Dancing on Broken Glass

Ka Hancock

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781451637380
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

A powerfully written novel offering an intimate look at a beautiful marriage and how bipolar disorder and cancer affect it, Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock perfectly illustrates the enduring power of love. Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They're both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy's twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there's no denying their chemistry.Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is.An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary, Dancing on Broken Glass takes readers on an unforgettable journey of the heart.

one

Dr. Barbee. Lunch with Lily. Pick up dry cleaning. Hospital to hug Mickey. I was lying on the exam table, freezing, planning my day out on my fingers while I waited. Charlotte Barbee said she’d be right back to finish up with me, but that had been several minutes ago. I counted my fingers again. Lunch. Dry cleaning. Mickey. There was something else but I couldn’t remember. Actually I just couldn’t think past Mickey. He’d been there six days so far—but of course not really Mickey for days before that. But this morning he sounded good, he sounded nearly back.

Charlotte hurried back in apologizing. “Darn insurance company! Think I have nothing better to do than . . . ,” she huffed, then breathed. “Now, where were we, Lucy?”

In just a moment, I was back in position, my bare feet firmly resting in the metal stirrups, freezing just like the rest of me. “Why do you keep it so cold in here, Charlotte? That’s just mean.”

When she didn’t answer, I lifted my head off the pillow and watched her face float between my bent knees. She was down there adjusting a pair of duckbills to get a better look at what should never, in my opinion, be looked at in the first place.

“So how’s Mickey this week?” she asked, still probing, ignoring my concerns about the temperature.

“Better than last week,” I said, gasping at her touch.

“Is he still in the hospital?”

“Yes. But he can come home Friday, if he’s good. And I so hope he’s being good.”

Charlotte Barbee smiled her knowing smile. “How long have you two been married now?”

“Almost eleven years.”

“It hasn’t been that long, has it? Where does the time go?” she said. “Now give me some deep breaths.”

The deep breaths made me cough and then I remembered: pick up cough drops.

It was my annual physical and Charlotte Barbee was nothing if not thorough. She knew what she was looking for, and if she found it, I would see it in her face where I’d seen it before. To the casual observer, this might have seemed like an ordinary physical exam, but the truth was more complicated. I was being scrutinized for recurring cancer. I’d had my first bout seven years ago, when I was twenty-six. That pathology used to place me not in the healthy-adult-female column, but in the more tentative cancer-survivor column—that is, until I’d been clean for five years. I breathe a little easier now that I’m in the healthy column with my two sisters. The same cancer that claimed our mother and grandmother threatens Lily, Priscilla, and me as well. With these fickle genetics skulking through our blood, we’re all very vigilant, especially Dr. Barbee, in whom we put our trust.

Lily offered to come with me today for moral support, but in all honesty, these checkups are almost harder on my sister than they are on me, so I declined her generosity. Lily is the real worrier among us, and me getting sick again is the absolute sum of all her fears. These days, where physicals are concerned, she prepares for the worst possible outcome, the whole time praying to hear Charlotte’s magic words of reprieve: Everything is fine. That pronouncement is like winning the lottery every time, and until Lily hears it, she is convinced dedicated worry will produce a good outcome.

As for me, I just expect more time. For five years I was happy to be granted life in half-year rations, which I relished and celebrated as if I’d outsmarted fate. Now, if I’m healthy at my checkups, I’m entitled to bigger chunks of time. Today marks my second annual physical, and I have to say, twelve months beats the pants off six. Even so, my routine is the same—I get the good news, praise the Lord, and dance on through my life. But only until it’s time to gear up for my next appointment and again ponder the statistical possibilities, which are bleak. If cancer returns, it usually returns with a vengeance. When fear creeps up on me, which it does occasionally, I repel it with my father’s words from so long ago.

I wonder sometimes if he had any idea that I would take his wisdom so fully to heart. But because of it, at the end of the day, death doesn’t really scare me. The dying part, however, does give me pause. I’ve done that before and I was not good at it. To watch the people I love, the terror in Mickey’s eyes . . . I thank God every day we’re through that because I’ve figured out that I’m much better at letting go than I am at being let go of.

