Truth and Beauty

by Ann Patchett

that I could not worry about Lucy anymore. I knew then it was just too enormous for me to manage and that worrying about her would swamp me. If I was swamped by worry, I would be useless to her.

work was the path to God, and that while it was a fine thing to feel loyalty and devotion in your heart, it would be much better for everyone involved if you could find the physical manifestations of your good thoughts and see them put into action.

my big chance for love, that I was doing something very romantic and important, but looking back on it now, it all seems part of a very simple equation: I left the house where I lived with someone who loved me to go to the house of someone who did not love me at all.

It was not an unusual story or even an interesting one, but when the punch line came it devastated me nevertheless. No one was in the Polo Club at four o’clock in the afternoon except for the bartender and the man waiting to meet me. When I walked in, the philanthropists’ adviser kissed me on the mouth and I knew the fun was up.

“All those conversations, details. Were you ever worried that you might get something wrong?” “I didn’t remember it,” Lucy said pointedly. “I wrote it. I’m a writer.” This shocked the audience more than her dismissal of illness, but she made her point: she was making art, not documenting an event. That she chose to tell her own extraordinary story was of secondary importance. Her cancer and subsequent suffering had not made this book. She had made it. Her intellect and ability were in every sense larger than the disease.

She had taught before and she liked a routine and she liked having people around, two things I never went in for.

“Why doesn’t anybody love me?” she said. “No,” I said. “Wait a minute. You promised you weren’t going to do that. You said that you were going to stop beating yourself up over this until all of the surgeries were over.” “I don’t want to go through this alone. It’s too much.” “But you aren’t alone. You know that isn’t true.” “I want a boyfriend. I’m so tired of being lonely.” “Oh, Lucy, please don’t do this to yourself,” I begged.

can make you feel like a saint. That’s what you’ve always wanted.” I stopped and looked at her, washcloth suspended. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Oh, Lucy, don’t do this. You really care for Stuart. He’s a good friend. Don’t turn it into this.” But now she was really crying, and I wanted her to settle down for fear she’d break something open. “I’m so tired of being lonely,” she said. I realized that night that there was nothing in the body I was afraid of. There was no wound I couldn’t clean and dress, nothing that made me feel squeamish or ashamed. Even the pain didn’t make me turn away.