Given my new state of mind, I was not remotely fazed when a radiologist called me after my annual MRI this past July to say there was a “little something” on the scan worth checking out further. It was my husband Herb, the philosopher, the stoic, who wore a worried look on his face. We were sitting in the dining room of our suburban New York home, with its teak furniture and tone-matched wooden window frames, the chair rail and the walls above and below it painted at my insistence in three different warm, subtle Benjamin Moore earth tones: August morning, Asbury sand, and soft beige. Which would have made for a very hygge room except that the table and two of our six chairs, as well as the nearby counters, were piled high and wide with just the last week’s accumulation of Herb’s books, scholarly journals, and printed articles.

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“Nah,” I said, consolidating and straightening my husband’s papers. “I’ve been through this a zillion times. It’ll be another false alarm—you’ll see.”

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I went alone to the biopsy. This was five months into the pandemic, so family members were not allowed. But I didn’t mind. In fact I think I impressed my caretakers by my sangfroid. I didn’t flinch when my warm, heimisch nurse Terri with the long, highlighted brown curls stuck a needle into the crook of my arm for the contrast dye. I didn’t kvetch when she and the trio of other masked nurses and technicians instructed me to climb onto a tall, skinny, high-tech version of a massage table, lie on my tummy with plugs in my ears and headphones over them, repeatedly scootch up and over like a superannuated arthritic toddler into the position requested, put my arms straight over my head, smush my face down onto the raised donut-shaped headrest, and hold that modified upward-facing–dog pose for the better part of a century with my left breast cradled in a towel, the right one falling through a circular cut-out, and one hand around a help button of sorts that felt like a bulbous rubber snot-sucker. I didn’t squawk when someone slid me and my narrow table into a tight space capsule for well longer than I expected and told me not to scratch my itchy nose or move my head, let alone my breast, as much as a centimeter. I almost fell asleep while the clack-clackers and tuba players in the booth behind the window blared out their percussion and brass symphony. Even when the lovely radiologist who’d introduced herself earlier as Dr. Seuss—yes, like the children’s book author—injected me with a local anesthetic and repeatedly took out samples of my lesion with an electric needle that sounded like a dentist’s drill, I felt silly having Terri and Judy—or Mary, or Florentina, whoever that was standing by me while my tightly cradled face was pointed straight down—each consolingly hold and rub one of my hands. The gesture was sweet, thoughtful, touching even, but I didn’t need hand-holding. Oh, the places we’ll go, I mused as I envisioned the doctor and her team of allied professionals whisking me and my breast cells off to a magical world of swirling color.

 

I mean, I am squeamish about some things. My eyes, for example. Cataract surgery had been a bear. I shivered whenever an ophthalmologist simply threatened to put dilating eyedrops in my eyes or shoot air at my pupils. I needed two people to hold me down the last time I had a cystoscopy. But this breast stuff was old hat to me and would prove to be a big nothing. Fibroadenoma, the doctor would say when she called me on my home phone after lunch on Thursday. Benign. That’s what they always said.

 

I left the office that Tuesday afternoon with my only souvenirs of the biopsy three skinny Steri-Strips arranged in an asterisk over my minuscule excision site and a cute pink floral ice pack nestled in my bra. And two days later, when Dr. Seuss interrupted an email I was writing to a friend, I gave her only half an ear.

 

“The pathology report on your biopsy came back,” she said. Yes, yes: the preamble. I waited, impatiently, for the magic words to follow, so I could check this chore off my list and get back to the important stuff. 

 

“You have invasive lobular breast cancer, estrogen-sensitive,” I heard instead. 

 

Whoa. What? No. That didn’t sound right. That sounded different from “Fibroadenoma, completely benign.”

 

It was very small, she went on. Teeny, really. And it was good that it was estrogen-sensitive. 

 

But it was cancer. Dr. Seuss said I had cancer. An effing malignant breast. And as the other Dr. Seuss might have said, “A tumor’s a tumor, no matter how small.” It wasn’t just one spot, either. This female Dr. Seuss was now telling me there was another dot an inch or two away that looked similar. I’d probably have to have that one biopsied, too.