“I need a urine sample, and then I’m done with you,” Charlotte said, jolting me back to the business at hand.

“So, am I good?”

She placed strong, capable hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “I think we’ll send all your juices to the lab and they’ll call me and tell me you’re fine.”

“I knew it. So I shouldn’t worry that I’m tired?”

“Lucy, I’m tired. You don’t have the corner on tired,” she scolded.

“What about this little tickle in my throat?”

“Open up.” She probed my mouth with a tongue depressor. “I don’t see anything here that concerns me. Tell me again how long you’ve been coughing?”

“I don’t know, a few days maybe.”

“I’ll swab you for strep, just to be safe.”

“You’re such a good doctor.” I gagged as she reached back for her sample.

“I try.” When she was done, she placed her swab in a small plastic vial and smiled at me. “Alrighty then, wrap this gown around you and go across the hall for your mammogram.”

“Yippee,” I said sarcastically. Having my small breasts crushed between two sheets of Plexiglas and examined for microscopic changes was, for me, the hardest part of this ordeal. Cancer starts in a single cell that recruits the surrounding cells in its rebellion, and then proceeds to destroy the neighborhood. Once dots appear on a mammogram, damage has a toehold. Charlotte lifted my chin with her finger and looked at me as if she’d read my thoughts. “Lucy, I’ll call you if we need to talk. But I don’t have any concerns, so don’t be surprised if I call just to chat.”

I nodded. “Okay. Good. Let’s go to dinner next week.”

Across the hall, I forced small talk while Aretha manhandled my boobs like they were so much bread dough. She was Brinley’s only mammogram technician, so she knew the breasts in our small community probably better than their owners. She was a tall, horsey woman—all-business—and I found myself wondering what came to mind when she saw us outside the office living our regular lives. Did she recognize the chest before the face registered?

I liked Aretha. Her son, Bennion, was a student in my history class over at Midlothian, and I knew she checked his homework. I thought of thanking her for that, but as I said, she was busy. In all the times I’d been coming here, Aretha never really said anything to me until she was finished, and this time was no exception.

“There ya go, Lucy. Always nice to see you. Benny sure liked your class.”

“He’s one of the good ones. You should be proud.”

“I am.”

I got dressed and brushed my hair. It’s long, so I kind of lost track of the brushing as I stared into the mirror looking for her. I have to do this every time I have a physical—it’s part of the ritual. I look for any sign that Death might be lurking in the corner, or in the mirror standing behind me, or floating just outside my periphery. But there was nothing, which was profoundly comforting—right up there with Dr. Barbee’s magic words.

After I got dressed, I walked to Damian’s, where I was meeting Lily for lunch. The stroll through the sunshine and warm breeze was delicious on my face. I love living here. Brinley, Connecticut, is a small town where you can walk just about anywhere in less than fifteen minutes. From the boat harbor to the Loop—Brinley’s answer to a town square—it’s nearly two miles, and the side streets that make up our neighborhoods stretch only about another mile on either side. Connecticut is rife with history and charm, but to me, Brinley is just about the best of everything: dignified, old neighborhoods, tree-lined streets, the grizzly kind of politics unique to small towns, like emergency meetings in the Loop to discuss the problem of dog poop or the need for a hose-winding ordinance.

A lot of people were out and about this afternoon, and none seemed in a big hurry to be anywhere. But maybe that was just because I didn’t have to be anywhere now that school was out for the summer, and I’d finished grading 170 finals.

I saw my neighbor Diana Dunleavy, walking her granddaughter, Millicent, to ballet class. The little jelly-bean-shaped girl was pirouetting her way past Mosely’s Market in a hot-pink tutu. Diana waved at me. “She gets all that talent from me, you know,” she shouted from across the road.

I laughed watching as Millie glissaded right into Deloy Rosenberg, who was coming out of the Sandwich Shoppe with a takeout order. He dropped his cardboard tray and a bag tumbled, but apparently no damage was done. Still, Millie hid her red face in the folds of Diana’s skirt until Brinley’s police chief gave up trying to soothe her and walked away with his lunch. Every time I see Deloy in his uniform, I think of my dad.

