The First Last Kiss

by Ali Harris

  Her voice raises several octaves. She is trying to sound all tinkly and bright. She just sounds scarily unbalanced. ‘If you are about to say that my son doesn’t want to come home, darlin’, then I will put the phone down on you. My son should be here. At home. With his famileee . . . ’

  I am his family.

  I hear her sobbing, it is the first time I’ve heard her cry. There is the muffled sound of the handset being passed and Dave comes on the line. I barely recognize his voice, it seems so long since I heard him speak.

  ‘Molly,’ it is a low rumble, like distant thunder down the phone-line. ‘I’m sorry, Jackie is a bit upset. Don’t be offended, she’s just . . . finding this hard. We all are . . . ’

  ‘I know, and I want us to come back to Leigh, Dave, I do, I need help but Ryan is determined . . . ’ I am crying now. ‘I need some help . . . ’ I put down the phone when I realize he already has. I look up but everyone is studiously working, heads down. Looking anywhere but at me.

  Sometimes I think people worry that what I’m going through might be catching. That if they hear too much, or speak to me too much, then something terrible will befall their loved ones. And part of me wonders if they’re right.

  ‘Molly? Could you come into my office for a moment please’ Christie has popped her head out and is gesturing to me to come in.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, and Christie gestures to the chair opposite.

  ‘How’s Ryan?’ she asks. It is always the first question anyone ever asks me these days. I appreciate their concern but I’m never really sure how to answer.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ I smile at Christie and decide to give her my pre-prepared, jokey, upbeat version of the truth. ‘Still perpetually stubborn, incredibly vain and annoyingly football-obsessed, but pretty good, all things considered . . . the doctors say he is doing very well.’

  Except for the nausea and the breathlessness and the headaches and the incontinence and the nightmares and the pain, I refrain from adding. I have learned the hard way that people don’t actually want the truth, just some marshmallow-covered version of it. Some (Jackie) don’t want even that.

  ‘Oh, that’s GOOD!’ Christie beams, like she has just heard, ‘He’s cured’. ‘Listen, Molly, I’ve brought you in here because I want to talk to you about your blog. There’s a post on there that has come to my attention . . . ’

  My mind flits to the latest image of Ryan and me currently at the top of my blog page with the title ‘The PDA Kiss’, and then underneath is the photo of us kissing on the red carpet in front of Tom Cruise. Underneath I’d typed ‘Next stop . . . Oprah’s couch!’ I’d shown it to Ryan as well and he’d found it hilarious.

  ‘Well, that’s my fifteen minutes of fame ticked off the list,’ he’d joked. ‘What with this and Take That reforming, I can die a happy man now!’

  I’m getting used to his jokes.

  ‘It’s actually the reaction to your blog that I wanted to talk to you about,’ Christie continues. ‘Not just to the most recent post, but to all of them. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed how many comments you’ve been getting since you started posting pictures of you and Ryan kissing?’

  I shrug bashfully. I have noticed, and I have found them incredibly moving. There have been so many overwhelmingly kind and uplifting words written by people I’ve never met. Messages from people writing to share their own stories of cancer, advice from women – and men – who have been, or are, in my position, and from people telling me how much they enjoy seeing the photos I post and who feel moved by our love story.

  Ryan knows what I’ve done but I don’t think he’s looked at the blog. His only concern is how he looks in the pictures.

  ‘Just don’t post any of me in dodgy outfits, Moll, I want to be remembered as a stylish man, not a fashion victim,’ he said last night.

  ‘But you ARE a fashion victim and always have been!’ I’d laughed, pulling up the duvet and whispering as his eyes began to close, ‘Remember those dungarees?’ He is sleeping increasingly more these days due to the morphine he’s now taking. Our bedroom is also becoming his office, couch, cinema and library. Some days he doesn’t have the strength to get out of bed. For anything. It is a strange thing to see a room that was once a place of sex and sleep turn into somewhere so clinical. Beside our bed is a bucket and fresh towels; a jug of water with his dosette box (which I’d never heard of but which Charlie told me to buy to put all his pills in) is on his bedside table. It is full of his pills, labelled from Monday–Sunday and Breakfast/Lunch/Tea and Supper, and it helps us both to remember exactly what he needs to take and when. It also puts my mind at rest that he’s taken them when I’m not with him. I’ve bought incontinence sheets for the little accidents that seem to be happening more and more. And we now have a bed pan for the same reason, if he’s in too much pain to get up in the middle of the night.

