by Matthew Crow
When they told me I had cancer, the word held a new quality. It felt charged, all potential, guaranteed to cause a reaction. But it was never the same reaction twice, which was a problem. So, for a while, I stopped saying it. I kept it to myself, like a new haircut or a daring pair of sneakers, until I felt comfortable letting it loose on the world at large. The word seemed wrong and awkward in my mouth, like the gum-shield I’d once been given as a precursor to the dreaded braces. I would sit on my bed and practice saying it, feeling it catch and snag in my throat, trying to find the right pitch and tone. Painful at first, then becoming easier, more natural, like a splinter making its way from a freshly bathed finger.
Of course, it didn’t stay secret for long.
Jacob was quiet when I told him.
“The bad kind or the good kind?” he asked. I didn’t entirely know how to respond to this. I knew there were bad and good bacteria, but wasn’t aware of the type of cancer that came with benefits. “No,” he said, trying to explain himself. “It’s just my mum had a cell or something removed once that was a bit suspicious, but she only needed the afternoon off work so it was fine.”
I had deduced that it would take more than an afternoon and a Band-Aid to make me better, so eventually settled on the most accurate answer I could come up with.
“Medium, I suppose.”
We settled, eventually, on simply not acknowledging it at all in conversation, unless as a matter of complete medical emergency, which suited me down to the ground.
Not everyone was quite so lax about the situation.
People started taking notice of me where they never had before. Teachers began marking me up on homework even I knew was below par. I was usually a steady B. Not because I was naturally mediocre, but rather, I suspect, due to the fact that my intelligence was raw and untamed, like an artist’s or a libertine’s. My mind went beyond easy classification; try and pin it down to a standard category and it bucked and writhed, never quite as apparent in black and white as it was in my mind. Also I did a lot of my homework in front of the TV or on the Metro, so my handwriting was sometimes quite hard to read. Either way, my marks were solidly average. After the diagnosis you’d have thought I was one of those pale kids you see on the news who get high marks in every exam they take three years early, only I was achieving such greatness without the inevitable early-twenties breakdown. I didn’t mind all that much. I just smiled weakly and whooped inside, each free mark another step to the university of my choice.
Other kids also started to behave strangely to me. No one made eye contact, no one spoke. It was as if for the first time in my life people knew who I was, and chose to demonstrate as much by ignoring me as elaborately as possible.
One Wednesday afternoon I was sitting in English Lit when Miss Cartwright came bustling into the classroom and had a word with Mr. Bryers.
“Francis Wootton, collect your things. You’re being picked up,” he said from the front of the class. I was disappointed because it was getting to the good bit of Romeo and Juliet, but I dutifully did as instructed and left with Miss Cartwright.
“It’s your appointment,” she said ominously, like we were in some alternate universe where everyone spoke in code.
I told her I didn’t have an appointment and she shook her head sadly as she hurried me along the corridor.
“He said you’d say that. That you’d have your days mixed up.”
“He?”
“Never mind, sweetheart. Oh, love, you really are all to hell, aren’t you?” she said, turning the corner into the library where the secretaries sorted the attendance roster. “Off you go, sweetheart. We’ve told your teachers for this afternoon.”
“But I don’t have an appointment. . . .”
Miss Cartwright shook her head and dabbed her nose with a handkerchief.
“So brave,” she said, scurrying back behind the counter.
Outside I couldn’t see anyone and still didn’t entirely know what was going on.
“All right, feller?” Chris said eventually, getting out of a car I hadn’t seen before.
I could see Fiona waving at me from inside.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Thought we’d have some time together. Nothing heavy. Just a bit of extracurricular bonding.”
I shrugged and got into the car.
Chris had borrowed it from a friend at work by saying that his little brother was at death’s door with cancer (!), but he said it wasn’t tempting fate because he knew I’d be fine. He drove like he always does, zigzagging in and out of lanes and leaving a choir of angry toots in his wake.
“We just thought we might as well have some fun,” Fiona explained.
“Don’t tell Mum, though,” Chris said as he swerved past a truck.
“Where are we going?”
“Tyne and Wear is our oyster,” said my brother, and put on a CD.
The drive was the second best bit of the day. None of us knew where we were going. We had no plan. No final destination in mind. We just drove faster and faster until we arrived. And when we did, all I could think about was how much fun it had been getting there.
“Your uniform’s looking especially avant-garde today,” said Fiona as we pulled into the parking space at the beach.
