A month in Paris, I reflect, as I lie awake, afterward. He’s snoring beside me, turned to face me, one leg thrown over mine, his manhood slack and wet against my hip, hand flung over my breast.
A month in Paris is way more than a vacation.
Fear is building. Panic. Desperation.
“Don’t leave me,” I whisper to my sleeping husband. “Please, don’t leave me.”
Never. I won’t leave you. I swear on my soul.
Keep that promise, my love. Please.
The Truth Will Out
“Welcome to Charles de Gaulle International Airport. The local time is 1:43a.m.…” the message continues with announcements and information, and then everything is repeated in French.
We packed light. One suitcase each, one carry-on each, plus one extra empty suitcase each. I’ve rented a flat in the 4th Arrondissement, Le Marais: trendy, hip, close to all the best of everything Paris has to offer…or so said the travel agent I hired to set this all up. Not knowing any better, I went with her expertise. I mean, she did have a French accent, and her name was Eloise Gautier, and her office is in Paris, so it stands to reason she’d know.
She told me our flat is a top-floor corner spot, with the most romantic view of the Eiffel Tower you can ask for. I paid extra to have it stocked with hand-picked red wine and champagne, stuffed to embarrassment with profusions of roses and bouquets of wildflowers, to have the fridge filled with cheese and strawberries and blueberries and yogurt and charcuterie meat and baguettes in the breadbox. Candles everywhere—I send a text when we’re leaving the airport, and the agent will send someone to light the candles. We have a car service, available to us twenty-four seven for the duration of our stay. I’ve scheduled a personal shopper for Nadia, and took out a credit card with an eye-watering credit limit.
I’ve also got essentially a bucket of high-dose painkiller narcotics, not just the good stuff but the best stuff. I sampled them a few days ago, when I first got them, and whoa. Seriously whoa. I have to be careful, judicious. Mainly at night, so I can sleep, or only during the day if it’s too much to bear.
I’ve gone all out for this trip. I cashed out a bunch of investments to pay for it, and did some financial jujitsu with the rest, moving them to less risky, more stable portfolios, and all solely in Nadia’s name. I’ve done a lot, the past couple months. My final book is done. The arrangements have all been made.
The entire reason I booked this trip in the first place is because I met with my oncologist, Dr. Jerry Lowell, not that long ago.
“All we can really do at this point, Adrian,” he’d told me, “is try to make you as comfortable as we can. We can keep doing chemo if you want, it’ll push things out a few more weeks, maybe a few more months at most. But…in the end, there’s really nothing else we can do.”
“Say I stop all chemo, all treatments,” I’d said. “How long?”
“Two, maybe three months. Three and a half on the outside.”
I’d nodded. “I had a feeling.” My eyes had burned, and Dr. Jerry had the decency to find something on his computer to do while I fought for composure. “So, how do we make me comfortable? Meaning, I want to be able to enjoy the time I have left with my wife as much as possible.”
He’d nodded, and explained my options to me.
So now, here we are. Paris. The trip of a lifetime. Of course, we’ve been here before. London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Berlin, Perth, Dublin, Reykjavik, lots of places. Signing tours, film publicity tours, that kind of thing. But they had always been for work. We always took a few extra days around the event to see the sights and play tourist, but we’ve never taken a major vacation like this without there being some kind of work event connected to it.
This is…not goodbye. Not yet. This is…I don’t know what the hell it is. Time with my wife, my best friend. An epic send-off. Memories to hold on to as I near the end.
I push my morbid thoughts aside as we slide through Paris traffic. I’m holding her hand, watching her more than the sights. She’s radiant, lovelier than ever. She had her hair trimmed, three inches off the bottom. Got a manicure, a pedicure, the works. Her eyes soak up the sights.
I’m going to make this the best month of her life. Take all the drugs to kill the pain and fight the nausea. Pretend it’s a stomach bug that won’t quite go away. There’ll be time, later.
I know she should have more time to adjust, but…selfishly, I can’t give her that. I want this time for us.
Us without
The Big C
between us, hanging like a bloody carcass, dripping effluvia all over our joy.
No. This trip is about us.
* * *
The first two weeks have been magical. We spent it walking, shopping, sitting in cafes sipping espresso and eating flaky, delicate pastries.
We attended Mass in Notre Dame at midnight. The nave was bigger than belief, the vaulted ceiling dark with age. A beautiful young woman in a blue gown sang an aria in Latin, sang it with such holy, reverent beauty that we both wept.
One day we strolled across the Pont des Arts bridge with hundreds of padlocks on it—there was signage posted in English and French prohibiting further locks, because the weight of them was beginning to compromise the integrity of the bridge, but we stood there at the apex of that romantic bridge at sunset, watching the water flow underneath like a ribbon of silk blowing in a silent wind. The locks caught the light, reflected and refracted, and each one represented a love story. We examined some of the locks and pretended we could determine the details of the lives of the people who’d put them there.
We lay in the long green lawn under the dizzying height of the Eiffel Tower, listening to the chatter of a dozen languages, watching lovers take selfies.
We made love, endlessly. I required a lot of chemical help, now, but she didn’t need to know that. All she needed to know was that I loved her, that I worshiped her body, that I treasured her.