  ‘Ohhaaarrr,’ he’d yawned, closing his eyes and ignoring me. ‘I’m so tired, this cancer is very draining, you know . . . ’ And then he’d weakly pulled me down into a cuddle and pretended to go to sleep with me locked in his arms so I couldn’t get out. Not that he was strong enough to contain me, mind you. His arms have lost all their muscle tone. I can barely touch him without him wincing, and I spend most of my time applying soothing emollients and bio oils to help ease the discomfort.

  This blog has become my therapy, my self-medication and my way of celebrating our love. I don’t want Ryan to be in any doubt of how much I loved him. Love him. Present tense. Not past. Not yet. Not ever.

  Christie reaches across her desk and touches my hand, I realize I’m crying. Again.

  ‘Molly, I have honestly never seen such a passionate reaction to a blog before. I’ve had emails from readers wanting to hear more from you, wanting to give you advice or for you to talk to them. They’ve been emailing our web email address with messages and pictures of them kissing their partners, some have been from women in the same position as you, some are saying that what you wrote on your blog really resonated with them. Look . . . ’

  Christie clicks open a folder that is full of emails – all with headings that simply say ‘Molly and Ryan’ or more specific headings like ‘Making every kiss count . . . ’

  I’m sitting with my hand over my mouth, trying to stop yet more sobs. My shoulders are shaking, there are hundreds – and they keep coming. I glance up and see another email in bold. I recognize the name. It’s the editor of our sister magazine in New York. The heading says ‘A Central Park Kiss’ and has the date 23/11/2005.

  ‘Can you open that one please, Christie?’ I say quietly. Christie glances at me and then back at the email. She clicks on the attachment and suddenly an image of two people kissing in the middle of Central Park, standing on the Imagine mosaic, appears.

  ‘Oh my God – it’s Ryan and me, when he proposed!’ I gasp. ‘But how . . . who . . . ?’

  ‘Viva in New York linked your blog to their site when you went out there,’ Christie says, ‘and it looks like they’ve never taken it down.’ She reads the email from Anna, the editor. ‘She says that she’s had a massive response from their website. They are all enraptured by you and Ryan, by your beautiful blog post and pictures of you and Ryan.’ Christie thinks for a moment.

  ‘I wonder if you’d like to post this photo and then put a call out on the site for anyone else who may recognize you and Ryan? I mean it could be to your friends or family, people you used to know. They might have old pictures of you that you and Ryan have never seen.’

  I am still staring at the computer screen, utterly entranced by the picture of Ryan and me at our happiest. I lean over Christie’s desk and read the message underneath. It says:

  I was visiting Strawberry Fields in Central Park a couple of years ago and witnessed one of the sweetest, funniest, most beautiful and heartfelt proposals. It stayed with me and when I realized it was the same couple from this blog, I had to send this picture. I hope Molly can add it to her collection of kisses and cherish it forever.
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  Wishing them both lots of love,

  Sandra

  I sink back into the seat opposite Christie. I can’t quite take it in. This is a way to keep him with me forever. By collecting these photos and putting them on my blog, Ryan and I could live on forever. In art and in love, just like my dad taught me.

  The Can’t Complain, Won’t Complain Kiss

  Forget that old movie line, you know the one: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’(Love Story, in case you’re wondering.) Well, in my love story, cancer means never being able to say you’re annoyed . . .

