Eating Heaven (10 page)

At home, I strip off my clothes, scrub myself pink in the shower. Then I look into the mirror, although I have to force myself to. My eyes are raw and glassy, my hair hangs in long, wet strings around my face, but I don’t look any different. I don’t look like I just ate an entire cake. I don’t look like someone who would run out on someone dying of cancer.

A sob erupts from my gut and I sink to my knees on hard hexagonal tiles, feel their corners dig into my flesh at the bones, the grit of dirt on the floor under my hands. I crawl to the toilet, push up the seat, and steel myself. Then I open my mouth, put my index finger inside, tentatively at first. When nothing happens, I shove it farther back until I am gagging, choking for air, but not throwing up.

“Come on,” I sob, trying again with my middle finger, maybe it’s long enough, but I just choke and sputter, cough nothing but air and spit and snot into the toilet.

Benny is lying in his darkened room when I return, watching an
Andy Griffith
rerun. His roommate appears to have gone home.

I take off my raincoat, shake the mist from it. He doesn’t see me in the doorway or notice as I approach his bed. His eyes are fixed to the screen, his face illuminated in the gray-blue glow of the television. He is clean-shaven, his hair combed, and his hands rest lightly on top of the blankets. His wedding ring still shines from the third finger of his left hand.

“Benny,” I whisper so I don’t startle him, but he doesn’t turn his head. “Uncle Benny,” I say a little louder.

He turns and looks at me, eyes vacant. He stares for a moment, then turns back to the television.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” I say, pulling a chair to his bed. “I’m sorry.” If I were a hand holder, I’d take his hand in mine, squeeze the hard, dry palm, the crinkled skin on top, to feel the warmth of him. Instead, I lay my arm next to his, the sheet soft and cool.

We sit this way for a long time, watching Barney’s apoplectic gyrations, Andy’s calm demeanor as they do the relationship dance with their respective girlfriends.

“Always had a soft spot for Thelma Lou,” Benny says, and reaches
over to squeeze my hand. “Even though she’s not nearly as pretty as you.”

I laugh, so relieved I actually feel blood course through my body, as thought it’s been waiting until this moment to nourish me.

“Ah, Bebe,” he says, “why did we never do this together? Just sit and watch the damn TV?” His face buckles and he begins to cry.

I swallow, then move to sit beside him on the bed, wrap my arm around his shoulders. “I don’t know, Ben, but we can now.”

At home, there’s a note taped to the door:

I ball up the note and stick it in my pocket.

The kitty lets me pick her up and hug her when I come through the door. After a few moments, though, she struggles, so I put her down and walk to my computer. There’s no e-mail about the assignment yet from Stefan. I sit and choose “compose new e-mail” from the menu, then type:

I hit
SEND
, then stare at the screen. I have no energy to undress, to get ready for bed, to turn on the television, to eat. I am a big, empty hole that nothing can fill. I can’t even cry.

Buddy jumps into my lap, purring. “Do you need some food?” I ask her, scratching her ears. “Am I a neglectful mommy?”

I pick her up and carry her into the kitchen. “How about some cream?” I say, setting her on the floor, getting out a bowl, opening the fridge. I pour it for her and she prances like a pony, as happy as a living being can be, it seems. “Good for you,” I say, then walk back to the computer to shut it down for the night.

A new message has popped into my in-box. It’s from Stefan. He’s reading my e-mail on a Sunday night. I click it and read:

I gasp that he’s used my nickname.

Love!

I read and reread his e-mail until I have it memorized. Then I shut down the computer, turn out all the lights, and crawl into bed fully clothed, listening to the steady rain tap the windows as I wait for sleep.

BY ELEANOR SAMUELS
What do the words “meat loaf and mashed potatoes” or “chicken soup” have to do with love? Everything, according to psychologist and family therapist Nancy P. Levy.
  “Our earliest experiences of love include food, starting with mother’s milk,” she says, adding, “but it depends on your own family and traditions. Those words could be ‘soba noodles and pork balls,’ or ‘potato latkes.’ Every family has its own comfort foods.”
  After a quick poll around the
American Family
office, the list of family-inspired comfort foods is varied and surprising: everything from apple strudel to zabaglione, and a few wacky Jell-O salads in between.

Clichéd. Trite. Drivel. If only someone had actually said “zabaglione.” While my editor thought it might be interesting to explore some unusual family favorites, she didn’t exactly give me license to write the article I wanted to, which now just sounds like a
bad idea, anyway. What the hell does food have to do with anything? It isn’t love or life or a solution to anything. Why have I spent my professional life so devoted to it? And who am I kidding when I say “professional life”?

