Legacy

Laurel Schwartz

A young woman — let’s call her Brit — is in sneakers and leggings jogging, her ponytail swinging in rhythm to the movement of her legs. She lives with the delusion she will always be healthy and young. Her body has yet to fail her.

Eden, another young woman is in sweatpants and a t-shirt, her bald head under a chenille cap with the brim pulled down to her eyes. She sits on a couch with a blanket pulled up to her chin. Eden, unlike Brit has no such delusions about being healthy forever. She is keenly aware that her body has failed her. Cancer has punctured her stomach wall and spread to her pancreas and liver. She knows she is going to die — and soon.

The doctor had been confident his protocol would work — six rounds of chemotherapy followed by the surgical removal of her stomach. Not that he actually said the word “confident” aloud. Maybe it was more that he acted confident. He was a tall man and seemed to know things. “After the stomach is removed,” he said, “the esophagus is attached to the small intestine.”

During the recovery, when her mother urged her to create a dating profile, Eden complied, confident (there’s that word again) she had a future. For “Describe Yourself” she wrote: “Could have died but didn’t, recovering from a full gastrectomy due to stomach cancer.” She was inundated with responses from young men with colon cancer, rectal cancer, leukemia, and even a boy who lost both legs after he was pushed onto subway tracks.

Months later, the results of a follow-up scan showed cancer again. A lot of cancer. Even more than that. (Treatment hadn’t worked. See above.) Eden took down her dating profile.

Who was to blame? The doctor? Upon a thorough mental review of all prior conversations, Eden had to admit not once had he said, “I can cure you.” She had heard something he never said. Yet, a possible reprieve from her terminal diagnosis was at hand — two more rounds of chemotherapy. “Yes,” said her mother, frantic to keep her alive. (Her father overwhelmed by her situation, took a job offer in a distant state. Actually, it was Canada.)  “All this cancer scares me,” he said.

“How do you think it (cancer) makes me feel?” she wanted to reply.

The chemo completed, Eden is thin like a piece of paper. When viewed from the side, she is barely there. Hard to believe two years ago she was healthy and robust, studying theatre and performance in graduate school. The best actress in my class. With a specialization in Shakespeare, she played the greats:  Juliet, Ophelia, Hermia. How she loved the beautiful, powerful, extraordinary words that came out of her mouth. Back then, she lay in bed at night and pondered if her reasons for loving Shakespeare made her a cliché. These days she ponders if she’s going to vomit up her small lunch.

Her mother is speaking. The local high school needs teachers. “They’re handing out Emergency Teaching Permits like candy,” she says, smacking her thigh with a rolled-up copy of the Sperling Advocate for emphasis and/or to pull Eden out of her depressive thoughts. Words continue to come out of her mouth. “Despair… hopelessness… would help you.” Hard to watch your kid die — even harder to be the one dying. Brit is jogging past the house. Earbuds in she’s hitting her groove. She remakes her ponytail, not missing a step. What a head of hair! Eden pulls her chenille cap further down to the bridge of her nose, the blanket further up. Suddenly key words, as though typed into a Google search, pop up and capture her attention: “English,” she hears her mother say. “Shakespeare.”

 The Emergency Teaching Permit is good for 120 days. Long enough for Eden to finish the first semester which ends on December 16 — assuming she lives that long. Eden is cautiously optimistic. Determinedly pessimistic. It depends upon the day and how she is feeling. The school is desperate for teachers, taking anybody who applies, including terminal cancer patients. No, they wouldn’t take a drug dealer, a clown, someone who had a lobotomy.

Morale is low at the school, hence the lack of teachers. Lousy salaries, meager supplies, a school board that doesn’t care. Two members were brought up on charges of fraud for using school funds for a car and driver, who waited for hours while they shopped at an out-of-town luxury mall. In an act of collective rebellion and despair, the teachers have taken to wearing bedroom slippers instead of shoes. The halls are filled with the sound of shuffling feet, which for some inexplicable reason makes Eden think of the dead. She will keep the door to her classroom closed.

