She reaches over to the desk and grabs a box of tissues, holding it out towards me. I take it from her, not because I’m crying or anything, but because I want to spare her the awkwardness of holding it out in the air for no reason. “So that seems pointless,” I say. She chuckles softly. I think she appreciates my bluntness as much as I appreciate her directness. “It could extend your life a little,” she says. “That means a lot to some people.”
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Books
Nice is Different than Good
Chapter One
I do the New York Times Wordle in five tries while waiting for the nurse to call me to the back. The Wordle Bot tells me that my skill rated a ninety but my luck is only a thirty-seven. Story of my fucking life.
I suppose I should be nervous, but I can’t make myself be. I already know what Dr. Peterson will say. She’ll say my pancreas is trying to kill me, and doing a pretty good job at it, too.
Until recently, I had no idea what a pancreas even did. I’m still not clear on the specifics. Something with insulin. Something science hasn’t figured out how to replicate or steal from otters or whatever so they can’t just remove it and replace it with a pill.
The nurse calls my name and mercifully doesn’t make me step on the scale. She doesn’t even take my blood pressure. I mean, what does it matter if I weigh two pounds more or less than last week or if my blood pressure is out of control? If I have a heart attack right now I’ll just save her hours of insurance paperwork.
She leads me into a room that isn’t quite as clinical as most of the rooms I’ve been in. The chairs are upholstered, and the walls are painted a seafoam green that I imagine is supposed to be soothing. She lets me keep my clothes on and tells me to wait. In the background, an elevator version of the Rolling Stones “Paint it Black” plays. For some reason this strikes me as hysterically funny and I can’t stop laughing.
This is how Dr. Peterson finds me when she comes in. By now, the violins are playing Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” which is just as hilarious.
I like Dr. Peterson, and the look on her face makes me like her that much more. She doesn’t look like the kind of girl that was popular in high school, and I think if we’d met under other circumstances, we’d probably have been friends. She’s such an odd little duck I can’t help but feel affection. She’s short, with tiny hands and stubby little fingers. For some reason, I imagine that her mother made her take piano lessons and she practiced all the time but remained terrible because of those fingers. She’d look exotic if she were pretty, but she’s not. Her left eye is a few millimeters higher than the right and her nose is slightly bulbous. But she’s kind, and to me that’s all that matters.
I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time imagining a backstory for Dr. Peterson. Her first name is Ramona. I can’t imagine anyone calling her Ramona. I feel like she came out of the womb with people calling her “Dr. Peterson.” I wonder what made her go to school for a thousand years to become an oncologist. Seems like her job is to tell people they’re about to die. Like she’s about to do to me.
But I already know that. Which is why I feel free to laugh at the irony of “Cruel Summer” sliding into Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky”. I have to wonder if this is a curated playlist or if it’s part of my thirty-seven rated luck.
Dr. Peterson settles in the chair next to me instead of the one on the other side of the desk. She’s not distancing herself from this conversation. She leans forward and grips my hand like she’s going to shake it, but there’s no shaking involved. She’s holding my hand steady. “Rosie,” she says. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?” She sounds like she might even care about the answer.
“Am I okay? Highly unlikely. How do I feel? Great, when my stomach doesn’t hurt and I’m not nauseated, which is about half the time, I’d guess.”
Dr. Peterson nods. “So you know we’re here to discuss the results of the CAT scan.”
I like how she doesn’t ease into it with bullshit. We both know why we’re here. Why prolong this torture with niceties? She looks me right in the eye. She’s not avoiding anything. “Unfortunately, the cancer has involved the blood vessels around the pancreas and seems to have metastasized into your liver.”
She’s looking at me now like she expects me to say something. I suppose most people start crying or cussing or even feeling something, but I just don’t. I want her to keep on giving me information, so I say, “How long do I have?”
“That depends. There are treatments we can try—”
I cut her off. “Will they work?”
“With your level of involvement, the five-year survival rate is three percent, even with treatment.”
She reaches over to the desk and grabs a box of tissues, holding it out towards me. I take it from her, not because I’m crying or anything, but because I want to spare her the awkwardness of holding it out in the air for no reason.
“So that seems pointless,” I say.
She chuckles softly. I think she appreciates my bluntness as much as I appreciate her directness. “It could extend your life a little,” she says. “That means a lot to some people.”
“Not me,” I say. “Whatever life I have, I want to live, not spend in a doctor’s office—no offense.”
“None taken.” She sighs. “I understand. Honestly, I don’t want to be here half the time myself.”
