Tattoos: A Novel

by Denise Mathew

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Marilee

  2. Jax

  3. Marilee

  4. Jax

  5. Marilee

  6. Jax

  7. Marilee

  8. Jax

  9. Marilee

  10. Jax

  11. Marilee

  12. Jax

  13. Marilee

  14. Jax

  15. Marilee

  16. Marilee

  17. Jax

  18. Marilee

  19. Jax

  20. Marilee

  21. Jax

  22. Marilee

  The Story Continues...

  23. Marilee

  24. Marilee

  25. Jax

  26. Marilee

  Epilogue

  The Peace Project

  Final Words

  Tattoos: A Novel

  By Denise Mathew

  Tattoos: A Novel

  Published by Denise Mathew

  © Denise Mathew 2013. All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal use. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without prior permission from the author.

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 9780991820153

  “The important thing is not to be bitter over life's disappointments. Learn to let go of the past, and recognize that every day won't be sunny. And when you find yourself lost in the darkness of despair, remember, it's only in the black of night that you see the stars, and those stars lead you back home.”

  Ritu Ghatourey

  This book is dedicated to all the people I’ve known and have never known. To those who have passed away from cancer and their families. Especially for Marilee my first best friend and the only person who could get me to wear a dress. For Ernest, Elmer, Evelyn, Margie and Leonard, who have all touched my life in their own ways and who have lost their own battles with cancer. You are missed.

  Denise

  1. Marilee

  They say that your whole life can change in a second. Good or bad, destiny spares no one. Before that day in Dr. John’s office I thought that kind of moment, where everything that you believed defined you was tugged away from you in a quick snap, wasn’t real. In my opinion those kind of things happened to old people, people who didn’t have their whole life planned out meticulously, people who weren’t me.

  But suddenly in less time than it had taken me to draw in a breath and exhale, a door into darkness had swung wide open and something horrible had entered my world. Something ugly, the kind of thing that seventeen-year-old girls weren’t supposed to get, had decided to take over my reality.

  One six letter word made my life stand still.

  Cancer. Hodgkins Lymphoma Stage 3 to be exact.

  “How can she have cancer? Kids don’t get cancer.”

  Mom’s voice cut into my thoughts, bringing me back to the too hot and cramped office of my pediatrician, Dr. John.

  I cast my gaze around the room, making it a point to avoid looking at Mom and Harold who were completely focused on Dr. John. I just didn’t have it in me to deal with Mom having a panic attack, or Harold asking too many questions like it was the Inquisition. I couldn’t cope with my parents because I was doing all I could to keep myself from collapsing into a heap of fear.

  I never really looked at much of anything in Dr. John’s office before now, but suddenly I found myself noticing every detail. Brightly colored prints of cartoon Disney characters covered the soft pink walls. An oversized glass jar, filled with assorted lollipops sat next to a container of tongue depressors and cotton balls. There was a child-sized blood pressure cuff pinned to the wall, I wondered if my arm was too big for it now. The stacks of paper gowns and the assorted bottles of liquids and concoctions that my doctor used to heal people, seemed so much more important than they had ever before. And all I could think was that I wanted to go back to when the worst thing I got was a shot and a red lollipop afterwards.

  “Well Luanne, there are types of cancers that…well,” Dr. John started to say. Before he could finish his sentence, Mom stood up and swayed.

  “Here it comes,” I said under my breath. I shook my head, hoping for something other than what I knew would happen.

  Harold knew Mom as well as I did. He jumped into action like a super hero ready for battle. The only problem is Harold is no super hero, he’s your typical uptight accountant who spends all his days looking at the past not the future. He did manage to catch Mom before she face planted on the navy Berber carpet.

  “Luanne, honey…?” Harold said. He gave Mom a shake. True to form she remained catatonically still. It amazed me how she could go the color of a bleached out sheet of paper on command. Nobody could deny that she had a talent for being histrionic.

  When Mom didn’t respond, Harold fanned her with his hand, as if the flutter of air that he’d produced would fix everything. Watching Harold preen over Mom made me really notice how mismatched they were. It was almost laughable, that was if I was in a laughing mood. Harold, the only father I’d ever known, was slight of build and petite for a man at 5’6. He clocked in at a little less than one hundred and twenty pounds, a full forty pounds lighter than Mom. Not that Mom was fat, because she wasn’t. She was curvy in all the right places, and if you looked really hard you might have said she had a slight resemblance to Marilyn Munroe.

  Marilyn Munroe is Mom’s all time favorite idol and who I’m unfortunately named after. I still don’t get why Mom would name me Marilyn Munroe Mackie, seriously did she give any thought to the fact that my initials were going to be triple M? Even though I could have changed my name to Lawrence when Mom had married Harold, call me crazy but I’d decided to keep my triple M status anyway. I can’t say why, only that my name was as much a part of me as my face was.

  Other than the unfortunate state of my initials I still didn’t get why Mom would have named me after a screen legend, who from all accounts had an extremely tragic life. Despite Mom giving me that moniker on my birth certificate, no one other than Mom and Harold called me Marilyn. I was Marilee, and had been since I was in pre-school when I’d decided that it was the coolest name I could get from Marilyn. Lucky for me it stuck.

