Department of Lost and Found Read online

  I WOKE UP on my couch with the ladies from The View yammering in the background, and moved my hand up to feel my pulse nearly beating through my neck. Gingerly, I swung my legs to the floor, wiped the film of sweat off my forehead, and reached for my Nikes. The waves of nausea had mostly passed, at least for this week and this round, so I propelled myself out the door. Dr. Chin had urged me to be kind to my body, not to push it, but also to keep it vibrant, let it know that it was still living. My four-mile-run mornings were out, but walking, breathing in the throbbing vitality of the city all around me, I could do.

  October had set in, and it had always been my favorite month: the one where the air still captured the warmth of the previous season but also hung with the promise of the fall chill. When the light on Seventy-third Street turned red, I stopped and nuzzled the wet nose of a black lab standing beside me with his owner, and in exchange, he lapped my face in a warm bath. I wiped down my cheeks and smiled. As I cut over to Central Park, the sun bounced off the crimson and golden leaves, and other than the passing dog-walker, it was just me, the nutmeg-scented air, and the autumn hues.

  When Jake first moved in with me, we took lingering walks each weekend. It was our thing. Some couples play poker, some love to bowl; we loved to explore the park like we might have when we were nine: It was our private playground. We’d stumble over the roots in the Rambles, roam up to the ball fields and watch Little League, or sit on the swings at dusk and split a bottle of merlot.

  Eventually, our buzz for each other faded, as one’s buzz inevitably does, and I spent more weekends holed up on the thirty-first floor, and he spent more weekends racking up frequent flier miles, in hopes of becoming the next Mellencamp or Petty or Clapton or whomever he’d deem cool enough to emulate that month.

  Today, because I was on the slow upswing of my chemo cycle, I felt well enough to follow the looping path down past the ice rink and around the carousel. I stopped and watched the little kids, mostly with their nannies, grab the fiberglass horses as tightly as their tiny fists could hold, and squeal with delight as they went up, then down, then back up again.

  That summer, the one before Jake and I came down from our heady romantic tornado, he’d convinced me to sneak into the carousel after dark.

  “This can’t be a good idea,” I’d said, citing the potential political damage to the senator if we were arrested. “I can’t imagine that bailing out one of her senior-most aides will be looked kindly upon in the papers.”

  But he grabbed my hand and picked the lock and led me in anyway. And it was amazing: It was truly as if we were three or four or five, like those kids I saw today. It was a cloudless night, and though you can’t see the stars in New York City, in the darkness of the park, it’s almost as if you can. We sat on the jester-colored horses and stared up at the sky, watching the lights from the skyscraping buildings bounce off the clouds and listening to a nearby Summerstage reggae concert. We didn’t speak for nearly an hour, and then Jake slipped off his perch on the horse and circled around mine and kissed me. And then we fell into each other in ways that we definitely wouldn’t have if we were five.

  This afternoon, the carousel slowed to a halt and the music wound down. As the kids scattered and a few cried, I took my cue to exit as well, pushing my hands into my pockets and wrapping my scarf tighter around my neck. I wasn’t sure if the sudden chill were noticeable to anyone but me. Or if there were a sudden chill at all, really.

  I was nearing the park exit when I heard my name echoing behind me.

  “Natalie? NAT? Is that you?”

  I spun around to see Lila Johansson, my sophomore-and junior-year sorority roommate, and by more current definitions, my second-best friend after Sally and a fellow bridesmaid in Sally’s wedding, waving at me from beneath a towering maple tree. With her crisply straight, perfectly highlighted blond locks, dark denims that just skimmed over her gazellelike legs, and her man-crushing stilettos, Lila was the embodiment of a celebrity, even though the only place she was famous was within our inner circle. And she was really primarily famous for putting those stilettos to use. And often. We first met our freshman year. We’d sat down next to each other after receiving our bids from our sorority and were promptly assigned to go to lunch together. I looked down at my monogrammed turtleneck and fingered my pearl bracelet and wondered what on earth a girl like me would have in common with a gal like her. Turns out that over chicken kung pao we discovered that hair color and inseam length have little to do with the true testament of who you are. True, she would happily desert you for a glass of wine with a budding Armani model, but her faults were clearly laid out from the get-go. At least those I could see.

