The Resurrection of Tess Blessing (26 page)

Tess stress giggles. Is the man who possesses the sex drive of a teenage boy honestly asking her to believe that he can’t get it up? That’s not only preposterous, it’s insulting. Like asking her to believe the sun won’t rise.

Trying to keep the incredulousness out of her voice, she asks, “Are you telling me that Pierre can’t…?” She slowly raises her limp index finger to a firm upright position.

Will nods sheepishly.

What a crock. The Frenchman is working fine. Connie’s just worn the poor thing out,
her mother scoffs.

Tess doesn’t completely disagree with Louise, and finds herself in another difficult position. She’d love to believe that a midlife dip in testosterone is why Will’s not been going after her the fevered way he usually does. It’s not that he doesn’t want to make mad love to her anymore, or that he’s stepping out on her, he’s impotent.

Trust, but verify? How could she prove it? When Will was dead to the world tonight, she and Pierre could have a little
tête à tête.
But even if he did rise to the occasion that would only prove that he was capable of doing so when her husband was an unconscious and unwilling participant.

She realizes that she should just stop all this torturous wondering. Ask him straight out if the high-school sweethearts have fallen back in love again, but enduring another surgery knowing for
sure
that her husband is cheating on her? That would take away all her hope. And he
could
be telling her the truth.

If wishes were horses you woulda been trampled to death years ago, Theresa.

Tess knows that she needs to take some time to carefully sort through what Will has told her. If she doesn’t, her mind will automatically take the low road. She’ll begin thinking crazy thoughts. Something like, he’s not having a midlife crisis, and now that it looks like she’s going to live, Will is just stalling for time until he can come up with a way to fulfill his promise to marry Connie. He can’t get a divorce because he’s Catholic, so the only way he can get out of their marriage is by murdering her. He’ll expertly carve up her body the way he does a side of beef at the diner, after which he’ll tell everyone, including the police chief of Ruby Falls, Stu Whitehall, that he had absolutely no idea what had happened to her and everyone would believe him because he’s a Blessing and apparently, so good at lying now.

She places her hand on Will’s cheek and says, “I want to talk more about this, but I need a few minutes to organize my thoughts, and I gotta empty my drain. I forgot to do it earlier. Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

She hurries to the upstairs bathroom to consider Will’s confession, lifts her shirt to perform the emptying routine, but something…it looks like there’s a hunk of tissue blocking the flow and the backed-up fluid is about to pop the top. She’s about to blow.

“Will!” she hollers. “Help!”

After he pounds up the stairs and arrives at her side, he says, “What’s…? Oh, geeze, that doesn’t look right.” He’s gone green around the gills, but the backup gives his manly self something to focus on. He sinks to his knees and begins tinkering with the apparatus the same way he would if something stopped working at the diner. “Let me pull this out of the top and—” he tugs too hard and the bulb separates from the tube and the insides of Tess—the blood, tissue, and fluid—spew all over the both of them.

She is mortified, but Will doesn’t pull away from her with a look of revulsion the way she anticipated he would. He tilts forward, presses his lips against the side of her bandaged breast, and says, “I know my problem can’t compare to what you’ve been going through, but…I hope you know that it’s been hard for me too, believe it or not.”

When in doubt—joke.

She places her bare foot gently on his Pierre region and says tentatively, “Not.”

When his laugh resonates in her chest, Tess bows her head and is grateful to receive the best medicine there is.

My friend had been able to forget about tomorrow’s margin surgery for twenty seconds at a time, but for the other twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, and forty seconds of the day, the fear took over. And it brought company. Depression.

Heartened by their recent bathroom exchange, she had asked Will during his break from the diner yesterday, “After work tonight, how about we bundle up and take a walk? Like the old days.”

He pulled a face and said, “Sorry, I can’t. It’s Wednesday. I’ve gotta stay late to…ah…review our food costs.”

