Julie Halpern - The F- It List

Her room smelled nothing of White Witch anymore. The smell was a combination of disinfectant, Jell-O, and puke. I wondered if Becca could smell it. Or if her nose was immune to it, like how grandparents have an old-person smell that I’m sure they’re not aware of.

Some days the smell in Becca’s room was so bad I almost suggested pulling out the old vile of White Witch and coating the air with it.

I watched helplessly as she dealt with the side effects: constant nausea, puking, not being able to walk, not being able to see, not to mention the tubes and holes and weight loss and not wanting to eat. Why did this happen? To Becca, and to anyone? Why can someone get so sick that the only way to get better is to make them more sick? It’s like the world’s longest exorcism. It doesn’t make sense that I can chat with someone live on a tiny screen, that governments spend billions of dollars on war and mayhem, that actors make millions of dollars to just look pretty and skinny, yet no one can fucking figure out how to cure cancer without torturing people.

The other day Becca’s mom said, “Thank God” about something. It wasn’t anything important enough to remember or anything big enough to warrant divine intervention, but she felt the need to thank God, something she’d been doing a lot of recently. Becca didn’t hesitate to correct her mom, “I don’t believe in God.”

“What?” Her mom looked shocked, uncomfortable, as if saying she didn’t believe in God would somehow make Becca cursed. If she could be more cursed than she already was.

“I don’t believe in God,” she repeated.

“I suppose that’s understandable, though I’m sure you don’t mean it,” Becca’s mom conceded. “I’m going to believe in Him and keep praying for you.”

“That is just wrong, Mom.” Becca’s mom had hit a nerve. “What kind of god do we have to beg to make us well? What kind of god allows people to get this sick? And not just get sick, but have months of pain and misery? Is it some kind of vengeance? A lesson He’s trying to teach me?”

“God gives what you can handle.”

“So it’s a test? Let’s see how much shit Becca can endure, so she can come out a better person on the other end? Was I that bad a person to begin with?”

“It’s not just what you can handle, Becca. And God doesn’t control everything, but He can help us get through.”

I wondered if Becca’s mom had always been this religious and I hadn’t noticed, or if this was a direct correlation to watching her daughter disintegrate.

“I don’t want to believe in a god who can help me because I can’t believe in a god who would let something like this happen in the first place.”

Becca’s mom was shaken. Maybe she was holding on to the belief that God would save Becca. That if she prayed long enough and hard enough, she’d get better.

I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Here I was, surrounded by death and sickness, guilty for the tiniest crumbs of pleasure I allowed myself: ice cream, horror movies, and the selfishly selfish act of finding happiness in making Becca laugh. Where did God fall into any of that? I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want the blame, or the hope, to be on someone else. So I carried on, waiting for whatever was to come, with or without God’s help.

I HADN’T SEEN LEO since the funeral. I told myself he needed space, that he wouldn’t have taken a semester off if he wanted to be around people. I tried to convince myself that somehow we were different; that my absence was appreciated instead of begrudged. But really, why would he want me around after the way I treated him? I went with that, but I thought about him all the time. When a movie came on TV that I thought he’d like, or I read about what celebrities were coming to Dead of Winter Con next month. I wanted to call, or at least text. Once I managed to force my fingers onto my phone.

Got a 2nd copy of Frankenhooker. You want?

Two painful days later, I heard back from him.

No

Like I said, ouch.

Becca tried to keep things light, when she could willingly move her body. We made a list of things to do at Dead of Winter Con, and we planned on going, no matter what state she was in. I told her if she couldn’t walk, I’d push her around in a shopping cart.

“What if I throw up?” she asked.

“Who would know that was real and not just some realistically sick-ass costume?”

Just one day earlier, Becca got the news everyone was waiting for: chemo was officially over, at least until after radiation and the results came back.

Then why was she still so fucking sick? Instead of cancer being over, Becca was in total, all-consuming pain. Her joints ached, her head hurt, and the nausea was just as bad as it ever was. Whatever they used to kill the cancer was beating the shit out of her insides nonstop. Her meds made her groggy and incoherent, and she still seemed to be in so much pain.

The last time I visited, packing Mom’s patented tuna noodle casserole, she slept most of the time, except when she woke up to whimper. I stayed out of obligation and guilt, not because I liked it. There was nothing I could do for her, and even being next to her didn’t matter when she was unconscious. Her mom came into her room every few minutes, and each time she told me, “You’re such a good friend, Alex.” It made me feel worse. Especially the fifth time she added, “God bless you.”

The only thing that lightened my mood was reading the love notes Caleb had been writing to Becca for the last couple months. He was a smart guy and an old-fashioned romantic.

My dearest Becca,

Today I chose to study the films of Lillian Gish. She reminds me of you, and I envisioned you on the screen someday as bright a star as there ever was. My sister is still in her baking unit, and she made some chocolate-chip cookies using coriander. I’ll make sure to drop some off. I don’t know if you can eat them now, so she froze some for when you can.

Looking forward to our next visit, Caleb

If a guy wrote me a letter like that, I’d be embarrassed to the point of burning the paper. But it suited Becca. She deserved to find some joy in the shitty quagmire of her life.

During the quietude of her bed rest, I tinkered with the idea of getting in touch with Leo again. It killed me that he ate away my brain like that. Maybe it was just the loneliness of being next to someone who couldn’t even talk to me, who had stacks of love notes tucked under her mattress. But she deserved those love notes. I deserved the loneliness. It was self-imposed, after all.