On the first day of school, she stands in front of her students and says, “Hi, I’m Eden James.” She smiles trying to appear likeable. She doesn’t know if she is — at least anymore. Her throat hurts, a side effect from the chemotherapy. She has nausea, also a bit of neuropathy in her feet. More side effects. She wonders. Can the students tell she has cancer? The wig she is wearing is of good quality, made from real hair. Does she have a cancer vibe? A cancer smell? Everyone seems cool. Although there is a chubby boy with sloppy black hair (real) in the back row who’s smiling and nodding. His head is going up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Maybe he knows. Maybe he has a tic. She thinks the bangs, the way they cover her hairline make her wig look more natural.

“Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost, is a narrative poem,” she says, “which means the poem tells a story.” How awkward, standing in front of the class and speaking. The location, the audience, the words, it’s all wrong. I’m a Shakespearean actress. What am I doing here? Yet, the show must go on. “What’s your name?” she says to a male student wearing sweat shorts.

“Sunshine.”

“Why don’t you read the poem aloud for us, Sunshine?”

“I don’t like to read.”

“Read the poem,” yells the chubby boy in the back of the room, with the sloppy black hair.

Surprised by the intensity and volume of the boy’s voice, Eden almost falls over. How awful would that be? Her on the floor. People staring as she slowly stands up, grasping at the edge of her desk, her fragility revealed. Worse yet, someone pulls the fire bell and the EMTs arrive, who put her on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face. As she’s loaded into the ambulance, she waves to the crowd of students like a beauty queen. There she is catastrophizing again. But is she really? “What’s your name?” she says to the voice from the back of the room.

“Dougie.”

Embarrassed by being the center of attention, Sunshine begins to read — slowly, hesitantly, sounding out basic words. He doesn’t want to read because he can’t. Eden wonders if he’s ever overdosed on antibiotics, NSAIDs, Vitamin D because he can’t read the directions on the labels or side panels of the boxes. In that moment, she’s no longer thinking about her wig or the horrible consequences if she’d fallen down or whether she feels grateful or angry toward Doug. Dougie? Her attention is on Sunshine as she urges him to continue. “You got this,” she says. He’s got nothing and fumbles his way through the rest of the poem. Eden knows she can’t understand what he’s going through. Cancer taught her that. She smooths her bangs.

 The doctor told her she was being hypochondriacal, making a big deal out of nothing. She had Irritable Bowel Syndrome like a million girls in their early twenties. “You get bloated, can’t get into those tight jeans and think the world is going to end.” How much time was wasted with a gluten-free, dairy-free or a Low FODMAP diet? Christ, on that FODMAP diet, the kid couldn’t even eat an apple, a prescription for good health for 150 years. Of course, the apple also has Biblical implications that include a no-good serpent, first cousin to the doctor who was a no-good, incompetent, snake in the grass with his hard sell ridicule. Would have probably thought the cancer was Eden’s fault if he’d continued to be involved in her care. As for her mother, how did she feel falling prey to the doctor’s authoritarianism and not pressing for a second opinion? Guilty, guilty, guilty.

 “How was your first day at school?” she asks. The question makes Eden feel like she’s six.

“I need to get right to Shakespeare. I don’t have weeks to waste on stupid American poets.”

“Let me help you take your wig off.”

“I have a student who can’t read.

“Your scalp is sweaty.”

“Oh my God, what if the whole class is illiterate? They’ll never do the assigned readings at home because they can’t. This is a disaster. I should have stayed home where I could read Shakespeare alone in my room. The wig makes my scalp itch.”

“Have them read Shakespeare in class, aloud to each other.”

“That’s about as appealing as another round of chemo.”

“I’ll wipe your scalp down with a towel and rub in some aloe vera.”

“Is my hair growing back?”

“Some fuzz.”

“Auburn?”

“White… I have great news. The insurance company is going to pay for the wig.”

