Jam Sandwiches

by Greg Fowler

  The tingling sensations were still strong when he laid his hand upon the sturdy limb at his bedroom window, but he didn’t have to do that anymore. More recently it had been as though he’d soaked in enough of this precious elixir that it now found its own reservoir within. As much as a lover can be scorned and confused by the hurtful, inconsiderate actions of their other half, they can also grow together like plants in a garden, so that they share the same root system. So that where one thrives, so does the other. So that where one withers and dies, so does the other. That was how it was here. That was the way of Eddy Sullivan and Mr Tree.

  So how could Mr Tree let this happen. How could he possibly play dead when death itself was truly on the cards. Had it already forgotten the way he himself had placed his own body on the line after Grandma Daisy had ripped its branches and shredded its leaves. Surely not. Not something as ‘connected’ to the greater knowledge as Mr Tree.

  ‘Why?’

  This time a bit louder, a bit more forceful.

  Did it not want Reagan to live? Was that it? Can a tree be jealous? Can it pull you into such a deep embrace that there’s no room for anyone else?

  ‘Why!’

  That bubbling, that boiling was rising closer now and Eddy felt his jaw tense up and his teeth grind.

  ‘WHY!!’

  Moving without thinking, Eddy charged up to the branches above his bed, the branches closest to the heart of this treacherous malformation of nature, and with a rage that consumed him, he beat his fists against it with all of his might. The lava had arrived and it burned with a heat that threatened to consume everything in its path.

  ‘Why!…Why!…Why!’

  The words were hard now, not just because he was crying but because he realised he had to find his own answers. He and Reagan had been deserted. There was no Mr Tree. There never had been. It was all just a fickle combination of coincidence and fool-hardy faith. This tree, this ‘thing’….maybe it was amazing like his neighbours always told him, but they didn’t know what he knew. It was a liar. It was a coward…and more than anything else….it was nothing more than a lump of deformed wood.

  ‘I hate you! I hate you Mr Tree.’

  Eddy’s hands pounded those branches so hard now they were bleeding, but he wouldn’t have stopped even if he’d noticed.

  ‘Don’t you dare let her die. I love her!’

  Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Eddy knew Grandma Daisy was standing out in the hallway. He could feel her concern, her want to come in and hold him the way he had held her, but she couldn’t. She had to let Eddy have his time.

  Knowing that the whole world was watching, that anything and everything under the wide blue sky was impotent, even immune to his pain, Eddy finally collapsed on to the bed sheets. The bed sheets that Grandma Daisy had freshly washed and lovingly folded back into place.

  In the exhausted moments before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, Eddy came to realise he would awaken to a whole new world tomorrow. And it would never be the same again.

  78. PRAYERS

  Reagan came home a week later, but for Eddy it wasn’t the experience it should have been. The doctors said she had a real battle on her hands and Mrs Crowe had been right, they felt the cancer had the high ground. It wasn’t impossible though, they added, nothing’s impossible.

  When Reagan was lifted out of the car (she could walk, but it took everything she had) she was but a shadow of the girl he knew. There was a hollowness about her that scared Eddy. It was as if death was a journey for her and she’d already wandered past a few of the milestones.

  He did his best to smile and sound happy. They all did. And they all failed miserably.

  The drugs didn’t help. As far as Eddy could tell, they only made things worse. Reagan would go through bouts of vomiting so powerful that Eddy himself could feel his insides cramp up. The dark circles he’d noticed under her eyes all those weeks ago had transformed to fully laden, accompanied baggage, but that still wasn’t the worst of it. What sat above those puffy sacks was the saddest thing of all. Those wonderful, life enhancing eyes of hers had dimmed and diminished. They weren’t just the window into a sick and suffering girl, they were the signals of a quiet surrender. Seventeen years in and none to go. It was just so hard to see.