 

Huh? What happened to my immunity?

 

I guess I joined the family club after all.

 

Which was fair enough. Why should I be the only one to get away scot-free?

 

But my entire world had just flipped, and somehow I was not prepared. What would this mean? Slash? Burn? Or poison? My mother, aunts, cousins, and sisters had, between them, tried all the standard options and then some. And pretty much every one of them sucked. Maybe worst of all was chemo—the energy sapping, the vomiting, the hair loss, and, less famously, the “chemo brain” my mother regretted for over a decade before strokes began chomping up the brain cells that still remained. But a mastectomy would be no picnic either; my little sister had almost died of a massive internal bleed the day after her first of a seemingly endless string of breast reconstructions. And radiation had burned our older sister’s skin so badly she had to go bra-less for weeks if not months. That would not, to say the least, be an attractive look for me.

 

That was what worried me, I told Herb over the ahi tuna in mustard-teriyaki-ginger glaze and the sides of steamed broccoli and basmati rice he’d made for dinner that evening. The table was otherwise pristine; he’d thoughtfully moved his scholarly detritus to his study. That should have clued me into his state of mind. 

 

“I’m just worried about what the treatment will feel like; what it will look like,” I went on with a full mouth. The tuna chunks were perfect; he’d taken them off the flame during that one fleeting moment between too raw and too dry. “How I’ll hold up through the torture.”

 

Herb nodded with empathy. But he had something else on his mind; I could tell.

 

“Why? What is your biggest worry?” I asked. 

 

He paused. “Longevity,” he answered quietly.

 

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. 

 

“You know what?” I said eventually, looking down at my broken fingernail and resisting the urge to bite it off. I speared a broccoli floret instead. “I hate to say it, but if this does me in, so be it.”

 

Herb waited.

 

“Not that I’m in a hurry,” I hastened to add. I took another bite of tuna. “Ideally, I’d hang out with you and everyone a while longer … long enough to meet Yoni’s and Naomi’s new baby; see Daniella realize her dreams, maybe with a loving partner by her side; maybe even make it to Elie’s bar mitzvah, if I’m lucky. And it would certainly be good to see the country rescued in a few months from this horrifying precipice we’re on.” This was in August, a few months before our 2020 presidential election. “Of course, if that doesn’t happen, death might be a welcome escape.”

 

Herb smiled ruefully.

 

“But if I don’t make it, I don’t,” I went on. “Cuz you know what? I’ve had love, with you, with our families. I’ve had kids and grandkids. I’ve had meaningful friendships, a good career, even a bout as a writer in my retirement. It’s enough, for a lifetime.” I shrugged.

 

“I feel the same way,” Herb said. “We’ve had beautiful years together.” But his voice seemed to have gotten caught in his throat. 

 

And then his shoulders shook, and he began sobbing. You had to know him to recognize it; to an outsider, it might look and sound like a cough, or a laugh. But this was how my husband succumbed, all at once, to intense emotion. Especially when mortality was at issue.

 

“Oh my God, you ninny,” I said. I gave him a hug, then took his hands firmly in mine and looked straight into his soft brown eyes. “Herb. Seriously: I don’t think this is going to kill me.” I reminded him that all my afflicted family members had survived their cancers except for one aunt whose treatment was too late and long ago in another country that hardly offered state-of-the-art care at public clinics back then. Whereas I had private insurance, I lived near great New York medical facilities in the year 2020, and my cancer was caught early. The radiologists told me we were talking about something way too itsy-bitsy to see on a sono or mammo, let alone feel on an exam.

 

“I know,” he said. “You’re right.” He’d composed himself, barely, but he still sounded tentative.

 

“Hey, trust me here; I wouldn’t do that to you,” I said. “You married a younger woman; you deserve the benefit of the bargain.” When he’d wed me ten-plus years ago, he was sixty-eight and I a child bride of merely fifty-three.

