HUCK
“Janet Elder and her family fell in love with their dog, Huck . . .
you’ll fall in love with them. A wonderful, inspiring book.”
—Deirdre Imus
JANET ELDER
Broadway Books
NEW YORK
ISBN 978-0-7679-3134-2
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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There was a shed just out the back door where the
washer and dryer were housed. The deep sink in the
shed was where Rich taught Michael the joys of fi lling a
balloon with water and throwing it at each other, some-
thing that became a yearly ritual.
Eventually, Michael and a couple of his buddies from
the city, Sam Bresnick and his brother Elias, who also
spent part of their summers on Nantucket, escalated
the ritual into a yearly batt le. The arsenal grew larger as
the boys did. By the time they were eight, they set out
to batt le one another with more than a hundred water
balloons, leaving in their wake the exploded, colorful
plastic pieces, all of which then had to be picked out of
the grass.
Rich and I had our own Nantucket rituals. Once
Michael went to sleep at night, we enjoyed the rare
pleasure of sitting in the yard, staring at the night sky,
listening to the quiet, and sipping wine.
Nantucket held a trove of potential pets. From the
time Michael was four until he was about ten or eleven,
every day at the beach, he would capture jellyfish, sand
crabs, and sea lice, put them in a bucket, and insist that
he wanted to bring them back to the cottage and then
back to New York. Initially, Rich and I did not react to
Michael’s desires in the same way. I was always trying
to figure out how to say no without seeming like the ex-
hausted mother I was. Rich was always trying to figure
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She was thin and had long blond hair. She did not look
friendly or approachable in any way. One might call her
“plain.” She was probably ten years my junior. Before
she spoke a word, I knew something was wrong.
“There is something suspicious on the x-ray,” she
said, as she pointed to a mass that looked indistinguish-
able to me from the other masses on the fi lm.
I didn’t panic. I had a twisted sense of relief in just
being out of the waiting room and fi nally in front of a
doctor, someone who could end the unknowing. I’m
also pretty good at steeling myself in a moment of crisis.
The journalist often takes over and starts asking a lot of
questions, listening for the nuance in the answers, try-
ing to detect information not intended to be divulged.
As long as I’m still reporting the story, gathering facts
and not writing the story, there is no conclusion, no bad
ending. Anything is still possible. It is usually later that
I fall apart.
“When was your last mammogram?” she asked.
Without waiting for the answer, she said, “You should
have a sonogram as soon as possible.’’
“Can it be done now?” I asked. Fortunately, “now”
was possible. I didn’t have to make another appoint-
ment for another day and wait some more. Waiting had
already become excruciating.
The medical suite had two floors. The sonogram ma-
chine was down a narrow, winding staircase. Another
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him off at the same time. “I’m still in the doctor’s office.
They found something,” I managed to say without cry-
ing. “I have to have another test. Can you come right
over?”
I kept staring down at my shoes, fi xing my eyes
on something so I would not get dizzy and fall. They
were the same shoes I had on just days earlier, sitting
at Caffè Quadri, where Rich and I had sat enjoying
the sun’s warmth and watching Michael feed pigeons.
Our waiter, Nicolai, had spun stories for us about life in
Venice and was as content as we were to have us linger
for hours over a cappuccino.
“I’ll be right there.” Rich knew to just come and not
ask me any questions.
There was a flurry of paper signing, absolving the
doctor if anything went wrong. The procedure was
called a core biopsy and involved taking five specimens.
For the fi rst time all morning, there was no waiting. I
did not have a chance to see Rich, to have him hold me
before being summoned for the biopsy.
I lay down on the same steel table I had been on
for the sonogram. The doctor used the sonogram to
guide the needles one after the other into my breast and
into the suspicious mass where cells were withdrawn
for analysis. There was an instrument that looked like
a gun, and it made a popping noise each time the cells
were withdrawn. I looked away.
I wasn’t scared. I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t mind
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the pain. I was still reporting the story, still fact gather-
ing. I was keeping my emotions at bay. In that moment,
I tried not to think about Rich or Michael. I tried not to
think about the fact that Michael was only eleven years
old. I tried not to think about the devastating effects a
parent’s deteriorating health can have on a child, how it
can rob them of innocence and make them grow up too
soon, something I knew fi rsthand. Instead, I focused
on whom I knew who could help me fi nd the right doc-
tors, the best care. I started making mental lists of the
people I could turn to for help.
At the same time, I was growing impatient with the
detached, morose mood of the doctor and the techni-
cian. These were clearly people who had spent too much
time with machines. If I had relied on their demeanor to
give me insight into my own situation, I probably would
have assumed I was near death. When she was about
to insert the fi fth needle into my breast, the doctor fi-
nally had a rare human moment and asked if I was “all
right.”
The biopsy was over quickly. Th ree hours after I
had fi rst put on the shabby pink gown, I was told to
get dressed. The doctor said she would know the results
of the biopsy in three days and I could call her at four
o’clock on Thursday—just what I was hoping for, more
waiting.
I got dressed, thinking only about what I could do
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