  Eddy knew she cried a lot. She’d hardly ever do it in front of him but that didn’t take it away. He knew in those silent, lonely moments when the lights were all out, she’d pull her pillow up close and ask God for help. And when He didn’t answer, the tears would come. She’d let it come on as quietly as the cancer itself had and, much as his Grandma had done when he’d laid into Mr Tree, Eddy could only stand on the outside and look in. She didn’t want pity, even if you dished it on a plate for her. She was too proud for that.

  And, in Eddy’s eyes, that made her all the more precious, all the more beautiful. The little girl who’d gotten out of the car that day and had waved back at him was dying. Eddy knew it, Mrs Crowe knew it, Grandma Daisy knew it, and, most painfully of all, Reagan knew it.

  Maybe, Eddy reasoned, she was just too good for this world. Maybe there’d been a mistake up in Heaven or something. Maybe one of the angels had got in the wrong line and God was calling her back. Yeah, maybe that was it.

  And if that was the case, then he’d been truly blessed. The Stupid Boy had been blessed. Did God take pity on him too, for his affliction, for his abandonment and for his resentful Grandmother? Had he placed this wonderful, amazing girl here for him on purpose just so he could climb out of this Hell on Earth, only to take her back when he’d come through it all? And if so, was it worth it….no, absolutely not. He’d go back to the old way in a heartbeat….his own heart beat. He’d die for Reagan. He was the freak. He was the one that should have died at birth and saved the world a whole bunch of trouble. Leave Reagan here. Let her continue to bless this place, to shine light into those eyes that have stopped seeing.

  In his own lonely nights Eddy too would pray. He’d ask God to take him instead. To somehow unplug Reagan’s fatal illness and plug it into him. He’d take it wholeheartedly too. He’d accept it with wide open arms and a smile.

  There was definitely something more on the other side of this life, of that he had no doubt. It was a place where souls came home and where no one was lost. Where nobody needed a Green Stone because love was everywhere. Heaven was one, big Green Stone. And while Eddy knew that Reagan would find peace there, she wasn’t ready. It was a feeling he couldn’t deny. It was more than blind hope and foolish wishes. It was something he sensed in the small stuff. Reagan still had something to give and he craved with every cell of his being to work out just how that was supposed to happen.

  He will come knocking soon.

  79. BEDTIME STORIES

  ‘Are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yes, for the fifth time, Eddy.’

  Reagan was lying in her bed, reclined up against a few pillows that hardly seemed to flex under her weight. Beside her, on the duchess, was a collection of pill bottles the likes of which had never been seen in one place before and Eddy was amazed at how a single person could fit them all in. It just didn’t seem right, and it most certainly wasn’t fair.

  ‘Do you w..want a drink of water?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Reagan shifted against the pillows a touch, releasing a grimace of pain in the process.

  ‘They think they’ll start the chemo next week,’ she continued. ‘Mum knows more than I do. I guess I just get to go along for the ride.’

  ‘You’re Mum’s going to let me know when so I can be there too.’

  ‘Cool.’ It wasn’t the bright acknowledgement it was probably meant to be. Instead it came out diffused of all emotion. It appeared to Eddy that Reagan was getting wiped of all emotion these days, and to him that was another step along her journey toward death.

  They both sat and pondered their respective roles in this new development before Reagan decided to break the ugliness of the silence between them.
‘It makes your hair fall out.’

  ‘I heard that.’ In fact Eddy had read it. He hadn’t told Grandma Daisy or Mrs Stanton yet, but he hadn’t done any proper study for a while now. He was still doing a heck of a lot of reading though. Anything about cancer he could get his hands on actually.

  ‘Mum reckons I can wear a wig. We’ll go out and pick one. What do ya think?’ she said with a good attempt at a smile and a model’s swagger. ‘Blonde or redhead?’

  ‘B..blonde’s make better movie stars.’

  Her smile stayed but her eyes wandered and Eddy immediately hated himself for saying that. How dumb was that? Reminding her of her dreams for a future she could never have.