 

Now he was smiling. Sort of.

 

“Still,” I said, “I think we should make some plans, just in case. I need to get you up to speed on the things I handle for the household, so you can manage without me.”

 

“Okay,” he said, gamely.

 

“If you sell the house,” I said, “make sure to hire a stager. You can’t possibly get a decent price for it with all the books and papers you stack on every available surface. Someone will have to make the place pristine, and we know you’re too clutter-blind for the task.”

 

“What makes you think I’d want to sell the house?” he asked.

 

“But if it becomes too much for you …” I said.

 

“There are people called realtors,” he said.

 

“True,” I said. “But do you know where I keep the deed and the list of home improvements?”

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He said he was sure he could find them.

 

“And the wills, the health care proxies, the powers of attorney? The tax records I’m collecting for the accountant?”

 

“Don’t worry; I’ll be fine,” he said.

 

In other words, he didn’t need me at all?

 

“Ouch,” I said. “Still, I stand by what I said earlier. You should go ahead and marry again when I’m gone.”

 

“Great,” he said. Not even a token protest! “I’ll let Rayzie know now, so she can get a head start on the search.” After his divorce from Wife Number One, his friend Rayzie had told him she had a list of potential matches for him from here to the ends of the earth. 

 

He chose me instead …  that time around.

 

Seriously, though: What would he need a third wife for? What did I do, for that matter, that he couldn’t handle himself? He was multi-talented and emotionally self-sufficient. He did our shopping and cooking, our laundry (save for folding and putting away) and ironing. He did the fix-it and carpentry jobs around the house and hired and supervised the contractors when we needed major overhauls. He even found the programs, live and streaming, to watch together on our smart TV; I’d never mastered the interplay of the three remotes. I’d be up a doo-doo creek without him. 

 

Surely I contributed something important to the household, though. Something beyond bill paying, record keeping, and tax prep. Beyond nagging Herb about the growing piles and reminding him to answer his emails and texts. Even beyond the occasional geriatric cuddle. Something he would have trouble managing without me, that he’d need a new wife to take over.

 

I cleared and washed the dishes, shined the smudgy fridge doors, and sat back down with Herb. And together we came up with a list of all the household and marital functions for which I was responsible. As it turned out, the list was actually quite extensive:

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• Making lists;

• Whipping up PB&J sandwiches—my culinary specialty;

• Folding our carefully color-coordinated napkins into the shapes of flowers or fans;

• Picking crumbs off the floor, lint out of the carpet, and crabgrass out of the lawn;

• Offering an hourly critique of the ambient temperature of whatever room we were in;

• Announcing that our country and planet were doomed;

• When Herb’s nose was buried in a philosophy tome or a volume of Talmud, showing him videos of cute baby elephants and the latest posts by Andrew Borowitz, Sarah Cooper, and Randy Rainbow;

• When he was opining on solutions to the mysteries and problems of the world, elevating the dinner conversation with a poop joke;

• At bedtime, admiring his amazing nipples, of which I will always be jealous;

• When he was drifting off to sleep, obsessing aloud and at length over imperfect relationships; and

• In the morning, responding to his shofar blasts from the toilet with my own from the bed.

 

Herb looked at my list and chuckled. “No prob,” he said. “I’ll put it together in a want ad.” 

 

“No,” I snapped. This was no longer funny. It was one thing for me to put myself down;  it was another for him to enthusiastically join in and pile on. 

 

“You know that you don’t have to earn my love, right?” Herb said, clearly sensing my mood change. I could see the mental uh-oh on his face. “It’s your being that I love.”

 

“Yup,” I responded. “Mm-hmm. So you’ve said. But never mind: I’m not going to die after all. Not until you can come up with something, anything, worth eulogizing about me.”

 

“Deal,” he said.

 

And so it was settled. Poison, slash, or burn—whatever it took. I would not die. Not until I was sure I was positively irreplaceable.