523 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes 21 seconds

Bon Pain again today. But then she expected this. She was here just nine days ago helping a friend pick out a Toshiba from J&R. Sleek, 17 inch screen, no needless trial programs loading, no need to connect to the Internet just to set it up. This is the machine she should've bought herself. This is the place she should have bought it. Needless/needles. And a glass of water. She hasn't even had water yet today.

Her face is dried from all the creams last night. Her fingernails pick up crud every time she touches it. She doesn't even want to go near a computer, so she picks at scabs.

524 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes 50 seconds

There was so much more to write yesterday. But She needed Percocet for headache, before the headache got too bad. And she needed water to take the Percocet. And of course the water was on her left side and of course her hand can't feel when it's touching something and of course the water spilled all over the left side of the keyboard. She dried it off with her T-shirt. The nurse dried off the water under the computer with a towel. So it's working and then not working, working then coming up with crazy characters, menus she hasn't pressed. She was able to surf the Internet using just the mouse. She brought it home, called 4G data, grabbed a cab down there at seven o'clock at night (they're open until 10 plus weekends). The keyboard shorted out, he said. They ordered a new keyboard. Maybe they can get this done under warranty. If not how much is this going to cost? $300? $400? The cost of two or three dinners or one medication. She could have bought the Rings of Saturn paperweight, plus the one for a Christmas gift. But she'll buy those anyway. And at least the Percocet worked.

525 days, 10 hours, 26 minutes, 30 seconds

One doctor at 10:30, an emergency, who doesn't see her until 11:40, making her late for her noon drip, and the nurse has to leave on time tonight, and the doctor's on vacation again this week.

A friend she seldom talks with on the phone thinks the purpose of waits is to be sure you understand who's in control here. She tells him about her student and how much that suddenly means to her. She tells him of her last drip. And he says he sees another Ratner anthology in the works.

525 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes, 17 seconds

Seeing the tall, thin baby, head wrapped up, in the oncologist’s office was bad enough. But to see the fat sobbing baby this morning in the neurosurgeon’s waiting room hurt even more. Water on the brain?

She knew a seven year-old with a brain tumor once. At four he couldn’t walk or talk intelligably, but they were living in rural New Hampshire and doctors there didn’t even think to look. They say that at ten or twelve you could still detect brain damage, but she was out of touch with his parents by then and only saw him once.

525 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes, 17 seconds

Despite several orthodox Jews plus one Jew for Jesus praying for her, and two Buddhists chanting on her behalf, she really doesn't think God gives a damn.

526 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, 50 seconds

Now that she's lost most of her hair, the cranial prosthesis needs to be tightened. They said this would happen. She wears it to breakfast with a friend from out of town. It feels like a big wool hat, and too hot for this 80° day. In between bites of eggs she doesn't usually like finds good today, she's idly tipping it, turning it, adjusting it. God knows what she looks like.

526 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes, 48 seconds

She almost forgot: she can't hold things in her left hand without dropping them. So now Ben's got another chip in his skull. God damn fucking brain surgeon – how appropriate. At least it wasn't the Hummel. At least it wasn't poor Pluto.

527 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, 58 seconds

Her father tried to interest her in the heavens once. There was a man up in Ventnor with a high-powered telescope who set it out on the street whenever anything interesting was about to happen and invited friends and neighbors to watch along. He tried to interest her tripping over sticks on some mosquito trail to look for birds. He encouraged her to get up at six in the morning to ride bikes on the Boardwalk with him. And of course there were always his flowers.

527 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Pluto arrived last week. A paperweight from Glass Eye Studios in Seattle, part of their Celestial series, each piece handcrafted with ashes from when Mount Saint Helens volcano erupted in 1980. But Pluto's been demoted. He's being discontinued next year. Especially at this moment, she feels kinship with what they're now calling a dwarf planet. She saw these paperweights last year and almost bought one for a friend who's always running out to view the stars with binoculars, some of the most beautiful artwork she's seen. Even more exquisite to hold in her hand. And now, greedy child that she is, she woke up this morning anxious to buy another for herself: the Rings of Saturn. The small disk in the center. Black lines swirling around it. Last night's midnight panic. The brain swelling. Movement, her husband says. Health, he calls it. And she wants to hate him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She didn't even know him in 1980.

