vacant, except for the hawk overhead, and whatever rodents lurked hidden in the grass. And, she now noted, a spiderâblack with yellow stripes. Richard had told her the name but sheâd forgotten. It sat in the center of a large web latticed on stalks of grass, a huge web really, nearly two feet across. She was grateful that only the spider and the other prairie creatures had been witness to her ridiculously maudlin and melodramatic statement, one verging on martyrdom, something to which she had sworn she would not succumb.
She was
not
dying. She was ill. Although the disease was not curable, there was treatment, she would live. So why was she sitting here on a bench in the prairie acting like a soap opera heroine? It was the isolation. Illness set her apart from others. Everything had changed. She could no longer take the ordinary workings of her body for granted.
In truth, she had to admit, she was responsible for a large part of the isolation. She had shut herself off from Richard, shut out their friends, most of whom didnât even know that she was sick although Richard urged her to tell them. He believed that if people knew, a network of support and sympathy would rise up, along with casseroles and offers for drives to appointments. She had refused, unwilling to be the recipient not only of their chicken pies and cookies but of the satisfying pity of which even she herself had been guilty in the past: the head tilted slightly to one side to indicate sincere concern, the voice pitched softer and higher than normal.
How are you doing,
dear? Iâm fine. No, how are you really?
All the time grateful it was someone elseâs turn at bat for cancer or betrayal.
She thought of Joyce Latch and her breast cancer, the lymph node involvement. Or that pathetic Mary Hudson whose husband ran off with a counter girl from Starbucksâreally, a counter girl.
How
are you doing, dear? Iâm fine. Fine.
But clearly Mary was not fine. She was eating herself into oblivion; at the rate she was going she would have to be buried in a piano case.
Libby was
not
dying. CarlottaâDr. Carlotta Hayesâhad emphasized that. Just as Carlotta had reassured her that it would have made no difference if Libby had gone for a checkup when she first noticed symptoms, symptoms she hadnât even recognized as significant. If there had been pain, she might have been troubled, but there had been only the swelling, a slight puffiness in her face and hands and ankles, similar to what sheâd experienced when she was pregnant with the twins. Salt retention, sheâd thought, or maybe an odd and early sign of menopause. Painâbackache or headache or even the slightest tendernessâwould have been a definite sign of something amiss, but not a little edema. Even the first time she saw foam in the toilet bowl after peeing, she wasnât particularly alarmed. Startled, certainly, but not panicked. She explained that away too, telling herself some food had caused it, the same way beets turned your pee red, or asparagus made it smell. Still, it
was
odd. And it persisted, even after she increased her fluid intake. When she finally mentioned it to Richard, she was resolutely casual, saying it was probably something sheâd eaten. What, he said, youâve been eating soap? He insisted she set up an appointment with Jack Dixon, their family physician. She postponed making the call. (Once, at a cocktail party, she overheard Jack complaining about the women needing nothing more than attention who filled his waiting room. He said more than sixty percent of the patients who came to see him didnât really need to be there.)
There wasnât any pain.
When she finally phoned Jackâs office, she emphasized that it wasnât an emergency. The day of the appointment, she went shopping first and even made a date with Sally Cummings for lunch. That was how certain she was that there was nothing seriously wrong.
Jack