  “Oh my God, I thought that was you!” Lila ambled closer. “What are you doing out in the middle of the day? I was on my lunch break and…” And then she blanched. “Um, how are you?”

  I forced a smile. Clearly, Lila’s gut instinct to hail me down took hold before she thought of the consequences of having to actually speak to cancer-riddled me.

  “I’m fine.” I nodded. “Really, I’m fine.” I looked down and kicked some crisp leaves with my foot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as she pulled me in for a hug. “I should have called. Sally told me a few weeks ago, and I’ve been on the road for work, and…oh shit. There’s really just no excuse.”

  “It’s okay. Honestly, it is,” I replied into her cashmere-blended wool scarf and then stepped back.

  “I just…” She raised her arm and let it drop. “I just didn’t…”

  “Know what to say? I know. Really, it’s okay, Li. A lot of people haven’t called. In fact, most haven’t. You’re not the only one.” I shrugged and looked down at my sneakers. Breaking news to friends that you had cancer wasn’t in the etiquette guidebook—truth be told, I’d reached out to as few people as possible. Consequentially, supporting said friend when she’s diagnosed with life-threatening illness isn’t exactly a paint-by-numbers situation, either. I’d told Sally that she was allowed to spread the news to a few choice people, but that they wouldn’t be hearing the ghastly info directly from me. Besides, other than an intimate group of friends, of which Lila was a part, true enough, I hadn’t exactly been stellar about keeping in touch over the years. So it was no surprise that, since I faded out of my old friends’ lives, they weren’t exactly bounding to get back into mine.

  “Oh God,” she whined. “Now I feel even more horrible. I just, I don’t know. There’s no excuse. But I was just worried I’d say the wrong thing or make it worse or somehow look like an asshole.”

  I grabbed her hand. “Lila, really. We’re okay. Come on, walk with me. I was thinking of going around the loop one more time.”

  Lila and I had nearly finished my second lap when the wave of vertigo overtook me. I felt the pavement tilt below me, and suddenly the trees stood on a diagonal. I clenched her arm to keep from falling, but it didn’t help much. Instead, I dragged her down with me, both of us just barely landing on the dying grass just off the sidewalk.

  “Oh my God, should I call someone?” Lila panicked and reached into her leather buckled Prada bag for her cell phone. “Nat, look at me, look at me! What’s wrong?” Dr. Chin had warned me about dizzy spells and about pushing myself too hard. As Lila rubbed my back, I stuck my head between my knees, something I remembered from high school first aid, and muttered at her, “No, no, this is just a side effect. I’m fine.”

  I’m not sure how long we sat there, my friend and I, in the autumn glow of a perfect New York afternoon, but when my breathing evened out and my eyes seemed to steady, I slowly rose and told her I wanted to keep going. I wanted to finish what I’d started, even though it was just a silly walk with my old friend five weeks after I’d been diagnosed with cancer.

  “Nat, you’re too exhausted. Your face is, like, the color of my walls. Let’s just hail a cab.” She put her arm up to nab a taxi as it cruised through the park.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’m walking home.”


  “Natalie, don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to pass out on Central Park West. We’re stopping. This can’t be good for you!”

  “Don’t tell me what isn’t good for me! And don’t tell me to stop,” I screamed, as Lila took a step back. “How the hell can anyone know what’s good for me! I mean, I work out, I eat relatively well, I’m not a bad person, and it appears that none of it, none of it, is good for me! So how the fuck does something like this happen to someone like me?” Without warning, I squeezed out fat teardrops that fell as if from the storm earlier that week. Lila pulled me close and held me up until I stopped shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes. “You’re just trying to do right by me, and I act like a crazy person.”