We stare at each other. “So what now?” I ask.
“Well, it’s your right to refuse treatment, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least give you information about it.” She spends a while giving me information I don’t listen to about treatment options. I tune back in when she says, “The other option, of course, is palliative care.” She tells me about pain management, hands me hospice brochures, information about death doulas, which fascinates the hell out of me, and inevitably tells me to call her if I have any questions at all and wishes me luck.
I figure I’ll never see her again.
Chapter Two
What do you do when someone just confirms that you won’t live to see next Thanksgiving? I’d told my boss that I had a doctor’s appointment and I’d be in when I was done, so I suppose I should go back to work. But that seems a waste. I get in my car and pull out of Dr. Peterson’s parking lot, because whatever I’m going to do it won’t be on that stretch of asphalt. I head in the direction of work. I only get a few blocks before I see a Burger King up ahead. I’ve always preferred Burger King to McDonald’s, probably because I was a picky eater as a kid and their commercials appealed to me—hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us.
I can’t even remember the last time I’ve eaten fast food. The sodium makes my ankles swell and my blood pressure rise. But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I don’t give a fuck if I have a heart attack or have cankles. How much weight can I gain in the next six months, anyway?
I start to pull into the drive-thru and then I decide no, I’m gonna do this right. I go in and there’s one person in front of me in line. He’s wearing some kind of mechanic’s uniform and he’s staring at the menu like he’s never seen it before. I want to shake him. Hamburger. Bigger hamburger. Big, whopper of a hamburger. Chicken sandwich or chicken nuggets. Fries or no fries. Life is short, asshole, don’t waste it on decisions that don’t matter like how big your stupid hamburger is going to be. Eventually he makes his choice and cedes the floor to me. I order a Whopper meal with a Frozen Coke. I ask her to hold the pickles on the Whopper. I don’t actually mind the pickles, but I figure if you ask them to hold something they have to make it for you fresh and not just pick one from the heating lamps.
A few minutes later she hands me my Frozen Coke. It’s sticky on the outside, which irritates me, so I wrap a napkin around the edge, something she could have done easily but didn’t. I wonder how many sticky Frozen Cokes she’s handled before she touched mine. A minute or so after that I get a tray with my Whopper and a carton of fries. I spend a few minutes trying to find a table that isn’t covered in grease and crumbs then sit down. I free my burger from its paper covering and take a bite. It’s terrible, of course, but a good kind of terrible. The fake smokey taste, the wilted lettuce. The miasma of ketchup and mayonnaise that makes up the Whopper sauce.
I take a sip of Frozen Coke and the sickly sweetness of it makes my teeth hurt. It’s so good I take another sip. Then I eat a French fry and another bite of Whopper. I get two chews into it before I realize I’m crunching on a pickle.
Of all the things that have happened today, this is the thing that makes me cry. This mother fucking pickle slice.
Like I said, I don’t hate pickles, but I specifically said I didn’t want pickles. I want to kick over the chair I’m sitting in and stomp to the counter screaming, but the chair is bolted to the floor and I don’t want to be the angry white lady video of the week on the internet so I don’t.
I just sit there and cry into my fries.
Eventually I’m all cried out and I dump my tray of food into the trash can. I consider taking the half-melted Frozen Coke with me because it was the one thing I got a dab of pleasure out of, but then I toss it on top of the mostly intact Whopper. I square my shoulders and head to work. Because honestly, I don’t know what else to do.
I pull in the parking lot and head to the building. I almost forget my lanyard and have to circle back to get it from the console of my car. It takes three swipes of my keycard before I’m allowed through the turnstiles to get in the building. When it finally works, I let it go with a flourish and the self-retracting cord flips up and the card hits me in the chin. It feels like a punch and I run my fingers over my jawline to make sure nothing is bleeding.
I make it up to my cubicle, nodding hello to everyone along the way, and wake up my computer. There’s the standard complement of emails in my inbox, every last one of them sure that what they have to say is the be all and end all in terms of importance.
I’m not going to say my job isn’t important. I’m a small cog in a big machine, but an important cog—if my cog jams up, the whole machine can come to a grinding halt. Not right away, but eventually. The question isn’t how important my cog is to the health of the machine, but how important the machine is in the grand scheme of things. We’re a marketing firm, and my job is to take the grand concepts that the guys who are allowed to have ideas come up with and make them into actual drawings. Well, not actual drawings. I haven’t put pen to paper in a thousand years. Computer generated images.
