Tom Mendicino - Probation

Ma, someday I’ll be ready to stand on my two feet. I promise. As soon as we get through this, all of this, cancer, divorce, scandal. I’m gonna stand by you, support you, be your rock. I can’t say I’m a raging success, but I wouldn’t have gotten even this far without you. And you, being who you are, will be kind and generous enough to pretend that all my efforts are for you when we both know you’re really just the beneficiary of my own fear of being left alone. But my motives aren’t important in the end; it doesn’t matter that I’m not Mother Teresa because I’m going to be here with you, the whole way, right up until the day they tell us you’ve got a clean bill of health and you’ll live to be ninety. I promise.

“It may not be a death sentence, Andy. Even the most aggressive lymphomas are responding to the newer treatment regimens. There’s a little bit of God in medicine these days.”

“That’s weird,” I say.

“Well, disease is a part of the natural order, but it always feels like a disruption of the natural order to those it affects.”

“No. I didn’t mean the disease is weird.”

Matt waits for me to elaborate.

“You’re a priest, you know,” I say.

“Yes, I certainly know that,” he says.

“And I’ve been seeing you since last summer.”

“Right.”

“And this is the first time you’ve brought up the subject of God.”

“You want to go somewhere with that thought?” he asks.

I feel a professional pause coming on, one of those eyes-locked silences intended to draw me out.

“Do you believe in God?” I ask.

“Of course I do.”

“You’ve never doubted?”

“Of course I have.”

“But you still believe?”

“Yes. I do.”

“I don’t.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Doesn’t that upset you?”

“Andy, I don’t make judgments about my patients’ religious beliefs or lack of them.”

“But you’re a priest!”

“Yes, I am. But that’s incidental to our work together.”

“How can that be?” I ask, not really certain why I’m so agitated. “How can you sit there and allow me to continue in my heathenish delusions? I thought it was your job to bring me back to God!”

“Andy, I’m not a missionary. I’m a shrink.”

“I didn’t think the Vatican let you compartmentalize,” I say, laughing. “See, I have been paying attention. I’m getting pretty facile with the lingo, huh?”

“So does being an atheist bother you?” he asks.

“Aha! See! I knew you’d get around to converting me! A leopard doesn’t change its spots!” I say, satisfied.

“Sorry, pal. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in God or Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. But I’ve got this funny feeling it matters to you.”

“Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

“I’m beginning to,” he says.

“Maybe you are,” I concede. “But you’re wrong about this one. I’m not an atheist.”

“So you do believe?”

“I suppose.”

“What do you believe in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just hedging my bets. Maybe I’m too much of a coward to make a commitment to heresy. I mean, maybe there is an Almighty Being and maybe there is a Saint Peter and I don’t want to get turned away at the Pearly Gates because I made the stupid mistake of thinking there isn’t a God.”

“Covering all your bases, huh?”

“Right. Anything wrong with that?”

“Not necessarily.”

“It’s not all about me, you know.”

Matt sits quietly, knowing where I’m headed.

“What if there aren’t any medical miracles? What happens to my mother if she dies? I’d rather think of her flying around heaven with a harp than lying in a box in the ground.”

“So you’re saying your mother is the reason you haven’t quite given up on God?”

“She’s one of the reasons.”

“Do you want to talk about your mother? About how you feel about this bad news?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to think about it. I haven’t thought about anything else. I just can’t think about it anymore. At least not now. And you’re right. Maybe it’s not worth thinking about at all. Maybe there’s a little bit of God in modern medicine after all. Maybe this time next year everything will be back to normal.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Tell you about what?”

“Tell me what it’s going to be like when everything’s back to normal.”

Goddamn it. This priest sure has a talent for stumping me.

Back to…what?

A Saturday night date with my mother at the club, then sleeping late in the morning while she putters in the kitchen, whipping up my favorite Sunday dinner?

Possible…but not normal.

Crawling into bed and drifting off to sleep while Alice rustles the pages of her novel?

Normal…but not possible.

“Andy, I think under the circumstances you need to concentrate on the present and not worry about the future. You need to focus on the positive to help you deal with the negative.”

“The positive?” I sneer.

“You’re a very lucky man, my friend.”

I snort, laughing.

“It almost makes me angry, your willful refusal to acknowledge what you have,” he says, his voice more measured than his words.

“And what would that be? A fat frequent flyer miles bank?”

“The knowledge that you are unconditionally loved. That’s a gift not everyone is given.”

“And now she’s gonna die.”

“That doesn’t die with her. That you will keep for as long as you live.”

I’m not taking a chance.

We’re going to get through this, Mama, if it’s the last thing we do.

It came disguised as a birthday present, but I know it’s really penance, an offering, a bone to throw at the guilt that occasionally pricks the seamless rounds of closings, meetings, parties, tennis matches, all the comfortable routines of my sister’s life. She’s convinced herself that the distance between Charlotte and south Florida justifies why I’ve had to assume full responsibility for these endless rounds of hospitals and medical office buildings. She’s willfully, blissfully ignorant of the six daily nonstop flights from West Palm. It’s probably just as well. Patience is not one of my sister’s virtues. To her, a waiting room is where people cool their heels until she is ready to receive them. She’d never be able to tolerate the slow drip of hours spent flipping through ancient copies of Newsweek and Good Housekeeping. Time doesn’t exist in a doctor’s waiting room, four beige walls and no window. It feels perfectly natural to study a recipe for the Perfect Plum Pudding for Your Holiday Table months after the twinkle lights have been packed away and the tree hauled away by the trash man.

“Mrs. Nocera, why don’t you step this way.”

I handed my mother over to the nurse and settled back to wait while they pumped her bloodstream full of chemicals. Later, at home, I’ll ask her how she feels. Fine, she’ll say, when I can see she’s doubled over with nausea. I’ll pour her some flat ginger ale and she’ll smoke a cigarette, saying it settles her stomach. My sister will call and my mother, exhausted, will try to sound interested in her tales. Then Regina will ask to speak to me and start haranguing, asking me the prognosis. I’ll tell her I don’t know. It’s true. I’ve never asked. My sister needs something more definitive; she uses medical terms she doesn’t understand like age-adjusted mortality and morbidity rates, primary and contributory diagnosis and cancer clusters, words she’s picked up from the Internet. I tell her all of this doctor bullshit is nothing but educated guesses, something on which to base false hopes and unrealistic expectations. She needs to pick up the phone and call the oncologist if she’s not satisfied with my reports from the field. Frustrated, she’ll swear at me and slam the receiver in the cradle.