  FF>> 26/05/07>

  I walk into our lounge, step over Ryan’s shoes that are spread-eagled in front of the door like a naughty pet, pick up his socks that have been discarded by the coffee table, and lift his sports bag that has vomited its contents – including his medication – all over the couch. I lay out his next dose of pills on the coffee table, get a glass of water, tidy up all his books and papers into a neat pile, pop them back in his bag and then walk to the front door and hang it over the coat hooks that I put up soon after we moved in because I couldn’t cope with Ryan’s various coats by the front door, over the sofa, on the bed, in the bathroom. Then I think about how I’m going to have to start packing all this up soon. We’ve rented out our flat and in a matter of weeks we’ll be leaving our home behind. It makes me feel breathless with sadness, but I can’t let it. I have too much to do. I’m desperate to write it all down to stop me from going crazy with the stress of it all, but, Ryan made his point and I am learning to live my life in the moment, dealing with things as they happen rather than treating everything as a perfunctory exercise to get through, things to tick off on my endless lists.

  I look around at our flat that is bursting at the seams with our life; the collections of ephemera that Ryan won’t throw away: endless Shrimpers football programmes, cinema stubs, gig tickets, piles of receipts from nights out from years gone by – including, amazingly, our very first teen date when we went for coffee which I was amazed to see (funnily enough I stopped complaining about them all when he showed me that). The shelves full of his old boy band CDs sitting uncomfortably next to my music collection. I shake my head as I think of Jeff Buckley squeezed between Boyzone and the Backstreet Boys, and suddenly I can’t bear to think of him without them.

  Anyway, there’s no way we’ll be moving anywhere big enough for our stuff. I know our little house by the sea isn’t going to happen now. His bad days are becoming increasingly bad; if he isn’t in pain physically, then he is struggling mentally. He still tries to pretend, but when he can’t get out of bed, or he is sick or has a raging temperature (from a lung infection, according to his GP), he can’t disguise how hard it is. We seem to be finding new lesions on his body daily and he has lost so much weight he jokes he looks more like a goalpost than a sports teacher. Jackie is desperate for us to move back, and as much as Ryan protests, I know that he has been staying in London for me, not him. He wants my life to continue so it won’t be such a shock after he’s gone, but I know I won’t be able to face coming back here.

  I walk back into the lounge just as Ryan is shuffling out of the kitchen. He’s still in his tracksuit but it’s hanging off his almost unrecognizable body. And yet to me, he is beautiful. He smiles and focuses on raising his cup of tea, which he holds in one hand, and a small child-sized plate of sausage and mash in the other. He watches as I take in the mess around me, smiling like a rebellious child. I don’t say a word. I just walk up and kiss him.

  ‘Good day?’ I ask flippantly, going into the kitchen to pick up my plate.

  ‘Yep,’ Ryan calls. ‘Brilliant! I managed half the day,’ he says proudly. ‘And I watched the Year Sevens thrash Dalston Comp. at basketball!’

  ‘It wasn’t too much for you?’ I say, worriedly, walking out of the kitchen with the tea that Ryan has made. He’s still trying to cook every day – even if he doesn’t feel like eating it. He says he finds it therapeutic. And he also says he has a good incentive as the alternative is eating my food.

  ‘No, babe,’ Ryan rolls his eyes affectionately at me as he sits down on the sofa. He puts his cup of tea down on the coffee table and rests his plate on his lap as he flicks on Eastenders and pushes his sausage and mash around the plate. I can tell that he doesn’t want it now. He does this a lot; have a craving for something, make the effort to cook it and then not be able to eat it. ‘You know I’d tell you if it was,’ he says, pushing his plate away and lying back on the sofa.

  No you bloody wouldn’t, I think but don’t say. Instead I just pick up a coaster and slip it under his tea, then go and sit next to him. I stroke his head. Ryan flicks to another channel. Hollyoaks is on. It makes me think of Casey. We watch it for approximately five seconds and then he flicks again. I bite my lip, and then a bit of sausage. He asks for his cup of tea, I help him up into a sitting position, he takes a sip and I go to put it back, but he won’t let me. He grimaces as he shuffles forward and puts it back down on the table, but not on the coaster. My eyes flicker to it, to the ring that I can already imagine marking the table, and then back at my plate, a sea of mash and beans and meat that is suddenly making me feel sick. He flicks to Friends on E4, laughs and flicks over again. I take another mouthful but can’t seem to swallow it, so I get up and scrape my dinner into the bin in the kitchen and start filling the dishwasher with dirty plates, bowls and saucepans that have been there since this morning. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I’ll feel better when it’s tidy. Ryan won’t even know how wound up I am. I’ll make sure of it.