530 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes, 38 seconds

What beautiful hair you have, they told her all through childhood. And she thought of Little Red commenting on grandma’s big teeth. That curse. That fear. That mother she didn’t want to look like. Little Red. Now she sees her scalp is red. Or maybe pink. It was white, she always thought. Another illusion biting the rim of the waste basket. Curls so thin she can see through them. She feels as if she’s giving it up too soon – the hair, the anger.

531 days, 13 hours, 32 minutes, 7 seconds

A glucose reading of 88 yesterday morning and again at bedtime. Does this mean she should learn to play the piano? She hasn't written for five days, she sure as hell better do something.

536 days, 4 hours, 3 minutes, 27 seconds

Bush sneers at balding reporter, the headline reads. Nick Robinson from the BBC, who can't vote anyway. They've locked horns before. Such a silly country England is. Judges still locked in debate about whether or not to wear wigs in court.

536 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, 50 seconds

It's been a long, hot summer. Only the start of August, and already the Madison Ave. topiary's losing its hair. Then again, she's not usually around in the summer. And most summer's it's the last thing she'd notice, but it's like he's waving her over. Or saying stop. Right now. Stop this.

537 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 28 seconds

Five days ago the Special Olympics stopped at the White House rose garden and, accompanied by police, had its Flame of Hope relit. The games are global now. Athletes from China were on hand to be photographed. The president and the first lady were there to welcome them (and also be photographed). The president talked about sponsoring the games when he was governor of Texas, and how these intellectually challenged athletes inspired him to forge ahead as well.

537 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, 1.6 seconds

Everybody brings her flowers. And she's delighted by what people choose. This last bunch has long purple spikes, as if designed for the one pottery vase she has. And she only has this vase because she bought it as a Christmas gift, then chipped it. When she was in the hospital her parents bought her a huge bouquet on the street, not stopping to think there wouldn't be a vase. But that was Sinai, sixteen years ago. Her mother was alive. Her father still spent hours tending his rose bushes. Hour after hour after hour.

And here she is, a teenager yet again. Her favorite song is Bobby Darin's "Artificial Flowers." She writes rhymed poems about crying clowns and dead roses.

538 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes, 28.7 seconds

There's soap caked up under her wedding ring.

538 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, 11 seconds

Lying in bed while she's backing up her computer, he tells her of the first time he tried to shop online. It was at a place called the Screwball Mall, and he wanted to buy her a present. He thought it would be appropriate. But he couldn't figure out how to put in his credit card. It was sort of a porn place, he says, drifting off to sleep.

539 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds

She looks at a photo of Hillary Rodham in 1969: long straight brown hair (possibly dirty), striped pants, shapeless tunic, large glasses. This she can relate to. Yesterday all the Washington Post could talk about was the v-neck blouse showing her cleavage. See, she tells her husband: this is why she doesn't like to walk on Amsterdam Ave.

540 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes, 58 seconds

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's being in the city all summer, around more people than usual. Maybe it's her skin all broken out. But she's been thinking of summer camp. How, when she was seven or eight, she scratched mosquito bites to the point where her legs were covered in sores. Horrified, her parents dragged her to the doctor. "See that, now you won't be able to go swimming," they told her. They knew she couldn't swim. They might or might not have known about the buddy system, how always two people had to stay together, and no one wanted to stay with her in the shallow water.

That's when the scratching habit started.

Just last night she was recounting the horrors of sleep-away camp, when a message would come over the loudspeaker every morning telling the kids how to dress, and counselors would yell at her for not putting shorts on. Then today she reads of a Shanghai company asking workers to wear shorts and tee-shirts to work to help save energy. Sitting a foot from the air conditioner replaced two years ago, she breaks out in chicken bumps. This is as bad as it was in the doctor's office when they tried to show her how to give herself insulin. She couldn't. Wouldn't. Won't.

And steroids, of course, would cure the rash.

Most years, in May, when anorexic women in the city wear less clothing, she walks around feeling ugly. Then, in June, she goes upstate, sees fat women with dirty hair and baby carriages in the supermarket, and starts to feel good about herself. But she's locked in the city this year. Maybe that's what depresses her.

540 days, 9 hours, 0 minutes, 50 seconds

Isolated thunderstorms predicted. The temperature's dropped eight degrees in the last twenty minutes. Thunder and lightning seem almost on top of each other. Her husband picks up an umbrella and heads for the coffee shop. She nibbles at a block of Jarlsburg the same color as that soap.