To hell with food and its false love, its deception. It lures you in, says, “I’ll make you feel better, I’ll be there for you.” And then it drives everyone else away.

I
am developing a strange and ugly new vocabulary.

Endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography: the procedure they did on Benny to relieve the jaundice and secure his diagnosis. Acinar cell carcinoma: the name of his rare pancreatic cancer, which is always terminal. Always. And so these words become necessary: “palliative,” “quality of life,” “hospice.”

The tumor on Benny’s pancreas is the size of a grapefruit (why must they measure in food?) and he has “involvement” in the liver. This cancer seldom metastasizes to the brain, but Benny has always been a rare bird. His brain is riddled with small masses, all less than a centimeter in diameter. Raspberries, maybe? Blueberries? Dr. Krall didn’t say when I finally got the nerve to call him yesterday afternoon. In his wheezy, plodding voice he recited what sounded like an AMA report on the state of Benny’s disease, sparing me nothing, but after a while I loosened up, encouraged him to tell me more. Each new medical term, each new quantifiable factoid (stage IVB is the end of the line for how advanced a cancer can be) filled the space in my head that had previously been littered with panic, terror, and an unspeakable sadness somewhere at the outer edges, lying in wait. Scientific words and facts feel far more purposeful and concrete, weighty and bulky in a way that is comforting.

Today, just five days after his diagnosis, Benny started Dr. Krall’s experimental course of chemotherapy, which, of course, is strictly to
relieve his symptoms. For a while. He’s also taking a steroid to shrink the brain metastases. Temporarily.

This morning, when I ask the perky-bobbed nurse
how
temporarily, whispering so Benny doesn’t hear, she waits to answer until she is hovered over his bed, checking his vitals. “I’ll be honest—it won’t feel nearly long enough, but at least you’ll have your uncle back for a while. Enjoy it. Make good use of the time.”

I look to see how he’s taking such frankness. He seems unfazed, watching
The View
and scratching the back of his neck, but then his hand runs up along his skull, over the top and back, fingers probing gently.

“How long until he can get out of here?” I ask.

“A day or so. We just want to make sure he does okay with the chemo.” She taps the hose of one of the three fluid-filled bags on his IV stand. “Then he’s free to blow this pop stand.”

“Wow, Ben, hear that?” I say, fake cheerfulness to rival hers. “You get to go home soon.”

“Yup,” he says, eyes never leaving the television. His hand drops from his head and settles into his lap with the other one, folding together like a child’s hands in prayer.

Last night, Christine called to give me Anne’s new unlisted number.

“Do you think she . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the question.

“I don’t understand exactly what happened, but I do know Anne. You know it, too, Eleanor; she’s ethical to a fault.”

“But maybe she didn’t realize what she was doing was wrong.”

Christine sighed. “She sounded pretty sure to me, but how would I know? I’m just a knocked-up schoolteacher.”

“Are you okay?”

She ignores the question. “And I talked to Mom a couple of days ago. I told her about Benny.”

“And?”

“She must have been in shock. She just thanked me for calling and said she had to go fix dinner. I had to throw up, anyway. Morning sickness doesn’t always happen in the morning, apparently.”

This afternoon, when I get home from the hospital, I dial Mom’s number and break out in a sweat. When the machine answers, I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“Hello, Mother. Just calling to update you on Benny’s condition, which I’m assuming at some level you care about. Basically, he’s dying and there’s nothing they can do but make him feel better for a while. They’re shrinking his brain tumors so he can hold a normal conversation, just in case you ever decide to talk to him again. He’s going home in a couple of days. If you’re not too busy over the next few months, which is probably all he has, you may want to at least tell him good-bye.”

I punch the
OFF
button with relish, then immediately feel scummy, knowing I’ve crossed a line. The phone shrills in my hand, but I let the machine answer. Two can play this game.

“My God, Eleanor,” Mom’s voice spits from the speaker. “How can you talk to me that way?”

“This isn’t about you,” I say to the machine.

“I’m sorry that your uncle Benny is so ill,” she continues, “and I know you’re going through a hard time, but really, Ellie. We all are.” There is a sharp click, then silence.

Buddy mews insistently for her evening bowl of cream. Usually by this time of day I’m starving, but I haven’t been able to work up an appetite for anything other than crackers, and then only to stop the burning gnaw in my stomach. I pour half-and-half into Buddy’s bowl. She crouches over it protectively, lapping furiously like a drug addict getting a fix.

I lean over to stroke her spine, tease her tail, and she twitches it away from me, scooting around to place herself between her precious cream and me.

“Boy, you’re quite the little piggy,” I say. Her sides have already filled in; she’s no longer the skinny ragamuffin that ran into my apartment just a week or so ago. “Maybe I should cut you back to milk.”

