Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

alternate.”
    DeDe, thank God, didn’t try to be a Pollyanna about it. “You’ll really like Ginny, I think. She’s a good egg.”
    “The oncologist?”
    “Mmm. She’s a serious advocate for women.”
    “She’s gay, I take it.”
    “Is that an issue for you?”
    “Of course not. Please. I was just curious.”
    “I can drive you there this afternoon, if you like. I’ve already told her we might stop by.”
    Mary Ann felt a rush of unalloyed affection for her old friend. “Oh, DeDe, would you? That would be such a load off my mind.” It soothed her considerably to have someone she trusted take matters in hand like this. She felt so much less alone.
    “Ginny says it’s a simple matter to have your records transferred. There are no hard feelings, are there? With your oncologist in Darien, I mean?”
    Mary Ann shook her head. “Not yet. I haven’t said a word to him.”
    “Guess you’d better, then.”
    Mary Ann hesitated, imagining that awkward scenario as she took another sip of her Sauvignon Blanc.
    “What’s the matter?” asked DeDe.
    “It’s a little too close for comfort. He plays racquetball with Bob at our club.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    “Of course I didn’t find that out until I was in the stirrups and he asked how good ol’ Bob was doing in Europe.”
    DeDe groaned. “No wonder you wanted a new doctor! Jesus, do you think he knew about … you know … Bob and your life coach?”
    Mary Ann shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past Bob to brag about it.”
    DeDe absorbed that for a moment. “Let Ginny handle it, then. That’s just the sort of challenge she enjoys. Does Bob know yet, by the way?”
    “About what?”
    “That you caught him in the act … or where you are, for that matter.”
    Mary Ann shook her head grimly. “I don’t have the energy for that.”
    “I hear you,” said DeDe.
    What they both could hear in the weighty silence that followed was the gurgle and purr of the vagina fountain.
    “Listen to that infernal thing,” DeDe muttered. “I could just kill D’or. The pump got clogged one week last month, and it started spitting at people.”
    “No.”
    DeDe smirked like a wicked teenager. “It happened during D’or’s Buddhist study group.”
    And they laughed, wearily, for a good little while.
    T HE ONCOLOGIST’S OFFICE WAS IN a rambling shingled L tucked in a grove of gnarled oaks. It reminded Mary Ann of a small but elegant shopping complex in Darien where she had sometimes bought wine-and-cheese baskets as last-minute birthday presents. Dr. Ginny herself was equally reassuring: fortyish and clear-eyed, authoritative without being bossy. “I want you to know,” she said, “I’ve done this over eleven hundred times.”
    Mary Ann’s response was a soft-spoken “Wow,” as if this handsome woman had just announced an impressive golf score.
    “I’m good at it, in other words. I consider it my calling.” The doctor’s honeyed earnestness was a perfect fit with her neutral-toned office and its Zen-spa furnishings.
    “How long will it take?” Mary Ann asked.
    “We’ll have you out in a day.”
    Mary Ann heard herself exhale. “Great.”
    “Have you had your appendix out yet?”
    Mary Ann was thrown. “No … actually.”
    “I can do that at the same time, if you like.”
    Mary Ann was beginning to feel like a dusty attic from which useless items were being systemically discarded. “Do you think my appendix might be … cancerous?”
    Dr. Ginny shook her head with an indulgent smile. “Here’s how it’ll play out, Mary Ann. Once I’m in there, I’ll lift out your uterus very gently”—she cupped her hands as if holding a small, helpless animal—“and then I’ll slip it into a plastic bag and hand it to the pathologist, who will proceed to slice it finely to determine the extent of the cancer. Which means that you and I will have some time on our hands. Well, you’ll be asleep, of course, but I might as well make myself useful … hence the appendix.”
    “But it’s never given me any trouble,” Mary Ann offered feebly.
    “Yes, but next year you’ll be scuba diving in Palau and it will give you trouble, and they’ll airlift you to Guam, where they have a 1984 MRI machine, and so one of my well-intended colleagues will give you a big ugly scar that I can avoid completely with laparoscopic surgery. I plan on leaving you with a nice smooth tummy.”
    “Oh … okay, then … I guess.”
    “No extra charge, of course.”
    “Thanks.”