Department of Lost and Found Read online

  I know. You’re telling me that it’s not. That I’m finally answering the question that I’ve long been plagued by: Is enough truly enough? But the thing is, Diary, I’m tired. I’m 30 and I’m single and I have cancer and I’m tired. And if my not-so-perfect boyfriend wants to pretend that he’s a martyr and occasionally wants to try to rescue me, far be it from me to tell him not to try.

  And anyway, I should probably tell you that Zach and Lila stopped by my hospital room. Together. Days of Our Lives was just finishing up, and I was contemplating a nap when they knocked on the door and came in. Lila brought flowers—“from us,” she said, while Zach thrust his hands into his lab coat and looked at the floor like a second grader who had just been scolded by his teacher. After Lila had to rush back to work—she came on her lunch hour, which objectively, I know, is very sweet—he looked at me and shrugged.

  “What’s that about?” I said.

  “She told me that she thought we should visit, and I couldn’t offer up a reasonable explanation as to why we shouldn’t.”

  “So she has no idea? Doesn’t know about dinner the other week or what you said? Or our brush with fame and fortune in the game show world?” To be fair, I hadn’t mentioned the trip to Jake, either.

  “She doesn’t want to hear it,” he said. “Every time I bring up how I feel, or where we are or aren’t going with this, she shuts me down.” He sighed. “You know how she can be. She’s like a train, and we’re all just the tracks that she rides over.”

  I didn’t think that I was in a position to judge, given that I was living with my quasi-boyfriend, so I just smoothed the sheets of my bed and told him that it was nice to see him. Even in these circumstances. He kissed me on the cheek and told me that he’d call this weekend to see how I was, and then he got back to his rounds.

  He shut the door, and I stared up at Passions. And it dawned on me that Zach and I, we were one and the same. Two people who didn’t want to feel lonely anymore, so we tied ourselves to the closest anchors and let them bring us down. Sometimes, it’s easier to sink than to swim.

  PS—I guess the good news is that Dr. Chin used my hospital stay as an opportunity to bump up my nipple surgery a few days. At long last…nipples. No more floating snow globes. I actually have semi-real-looking breasts. At least for a XXX star.

  Sigh. And the better news is that at least this little setback got me out of that miserable, sure-to-be mope-filled lunch with Susanna Taylor and her gang of cancer-fighting superheroes.

  TWENTY

  I cannot believe her,” I said to Jake, over Sunday morning bagels and tea for me, black coffee for him. “I mean, how could she do this? She knows it’s going to screw me.” I leaned back into the cushions of our couch and sighed.

  Jake bit into his poppy seed bialy and thought it over. “Nat, seriously. Do you hear yourself? You’re asking her to choose your friendship over her big break, when really, you could choose just as well.”

  “I don’t follow.” I frowned, and wiped cream cheese from the corner of my mouth.

  “Well, I just mean that you could say, ‘Hey, you know what? I’ve put Sally second to my career my whole life, and this time, I’m going to let her—because of our friendship, not in spite of it—go after this thing that she really wants.’”

  I took a sip of my peppermint tea, mulled it over, and wondered if Jake had found some sort of enlightenment on his road trip, because he was just as guilty as anyone of putting people second to his career.

  Sally and I had gone to lunch the day before. We artfully danced around the subject until it became clear that we had nothing left to talk about. When I asked her again to please stop, to please not dig deeper into this story, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

  “Nat, you know that I’d do anything in the world for you. I mean, I feel like I’ve done everything I could for you as a friend. But there are limits. I have them, you have them. And well, these are mine. I’ve wanted this for so long. And not only does it suck that we can’t see eye to eye, it sucks even more that you can’t be supportive.” She played with her straw so she didn’t have to look at me.

  “Sally, that’s completely not fair,” I responded, feeling my pulse race. “This has nothing to do with not supporting you, and everything to do with protecting my boss. You have no idea how ugly this is going to get.” It came out condescendingly, even though I didn’t mean it to.

