name of a clown or the punch line to a joke in a children’s book. What do you get if you mix sappy with a sneeze? Ha—ha—ha—happiness. What do you call a man who likes to pee? Happy. Get it, TWO “p”s? Bad jokes from the kindergarten set.
Rita had always thought happiness was overrated, anyway, the emotion for the masses. Something advertised daily on national television. This new car, or that vacation or this food or that medication … voilà! Happiness!
She was much more interested in other human sentiments. She particularly cultivated irony, sarcasm, sardonicness (was there a “ness” on the end? She would have to look that up), and even a freckle or so of out-and-out despair. Despair, after all, was appropriate when you lived on a planet on the brink of collapse in a society that insisted on declaring war every ten minutes on places so far away most of her students had never even heard of them, and with a disease that could begin to sprout and grow inside you at any given moment. Happiness was the drug they fed you to keep you from noticing all this.
For this reason she was pleased when she found out she would be teaching a course called “Irony in Western Literature” in the spring at the college, rather than English 102, which she had been assigned to teach on her arrival. She wasn’t sure exactly what they would readyet, or what she would teach, but she simply loved the sound of the course, the way you might look forward to a large unsweetened beverage on a hot day. The right sort of drink, one that would not give you cavities or cancer or add a spare tire around your waist. An irony cocktail.
Late at night, when she got home from the new college in the new town, she went online to a cancer “discussion forum” and shared her feelings about the diagnosis with people as far away as Hong Kong and Cape Town and Iowa City. There was even a man on a boat somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland in the cancer discussion forum.
“The funny thing is, I just don’t feel that different,” the man said. His name was Henrik. He was a lifelong fisherman.
“I do,” said Rita. “I feel like I have been invaded by an alien.”
“But that is how you feel in your mind, do you feel any different in your body?”
“Not yet,” she said, “but they start the radiation next month.” That was how it worked. First the surgery, then chemo and radiation.
“Yeah, I hear that kicks your ass.”
I t was hard to imagine anything kicking Henrik’s ass. He had faced storms at sea and several bouts of pneumonia, and had lost a finger once in a machine that cleaned fish. He was a tough guy.
Her surgery was quick and easy enough, the lumpectomy. It was actually an outpatient procedure. She had it on a Friday and was back at work on Monday. Her breast didn’t even feel any different. She had been afraid to feel for the pea, that it might still be there.
Days, Rita taught
Hamlet
and
Pride and Prejudice
and geared up to teach
Things Fall Apart
and
The Good Earth
. Nights, she went online to talk to Henrik and a woman named Anna Lin, who taught English in Japan. After four weeks, she began radiation and chemo.
It may have been her imagination, but Rita began to sense something happening between Henrik and Anna Lin, a kind of attraction, blossoming. While she would talk about her classes and the treatment, her nausea, the way she would vomit in secret at a bathroom in the janitor’s office at the college, how she hid her illness like a crime she was committing, Anna Lin and Henrik would talk about their favorite movies, the best foods to eat after chemo.
They would share articles they found online about people who had survived the disease and done amazing things. Henrik’s favorite book was Lance Armstrong’s
It’s Not About the Bike
. Rita secretly suspected the athlete’s cancer could have been caused by the steroids he used over the course of his career as a bike racer, but she didn’t say anything.
Rita had always thought happiness was overrated, anyway, the emotion for the masses. Something advertised daily on national television. This new car, or that vacation or this food or that medication … voilà! Happiness!
She was much more interested in other human sentiments. She particularly cultivated irony, sarcasm, sardonicness (was there a “ness” on the end? She would have to look that up), and even a freckle or so of out-and-out despair. Despair, after all, was appropriate when you lived on a planet on the brink of collapse in a society that insisted on declaring war every ten minutes on places so far away most of her students had never even heard of them, and with a disease that could begin to sprout and grow inside you at any given moment. Happiness was the drug they fed you to keep you from noticing all this.
For this reason she was pleased when she found out she would be teaching a course called “Irony in Western Literature” in the spring at the college, rather than English 102, which she had been assigned to teach on her arrival. She wasn’t sure exactly what they would readyet, or what she would teach, but she simply loved the sound of the course, the way you might look forward to a large unsweetened beverage on a hot day. The right sort of drink, one that would not give you cavities or cancer or add a spare tire around your waist. An irony cocktail.
Late at night, when she got home from the new college in the new town, she went online to a cancer “discussion forum” and shared her feelings about the diagnosis with people as far away as Hong Kong and Cape Town and Iowa City. There was even a man on a boat somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland in the cancer discussion forum.
“The funny thing is, I just don’t feel that different,” the man said. His name was Henrik. He was a lifelong fisherman.
“I do,” said Rita. “I feel like I have been invaded by an alien.”
“But that is how you feel in your mind, do you feel any different in your body?”
“Not yet,” she said, “but they start the radiation next month.” That was how it worked. First the surgery, then chemo and radiation.
“Yeah, I hear that kicks your ass.”
I t was hard to imagine anything kicking Henrik’s ass. He had faced storms at sea and several bouts of pneumonia, and had lost a finger once in a machine that cleaned fish. He was a tough guy.
Her surgery was quick and easy enough, the lumpectomy. It was actually an outpatient procedure. She had it on a Friday and was back at work on Monday. Her breast didn’t even feel any different. She had been afraid to feel for the pea, that it might still be there.
Days, Rita taught
Hamlet
and
Pride and Prejudice
and geared up to teach
Things Fall Apart
and
The Good Earth
. Nights, she went online to talk to Henrik and a woman named Anna Lin, who taught English in Japan. After four weeks, she began radiation and chemo.
It may have been her imagination, but Rita began to sense something happening between Henrik and Anna Lin, a kind of attraction, blossoming. While she would talk about her classes and the treatment, her nausea, the way she would vomit in secret at a bathroom in the janitor’s office at the college, how she hid her illness like a crime she was committing, Anna Lin and Henrik would talk about their favorite movies, the best foods to eat after chemo.
They would share articles they found online about people who had survived the disease and done amazing things. Henrik’s favorite book was Lance Armstrong’s
It’s Not About the Bike
. Rita secretly suspected the athlete’s cancer could have been caused by the steroids he used over the course of his career as a bike racer, but she didn’t say anything.
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