If she’d been diagnosed in 1981, the rates would have gone up by 15 percent. But she was diagnosed in April 2001, and therefore neither Rhonda Nighly nor anyone else on the cancer floor was terribly surprised when, just a few months after Elaine began chemotherapy, her estrogen concentrations were normal and she was as clean and cancer-free as she’d been ten years before. She’d lost weight. Her hair was growing back into a chic little pixie cut that she spiked up with her hands. She’d started wearing a bit more makeup to return the color to her cheeks and the sparkle to her eyes. She’d started wearing more jewelry, too. This was the renaissance of our marriage, the very heart of the renaissance, and who can say if our rebirth was due to her survival, Elaine’s new interest in herself and her own happiness, or my own deep gratitude that she’d made it through okay and still loved me, needed me? I started buying her little gifts I knew she’d like, a framed black-and-white photograph of Central Park, a big purple orchid in a little pot.
