Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

“My lord,” Hollis said, rising from where he had sat at the foot of their bed, walking gingerly toward her, his gaze traveling the circumference of her oval-shaped head.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don't know,” he said. “You look like you, but not like you.” He extended a palm outward, bringing it to her tender scalp, letting it glide about on the smooth surface. “You look like a blank canvas, Deb.”

“If only that were true,” she replied, and at that moment a shiver shot through her body, producing goose pimples on her bare shoulders and arms, as if to signal the premature arrival of the dry, brisk winter months. Then the colder season found her coughing and sneezing more than ever before: surely a weakened immune system, she and Hollis had concluded; for a while, each abrupt wheeze from her mouth or nose — every single hack or sudden nasal eruption — was accompanied by an uncontrollable release of urine, to the point where Debra began relying on what she liked to refer to as adult diapers. “Never saw myself as the depending-on-Depends type,” she'd told Hollis at Costco, after he had lowered two bulk-size packages of the moisture-absorbing undergarments into their shopping cart.

Since they hadn't yet formed any close acquaintances at Nine Springs, no one sought them out during that first winter, and, for the most part, the weeks between Debra's treatments were spent in relative solitude. Hollis whiled away the hours by doing landscaping in the backyard, cooking their meals, and strolling the aisles of Home Depot or Costco. There was also his increasingly questionable, slow-going autobiography, resumed now and then whenever Debra had urged him to keep writing, given the working title of The Hardest of the Hard: A Young Soldier's Story of Adversity amp; Courage Under Fire ; but with only a few pages completed, there wasn't yet the heroic wartime tale or narrative structure he had envisioned — that account of glorified half-truths he intended to composite from the published fictional accounts of others while omitting much of what he had actually seen or done in Korea. However, it was a return to drawing and painting which gave him the kind of immediate satisfaction writing just didn't provide, rekindling a hobby which had been dormant for decades and allowing him the opportunity to engage in an honest form of creative expression.

So on Friday afternoons, Hollis attended the two-hour Painting Your Life class at the local Funtivities Center, where — for a $58 monthly enrollment fee — he was supplied with colored pens, pastels, oil paints, watercolors, brushes, and large sheets of white construction paper. With a single assignment given at the start of every session (Compose a dream you've had — Depict your favorite place — Make a self-portrait — Sketch something you like to eat) and offering a minimal amount of instruction, the classes were reserved, meditative affairs set around four circular tables which could each seat five to eight participants. Under the roving presence of the soft-spoken and diminutive Mrs. Ambrose, a retired art-history adjunct professor from the University of Arizona, Hollis completed every assignment in less than an hour, always excusing himself before those around him had finished their pieces (his weekly creation carried across the parking lot in one hand, rolled up tightly as he headed for the Suburban, destined to be placed on a garage cabinet shelf).

But a couple of his paintings had caught Mrs. Ambrose's attention, bringing her to hover above his shoulders, her bifocals dangling from a silver chain and brushing against his neck. “Oh, I like this, very unusual,” she had said while watching him add a light blue sky to a pastel-based image showing a half-naked man and boy, their heads concealed behind gas masks; and then, two weeks later, she repeated the sentiment when gazing down at a self-portrait which had Hollis surrounded by a purple-crimson background, arms at his side as he stood near a white cow and in front of a blackish tree with bloodred leaves. “Oh, I like this, Mr. Adams. I like what you're doing here — the symbolism of the tree, the colors you've used — figurative while also abstract. Now tell me what you're trying to convey in this?”

Lifting a red pastel he was using from the construction paper, Hollis regarded his self-portrait as if he were viewing it anew. “You know, I can't say for sure,” he said, his words preceded by a faint sigh. “I guess I don't really know. It sort of just came to me, I suppose.”

Mrs. Ambrose raised her bifocals, holding them at her nose like a magnifying glass. “Well, it seems rather personal, don't you think? Perhaps you're addressing something about your childhood, a longing for days gone by.”

“Perhaps that's it,” he said, lowering the red pastel to the paper. “It could be, sure,” and with that he began working again.

Debra, on the other hand, occasionally took tai chi and ceramics classes at the Funtivities Center, although she usually occupied herself with escapist fiction, managing to track down and read the forty-six novels of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series; at the same time, she could not resist owning another escapist collection of sorts: shunning the typical line of chemotherapy wigs, she acquired instead various specialty hairpieces which added an elegant or humorous touch to her otherwise barren appearance (Illusion by Eva Gabor, Encounter by Revlon, Action by Raquel Welch, as well as a blond beehive, and a Princess Leia wig), wearing whichever one suited her mood when heading to the grocery store or into Tucson for treatment. But she quickly grew tired of such novelty items. In the latter half of that winter, she began leaving the wigs at home, deciding to venture outside adorned only with a bandanna or a purple Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap, sunglasses, and a charcoal-filtered surgical mask to help protect her lowered immune system; although none of what she wore could hide the lethargy which had finally descended upon her — a deepening lethargy, Hollis believed, not based solely on the effects of the monthly chemo infusions but, rather, because she could also no longer deny a feeling of having been horribly betrayed by her own body.

Thereafter, their days and nights elapsed in quiet uncertainty, both waiting for the next round of treatment or some clear-cut sign that the infusions were working, hoping for a positive outcome to the ordeal, and for the colder months to conclude so they could at last open up the windows on warmer evenings. During one of those chilly nights when they were sitting together on the living-room couch — speaking very little while the fireplace crackled nearby, lost in their own thoughts as the TV played in front of them — Debra suddenly announced she wasn't the same person anymore, that she had become someone far removed from the woman he had married and the woman she had imagined herself as always being, saying this with the softest of voices.

“Why do you think that?” Hollis asked.

“Honestly, take a good look at me,” she said. “Everything about me has changed. I'm not really me, not really me at all. I'm a complete stranger to myself.”

Meeting her eyes, he shook his head; he wished to counter her view of herself, to let her know she wasn't any different, that she was still Deb, that once the cancer and chemo were gone she would feel like her old self again, that none of the physical manifestations of her illness, or its treatment, could ever completely alter her intrinsic qualities — except he wasn't sure if that was the case. In truth, she had changed dramatically during a relatively short period of time: as opposed to her usual energetic, outgoing nature, she'd grown increasingly listless and withdrawn, her movements were sluggish, she often spent more hours sleeping than awake; hairlessness aside, her skin, too, had a shiny, almost translucent veneer; from maintaining an irregular sleeping pattern, dark circles had formed like bruises beneath her eyes, her voice had a languid, detached tone — and mirroring those retirement-home shut-ins unable to tend to their own basic needs, there was sometimes a yielding look in her stare. Hollis placed a hand on her leg and returned his gaze to the television program, saying nothing.