She made a quick pit stop at home, and then the wintry temperature propelled her around the Tan Track in record time. After a shower and change, she was back out again into the cold and bundled up in her thick, cream coat, heading back into the city to Chinatown where she met Ally at their favourite restaurant.
They ordered the Peking duck, requesting to assemble their own pancakes. Maddie spread a generous helping of plum sauce across the surface of the pancake, added a small amount of duck and a decent sprinkling of the cucumber, but no spring onions.
‘I can’t believe you never told me what Caitlin said to you that day.’ Ally spread a more modest helping of plum sauce around a fresh pancake. She tore some duck apart on the centre plate and arranged it on top, added a few slivers of spring onion and cucumber.
As soon as Maddie returned from Sydney, she had confided in her best friend. Saying the words out loud had diluted them in a way, and she couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to see them for what they really were – just words.
‘I know that now, Ally. I should’ve told the people I love most in the world and saved myself a whole lot of pain.’
‘I’m still worried about you, Maddie.’ Ally tore away some more duck and positioned it on the pancake. ‘Is Evan off the scene for good?’
Maddie finished her mouthful and licked away the plum sauce that had oozed down one finger, giving her a chance to cast her mind back to that time alone with him in his apartment.
‘I haven’t heard from him,’ she answered honestly, rolling another pancake into a perfect cigar shape, all its contents safely tucked inside.
Ally topped up both glasses of wine and changed tack. ‘Have you decided what to do about Caitlin?’
She shook her head. Caitlin’s number was programmed into her phone, but that was as far as she’d got.
A bowl of steaming egg fried rice appeared in the centre of the table, along with a sticky offering of sweet and sour pork that Maddie began to spoon into rice bowls.
Ally armed herself with a set of chopsticks. ‘You know how every year I try to take you away from the 9/11 hype?’
‘It’s only July, Ally.’
‘I know.’ Her friend shrugged. ‘Call this an early getaway, then.’
Maddie thought back to Ally’s attempts over the years. ‘Let me see: last year it was the Blue Mountains, the year before was Olinda, the year before that was Noosa.’
‘Okay, okay. It’s just that Joel has been offered a holiday apartment up on Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays for the first weekend in August. It’s a three-bedroom place, and Josh said he’s up for a weekend away, Todd too. It’ll be about a few friends getting away from the cold and warming up for a while, at no cost apart from the flight. I think it could really do you good.’
‘I’m not sure.’ Maddie hadn’t seen Josh since the night she went home with him, and she still felt guilty for the way she’d led him on.
‘Don’t worry about Josh. He knows you’re invited and he’s totally cool with that.’
‘I’m not sure I could get time off work,’ she teased.
‘I’ll ring your boss myself – tell him it’s essential for mental health!’ She pointed her chopsticks at Maddie.
‘There’s no need you daft cow. I’m in.’
‘You are?’ Ally’s chopsticks went flying in her excitement and a waiter nearby scuttled over with a fresh set.
‘Just try and stop me.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
The chemotherapy session wiped Evan out even more than he had expected, but he would take the tiredness and the nausea anytime over hair loss and constant vomiting that he had assumed would be part and parcel of the affair.
Ben had waited with him for the two-hour session and they had played cards to take his mind off the needle going into his arm and the drip leaking poison into his body. Evan had seen others coming and going for their own treatment, surprised at an atmosphere less tinged with stress and fear than he had expected.
He knew he should be happy, happy that he wasn’t one of those poor bastards who had already signed up for relentless chemo sessions day after day, week after week – longer sometimes. A pale, drawn-out man had passed by just after Evan started his own session with the IV drip, and Evan was shocked that he couldn’t even begin to guess the man’s approximate age: with no hair and skin that looked as delicate as the thin film that sat beneath chicken skin, it was impossible.
How on earth did people go through it time after time? How on earth did they manage to keep going? He shared his doctor’s hope that his experience with chemo would be a very short-lived one.
Evan had chatted briefly with one of the jolliest women he had ever met just as he was about to leave the hospital room. Lorraine had bantered on about her selection of fluro headscarves she had at home, used to hide her bald head – fluro green was today’s choice – and she had told him that this wretched chemo wasn’t going to cure her, but it would buy her some time with her kids. It would let her see her youngest daughter get married in a few weeks, and then she intended to stop prolonging the inevitable.
After Lorraine shuffled off to her treatment session, Evan had gone into the men’s and cried, sick to the pit of his stomach that life could be so cruel. He and Ben had driven home from the hospital in silence, and Ben had taken some convincing to leave him alone in his apartment.
*
In the days following his chemo, Evan lapsed back into the same gloominess he had seen following his operation. The words of the doctor still rang in his ears: ‘Attitude can make a huge difference to recovery time.’ Yeah, well, that was easy for him to say. Evan alternated between sleeping and moping on the sofa. He sat outside on the balcony if the weather allowed, for fear that he would forget what fresh air felt like; that or become severely vitamin D deficient. With another couple of weeks of scheduled sick leave to go, and with a ban on running for the time being, Evan felt grotty, grim and unable to climb his way out of the hole he was in. Apparently these feelings were quite normal with a cancer diagnosis, but it didn’t make the everyday dealing with them any easier to handle. Some days he felt determined – determined that he wouldn’t let the wretched disease get one up on him again – but on other days he could barely recite that positivity in his head, let alone be strong enough to tackle it.