  At six feet with flowing bottle blonde hair, big blue eyes and a full mouth, Mom was still beautiful, albeit in a little trashy way. Even without asking, Mom was always too happy to tell everyone who would listen that she used to be a runway model. That little fact wasn’t exactly true, since she did precisely four shows when she was nineteen before getting pregnant with me. The rest as they say is history. But in Mom’s mind her modeling life wasn’t really history because at least once a week she’d tell me about the career that she should have had, could have had…

  “Luanne darling, come on sweetheart, wake up…”

  Harold pushed his black framed glasses up the bridge of his sweaty nose. They promptly slid back into their former spot at the tip again. Poor Harold had terrible vision. In fact he was legally blind without his glasses, that had lenses so strong that they made his eyes look like Yoda’s. Coupled with his too-small nose and thin lips he wouldn’t be considered the most likely candidate to be Mom’s husband, but as Mom always said, beggars couldn’t be choosers. The fact that Harold, a highly successful accountant and all around good guy had been willing to marry her, even with a two-year-old child in tow, was beyond gracious in Mom’s
opinion.

  I cut my eyes to Dr. John. He was a smallish Indian man, balding at the crown with skin the color of caramel, and could always be counted on to calm Mom. But when I studied him I realized that he had fallen under Mom’s spell too. He appeared more than a little stressed.

  He had been my doctor as long as I could remember and I had to admit I had never seen him this off kilter, but then again he had never had the full Luanne Lawrence treatment before now either.

  “Susan can you come in here for a moment,” he said into the intercom on his desk. I watched the chaos unfurl its wings and the only thing that rang true was that I was the one with cancer. I shook my head, stunned and in disbelief, that even though I had just received the worse news of my life, Mom was the center of attention. I backed into the corner so everyone could fawn over her. With her hair fanned out and her fake eyelashes resting peacefully against her milky white high cheekbones, as if she had choreographed the whole scene, Mom looked the part of the tortured soul.

  And right there, despite the fact that Dr. John had just told me I had Hodgkins Lymphoma, laughter bubbled out of me like a soda bottle that had been shaken up too much. Before I knew it tears were streaming down my cheeks, yet I giggled so hard that I could barely catch my breath. That’s when the realness of it all sunk in. No matter what was going on with Mom, or how comical the whole scene was, I was sick. And it wasn’t like Mono like my friend Selina got for a whole year, where she missed so much school that she had to take courses in the summer. I was sick enough to die, long before I had a chance to live.

  With that reality firmly lodged deep in my brain my laughter died away and numbness took its place. Tears continued to stream down my cheeks, but that’s all they were, tears, salty drops of water. I felt so empty and alone. For the first time in my life I didn’t have it all figured out. And I wanted to be normal, and have parents that could handle this kind of news because I wasn’t sure if I could go it alone. I couldn’t be a support to Mom and Harold and get through whatever I had to deal with too.

  Without another thought I left the office. In the midst of all the pandemonium it was easy enough to slip out and away from them. As I made my way through the packed waiting room it seemed as if every eye was on me, like they somehow knew I’d been just handed a death sentence. I tugged my iPod out of my Prada purse and plugged the ear buds into my ears. I blasted the dance music that usually brought me up after something major happened. It did nothing to make me feel better this time.

  Since Mom and Harold were my only mode of transport, and I wasn’t about to go back to Dr. John’s office, I decided to take a public bus. I’d always hated public transport. The buses seemed chock full of weird people, who liked to stare. I hoped that since it was the middle of the day it would be fairly empty. I wasn’t wrong because when I boarded the bus I noticed that besides an old man with a black fedora hat and a sable colored cane, tight in his gnarled hand, I was alone. I sat in a seat close to the front and shut my eyes, trying to process everything that had just occurred. It felt impossible.

  I got off at my stop, walking the block or so to my house. Multi-colored leaves were already falling off the trees, helicoptering around me. When a few of them got stuck in my hair it made me remember that I’d just had my hair permanently straightened, and that now there was a good chance that I’d lose it all. I was sure that I would probably look like a bald alien. Just thinking about losing my hair made me feel pissed. Why had cancer picked my life to screw with?

  Didn’t the universe know that I’d had everything worked out. At seventeen I was already ahead of the game because I’d skipped grade five. So next year I would have been off to college to get my undergrad, then I was going to apply to law school. Then after I’d written the Bar, I’d land the job of the century. Next would have been to find the perfect guy, someone who was gorgeous with a ton of money, but who had eyes only for me. Maybe someday we’d have kids, a girl and a boy, both would have my blonde hair and blue eyes and…

  When I spotted my house, a massive two story grey brick, European manor style mansion that was by far the biggest on my street, I sighed with relief. We all knew that the house was too big for just the three of us, but since it was in the best neighborhood in town, Mom had insisted Harold buy it for us, despite its size.

