So her friends visit her in pairs, bearing bubble wrap and boxes and small, meaningful gifts that have to be packed along with dishes and books. Nobody can believe this is happening, although they felt the same way about the lump, the chemo, the mastectomy, the other chemo. But crippled isn’t cancer, and for that they’re all grateful. They’ve heard that Iowa is beautiful. One of her former coworkers, a man from the Bronx, asks if she will have neighbors out there. She visits the clinic one last time, stumping past the waiting room filled with women in various states of deconstruction. The medical staff seem very pleased with how the breast turned out and mildly surprised that she’s leaving but they know that cancer changes people, turns them around in significant ways.

I can’t walk, she says tersely. I lost my job and my pension.

And Iowa truly is beautiful in September when she arrives. She moves into Linda and Wayne’s spare room and sets to work getting back on her feet, literally. She undergoes physical therapy for numbness and foot drop, and the local doctors install something called a transcutaneous nerve stimulator, which works, slowly and miraculously.

She feels bionic and hopeful in her leg brace and dungarees, restored to her former Iowa self, sitting on the dark porch at night with Linda and Wayne and one or two of their children, cats wafting around their ankles while they talk and talk. During the days, she works on her leg, walking and stretching and balancing herself, practicing with the cane until she’s almost like a regular person. They rake leaves right before a windstorm and wake the next morning to find them evenly distributed over the lawn again. They have barbecues and card games. She and Linda house-hunt with fervor, horrified at what they see until one day a little house on Davenport Street goes on the market and they get wild with excitement. Wayne looks it over and they scheme; Cheri calls her mother and arranges a loan, then lands a job in an optometrist’s office where she doesn’t have to stand or walk and can sit all day on a stool, her cane against the wall behind her. Within three months of arriving in Iowa, she has a house, a job, and a life.