  The truth was that, just like the Mississippi contingent, I too had a “folder of secrets” on just about everyone in Congress—who they might have been sleeping with, what (ulterior) motives they had to vote why they did, which interns had gotten felt up more than once and by whom. As Sally probed deeper and deeper into each senator’s reasons to back (or stymie) the stem cell bill, the two sides walked toward each other like medieval armies, only we were armed with our sordid knowledge of each other’s histories rather than swords and cavalry. What she was doing was exposing more than just the political divide on this particular issue, she was opening up a fissure into which we’d dumped all of our dirty laundry.

  She looked at me over her Greek salad and stabbed it with her fork. “You know, Nat. Never, never, have I sat in judgment of you while you’ve clawed your way to the top. Never have I made you feel badly for forgoing your friendships or dating unavailable men or making the choices that you’ve made that maybe I didn’t agree with. I stood by you all the same.” She stopped, letting her eyes wander as she searched for the right words until she found them. “And now? I don’t know. This feels like lousy payback. Like your boss’s ass is more important than mine.”

  “I didn’t realize that you required payback. Forgive me. I thought you were my friend with no strings attached.” Overhearing my raised voice, the couple next to us turned and stared.

  “Everything has strings, Nat. Everyone has the point where they know that they’ve been pushed too far.” Sally sighed, and I thought of Susanna Taylor and her philandering husband, of Zach and the games Lila played with him, of Jake and his almost broken promises. Sally interrupted my musings. “Please don’t push me, Nat. Because this time, I can’t be held responsible if I push you back.”

  I STILL NEEDED to speak with the senator about the education bill, not to mention Sally’s story that wouldn’t go away, but by the time I got back into the office after recovering from my hospital stay, Dupris was on vacation for a week in Aruba.

  “Tough life,” I said to Kyle, as we filtered through her mail, tossing anything even remotely unworthy of her time into the assistant’s bin. Blair was the one who would answer the letters to the family in Buffalo who believed that the senator wasn’t honoring her campaign pledges or to the elderly couple in the Bronx who wanted to thank her for stopping by their church. The busier the senator got, the less time she had for the actual people who voted. Don’t get me wrong—she still stopped and smiled for pictures on the street when people asked her to, and she definitely still shook hands with eager voters as she made her way to lunch at The Four Seasons. But this time around, her second term as a senator, she seemed more focused on pushing herself higher and less intent on actually getting things done. I’d recognized it only recently. I wasn’t sure if it were because she had changed or I had, but it didn’t matter really. I recognized it just the same. That’s how it was with politicians: If you just noticed the shiny veneer on the outside, they’d always look perfect. So you had to peer closer, watch them when they didn’t think they were being watched. Eventually, you’d notice the dings.

  “It’s not just a vacation,” Kyle said. “It’s a working vacation. She’s down there with Andrews. He picked her up in his jet at Islip. Made it clear that she shouldn’t bring along her advisers. Very hush-hush.” Gerald Andrews, the head of the Democratic National Committee. I raised my eyebrows. The things I missed while knocked out at Sloan-Kettering.

  “Yep, they’re grooming her for the next ticket,” he said. “Her star is about to blow out of the sky.”

  “S
eriously? So the rumors are true. Can you imagine? The first female president.”

  “Can you imagine,” he said, “what it would do for our careers?”

  “I BOUGHT OUR tickets today,” I said to Jake. He’d just come back from his publicist’s office, and I’d just gotten in from work. I sat on my plush white couch and rubbed Manny’s stomach while Jake filtered through delivery menus.

  “God, I’m starving,” he said. “What do you feel like tonight? Do you mind if we get Chinese? I’ve been craving moo shu all day.”

  “Sure. But did you hear me? I bought our tickets to Sally’s wedding today. We’re taking the nonstop out of JFK at 9:00 A.M. I figured that this would give us nearly three full days down there.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, as he walked into the bedroom in search of the cordless phone. I wondered if he’d even heard me. I probably could have told him that I ran naked through the subway that morning, fake boobs and all, and he would have had the same reaction: In this present moment all he cared about was his moo shu.

