VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking
Copyright © 2019 by XaBo Ltd
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Cantor, Melanie, author.
Title: Death and other happy endings : a novel / Melanie Cantor.
Description: New York : Pamela Dorman Books, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018058602 (print) | LCCN 2018061549 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525562122 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525562115 (hardback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Family Life.
Classification: LCC PR6103.A683 (ebook) | LCC PR6103.A683 D43 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058602
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For my mother and father,
Doreen and Eddie,
Watching over me from their cloud
And for my sons,
Alexander and Joseph,
My happy endings
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part OneHow It All Begins
The Countdown Begins: Day 90
Day 87
Day 80
Day 79
Day 75
Day 73
Day 71
Day 70
Day 69
Day 68
Day 67
Day 64
Day 62
Day 56
Day 55
Day 54
Day 53
Day 52
Part TwoChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part ThreeChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
How It All Ends
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live our lives to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
—attributed to Pope Paul VI
PART ONE
How it all begins
There are some people in this world to whom things happen. I am not one of them. I lead an ordinary life. I do regular things. That’s not to say my life is boring, but it’s not a life full of big “you won’t believe what happened to me” stories, either. Until now. When this happened. Honestly, it really did . . .
* * *
—
Are you with anyone, Jennifer?”
I smile apologetically. “Um, no . . . still single.” Shuffle in seat. I hate this sort of question. “I go out on occasional dates, Dr. Mackenzie, it’s just I’m not very good with this internet stuff. Besides, I’ve never known my left from my right.” I chuckle awkwardly then catch the look on his face. “You don’t mean that, do you?”
“No,” he says, scratching his chin. “Are you here with anyone today?”
I’m thrown by this. For a moment, I thought he was about to tell me I had an STD, which under the aforementioned circumstances would give substance to my fear of public conveniences. “Why?” I say. “Should I be?”
“It would have been helpful. I asked the receptionist to suggest it.”
I think she did. I thought she was mad.
He takes off his steel-rimmed glasses and presses his palms against his eyes. “I’m really sorry, Jennifer. It’s not good news. You have a rare blood disorder. “
He looks grim faced. I’ve never seen this expression before.
The room starts to throb disconcertingly. My ears throb. Everything throbs.
I try focusing on the doctor’s face as he pinches the bridge of his throbbing nose, rubbing his pulsating spider-veined flesh. He casts me a furtive glance like he’s checking my response, then mutters some unintelligible name. I only catch the ’osis at the end.
“What is that?”
This apparently warrants a biology lesson. A long and complicated lecture about platelets and white blood cells versus red blood cells. I’ve never been good with that stuff, least of all while the world is pulsating around me.
“That doesn’t sound friendly,” I say.
“No,” he mumbles. “Very unfriendly. And aggressive.” He fiddles with some papers, tapping them into neat alignment. He clears his throat. “Untreatable.”
I’m not sure I’m hearing him properly. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve looked into it extensively, Jennifer. This is such a rare condition, most hematologists in this country won’t come across it in their entire career. I’m afraid there’s no available treatment like, say, chemo. This needs time . . .” His jaw strains to the left then springs back as though hooked to elastic. “Something I’m not sure you have.” He coughs. “Three months at best.”
Now let’s pause here. Did he really say that? Slipping it in the way a disreputable restaurant slips an extra bottle of wine on the bill, hoping you won’t notice.
My ears are ringing. I try to ignore the bile that’s rising in my throat but it’s unrelenting. “Dr. Mackenzie,” I splutter. “I’m afraid I may throw up.”
He shoots me a panicked glance and makes an old man’s slow-mo dive behind his desk, knocking his elbow, “Ouch”—I feel his pain. He hands me a gray metal bin. I stare into it. He waits a polite moment.
My every cell is focusing on the bin. A discarded Snickers wrapper sits among scrunched balls of paper. I retch, then throw up. My head is pounding.
Dr. Mackenzie passes me some tissues and a glass of water he has on standby. “Take your time,” he says.
But I don’t have any
. I sip slowly, trying to take stock. “So you don’t think treatment is worth pursuing?”
“I’ve made some inquiries, Jennifer, but I don’t want to raise your hopes. And I have to warn you, it’s not a cure.”
His voice floats around the acrid air, landing in my consciousness in snatches. “. . . even if” . . . “it may only” . . . the words crashing against my ears. I don’t want to hear them.
The walls of his office close in on me, gray and bleak, devoid of distinguishing features.