Eden is back in the classroom. Today is Shakespeare day. She feels as though she’s about to have a vasovagal episode, this time from overwhelming excitement rather than watching her blood being drawn. Oh my God, don’t you get it? She’s about to offer her students mana, the sweetest of foods. She takes a deep breath, steadying herself and says, “For our next assignment, we’re going to read Hamlet – aloud in class.” Just the very word “Hamlet” and she is transported to a Danish Court with great costumes, atmospheric lighting, clever word play, political intrigue, and characters with tragedies larger than her own… I was an awesome Ophelia. A hand is raised. “Yes?” says Eden.

“What’s Hamlet?” says a boy whose name, she will discover is Chuck.

Such euphoria, such despair. I’m used to that — two years of promising cures each one a failure. Still, that she’s in a room of oafs or at least an oaf, who has never heard of Hamlet deflates her. For a moment she had felt… well, really good. As she gathers the plays together to hand out, she’s thinking of walking out of the classroom and home, where on the way, she would give in to her growing exhaustion and lie down by the side of the road and die alone. But then there’s Dougie who’s come to the front of the room to help. He takes the plays from her hands and smiles. He must know.

Eden takes a sip from the water bottle on her desk. Her mother has told her she needs to stay hydrated. For being so gallant she rewards Dougie with the lead in Hamlet. “Sunshine needs the part more than me,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” says Sunshine.

“You want to drive, don’t you? How can you pass the test for your learner’s permit if you can’t read?

“It’s multiple choice.”

“Sunshine,” says Eden, “you’re Hamlet.”

“Oh God,” he says and puts his finger down his throat like he’s trying to make himself vomit.

“That’s not funny,” says a dark-haired girl almost as thin as Eden. “He’s making fun of my eating disorder.”

“Eating disorders can cause sudden death due to electrolyte imbalances,” says…

“What’s your name?”

“Megan.”

“Death?” says a boy with a frightened look on his face.

“You’re…” As Eden turns from student to student, she feels herself getting dizzy.

“Cleveland.”

“Sudden death,” says Megan. “All the organs in the body are starved simultaneously.”

 “We get it,” says Sunshine.

 The bell rings. Dougie collapses onto the floor, where he lies in a rigid straight line. “Look at me! I’m an exclamation mark,” he says wanting to lighten up the feeling in the room. The students laugh and step over his body as they exit — except for Sunshine.

“You’re a jerk and a traitor,” he says.

 “How was school today,” asks Eden’s mother.

“A girl in my class is anorexic.”

“How terrible,” says her mother. “Eating disorders are the worst.”

“Please open the play to the first page,” says Eden. She looks at the students who sit cheerlessly at their desks — except for Dougie who merely attentive, offers a respite from the oppressive (depressive?) energy in the room.  When I played Ophelia, no one could take their eyes off me. “Shall we begin?”

“I’m confused,” says Chuck.

“Always,” mutters Megan.

“Am I supposed to go?”

“Yes,” says Megan.

“I go?”

“Yes. You’re Bernardo, aren’t you?” says Megan.

“I’m Bernardo, aren’t I, Miss James?”

“You’re Bernardo.”

He finishes reading and the room falls into silence.

“You’re up next, bro,” Dougie says to Cleveland. “You’re Marcello.”

“Do I have to be?”

“Somebody does,” says Eden.

“Well, can’t it be somebody else?”

“No, Cleveland,” says Megan. “You’re it.”

Resigned, he begins to read the text, mispronouncing liegemen. “Leggymen,” he says.

None of the students want to read their parts. Horatio, King Hamlet’s ghost, Claudius, etc., they all balk. Eden, with no hair, no health, no future wants to give these kids the only thing she has to give – Shakespeare with his language (pure poetry), amazing characters (so amazing) and stories (timeless). Their rejection of her treasured gift hurts her, and she imagines stabbing each one of them with a poisoned sword. While engaged in this mental activity, the word “entrails” comes to her mind and before she can rigorously mutilate and kill a few more of her students (in fantasy only) she recalls the stomach she lost that was “full of cancer.” The bell rings signaling the end of class and everyone in the room is relieved.