  “Oh please, this is nothing compared to how you reacted when you found out that Brandon was cheating on you sophomore year. Remember that? If I can handle that, I think I can cope with this.” She laughed and handed me a tissue from her purse. “Okay,” she conceded, “we won’t stop.” She squeezed my hand and started walking.

  “Did you hear that, ‘cancer’?” I replied, mustering up a grin. “I’m not stopping until you prove me unstoppable.”

  Dear Diary:

  The good news is that I barely think of Ned at all anymore. And when I do, it actually doesn’t occur to me to head down to Modell’s and buy an aluminum bat with which to bash his brains in. So that’s good news, right? I mean, I sort of get it. Why he left. No. Let me amend that. I will never GET why he did what he did WHEN he did it. But in the larger picture, I mean, I think I might get it. The truth is, Diary, we didn’t have much of a relationship going, even if we thought we did. And I know this now because my life hasn’t changed so much since he left. I still eat most of my meals by myself, I still confide more in Sally than in him, and other than my rage, I still don’t miss him much when he’s gone. Huh. So go figure. Maybe if I get around to it, I’ll listen to his side of the story, too. But that’s my peace for now.

  And of course, as life would have it, as soon as I’ve made peace with one thing, another battle arises altogether. See, Diary, I’ve been thinking about Jake. A wee bit too much. And I also think I might have a teeny, tiny crush on Zach. Oh, who I haven’t told you much about. See, the fact that he’s my ob-gyn should, I know, be enough to skeeve me out for, like, forever. I mean, Lila jokes that he’s been in more vaginas than the entire NBA (and she would know since she broke his heart into a billion pieces this spring when she up and dumped him without any warning). But he bears a striking resemblance to Patrick Dempsey, and, well, he calls a few times a week to check up on me, and when he does call, it’s like I almost forget that I have cancer—which I know is stupid, since that’s the only reason he’s calling to begin with—but still. Let me be clear here, Diary: Zach looks nothing like your gynecologist, nor does he look anything like your previous gynecologist. In fact, with pools of green eyes, a lean runner’s body, and wavy hair that curls perfectly over his forehead, I’m not sure that he should even be allowed to be a practicing gynecologist, given that it’s highly probable that the bulk of his patients find him, just 35 years old, more arousing than their husbands. And for those ten minutes on the phone when he calls, it’s like I’m a normal girl who might have a normal shot with a normal guy.

  So between my pathetic ruminations on Jake—Where is he? Is he banging groupies? Does he ever think of me? (and to answer some, if not all of these questions, I logged in nearly two hours on Google last night)—and my realization that despite my rising lust for my gynecologist, I cannot, nor will I ever, be his, it’s easy to see that I fell into a bit of a funk. All of which I raised with Janice at our next session.

  After assuring me that (a) I was still entirely sexually viable to men (snort, as IF, Diary!) and (b) my topsy-turvy emotions were perfectly normal, Janice did mention that she wasn’t sure about opening up the doors to my past via this very diary (remember, the hunt for my exes?) when I was already dealing with so much change, but she wasn’t there to judge. That’s what she said, “I’m not here to judge, Natalie, just to help.” As if that didn’t make me think she was judging. It’s like back in high school, when my mom would purse her lips and say to me, “Well, if you think it’s the right decision,” when clearly, she thought it was entirely the wrong decision, and pretend that she wasn’t dropping a passive-aggressive bomb. But I told Janice that I felt like sorting through my past might help me come to terms with the present, so she nodded and said, “Well, that’s progress.”

  We spent the rest of the session talking about my theory that in every relationship—friendship, romantic, whatever—there is an alpha and a beta. Namely, one strong person, the rock, so to speak, and one weaker link, the one who does the leaning. By weaker link, I don’t mean to imply that they’re a less critical component: In fact, if you put two strong types together, they often combust, sort of like two opposing elements that explode in chemistry class.