I open the email at the top. It’s from my boss, forwarded from a client without comment. The client is pissed because the logo I’ve created for her has too much pink in it and not enough orange. Never mind that we spent the better part of three agonizing hours going over color charts and she picked the colors herself. I think about replying “What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” but instead type, “She chose red #F23-B for the lettering. Do you want me to over-ride her choice or ask her to choose again?”
The reply comes back so quickly it feels like he had it pre-typed and ready to go. “I want you to satisfy the client. She’s been on my ass all morning.”
I take a deep breath. I’ve only got a few months left in this life. I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend any of my precious minutes dealing with this nonsense. Rather than type a reply, which is dumb anyway, since I can see Marc through the glass door of his office from where I’m sitting, I get up and walk to his office.
He sees me coming and waves me in. Without preamble, he says, “I know. She’s irrational. But it’s our job to make her happy. Just pick a goddam color with a little more orange in it and swear to her it’s F23-B.”
I don’t bother sitting down. “I quit,” I say.
“What?”
“I quit.”
Of all the things I could have said or done, I think this surprises Marc the most. I’ve been a good little worker bee for the past ten years, not complaining when I got passed over for promotions because “we need you here.” I’ve kept my head down, done my work, and not caused any trouble.
Marc’s mouth is opening and closing like he’s a landed fish. “I’m sorry I took out my frustration with the client on you. That was my bad. Please, Rosie. Don’t quit on me. Is it money? I can talk to management for you.”
“It’s not money,” I say. “I just don’t want to work.”
He doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve left off the “here.” “Do you have an offer from someone else? We’ll match it. If I have to take it out of my own salary, we’ll match it.”
“That’s not it, Marc. I’m not going anywhere but home. I don’t need anything from you or Apple & Gauge.” I think for a moment. “Except COBRA. I guess my next stop is HR?” I search my memory. I think I’m entitled to COBRA for at least as long as I’ve got. My 401k will more than cover my living expenses for that long. If my medical bills are more than that? Well, let the hospital sue my bankrupt estate.
“When’s your last day?” Marc looks defeated. “We’ll throw you a party at least.”
“Oh, I’m not working anymore.”
“You have to give us two weeks’ notice.” He seems mad now. His eyebrows are scrunched together and his hands are gripping the rim of his desk.
That would be good form, I suppose. Probably, somewhere in my contract it says that I’m supposed to give two weeks’ notice and it has to be in writing, blah blah blah. The good girl in me wants to say ok fine but that good girl is consumed with pancreatic cancer tumors and she’s no longer able to speak. “Or what?”
“What?” His scrunched eyebrows spring to the top of his head. He seems genuinely baffled.
“Or what? You’ll fire me? You’ll have me arrested? Drawn and quartered in the public square? There are no consequences, Marc. Today is my last day. I’m going to gather my things, head to HR for the paperwork and that’s that.” I honestly hadn’t had a plan when I walked into his office, but now that I’m speaking it aloud, it sounds perfect. The little angel on my shoulder whispers ten out of ten, no notes into my ear, and I feel a joy spreading through my chest that I haven’t felt in a very long time.
Chapter Three
Linda at HR is very nice and professional. She keeps asking me why I’m leaving Apple & Gauge and I keep telling her I don’t want to work anymore. This seems to baffle her in the same way it baffled Marc. Yes, I’m aware I have a spotless record. Yes, I’m aware they’re willing to renegotiate my contract. No, I don’t have employment anywhere else. No, I won’t be asking for unemployment. Yes, I’ll sign whatever they ask. I know I can’t get at my 401k without penalty. I just don’t want to work. I know I won’t be eligible for social security for another seven years—I don’t tell her it will only be my scattered ashes that will be around to make the request.
It takes us about an hour and a half to get through the bureaucratic bullshit that is quitting one’s job. But for COBRA, I’d tell her she has my permission to sign whatever forms need to be signed on my behalf and simply walk out. I’m not so far gone out of my head that I am willing to forego my excellent health insurance. If nothing else I want the pain medication that’s going to come.
Eventually, I’m released from human resources purgatory, and I’m allowed to leave. I’ve been working at Apple & Gauge for ten years, but the only personal stuff in my desk fits into a paper box. I should probably say goodbye to people—I do actually like the people I work with, but the thought of answering everyone’s questions is more than I can handle. I want a nap.
