What to Wear with Cancer

The woman dying in the bed next to Mallary’s really was reading a book called, What to Wear with Cancer. That’s the second thing Mallary had noticed about her after noticing the contents of the suitcase the woman had unpacked— the silk pajamas and cashmere wraps, the satiny underpants and bras with lace that didn’t curl, the hospital wardrobe that immediately confirmed all Mallary’s notions about Italian women and fashion, perhaps an absurd obsession with fashion, given that this woman had come to have her stomach removed and radiated outside of her body for days in a new last-resort experimental procedure to extend her life.

Mallary could not believe that the woman was as sick as she was, given her cheerfulness and insistence on popping out of bed every time Mallary moaned in order to rub Mallary’s temples or kiss her cheeks or show her a picture of a beautiful dead sister; Mallary looked just like the sister, the woman insisted—the exact same waist-length dark curls!-- though Mallary couldn’t see it, despite how flattering the comparison. The resemblance was such a comfort to the woman who had not yet gone in for her surgery; it seemed as though the sister had stepped into the room to watch over them both—a guardian angel. Mallary had been in Perugia only two days when her appendix burst and she’d been rushed to Silvistrini Hospital not knowing a word of Italian, her parents in route but still 24 hours away. The cancer-riddled woman had kissed the picture of her dead sister, uttering prayers, possibly weeping as burly attendants hoisted Mallary onto the gurney to wheel her toward surgery. When Mallary woke up with a drain in her side, the first thing she’d seen was the woman’s pixie face, made up to perfection, hovering over her like an angel; nothing about her had looked sick.

The time came for the woman to go under the knife and, the night before, Mallary wished she were capable of standing up, getting out of bed, getting out of the room, out of the way so her room-mate could say what she needed to say to her husband and seven year old son and mother and mother-in-law and cousin Agnese, and brother Filippo, and the priest who came and prayed over her, kissing the cross and waving it over her like a wand. Everyone was crying, everyone except the woman who kept saying things in words Mallary could not understand and blowing kisses while her son with a wizened, knowing face sat at the foot of her bed twisting the sheet around his arm.

When the woman awoke from anesthesia the first thing she did is smile at Mallary as though greeting a friend she’d thought she’d lost. She seemed too happy to have been through such physical trauma and Mallary felt sudden shame that she had moaned and carried on like such an American over a mere appendix. Now this woman was to learn that the cancer had invaded too many of her organs for the surgeons to do the trick they’d had in mind with her stomach . They had opened her abdomen, stood back in horror, then closed her up again to let her die of the same kind of cancer that had killed her sister.

A mere two weeks after surgery, Mallary has caught up with her school work, comes to class, is going with me this weekend to an agriturismo near Gubbio—ready, she says, to walk in the wild and see the sights that had originally drawn her to Italy. But the real beauty of Italy exists elsewhere, she’s sure, and she’s still trying to find it and name it as she makes her daily visits to the hospital, bringing her new friend bright scarves, flea-market bracelets, trendy camouflage vests embroidered with roses—outfits sure to shock and dazzle the many visitors who flock to the woman’s bedside to discover what on earth she’ll wear next.