Spoonbenders

He said, “You’re not a doctor. Stop being dramatic.” It wasn’t the kindest he’d ever been. It was seven in the morning, and he was tired, unemployed, and in pain. He’d spent most of the night in the basement, watching the TV and doing physical therapy, which in this case took the form of repeatedly lifting a heavy bottle with his bandaged hands.

“I’ve already gone to the doctor.” What she meant was “doctors.” Weeks ago she’d made an appointment to see first their family physician, then her gynecologist, then an oncologist. She said, “I couldn’t tell you until I was sure.”

“But we can’t know for sure until they do a biopsy. Did they do a biopsy?”

“It’s scheduled for next week.”

“Then it could be nothing.”

After the test results came back, with undeniable evidence of epithelial cell tumors, he doubled down: the doctors were wrong, the tests were wrong, and even if they weren’t, she could go into remission at any time.

She stood at the entrance to the basement, arms crossed, keeping her tears behind her eyes. “We need to talk about what to tell the kids,” she said.

“Tell them what? There’s nothing to tell,” he said from the couch. “We’re going to beat this.”

In 1974, nobody he knew “beat” cancer. Half a dozen friends had caught the lung variety—they were a generation of chimneys—and had croaked in a few years. One died of colon cancer, another of some kind of melanoma. Ovarian cancer, that was something else. They called it “the silent killer” because early symptoms—stomachaches, the urge to pee, loss of appetite—were easily dismissed. The tumors grew, and it wasn’t until the bleeding started that you knew something had gone terribly wrong. By then it was too late.

All through the spring and into summer, he avoided all mention of the Big C. Wouldn’t have the conversation with Maureen. Her dogmatic belief that she was doomed infuriated him. It was surrender. Negative thinking. He knew that if they talked about death, if they planned for it, they would only give it power over them. Why invite the specter into their house, pour it a cup of coffee, let it put its bony feet all over their couch?

No. They’d beat cancer, by cheating if necessary. Teddy had been training for the job his entire life.

But even he couldn’t remain blind to the changes in her body. She grew thinner through that summer. Their age difference once had bordered on the scandalous, but now she was catching up to him, aging at three times his speed, and angling to pass him. By August she was coming home from work exhausted. Irene was cooking then, and Maureen would sit with Buddy in her lap and look out the window as if she were already on the other side of it.

One night late in August, she roused herself to wash the after-supper dishes, and he watched her thin arms scrub the pots. That was the night she made him promise never to allow the children to work for any government. He’d made fun of her, and she’d shouted at him, wasting the last of her energy on him. He felt terrible. He apologized, and promised to do everything she asked—all without allowing himself to think there’d ever be a time he’d have to take care of the kids without her.

“I want you to come back,” she said that night. “Back to the bedroom.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Jesus, Teddy.” Exasperated. She leaned against him, and he put his hand around her shoulders. She seemed so light. A girl with eggshell bones.

They went into the bedroom and lay down side by side, on their backs, as if trying out burial plots. “I have to tell you something,” she said.

His chest went cold, dreading what she’d say next.

“I’ve done something bad,” she said.

He was relieved. There was nothing Maureen could do that was as bad as what he’d done, no weight as big as what he’d brought down, and he welcomed any shift in the scales. “You can tell me anything,” he said.

What she told him was impossible to believe at first. She had to go through parts of it several times.

After she’d finished, he thought for a long minute, and then said, “You’ve betrayed the American government.”

“Yes.”

“And disrupted our nation’s intelligence-gathering networks.”

“Yes.”

“And what else? Oh—allied yourself with a dissident Russian to also bring down the Soviet psychic warfare program.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My God, Mo, you’re an international criminal!”

“Pretty much,” she said.

They laughed together, like the old days.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said.

She begged him to stop talking, because her stomach hurt. No, really hurt. He rolled onto his side to watch her face. That fast, her concentration had moved away from him, down into the pain.

A minute or so later, she spoke without opening her eyes. “We have to talk about what to say to the kids.”

“Is this about the government thing? I promised you—they’ll never work for them.”

“I’m talking about me,” she said. “Buddy already knows, but—”

“You told him?”

“He already knew. He drew my grave.”