  The only time that I got 100 percent from Jake these days was when we were dealing with my cancer. With the diligence of a schoolmarm, he reminded me to take my medicine. Because Dr. Chin encouraged a varied and colorful diet, Jake acted like my own personal nutritionist. And, of course, he asked me how I was feeling at least seventeen times a day, which I knew I should find endearing, but after about the ninth time, it grated. I know, I know. I should hardly complain. And it was true that he occupied not just the space in my apartment, but also a space in my heart. He could have been screwing groupies and snorting coke and engaging in entirely too much unhealthy debauchery, but instead, he chose to be with me. I suppose that this was at least part of the reason that I ignored the fact that he’d already broken his promise to me that he’d stay.

  There is a moment in every relationship when one of the parties senses its imminent demise. There’s a moment of incredible clarity, when your stomach drops with a heavy sense of dread, and you feel like control is slipping through your fingertips even as you try to hold on. The night I bought our tickets to go to Sally’s wedding and the one when Jake was dying for moo shu—that was the night I had that moment.

  I followed him into the bedroom. He’d just hung up the phone with Empire Szechwan and said, “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes. That’s what I love about Chinese—you order it and they’re already at your door. I got you wonton soup. Figured that would go down easy.”

  “Great. Fine. But did you hear me about the tickets?”

  “I told you that I did. I already said that!” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and threw it on top of the hamper. “So we’re going? Are you two speaking yet?”

  Sally and I had tacitly called an unsteady truce. Well, not really called a truce, but just stopped calling each other period so we didn’t have to tackle this irresolvable subject all over again. Because we had tackled it all over again on the phone a few days after our lunch and ended up getting nowhere. I decided to treat her like any other journalist, so I barred access to Dupris. She snorted into the phone and told me that if I thought that the only way she could get information was from the source herself, then clearly, I underestimated her abilities as a journalist. And then I raised the stakes by saying that whatever she printed that wasn’t directly from Dupris’s mouth could be considered slander. To which she yelled that if I gave her damn access to the senator in the first place, legal action wouldn’t even be an issue. We’ve endured a tense silence ever since. The truth was though, when I wasn’t busy being angry at her, I realized that I missed her.

  “Yes, we’re still going. I’m her maid of honor for God’s sake. So you marked it in your calendar? You told Sony and your agent and your publicist and anyone else who might urgently need you and page you back from Puerto Rico that you will be otherwise engaged that weekend because we’ll be attending the wedding of my best friend?”

  “Correction: best friend to whom you’re no longer speaking. But yes. For God’s sake, I’m not that disorganized.” He paused and examined his skin in the closet mirror. “But you know, sometimes things are out of my control. I mean, if they absolutely, absolutely need me, I have to be somewhere.”

  “It’s not like you’re the president, Jake,” I said, turning around and walking back into the living room.

  “Natalie, give me a break,” he said, plodding after me. “You know that I’m trying my best. And I have every intention of coming to Sally’s wedding with you. Why are you flipping out?”

  “I’m not flipping out at all,” I said, as calmly as possible to indicate that I wasn’t flipping out even though I very clearly was. “But it seems to me that you’re already offering up excuses, and the wedding is still five weeks away.”

  “I’m not offering up excuses of any kind. Jesus Christ. I was just saying that sometimes shit happens, and I don’t have a choice.”

  I grabbed Manny’s leash to take him out for a walk. I was out of pot and wasn’t hungry anyway.

  “No, Jake, that’s where you’re wrong. Me getting cancer? True enough, I had no choice. How you treat the ones you love? Well, there, you always have a choice,” I said, as I slammed the door.