Evan pulled himself to a sitting position on the sofa, not even sure of what day it was now. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging from the roots, paranoid that clumps would come off in his hand even though the doctor had said it would be highly unlikely with such a short burst of this sort of chemo. He was right; the only hair loss came from the strands he had managed to pull out himself with the strength of his sheer frustration.
When the phone rang he waited until the answer machine clicked in, in case it was Holly, Jem or Ben – they had all phoned eager to join the pity party. He hoped it wasn’t Maddie either. She’d been on his mind a lot, but the thought of her seeing him like this, helpless and weak, was almost too much to bear.
When he realised that it wasn’t any of them, he snatched up the phone. ‘Jack, it’s great to hear from you!’ The different name thrown into the mix felt like a tonic, and Evan was alert, happy to talk to one of his best mates who knew nothing about the shit he was dealing with.
They swapped greetings, bantered about The Demons and the approaching footy Grand Final in September, but Evan’s sudden rosy outlook soon took on another shade, and this time it was a whole different kind of red when Jack said, ‘I heard about the cancer.’
*
‘What the fuck gives you the right to go telling people?’ After his conversation with Jack, Evan’s temper had propelled him out of his apartment for the first time in days and he had driven in a rage over to Port Melbourne. When he arrived Ben dragged him outside so they didn’t have the fight in front of Ava.
‘You need people around you, Evan.’
‘I’ve got people around me!’ He wiped his mouth as saliva landed o
n his chin. ‘I’ve got so many people calling me, fussing around me that I feel claustrophobic. You’re all on at me: “Get out of bed, Evan”; “Have something to eat, Evan”; “Maybe a shower will make you feel better, Evan”; “Maybe it’s time to rest, Evan.” I’m going insane with you lot being in my face all the time!’
When Evan’s roar subsided he leaned back against the cold bricks of the house. His T-shirt was damp with sweat, and his body began to shiver from the cold and the anger inside of him.
Ben took up position leaning on the wall next to him. ‘I know you’re having one hell of a time right now, but don’t push us away. Jack has been your friend since high school, and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want him to know. That’s why I told him. You’d never mentioned that it was a secret.’
Suddenly, Evan was exhausted. The surge of adrenalin had used every ounce of energy that he had left, and when he realised he was shaking, he didn’t know whether he was cold, about to pass out or just plain frightened.
‘Wait there,’ said Ben. He ducked inside, and Evan heard him murmur, presumably to Holly, and he reappeared with a fleece.
‘Thanks.’ Evan pulled it over his head. He waited a while, watched the tiny grey clouds as his breath met the air when he exhaled. ‘I guess I wanted there to be some people who didn’t know about the cancer. I know that you all mean well when you ask after me, encourage me to do things, but I need some people around who aren’t looking at me with pity.’
‘We don’t pity you,’ said Ben.
‘Maybe not intentionally, but that’s what it feels like, and all it does is remind me of everything that’s bad right now. When my father died I remember those same looks, those same soft voices. People would pass us in the street and you knew that they were thinking, “Those poor Quinn children.”’
Ben didn’t speak, he just listened.
‘I remember flying over to Perth on holiday not long after Dad died and Mum bumped into a lady she used to work with. She had two kids, a boy and a girl about our age, and for some reason Mum decided that we wouldn’t tell them about Dad. I went along with her game and she told these people that our dad wasn’t around.’ He raked his hand through his hair before pushing his head back against the wall as though it gave him the strength to stand up. ‘She made it sound as though we were on the run. It was quite an adventure. But it didn’t hurt that Mum wasn’t being honest. I totally got why she did it.’
Ben stayed in position next to Evan on the wall but rubbed his hands briskly together and blew into them for warmth.
‘We hung out with the lady, Beth, and her kids for the whole week, and it was the best time that Holly and I had had since Dad died. There were no sympathetic looks, no informal counselling by someone who wanted to help. We came back from that holiday a hell of a lot more positive than we had been in the days since the funeral, and from that moment whenever we were sad Mum would bundle us both into the car, load up the buckets and spades, and whether it was winter or summer she didn’t care; off we would go to the beach.’
‘That sounds like the crazy sort of thing Holly would do. Like mother like daughter, eh.’
Evan sighed deeply. ‘Now do you see why I didn’t want to broadcast my cancer?’
‘I’m sorry, mate, I really am. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth without talking to you first. But for what it’s worth, telling Jack will make it easier in the long run. You may think we look at you with pity, but I can assure you we don’t. We look at you as a man who has a fight on his hands, that’s all, and that doesn’t make you weak.’
Evan suspected that his anger was misplaced. Perhaps the person he was most angry at was himself – for being so down since the operation and the chemo, and for letting Maddie slip through his fingers because of the wall he had built up. She had told him she had been hurt badly before when Riley died. He wished he had been strong enough to support her, to know that this wasn’t easy for her either. He wished he was man enough to do that, at least.
