Free Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg

company, something in marketing. This meant that we could no longer spendlong afternoons together, but we talked every day and saw each other at least one night a week. It was on one of those nights a full year later that she told me about her lump. “Come with me to get the biopsy,” she said. “Maybe I’ll feel weird after, and I won’t want to drive.” Then, looking at my french fries, she said, “Are you going to finish those?”
    I pushed my plate toward her. “Aren’t you scared?”
    She waved her hand in dismissal. “I’ve got lumpy breasts. I’ve been through this before, no big whoop. Slice and dice, hardly a scar left behind. It’s never been anything before. It won’t be this time, either.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    She looked up. “It
won’t
be!”
    “Okay, I believe you! What time?”
    “Nine-thirty,” she said. “Want to go out and look at fabric afterward? I’m taking the whole day off.”
    “Of course,” I said. Ruth and I could spend hours in a fabric store. She was the only woman I’d ever met whose fascination for those places matched mine. The colors. The quiet undercurrent of industry. The tactile pleasure and smells of jewel-colored silks, calico cottons, wide-wale corduroy, pristine interfacings. We enjoyed looking through pattern books, especially when they got old and you could feel the history of so many hands on them. We loved the racks of buttons, all with personalities: shy pearls, flamboyant rhinestones, sensible round navy-blue buttons, lined up three in a somber row—Ruth said if they were little girls they’d all go to Catholic school. Every time we went there we admired the expensive scissors kept behind a glass case, and oneChristmas I finally gave Ruth a pair. She made a house for those scissors—lined a drawer with burgundy velvet and kept nothing but them there. I was a novice at sewing and struggled through each thing I attempted. Ruth made a raincoat, fully lined suits with invisible zippers, slipcovers for her sofa out of gorgeous French florals whose very presence on their five-foot-long bolts intimidated me. When winter came, we built huge fires and spent hours piecing together quilts on her bedroom floor. The wind rattled her windows and occasionally, with thrilling gusts, pushed itself into the room with us. But we were warm and distracted, sitting in our turtlenecks and flannel shirts and sweatpants and thick socks. Our hair was secured up off our faces with chopsticks and we were listening to moody jazz on the radio, drinking cocoa, and making art that would last for years. We were protected.
    Of course we didn’t go to a fabric store that day. Because the lump was not nothing.
    I was in the waiting room, watching television and reading magazines, looking at my watch with greater and greater frequency. It was taking too long. Finally, the surgeon came out and called my name. I followed him to a corner of the room. He began speaking, but he wouldn’t look at me, and I felt every part of myself grow stiff and cold. “It’s not good,” he said and I began nodding like an idiot.

I stayed with her that night. Both of us crowded onto her little bed, like sisters. “Aren’t you at all scared?” I asked, just before we fell asleep. She had reacted to her diagnosis as though she’d encountered a minor road detour. She hadn’t wept. She hadn’t looked anxiously about. Her hands stayed still, resting half open on her lap. Her only movement was to cross her legs and lean back in her chair. A moment passed. Then she sighed and said, “Shit.” And then, leaning forward again, “So. How are we going to get rid of this?” The surgeon said she should come to his office in a few days and discuss it. Ruth looked at me and I nodded yes I would go with her.
    “I know whatever happens, I’ll get through this,” she said that night. “I know I’ll be fine. I just
know
it. Don’t you feel that, sometimes, a kind of absolute sureness?” I could smell her