Last Dance, Last Chance

didn’t either. It was embarrassing to be led home.
    When she looked into a mirror, her own face looked alien to her. It was all bloated and puffy, with black circles carved beneath her dark eyes. She looked a hundred years old, but she couldn’t remember growing old. She couldn’t remember when she got sick.
    Sometimes people came and went, and her friends’ faces seemed to float above her, their expressions worried and concerned.
    How do you feel? they asked, but she couldn’t answer them. She couldn’t describe how she felt. Sick. Sick. Sick. And so tired that she could not imagine cooking a meal or making a bed or walking to the mailbox ever again. When she could fix her mind on her children, she wept inside for them. They no longer had a mother, only a useless, swollen blob who sat propped up in a recliner chair while the world went on without her.
    The doctors didn’t seem to know what to do about her. The one man she trusted most assured everyone that she was doing just fine, and that he would take care of her. Sometimes he said that all she needed was to have her gall bladder removed. He didn’t think there was anything really wrong with her. And he, of all people, would surely know.
    But nothing changed. She sat in her chair for what seemed like months. He lay on the couch nearby, rarely leaving her alone. Sometimes it seemed to her that he was watching over her with concern, and sometimes he didn’t seem to notice her any more than if she were a piece of furniture. The ice clinked in his drink as he watched television, clicking the channel changer often. His voice slurred, and he dozed off, but he never did anything, despite the questions people kept asking him.
    Why don’t you take her to the hospital? they asked him.
    They have a skeleton staff on the weekends, he told them. She’s much better off here with me…
     
    And so, day after day, the sun came up with pale washed skies, grew bright and hot at noon, and faded until the room was again in shadow. And Debbie Pignataro was still there.
    At length, with what rational thought she could manage, she began to believe that she would die there, surrounded by people who loved her—people whom she loved—and yet somehow beyond all hope of rescue.

2
    D eborah Rago was born in Erie County, New York, on July 22, 1957. Her mother, Caroline, was a housewife, and her dad, Frank, supported the family with hard physical labor. She had an older brother, and she was the little girl her parents had hoped for. They were both children of the fifties, that rather innocent time in America sandwiched between World War II and the Vietnam War, the calm between storms.
    In 1957, the year Deborah was born, the first reports suggesting that smoking might contribute to lung cancer appeared, but smokers weren’t really alarmed. Actor Humphrey Bogart, a heavy smoker, died of throat cancer that year. But a huge segment of the population still smoked, sure that it wouldn’t happen to them.
    Father Knows Best and The Roy Rogers Show were popular on television, and Leave It to Beaver was in its first season. Elvis Presley’s performances on the small screen were deliciously shocking and were only allowed to be filmed from the waist up on The Ed Sullivan Show. John F. Kennedy was a senator, and Billy Graham was a young evangelist. Americans were somewhat worried about Russia and Cuba, but most people felt safe. Young families had four or more children without a thought to the dangers of population explosion. “Young Love” was top-ranked on Your Hit Parade during most of 1957. Pat Boone was a rosy-cheeked twenty-two, and he still wore white bucks. So did a lot of people.
    There was crime and murder and scandal in the fifties—there always is—but it wasn’t omnipresent, because the vast majority of American citizens only read about it in the newspapers or listened to coverage on the radio. Tabloid television was yet to be heard of.
    Debbie Rago grew up cosseted by her extremely close and loving family. Her father worked in construction. He was considered an artist at building forms for concrete and in the timing of its pouring and hardening. Caroline worked part time in Krasner’s, a ladies’ dress shop, and Debbie’s brother, Carmine * , five years older than she was, was a typically protective big brother. They all lived in a nice little house in Williamsville, out Kensington Avenue northeast of Buffalo. “We lived there from the time I was one,” Debbie