her, and eventually Carmen didn't know what else to do, and went back to the kitchen. She sat there listening to her cry, dabbing at her own eyes, until finally Alex stopped. “Will you please pick Annabelle up?” Alex said to Carmen in an exhausted voice that was completely devoid of emotion.
“Why don't you do it, Mrs. Parker? She will love to see you.”
“I can't,” she said in a voice that sounded more dead than alive. They had killed her.
“Yes, you can. If you want, I will go with you. Come … we go together …” She led Alex back to her little dressing room, and took out a loosely knit dress and held it out to her. “Annabelle likes this.”
“I can't, Carmen. I can't do it.” She started to sob again, but this time Carmen clung to her shoulders and held her.
“Yes, you can.” They were both crying by then. “I will help you.”
“Why?” Alex wanted to give up and die, but Carmen was holding her and wouldn't let her.
“Because we love you. We are going to help you until you are strong again. You will be fine very soon,” she said confidently, trying to give Alex courage. But Alex only shook her head as she stepped into the knit dress Carmen held for her.
“I won't be fine. They're going to give me chemotherapy.”
“Ah no …” She looked horrified, and then, “All right … we will get through it.” Carmen was determined to help Alex. She was a good woman, and a good employer, and she didn't deserve this. She had a husband who loved her, and a little girl. She had to live for them, and Carmen was going to help her do it. “We go to pick up Annabelle, and then we have lunch. And then you take a nap, and I will take Annabelle to the park.” She was speaking to her like a child, and Alex responded to it from the depths of her anguish. She had never seen anything as ugly as what the surgeon had left her.
But she went with Carmen to Annabelle's school, and then they walked home quietly. Alex was silent, but Annabelle didn't seem to notice. And once they were home, Carmen gave them homemade tomato soup, and a turkey sandwich for each of them. And then she tucked Alex into bed, and told Annabelle that her mother needed a nap, which Annabelle thought was a game. She helped Carmen tuck her Mommy into bed, and then they went to the park and played.
She told her Daddy about it late that afternoon, and he wondered if Alex had been playing invalid again, as he put it.
“What's up?” he asked casually, after Annabelle went to bed. “You sleeping all afternoon?” In his voice was a barely concealed tone of disapproval. He didn't want her languishing in front of Annabelle, he had lived with that as a boy, and the memory of it still drove him crazy. Even as an adult now, he had an almost phobic hatred of illness.
“I just took a nap. I was very tired. I went to see Dr. Herman.” Her voice was lifeless as she looked at him, and her eyes gave away nothing.
“Are the results of the pathology reports in?”
“Yes. Four of my nodes are involved. I need chemo,” she said in a dead voice. And then, “He took off my dressing.”
“Great. That's a step forward at least. That should have cheered you up.” He spoke enthusiastically, as though to spur her on, ignoring the fact that she needed chemo, and she looked at him as though he came from another planet.
“Not exactly.”
“Why not? Was there a problem?”
“Not really.” Only a small one …my breast seems to have fallen off with the dressing …
“So what's the big deal? Why are you so tired?”
“What do you want from me?” she snapped at him. “Polaroids? Can't you figure it out for yourself for chrissake? I lost a breast. It's a big deal, to me, if not to you, and I don't buy the idea that it's no big deal to you either. You've been acting like I have leprosy ever since I got home, standing halfway across the room from me. I get the message. You don't think this is so cute either.”
“I never said it was. But it doesn't have to be the tragedy you make it.”
“Maybe not, pal. But let me tell you one thing, it sure ain't pretty.” She looked venomously at him, filled with