Promises to Keep

by Jane Green

  When ready to serve, pour the sauce over the tuna and fan sliced avocado on the top.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  There is nothing quite like setting three women free in a quaint country store to revive their spirits and take their minds off whatever in life is dragging them down.

  Mary makes a huge fuss of Honor, pouring on compliments about what a wonderful daughter she has, while Lila swoons over the homemade chutneys, shopping baskets and coasters.

  “God, I love shopping,” she says happily to Steffi as she sweeps through the store, putting more and more items in her trolley.

  All three women have been consumed with fear for Callie. She has taken up space in each of their heads. They have waked up each morning with her the first thing on their minds, and have continued to think about little else for the remainder of the day.

  Of course, life goes on, even with the weight that is now permanently on their shoulders, and they are adjusting to this new version of their lives.

  Steffi has a new path to forge. She has Fingal and the farm animals to take care of, menus to plan for Amy Van Peterson and hours of cooking and baking for Mary’s store. She is getting to know the locals, and becoming used to hours passing with no one around.

  She never would have expected to enjoy this quiet, coming, as she did, from the hustle and bustle of the city, the craziness of being a chef in a popular restaurant. But it is precisely the quiet that she loves. It is as if it has centered her, calmed her down; for the first time ever Steffi doesn’t feel as if she has to constantly keep running.

  Lila too is adjusting to the quiet, with less ease than Steffi. She is still not used to being self-employed, particularly in a world that is no longer spending money, no longer bringing in marketing consultants the way it once did.

  Her quiet is accompanied by a constant low-grade anxiety. What if she doesn’t get enough work . . . what if she has to find another job . . . could she, in fact, go back to working full-time . . . what if she can’t pay the bills . . . From time to time she shares these fears with Ed, who has a magical ability to calm her down. He tells her they are in this for the long haul, and they are in this together. That everything will be fine. And for a while, when he says this, she believes him.

  Of the three women, Honor is perhaps the one who is handling the weight of sadness the least well. She does not have a fresh start, a new home, a new job to occupy her. She does not have a supportive partner to whom she can turn when her anxieties threaten to overwhelm her.

  Honor is not at home, surrounded by things that may be able to comfort her, and so she lives each day dragged down with fear.

  For Honor the fear is constant. Her only breaks are when she is at home with the children, when she can pretend that she is not sick with fear, but it is a pretense. There is no place to go, physically or mentally, to get away from her thoughts.

  Today, now more than ever, these women need to be together. They need to be shopping, laughing, having fun. They need to stop thinking about the missing link, even if only for a few minutes.

  They drive back home, giggling with excitement about their new nightgowns, and walk into the house to find absolute quiet. Ed is on the computer doing something with the kids, and Reece is standing up by the counter, pale.

  “Mark called,” he says quietly. “He says we have some results.”

  “What? What did he say?”

  “He said I have to come in. He wants me to go to the hospital now.”

  There is a dull silence before Steffi’s hand flies up to her heart. “Oh God,” she says. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  The drive to the hospital seems to take a lifetime. The kids stay with Steffi and Ed, and Reece drives in with Honor and Lila.

  “Are you sure you want me there?” Lila says, not for the first time.

  “If you’re going to be Callie’s advocate, you need to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Reece says, but other than that, there is little conversation.

  “I know it’s not nothing,” Reece says finally, as he is turning into the driveway for the hospital. “Or, not nothing, but . . . maybe they just know what it is, and now we’ll work out a treatment plan.”

  “What’s the worst-case scenario?” Honor attempts. “That it’s cancer? She’s beaten it before, she’ll beat it again.”

  “If it is cancer,” Reece says.

  Lila says nothing.

  Words have failed them again by the time they reach the thirteenth floor. They file down the corridors, Honor looking in each room, all of them filled with the elderly, the infirm, people who you would not be surprised to see in a hospital.

  How can my daughter be here, she wonders. How can my lovely, vibrant daughter be here?

  Callie has just waked up, and is having her vitals taken when they walk in. Lila is shocked at how thin and drawn Callie appears. She does not look well. Mostly because there is no smile on her face and the light has gone out in her eyes. This is the biggest shock of all, and Lila swallows her lump, again, and walks over to kiss her friend hello.

  “Hey, sweetie.” She leans over Callie, stroking her cheek, holding her hand. “How are you doing?” Her voice is a soft whisper.

  “Not so good today,” Callie says. Her eyes are suddenly too large for her face, and she looks so tiny in her hospital bed it feels, Lila realizes, as if she was a child again.

  “I know, sweetie.”

  “Mark said he wants to see me and Reece. Will you stay with me too?”

  “Yes, baby. Of course. If you want me to.” Callie nods her agreement. “I’m not going to let them give you anything but the best treatment,” Lila says.

  “I’m scared, Lila.” Callie stares her straight in the eye, and Lila doesn’t know what to say.

  “I’m scared too,” she says eventually, for she cannot tell her it’s all going to be okay. She just doesn’t know.

  Mark appears five minutes later. He steps into the room and shuts the door softly, then comes and kisses the women hello, shaking hands with Reece. But there is nothing in his manner that is light. He is as grave as Reece has ever seen him.