  Dear Diary,

  Jake and I had a fight. A pretty big one too. Sort of like the old times. When he’d get back from a long road trip, and we’d reacquaint ourselves with each other, and we’d finally ease back into things, and then he’d announce that he had to leave all over again. And I’d simmer in my own anger, pretending that I didn’t care that he was off to Madrid or Amsterdam or even fucking Tucson, as if anyone actually wants to go to Tucson, until I couldn’t pretend anymore and would finally explode. Usually after a particularly crappy day at work. I mean, after days like those, even Tucson sounded like nirvana.

  This time, I know that not speaking with Sally and this whole shit-show with her article is weighing on me. But I also know that, like what Zach once said, if something didn’t work the first time around, it’s probably not going to get much better the second. Especially because the second time, you’re haunted by all of the things that went wrong before.

  So you look for hints, for signs, even if they’re not quite lying on the surface. But Jake is slipping; I can feel it. I think he thought that he could rescue me: It was romantic, it was idyllic, it was the way to win me back. But after all that faded, after the heady rush of my diagnosis and his knight-in-shining-armor entrance, we’re left with just the two of us. Me, the cancer-laden jockey gripping the reins, and him, a budding rock star who is dying to break free and gallop.

  But that’s not really the reason I’m writing. I’m writing because I contacted Ned. Yes, you read correctly. Ned, the guy who ditched me on the day that I was diagnosed with Stage III cancer. Ned, the weaseliest weasel who ever weaseled. (And that’s saying a lot considering the current standing of both Brandon and Dylan.) I’m sure that you thought that I wouldn’t bother including him in my chronicles, since I already knew why we broke up. Namely, that he’s the lowest scum and most spineless amoeba to ever have inhabited the planet. And this is true. But I promised myself that I’d track them all down: the five loves in my life, and as I round the corner to the end of my treatments, I wanted to see this through. If only to let his spineless ass know that I’m back with Jake.

  Anyway, it turns out that Ned did accept that transfer to Chicago. I know this because when I called his secretary in New York, she told me that he was no longer in that office and passed me a 312 number.

  I called Ned at his office from my cube in the back of my own office, but he wasn’t there, so I left a message. I heard his voice on the recording, and I felt my blood almost literally boil. Maybe six months wasn’t enough time for me. Maybe this was a mistake. But I tempered myself as much as nearly possible, and I’d have to say, Diary, that I left a relatively downright dignified message, even if the undertones of my voice did not-so-subtly imply that I thought he was pond scum. Oh well, I can live with that.
r />   It’s funny, isn’t it, Diary? That thin line between love and hate? How you can go from seriously contemplating spending the rest of your days with someone, only to discover that the next day, you’d be totally content should he encounter the unfortunate circumstances of having all his fingernails ripped out simultaneously. Weird how that can happen, but it happens all the same.

  Ned didn’t call me back, which I guess isn’t surprising. He might have been smart enough and funny enough and just handsome enough to eke out the persona of a desirable man, but he was never particularly courageous. Maybe I don’t have to explain that to you, dear Diary, since he left me at my lowest moment rather than stick out some hard work during hard times.

  So maybe I’ll just let Ned go. Not try to pry too far into that one because it’s too recent to see objectively, and really, what else do I need to know? He left me for some chick in Chicago. Maybe that’s the way to close the door to that chapter. Let sleeping (scummy, small-penised) dogs lie.

  ROUND EIGHT

  April

  TWENTY-ONE

  If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I’d never believe it to be true. But on March 28, the day of my last chemo treatment, I found myself unsure what I would do without it. The chemo and its patterns had become so ingrained in my life that I literally worried how to move past it. Strange, isn’t it? How life can play that trick on you?

  I said good-bye to Susan, the receptionist who checked me in each time; hugged Mary, my nurse, good-bye as I got up to leave; and gave all of the staff who had nurtured me back to health (I hoped) gift certificates to Bloomingdale’s. It was odd to admit, but I would miss them. And it was odder still to admit that I was sad. Whoever would have thought that the one place I’d find solace from my loneliness would be at the chemo ward at Sloan-Kettering, where the staff not only had championed my well-being, but also had grown to be my family.