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He writes his congressman and Runs for the Cure.

He goes with you to your doctors. He knows all the terminology. He reads all the research. He fills your refrigerator with grapefruit and oranges, broccoli and carrots. He makes green tea for you. He reminds you to do your visualization exercises.

During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. You don't know how you'll answer the door when your groceries are delivered.

But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now, it's instantaneous.

—•—

Two weeks after your last chemo treatment, one week before radiation, you're sitting around your apartment reading the paper, when he says that he feels ready to marry you. "I think I can do it now," he says, passing you the ring box as ceremoniously as if it's the phone, for you.

You don't take it. You say the truth as it occurs to you: "You're talking about you again."

Now he holds the box like it is what it is. "I'm doing the best I can," he says, and you know this is true.

Still, you say, "I'm not sure you even know who I am."

"I'm not sure I do either," he admits.

His words stop you. You realize that if he doesn't know who you are, he won't be able to remember who you were.

When you try to explain, he argues that you're not going anywhere. "Forget dying," you say. "Dying is beside the point anyway."

But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here—and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.

When he says, "I love you, honey," you realize that he never calls you by your name.

You will say good-bye for all the right reasons. You're tired of living in wait for his apocalypse. You have your own fight on your hands, and though it's no bigger or more noble than his, it will require all of your energy.

It's you who has to hold on to earth. You have to tighten your grip—which means letting go of him.

—•—

You go through radiation.

Then your immune system is all you have to kill the aberrant cells, which you imagine as sinister and black-clad, smoking cigarettes as they cluster in the dark S & M club of your body.

It was easier when the menace came from the outside, you tell a therapist; she nods, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Thursday after Thursday, you tell her about your relationship with him. You talk and talk, waiting for the cure. After a while, though, it occurs to you that even a perfect understanding of failed love is the booby prize.

You don't see him again. Sometimes you worry that he loved you better than any man ever has or will—even if it had nothing to do with you. Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into a cab, every runner along the river, every motorcycle coming and going.

T H E

G I R L S ' G U I D E

T O H U N T I N G

A N D F I S H I N G

. . . [W]hen you're with a man you like, be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile. Don't talk so much. Wear black sheer pantyhose and hike up your skirt to entice the opposite sex! You might feel offended by these suggestions and argue this will suppress your intelligence or vivacious personality. You may feel that you won't be able to be yourself, but men will love it!

—From The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider

My best friend is getting married. Her wedding is only two weeks away, and I still don't have a dress to wear. In desperation, I decide to go to Loehmann's in the Bronx. My friend Donna offers to come with me, saying she needs a bathing suit, but I know a mercy mission when I see one.

"It might be easier if you were bringing a date," Donna says in the car, on the Major Deegan Expressway.