“Are you okay?” says Dougie, who has stayed behind.

“I hate them,” she says.

“I get it.”

“Do you?”

“I’m a painter.”

“Exteriors or interiors?”

“More like portraits.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody does.”

“Well, theatre is my life. I’ve been acting since I was six. My mom enrolled me into an afterschool program because I was shy and didn’t have any friends.”

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t play video games.”

“Your parents must be proud of your painting.”

“Not really. They want me to play the guitar. My dad plays the guitar.”

“I just want the class to appreciate Shakespeare — a little bit? A tiny bit? A smidge?” With whom is she bargaining?

“That’s not going to happen,” says Dougie. “A lot of these kids are really bad readers, so all Shakespeare means to them is being embarrassed in front of their friends.”

“But Shakespeare understands embarrassment,” she says. “He understands shame. Isn’t that how Hamlet feels when he considers how quickly his mother remarried after his father’s death? That’s another thing Shakespeare understands. Death.” Eden puts her hand on her stomach. “My mom drives me everywhere,” she says. “When I get into the car she calls me, ‘My Precious Cargo.’”

The two cornerstones of Dougie’s life are going to be painting (portraits) and rescuing women. To do both of these things, each an art form in its own right, Dougie will (and has already) become highly empathic, with superior observational skills. These traits first began to develop in sixth grade, when his father brought home a “dinner guest,” his mistress, Ursula. Not Mistress Ursula like an S&M dominatrix, but his secretary who was a (legal) immigrant from an Eastern European country that at one time, had been part of the Soviet bloc. That night, upon entering the house, he and Ursula immediately retired to the living room where he serenaded her with folk songs as he strummed his guitar for accompaniment. Ursula looked at him adoringly (part of her appeal) and noting how he was dressed — seer sucker suit and cowboy boots — thought him a demigod. Dougie’s mother relegated to the kitchen, cooked, banging the pots and pans loudly. It would be a singular act of rebellion, with all future cooking demands met with acquiescence.

Slowly, but not that slowly Dougie noticed Ursula began to appear more frequently, until she seemed to be living in their house. Maybe she was. She soon came on family vacations. “We don’t want to leave Ursula behind, do we?” said his father. They travelled to Niagara Falls (U.S. side), Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell “so Ursula can understand democracy,” his father said and most recently Boca Raton, where Ursula wore a bikini. Dougie was aroused. Confused. Guilty because he was more attracted to Ursula than his mother with her bulky figure and large behind covered in heavy nylon fabric. That he was even thinking about being attracted to his mother, weighing the pros and cons made him feel like a pervert. The whole thing was super Greek, but even if he could have poked out his father’s eyes and taken Ursula as his own, he wouldn’t have. His loyalty was to his mother — even if he didn’t understand why she put up with Ursula; and even if sometimes, her behavior made him angry, and made him think of her as pathetic and weak. Still, she was his mother, and he was losing her.

Each day she became more emotionally withdrawn. Less affectionate. Less there. She put on weight. She put on more weight. Dougie tried to make her laugh, desperately thumbing through joke books. He tried to make her proud bringing home good grades. He painted her portrait and in an act of solidarity, steadfastly refused to paint Ursula’s, despite his father’s nagging. He told her, “You’re a great mom and I love you.” She didn’t even look at him.

 Like a long, seemingly endless drive to a destination to which no one wanted to go, Hamlet finally comes to its conclusion. “I don’t understand” says Sunshine. “Is that it? Hamlet and everybody are dead.”

“It happens,” says Eden. She should know. Not just because she’s going to be dead but because the dead have been visiting her, piled knee deep in the back corner of the classroom. A coffee klatch, without the coffee they chatter away offering Eden reassurances.

“We’re waiting for you.”

“Everything will be fine.”