  Callie, lying prostrate, follows him around the room with those huge eyes.

  Mark clears his throat, clutches his clipboard, then perches on one of the chairs.

  “As you know we did the lumbar puncture the other day, and the results were negative,” he says.

  “That was good news, wasn’t it?” Reece says.

  Mark pauses. “In forty to fifty percent of lumbar punctures performed we see a false negative. What we did find were mildly elevated protein levels, but given the possibility of the false cytology, we performed another one.”

  He pauses again and takes a deep breath.

  “We confirmed the results today with an MRI. Callie has a disease called leptomeningeal carcinomatosis.”

  There is a long silence, broken by Reece. “What is that?”

  Mark goes on to explain that leptomeninges are the innermost layers of the system of membranes that envelop the central nervous system, and their primary function, together with the cerebrospinal fluid, is to protect the nervous system.

  “Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis is a tumor that has diffused within the leptomeninges. It means the tumor is in the cerebrospinal fluid and traveling around Callie’s nervous system, hence the headaches and,” he sighs, “a new symptom these last twenty-four hours of weakness and numbness on her left side.”

  “When you say tumor,” Reece says and swallows hard, “do you mean the cancer is back?”

  Mark lifts heavy eyes. “It does not present as a tumor in the way other cancers do, but five percent of breast cancer sufferers will get this disease, and this is the same cancer as the primary breast cancer.”

  “So what is the treatment?” Honor asks quietly.

  Mark turns to her, looking between her and Callie as he speaks. “We will start with whole-brain radiation therapy. I have called the radiologist to come up here to consult on the am
ount needed, but I would say three weeks of radiation.”

  “And then?” Callie asks, and Mark turns to address her directly.

  “Then, if it is successful, we can start intrathecal therapy, where an ommaya port is inserted directly into the brain to target the chemotherapy.”

  “So what is the prognosis?” Callie is the only one who has the courage to ask. It is whateveryone is thinking, but no one is daring to put it into words.

  Mark hesitates. “It’s difficult to say. This is rare. We don’t see it very often. But Callie, Reece, you know we will do everything we can. The treatment is palliative, but can be very effective in easing the sympto—”

  “Palliative?” Lila jumps in, her professional voice belying her thumping heart. “You mean it won’t make her better, it will make her more comfortable?”

  He nods.

  “So she’s not going to get better?” Reece looks white with shock.

  Everyone in the room seems to have forgotten that Callie is there.

  “I’m sorry.” Mark then looks at Callie, reaches over and takes her hand as a silence falls. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re my friend, Mark,” Callie whispers, the only person who seems able to speak. “You know my family. You know my kids. You’ve been to my home. If I’m to get my house in order, how long have I got?”

  Mark swallows. “If the treatment is successful, maybe six months to a year.”

  No one says anything.

  “And if it’s not successful?” Callie’s voice is surprisingly strong.

  “Four to six weeks.”

  Mark leaves, and Callie turns her head to look at her husband, her mother, her best friend. No one can speak and, as Callie looks at them, tears start to trickle down her face.

  Reece rushes over and puts his arms around her, and Honor and Lila stand up and leave the room.

  They walk silently to the waiting room at the other end of the corridor, and as they walk in they look at each other, both bursting into tears, clutching each other for support, Honor heaving like a child as Lila sobs.

  A nurse comes in, rubs their backs, then places a fresh box of tissues on the table, and leaves them alone in their grief.

  After they finally pull apart, they sink into chairs, numb, to stare at the wall with tears dripping down their faces until Reece comes to get them.

  “She wants to see you,” he says to Honor, who nods and makes the weary trek down the hallway, while Reece sinks into the chair next to Lila, leans his head on her shoulder and starts to cry.

  “You need to take care of my children,” Callie says, when Honor has stopped crying. “Reece is an amazing dad, but he can’t do it himself. He needs a shitload of help. You have to be there for them.”

  “I will. Of course I will.” Honor feels ready to explode with tears, but she cannot do it here; she has to be as strong as she can be for Callie.

  “Six months to a year means I can plan,” Callie says softly. “We can make videos for Eliza and Jack, write them letters. I can organize things. Oh Jesus—” And she stops and looks away.

  “What?”

  “I just . . . I can’t believe it. I’m not . . . ready. I’m not ready to die. There’s too much I need to do.”

  “I’ll help you,” Honor says, not able to believe it either. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

  Lila is the last to go in. She cannot pull herself together enough to see Callie, and so she waits in the waiting room for an hour. Eventually, when Honor and Reece have gone downstairs to the cafeteria to grab some coffee—even though neither of them wants it, but they don’t know what else to do—she takes a deep breath and walks up to Callie’s room.

  Perhaps Callie is sleeping, she thinks, tiptoeing round the bed to see Callie’s head resting on her folded hands on the pillow, her eyes wide open and staring out of the window as tear after silent tear slowly slides down her cheeks, soaking the pillow beneath.

