Stella surveyed the store, straightening her wig. I knew she was searching for acquaintances, people who wouldn’t expect to see her in a wheelchair. Her oncologist was in Pittsburgh, only an hour’s drive away, but Cobalt was so insulated and separate from Pittsburgh that Stella felt like her secret was safe here. She felt like no one in Cobalt would ever guess how many times we’d gone to her doctor-first for the surgery to remove the portion of her rectum, then to prepare for the bigger surgery in her colon, then for the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, then for the various surgeries to remove more and more pieces of her colon and to probe parts of her intestines and inspect her lungs, which had suspicious spots on them, too. Then for the CT scans, more chemotherapy, experimental drug chemo pills that she could take at home. We were in the middle of radiation to shrink the tumors in her lungs, staving off the disease’s possible progression to other systems, especially her brain. Her doctor warned that the various treatments Stella requested were far too aggressive for someone her age, but Stella squared her shoulders and said, ‘Bullshit. I can take it like a man.’
Stella went to great lengths to keep up as if nothing had changed. She still played euchre with her friends, a scruffy bunch of women of varying ages who had lived in Cobalt their entire lives. I tagged along, sitting in the lumpy, overstuffed, chenille chairs that seemed to live in each of their living rooms, reading a magazine or the same racy parts of the romance novel they all seemed to own. Stella told everyone I was her ‘chauffeur’ because she temporarily couldn’t drive-a small squabble with the police, she explained, rolling her eyes, making out like she was an outlaw.
Although she never missed a euchre day, those days were always hard on Stella; after one euchre game, as soon as we had climbed into the car and rolled out of the driveway, Stella had made me pull into the wooded part of the cul-desac so she could open up her window and vomit.
‘Why don’t you just tell them?’ I pleaded with her. The women had to know something was up; Stella showed up every week in those satin gloves, formal attire for a Tuesday afternoon. She declined glasses of iced tea on sweltering summer days because her treatments made her sensitive to cold drinks. At five-six-tall for a woman her age-she weighed one hundred pounds. And that was an improvement-when I’d picked her up after her car accident, her chart had said that she weighed eighty-eight. ‘Then at least they’ll cut you some slack,’ I had gone on. ‘Then you can lie down between hands.’
Stella wiped off her mouth with the roll of paper towels she kept in the car for exactly that kind of emergency. ‘There’s no way I’m admitting that I had a bout with cancer of the ass. And anyway, this isn’t because of that. It’s probably from that foul food Esther always serves. Those cookies are about a million years old!’
‘They were sealed,’ I argued. ‘They’re from the grocery store.’
‘They taste like metal.’
‘You know what that’s from.’
‘Perhaps I’m pregnant!’ Stella suggested. ‘You ever think of that? This could be morning sickness.’
‘Some people don’t mind sympathy from their friends.’
The street ended in a T; straight across was a steep hill that looked over downtown Cobalt. It had been dusk, and Cobalt’s one bridge had been lit up, making a soft, green reflection on the river. The little houses that lined the bank looked sweet and quaint that night; you almost couldn’t tell they had stability issues and peeling paint and junked-up porches.
Stella sank into her seat, looking at the view too. ‘Cobalt used to be a wonderful place to live. You might not believe it, but it really was. Your grandmother and I used to do so much shopping on that main drag when we were teenagers.’
‘It sounds like you guys were such good friends when you were younger,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, life,’ had been Stella’s answer.
If it turned out the cancer took Stella, I was to handle the announcement in the papers. She didn’t want me to mention anything about her illness. If pushed or struck with a burst of honesty, I could only say she died of natural causes. But if she had her way, I was to tell the Cobalt papers that she died rather fabulously. For instance: A ten-point buck had attacked her. She wrestled it to the ground but its antlers bored her through the heart. (‘Which part of the heart?’ I asked. ‘The left ventricle,’ Stella said quickly, as if she’d been thinking about it for a while.) Or: she was giving a phone interview on CNN and had gotten so wrapped up in her answer that she’d accidentally driven her car over a cliff. (‘An interview about what?’ I asked Stella. She looked at me sternly. ‘Does it matter?’ ‘I just want it to sound real,’ I said. ‘Fine.’ Stella stared at the television. On the History Channel, a man in a tweed jacket was strolling among a bunch of enormous stone heads. ‘They were interviewing me about Easter Island.’) Or that she went down with a sinking ship. (‘On what body of water?’ I asked. ‘The Allegheny River.’)
‘You go get me the wine glasses,’ she instructed now. ‘It’ll be like Christmas. I’ll just sit here by the hot dogs and wait for my gift.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘What sorts of glasses do you want?’