Where’d She Go? - Part III
About twenty years ago, my husband and I began attending art auctions. We didn’t know anyone and were never included in the post-auction lunch outings, so it was odd when we attracted the attention of a woman who always asked if she could join us for coffee or a meal. In the beginning we were baffled as to why this vague and whispery woman would’ve latched onto us, two unknowns. But we also wondered if she wasn’t aware of a certain hidden fact about us, one that we wanted to keep secret. We’ll never know for sure, because she mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
THIS IS PART 3 of a FOUR-PART STORY
As time passed and we went to more and more auctions, Andrea Jean and I developed an extremely close friendship. We’d go for lunch. We’d go for dinner. We’d talk on the phone. There were no limits to the things we could discuss, relationships with our families, our husbands and partners, our opinions about people in the art world, about the paintings themselves. She’d never been married, but she had a boyfriend, an older man, very poised and worldly, who had a seaside home not far from the Hamptons, and an ex wife who wouldn’t give him a divorce. Andrea Jean spent part of her time in her small midtown apartment in the city, and part out on Long Island with her boyfriend, whose name was Theo. She was fun and I loved hanging out with her, loved flying up to the city to visit her and go on crazy expeditions all over town. And then, one day, Theo noticed a tiny black mole in the small of her back.
It was serious. Melanoma. The little bit of tissue, striated and crusty, would be a death sentence if not attended to quickly. To me, the removal of a mole, even a dangerous one, seemed fairly straightforward. The surgeon would just take his sharp tool and dig it out, right? But it was far more complicated. Andrea Jean was put in the hospital where her entire body was scanned (they even had to scope her lungs) and where she underwent an invasive surgery to get at the roots of the mole. Afterwards she needed a lot of rest, so it was a while before I saw her again.
But when I did, she seemed unchanged. Maybe a little fragile, but still fun-loving and adventurous. She wasn’t going to permit a little mole to get her down. Not that it was something we spoke about – in fact, the subject was kind of taboo, the only issue in her life we avoided because Andrea Jean was in denial about the seriousness of her condition. But I was worried about her.
I was scared of the hole her absence would leave in my life should the surgery prove unsuccessful, allowing the cancer that had started as a little scrap of nothing to spread defiantly to all the organs of her body.