You are allowed one drink only, so make it count. My secret mission. I’m on my way to Old Town, the first night out since I became a shadow, abruptly and irreversibly over the last six months. It’s not the breast cancer that turned my brain against myself, but that first, dreadful shot of Zoladex that marked my last period. 

My legs are heavy as I walk to the bar, a sandquake at every step, touching where there used to be an electric gap waiting to be entered. How did this happen to my legs? I was a petite pretty thing crossing the streets of New York, all pleasure and rhythm. No longer. It seemed to have happened overnight. No more estrogen, no more light. Not like I was wild before; I only had sex with one man in my entire existence, my fun-loving and reluctantly caring husband of sixteen years and counting. I never cheated on him, loyal and shy in equal measure, but I dreamed of it, because my libido was healthy, my imagination harmless, and I never wanted to miss a night while ovulating. 

I’m going out tonight to prove I can still want and be wanted, terrified of what I might find out. I feel my sagging cheeks forcing my mouth into a frown, my drooping eyelids narrowing my vision, keeping it low and blurry over the sidewalk. Sheltered from strangers. I walk as if I’m in a dream, trapped in a body I am ashamed of. I feel nothing at all, I desire nothing at all.

Chemical menopause is what my oncologist calls it. How civilized, misleading. As if inducing it was going to somehow make it gentler. Less of a grenade. I still hear the nurse, sturdy and soft. I’m sorry this is happening to you, she says, administering that first shot of Zoladex. She’s squatting on her solid legs like modern parents do with their children. It’s hard, and it’s scary. 

She has two small boys, she tells me, her way to find out whether I have birthed children too, before putting my forty-three-year-old ovaries to rest. Same, I say, two boys. Three and six years old. I tell her we just celebrated their birthdays. She places an icepack on my uterus and says, Spring babies are the best. The big locust outside of our bay window in Brooklyn has sprung, green reflecting on the white walls of our living room, just like when we brought the boys home so many years ago. It’s true, I say, they are the best. The lush green reminds me of the early days with them. I nursed them by that tree, the tree of our life. My enormous breasts tortured by mastitis, my chapped nipples covered in salt, never the same since. 

I look at the nurse’s name tag, Sheryl, hoping to remember her. I’m bad with names, faces, and looking in the eyes. But I look back at her, her cheeks, freckles, and copper strands of uncombed hair, and I am comforted. 

It’s going to sting, she warns me as she pinches my belly, reddened by the icepack. Like a bee. I think of the last time I was stung by a bee, as a child on the beach in Southern Italy, while eating a sandwich. My mother applying pressure to ease the pain. 

Are you ready, Beatrice? The only nurse to ever use my name. 

The bar is packed, backpacks and laptops abandoned on stools, pitchers on tables. Christmas lights and real greenery hanging from the wooden picture rails. Smells like beer and pine. Patrick is here already, I see him cheering with our colleagues. He’s visiting for the holidays, back from overseas where he’s been working remotely long before it was the norm. I haven’t seen him in four years. He sees me. 

Bea, here you are! Long time…

Since before the pandemic.

Crazy. How have you been?

He reaches for my body, not waiting for an answer. Pressed against him, my breasts hurt so much I scream a little. Nothing like the languid explosion of nerves around my nipples Patrick’s proximity used to provoke. I wonder if he noticed. I wonder if he noticed that my breasts are half the size, carbonized by radiation. I am wearing a blue lace dress, because a million years ago he boldly told me blue looked good on me, only this dress is open on my chest. Too open, I worry now. I wonder if he can see the anchor scar between my breasts, not perfectly concealed, the skin oddly folded over the seam. He’s still wearing one of his soft button-downs, even after the pandemic. Light blue as if he was an investment banker, not an architect like the rest of us, the long sleeves rolled above the elbow. Maybe just a fan of blue, not of me, all along. Of his defined forearms. He’s still handsome. Does he still think I’m beautiful? I wish I could ask him. I wish I could ask him if he sees it too or if it’s all in my head, this sudden ruin. My once-full eyelashes falling, my brittle nails. 

I close my hand in a fist and attempt a smile. I’m alive, I say.

The one drink order came from my oncologist. Alcohol produces estrogen, estrogen feeds my cancer, she said. My mother says we all have to die somehow. Di una morte si deve morire, she has been telling me my whole life. One way or another. I wish I told my oncologist. And I don’t want to die sober. I want to die alive.

Dizzy, a burnt stomach and a light head. The one drink mission worked, so much so that I tell Patrick about the cancer. He says the obvious. Things like, That’s some scary shit, and how he had a really bad, stubborn fever a few weeks back because inexplicable stuff happens to your body when you age. He has no idea. I slide a hand on my hardened chest, free of a bra after thirty years. I take a full, deep breath, holding it in for five seconds with my eyes closed. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. The technician guiding me behind the glass while I lay in the radiation machine, my active collaboration required to protect heart and lungs from misfired beams of invisible fire. Katy Perry is roaring in the background. A fighter, a hero, through the fire. How appropriate. He has no idea, forgive him. Blown up, my damaged tissues awaken, a pleasant aching.

Speak for yourself, I tell Patrick. I am still not as old as you are. Only wiser. I smile and pour beer from the pitcher into my dried-out glass. 

One drink only, huh? 

Eh, what the hell. We all have to die somehow. One way or another. 

He smiles too. I tell him nothing about the menopause. 

Up the stairs slowly, unsteady. I follow the sign WOMEN at the end of the hallway at the top of the stairs, called by it. As if reaching the sign is going to make me feel like a woman again. A saloon door separates the bathroom from the dining room. The sound of laughter, painfully joyful. They’re cheering for me, I pretend, I’m one of them again. I enter the bathroom and I seek the stall, to the right of the mirror I avoid looking into, behind another saloon door, this one with a hook for privacy. The stall is so small, I’m worried my blue lace dress will fall into the bowl. I pee, frantically, trying not to wet my dress, trying not to bang my head against the wall. A delirium I used to regret in the good old days feels like a victory now. I’m drunk, so drunk. Mission fucking accomplished. Then I see a sheet of organza pinned to the door. I realize I’m squatting below the door panel high above the ground, concealed by nothing but a flimsy piece of yellow fabric. Anyone could walk in, and I’d be peeing out in the open. As if I were that kind of free spirit that I never was. I miss the bowl, my useless pelvic floor. Warm liquid dribbles down my weakening legs and onto the tiles. I look for paper, none is left. Of course. I caress my skin dry with the tip of my fingers, all the way up my legs. A few hot drops drip onto the palm of my hand. The light touch stirs me. Finally, I am. Careless. I laugh, fiercely, mischievously. Daring someone to walk in.