Irregularities

by Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri

The buses were still almost empty. The endless public warnings wove through every movement as soon as people left their homes. Unlike many, she had started to feel safe. She enjoyed the low hum of the bus, the ten-foot gap between herself and the only other passengers. She leaned against the window and let her left-hand slide inside her shirt. The lump was still there, just below her nipple. When she stroked it, it seemed to tense up and become turgid, even more than her nipple. Her hand was still there when the driver announced her stop.

She had booked her appointment a month after the contagion levels were declared low enough to start easing into something that resembled life before. Her doctor had called twice to remind her. She knew the risk. She was exhausted from thinking about risk—but she did as she was told.

She knew the result long before the letter came in the mail. There had been signs. The way the technician had ushered her straight to an unscheduled sonogram before she was done pulling the blue gown around herself after the mammogram. The way everybody kept their gaze low, on their screens to avoid her. The speed with which they called her back for a biopsy. 

When they told her, her first thought was that it would be better for both of them if she didn’t tell her husband. He still couldn’t sleep through the night without pills. The past year was grinding in him, and the struggle against his inner windmills took all he had. Routines got him through the day, but only barely. When she started wearing a bra to bed telling him she wanted to prevent sagging. “But your breasts look great,” he said, reaching across to touch. “And I want to keep it that way,” she waved him off. When his pills kicked in, she lay awake in the dark, trying to remember the last time he had tried to touch her.

***

After the biopsy results, she put in a request to take her remaining vacation weeks. “Going anywhere nice?” the new woman at HR asked her. “We’ll see,” she replied. She realised some people must  have started travelling again as more areas were declared safe. The people at HR were always the first to know something was about to change. 

The best place to hide something irregular is under layers of routine. So, she decided to just continue to take the bus in the morning. They walked the short driveway down to the main road together and then went in opposite directions. The first few days, she stayed on to the end of the line and then came straight back to the house. But then she started worrying he’d come home early, discover her, and start asking questions. She needed a plan.

Between their subdivision and the city, there was a greenbelt. Since she moved away from downtown, she’d passed through it every day she went to work but never stopped. She had been there on dates, though, before her husband. A dozen years must have passed since the last time. Getting out in nature would be good for her. Forest-bathing, clearing her head. She could fit a pair of sneakers into her work bag. He’d never know.

When she got off at the only stop near the forest, the bus driver looked  like he wanted to ask her something. There were several drivers, but only a handful of passengers. Anyone paying attention on the job would know that wasn’t her stop. And the light drizzle had gotten heavier. She got off before he worked up the courage to say something. She was soaked even before she had changed into her sneakers. The two hours she spent trying to find a path that she thought she remembered, felt like a time trap. She walked and walked and made it nowhere. On her way back she felt the wet patch on her seat grow and grow and she did nothing to stop it. 

***

The next day, she started out better prepared. She wore a loose skirt, which made it easy to slide on training pants underneath. She aimed for an area with a tree canopy that would shelter her if it did start pouring again. The trail map she knew used to be there, appeared when she looked for a trunk to tie her shoes on. Muscle memory kicked in. She soon found the lake where she used to go with a boyfriend whose face she’d forgotten. She sat on a rock still damp from yesterday’s rain and watched the cloud cover open up an area wide enough for the sun to peek through. The air was crisp, almost as if these past two years never happened. The rays  warmed her face and neck. She unbuttoned her office shirt and took off her bra. She closed her eyes and soaked up the heat. When she opened them up again, she saw her right boob looked even stranger in this light, as if someone had stuffed it with pebbles while she slept.

She had always been careful when she touched the lump in the bathroom or on the bus, letting her fingers get to know the new shape but without squeezing. She didn’t want to be too attached to it before it was removed. 

Except for a couple of years during puberty, she had never cared much about tits. They were  just the soft casing around her mammary glands. And she wasn’t planning on having children, so they were an unnecessary accessory. But now the sun, swathing her in light, pulled her hand toward the breast again. As she cupped it, she tried to imagine her hand empty when she reached for the same spot a week from now. Just her—and a hand full of absence.

As her grip hardened, the lack of pain alarmed her. She had assumed the solid white area on her mammogram would at least be sore, but she felt nothing. Her mind fully on her hand and the malformed mammary. It was getting chilly, but she didn’t cover up. She kept kneading the lump to challenge the lack of feeling.

A duck and  her line-up of ducklings ploughed the lake. The ripples at first barely perceptible, but they soon spread across the whole lake and reached the shore where she sat as tiny waves that made a soft splashing sound. She had seen ducks here before, but never noticed the water they displaced. The soft light broken and scattered across the surface by tiny crests. 

She stared at the lake, watched it break into lines at each touch and then slowly return flat, unbroken. Finally, she let go of her breast. She started gathering her things, hooked her bra and buttoned her shirt as if in a hurry. She tried to iron the creases out with her hands. She was late, so he’d already be home when she got there. The excuse she had prepared wouldn’t cover her the way she looked now. She kept flattening the shirt fabric, hoping she’d come up with something. It took a while to notice the stickiness of her hand. A line of goo had formed, marking the trail of her hand across the fabric. Some kind of sap or juice, she didn’t know. Evidence of her secret. She went to the edge of the lake, squatting down. She could still save herself. She scooped up water and splashed it across her shirt, then watched the goo dilute, creating a web-like pattern. When she was done, it was too dark to see her own reflection.

Hege A, Jakobsen Lepri: Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri is a Norwegian-Canadian translator and writer in the process of moving to Oslo. She's the winner of the inaugural Frances Thomas Memorial Flash Fiction Award. Her most recent work is featured or forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Grist, North Dakota Quarterly, This Magazine, Room Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Round table Literary Journal, You find her at www.hegeajlepri.ca