“Thanks. The trousers are actually skinny jeans—look!” I held up my thigh to show her the discreet denim, which was forbidden at school. The jeans weren’t actually supposed to be skinny. That was just a lucky coincidence. None of my clothes fit properly because I was too scared to try anything on. I once got stuck in a pair of pants in Topman and started hyperventilating. Mum must have heard me panting and groaning and assumed I was doing something ungodly, because she threw the dressing room curtains open with a mortified look in her eyes and then burst into hysterics when she saw me struggling. She had never been very good in a crisis and provided little in the way of emotional stability. It was a wonder I turned out as stoical as I did. Things took an even worse turn when she started trying to yank them off my calves. The salesgirls just stood in the corner asking if we needed any help and Mum made a joke about them having to fetch the Jaws of Life, which was a) not funny, and b) inappropriate given my shortness of breath at the time. I could easily have blacked out through stress.
The memory of it still haunted me; the upshot being I had clothes that either hung loose and baggy around me or were so skintight I could barely move. The jeans fell into the latter category.
“. . . and I put black suspenders on underneath my blazer.” I dipped my shoulder to provide supporting evidence. “It’s a nod to Patti Smith on the cover of Horses. No one got it, though. I don’t think the rest of my class are too well versed in seventies counterculture.”
“More’s the pity,” she said, and put her arm around me. “Do you know something, Francis?” She took a long sip of soda and continued, “Years from now there are going to be women crying at their bachelorette parties, telling their friends that you were the best they ever had.”
“Not at the rate I’m going,” I said flatly.
It was true. I’d only ever kissed two girls, and one of them was my second cousin for a dare when I was six. The other was Paula Amstel, who wore a corrective shoe and couldn’t say her Rs properly.
“Oh, Francis, it’ll happen,” Fiona assured me.
“Do you think the Make a Wish Foundation could sort something out . . . you know, all things considered?” I asked, only half seriously.
Chris laughed from the front of the car and impressively managed to span three parking spaces before stopping the engine.
“I’ll get a ticket, Don Juan,” he said, still chuckling, and slammed the door behind him.
When he was gone Fiona gave me a funny look. Not embarrassed, the way everyone at school had started to look, or pitying, like the teachers did. She looked like she was on a missio
n and determined to succeed.
“Francis,” she said, glancing through the back window like she was scared someone might be spying on us, “I’m going to do something now and I need you to know it’s an act of humanitarian goodwill, okay?”
I nodded.
“I mean it! I don’t want to be put on some register.”
“Okay.”
She sighed again and sat up straight in her seat.
“You can look but you can’t touch, deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
Before I knew it she had lifted her sweater up and pulled down her bra.
I sat there, stunned.
I can categorically confirm that they were even better than Juliet’s.
“There,” said Fiona, pulling her top down. “And if anyone asks, you can say we did tops and fingers. I’ll back you up that far. Beyond that you’re on your own.”
I nodded even though I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. I wasn’t very good at sex, even in theory. This was probably down to the fact that I had no real friends except for Jacob, and his track record with the opposite sex was as lousy as mine. Sex education was a joke because they only ever put on scratchy videos of women in labor and cartoons of men in white shorts swimming toward giant orbs. And even though she’d tried, Mum’s attempt at The Talk hadn’t been entirely illuminating. She just sat on my bed one day, stroking the sheets absentmindedly, and eventually asked if I knew that people got off with one another. When I told her I did, she looked relieved and said, “Good. Well, if you need any gaps filling in, then we’ve got broadband and I never check the history. . . .” Then left to make tea.
The three of us walked along the promenade for a while and chatted about music and films. Chris kept stopping to text me the names of bands he said I should listen to and fall in love with, and Fiona kept linking my arm each time we passed groups of kids skipping school, making it look like she was my girlfriend.
About half an hour later we passed an ice-cream van, which looked sad and lonely in the winter sun, and Fiona dashed across for some emergency supplies. I hung around to wait for her but Chris said she’d catch up and led me to a seat overlooking the water.
We sat quietly together for a while. Fiona had the knack of luring into conversation just about anyone she talked to. Even Grandma would talk to her for hours despite the fact that Fiona had tattoos and often wore clothes that exposed her navel. But something told me that this was more choreographed than her usual social detours.
Chris and I sat and watched two gulls fighting over a greasy sheet of newspaper, and I closed my eyes as the damp sea fog passed across my face. My brother didn’t speak, just prodded the toe of his Converse into a puddle on the ground.
“Chris,” I said eventually, worrying about how long Fiona would be able to tolerate the conversation of the ice-cream man, “do you want to have a poignant conversation?”
He laughed and shrugged, kicking a cigarette butt from the puddle so that it slid off the edge of the promenade.
“Dunno. Do you?”
“Not really. Can’t things just be normal?”
“Not really,” he said, and laughed again, only more sadly this time. “I’m so sorry, Frankie,” he continued, rubbing a hand across his mouth.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. It just is, I suppose. Besides, they’re going to do loads to get rid of it.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’ll be over before you know it. And I’ll feel like a boob about busting you out of school and forcing you into a Deep and Meaningful.”
“Probably. I’m glad you got me out of school, though. I’d forgotten my copy of Birdsong.”
“Are you scared?” he asked.
