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  The nurses spoke like a cross between sorority sisters and robots—droning but perky. “If you squeeze the rubber ball, we will ask you, ‘Are you sure you wanted to squeeze the rubber ball?’ And if you squeeze it again we will stop everything and pull you out.” My fingers stiffened around the syringe in my left fist and the rubber ball in my right. They continued, “And if we stop everything and pull you out, then you will have to come back tomorrow and try to do it again.”

  After twenty minutes I started praying to God to help me not squeeze the rubber ball. I thought about the old ladies who didn’t know how to use cell phones. How did they do this? How could they even put their arms over their heads? Was I weak? I was sure of it. Was I a coward? I knew it. Was I going to get through this? I wasn’t sure anymore.

  I kept counting down from ten. I could barely make out Amy Winehouse on the headphones they’d placed on my ears after sucking and clamping my breasts under the table. The machine made the most god-awful techno slamming ringing noise in staccato patterns. The table was shaking. This was how they would torture and kill people in the future Holocaust on Pluto. Amy Winehouse was singing, “I don’t want to go to rehab, no, no, no,” and I was praying with sweat rolling down my crushed face: Please don’t let me squeeze the rubber ball. God, please, no ball, no rehab, no way, no, no, no.

  As I was walking to my friend’s boyfriend’s memorial the next day, my phone rang. I recognized the number. I pulled over on the sidewalk and took off my mittens. The air was cold. My hands were shaking. The cancer surgeon’s first words were “I’m sorry.” They had found another spot on the MRI. I would have to return tomorrow for another MRI, this time while they used the hollow-needle attached to a vacuum to suck out more tissue.

  “If it’s more cancer, is the lumpectomy still an option?” I asked. My fingers were freezing and the wind was howling. I strained, thinking it would be difficult to hear, but I could hear the surgeon clearly when she said, “No. A lumpectomy would no longer be an option.” She didn’t say what the new option would be, but I knew that she knew that I knew that the new option was a mastectomy.

  I sat with another friend on a wooden bench three rows behind my friend’s boyfriend’s parents. The parents sat in front facing the urn filled with their son’s ashes. The green urn was large and looked heavy. It looked uterine-like, with a narrow bottom that gracefully swelled at the top with a large curved handle on each side. My friend’s boyfriend had been a very solid, muscular man. His calves were notably large from working out, and many of his grieving friends commented on his calves in their eulogies. I could not conceive that his body was in the jar.

  My friend was crying. I wondered how my coat would lie on my chest with one breast. I stared at everyone’s breasts as the line formed to hug my friend’s boyfriend’s parents. When I hugged my friend’s boyfriend’s mother I told her that her son always made me feel special and loved. She would not let me go. She kept saying over and over, “We didn’t know he had so many friends. We didn’t know. We didn’t know.”

  On the way home I called an older woman from my alcohol and drug addiction recovery meeting. My voice was loud and high and fast and I didn’t recognize it as my own. She recited from the signs on the wall in our meetings to try to calm me down, but she added her own phrases and terms of endearment:

  “One day at a time, honey.”

  “You are not alone, sweetheart.”

  “Take it easy, darling.”

  Then she added, “Call the surgeon and ask her to prescribe a Valium.”

  This was not a slogan on one of our signs at our alcohol and drug addiction recovery meetings. She was a recovering pill addict, so I was relieved that even she thought a Valium was in order. I felt new hope. I called back the surgeon, who agreed to my request and phoned in the prescription. On the way to the pharmacy I bought birdseed to lure sparrows to my window for the cats’ entertainment. When I picked up the prescription, I saw there were two pills in the bottle and the instructions read, “Take one a half hour before the procedure, and one after the procedure, if needed.” I wondered if I’d need to take the second pill. I had no question about the first.