  ‘Eddy?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Reagan reached over with her hand and took his.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Wh…what do you mean?’

  ‘After I’m gone. You’re the most special boy in the world Eddy and I think the biggest thing I’ll miss is watching the incredible life of Eddy Sullivan.’

  ‘Reagan, please d…don’t talk like that. You’re going nowhere.’

  Reagan listened to his words patiently before responding. It was as though an aged wisdom was being fast forwarded into what time she had left. As if life had a life of its own and it suddenly realised it had less time to develop all the answers it could.

  ‘Just do me a favour then. Tell me a story. Tell me the life and times of Eddy Sullivan.’ Then, with a longing look. ‘Please.’

  Eddy suddenly felt uncomfortable. In all honesty he didn’t want to consider a life without her, not yet, not when she was still sitting here, talking to him. There had to be hope somewhere, he just had to dig for it.

  He sleeps now, Eddy. He dreams.

  ‘Reagan, do I have to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eddy resigned himself to her determination. It wasn’t going to be easy though. A future without Reagan wasn’t really a future at all. But he’d give it a shot…for her.

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it. Things have been happening so fast, I g..guess I’ve just been taking one day at a time.’

  ‘Well then,’ interjected Reagan. ‘Here’s your chance to figure it out then.’

  ‘The study’s all good and everything but at the same time it’s frustrating.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s sort of h…hard to explain. It’s like all the stuff in those books…it’s missed the point. It’s like everything we learn is only scratching the s…surface. Does that make sense?’

  ‘More and more every day.’

  Eddy nodded, appreciating that she probably knew exactly where he was coming from.

  ‘There’s deeper stuff out there. A deeper knowledge. The thing that I d…don’t get is that it’s there for everyone. I mean everyone. And when we only learn the surface, we only live the surface. That’s the biggest problem out there.’ Eddy waved his hand at the wide world outside Reagan’s window. ‘There are layers within the layers and if we learn the r..right way we can see them. I know that.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I think I want to teach, Reagan. Yeah, I w…would love that. I would love t..to be able to show people there is so much more to this existence than m…meets the eye. To make them open their eyes.’

  Reagan’s smile was real this time. The pain was still there, it always would be, but for a moment at least, it took second place.

  ‘And you know wh..what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When people get it, when they understand it, they’ll never b..be able to unforget it. I know it sounds like a crazy thing to say….but that sort of thing could change the whole world.’

  ‘I believe you Eddy. I truly do.’

  ‘It would make people h…happy. Really happy. Not just surface happy, here today and gone tomorrow. Deep happy. Soul happy. That’s what I want t…to teach.’

  ‘Eddy?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I can think of no better person in the universe to do that than you.’ Reagan gave his hand a squeeze and Eddy fell in love with her all over again.

  80. THE SLIDE DOWN

  About a week and half after she’d fished his future out of him, Eddy accompanied Reagan and Mrs Crowe back to the hospital. This time they had an appointment. It was chemo time.

  Reagan was nervous as anything, but on that front she was only marginally ahead of the rest of them. Where she stood head and shoulders above them was in the pain stakes. It appeared to Eddy that the cure was worse than the disease. They’d instructed her to up the meds leading in to the chemo and that took a massive toll on her. It seemed to be ripping her from the inside out. Watching on as she threw her head back to swallow yet one more pill, he was both crushed with sorrow and amazed at her courage. Each new pill was another package of side effects and horrid reactions and yet she continued to take them.

  Yet while she was brave on the outside, inside she was still a frightened little girl. When they’d taken her into the radiology suite, she’d looked back at Eddy with an expression that had killed a piece of him. A pile of pills a day was one thing, this was something more sinister altogether. But what stabbed him worst was he could do nothing to stop her being wheeled away from him. She had to go, even though she so desperately didn’t want to.