“It’s nice here.” Distant relatives, neighbors. Who cares? Until she sees Donna Vincenzo, a grade school classmate known for her mucous-filled cough. She had died in fifth grade.

“What killed you?” says Eden. “Emphysema?”

“Yes,” says Donna.

“Cystic Fibrosis?”

“Yes.”

“Obstructive pulmonary disease?”

“Yes,” says Donna.

“Is this conversation going anywhere?”

“No, but you are. I’m here to help.”

“Does anyone else want to say anything about the play we just read?” Eden asks. The anorexic girl, Gabby has her hand up.

“I have something to say. My father died from alcohol poisoning and my mother really did marry my uncle, my father’s brother. I think he’s trying to mess with my little sister. When I come home from school he’s always lying on her bed.”

“Well, you know what Hamlet says about that,” says Megan.

“I should kill him?”

“Of course not, dummy. That nothing good is going to come of that marriage because its nasty and you should report your uncle to the school social worker. Geez. Do I have to do all the thinking around here?”

“I can’t take this anymore,” says Cleveland.

“Take what?” says Sunshine.

“Talking about this play, and people dying and being dead. All it does is remind me of Mikey.

“Mikey’s dead.”

“Exactly, and it’s my fault. He wanted us to join this cult, and I went along with it, although I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Then I thought maybe it was a bad idea, but I didn’t say anything.”

“Is that why you wore green all the time? I thought you were part of some environmental thing,” said Gabby.

“When our parents found out, they wanted us to quit and I wanted to quit, but Mikey didn’t. I kept on waiting for the right moment to tell him I thought being in the cult was a bad idea, but by then our parents had hired these ex-FBI agents who came and took us in handcuffs to this Wilderness Program in Idaho for deprogramming.”

“That’s harsh,” said Megan.

“So, there we were at this camp and Mikey wants to get a coffee. An iced coffee. We’re in the wilderness and it’s snowing. I want to tell him, ‘Hey man, this is a crazy idea,’ but then I think maybe he’s right and just past those trees is a Starbucks. Then it begins to snow harder and I’m thinking I should speak up and tell him we need to get back to camp but I’m waiting for the right moment. Then the wind begins howling, and I’ve never seen snow fall that fast and out of some self-preservation part of my brain…”

“The amygdala,” says Megan.

“Shut-up,” says Sunshine.

“I finally speak up and say, ‘We need to turn around.’ Mikey, he keeps on walking so I grab him and try to pull him back towards the camp. He fights me off and the last thing I hear him say is, ‘I want my iced coffee.’ Mikey…”

“Froze to death,” says Megan.

“If I hadn’t doubted myself about the cult, and what I was seeing that day (wilderness, lots of snow) Mikey would still be alive.”

“Mikey always had to do the opposite of what anyone said. It’s not your fault,” says Dougie.

“Hamlet’s fatal flaw was failing to act. Isn’t that what you said, Miss James? My mom would call him a procrastinator which is what she always calls me. I have the same fatal flaw. I wait, I dawdle. I doubt my decisions and it killed Mikey.”

“Mort,” says Gabby. “We learned that word in French class.”

Eden hears wild clapping. At the back of the room are the dead giving her a standing ovation. “You’re a good teacher,” says Donna Vincenzo. “Cleveland learned something.”

At the end of class, Dougie waits until the other students have left. He takes an apple from his backpack. “There’s a hole on top,” he says to Eden, “and a hole on the side.” When she looks confused, he adds, “It’s a bong… to smoke weed — for the pain.” Eden is sure. He knows. Maybe the class knows. More and less.

 Eden’s abdomen is becoming distended from the growing cancer. She’s tired. Very tired. Out the front window, Brit can be seen jogging past the house. Since the weather turned cold, she’s been wearing a red running jacket, with red fleece gloves, “and a cute, matching headband.” It covers her ears, and she tucks her ponytail through a hole in the back. “Remember my ponytail? It was really thick. I wish, I wish…” says Eden. “Oh, mommy.” Her mother rushes over and lies next to her on the couch, holding her tight, hoping to staunch her pain. “Too tight,” cries Eden, “you’re hurting me.”

