Neil Simon's Memoirs by Neil Simon

Author:Neil Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

I SAT IN THE Lenox Hill waiting room with Joan’s mother, Helen Baim. Joan’s father, Morris Baim, or Moe, as everyone called him, had died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-five, about a year and a half after we were married. Joan adored her father, as he adored her, and I wished that he could have been with us on this day. His warm, smiling face was always a comfort to Joan.

I have no recollection of how long Joan was upstairs while the biopsy was being performed. Time goes too fast or too slow when awaiting news of such consequence. Helen sat next to me, nervously rubbing my hand. The surgeon finally appeared, still in his gown, and told us Joan would be down shortly. Helen asked if there was anything he could tell us. He said in a very polite but noncommittal voice, “I’d like to speak to Joan’s husband first. Mr. Simon, could you come with me, please?”

I followed him apprehensively down the hallway, expecting to be taken to his office. Instead he took me to the worst of all possible places. Through a door, we were on a cold back stairway, a place where it was pretty certain we’d not be disturbed. He sat down on the third step and asked me to sit next to him.

“It’s not good, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean? The biopsy?”

“I never did the hip biopsy. In examining her before the procedure, I found a malignant tumor in her breast. It’s cancer and it’s already metastasized into her hip. I didn’t remove her breast. There was no need to.”

The words were coming too fast for me, too much information to absorb, too many feelings and emotions bouncing around in my brain to accept the full impact of what he was saying. What exactly was he telling me? What was the treatment? What was the long-term prognosis? I heard it all in one devastating and final statement.

“She has about a year. A year and a half at most.”

A hole opened up underneath me, one that I slipped into, trying to grab the sides of the wall to stop me, but the fall was far and dark and unending. I could not breathe and I could not stop sobbing, both at the same time, and he put his hand on my arm and said he was sorry. Questions were asked and answers were given, none of them making anything more acceptable.

“Are you sure? Isn’t there some treatment? How can you be so sure of a year or a year and a half?” They all added up to the same thing. Joan was going to die. “Does she know?” I asked.

“I told her it was breast cancer. No, I did not tell her how long she had. That’s as much a family matter as it is a medical one.”

“What do I say? What do I tell her?”

“In my opinion, I would give her some hope. She’ll know herself when the time comes. If I were you, I would say we caught the cancer early but that we got it all.

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