THE HOLIDAYS CAME AND WENT. They were the first without my dad, and therefore had more sadness and reflection than anticipation and celebration. Becca and I exchanged gifts aboard her bed. She gave me some hardbound classic Tales from the Crypt comics, and I bought her a Battlestar Galactica t-shirt reading, “I ♥ Fat Apollo.” It was a hilarious misstep on the part of the show’s creators, making the usually buff Apollo into a doughy mess to show the passage of time (other characters just got new hairdos). Even better was how quickly and effortlessly he got back into shape. And even better than that: A shirt was created to commemorate the gaffe.

It would be the perfect shirt for Becca to wear to Dead of Winter Con, where none other than Jamie Bamber, aka Lee “Apollo” Adama, would be appearing in the autographs area. That would finally give us a chance to get back to the Fuck-It List, which had fallen into obscurity soon after Leo’s brother’s death. Except for one item.

“I did it!” Becca announced over Skype one afternoon. She was having a good day and spent almost the entire time at school “playing a norm” as she liked to call it. By the time I came home from school, she was back in her pj’s.

“Did what?” I assumed it had something to do with one of her video games, which she had become increasingly addicted to thanks to too many hours a day in bed.

“Number eleven on the list.”

“Some of us don’t have the list memorized,” I reminded her.

“Here’s a hint: It’s one of the first ones you did. By yourself. Something I had never done by myself.”

“Ooooh. Number eleven.” I recognized it now as the masturbating number. “Mazel tov,” I congratulated her.

“It just felt like the right time. No one was home, and Caleb left a note by my door. I imagined him sneaking in my window.”

I interrupted her, “Becca, the beauty of number eleven is that I don’t need to know what you did or what you thought about. But I’m happy for you. See? Even cancer can’t stop you from touching yourself.”

“Fuck cancer!” she exclaimed.

“Fuck cancer!” I reiterated.

A few weeks later, Becca would have the chance to accomplish number 21: Touch Jamie Bamber’s butt. I couldn’t wait. Dead of Winter Con was a decent-sized horror/sci-fi convention filled with panels of B-grade (or lower) celebrities sharing their memories of working on mostly defunct TV shows and straight-to-DVD movies, with plenty of vendors selling their gory wares. Some years there was no one I’d pay money to see, but I still loved the atmosphere. People dressed up in homespun costumes, some based on movie characters, others pulled from their sick and twisted minds. My kind of people. This year I’d wear my usual clothes, since they were already zombie-based, and I’d add some blood and dangly bits to my arms and face to make it realistic. Becca planned on wearing her Fat Apollo t-shirt, in hopes of charming the pants off Jamie Bamber. Not literally, of course, although number 21 didn’t specify whether or not his butt had to be naked.

I hadn’t had something like this to look forward to in months. Not since the Army of Darkness showing with Leo.

Leo.

I wondered if he would go to Dead of Winter Con.

I wondered if I’d see him.

I wondered if he still loved me.

I tried to forget he said that. It seemed unreal, a spontaneous proclamation born from ejaculation and mourning. I told myself over and over that he didn’t mean it. And then I berated myself for even thinking about it. For thinking about him. I’d catch myself, in the early morning times when I was only half awake, when I allowed myself to feel good, thinking of Leo. I remembered what it felt like to be together, how being with Leo felt better than being alone. I relived his touch with my touch, but it wasn’t the same. I’d hate myself in the shower afterward. It was just easier to hate myself.

THE WEEKS BEFORE Dead of Winter Con, Becca began feeling a little better. She was still tired, still in some pain, but her hair was sprouting the tiniest bit so nothing could get her down. She started radiation, a process not nearly as bad as chemo.

“I still feel like shit, though,” Becca confided one afternoon from her bed while I sat in her blue chair. She wore a pair of pajamas covered in pictures of sushi, some of her cancer swag. Every time I saw her she was in a different pair of pajamas. She swore she had more pj’s than regular clothes. “And check this out.” Becca lifted her shirt to show me a pattern of black lines drawn on her chest.

“If you wanted a tattoo, I could’ve done something cooler than that,” I told her.

“They drew them on me at the hospital so every time I have radiation I’m lined up in the exact same spot. It seems so unmedical, like there should be more to it than just pulling out a permanent marker and some waterproof tape to cover it.”

“What would happen if they didn’t align you correctly?” I asked, picking at a box of chocolates dropped off by her homeschool loverboy.

“They’d burn up my organs, I guess. In the olden days they’d actually tattoo the marks on your body.”

“The olden days before Sharpie?”

“Yes. The Sharpieless days of yore.”

It was fun hanging out with Becca like that, but everything was different. Just looking at her was a constant reminder of the past four months. Her hair, of course, but even when she lifted up her shirt I could see how thin she’d gotten. So many months of nausea killed her appetite, and the combination of the illness, drugs, and malnutrition zapped her energy. Nearly every time we watched a movie together, Becca fell asleep. I didn’t know how she—how we—would make it through Dead of Winter Con. Becca’s mom rented a wheelchair a month ago, but Becca refused to use it. It was funny to watch Becca’s vanity randomly show its pretty little head. She didn’t seem to mind the baldness and wig wearing, but when it came to her standing on her own two feet she was adamant. “I don’t mind leaning on someone if I’m having trouble,” she told me. “In fact, I have to admit I love the attention. One day at school, Edgar Abbott practically carried me out of French and down the hall.”