I spotted Lily and Jan across the street, so I jaywalked toward them. Jan Bates, our next-door neighbor, did eventually become Lily’s mother-in-law, just as I’d predicted when we were kids. What I didn’t know then was that she would become every inch a mother to me as well.

Oscar Levine was pounding a sign onto the gate of our tiny park when he saw me. The bony little man dropped his hammer and shouted, “Lucy, you’re coming to the Shad Bake on Saturday, right?”

“Of course she is, Oscar,” Lily answered for me.

Jan gave me a quick hug. “Just say yes,” she whispered in my ear.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “And Mickey will be home by then so he’ll be there, too.”

“Atta girl.”

The Shad Bake was a spring ritual all along the Connecticut River Valley, but we Brinlians did it up right. We pay homage to the supposedly endangered fish by nailing it to oak planks around a pit fire, then gorging ourselves on it until we can’t move. It’s just one of the many things I love about living in Brinley.

“Well, I’m off to teach little boys how to paint pine trees,” Jan said, laughing. “You girls stay out of trouble.” Jan pecked us both and we watched her walk away.

My sister then turned to me with an overly broad smile that failed to hide her anxiety. “So how did it go?” she said, linking her arm through mine.

“I’m good. Charlotte had no concerns. And Aretha said my boobs look fantastic.”

“Yeah, I can just hear her say that.”

“Actually, she said they’re nicer than yours.”

Lily laughed. “Well, now I know you’re lying.” My sister was beautiful, with short blond hair, fair skin like Mom’s, and in the sunlight, she looked almost translucent. “So you’re good?” she asked, turning serious.

“I’m good,” I promised on a little cough.

She leaned her head into mine and I felt the shudder of relief pass through her. “Liar.”

“What?”

“I know it’s too soon to know that for sure.”

“Maybe, but Charlotte was not one bit concerned, so neither am I.”

Lily bored her eyes into mine as if searching for a hidden truth. She’d done it our whole lives.

“I’m fine, Lil. I feel it.”

She nodded, but did not move her eyes from me. “Okay. Because . . . you know, I refuse to bury you, Lucy.”

“I know,” I said, squeezing her hand.

At the corner George Thompson, the only florist in town, was loading flats of spring flowers into the trunk of a Cadillac. He grunted an indeterminate greeting at us as he arranged the blooms with a scowl on his grizzled face.

“How’s Trilby, George?” Lily asked as we approached. “Is she feeling any better?”

“No, and she’s grumpy as a wet hen. Somehow it’s my fault she broke her foot. Wasn’t me who was jazzercising, for hell’s sake. Stop your laughing, Lucy!” he scolded. “It’s not one bit funny!”

Lily elbowed me and said to George, “Well, tell her the antique mirror she ordered came in. She can pick it up when she feels better.”

George stopped what he was doing and straightened. He didn’t seem aware of any antique mirror and the moment was just about to turn awkward when Muriel Piper saved us. “Hello, my angels!” she cackled. “Isn’t it a glorious day! Look, I’m going crazy with flowers.” She laughed, deep and throaty. Muriel was a Brinley matriarch, pushing ninety but not about to admit it. She was wearing pleated blue jeans, a cashmere hoodie, and diamond studs so heavy they made her earlobes droop—a casual gardening ensemble, for sure.

Muriel pulled me close in a firm embrace that belied her age. “Lucy, you’re too thin. I want you to come over so I can cook for you. You never take care of yourself when Mickey is doing poorly.”

“He’s coming home on Friday. And I’m eating just fine.”

“Not till Friday? He’ll miss Celia’s memorial service tomorrow.”

I nodded.

“Well, bring him by this weekend so I can give him a hug. I just love that boy.” She turned to Lily. “And yours! Do they come any better looking? Oh, my goodness.”

“I’ll tell him you said so, Muriel.”

“Don’t you dare! I’d be so embarrassed! Well, I better skedaddle. These flowers aren’t going to plant themselves.” Muriel waved at us...