Page 150 - In Five Years

“You don’t have it?”
“I don’t,” he says, his back to me.
This is what marriage is, I know. Tiffs and comfortability,
miscommunications and long stretches of silence. Years and years of support and

care and imperfection. I thought we’d be long married by now. But I find, as I sit
there, that a hitch of relief hits me when David still doesn’t have the rabbi’s

information. Maybe he’s still a step away, too.

On Saturday, I go to Bella’s chemo appointment with her. She chats amicably to
a nurse named Janine, who wears white scrubs with a hand-painted rainbow
emblazoned on the back, as she hooks her up to the IV. Chemo is in a center on

East One Hundred Second Street, two blocks up from where her surgery was
performed. The chairs are wide, and the blankets are soft on the third floor of the
Ruttenberg Treatment Center. Bella has a cashmere throw with her. “Janine is

letting me store a basket here,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper.
Aaron shows up, and the three of us suck on popsicles and pass the time. Two
hours later, we’re in an Uber going back downtown when Bella suddenly

clutches my arm.
“Can we stop?” she asks. And then, more urgently, “Pull over.”
We do, on the corner of Park Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, and she climbs

over Aaron to retch in the street. She starts puking with ferocity, the remains of a
technicolor popsicle spew out with the bile.
“Hold her hair,” I tell Aaron, who gently rubs her back in small circles.

She waves us off, breathing heavily over bent knees. “I’m fine,” she says.
“Do you have any tissues?” I ask the Uber driver, who mercilessly hasn’t said
anything.

“Here.” He hands a box back. There are clouds on the cardboard.
I pluck three tissues out and hand them to Bella, who takes them and wipes
her mouth. “Well that was fun,” she says.

She climbs back into the car, but there’s a change in her. She knows now that
what’s to come is hers to face alone. I can’t take this part from her, I can’t even
share it. I have the instinct to reach out, to try and keep the jaws open, but they