Lolly sat down at her computer. She typed in the word “osteosarcoma” and hit “search.” There it was: “more common in young people ages 10 to 25.” About two in one million people a year get it. How nice to be so special. None of this information was new to her. She had lived it. She had lived those symptoms—the way her leg had turned red and thick. The pain that kept her awake at night, and her mother’s assurances, “probably nothing, but let’s go see the doctor anyway.” They x-rayed her and biopsied her and then left her lying on the exam table, the doctor in his white coat and serious voice saying he needed to talk to her mother alone. And the look on her mother’s face as she came out of the doctor’s office as if every good thing had been wiped off the earth. Seeing her mother’s face, forlorn and foreign, Lolly had experienced an unspecified terror to add to the pain, and she tasted it in her mouth—dry and metallic.
Then there had been months of doctors, tests, hospitals, her body like something that didn’t belong to her, just something to poke, prod, scan and shoot radiation at, something to dump chemicals in. So that when the doctor stood in the hospital room as her mother clutched her hand and said, “We have to remove Lolly’s leg,” she was tingly with numbness. She turned and smiled – smiled! – at her mother and said, “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m brave.”
Looking back on it, she understood that she had no other way to separate herself from the horror that was happening to her and that worse than anything was the anguish of her mother. It must have been a terrible thing indeed to face the possible loss of her child.
So she smiled at her mother and later she smiled at the kids at school when they whispered about her. She smiled at the adults who for some reason treated her as if she were somehow at fault, somehow to blame for not being perfect. They had. Not all of them, of course, but too many. Before high school, she thought she’d follow in her sister Jen’s footsteps and go into drama. She had gone to see Jen in all the high school plays, and Jen was usually the lead role. Jen was pretty and even popular in high school though she wasn’t one of that elite clique of rich kids. Still she was accepted by everyone and her daredevil exploits gave her a certain cachet in the school. Teachers liked Jen and ignored the smell of pot smoke or the fact that she sneaked off campus to be with one of her boyfriends. But treatment for Lolly was sharply different. When Lolly auditioned for the school production of Oklahoma, the theater teacher had grimaced and said to her, “I’m sorry, but what were you even thinking? You can’t be on stage.”
Lolly remembered the feeling, like a sucker punch, her breath hard to find, but still she smiled. She smiled all the way to the girls’ bathroom where she broke down and sobbed in a stall by herself until someone knocked on the door and asked if she was all right. Lolly opened the door, preparing to smile, and saw the school cleaning lady, and instead Lolly fell into her arms and wept. That day Lolly made her alliance, not with the blessed people who strode the earth obliviously crushing anything in their path, but with the invisible ones who cleaned up their toilets and swept their debris.
The Internet yielded no answers as to whether osteosarcoma could come back in some other form. It made no sense anyway. They had cut off the leg, removed the shin bone where the cancer had spread to the blood vessels. The cancer was gone. Lumps in the breast could be anything, a benign fibrous something caused by caffeine. She got up from the computer and took the elevator downstairs to the lobby to go outside and sit in the fresh air for a few minutes before her lunch break was over.
The lobby of the building was filled with light from large plate glass windows overlooking Gaines Street and the floors of the building sparkled. A security guard named Frank sat behind the desk in the lobby and waved at her.
“Hi, Frank,” she said. On the walls were bright colorful paintings by school students. She loved working here. She loved her life. It had taken a long time, but she had overcome the emotional ravages of her early years. She liked the person she had become. She liked the way she laughed, the way she felt curious about everything, the way most people warmed up to her slowly but permanently.
She went outside and crossed the busy street to a park where she liked to sit on a bench underneath an oak tree. But as she came closer to the bench, she saw someone was already there. Oh, it was Rusty, a friend of hers who worked in the investigations department. Rusty was lanky with longish dark hair. On weekends he played bass guitar in an alternative rock band. He was always kind, and she enjoyed his friendship. It had been so sad last year when his wife died in a car accident. She hoped he wouldn’t mind if she came over and sat with him. She approached him and smiled.
Saturday, June 10
Jen rode in the passenger seat of Lolly’s Honda Civic and stared out at the passing scenery. Highway 90 wasn’t much to look at except for the crepe myrtles waving in colors of white, pink and purple like girls in dresses. The sisters hadn’t said much to each other, though she could tell that Lolly wanted to talk about what they’d be doing that day.
Finally Jen asked, “Why do they call it a wellness program?”
“You can never say you are there for any kinds of arts programs. The legislators would have conniption fits if any coddling of the worthless criminals took place. I am there for ‘wellness.’ But that’s accurate enough. Words can be good medicine.”
“I guess they don’t see how the arts by themselves could be a benefit,” Jen said.
“Are you nervous?” Lolly asked.
Jen shrugged and asked, “Shouldn’t I be? I mean, these are convicted murderers and thieves, right?”
“Some of them are, but you know, that’s not what they do every day. Most of them just got into some kind of bad situation and couldn’t figure out how to get out. I try not to judge them.”
“Well, it’s not like I’ve been an angel my whole life,” Jen admitted. She’d never told Lolly about her Miami years, and yet she imagined that Lolly must have figured out some of it by now. There were whispers, rumors around Tallahassee. That’s probably why she couldn’t get a fulltime teaching job and had to scrape up a living as best she could. To think of all the thousands of dollars she’d made and blown in those few short months: right up her and Lyle’s noses.
“What I think you’re going to find is that these women are incredibly talented and willing to take risks. You’ll love them. I know I do,” Lolly said.
“You would, Lolly,” Jen said. “I just hope you don’t let any of them take advantage of you.”
Lolly glanced over at her. Lolly had thick Frida Kahlo eyebrows and freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“How much advantage can they take? They’re locked up. Some of them for decades,” Lolly said.
Jen didn’t answer.
“You’ll be amazed at how talented they are,” Lolly said. “I have one who is a really good writer. I actually sent a couple of her poems out after the poetry class and they were taken by a literary magazine. And last week, when I met with them, I brought in a monolog from The Trojan Women. Wow. Some of them were really good. Of course, some of them are not so good, but we’ll find things for them to do.”
Jen mused. “But they’re convicted felons, right? I guess I’m having a hard time imagining this. Do they have any education?”
“Some of them have been to college. In fact, Lucille has a master’s degree. They all have to have a GED or high school diploma to take the program. That’s their rules, not mine. Personally I would open it to everyone, but that’s not the way it works.
“What about behavior problems?”
“We shouldn’t have many problems. They all want to be in the program. It’s like a form of escape for them, and if they screw up, they won’t get to come back. You have to understand