Like him.
He’s been my doctor for more than thirty years—he was my family’s doctor—and I know nothing more about him than these four gray walls. Oh, and he probably grabs Snickers bars for lunch. There’s not a single family photo or pet portrait or anatomical diagram. Not even some terrible poster that might put me off smoking—not that I smoke by the way but still, it would have been nice to have something to distract my attention.
I’ve lost all track. He finishes. His voice is not one of enthusiasm. “I’m just trying to be honest with you, Jennifer,” he says, propping the glasses back on his nose. “You need to understand the prognosis. You need to be prepared.”
For what, Doctor?
“Thank you,” I say.
Dr. Mackenzie stands up and opens a window. I’m staring at the pale vinyl floor, turning back and forth in the swivel chair. I realize I’m still gripping the bin and put it down, sliding it away from under my nose.
“But Dr. Mackenzie. Are you sure? I mean, I just feel . . . tired. No pain. Just tired. And maybe a bit bloated. Are you sure it’s not IBS? Or CFS or . . . ?” I sound like I’m making a plea for an acronym. I am! Anything but a bloody ’osis. No pun intended.
“I have the results of your blood tests right here, Jennifer,” he says, holding up the neat set of papers, evidence for the prosecution. “I wish I could tell you something different, but I’m afraid it’s very advanced.” Plea overruled. He emits a weary sigh then deals the guilty verdict. “I’m really sorry. I wish you had come in sooner.”
I gasp inside my head. I’m forty-three years old and I’ve just been told I’m not going to make it to forty-four because I missed a deadline. I want to cry. No! I will not cry. I mustn’t. I’m trained. I’m in HR. I don’t do conspicuous emotion. Besides, this must be tough for him. I don’t need to make it any tougher. “I’m sorry, too,” I say.
He slides a clutch of leaflets across his desk like a croupier does his chips. “These might help you,” he says, his voice mellowing. I smile stiffly and toss them carelessly into my handbag, preferring the bin if I’m honest, and watch as he scribbles out a prescription. “The chemist around the corner has everything. This should see you through for now.”
“For now,” I repeat, aware of how ominous that sounds.
I examine the shaky scrawl, hoping for a compensatory windfall: Valium or codeine or a drug I might recognize from my mother’s long-gone medicine cabinet, her prized collection of everything anyone might ever need, particularly her. Nothing is familiar.
“What do they do?”
“They’ll help with the fatigue. And the pain.”
I look at him curiously, a hint of polite doubt. “But . . .”
His mouth twitches. I know what that means: read the leaflets.
He clears his throat, stands up with brusque finality. “I’ll need to see you again soon. Eunice in reception will find some available dates for you, so please see her on your way out. And don’t forget to pick up the prescription, dear.”
He calls me “dear.” He’s never called me dear. I’m definitely going to die. He walks around the desk and accompanies me to the door, which is nice of him because I usually see myself out, then gives me a fatherly pat on the shoulder.
“Sorry about your bin, Doctor,” I say.
The countdown begins: Day 90
And that was it. “Eunice in reception will find some available dates”: the only kind of dates I have to look forward to now.
I avoid the front desk—I have no idea which one Eunice is anyway—I can’t get out of that place fast enough. I walk home. I must have. I’m here. It’s like when you’ve been out and got properly hammered yet wake up to find you managed to get home and in your alcoholic stupor still carried out all your normal rituals: put the front door keys in the dish, took off your makeup, put your phone on charge. But you remember none of it. That was my walk home. I don’t even remember walking into the chemist but that crisp white-and-green paper bag on my kitchen worktop would suggest I did. There’s a small bottle of whiskey that sits alongside it. I don’t drink whiskey, but in my haze of emotion, I must have decided I needed it. Amazing the rational decisions you can make in a totally irrational state. Now I’m sitting staring into oblivion with a cup of tea in my hands. One I don’t recall making. I think I may sleepwalk through these final months.
I am reeling. Where did this come from? This freeloader in my body who has squandered all my hopes of a future; one I no longer have because I left it too late. Because I didn’t take my tiredness seriously.
What am I meant to do now? Sit and wait? Where is my mother when I need her?
I still haven’t cried. It’s weird that I can’t. Not yet. It’s as though my tear ducts refuse to believe it. I must be in the first stages of grief and this is denial. What’s next? Anger? Probably. I can feel it sitting, waiting in the wings. But not yet, anger. I like denial.
