“Harvard doesn’t care if Michaela got a B plus in social studies. Harvard wants to know that she spent her freshman year learning more about who she really is. Finding something that she liked doing.”
“Exactly,” Mrs. Berrywick says. “Which is why she joined the SAT study prep class.”
Michaela will not be taking the SATs for another two years. I sigh. “I’ll talk to Mr. Levine,” I say, “but I can’t make any promises.”
Mrs. Berrywick opens her purse and takes out a fifty-dollar bill. “I appreciate you seeing my side of things.”
“I can’t take your money. You can’t buy a better grade for Michaela—”
“I’m not,” the woman interrupts, smiling tightly. “Michaela earned the grade. I’m just . . . offering my gratitude.”
“Thanks,” I say, pressing the bill back at her. “But I truly can’t accept this.”
She looks me up and down. “No offense,” she whispers, conspiratorial, “but you could use a little wardrobe update.”
I’m thinking of going to Alec Levine and asking him to lower Michaela Berrywick’s grade when I hear someone crying in the outer office. “Excuse me,” I say, certain that it’s the tenth grader I saw an hour ago who was twelve days late for her period, and whose boyfriend had dumped her after they had sex. I grab my box of tissues—school counselors ought to do product endorsements for Kleenex—and walk out.
It’s not the tenth grader, though. It’s Zoe.
“Hey,” she says, and she tries to smile but fails miserably.
It’s been three days since our disastrous trip to Boston. After Zoe’s D & C, I finally got in touch with her mother, who flew home from her conference and met me at Zoe’s place. I’d called Zoe multiple times since then to see how she was feeling, until she finally told me that if I called again and asked her how she was feeling she’d hang up on me. In fact, today she was supposed to go back to work.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, as I lead her into my office.
And close the door.
She wipes her eyes with a tissue. “I don’t get it. I’m not a bad person,” Zoe says, her mouth twisting. “I try to be nice and I compost and I give money to homeless people. I say please and thank you and I floss every day and I volunteer in a soup kitchen at Thanksgiving. I work with people who have Alzheimer’s and depression and who are scarred and I try to give them something good in their day, one little thing to take with them.” She looks up at me. “And what do I get? Infertility. Miscarriages. A stillborn. A goddamned embolism. A divorce.”
“It’snotfair,” I say simply.
“Well, neither’s the phone call I got today. The doctor—the one from Brigham and Women’s? She said they did some tests.” Zoe shakes her head. “I have cancer. Endometrial cancer. And wait—I’m not finished yet—it’s agoodthing. They caught it early enough, so I can have a little hysterectomy, and I’ll be just fine and dandy. Isn’t that just fabulous? Shouldn’t I be thanking my lucky stars? I mean, what’s next? An anvil falling on my head from the second story? My landlord evicting me?” She stands up, whirling in a circle. “You can come out now,” she shouts to the walls, the floor, the ceiling. “Whatever shitty version ofCandid Camerathis is; whoever decided I was this year’s Job—I’m done. I’mdone.I’m—”
I stand up and hug her tight, cutting off whatever she was about to say. Zoe freezes for a moment, and then she starts sobbing against my silk blouse. “Zoe,” I say. “I’m—”
“Don’t you dare,” Zoe interrupts. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry.”
“I’m not,” I say, straight-faced. “I mean, if you look at sheer probability—the fact that all these things are happening to you means it’s much more likely I’m safe. I’m positively charmed, in fact. You’re good luck for me.”
Zoe blinks, stunned, and then a laugh barks out of her. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“I can’t believe I made you laugh, when you clearly ought to be railing against the heavens or renouncing God or something. Let me tell you, Zoe, you make a lousy cancer sufferer.”
Another laugh. “I have cancer,” she says, incredulous. “I actually have cancer.”
“Maybe you can get gangrene, too, before sunset.”
“I wouldn’t want to be greedy,” Zoe answers. “I mean, surely someone else needs a plague of locusts or the swine flu—”
“Termites!” I add. “Dry rot!”
“Gingivitis . . .”
“A leaky muffler,” I say.
Zoe pauses. “Metaphorically,” she points out, “that was the problem in the first place.”
This makes us laugh even harder, so much so that the guidance department secretary pokes her head in to make sure we’re all right. By then, my eyes are tearing, my abdominal muscles actually ache. “I need a hysterectomy,” Zoe says, bent over to catch her breath, “and I can’t stop laughing. What’s wrong with me?”
