Fortunately, I’m not the oldest in my master’s program. A graying forty-something woman named Teresa sits near me in my Advanced Theories of Stress Management class. I imagine she’s a divorcée and this is her Eat Pray Love experience. She’s going back to school! Getting her counseling degree! Making something of herself! Jack says that’s unfair. That maybe she just lost her job in the recession and is trying out a new career path.
Whatever the reason, I guess everyone has their story for why they are where they are. Mine, of course, has to do with the cancer. I started chemo right after graduating, and deferred my acceptance to my master’s program for a year. But the next fall, when my treatment had long been finished, I still wasn’t ready. My body was tired.
“Take a few years off,” Jack said. “We’ll get married. Have some fun.”
That’s how my husband proposed to me.
I accepted.
Then I got a job at a credit card call center where I wore a headset and flipped through psychology medical journals to pass the time. When a tone beeped in my ear, I pleasantly said, “Thank you for calling AmeriFunds credit.” My job was to help people make balance transfers onto a new credit card with zero percent APR for twelve months. “After twelve months, the variable APR will be fifteen-point-nine-nine percent to twenty-three-point-nine-nine percent based on your creditworthiness,” I explained to faceless voices on the other end of the line.
But my favorite part of the job wasn’t really part of the job at all. Or it wasn’t supposed to be. It was when customers would explain why they were opening the new credit card, giving me a glimpse into their lives. There were the happy clichés: “My daughter just got engaged. There goes the retirement fund!” And the abruptly sad: “My Herman usually took care of this kind of stuff. But he’s gone now.” I wasn’t supposed to veer off the script, but if a supervisor wasn’t hovering, I’d probe deeper (“How old’s your daughter?” or, “When did he pass?”). And it occurred to me that most people just want to talk. To be heard. Even if it is by a stranger. Or maybe, especially if it’s a stranger. I felt like I was doing a public service. Or that’s what I told myself in order to feel better about my menial minimum-wage job. Either way, I liked it. The listening.
Until then, I had been going through the steps in becoming a psychologist. Checking off boxes on the life plan I had made when I was thirteen years old and watched Prince of Tides for the first time. I wanted to be Barbra Streisand, in a cushy chair and expensive diamonds, unlocking the mysteries of men’s brains and irresponsibly falling in love. It all seemed so grown-up and glamorous. And though, like most thirteen-year-olds, I already thought I was the former, I desperately wanted to be the latter, as well.
After two years, when my manager wanted to promote me to the other side of the call center—the one that actually placed calls, instead of received them, I decided it was time to go back to school. I didn’t want to be “a goddamned telemarketer” (my mother’s term). I wanted—really wanted—to be a therapist.
I get to Gender Studies with five minutes to spare. I slide into a desk and take a pack of empty index cards out of my bag so I can fill them with concepts that I need to memorize for the exam we have next Tuesday. I delight, as I always do, at the idea of crossing something off my to-do list. But before I can put pen to paper, my cell buzzes.
It’s my best friend, Kayleigh, who’s a kindergarten teacher and isn’t technically supposed to be using her cell phone during school hours while children are in her class. But Kayleigh doesn’t give a fuck. In fact, when she dies, I’m 90 percent sure that’s what her gravestone will read: “I don’t give a fuck.”
I silence my phone, sending Kayleigh to voicemail, because I do care, and because my professor, Dr. Walden, a tiny woman who’s five feet tall on a good day, has taken her position at the front of the classroom and cleared her throat. I smile, anticipating what Kayleigh’s message will say. Probably a diatribe about the nineteen-year-old UGA basketball player she’s inappropriately sleeping with, or a bitchfest about her goody co-teacher, Pamela, who wears pearls and sweaters with animals on them. Then I frown, because I have this feeling in the bottom of my stomach, like I’ve forgotten something. Did I turn the stove off?? Did I remember to grab my lunch from the fridge? Is my car overdue for an oil change?
And then it hits me all at once, and I can’t believe that I forgot, even for a second.
My cancer is back.