Photos of You (ARC)

by Tammy Robinson

  My room is the same as the day I left it. Well, that’s not strictly true. When I’d left, seven years ago, I’d been giddy with newfound independence and freedom and I packed in a hurry, throwing anything I thought I might need into a bin bag and leaving the rest lying around like hurricane debris. My mother has been through and tidied, most likely seizing the opportunity to throw a few things out.

  Lowering myself gently down on to the end of the bed, I look around, feeling a mixture of emotions. I grew up in this room. My parents bought the house before I was born, and even though I’ve lived under a few roofs since, this is the only one that has ever really felt like home.

  I reach out to run a hand along the smooth wooden walls behind my bed. I can tell you exactly how many knots in the wood there are in my room (487), and which boards creak in the heat of the afternoon sun, and which ones constrict noisily in protest when it’s winter and the air outside is cold. The stain is still on the carpet from where I spilled my pink nail polish when I was twelve and getting ready for my first disco, and there is the tiniest crack in the corner of the window from where I threw my shoe at it in frustration when I was sixteen and grounded, for a reason that seemed devastatingly unfair at the time and something I’d never get over but is nothing but a foggy memory now.

  The walls feel like they are closing in on me and I can’t breathe without making a strange choking sound. The tears come again. I fall backwards onto the bed and I let them fall. Noiseless but no less powerful, I rage internally against the unfairness of it all. Why me? Why again? Was it not enough for me to live with the fear of death hanging over me once? To have my body sliced open and bits that had turned against me like mutinous sailors be removed, carted off to some laboratory to be biopsied and then incinerated like a grim rehearsal, before the rest of me followed in the same manner? To be pumped so full of drugs I barely recognized my own reflection in the mirror, that of some bloated, bald woman who bore more resemblance to a corpse in some B-grade horror movie than the person I was?

  Just enough time had passed for me to relax a little, let my guard down and the fear that followed me around dissipate. I let myself think I was in the clear, enjoying life. But now here I am, face-to-face with my own mortality again, only this time there is a limited amount of sand in the hourglass and it’s trickling away fast.

  I don’t know how long I spend curled up in the fetal position, mourning a simpler time and the innocent person I was, but eventually I remember why I am here, and that there are people present just for me. They don’t know why I have disappeared. To them I am simply being rude. So I turn the light back on and uncurl. Yesterday, those twinges in my back and legs would barely have registered. Today, I know they are a symptom of the beginning of the end of me.

  My reflection in the mirror is not great, but it’ll have to do. I’m not the kind of girl who carries spare makeup around with her for touch-ups. I wipe the tears from my face with my hands and dry them on my dress. Yesterday, this dress consumed an inordinate amount of my thoughts. Was it OK for the party? Dressy enough? Not so dressy it looked like I was heading out for cocktails afterwards? Now it feels like a stupid waste of thought. I could have spent that time cloud-watching, or reading a good book, or writing a letter to the pen pal I haven’t thought of or written to in over ten years. Assuming she’s still at the same address. The point is I could have spent that time doing something meaningful instead of worrying about whether my outfit looked good or not. I had learned that the first time, but somewhere over the couple of years I had slipped back into old habits. It’s easy to spout off the catchphrases—“Life is short,” “Live every moment as if it’s your last”—but truly maintaining that kind of life long-term is exhausting.

  I’m turning to the door when something white catches my eye. A picture, pinned to my dream board. Another thing I’d left in my haste to leave the nest and flex my budding adulthood.

  The rain is falling harder, the noise almost deafening, like it’s a metaphor for the way I’m feeling. I walk over to the dream board and study the pictures I carefully cut out of magazines and pinned there so long ago. They are as familiar to me as my face, and I trace my finger over them gently. I spent so much time back then looking at them, dreaming, imagining my future.

  They are not pictures of exotic destinations. No pictures of Disney World or Paris or the pyramids in Egypt. Nothing like that.

  The pictures are of bridal shoes, jewelry, bouquets. Cakes and flower-strewn altars. Brides wearing the most exquisite dresses, with immaculate hair and makeup and expressions of blissful rapture.

  There is a knock on the door and I turn my head toward it. The handle turns and it opens; my mother’s head pops around.

  “There you are,” she says. “Are you OK?”

  I nod.

  “Well, come back out then and mingle with your guests. They’re starting to think you’ve deserted them.”

  After a last, lingering glance at the pictures, I follow her, down the hallway back into the lounge.

  “I found her,” my mother announces brightly to no one in particular. Still, most people turn and smile. Amanda has been in the kitchen getting a drink and comes over to peer at me shrewdly.

  “You OK?” she asks quietly.

  I put my arms around her neck and rest my forehead against hers. This close I can see the freckles on her nose that she spent a great deal of our teenage years caking in foundation to try to cover.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not OK. But thank you for asking.”

  She frowns, confused.