  And in the end, it had been every bit as bad as he’d hoped it wouldn’t be. She stayed that full next week and a half in the hospital, most of it spent recovering from the marrow deep bouts of radiation that, despite their best efforts of targeted application and pain management, wracked her to the bone.

  Seeing her there, amidst the four corners of her recovery room, Eddy felt an immutable urge for circles. Life was all about circles, not squares. Squares had ends, hard, sharp ends that refused to budge. Circles, on the other hand, never ended, they just kept renewing themselves. Hospitals would be much better places for healing, he concluded, if they were designed as circles. No architectural reason, just a sense.

  Reagan wasn’t up for talking most of that time. He couldn’t blame her. She had more tubes poking in and out of her than an engine, and Eddy figured maybe that was how the doctors saw her. An engine. Something to be tinkered and tweaked. Does this work? Does that work? What if I tighten this or loosen that?

  Damn it, she was a girl, a human being, a creation too great to fully comprehend. There had to be a less intrusive way. If she was going to die, let her die in peace.

  When the doctors and nurses weren’t measuring one thing or another, Eddy would read to her. Happy stories. Stories with pages of hope and blessed ever afters. A lot of the time he wasn’t even sure she heard him, but that didn’t deter him. It gave him something to do, something that, even in the tiniest of ways, might just make her painful existence a touch easier.

  When she was consumed by a sudden and vicious bout of vomiting, he’d be there too, the first to grab the bucket and hold back her hair. The same hair that would soon begin to thin and fall out.

  And at no time whatsoever, despite seeing her at her lowest of lows, did he ever stop seeing her as anything but beautiful.

  Those times when she was fast asleep, when he knew she couldn’t hear him, nor could anybody see them, he’d put the book down and watch her. Her appearance may have changed but she was so much more than that. The girl who’d made him countless jam sandwiches was still in there, and he’d tell her that. He’d talk to her in those solitary moments. Not much more than a whisper, but loud enough so that if she was awake deep down inside, she’d be able to hear him still. So that his words would touch her soul and find a haven that could never be wiped away. She’d stamped herself on his soul and he just wanted to do the same for her.

  81. A STRANGE MAN FOR WILLOW AVENUE

  A couple of days before Reagan was due to come back home, Eddy had a strange urge to leave the hospital. He didn’t know why, it was just a blind instruction, one he found very hard to ignore.

>   He’s coming. The knocking man is coming.

  These weird thoughts he’d been having lately, they were somewhere behind this strange urge and he couldn’t afford to let it be. He so desperately wanted to stay here with her. She was on such a knife’s edge, and if she tipped the wrong way while he was gone he’d never forgive himself…but the urge was just so strong…he couldn’t deny it.

  He caught a lift home with Mrs Crowe, their conversation not even daring to touch the subject so close to their hearts. Such a conversation could only end badly.

  He’d also been more mindful of Grandma Daisy this time. Instead of charging on upstairs despite her best intentions, he took time to sit with her downstairs and talk about things at the hospital. She was worried too, worried for Reagan and Eddy. In contrast to the resentful lady who’d once cursed ‘that girl next door’, she’d seen how Reagan had contributed to this fine young man in front of her. So fine in fact that, even at his tender age, he’d already taught her more about life than anyone…maybe even Nevil. And now, to see Eddy so tortured hurt her as well. It made her miss her daughter. It made her miss her a lot.

  Soon enough though Eddy found himself alone in his room, wondering if coming home had been the right thing and feeling guilty as he imagined Reagan lying between those four cold corners. When he considered this he couldn’t help but notice how Mr Tree had fixed that as far as his own lodgings were concerned. As its limbs arched from one wall to another it cut off the corners in a gentle bow. The overall effect as it now crossed all four corners was that of an oblong. Not quite a circle, but much closer to it than a rectangle. It was comforting in a way, like being held by your mother. Despite that sense of consolation however, Mr Tree remained cold and silent. Mr Tree continued to desert him when the need was dire.