  That night I called multiple friends from my alcohol and drug addiction recovery meetings and described the procedure I would have in the morning in detail. I was hysterical by the time I got to the part where they turned on the tissue-sucking vacuum. Lisa with Gray Hair—we called her that so as not to confuse her with Depressed Lisa, and because we don’t use last names—told me to stop calling people and describing the procedure. We hung up and I threw birdseed out the window. There was no sign of birds. I played with the kitty while the older cat watched unblinkingly.

  “You can do it, kitty! Get the mousey!”

  The kitten pounced on a toy mouse and the older cat pounced on the kitten. The older cat went for the kitten’s neck and there was screeching as they tumbled and hissed and snarled and shrieked under the bed. I ran to rescue the kitty, and the older cat emerged with a tuft of fur sticking out of her mouth. I took the kitten in the bedroom with me. I felt a wave of relief when I looked at the bottle with the two Valium on my desk.

  I remembered that before they placed me in the MRI yesterday, they had asked if my pants had a zipper and when I said yes they made me remove them. I found a pair of floral stretchy pants with no zipper and laid them out to wear in the morning. I pulled my heavy rubber boots out of the closet because there was snow predicted in the early hours and I had a new terror of falling down and smashing my traumatized breast tissue on the icy sidewalk. I placed the boots by the floral pants. I pulled a flannel shirt that buttoned up the front off a hanger and folded it on top of the floral stretchy pants. They didn’t match each other, but that was not a priority. It was soft flannel and easier to put on than a shirt that pulled over the head. I topped the pile with a lime-green jog bra for extra support. The kitten jumped on top of the lime-green jog bra, purring, the toy mouse still in her mouth. I went into the kitchen and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and placed it in a Tupperware container.

  The next morning while my older friend from recovery whom we called Older Gail sat in the waiting room, I was escorted to the MRI room. They took away my sandwich but let me keep my pants on. I asked one of the sorority-robot techs if she could talk to me in a reassuring voice throughout the procedure.

  “I am very anxious,” I added so she’d feel sorry for me.

  She’d heard this before. “Honey, we’d be worried if you weren’t.”

  I closed my eyes, even though I couldn’t see much anyway, and as the machine started to squeal and screech I felt a curtain of peace descend over me. I thought I was having a spiritual experience—that I had found God in the center of an MRI machine and deep down in the tissues of my greatest fears. Then I remembered the Valium and realized it must have kicked in and either way, God or Valium, I was sure I would make it through this.

  There were syringe injections, needle placements, loads and loads of lidocaine, and reassuring voices. “Wow, you are doing great. You’re going to feel a pinch. You are okay. You’re going to feel an injection. You are the best. This is the worst part. You did great. You are going back in the MRI.”

  When they pulled me out of the MRI for the last time and removed the needle, they forgot to tell me it was over. I was still pinned to the table, breasts clamped underneath, while they tossed things to each other over my back and talked about their plans for the evening. I heard them cleaning up the bloody paper liners under my breast.

  Finally, my voice muffled from inside the inset and rising in pitch, I said, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Are we done?”

  “What? Oh yes, great job!”

  Someone patted me on the back. They released the clamps on my breasts and awkwardly helped me up to a sitting position. I was so grateful for the sight of my floral stretchy pants in the midst of all the beige plastic, light blue paper liners, and scuffed beige walls. They peeled off their latex gloves and threw them
into a medical waste container. I cringed at the sight of the overflowing can, picturing rivers and lakes clogged with latex.

  They led me up the back stairs to wait for a mammogram, with my bandaged breast and the container with the one remaining Valium in my gown pocket. I was filled with love for my fellow old lady comrades in the waiting room, with their mismatched tops and loudly patterned stretchy pants. I was in love with my floral stretchy pants. I was high for the first time in seven years and it was awesome.