I barely sleep anymore. It’s like my mind, now that the end grows near, refuses to let miss even a few hours of life.
I watch her sleep.
I write poems to her, about her, for her.
I write vignettes, remembering our life together. That time we tried to adopt a dog from a shelter, and it turned out to be a wild monster of destruction, sweet and hysterical but obsessed with eating couches and shoes and counters and cabinets and even, when locked in the garage, my lawnmower. It ate my fucking lawnmower. The final straw for it was when it ate Nadia’s Michael Kors purse—literally ate it, devoured every last scrap of expensive leather.
There are a thousand stories, and I lie awake and try to remember them all, write them all. What I’ll do with the collection, I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just for me.
She wakes up, sees me in the bed next to her, my laptop on my thighs, the screen glow lighting my face. Snuggles closer. Kisses my shoulder.
* * *
It’s taking more and more drugs to act normal.
We have a week left. I feel my body shutting down. I feel things beginning to fail.
I’m not ready, goddammit.
I mean, in terms of “wrapping up my affairs” I’m as ready as I can be. It’s all arranged, everything is taken care of. She won’t have to do a thing, after I’m gone.
Sometimes, when I do manage to catch a little sleep, I wake up and see that she’s watching me.
Once, after a long night of sex and wine and French TV, I fell asleep on the couch and I woke up curled on her lap like a cat, and she was stroking my hair, what’s left of it, and she was crying.
She knows.
But when we’re awake, we pretend this is just a vacation.
It’s what I need, and she knows it. She needs it too, but I’m not sure she realizes the depth of that, just yet.
I had to convince her to splurge on the shopping trips. She’s a naturally thrifty person, doesn’t let herself spend a lot very often. One time I wanted her to buy a Porsche, but she settled for an
A5. I wanted her to get a Chanel bag, and she bought a Louis Vuitton.
This time, I insisted. It’s taken care of, I told her. So she did. Reluctantly at first, but when she saw the way it made me smile, she let herself get into it and enjoy the splurge.
* * *
We wake up to our last morning in our Parisian flat.
We pack up, and I tell her to leave everything but her carry-on and purse, it’ll all be taken care of.
We haul our carry-ons down to the cafe a half block from our flat, where we’ve become regulars this past month. We get espresso and pain au chocolat, sit one last time watching the passersby, gazing lovingly at each other.
“Thank you for this,” she says, finally, after a long thoughtful silence between us.
I’ve been getting emotional, lately. I have to fight it so she doesn’t misinterpret it. “No, Nadia. Thank you. You’ve made this best month of my life.” I have to clear my throat, look away.
She reaches across the small round table, through the wreckage of espresso cups and pastry platters and crumbs. Takes my hand. I have to look back, at her, meet her eyes.
“Best month ever,” she agrees.
It’s there, unspoken.
Not yet. I silently plead with her to not ask, not yet.
She doesn’t.
* * *
Touch down, Atlanta.
Home.
Unpacking.
I’d arranged for the house to be cleaned in our absence, the fridge emptied and restocked, bed linens refreshed, fresh flowers everywhere. So it’d be a welcoming homecoming.
* * *
It’s impossible to ignore reality, now.
Finally, I know it’s time to tell her. I loathe this. She’ll be angry I’ve waited so long. There’s so little time left.
It’s hard to get out of bed the next morning. So, for once, I don’t.
Nadia comes in with coffee, a mug for each of us. I take mine, sip at it.
“We need to talk,” I whisper.
She nods, but is already blinking hard.
A brief, hard pause.
“What is it, and how long?” she asks.
“Pancreatic. End-stage…” I have to pause for courage. “Probably another month or two.” Getting those words out is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
“Adrian.” Her hand trembles. She comes perilously close to spilling scalding coffee on her hands, so I take the mug from her and set it on the bedside table.
She stands up. Paces away.
I give her space.
She turns around, and I see that anger I know I deserve in her eyes. “A month or two?”
I nod, shrug. “There’s no way to know for sure.” I try to swallow, but can’t. “This isn’t exactly scientific here, but…I can feel…it. The end. It’s not far off.”
“No…” she hisses. “No, Adrian, no.”
I don’t know what to say, now that this moment is here. “I’m sorry I kept it from you.”
She laughs bitterly. “You thought you were. But I’ve known all along.”
“Then you know why.”
“Yes.” She sits, takes her mug back, and curls both hands around it.
Her thick black hair is loose, wild as thunderclouds. She’s wearing my UNC T-shirt, and little boy-style briefs with flowers and hearts on them. They’re so fucking adorable on her it makes my chest hurt. Sunlight shines early morning yellow-gold through our bedroom window; it’s open, that window, letting in a breeze that wafts her hair playfully. A robin sings on a branch just outside. I can see it, the robin, redbreast puffing and fluffing, fluttering its wings, lifting its head and calling to the sky.
She tucks her bare thigh under the other, all but sits on me. She’s battling more emotions than any human should experience all at once.
“Yes,” she finally repeats. “I understand why. Doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you for it, though.”
“I’m sorry, Nadia. I just…I couldn’t let it be your burden.”