Tess was crushed, until her rage kicked in. Hell hath no fury and all that. She swore to herself that if and when she did feel stronger she’d quit pussyfooting around and discover what her husband was up to once and for all and it better not be Connie. She’s already devised a rudimentary plan. She’ll follow him. Like one of those dicks in
True Detective
she used to read about at Dalinsky’s Drugstore when she was a kid. She might even take it one step further and get some helpful hints from the best stalker she knows—Otto the dishwasher.

She’s listening to the soundtrack of
To Kill a Mockingbird
as we head south on I-43 this morning. She usually plays the
West Side Story
soundtrack when she goes on errands longer than two miles because it’s her favorite musical, but singing along this morning to
I Feel Pretty
is out of the question. She’s gained nine pounds in the last month, her hair has gone even wilder, and her right breast appears to have been involved in a fender bender. Her nipple—a smashed taillight.

The day after Dr. Whaley removed the bandages and pulled the drain out with a breathtaking
swoosh
, she’d begun doing the exercises he’d given her to stretch the muscles near where he’d removed the lymph nodes. If she didn’t, he warned, her arm wouldn’t gain back its full mobility. The stretches would also help guard against lymphedema. Because the flow of lymphatic fluid had been changed after he removed some nodes, she had to take certain precautions to keep it from draining into her arm, which would cause it to painfully swell. When her blood pressure needed to be checked from here on out, the doc told her to insist that the phlebotomist place the cuff on her left arm. And no shaving her right underarm with a razor that could nick and lead to an infection.

To Tess’s questions about the need for the margin surgery, he shrugged and said, “I don’t necessarily agree with the pathology report, but it’s important to cover all the bases.”

Patience stopped in the exam room after Tess and Whaley had finished up. “Where’d you decide to go for your radiation treatments?” she asked.

“St. Joe’s.”

Tess had done some field research at the diner. Knowing now that one in eight women got breast cancer, she’d eavesdropped on tables of four or more lunching ladies. A Dr. David Sherman, a radiation oncologist located at the cancer center at St. Joseph’s, came up more than once in conversations. She was supposed to meet with him next week at the hospital in her old neighborhood—she and Birdie had been born there—but now, on account of the margin surgery, she’d had to push the appointment back.

Patience told her, “Dr. Sherman is highly respected. I’m sure he mentioned that you won’t be able to wear your regular bras during radiation.” He had. “You’ll need soothing fabric against your skin.” She dabbed at her nose. “The Pink Ladies would be the first to tell you that it’s better to stock up on sports bras now rather than in the midst of treatment when shopping will be too exhausting.”

That’s why we’re turning into Bayshore Mall this morning.

Sun’s not out, and there’s a twenty-mile-an-hour wind coming off Lake Michigan that’s sending the temperature below zero. Tess would love to park the Volvo out of the elements, but in the Lifetime movies Haddie and she watch, a vulnerable woman is often attacked in a parking structure, and she’d also heard that it’s the last place a person wants to be during an earthquake. (A very minor one was reported on May 6, 1947. She figures they’re due.)

Since it’s not the type of day many venture from their homes, she easily finds a slot, flips up her furry parka hood, and the two of us trudge through the lot toward the mall doors.

The children are always foremost on her mind, so after she picks up a
Rounders
poster that was screaming Henry’s name from the front window of a novelty store, she moseys over to Boston Store’s perfume counter for a bottle of Happy. She sprays a sample of Haddie’s favorite on her wrists so she can more easily pretend that she and her girl are shopping together the way they had before trying on a pair of jeans became torturous. At Williams-Sonoma, she purchases a copper sauté pan that she knows Will would put to good use, and at the Barkery—she picks up a bag of chewy cookies for Garbo.

Trying to buy your children’s love? Charm your husband with cookware? Bribe your poor dog with a bone?

Demons are waiting for Tess in Macy’s third-floor lingerie department. When we step off the escalator, we are met by mannequins dressed in frothy, creamy underthings. She stops to finger the flimsy lace fabric like a child forever denied dessert. She wells up when she thinks that she’ll never be able to wear anything frou frou again without feeling like she’s trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. She ends up snatching four of the simple cotton sports bras that Patience had suggested off a nearby rack.

I set my arm around her shoulders as we drag toward the down escalator with her purchases. “Remember the words of Dr. Drake,” I say. “Humor is the best way to transcend the pain. Whatcha got?”

