Nude Men

does uncontrolled violent things when I’m angry. So all I do is eat a piece of fin, without asking her permission.
    “Why did you buy Sara that ten-thousand-dollar parrot and custom-made dress?” I ask.
    “To make her happy.”
    “You’re ruining her personality. She’s acting like a spoiled brat, to say the least.”
    “But is she happy?”
    “Oh, yeah, she’s happy, but she’s mean.”
    Henrietta continues picking at the fin and mutters, “As long as she’s happy...”
    “Yes, but next thing you know, she’ll ask you for a dress the color of the weather, like in her movie Donkey Skin, and then what will you do? If you don’t give it to her, she’ll hate you.”
    “She already did ask me for one. And I did give it to her. She prefers the one the color of the sun.”
    I tear off a little piece of the tail and chew it angrily in front of her. Immediately, I feel sad for having ruined an uneaten section of her custom-made fish.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “But you can’t keep buying her everything she asks for.”
    I suddenly notice tears running down her face.
    “What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting down next to her and putting my hand on her shoulder.
    “Sara is dying,” she says, staring at the marzipan fish.
    “What?”
    “The doctor says she has a brain tumor.”
    “No.”
    She nods at the fish. I want her to look at me.
    “She had pains in her head,” she says, “and nausea. He did tests.”
    “Are you sure about this? Did you get a second opinion?”
    She nods at the fish. As long as Henrietta keeps staring at that fish, I have trouble believing her words are not insane.
    “There are cures,” I tell her.
    She shakes her head and tells the fish, “It’s too far advanced. It can’t be cured at all. She has only a few weeks or months left.”
    “Oh my God.”
    We sit in silence, both of us staring blankly at the fish.
    “Does she know?” I finally ask.
    “No.”
    There’s a movement in the kitchen doorway. We look. It’s Sara, standing.
    A small voice in my head says: She does now, ladies and gentlemen.
    We stare at her, stunned, waiting for her to speak, not knowing if she heard us talk. We soon realize from her expression that she did hear.
    “Is that true?” she asks.
    Is what true? I want to ask in return, but I remain silent instead.
    Henrietta is unable to reply, which is a clear enough answer for Sara, who turns around and disappears into the living room. Henrietta rushes after her. I follow. The mother and daughter are holding each other, crying.
     
    T hat night I tell Laura the news about Sara, and I cry. Her first reaction is incomprehension. Then she cries, too, and tries to comfort me.
     
    T he next day Henrietta asks me to come over whde Sara is at school, so we can talk in private. We sit on the couch.
    She says, “When the doctor told me the bad news, I recorded it.”
    “Why?”
    “I can deal with bad news better if I own it and can play it whenever I wish. It makes me feel I can alter it, even though I know it s not true.” She takes out a little tape recorder. “If you ever have bad news to tell me, please warn me beforehand, so I can record it.”
    She turns on her tape recorder, and from it comes the doctor’s voice: “During the next two weeks the pain in her head will become much worse and will be constant, not just seizures like now. I cannot stress, sufficiently, how excruciating the pain will become.”
    “Oh, no,” gasps Henrietta’s voice from the tape recorder.
    “Yes. But ”—the doctor pauses—“there will be another symptom going on at the same time as the pain, which will make the pain more bearable.”
    He waits for her to ask “What?” The jerk.
    “What?” she asks.
    “This secondary symptom is nicknamed the Happy Symptom. It’s rather rare, but it occurs in certain cases of brain tumor, such as Sara’s.”
    “What is the Happy Symptom?”
    “It is what it sounds like, which is, happiness. During the next two weeks or so, her tumor will be growing through a part of her brain that will cause excruciating pain, but it will also be growing through a part that will cause tremendous happiness. The more the pain grows—and it will grow each day, I assure you—so will the happiness become more intense.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “Pain and happiness, just like pleasure and unhappiness, can coexist without discord. Notice that I did not say pain and pleasure, which form a different combination altogether, the pain