  After the mammogram I went downstairs and showed the bottle with the one remaining Valium to Older Gail, the ex–pill addict. “I don’t think I need this last Valium and I’m certainly not giving it to you!” We laughed as I walked over to the trash, shook the pill out into my palm where she could see it, and slowly tipped my palm until it fell into the trash can overflowing with granola bar and sandwich wrappers. Older Gail applauded and the woman sitting next to her asked me how quickly the Valium worked. She was clutching her prescription bottle and was crying. She was young like me. Older Gail told me later that the woman had a fast-moving, invasive breast cancer. They thought it had spread to her other organs. She was waiting for her PET scan. I thought of the Valium sitting on top of the trash. I recalled the doctor saying when she gave me my diagnosis that it could be worse, a lot worse.

  Older Gail and I parted ways at the exit to the Cancer Center. The snow was starting to fall as I walked to the subway. I had my backpack on only my right shoulder. My black rubber boots felt solid. I had bought groceries the day before and for extra measure had ordered three full meals of Chinese takeout and packed the Tupperware containers in the fridge. The weather people were excitedly predicting a blizzard. It was Friday, so at the end of the day the labs would close for the weekend. I’d have to wait until Monday to find out if I would lose my breast.

  The snow was falling steadily by the time I emerged in Brooklyn. I let the kitty out of the bedroom and the older cat chased her back in, then stretched out on the threshold, languorous and watchful, like the kitty’s sadistic prison guard. I tried to activate the chemical ice pack they’d sent me home with. After ringing it in the middle like someone’s neck, I threw it away and got out a bag of frozen corn from the freezer. I had bought some frozen vegetables for this reason. I iced my breast while watching romantic comedies and yelling at the older cat.

  “Be nice! Stop it! Settle down!”

  After they made love, Hugh Grant asked Julia Roberts where she got her perfect breasts. I went to the freezer to swap the warm pack of corn with frozen peas. I wondered if Hugh Grant was too shallow to love a woman with one breast. I still cried when they broke up and then cried again when they got back together. It closed with a scene of her pregnant, lying in his arms on a park bench, her breasts accentuated in an empire-waist dress.

  Between Notting Hill and Beauty and the Briefcase, I opened the window to throw more birdseed on the sill. The air was cold and the snow wet my face. I felt the small hairs coming out of each pore, each snowflake that hit my skin, and my heart thumping under the frozen peas, the bandage, and the traumatized breast tissue. I felt oddly alive and wondered if the birds would come.

  Between Beauty and the Briefcase and I Hate Valentine’s Day, I imagined a surgeon with a hacksaw sawing off a breast on a chopping block. I pictured lying on Dr. Frankenstein’s table as he sewed the breast of a dead woman on my chest. I saw the bulky stitches, the discolored flesh, the missing nipple. I finally brought myself to image-search mastectomy scars on the internet, and I studied the neat incision line. The images of mastectomy scars were linked to images of mastectomy tattoos of flowers and birds, which ignited my interest. I could finally get a tattoo with great meaning. I read about “going flat,” a choice by women to remove both breasts and forgo the breast reconstruction. Some got a tattooed tank top or lacy bra, as if they were wearing the lingerie.

  I looked at the big breasts under the soft sweaters of the lead woman in I Hate Valentine’s Day and imagined what she’d look like flat. Between I Hate Valentine’s Day and The Wedding Date, I checked on the duct-taped window in the bedroom. The wind rattled the crooked frame and the snow was starting to cover the cracks. I worried it might blow in during the storm, but it held.

  I called my friend Shauna with Red Hair to tell her about my mastectomy tattoo ideas. Then I called my friend whose boyfriend had killed himself. She said he had looked scary when she found him hanging from their bedroom door. She couldn’t believe it was true. She had wanted to take a picture when she found him because she knew that later she wouldn’t believe it had really happened. She didn’t think it would be respectful to him at the time, but now she wished she had.

  “I could choose whether or not to look at the picture, but I think it would have been nice to have it, so I had the choice. I just can’t believe that this is true.”