Still . . . I’ve got to be realistic. I should arm myself with every bit of information available so I understand what this ’osis means (I will never call it by its full name. I will never, ever dignify this interloper with its title). I resolve to read the leaflets in my handbag, then google my vile new bedfellow even though I’m familiar with the dangers of googling an illness. (I once had an overlong case of pins and needles and googled to discover I had MS. Except of course I didn’t.) But googling this can’t possibly terrify me more than it already has, and surely it’s better to be prepared?
I go to retrieve the leaflets then stop midstoop, dropping my bag as though it’s live. I can’t do it. Determination deserts me. Knowing too much might risk manifesting the symptoms quicker than they would otherwise take hold. Like when you read all the possible side effects of a drug and know you’re going to get the stomach cramps, the diarrhea, the skin irritation, the depression even before you start taking the damn things.
I scream inside my head.
If there is a God, please help me! Please tell me what to do.
I am lost.
I am scared.
I am dying.
* * *
—
I must have fallen asleep because I wake up with a jolt, curled in a ball on my sofa, freezing cold, with that horrible groggy feeling that seeps from your head to your stomach to your toes. To be honest, it’s how I normally feel when I wake from a snatched weekend nap, but this feeling now terrifies me. I feel ill in a way I never felt before the diagnosis. I mustn’t do this.
And then, it happens.
I cry.
I cry with the abandon of knowing no one is listening and yet I so want to be heard. I want someone to hold me and tell me it’s all going to be okay. But I’m alone in this. Suddenly I’m not so comfortable about being single. I feel vulnerable and exposed. But I am also pragmatic. I’m a list maker. Maybe that will help. I wipe my eyes, blow my nose, stop the snuffling, and grab paper and pen.
Let’s look at the positives:
NUMBER ONE: I don’t have to struggle through the shitty bits anymore. And let’s be honest here, the world is a pretty shitty place right now. No Bowie, no Leonard Cohen, no Maya Angelou. It’s all algorithms, politics, no poetry.
NUMBER TWO: I’ve had twelve more years than my friend Vanessa. Vanessa was thirty-one when she died and I’ve crammed a hell of a lot into those twelve years she never had.
NUMBER T
HREE: I won’t get Parkinson’s like my father. Or Alzheimer’s like my mother. I won’t get wrinkles, or saggy breasts, or teeth that flop out at the mention of the word apple. And maybe I’ll be remembered with the romantic grief bestowed on those taken too soon. It would be nice to think so. I hope I won’t be easily forgotten.
NUMBER FOUR: I am not frightened of death. I’ve witnessed it. I was with my friend Vanessa when she died. It was peaceful. Beautiful in fact. I was with my father, then two years later my mother. You see, there are the hand-holders and the people who stay out of the room—like my sister.
I held their hands.
But who is going to hold mine? WHO?
I have no children. My three miscarriages are the reason my husband, Andy, is now my ex-husband. Supposedly, my insular sadness after each loss made him feel excluded. I could have included him if he’d asked, but he never did. He just looked elsewhere. At Elizabeth. Would things have been different if I’d made him mourn with me? I’ll never know. Sometimes I wish I could rewind the tape. Never more so than now.
* * *
—
Saturday morning, I take myself and my misery into Kentish Town and buy a wall calendar from the local pound shop, each month illustrated by an English masterpiece. I could have bought a Taylor Swift official but seeing her all vibrant and full of life seems counterproductive.
Dr. Mackenzie’s words ring in my ears. Three months . . . at best. I rip off January to August (an extravagant waste had it not cost 50p) to reveal a Gainsborough landscape and start a ninety-day countdown, ignoring his miserable at best caveat. It’s like making an advent calendar without the chocolates. If I’m lucky, I might scrape past Christmas.
But let’s not get maudlin. It’s not a science; it’s a guide. An incentive. Something to encourage me to make the best of every day and who knows, perhaps I can get beyond Day Zero. Maybe I’ll even see in the New Year.
I hang the calendar inside the closet in my bedroom. Two crosses. Today is the last day in September—a short month which now feels even shorter. Gainsborough will be gone by tomorrow and tomorrow is already day eighty-eight. I try to convince myself I am being proactive and that I’m facing my illness head-on but I know full well it’s a form of procrastination. A distraction from my first hurdle. Telling people. Because no matter how much I try to deny it, once I tell someone, reality will kick in. And right now, denial holds an enormous amount of appeal.
Death and Other Happy Endings Page 1