  I was glad to see that our black Mercedes SUV wasn’t parked in the driveway, meaning I didn’t have to face them yet. Just as I put my key in the front door I felt my cell phone vibrate in my purse. Rather than grab it like I normally would have, I ignored it. It was a first for me. When I walked into the house everything was exactly as it had been when I’d left for school in the morning. Seeing that nothing had changed made my trip to Dr. John’s office seem like a bad dream, not reality. I tossed my purse onto the coffee colored leather sofa. Before I retreated to my room I heard a key in the lock. The door swung wide and Harold strode in. He caught sight of me in a flash and his face pinched like he’d bitten into a lemon.

  “Oh there you are Marilyn. We’ve been worried sick. After everything that’s happened already the last thing your mother needs is added stress,” Harold said. He wagged his finger at me. I stared back at him incredulously. I guess being diagnosed with a life threatening illness wasn’t enough to garner any sympathy. Obviously in Harold’s opinion all the attention went to my melodramatic mother.

  “I…” I started to say. A lump formed in my throat so rapidly that I couldn’t utter a word in my defense. He closed the distance between us, raking his hand through his thinning dark hair. Although there was not much left on his head, what was there, had been dyed black, according to Mom’s specifications. The last thing she could cope with was Harold’s grey hair. It was a wonder that she hadn’t already hooked him up with a hair transplant doctor since she couldn’t stand bald men either. I wondered if that sentiment held for bald daughters too. I tried to swallow but it seemed impossible, so I stared blankly at him.

  “I’m going to bring her in now. I expect you to be on your best behavior.”

  “Me?” The word came out in a squeak. Once again I couldn’t believe that Mom had hijacked a time in my life where I should have been the one supported, not the other way around.

  Harold laid his delicate hand on my shoulder. I recognized the pity in his gaze and it almost unhinged me. Yet I knew that whatever sympathy he felt for me would never supersede his commitment to his Luanne. The way he hovered over her made me think that he was actually grateful that she had married him.

  “You know your mother. She doesn’t do well with bad news. Try to understand.”

  “I’ll try Harold but did you forget that I’m the one who has cancer not Mom?” The word cancer caught in my throat. I fought to hold back the tears ready to overflow. He stared back at me. I knew by his expression of resignation that I didn’t have a snowballs chance in Hades of making him see that I deserved as much care as Mom did. I shrugged. What else could I do?

  “She just needs time,” Harold said. He released an extended sigh. “I’m going to get her now. Dr. John gave her a sedative, so she’s going right up to bed.”

  He turned and moved toward the door. When he did I couldn’t help but notice that his usually crisp button down white shirt was uncharacteristically rumpled, and one tail dangled over the back of his black wool slacks. Oddly in some strange way his slightly disheveled appearance made me feel like he was actually as thrown by my diagnosis as I was.

  Minutes later, Harold returned with Mom. If it was possible to cling to someone who was six inches shorter than you and still manage to appear frail, Mom did. Her bleached blonde hair was in an atypical tangle. Her mascara was a mass of scraggly black trails on her cheeks and her lipstick was smudged all around her lips. I’d seen her have more than her fair share of emotional meltdowns, usually over trivial things like a bad haircut or when she’d broken a nail. I’d never seen her quite as bad as she looked right then.

  She glanced over at me with her watery bloodshot eyes then dabbed
at her nose with a crumpled pink tissue. I was sure it was from her personal stash. She always had tissues available since she cried at just about anything, maybe even a stop sign. Of course in her world tissues always had to be colored and scented.

  “My poor baby,” Mom wailed. She waved a hand weakly, as if it was too much effort to reach for me.

  “Now, now Luanne, she’ll be all right,” Harold said. Mom buried her head in his shoulder and once again I was struck by how strange they looked together, like an Amazon warrior and a gnome.

  “Damn,” I breathed.

  Mom broke into a fresh set of hysterics. I did the only thing I could, I tore up to my bedroom. When I pushed into my room, a place that I had used as a refuge more times than I could remember, where I’d always felt safe, it was suddenly too pink and fluffy. I couldn’t understand how everything could be so artificially cheery when my whole world had fallen apart. I wanted to rip the petal pink and lilac duvet off my four poster bed and burn it. In fact I wanted to torch the whole place because the decor wasn’t even my style, it signified that once again I’d given in to Mom’s dreams. I’d always been the perfect and dutiful daughter, always attempting to make everyone happy. And look how that had turned out for me.

  Since I could remember I’d lived my whole life by a code that said that it was my job to make sure that I was perfect in every way possible. Now none of that mattered. Not one moment of my time spent on the Prom committee or my hours studying for tests to bring up my GPA, could do anything to change that I had cancer, and I might never make it to my eighteenth birthday.

  2. Jax

  Sirens pealed and flashing lights strobed through my bedroom window. It was time to get up. Years before, I’d stopped wondering who’d been shot, killed or mugged on the sidewalk below our apartment building. There was nothing I could do about it. Police lines, blood on the sidewalk and chalk drawings were just another day of life on the Strip.