‘Not really.’
‘Is it growing?’
‘No, it was that size when it arrived.’
Dr Epstein rapidly fills out a large form. It is latticed with boxes, most of which he is ticking.
‘Tests,’ he explains. ‘You need tests, a lot of ’em.’
I feel like I’m in an opening sequence of ER, with the first plot line being wheeled in on the gurney while Dr Ross or Dr Green rattles off a battery of acronyms.
‘What seems to be the problem?’ I ask, realizing this should be his line.
‘Let’s just wait until the test results come in, shall we?’
‘But what kind of thing might it be?’ I insist.
‘Well, I’m really not sure, but …’ He trails off.
‘But what?’ I prompt.
‘It might be a lymphoma.’
Lymphoma, I know from ER, is American doctor-speak for cancer, and I return to our apartment in the West Village convinced that my future is mostly behind me.
Saturday, 2 May Joanna
I am more than a week late now. On the back of the packet it proclaims the Answer Test is so sensitive it can detect pregnancy within twenty-four hours of an overdue period. On the front it claims to be ‘99 per cent accurate!’ so I think perhaps the test is past its sell-by date. I didn’t much trust the pharmacist who sold it to me. He looked shifty and I had to wait for ages while a tall, balding man was interrogating him about Viagra, Pfizer’s wonder drug to overcome ‘erectile dysfunction’.
‘How much is it?’ he asked in a heavy Hispanic whisper.
‘It’s about ten bucks a shot, but you can only get it on prescription,’ said the pharmacist.
‘Ten bucks? Each tablet is ten bucks?’ demanded the man, louder and alarmed.
‘Yes, but it’s only available on prescription,’ the pharmacist repeated, tidying the breath mints by the till. ‘I can’t just sell it over the counter, you need a doctor’s recommendation.’
‘Oh it’s not for me,’ said the customer hastily. ‘It’s for my friend.’
‘Then you tell your friend he has to see a doctor before he can get some.’
‘But this is not possible,’ the customer replied. ‘My friend, he is in Brazil. He is desperate …’
‘Tell you what,’ said the pharmacist, lowering his voice, ‘come back around seven p.m. when things are a little quieter round here, and I’ll see what I can do for you, OK?’
‘Seven p.m. today? I’ll be here, seven p.m. Thank you, thank you.’
‘But you better tell your friend how much this stuff is gonna cost him, OK?’ said the pharmacist.
‘I tell him, I tell him exactly,’ said the customer, giving him a discreet thumbs up and hurrying out of the store.
Sunday, 3 May Peter
I am preoccupied with the wait for my test results and I cannot possibly concentrate on my novel. Despite a recent spurt, my book is going terribly anyway. Dog metaphors besiege me when I try to describe its progress. Sometimes I feel like a dog that circles interminably around something unknown, something it hasn’t quite got the confidence to confront. Sometimes when I approach passages which cry out for major rewriting, I feel a nauseating déjà vu, like a dog returning to its own vomit.
The truth is I have had writer’s block for months, but I cannot bear to admit it. It seems I need the Zimmer frame of non-fiction on which to rest the body of my imagination; I am crippled without the firm aluminium stroller of fact. Scared by the multitude of options out there, I have to impose a false horizon, a fake polystyrene ceiling, on my literary ambitions.
It’s like loft living. We thought that this loft we now inhabit, with its vast, high ceilings, would be the most aesthetic living machine possible; a white-walled, parquet-floored, 2,000-square-foot playground for adults. But soon a strange attitude developed. We found ourselves delineating areas. At first it was just in our minds, as defined by clusters of furniture, the dining-room table, my study desk, the TV. But then we began, little by little, to cordon off areas with bookshelves and sofas and filing cabinets, trying to create a conventional apartment out of our soaring, unfettered space. Such, I have begun to fear, is the story of my literary imagination too.
I have printed out a sign which says: THIS IS YOUR JOB. It is supposed to urge me to take writing more seriously and to remind me that the novel is now my main source of income – because I have virtually no other source. I have blown up the message in 29-point Times New Roman bold type and affixed it to the pillar opposite my desk with a blob of chewing gum. I know I am far too old for gum, but it seems to alleviate the headaches that have been plaguing me.
Sunday, 3 May Joanna
Wandering over to Peter’s desk, I stretch my right leg out on the window sill as I imagine the dancer Sylvie Guillaume might do to stretch her astonishingly long hamstrings, and announce, ‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘What do you mean?’ he says, hunched over his Powerbook without looking up.
‘I mean I’ve done a test and I’m not pregnant.’
‘That’s good,’ he says, tapping the space bar and still not looking up. ‘Did you think you might be?’
‘Well, it’s very odd because I’m late and I’m never usually late. But the test is negative, so I can’t be pregnant.’
There is a short pause. ‘Good oh,’ he says cheerfully.
Sunday, 3 May Peter
Joanna is behaving very oddly. Suddenly she announces that she’s not pregnant. I hadn’t even realized that she might be. I assume that being unpregnant is the standard template, one that doesn’t require confirmation by way of regular bulletins. In any case I am relieved by the all clear.
Later, on my way to buy groceries at D’Agostino’s on Washington Street, I pass a man unloading boxes from a truck into the twenty-four-hour City Deli at the corner of our building. On the side of the truck is painted the name of the company: ‘Lo Boy Foods’. Underneath it advertises ‘Individual portions of meats and fish’. An entire company devoted to the catering needs of solitary diners? Maybe that is my fate, sitting alone in middle age, eating individual portions of meat and fish from ‘Lo Boy Foods’.
The prospect of Joanna being pregnant suddenly doesn’t seem so unpalatable, well, no less palatable than a future fuelled by ‘Lo Boy Foods’.
On my return from shopping, on the corner of Bank and Hudson, the old folks are sitting in their wheelchairs on the pavement in front of the Village Nursing Home, rolled there by the white-uniformed nursing aides for some ‘fresh air’. Their the worn-out bodies will slowly toast the morning away in their wheelchairs, empty eyes staring out at the traffic.
And I notice, yet again, the smartly dressed middle-aged man sitting on a bench to one side, with his mother. He reads the New York Times intently, while she sits twitching next to him, one leg crossed tightly over the other, bony knuckles clenched over the armrests of her wheelchair. She is unable to talk or even to listen, it seems. I’m sure she wouldn’t notice whether he’s there or not, but that doesn’t dissuade this conscientious son from his daily vigil. His dedication to his uncomprehending mother makes me feel ashamed of myself.
And