And so, even though it’s three p.m. and even though it’s a Thursday, I go home and take a nap. I wake up around five and look in the fridge to see what I can scavenge for dinner. Nothing in it or the pantry appeals to me. I’m running low on basics like milk and eggs, so I head to the Publix down the road from me.
I work the store in my regular pattern, starting with the produce. I head to the bananas, and the choices are mostly green. Normally, this wouldn’t matter to me at all, since I know they’ll ripen in a day or so. But I think of that old joke about being too old to buy green bananas, and I wonder when I’ll be able to make that joke about myself. Too damn soon. Just because I still can, I pick the bunch without the slightest hint of yellow and put them in my cart.
When I’m done with fruits and vegetables, I head to the bakery. Since it’s just me in my house, I usually buy factory bread with a ton of preservatives because the good stuff will go bad before I finish it. But today? Fuck it. I’ve already gone bad, I can’t care about bread. Bread mold’s just penicillin, right? The worst it can do is cure me.
The bakery smells like yeast and gluten and pure indulgence. It reminds me of my high school job, working in a kosher bakery on Long Island. I learned quickly that the cookies and pies were good, but the real joy came from a loaf of onion rye slathered in salted butter. I’m in Atlanta now, so I wouldn’t even know where to find an onion rye, but there’s a seeded Italian loaf that looks nice, so I put it in my cart.
I fill the basket with a New York Strip steak so gorgeous I feel like the cow would have been proud to have given her life for it. I throw in a box of corn dogs and three different kinds of Oreos. I don’t look at the nutrition information on a single product or check the price per pound. By the time I wend my way around to the freezer aisle, I’ve got an entire trolley full of things I haven’t bought since Adam left.
By the time I get home and put the groceries away, I’m too tired to cook anything, so I take out the half-gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream from the freezer and bring it to the couch to eat for dinner. I wait for the good girl in me to give me grief about it, but she just sits there and asks for a bite.
I watch Antiques Roadshow while I eat and I wonder who will want the stuff in my house. So much of it has great sentimental value and is worth maybe five bucks at a garage sale on a good day. I have a will: Apple & Gauge had good employee benefits, and one day they had an estate planning clinic. These lawyers came into the conference room on the third floor and we could get simple wills and powers of attorney done with the company paying for half, and I took advantage.
My cousin Scottie is going to be my executor. He’s probably not the best choice, the lawyer told me, because he lives in Miami Beach, which is a good twelve-hour drive away, but I honestly couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust pawing through my underwear drawer after I died. Giving someone the authority to look through my tax returns, credit card bills, and junk drawers seemed so personal.
Scottie and I were best friends growing up. My mom and his dad were siblings, and we were born just a couple of months apart. I have a sister, who I don’t talk to anymore, and he has a brother, but Scottie and I were always the pair. When we were fourteen, Scottie and I went to a Halloween party at Jason Duran’s house. He wore a Darth Vader costume, and I was dressed as Princess Leia. As we stood outside in the dark, waiting for my mom to pick us up, Scottie took a few swipes with his light saber and said, “I think I’m gay.”
I said, “You think or you know?”
“I know.”
“Well good,” I said. “Now we both know.” My dad pulled up at the curb just then, so we switched the conversation to begging my mom to convince his dad to let us go see Rocky Horror on Saturday night.
Later, I found out that I was the first one he told about being gay, and I remained the only other one who knew for years. I don’t know how anyone else didn’t know, it seemed obvious to me, but Scottie was good-looking and an athlete and always seemed to have girls hanging around him, so maybe people see what people want to see.
I suppose I should call Scottie and tell him that he’s gonna need to be on call in the near future, but I just don’t want to have that conversation. It’s not that Scottie and I aren’t tight anymore, it’s just that we’re the kind of tight that doesn’t have to talk every day to be that way. We have our own lives. And if I tell him, I know what he’ll do. He’ll freak out, and he’ll drop what he’s doing and come up here to take care of me. That’s sweet, but it’s not what I want. I don’t want to be pitied or babied. If I could be sure that the Scottie who went to Stony Brook University with me, the one who became fully himself and dressed up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter for Rocky Horror nights and didn’t change out of his fishnets when we went to an all-night diner afterwards would come up and visit, that’s what I’d want.
But fifty-five-year-old Scottie has become fussy and I don’t want him fussing over me. I don’t want anyone fussing over me. I want to live as loudly as I can and then I want to go out with a bang. Maybe I’ll feel differently when I start shitting myself, but frankly, I hope the bang happens before then.