 With only a few days left in the semester and Hamlet complete, Eden seems unsure what to do next. To engage or disengage that is the question. Dougie steps in. “Let’s read another Shakespeare play,” he says too enthusiastically.

“No time for that,” she says.

“How about we watch Hamlet, the movie on YouTube?”

“I’m so sick of Hamlet I could puke,” says Sunshine.

“Stop it. Stop it,” yells Gabby.

“Poems,” says Dougie, “they’re short.”

Sunshine is about to say something derogatory about poems when he looks at Eden and notices… She looks horrible. The skin on her face is hanging. And what’s that thing, why’s that thing sticking out like that? Her stomach. He’s seen corpses that have looked better than her (or at least a corpse) and thinks back to his grandfather’s funeral where his mother insisted upon good behavior out of “respect for the dead.” Sunshine decides to keep his mouth shut and sits up straight, his hands clasp on his desk.

“That’s an idea,” says Eden perking up. “We could read Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

“Awesome idea,” says Dougie. “Really awesome! Amazing.”

“Sonnets? How many are there?” says Cleveland.

“154.” Eden looks at the tense faces of the students. “You know what?” she says. “Instead of the class reading them aloud, I’ll read them.” Everyone relaxes and there is a collective sigh so powerful it almost moves the hair on Eden’s wig.

“What’s a sonnet?” says Chuck.

“You’ll see,” she says.

As a trained Shakespearian actress, Eden takes a moment to prepare her “instrument.” She puts her hand to her mouth. Closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She taps into some creative spot (where?) and begins to recite Sonnet 18 from memory, her voice gentle, yet passionate. A number of students zone out. Megan doodles. When done, Eden pauses and sips from her water bottle. It’s hard to swallow. Her stomach hurts non-stop. She hasn’t told her mother but thinks she knows. “What was it about?” asks Chuck.

“Beauty,” says Eden.

“It sounded like a lullaby,” says Gabby.

With class over, Eden is alone in the room. The dead have stopped showing up — except for Donna Vincenzo. “Not only Chuck, but that kid, Sunshine has learned something about beauty through Shakespeare,” she says.

“How do you know?” says Eden.

“I can see into the future and can tell you with full confidence (that word again!), Sunshine will never put his bare feet on his dashboard. No dog hair, or garbage in his car, either.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” says Eden.

“And cleanliness leads to beauty, through its symmetry and organization. Think fractals.”

 “You don’t sound like you’re 10 years old anymore,” says Eden.

“I’ve grown,” says Donna. Eden stands at her desk, silent. “How come you keep on holding on? You’ve got to know by now that you’ve made a real difference in peoples’ lives through your acting and your teaching.”

“I’m worried — about my mom,” says Eden.

“She’ll be okay,” says Donna. “Dougie will be there to take care of her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Is that a real question?”

“You know what I mean.”

“He’ll paint her portrait. They’ll chat.”

“Anything else — like love being immortal?” says Eden.

“I think we’re both way past the point of stating the obvious,” says Donna.

 On the final day of the semester, Eden reads her last sonnet, number 91, about the pain of lost love. “You’ll have to read the rest on your own,” she says, her voice raspy. “And I hope you do.” She lets the class leave early. On the way out, Megan comes up to her desk.

“Hamlet wasn’t so horrible,” she says. “See you in January.”

With the semester over, everyone is gone, except for Dougie, who, as usual, has remained behind to help. He walks to Eden’s desk and picks up her tote bag. It’s surprisingly light, as though there is nothing inside. Maybe there isn’t. He then picks up her book of sonnets and offers her his arm. “My Queen” he says. “My liege,” she replies, taking his arm. She holds tight, the neuropathy in her feet making it difficult for her to feel the ground. Slowly, they exit the classroom together, as he escorts her to her mother’s waiting car.

The bell rings. Class is over.