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Forces "Well, good," was all I could manage. It didn't seem right to deny anything, in light of what she'd said. In my embarrassment I fell to straightening the shawl that covered her — a gorgeous embroidered thing I got for her when Stanley and I went to Spain in 1978. Then, just to make my agony complete, Jack came in with a bunch of yellow roses. He is a tall man with a beautiful head of white hair, and as for the state of his body — let's just say that in jeans and a cowboy shirt Jack makes Ronald Reagan look like Willard Scott. He has that "Let me handle this" style that some Western men carry off so well. As soon as he came in and stood there, with the roses glowing in his hands, you could feel the energy coming out of him, filling up the room. "Polly Ann," he said. "What do you think that tank's for — a door- stop?" He hardly saw me, which was a mercy. He went straight over to the couch, handing me the roses as he went by. "Could you find a vase for those, Gracie?" Then he was fiddling with Polly's breathing tube. "Oxy- gen's not doing you any good inside the tank, woman!" Polly said, "Darling, I don't really need it when I'm not even sitting up. I can breathe okay." "Okay's not good enough. You need pure oxygen for your red cells. You can't fight this thing without red cells." He kept trying to stick the tube into her nose and she kept moving her head. That didn't seem like something you should watch, so I got up quickly and went into the kitchen with the flowers. "Let me do it myself," she said, and when I came back with the roses in a Monterey Jade bowl she was lying there with the tube taped to her cheek. Jack looked grimly satisfied, like John Wayne after he's cleared out a nest of varmints. "Doc Kraler says breathe oxygen, you breathe oxygen. Problem and solution, simple as that." Polly patted his hand and sneaked a little look at me. Jack knew how bad she was, but he couldn't always admit it. He was used to being the one who made things happen. And when you were with him you felt he could do it — just shrivel the cancer with his will power. I put the flowers on the coffee table and Polly exclaimed as if she hadn't ever seen a rose before. Jack told her there were plenty more where those came from. Then he noticed me. "So, Amazing Grace," he said. Jack isn't one to let an old joke die peacefully. "Feet recovered yet?" I explained to Polly, "I was complaining to Jack about the number of ways men manage to hurt my feet when we're dancing. Charlie Phillips steps on you — you remember — and Ralph sort of abrades the side of your foot when you swing, and Howard what's-his-name kicks my instep every time. If I could draw I'd make an illustrated catalogue. A Kama-Sutra of foot abuse." <<| 1
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