  “How about a speech from the birthday girl,” someone calls, and a hush falls over the room, the only sound the rain, which is pounding now. Everyone looks at me expectantly. I pull away from Amanda, although I leave one arm slung over her shoulders. I look out at the faces, all watching me expectantly, all familiar and yet so foreign, in that moment. These people have the rest of their lives to look forward to. They will mourn me, of course, at first. How long does that last, though? Until ordinary life creeps back in and thoughts of me become further and further in between? Selfishly, perhaps, the thought of my family and friends living on without me brings me no comfort, just fear.

  Life just got urgent.

  If you have something you want to do, do it. Do it now.

  The old lady’s words echo back to me.

  “I’m getting married,” I say quietly.

  My mother’s face creases in a quizzical expression as she tries to digest the words she just heard.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Say that again?” Amanda says.

  “I’m getting married,” I say again, louder. “I’M GETTING MARRIED.”

  The rain stops.

  My mother looks from me to Amanda.

  “To her?” she says.

  Chapter Four

  There must be something they can do? A drug trial? Did you ask him about any new drug trials?”

  Only my parents, Kate and Amanda, and I are left. My mother all but hurried the guests out the door, plates of food pressed into their hands, shortly after my marriage announcement. She knew something was up, and it was confirmed when I started crying and seemed unable to stop. I sat at the dining table with the tears streaming into my nose, my mouth, and my hair, until I was a sodden, damp mess that gaped like a goldfish every time one of them asked me what was wrong, incapable of words.

  In the end my mother poured neat whiskey down my throat and that stopped the tears, at least long enough for me to tell them.

  My father hasn’t said anything since, not a word. He is staring at the wall as if he can see through it, to some other place, another dimension, one where his only daughter hasn’t just told him he’ll be burying her before the year is out.

  Kate and Amanda are crying. Quietly, unobtrusively, low sniffles and pained breathing. My mother gave them glasses of whiskey for the shock too. Amanda is already on her third measure; her coping mechanism anytime she has bad news is to get completely shi
tfaced. I feel like joining her. Anything that will help numb the sense of impending doom I feel, and the guilt that threatens to choke me for putting my parents through this.

  My mother isn’t taking the news lying down. Even though I have told her everything the doctor told me, she is insistent I must be wrong. That I’ve misheard something, that in my shock I missed out on a vital piece of the conversation. She is angry that I went without her, as if her presence today would have changed the very outcome of the meeting.

  I shake my head. “No. I didn’t ask.”

  “Right. We’ll go see him again tomorrow, together. You’re in too much shock to ask the questions that need to be asked.”

  I take another gulp of whiskey. “Fine.”

  “We’re not giving in to this,” my mother warns me. “You have to fight, just like last time.”

  The thought of going through all that again is unbearable. But what choice do I have? I nod.

  My dad stirs for the first time and looks at me. “Should you be drinking? In your condition?”

  “She’s not bloody pregnant,” Mum snaps, and he bows his head.

  I put a hand on his arm. “It’s OK, Dad, it can’t get any worse than it already is.”

  He nods and pats my hand. His face has gone that pale yellow color of the first spring daffodils, only on skin it isn’t anywhere near as pretty.

  Chapter Five

  How long does she have?”

  Dr. Harrison gives my mother a look I’m sure he’s cultivated especially for mothers like her.

  She’d bustled into his office today determined to change his mind, like my terminal diagnosis was just some half-cocked idea he’d come up with on his own.

  “You must have made a mistake,” she said.

  He hadn’t.

  “Surely there’s a way to cure this?”

  There wasn’t.

  “You’re telling me, that all you doctors with your collective wisdom, you can’t find a way to save my daughter?”

  That’s exactly what he was telling her.

  Finally, after exhausting all her prepared questions and failing to get a different answer, she had blusteringly accepted it, inasmuch as a mother can accept being told her only child is not long for this earth, and had just asked him the question I’d been longing to but had been too afraid.

  “That’s hard to say,” he says carefully.

  “Come on, you must have a ballpark figure.”

  “We don’t like to give people false hope.”

  “How about if we promise not to hold you to it?” she says exasperatedly. “Give us some idea, please.”

  “I really couldn’t hazard—”

  “Do you have children of your own, Dr. Harrison?” my mother interrupts.

  “No.”

  “Well, could you just right now, just for a minute, pretend that you do. And then put yourself in our shoes. How. Long.” My mother’s teeth are gritted, her expression steely.

  “A year maybe, eighteen months. Could be less, could be longer.”

  “With all due respect, Doctor.” I lean forward to speak up for the first time. “There’s a big difference between twelve months and eighteen. A whole extra six months, in fact. There’s a lot I could do with that time. I could take a world cruise in six months.”

  My mother’s head swivels to look at me. “Is that on the cards?”

  I shrug. “I dunno. Probably not. But I’d like to know my options. I’m not going to go ahead and book something if it’s unlikely I’ll be around to enjoy it.”

  Dr. Harrison rotates his pen between his left thumb and forefinger, a nervous habit he’s probably not even aware he has. He looks to his computer screen for help, but the inconsiderate thing has gone into sleep mode.

  “I wish I could be more specific,” he says finally. “I really do. And I understand the desire to have a time frame. I’d be the same in your shoes. But these things can change depending on circumstance. General health, the treatment options you choose. It’s just not something we can predict with any great accuracy.”