When she is finished drinking, she is all purr and affection again, letting me scratch her ears, rub her belly as she rolls side to side on the floor.

“Look at that little tummy,” I say, cupping the silky rise of it in my hand, remembering something about pets growing to look like their owners. “It’s definitely milk for you from here on out. I don’t want to get any lectures from the vet next week when she takes out your stitches.”

I’ve become a cat lady. What if someone heard me talking to her this way? And why shouldn’t she be fat and happy? What would that hurt?

“I need a life,” I tell Buddy, but she has become engrossed in the intricately choreographed process of licking her paw and swirling it around her cream-spotted muzzle, whether to clean her face or consume every last drop, I’m not sure.

The next morning, a familiar ding announces the arrival of the hospital elevator, and I step through the swishing doors, knowing without looking exactly where the number 6 button is, knowing how long my ride will take, barring any stops at other floors. I walk the corridor toward Benny’s room, nodding at the staff at the nurses’ station; I know three out of four by name. I recognize the patients in each room as I pass; the old man with the bony legs and distended belly in 642, the youngish woman who stares out her window in 634, the unidentifiable figure in 627, always buried in bedding, never moving.

I stop just before Benny’s door and take a breath. It’s become a ritual: stop, breathe, relax. Then I step inside. He is sitting in the chair beside his bed, eyeglasses perched at the end of his nose, engrossed in the morning paper. He doesn’t notice I’m there until I’m standing right in front of him. He looks up, smiles his old, easy smile, lays his paper in his lap.

“Benny!” I say. “You look so . . . good.” They said the drugs would kick in quickly, but I didn’t believe it.

“Don’t sound so surprised. You know I don’t give up without a damn good fight.”

Tears spring to my eyes, but I make myself laugh, relief flushing through me. “Me, either,” I say, and he takes my hands in his.

“Well, all right, then,” he says, giving them a little shake. “They’re springing me the day after tomorrow. I’ve got a hankering for some pineapple upside-down cake, and ham with brown-sugar glaze. Reckon you’re up to it?”

I push my lips into a smile. “Of course I am,” I say, although I’m not. I so am not. “I just happen to have a recipe for pineapple upside-down cake that will make you think you’ve—”

I stop abruptly.

“Died and gone to heaven?” he says, winking. “Sounds like just the thing.”

Somehow, the rest of the world doesn’t get that life as we previously knew it no longer exists. Assignments are piling up faster than I can check my e-mail, which I do much less frequently since becoming a hospital regular—just first thing in the morning and then again when I get home, like now. “10 Surefire Ways to Get Your Family to Eat More Fish.” Easy enough. “Are Root Vegetables the New Potatoes?” What is so wrong with potatoes? “Chicken Soup Recipes to Cure Just About Anything!” At this one I gasp, but two weeks ago I wouldn’t have noticed what was wrong with that sentence. I have to get a grip. Regardless of what Benny’s going through, I still have to make a living.

I’ve never said no to an editor, but how am I going to keep up? How can I write total bullshit now, of all times? If I start turning down assignments, will my editors give me any more work? Or will they move on to the next freelancer who always says yes?

“Yes,” I e-mail back to the fish article. Yes to the root vegetables. After a few deep breaths, I say yes to the chicken soup piece, then go in search of Stefan’s e-mail from the other night.

I’m reading it (why I don’t know, since it’s forever committed to memory) when my computer bleeps that I have a new message. My pulse quickens. Stefan?

It’s from the food editor at the
Oregonian
. I wrote for her when I first started out, but soon discovered that newspapers couldn’t pay freelancers nearly what magazines could. Still, I liked writing for Sandra, and seeing my name in the local paper. I open her message.

Ugh. Exactly why I hate writing profiles. I write about food, not people and their personal details. Still, I could use the money.

I hit
REPLY
:

As if I don’t have enough on my plate. I sigh and close my eyes, fighting the eddy that threatens to pull me down.

Later, after staring at Stefan’s e-mail for far too long, I hit
REPLY
.

I stop here to shuffle to the bathroom for Kleenex, wipe my face, blow my nose, then continue.

I type “Love,” then delete it and type “Yours, Eleanor.”

The rain outside slashes through the purple-black night, pelting the windows in thuds and plinks. It’s not even ten, but all I want to do is go to bed. At one a.m., though, I’m still awake, rolling from side to side to try to get comfortable, throwing blankets off, then pulling them on, disgruntling Buddy at every turn. Finally, she jumps off the bed and trots into the living room. I get up, too, and follow her, wander over to the computer. I have mail. I click it open and read:

I’ll never get any sleep now. It’s already four a.m. in New York.