  Lila wants to gather her up, fold her into her arms and make everything better, but there is nothing she can do. She sits on the bed and leans her head down on Callie’s shoulder. She realizes, in all the years she has known her friend, she has never seen her cry.

  For Callie is the girl who can do anything. She is the girl who is always happy. The girl who seizes life and wrings out every last drop.

  How can this possibly be happening?

  They stay there, for a long time. Eventually Callie turns her head and looks Lila deep in the eyes. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “I don’t want to die.”

  “I know.”

  “Who’s going to raise my children? Who’s going to look after Reece?”

  “I’ll find someone for you,” Lila says. “I’ll speak to the agencies. I’ll find them a nanny-governess person. I’ll find someone amazing to raise your kids.”

  Callie nods. “And you? And Steffi too. Both of you. You have to make sure they’re okay. You have to help Reece. I love him to pieces but you know how hopeless he is.”

  Lila smiles through her tears. “You’d be surprised if you saw how amazing he has been.”

  “I would.” Callie smiles back through tears of her own.

  “I love you,” Lila says softly, leaning forward and kissing Callie on the cheek, then the other cheek, then her forehead. She would keep kissing her for hours if she could. As it is, it seems she cannot be in this room without physically touching her—sitting on Callie’s bed and holding her hand, resting a hand on her back, leaning her head on Callie’s shoulder and leaking tears. It is as comforting to Lila as it is to Callie.

  “I love you,” Callie says, and they lie there, holding each other, until Reece comes back upstairs to take Lila’s place.

  “We have to call Dad,” Callie says, exhausted now, the emotions and the pain meds too much for her.

  “I’ll call him tonight,” Reece says.

  “No,” Callie says. “Tell Steffi. Then let her tell Dad. And we have to have a party.”

  “A what?” Reece thinks he has heard wrong.

  “A party. I’d rather celebrate my life while I’m still alive.”

  “Where? In the hospital?”

  “No. I’m coming home. The kids. I have to do so much. Leave them rules to live by. Tell them about me, and about them as babies.”

  “We can do all of that,” Reece says. “I can bring a tape recorder. We can start tomorrow.”

  “How do we tell the children?” Callie’s eyes grow watery again. “How do I tell our children that I am going to die, that the longest I’m going to be around for is a year?”

  Nobody says anything to the children that night.

  Reece, Lila and Honor go back to Steffi’s to collect them, and Reece stays behind, after the children have gone home, to tell Steffi.

  “What?” she keeps repeating, a loud buzzing in her ears. “What?”

  She cannot understand, refuses to understand until after Reece has gone. She sinks down on the floor in the living room, staring numbly at the fireplace, when suddenly a huge sob lifts her up, and she lies, crying, for hours, Fingal curled up by her side.

  In the early hours of the morning she pulls herself up to go to bed. Her limbs are so heavy, she can hardly move. This, she realizes, is what they mean when they talk about weighed down with grief.

  Apsychologist comes in the next morning to talk to Callie and Reece. She is warm, understanding and wise. She gives them the words to tell the children, explains that the children have neither the life experience nor the intellectual or emotional development that allows them to understand what is going on in the way adults do.

  She sits quietly as Callie and Reece both cry, and works through examples of what to say; but there is no rush, she says. Be honest with them about her illness, that she is taking medicine for it, but introduce the possibility of its not working. Studies have shown that the more prepared the children are, the better they will handle it.

  Mark comes in afterward, and explains the course of treatment.


  “I want to go home. Can I do it from home?”

  He is reluctant, concerned about the pain medication, but willing to let her go home if they can get the pain under control in the next couple of days.

  “I just want to be in my own bed,” Callie says. With the children. A year,” she keeps repeating to herself, the words seeming to reassure her. “There’s a lot I can get done in a year.”

  A weight has settled on Steffi’s chest during the night. She wakes up with tears already flowing down her cheeks, before she has even consciously remembered the news. She has no more sobs left, but a steady stream of tears trickle down throughout her early morning routine: making coffee, letting Fingal out, feeding the animals.

  She is supposed to be cooking ginger almond chicken for Amy this morning, but Amy will understand. She pulls on some leggings, a scarf, slips her feet into thick socks and boots, and climbs into the car to go and see Callie.

  Steffi would not say this to anyone, does not even dare think it properly, but she heard a year, and she heard four to six weeks and, while she has never considered herself to have a psychic bone in her body, she knows that she will not have Callie for long, that Callie will not be here by summer. Possibly not even by spring.

  And the little time they have left must be wonderful. She will make sure of it.

  She stops at the flower market on the way and buys a huge and horrendously expensive bunch of peonies—God only knows where they got them from: who has peonies in winter?—but Callie will love them.

  At Mary’s she runs in and picks up her own banana and chocolate cake, and a nightgown.

  “Are you okay, my dear?” Mary peers closely at Steffi’s red, puffy eyes and blotchy cheeks.

  “Yes . . . I’m fi—” A sob comes up, and Mary gathers her in her arms as Steffi continues to cry.

  “You go and show your sister how much you love her,” she says. “Go and look after her. Don’t worry about cooking for me, and I’ll let Amy know you won’t be cooking at the moment. You have more important things to do.”