  I sit back in my chair and exhale. “It’s OK. I understand.”

  My mother looks at me with a stunned, helpless expression. “This can’t be it, the final say on the matter. We’ll get a second opinion.”

  “Absolutely. You’re welcome to do that, of course,” Dr. Harrison says, twirling his pen. “I can recommend someone, if you like?”

  “No.”

  “Ava—”

  “No, Mum. Dr. Harrison knows what he’s doing. I trust him.”

  “It’s not about trust. This is your life we’re talking about.”

  Normally I’d react to a statement like that. But I know she doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. She’s hurting too.

  “I’m aware of that,” I say levelly.

  Her shoulders collapse inward like someone just punctured her lungs. My normally youthful mother suddenly looks every year of her age. “Of course you are. Sorry.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “No, it’s not. None of this is OK.”

  “That’s got to be the understatement of the year.” I smile, trying to break through her seriousness. Not that the situation doesn’t deserve her gravity, because of course it does. But if I only have a few months left I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend them being miserable all the time. The odd pity party is allowed, expected, even, but I’m not going to wallow there. She gives me a hopeless little smile. This isn’t fair on her either.

  “When would you like to start treatment, Ava?” Dr. Harrison clicks his mouse to bring up a calendar, relieved to be back on familiar territory.

  “As soon as possible,” Mum answers him. She looks at me. “Right?”

  I look out the window at the sky. It is fiercely blue today, and almost empty bar a few scraps of cloud clinging to the hills. I feel like my senses have been heightened by my diagnosis, and I’m painfully aware that out there life is happening, all around. I hear traffic, voices, birds, and the distant hum of one of the small aircraft that fly tourists up and down the coast on sightseeing trips. Out there, new life is being created, people are taking their first breath, just as others are taking their last.

  “Just so we’re clear.” I look Dr. Harrison straight in the eyes. “You can’t cure me, is that right?”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “And these treatments, chemo and the like, they would merely be prolonging the inevitable?”

  “Not necessarily prolong, no. It’s difficult to say. Best-case scenario we would buy you some time, yes.”

  “But nothing is definite.”

  “No.”

  “So what’s the point?”

  Mum stiffens. She has sensed where I’m heading.

  Dr. Harrison scratches his head. “With treatment we can prevent some of the complications that may arise. We also hope to improve your quality of life, and of course manage your pain.”

  “Basically you want to be able to look in the mirror before bed and say you did everything you could.”

  He gives me a look that says I’m not being fair. “We do everything we can for all of our patients, Ava.”

  “I believe you. But, Dr. Harrison”—I shuffle forward so I’m sitting on the front of my seat, my elbows on his desk—“I need you to cut the bullshit.”

  Mum snorts and covers her eyes with her hands. She’s used to my bluntness, and while normally she’d make an effort to stop me, she correctly senses this is one of those moments in life when she needs to let me be an adult on my own terms.

  Dr. Harrison looks both amused and wary. “I’m not bullshitting you, Ava.”

  “Good. So the kind of chemo you’re suggesting is aggressive, yes?”

  He nods.

  “The kind like I had last time? That will leave me feeling so wretched and broken I’ll almost beg for death?”

  He swallows but says nothing.

  “I appreciate that you’re offering me options,” I say. “But I don’t want
to waste a minute being falsely optimistic, and I don’t want to spend what little time I have left up here, having X-rays, and scans, and endless blood draws. Vomiting my guts out and losing control over my body and any dignity I still have. And I definitely don’t want that port back in my chest for you to pump drugs into me that will do just as much damage as they may, on the off chance, do some good.”

  “It’s your choice,” he says finally. “Of course it is. And, believe it or not, I do understand where you’re coming from.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Just so we’re clear,” he says, leaning forward himself. “You’re making the decision, as is your right, to forgo treatment.”

  “I’m making the decision to plan for the worst and hope for the best. I’m making the decision to not spend my last days here in a futile effort to buy myself more time when that time would be spent barely living anyway. But also, I’m making the decision to keep my options open, because I might change my mind in a week and be back here begging for you to help me.”

  He gives a small smile. “I’ll be here.”

  Chapter Six

  I spend a few days after the appointment at home, wallowing and feeling sorry for myself, watching crappy daytime TV and eating anything at all that takes my fancy. I figure there’s no point anymore in either trying to watch my figure or heal my body through healthy choices.

  But it’s not in me just to quit outright. And even if it was, my mother wouldn’t let me. She comes around to browbeat me into accepting treatment through an efficient mix of nagging and parental guilt.

  I am camped out on the couch wearing the same clothes I have been wearing for the last three days straight. Track pants and a slouchy top that, conveniently, works as either day wear or sleepwear, allowing me to slip effortlessly from one to the other.

  “I just want to be alone,” I tell her mournfully when I open the door wearing my most pitiful expression.

  “Tough,” she says, pushing past me. I watch as she picks her way through the detritus of my life, gingerly collecting up dirty plates and containers off the floor, her disapproval obvious.