that was hers alone.
“What happened? Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Jean, who absolutely couldn’t do anything about the phone even if she’d known. Siobhan stopped laughing. She’d need, now as always, to find the proper words, to prove her own case and defeat Jean’s faith that all could be solved with beverages and good listening skills. Her critical eye informed her first that she was unfair to think this, and then—she was a hard-ass, but not just a hard-ass—that she had the right to be unfair, for a little while.
And Jean was already past it. She noticed Siobhan’s face, her first rich tears, before Siobhan did; how many times did her body have to surprise her before she’d believe that it could? Jean moved so quickly. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching out to stroke her hair, as she—no matter how many times Siobhan told her she didn’t have to, really—always did, “It’s fine, Cookie, don’t worry, it’s fine, whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
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Aharon Levy is a stock speculator whose essays and fiction have appeared in many publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.