‘You can make it up to me by rustling me up some dinner. I’m starving.’ Evan grinned, all the fight gone out of him for now.
‘You’re on,’ said Ben as he pushed open the front door. ‘Mission accomplished at any rate.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘I got you out of your apartment, didn’t I?’
Holly emerged from the kitchen and hugged Evan. Ava ran at him full throttle, and he knew in that instant that he was in the right place. In minutes Holly had thrown together sausages, eggs, beans and thick-cut chips. She reprimanded him for being so aloof and made him swear that he would make the effort to at least check-in with them more often.
‘Right, then.’ Ben stood up as they finished eating. ‘There’s no time like the present.’
‘I’ll clear all this up,’ said Holly. ‘You have a great time.’ She hugged her husband and gave him a kiss on the lips.
‘They’re in love!’ Ava giggled into Evan’s chest. ‘Where are you going, Daddy?’
Ben leafed through his wallet. ‘I’m taking Uncle Evan out for the evening.’ He held a hand up to stop any protest. ‘My main mission was to get you out of the house, but part two is to get you out with all your mates. Jack and the others will meet us there in half an hour, I texted him. And before you say anything, he hasn’t passed on your news yet. It’s been what, a grand total of seven hours since I told him, you came round to knock my block off, and I told him to keep quiet. Gossip doesn’t run quite the same race with men as it does with women.’ He ducked as Holly flicked a tea towel at his backside.
Evan knew his first move had got him this far so he may as well go along with the rest. And besides, he was looking forward to seeing his mates. He hadn’t seen these guys in almost six months, their jobs and lives, girlfriends and families all getting in the way, not to mention his own personal battle.
*
‘You need to get back into the swing of things,’ said Ben as they parked up in the city. They crossed the road and headed towards the agreed pub for tonight. ‘If you can’t handle a night with your mates, how the hell do you expect to handle a pack of kids screaming at you to tie their laces, yelling at you to wipe their snotty noses when you go back to work a week Wednesday?’
‘Fair point, but I wouldn’t go near their snotty noses even if the government paid me an extra hundred grand a year.’
‘Glad to hear you haven’t gone completely soft.’ Ben gave him a friendly punch on the arm as they approached the Irish pub.
‘Evan.’ A voice stopped them before they opened the door. It was Jack. ‘Good to see you, mate.’ Jack pulled him into a typical man hug: distance and back slaps. ‘I haven’t mentioned anything to the others.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ Evan felt almost ashamed that he had kept this huge secret now.
‘Oh, and I don’t pity you at all if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘I should hope not.’ Evan grinned.
‘I haven’t cooked you any dinners or counselled you over the telephone—’
‘Yeah, you’ve been pretty crap!’ Evan ran a hand across a stubbly jaw as they entered the pub. He had given in and had a shave a few days ago after Holly kissed him hello at his place and claimed that his beard was beginning to smell not too dissimilar to the guinea pig hutch at home.
‘You know they’ll wonder why you’re not getting on it tonight,’ continued Jack when Evan told him that he wouldn’t be drinking. He could have a beer, maybe two, but the chemo hadn’t left him with much of a taste for it. Whether that was the chemo itself or his emotions wreaking havoc, he had no idea. ‘I’ll cope, even if it means you have to drink mine for me.’
‘Happy to help,’ said Ben, ‘although in that case you’ll have to drive us home.’
‘No worries.’
They found Simon and Will hogging the wooden table towards the back in the dimly lit bar. They looked as though they were into their first beers and man hugs ensued as well as exclamations at how long it
had been since they had all been out together. Talk inevitably turned to sport and which teams were most likely to be battling in the AFL Grand Final this year.
‘You want to support a real team.’ Simon deliberately tried to provoke Evan, which was typical and not always one-sided.
He didn’t rise to the bait. ‘I stand by my team. Go Demons! I’ve always barracked for Melbourne. I’m a Melbourne boy through and through.’
Ben had been right to get him out tonight for drinks. He felt more human by the second; one of the guys as much as any of the others, with or without both balls.
Will knocked on the table in the absence of something to tap against his glass. ‘I’ve got a bit of an announcement to make,’ he said sheepishly.
‘You’ve decided to shave your hair off and get rid of that receding hair line?’ put in Jack.
‘If you could all be quiet for one second, I’d tell you that it’s nothing to do with my hair, or any other part of my anatomy. It’s Ginny.’ He paused for effect. ‘She’s pregnant. We’re having a baby!’
A raucous cheer went up that Evan felt detached from. He could hear himself making the appropriate noise, he could see his glass raised in the air, chinking into the others and then slurping the amber liquid of his light beer along with his mates. But the normality of a few seconds ago had come crashing down, and all too quickly his mate’s journey into fatherhood made him feel as though he had stood on the prongs of a garden rake and the shaft had shot straight up and smacked him in the face. What if the doctors were wrong? What if one testicle wasn’t enough to give him the chance to father children? What if the cancer had spread undetected and, while he stood here in this pub, was already ravaging other parts of his anatomy?
Handle Me with Care Page 17