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“Rather than my mother, you mean?”
“Well, that he taught you at all. If you were to learn those things, I would have thought your mother would have been the one.”
“I told you, my father learned all that at the children’s home.” The truth was my mother was more likely to paint a fresco on the dining room ceiling than scrub a toilet. I’ve always thought that if we’d stayed in Springfield, if she had gone to art school like she wanted, she would have eventually had a career as an artist.
“Aren’t you being a bit sexist here, MJ?” Sue P asked, effectively ending the conversation. We set to work preparing for our dinner party.
Sue P, MJ, and I started to cook together in our tiny galley kitchen. We made sausage and peppers—with sausage from the terminal market downtown that reminded Jackson and I of the sausage the farmers in Locust Hollow made and sold, and burgers and home fries. As we cooked, Jackson set out the plates and forks and knives.
“I hope we have enough,” MJ fretted.
Ever practical, Sue P said, “Next time, let’s just have folks bring their own plates and utensils.”
We ended up with ten or twelve people. People sat on what furniture we had and on the floor with plates in their laps. Someone brought a jug of Boone’s Farm apple wine; Perils sneered at it but gamely had a glass with dinner.
We were having dessert when Faiz, tipsy, started to cry. This was so far from his usual bubbly personality everyone was immediately alarmed. Everyone loves Faiz. He is sweet. With eccentric Middle Eastern looks and a mass of curly black hair, he is always smiling. He and Sue P dote on each other; they go everywhere together, causing endless speculation about whether they are a couple:are they, or aren’t they?They often contradict each other on this point.
“Faiz!”
“Faiz, what’s wrong?”
“I may have breast cancer.”
“What?”
“You do not have breast cancer,” Sue P objected. Sue P is the most maternal of our friends, but she has no patience with drama that she sees as nonsense.
“You don’t know that. I have a tumor in my breast—”
“Chest,” Sue P corrected.
Faiz glared at her through his tears. “I’m having surgery on Monday.”
“Oh, Faiz…”
“Do you want one of us to go with you?”
“No. Sue P is going with me.”
Sue P. Evidently there had been two Sues at some point, so the first initial of Sue P’s last name had been added to her first name to distinguish between the two. No one could remember a second Sue, though. Nonetheless, the moniker persisted.
The fuss and attention soothed Faiz, and he was soon laughing again. We moved to the courtyard for cookies and milk, which Perils insisted would absorb the alcohol we had consumed and prevent hangovers.
Monday, April 30, 1979, University City—Today was a quintessential spring morning, warm and bright, not a cloud in the sky. Still high on the success of our first dinner party, I fairly skipped along after my first class on my way to Dodo for a snack and coffee. I saw Sue P and Faiz leaving the university hospital. When they reached my side of the street, I asked, “So how did it go?”
“Fine,” Faiz chirped. “They removed the tumor. They’re pretty sure it was benign.”
“It was just a fatty tumor,” Sue P said.
“They were worried about scarring,” Faiz said. “So they had a plastic surgeon suture the incision.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Wanna see?”
Before I could stop him, he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Shit,” he said. “That hurt.”
“The doctor told you to avoid lifting your arm over your head for a few days.”