Chapter Four
My alarm rings the next morning because I forgot to turn it off. I don’t suppose I ever need to set an alarm clock again. I wonder how many other things I’ll never have to do again.
My stomach is not happy with me, so I drink a Coke for breakfast to settle it and think I probably ought to make Scottie’s job easier. I go over to my closet and think about which of my clothes spark joy. Hardly any of them. Most are simply practical items designed to get me through a workday or fancy dresses I keep in case I have an occasion. No more of that. I get some big garbage bags and begin to load them up, not even bothering to take things off the hangars. When I’m done, I’m left with some old, comfortable jeans, some tunics and leggings, and some shapeless dresses that don’t bind me anywhere. I look on the internet and find a domestic violence shelter in need of women’s clothing and drop the load off there.
There’s a Burger King next to the drop off location, so I figure I’ll try again. My stomach has settled and I’m hungry. It’s right about noon, so the line is four people deep. I stand there, wondering if I should get a Whopper meal again or start smaller with a kids’ meal when the woman behind me says, “I wish it would rain.”
At first, I figure she’s not talking to me. I have no idea who she is. But the sound of her voice captures my attention so I look in her direction and she makes eye contact with me. “It hasn’t rained in a long time, and it’s so much effort for me to drag the hose out to the flower beds.”
I smile and nod because it isn’t like she’s asked me a question, and it isn’t like there’s some witty response I can dream up to this boring-ass thing she’s said to me.
“The pansy faces look so sad and droopy when they get thirsty so I can’t just let them be. I suppose I should get a sprinkler system installed, but that seems like such a big project, and I’m afraid I’d have to tear out some of the big trees in my yard.”
She keeps going but I’m not listening. Instead, I’m wondering how many hours of my shortened life have been spent being hijacked by perfectly nice people who think that whatever random thing they have to say is more important than whatever is going on in my head.
The little angel on my shoulder giggles and says, You should tell her to shut her pie hole.
This is such a surprising thing for the angel to say that I almost start to laugh, but I manage to stop myself. This poor lady is probably lonely and has no one to talk to. That’s not nice. You’re an angel, I thought you were supposed to be nice.
I’m an angel, she says. I’m supposed to be good. That’s different than nice.
This brings me up short, but I don’t have time to think about it before the teenager at the counter yells “Next guest” and I say “Good luck with your pansies” to the boring lady and order my Whopper meal, making a point of saying no pickles three times.
I’m prepared today, and I have a napkin in my hand to grab the Frozen Coke cup so I don’t get sticky. I bring the whole shebang over to the table and begin to eat.
And there it is. A fucking pickle.
You should say something, the Angel says.
If I’m going to be talking to her this much, I should probably give her a name. She’s always been around, but more as a concept, keeping me in line. I guess most people hear their mother’s voice, but I’ve always heard the Angel’s. I’m glad she’s here, keeping me company at the end.
What’s the point? I ask her. The cashier is just some kid making $7.25 an hour. She’s not invested in making this Burger King the best it can be, she just wants money so she can go to the movies with her friends. If I say something, I’m just going to get a gob of snot on my replacement Whopper.
She shrugs. Look. Eat your Whopper. Then go up there and say that two days in a row you asked for one with no pickles and two days in a row you got one with pickles. You’re not asking for another one or a refund or anything, but dammit, Rosie, you of all people know that life is short and pleasures are few. If you want a Whopper with no pickles you should be able to get one, especially when you asked nicely and paid the asking price for it.
I stick a few French fries in my mouth. Since when do I get what I want?
I feel her lean her tiny head against my neck. Since when do you demand it?
This simple question strikes me so hard I stop chewing. What right do I have to demand anything? More to the point, what good will it do? I can stamp my feet all I want but it won’t make people start doing the right thing or giving in to my wishes.
You know I can hear you thinking, she says.
What’s your name?
I’m just the angel who sits on your shoulder when she needs to.
I want to give you a name.
I don’t need a name. I need you to take control. Stop being nice, Rosie. Start being good. Good isn’t always easy. It’s a better world when we all care about doing the right thing, and if we all just let each other slack off without consequence, the world is going to continue to sink into the pits.
This world is already pretty damn deep into the pits.
Lori B. Duff is an attorney in Loganville, Georgia. A two-time winner of the Georgia Bar Journal’s annual fiction competition, she is also the author of the Fischer at Law series published by She Writes Press. A leader in multiple fields, she is a past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a past president of the Georgia Council of Municipal Court Judges.