  The weekend was a whiteout of snow, Chinese food, romantic comedies, catfights, and mastectomy tattoo designs. The city noise was absent as all drivers were banned from the roads. At night, in the silence, my breast throbbed. I couldn’t lie on my left side. I lay awake trying to figure out how I would feed the cats after surgery if I couldn’t get out of bed. I could get a large Tupperware container and place it by my pillow filled with Chinese food, cat food, a spray bottle, dishes, and chemical ice packs. I broke down and called Lisa with Gray Hair. She told me that if I couldn’t get out of bed, she would feed the cats. I asked her: If I needed to have a mastectomy, could I have another Valium before?

  “Definitely,” she said.

  ON SATURDAY NIGHT, my phone rings and I recognize the number from the Cancer Center. It is a male nurse who hasn’t gotten the memo that my lumpectomy may no longer be an option. He is calling to go over my medical records for the surgery. I fill him in that I am now waiting to see if the surgery will be a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. A pain shoots through my breast as I say the word mastectomy.

  “That’s okay,” he says. “Let’s go over your medical history for the, let’s call it, ‘to be determined’ surgery.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Let’s see, it says here you had uterine fibroids removed by myomectomy two years ago?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And it says here that you are bipolar?”

  “Yes,” I say, somewhat taken aback.

  “And it says that you suffer from anxiety?”

  “Yes,” I say, my heart starting to pound.

  “And you suffer from depression?”

  “Not all the time,” I say, my hands sweating and ears ringing.

  “And you are an alcoholic?”

  My face turns red but he can’t see. I am overcome with shame by my medical records.

  “Yes, but I’ve been in recovery for seven years,” I say, on the verge of tears.

  There is a pause on his end. “Hold on, honey,” he says, “let me close my door.”

  I can hear him get up and walk across the floor and shut his door. I’m panicking that he will recommend canceling the surgery because he has discovered that I am totally insane. He gets back on the phone.

  “Look, sweetie. I’m a recovering alcoholic too, and bipolar, and suffer from depression and anxiety.”

  “Oh my God, really?” I start to cry with relief.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. I am going to take good care of you when you come in for your surgery. You just ask for your friend Jeff and I’ll be right there. By the way, it says here your anesthesiologist is Dr. Virk, and he’s totally hot.”

  “Finally, a hot male doctor!”

  “Yeah, I mean Dr. Virk can stick a needle in my arm and put me to sleep anytime!”

  We both giggle about hot Dr. Virk.

  “I don’t usually reveal my personal stuff to patients,” he says, “but I felt compelled to tell you for some reason.”

  I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my guardian angel Jeff, the bipolar, alcoholic nurse, and sleep well even if it’s only on my right side.

>   In the morning the cats stop chasing each other. They spot the bird before I do. The older cat flattens her ears and makes the clicking, gurgling noises I imagine Satan makes right before he eats children. The kitten also flattens her ears and chirps. They crouch down level with the windowsill so as to not be spotted. They are sitting side by side, united by a common purpose, which would be murder in the first degree if the window were open. I hide behind the curtain. We all watch, as the snow accumulates and the birds land on the sill. They are little sparrows with puffed-up breasts. They flicker their wings in the snow looking content, frisky. Twittering, they peck in the snow at the seeds. All three of us are watching together, fascinated. The snow continues to fall and I watch as the older cat nuzzles and licks the kitten’s cheek. We all look back at the window and watch as furry breasts rise and fall, fly and land, soundlessly, in a perfectly and pristinely soft white world.

  Valerie Hegarty is a Brooklyn-based visual artist and an emerging writer. She has been recognized for her achievement in the arts by numerous grants from the Tiffany Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She exhibits her artwork internationally and has been awarded residencies from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, LMCC, Performance Space 122, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony.

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  I initially received this story from Kikuko Tsumura’s translator Polly Barton, and upon first reading I strongly felt that Tsumura’s was a voice I wanted to publish in the magazine. The story made me laugh because its emotional landscape felt so true to me, even though I have never experienced the specific situation of the protagonist. Rendered beautifully in Barton’s translation, Tsumura’s prose is necessarily unadorned, giving the reader precise space to glimpse the tensions that ripple below the surface of the ordinary.