13. Off Battleground Avenue
Out at the science center, one of the tigers dies: Kisa, the female. I read as much as I can about it in the local paper, but there aren’t many details. She was a month away from turning twelve. She had been acting strange, had a uterine infection, didn’t recover from the emergency surgery they gave her. Axl, the male, has been left alone.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been out to visit the tigers. My kids have aged out of going to the science center as a regular activity. But reading about Kisa, I am awash in images from the survival days: strollers, diapers, Cheerios, and sippy cups. The boys running on the path past the lemurs—the forsaken lemurs—straight for the tigers. Always the tigers. Beastie cats! they are yelling. I want to roar with you!
These are the days that go on forever: Melissa and I pushing our bright strollers along the path, discussing mastitis, autism markers, Montessori versus Waldorf, vasectomy versus the pill. We are mad at our husbands who are always working, mad at our lives—so small and long. We discuss with horror the meningitis that stole our friend’s daughter—sixteen months old. We cannot imagine. We cannot. We cannot. “Slow down boys!” we are calling. “You have to stay with us!” String cheeses and juice boxes and potty time and Do you really think it is a wise choice to roar at a tiger?
Axl prowls the perimeter. Pacing and pacing—staring down the boys and their juicy red fingers and their sticky mouths. Kisa above on the rocks—her gaze far above ours. Nap time we are saying now, say bye we are saying—and now back in the parking lot we are feeding our folding strollers into the mouths of our vans.
Who will Axl fuck now—so vigorously and so often? And who will know, so calm and certain, what threats lurk in the woods along Battleground Avenue. Who will be listening to the cars that pass, and the birds that fly overhead but never land here.
I learn from the paper that the tigers came to Greensboro from the Conservator’s Center in Burlington—about a half hour off the interstate if you get off at the Embers Motor Lodge and head north.
14. Camp Radiation
It’s July, and school is out—has been forever, will be forever. This morning, the dogs are at odds. They usually play fight and nip at each other’s ears and paws for hours—the boys call it the Morning Match, the Afternoon Attack, and the Dinnertime Duel—but there is an edge to it today. Some yelping, a growl. One knocks the water bowl, the other slinks under the dining room table to sulk during the Morning Match. Maybe they’re trying to fill the gap of the lack of conflict in the house with the boys gone.
John just left to pick them up from their week at Cancer Camp. I guess we’re going to have to stop referring to it so breezily now that they’ll be home. Camp Kesem. A camp for kids who have a parent dealing with or dead from cancer. A tiny beautiful loving little nest of a place. I wanted to go back up into the Shenandoahs with John to fetch them but I am not up to it. This latest radiation treatment has been grueling.
I have a new tumor on my spine—up at the T7 vertebra. Also some new cancer at the site of the L2. Plus the ones in my hips. For this treatment they give me a higher dose of radiation than what I’ve become used to, and because the tumor is resting right next to my spinal cord, precision is that much more important. They make me my own personal body mold to hold me in the exact same position each time.
“Scootch up in your cradle a little,” says Nelson, the radiation therapist, as I lie on the metal table, “We need to line up the lasers with those crosshairs on your belly.”
After forty-five minutes of angling and measuring and scootching and waiting, my arms—placed above my head—go numb and start to cramp. I’m dehydrated from spending the drive home vomiting after the last treatment. I wiggle my shoulders and Nelson’s partner Kelly pops up at my head almost instantaneously. “You can’t move, baby. Not even a twinge. Now we’re going to have to do the imaging all over again.”
“I’m so sorry,” I’m saying. I’m trying not to cry.
“I know,” she says, patting my thigh. “It’s not your fault, but you have to try harder.”
For the last five days John and I have been sitting around doing what all the other camp-sending parents do I guess: basking in our serenely quiet and clean house, eating crackers and cheese and beer for dinner on the couch while simultaneously hitting the refresh button every two minutes on the Facebook page where the Camp posts hundreds of daily photos.
“Did you see the one of Freddy photobombing the counselor photo? Typical.”
“Yup. Did you see the one of Benny in the paddleboat with his stuffed animals? I think he was smiling. Do you think he was smiling?”
We’ve both been nervous about Benny—a profound homebody and on the very young end of the campers. And stubborn as hell.
It’s Freddy we get the call about, though. Joy—whose camp nickname is Springs—isn’t Joy already a pretty solid camp nickname?—is on the line. Everyone has self-selected camp nicknames. The camp directors go by Wallaby and Lotus.
“Foxtrot and The Platypus are both fine,” she says. “But we’ve been having some behavior problems with Foxtrot the last few days. He doesn’t always listen when he’s asked to do something. And yesterday during Feet on Bed, he and a friend were roughhousing and he kneed another boy in the privates.”
Oh, Foxtrot.
“I am so sorry, although I am not supersurprised to hear this,” I say. “Foxtrot has these issues at home as well.”
“No biggie,” she says, “He’s a trip—smart, hilarious, superresponsible with his diabetes care. Just didn’t want you in the dark on this because he won’t be welcome back to Camp Kesem if this behavior continues. It’s too sensitive of an environment.”
“Of course,” I say. I’m holding the phone lying in bed with a scented sleep mask over my eyes to keep the nausea at bay. “I get it.”
Looking up helps—with nausea and when your kid is on the verge of getting kicked out of Cancer Camp.
On the way home in the car while I was puking over and over again into the McDonald’s bag, my dad—my poor dad!—spotted some kind of dirigible up in the clouds over Graham, not far from the Embers exit.
“Look at that,” he said—and we did, admiring its noiseless, almost imperceptible movement from where we were on the highway below. I like direction that looks aimless but isn’t. Just subtle. Just making its way without hope, without despair. Isn’t that what Isak Dinesen said about writing? Same with living.