She’s nonresponsive, almost limp, so I take the initiative and tell her the joke about the Polack who got stuck on an escalator as we step on. It’s one of her favorites because her daddy told it to her, but even that doesn’t help stave off the black feelings.

“The song?” I suggest.

She’s so tangled up inside that she doesn’t even realize she’s acquiesced and given voice to, “I’ve got something in my pocket that belongs upon my face. I keep it very close at hand in a most convenient place,” until another woman with a haunting vibrato joins in, and then one by one so do the other ladies stacked up behind her. “I’m sure you’ll never guess it if you guess a long, long while. So I’ll take it out and put it on it’s a great big Brownie smile.”

By the time they reach the ground floor, the troopers are in perfect harmony.

Unlike his response to the initial surgery, Will volunteered to stay in the hospital room while Dr. Whaley completed the margin cleanup, but until Tess’s questions about his faithfulness are satisfactorily answered, she thought it best to keep him at arm’s length.

After he delivers her to St. Mary’s North, she jumps out of the car and rushes through the hospital’s double doors before he can holler an insipid, “Love you,” out the car window.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Nurse Jerry quips when he shows Tess into the room.

The accommodations are not as sumptuous as the last time. The bed has been replaced by a La-Z-Boy, and she assumes that Will was right when he’d told her, “This surgery doesn’t sound like a complete engine overhaul like the first one. This will be quick. Like a tune-up.”

After Susan, the Amish-looking nurse, checks off the presurgery questionnaire, off they go to the operating room where Dr. Whaley asks from behind his green mask, “You set?”

“Like a table,” hysterical Tess says through chattering teeth. (Birdie had told her that joke when they were kids.)

When anesthesiologist, Dr. Gritzhammer, lowers the mask it occurs to her that it might’ve been prudent to apologize for not returning his call last night since he’s controlling her air flow, but by her third inhalation—ninety-thirteen—she no longer gives a fig. She’s got bigger fish to fry. The only way she could talk herself into the surgery was by reminding herself over and over that while she’s under, she’ll be reunited again with her family in the Sea of Unconditional Love.

What a cotton-pickin’ shame nothing like that happened.

Tess awakens in the recovery room remembering nothing and feeling leaden and groggier than the last time. Jerry returns her to her room, fusses over her vitals for a few minutes, and warns her to stay seated.

She’s relieved that Dr. Gritzhammer hadn’t transformed her into a salad ingredient, but she’s crushed that she’d not experienced another visit to the Land of Milk and Honey. Close to tears, she asks me, “Why do you think that is?”

I shrug and say with a smile, “One per customer?” because I can’t answer that truthfully. I can only commiserate. (Another part of my job is to decide how many revelations my already overstimulated friend can handle at any particular point in time. I don’t want her to short circuit.)

Upon Jerry’s return, Tess tells him how glad she is that Mare’s cancer had gone into remission in an overly lucid way—the way drunks talk to cops—because he won’t release her if she seems too out of it, which she is.

Will shows up to retrieve her an hour later.

Back home, he helps her into bed and returns to the diner for the afternoon shift. She drifts into a deep sleep and a drug-induced dream. She and Birdie are having a picnic on the beach where Tess had tried to dispose of her mother’s ashes. The girls are having a grand old time until they notice someone darting amongst the trees in the woods behind them. It takes them a few minutes to figure out it’s Louise. She keeps her distance until the sisters go for a swim, but then she scuttles down to the sand and steals their lunch basket.

Tess hears herself yell out, “Stop, thief!” when she bolts up in bed drenched in sweat. Unsure how long she’d been out, she checks the clock next to the bed. It’s almost five. “Henry?” she calls out. “You home?”

If he is, he isn’t answering her. She didn’t tell him about the early-morning surgery. She’d figured that the anesthesia would’ve worn off by the time he got home from basketball practice asking for a snack or complaining about some teacher.

She calls him on his cell phone because she recently discovered this is a better line of communication as opposed to face-to-face conversation.

“Where are you?” she asks.