  I wasn’t sure why my alpha dog theory had been weighing on me as of late, until Janice suggested that other than you, Diary, it would be nice for me to find someone on whom to lean. You know, so I didn’t have to bear my burdens all alone. I told her that I liked living as a solitary being, and that really, at the end of the day, I was the only person I trusted enough to rely on. (No offense. I do find you to be a fantastic listener.) She nodded and said she understood, so she suggested taking baby steps, that I shouldn’t be afraid to also look for small gifts, for people who outstretched their hands, even if they weren’t offering a full shoulder. I remembered Sally running my errands for me last weekend when I couldn’t find the energy to restock my toilet paper, and Lila blowing off her afternoon of work after our walk to sit in a tea shop and regale me with all the latest gossip from our group of friends. Still though, Diary, if I’m going to be honest—which is really the point of this whole thing, isn’t it?—it all felt flat.

  So anyway, Diary. I know that it’s only my second entry and I’ve already lost track of the purpose of this damn thing in the first place, which namely was to provide a diversion from my wallowing and self-pity parties. So this week, honestly, I’m going to shovel myself out and stop Googling Jake and move on to Colin, from high school, and then to Brandon. That should be fun. (Note heavy sarcasm.)

  I HEARD THE latch turn before I actually saw it. I was flattened on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and mentally calculating how many square feet someone could live in without officially going crazy. The 650 feet of my one-bedroom apartment had me choking with claustrophobia, my daily walks be damned. I remembered the room that I’d shared with Lila back in college—it couldn’t have been more than thirteen by thirteen—and yet I never felt suffocated there. But inside my apartment, I truly felt as if I might crawl the walls. I was debating how the view might appear from a Spidermanesque perch on the ceiling when I heard the click-click of the door, and I shot straight up, my butt sinking into the down pillows. I ran through a mental checklist of who had access to my keys. Sally. But she was working this morning; she’d already e-mailed me. My parents. But they were safe in Philly. My doorman. But he always called before he came up. And then my stomach dropped. Ned. That rat-bastard, skunk-smelling, motherf—ing Ned.

  He poked his head through the door and muttered, “Shit,” as he dropped his keys. I stared at him the way that a rabid dog might size up a postman’s shin, and when he straightened up, I pelted him with the fluffy angora pillow that he’d insisted on buying because he’d seen something similar in Metropolitan Home.

  “Holy shit,” he yelped, as the pillow smacked him on the side of the head, and he jumped two feet in the air, coming dangerously close to the door frame. Damn, I thought. Nearly fifty points for a concussion. “What are you doing here?” he asked, cautiously taking a step in. “You’re never home from work on a weekday.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest. “Need I remind you, oh valiant one? I’m in the middle of chemo. I’m working from home.” I reached out my han
d. “I guess it goes without saying that I want my keys back.”

  “Look, Nat, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be here.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose like he was getting a migraine. “But I left…well, you didn’t pack up…anyway, some of my work files are here. I just wanted to grab them.”

  “Get out,” I said, raising another pillow as ammunition.

  “C’mon, Nat. Be reasonable. I just need to find this stuff, and I’ll be gone.” He shuffled over and dropped the keys on my coffee table.

  I reached for the remote and flicked on All My Children, increasing the volume until the entire block could surely catch wind of Erica Kane’s latest romantic embroilment. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Ned walk to my desk, open up the bottom drawer, and filter through the papers. He stuck two manila folders into his messenger bag and paused for a minute to read over a memo, which he then crumpled up into a ball and tossed in the trash can that sat at the foot of the desk. Then he kept digging.

  “Do you need this?” He held up a business card. I squinted to make out the writing, so he flipped it over to read it himself. His voice grew soft. “It’s for a wigmaker, Adina Seidel.”