Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Sara realized now (knowing what she knew by March) that Irene must have been about to tell her the story of Mrs. Cho’s kimono, but couldn’t do so without explaining how she’d spent Christmas Eve at the Cho household, and that she couldn’t explain that without first explaining how she’d broken down and called William from the MetroStop Bakery by the hospital, and that she couldn’t explain that without first explaining why she’d been in the hospital. Irene had traced this long invisible thread of events back and had landed where she needed to begin, which was to say, “Well, the biopsy results came back positive.”

Sara ignored the apparent non sequitur and hugged Irene firmly. She had been ready for this since before the holiday party.

“Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to beat this thing, no problem.” She pulled her phone from her purse to start hunting for the relevant numbers. “Luther said he knows someone at Sloan Kettering and someone else at Montefiore. We should make appointments right away for a second opinion, and then our health columnist, Dr. Sammy, he said he’d talk to us about treatment options anytime.”

But Irene had actually seemed annoyed by this. “Actually,” she said, “I started chemo a few weeks ago. At Mount Sinai.”

“A few weeks ago?”

“It only took a few hours for three days. Now I’ve got a little time off before the next round. It wasn’t so bad. I feel pretty good, and they’re very optimistic. I just didn’t want to ruin everyone’s holiday. It’s silly.”

“ Silly ? Irene, this is serious.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Who else knows? Does Jacob know?”

“No,” Irene sighed. “William’s the only one who knows.”

“But you barely know him!”

“He was here, and I got scared, I guess,” Irene had said matter-of-factly. “It doesn’t matter. He sort of left me at Penn Station. He’s probably waiting for me to call him, but—”

“You told him you had cancer and he — what?”

It had then taken a good twenty minutes to back up and get the whole story before the cab driver deposited them, and Sara helped Irene navigate the cocoon into the storeroom. And though it had all seemed fine at the end of the day, Sara continued dwelling on it. They had always told each other everything. So why hadn’t Irene told her right away? It killed her that when it was all said and done and Irene had been cured, this would still be there between them.

All Sara wanted was to take care of Irene: shuttle her to and from her doctor’s appointments, make her chicken soup from scratch, sit with her on the couch watching ¡Vámonos, Muchachos! and wait until Irene fell asleep to pick her hair off the pillows. But Irene refused to allow any of this. She insisted on acting as if nothing were any different than before, like the rest of the world.

For instance, it was insane that Sara still had to wake up and get to the New York Journal on time and spend the bulk of her day in a gray cubicle, covered in orderly columns of Post-it Notes and tacked-up newspaper clippings. While her friend had cancer. She just had it. “I mean, hello?” she felt like saying to her dry-erase calendar. “Are you serious with this shit?” It was still totally full of precise, centimeter-tall lettering and meticulous color coding: red appointments, green deadlines, blue editorial board meetings, purple social engagements, yellow holidays, and intern schedules in brown.

Even though Irene had been adamant about sticking with Dr. Zarrani at Mount Sinai, Sara still went in to discuss the situation with her boss, Luther Halles, the editorial director. He gave her a few numbers — well, actually he told her to look the numbers up in his Contacts list — and said she could use his name, of course, for anything anytime.

“You could do a piece on this,” he said, rolling his Mont Blanc pen between his fingers. She did a quick mental check of whether she needed to order him more ink. “Even a multipart thing, you know? Young, invulnerable people with cancer. It’s compelling stuff.”

Sara hummed. “I’m not sure my friend would go for that.”

Luther got up and began pacing. The way he walked, he sort of led with his head, which whipped this way and that, tugging through his neck as if pulling the rest of his low, reluctant frame behind him. “Tell her this is important. Others can learn from her.”

She wasn’t sure that was on Irene’s list of current priorities.

“Hey. Does she have health insurance?”

Sara nodded. Juliette and Abeba were keeping Irene on the payroll.

“She works at this gallery in Chelsea.”

Luther made a face; it would be a better story if she didn’t have insurance, Sara supposed, with all the headlines about the legions of young people who were coming off their parents’ plans into part-time work and their parents’ basements. There was no room now for them here, with her whole graduating class on idle, waiting for this financial crisis thing to end. Now the people above them couldn’t retire and wouldn’t be promoted and so she and everyone else were stuck in assistant purgatory. Still it was better than being back home.

“The other thing is that I might need to take three weeks off,” Sara said as seriously as she could. She knew he knew she had the days saved up and he’d been dreading she’d try and use them. “Once she’s finally feeling better, I’m taking her to France.”

Luther didn’t reply, and didn’t really need to, as his eyes alone suggested that this wasn’t happening. She knew she’d be better off asking him to rename the paper The Daily Sara than asking for multiple weeks off. She was the paper’s unofficial closer. Whenever someone quit or was fired (which happened every other week), their abandoned projects were usually given to her to finish. Meanwhile she represented the paper in the Classroom Journalism Initiative and served on a steering committee for the new Web interface. When Luther traveled, Sara was the one trusted to book his hotels, dinners, cars, and flights and to find people to take his unused Knicks tickets if there was going to be a game. She spoke to Mrs. Sigrid Halles (a former Miss Norway runner-up) at least three times a day and kept track of the major life events of their children Laetitia and Laurence.

He seemed aware that this was a lot of work for one person, or at least he had given her a 5 percent raise last summer when she’d complained about it and given her a new title as head of the mentorship program, which meant she had use of the two interns. But using them was far more work than doing it herself, for both were clueless. They were only six years younger, but they were hopeless. God knew what they would do to the place if she were gone for three weeks.

Luther sat back down and pushed a stack of files toward her, which he’d finally signed after a week’s delay. “Why don’t you all go use my beach house? Shelter Island is great this time of year. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“In March?”

“Oh, totally. I wouldn’t go swimming, but there are some excellent vineyards, and you’ll have the town to yourselves. It’s primal, I’m telling you. It’s so relaxing. I go out there some weekends just to think. Be in nature. Commune with the pounding surf and the wide-open sky. Check with Sigrid about it. We’re lending it to her nephews until early April, but you can have it for a couple days after that. It’ll be perfect. A long weekend on Long Island! On me.”

Sara thanked him with enough false gratitude that he’d be satisfied and promised she’d think about it, even though the idea of staying in her boss’s house — even his vacation house — made her feel awkward.