  No one warns you that once you know your partner is dying of cancer you’ll never want to shout, criticize or nag again. Since he was diagnosed I haven’t as much as raised my voice in annoyance. I am a veritable saint on the outside. But sometimes, inside, I feel like I’m going to explode. I’m doing my best, but when he does things that he knows wind me up, like leaving the loo seat up, or missing the laundry basket by 5 centimetres, I want to revert to my default-nagging setting (‘Just put your socks in it Ry! It’s not hard!’). That sounds horrible, doesn’t it, but it’s not that I mind that he’s doing it, of course I understand that it’s as much as he can do to take his own clothes off, or get to the toilet some days. I just miss shouting at him. This relationship of compliance we now have is not natural. We’ve had to quickly take on these new roles, act in a way with each other that we’re not used to and it feels . . . fake. I’m not a natural nurse and Ryan isn’t any better as a patient. He’s a man, for a start, and he’s a sporty, athletic man who has never taken a sick day in his life. He hates taking tablets, being a slave to the medicine and the morphine, the seizures that now come out of the blue and that mean he can’t go anywhere on his own any more. No more school (Charlie took him to the Year Seven match today as a treat as I had to work). He hates all the appointments and the only person he’ll really properly open up to is Charlie. Sometimes I think he is the only person who truly knows what Ryan is feeling. Even more than me. Yet again, we have another person in our relationship. But this time, Charlie is a welcome addition. I need him as much as Ryan does.

  The other day he came round when Ryan was asleep and we just sat and chatted for ages. About everything. How I was feeling, how Ryan was doing. And I asked him the thing that I’ve wanted to ask for ages, but not had the courage to.

  ‘Charlie,’ I said, handing him his cup of tea across the breakfast bar. He glanced up, tilting his head in that instant ‘I’m listening’ position he does. ‘I know you must get asked this all the time, and I know I’m not meant to and I don’t want you to think I’m in denial or anything but . . . ’

  ‘You want to know how long,’ Charlie had said, taking a sip of his tea. He put it down on the counter and linked his fingers. A childhood rhyme had instantly popped into my head:

  Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people.

  Then an image of a funeral flashed into my mind and I began
to cry.

  ‘Hey, listen, Molly,’ he says, reaching out and taking my hand. ‘I can’t foresee the future and I don’t want to give you bad news or false hope, but I will say that you need to think about the next stage very soon. Living in this flat is too much for him, and caring for him on your own is too much for you . . . ’

  Ryan comes into the kitchen and leaves his plate on the breakfast bar, unscraped, and then goes back into the lounge. I take a deep breath. I hear him laughing at something and I want to scream. How can you laugh? How can you laugh at anything? But I don’t. I just roll my shoulders back several times, massage my neck with my hand, and pour myself a large glass of wine. Then I walk back into the lounge and sit down, snuggling up to him silently as Ryan puts on A Question of Sport, which he knows I hate. I don’t say anything though. I mean, I’m not going to tell a dying man that he can’t watch his favourite TV programme, am I? In fact, I’m now questioning all the times I ever moaned about it in the first place. I mean, what kind of shitty wife have I been? Moaning and nagging and . . .

  I swipe away a tear and take a sip of wine, but Ryan nudges me just as I do and then laughs as a bit dribbles down my silk shirt.

  ‘Shit!’ I exclaim, putting my glass down (on a coaster) and going into the kitchen to get some kitchen roll. I’ll have to get it dry-cleaned. It’s a Reiss top and I spent a ridiculous amount of money on it. An amount of money which now seems horribly indulgent. I should’ve stuck to black. I should be hanging out at home, looking after Ryan, wearing sloppy clothes, or a nurse’s outfit to make him laugh. Not this stupid office attire. I stop dabbing. What does it matter if it’s ruined anyway? What does anything matter any more? I cling on to the kitchen counter and let my tears fall into my wine. I hear Ryan come into the kitchen.