“Not really. I know the bits I need by rote.”
Chris bumped his shoulder against mine. He had gone to the trouble of securing an automobile, so the least I could do was meet him halfway on the big emotional scene he’d obviously envisioned.
“I suppose so,” I said after a while. “It just feels so big. Too big. It’s like . . . remember that summer when Mum had the swimming pool built in the back garden without measuring it properly first?” I asked, and Chris laughed at the memory of one of her more obscure tangents. “And how, until she got the builders to take it out again, we had to walk around it with our backs against the fence just to get our bikes out of the shed? It’s like that. Like suddenly it’s right there, with no planning, no warning. And you can’t not notice it. It’s in the middle of everything, and it’s ruining everything, but nobody knows how to get around it. I think I just want someone to tell us how to make it work, you know, how to make it fit in with everything else. Because it doesn’t feel like there’s enough room for it. I’ve got exams to think about for a start.”
Chris laughed and put his arm around me.
“What we need is an idiot’s guide to leukemia. Maybe the bookstore will have something in.”
I felt all the hairs on my arms stand up. I did not like Chris saying the word. No matter how gentle they made their voices or how low they forced their tone, other people saying it made it sound like an accusation.
“Yeah, exactly,” I said after a while. “That’d make everything fine, if we just knew how it was all going to pan out. A timescale. That’s what we need. Maybe a wall chart, like my study timetable.”
We both laughed, and Chris pulled his arm tighter around me.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to swap places with you, Frankie.”
“I know.”
“There isn’t anything I won’t do to make it easier for you.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’ll try.”
We were quiet again and eventually I told him that there was one thing he could help me with.
“And I need you to answer me honestly.”
“I will.”
“I just need to know. I mean, I probably do already know, but I just need you to explain exactly. . . .”
“What?”
“I mean, obviously I know, but just, if you could tell me for definite. . . .”
“What is it, Frankie?” he said, looking impatient. “Just say.”
“Well, I suppose, what I mean is . . . what exactly do people mean by tops and fingers?”
We got french fries because the smell from the shop made our mouths water, and then didn’t eat them because they seemed so much more exciting in theory than in practice. We just sat in a bus stop because it had started to drizzle, warming our hands on the soggy newspaper, and chatted about all kinds of unimportant things, as if nothing was different, just like it was any other day when Chris and Fiona had kidnapped me from school. At one point I thought I saw Mum’s car and started to have difficulty breathing when I thought my cover might be blown, but Fiona said cancer was like a dozen get-out-of-jail-free cards: No one was going to get me on anything behavioral for some time to come. Not even Mum.
They dropped me at the far end of the street so as not to arouse suspicion, and then ruined the whole operation by tooting six loud bursts of the horn as they drove away. I panicked and threw myself into Mrs. Jackson’s shrubs. Truancy can result in a fine, which Mum could probably afford but which would also besmirch the otherwise immaculate permanent record I needed for applying to university.
When I got in, the house was quiet. Usually Mum had on music or the TV. Sometimes both. She was not like me. I needed an almost Zen-like state of calm when I did homework, and my desk had to be organized in a way that meant everything was both symmetrical and ordered by size. Mum’s desk usually looked like a bomb had gone off, and her paperwork was always dog-eared and with coffee stains. It was a wonder she’d come as far as she had in life. To me, presentation was key. That was why I even had her iron my boxer shorts.
Grandma’s
shopping cart was in the hallway, so I knew she must be visiting. This usually meant good things, primarily a little pocket money and probably some sweets also. Grandma’s company itself varied in quality. Sometimes she could be a real laugh. She and I were allies. When Grandma was about I was never to blame.
Other times she just made clucking sounds at everything Mum seemed to do, and Mum huffed and puffed like a teenager until she finally started yelling about stuff that happened ages ago and it all kicked off big style. The atmosphere sometimes became too much for me to take, so I removed myself to watch The Simpsons on the TV in the conservatory. That was my sanctuary. It was like the cluttered study of some Victorian detective. I’d had many of my most profound thoughts in here. I think it might have been because of the combination of the endless view toward the sea and the muggy air, which lent the place the atmosphere of an opium den or Roman steam bath.
There was no sound coming from the front room until I made it inside. I saw Grandma sitting next to Mum on the sofa. She had her hand resting in Mum’s lap. This was the first sign something was wrong. The TV had been muted. Another bad sign.
When I arrived inside Mum stood up and I could see that she had been crying again. I assumed that the full implication of my illness must finally have hit her and she was struggling to cope, so I moved toward her to comfort her, only she reached out and slapped me across the face. It wasn’t hard. If anything, the sound was louder than the sting. But the point was made. Grandma held her hand to her mouth in shock, the way ladies of her age do. I was surprised she didn’t flutter her handkerchief and slide unconscious to the floor. She was, after all, witness to the birth of abuse in the family home.