“You fought it?”
“For a year and a half. Mostly chemo. Surgery was never an option—didn’t find it till it was too late for that.”
“A year—” Her voice breaks. “A year and a half? Fuck you, Adrian. A year and a half?” She ducks her head, and a tear slips down her nose. “I’m your wife. It was my duty and burden to help you bear this.”
I touch her chin, but she pulls away. “No, Nadia, it wasn’t. You couldn’t have healed me, not even with your force of will.”
“I’m so angry with you for this, Adrian. So angry.”
“I know.”
“But you did it anyway. You knew I’d feel this way.”
“I couldn’t tell you. I tried. Right at the beginning. I almost told you. But then I…I thought about you wanting to push my wheelchair to and from chemo, and holding trash cans for me to puke into, and…I just couldn’t. You couldn’t have changed anything, Nadia. Chemo is boring. It gave me a little extra time, but that’s it.”
“I should have been there with you.”
“I don’t know how to say this without it sounding harsh or mean, but…I didn’t want you there. It’s dark and brutal and cruel and evil, Nadia. I needed you to be you—to be innocent and beautiful and good. I needed you to come home to, to be my brightness when I felt dark. I’d feel sorry for myself and then I’d come home and you’d kiss me and you’d look at me like I’m the best thing since red wine.”
She sniffles a laugh, wet around tears. “You’re not that great,” she teases.
Silence.
“So, how does this work?” she asks, finally.
I shrug. “Hell if I know. My first time dying of cancer,” I quip, but it’s bitter and falls flat, and she flinches. “Sorry. I’m not flippant about this, I swear. But sometimes humor is the only way I can face it.”
She takes my hand. “Since you kept it from me for so long, I think it’s only fair we do this my way.”
“‘Oh good, my way… What’s my way?’” I quote.
“‘The moment his head is in view, smash it with the rock!’” She continues the Princess Bride quote, mostly correctly.
“‘My way’s not very sportsmanlike,’” I finish.
She laughs, but again it’s more of a wet sniffle than a laugh. “We should watch that.”
“Nadia.”
She shakes her head. “My way is I quit my job, or take an indefinite leave. You let me take care of you. We spend this time together. Like in Paris, but at home, and—and all the way to…to the—the end.”
“All right.” What else is there to say?
She’s blinking hard, head tipped back. “You’re sure there’s nothing…they can—they can do?”
“I’m sure.” I wave a hand. “I could do more chemo, but at this point even the most aggressive chemo is just going to make my last few weeks or months a misery. Chemo fucking sucks…it sucks, it really, really, really sucks.”
She nods. “I’ve done shifts in the oncology ward.”
“I guess, if it can’t be cured, and there’s nothing else that can really extend my life in any meaningful way, then…I’d just rather go as peacefully as I can.”
She’s chewing on something. “What…god, I don’t even know how to ask it. What will it be like? Do you know?”
I shake my head. “No, not really. I’ve wondered more than a few times myself, especially recently, but it feels sort of—I don’t know, defeatist? Morbid?—to Google or ask the doctor what dying of pancreatic cancer will be like. Not fun, I can tell you that. But I’ve got…” I tug open my bedside drawer and pull out my little leather satchel of pills. “This. A veritable pharmacy of shit that’s supposed to take the edge off. So I guess I’ll just get all strung out and…we’ll be together through it.”
She’s sorting through the bottles, reading the labels with a certain professional curiosity. She lifts one. “Adrian. Really?”
I know what’s she’s got: the little blue pills. “I get by with
a little help from my friends,” I say, trying to smile. “I just needed…I needed you to—to know that I still…that I’m not—”
“Oh, Adrian…” she chokes out.
“It’s taking so much from me,” I say, swallowing hard, my words feeling thick and slow. “I wasn’t going to let it take that. I don’t need them, especially when I’m not doing chemo, which I haven’t since I was in Boston. It just helps things…last longer. Helps me out, when my body is using all its resources elsewhere. Doesn’t leave a lot left over for sustaining erections, or sexual stamina.”
“Coulda fooled me,” she whispers. “Did fool me.”
A long pause.
“I have another question,” she whispers.
“’Kay.”
“Is this why we haven’t been able to conceive?”
“Didn’t help,” I admit. “Chemo kills everything—it doesn’t discriminate. So yeah, it killed all my swimmers. But I also think there was an issue there before, honestly. I remember when Mom was in the hospital she was kinda delirious for a while and was just rambling, and she said she and Dad tried for years before they had me, and were never able to conceive again, which makes me think I’m either sterile or I just have shitty sperm.” I take her hand again. “So, I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I couldn’t…” My voice breaks. Fuck, this is hard. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you that.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize.”
“I know you want a baby, more than just about anything.”
“Well, I did. Now I just want you to…to not fucking die.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that myself.” I cup her cheek. “Still. I’m sorry, Nadia.”
She sets her mug on the side table, roughly, the coffee sloshing over the rim and dribbling down the side, smearing in a ring around the base. Climbs onto me, stretching onto my body, curling her hands behind my head, breathing in my scent and clinging to me.
The Cabin Page 7