To call her from the vegetable garden, where she might be weeding, or
from the rock garden, when she might be replanting the daffodil bulbs,
to call her from a book, or from washing the cocker pups, or from
painting shelves, or from anything that she was doing. I wanted, with
overwhelming urgency to tell her to come down to New York and share
this weekend. Carry it with me and for me.
She would. She has the grit and the amenability to Nature. Besides, she
knows me.
But I sat there, my fingers growing slippery on the phone.
If it proved to be harmless--then the consummate hours, the pain, the
anxiety, and the quiet planning would be a mere excess.
If it proved malignant--what purpose would be served by destroying her
tranquillity, by adding her dread to my own, until the hour when the
fact was established?
She would willingly, wantingly, accept the burden--to ease my share of
it.
But why should she?
Monday would be soon enough--win, lose, or get some cursed clinical
draw. Radiation. Surgery. Artificial larynx. _Gueules cassées_, I
thought. I'd seen friends. Getting their throats cut inchmeal. Burping
to make speech. Shedding their chins.
The hell with it! I called the bookstore, instead, and ordered a tome
on carcinoma of the throat.