by Matthew Crow
“They told me you were at the hospital,” Mum said, starting to cry. My cheek began to sting and I was cross that she was the one who was going to be getting all the sympathy. I thought about forcing myself to cry but it was no good. I could not bring myself to whore my emotions that way. So I just stood there, dumbstruck.
“You stupid, stupid boy,” Mum said, pulling me toward her. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She hugged me for a moment and, though reluctant at first, I eventually relented and hugged her back. Mum heaved wet sobs onto my shoulder. I knew she’d be able to smell the sea on my clothes. I also started to panic that she’d smell Fiona’s cigarettes on my uniform and assume I’d been smoking. If skipping three lessons warranted a facial assault, then the Lord knew what smoking might induce. It would probably be enough to inspire an entire trilogy of memoirs. Talk show hosts would end up congratulating me on my Journey.
But Mum didn’t seem to notice the smoke, so I carried on hugging her. I was surprised she’d got in touch with the school in the first place, or vice versa. They’d never seemed to communicate that much in the past. One parents’ evening Mum sat for forty minutes in the hallway of kindergarten before remembering I’d moved up into Elementary, then came back and blamed me for never showing her the letters I’d brought home.
I peeked over her shoulder to try and see whether or not I was in time for The Simpsons, but she must have misinterpreted my curiosity for affection because she started hugging me tighter, saying how sorry she was and how I was never to frighten her like that again. Grandma gave me a look and nodded, which meant she was proud of me, and suddenly I was proud of myself too. In that moment I was keeping my entire family afloat, and safe from complete emotional breakdown.
I suddenly felt quite burdened.
Dinner was a somber affair. Grandma told us stories about Granddad, which I’d heard a thousand times before but still smiled at because I liked hearing her tell them. Grandma was different when she talked about Granddad. It was as if someone jiggled her antenna and suddenly the picture became a bit clearer. Mum loved hearing about him too. They were always close. Mum had him and Grandma living with us when he had been unwell, and took loads of time off work to help out. Even Grandma said she’d made her proud, the way she had behaved.
Grandma was still there when I went to bed. When I hugged her to say good night she drew me tightly to her and gave me a surprisingly wet kiss and whispered in my ear that she loved me. I said it back, then said good night to Mum before making my way to bed.
The day’s downward spiral had left me feeling low. I logged on to eBay to check my positive feedback comments in the vain hope that it might give me a confidence boost. It did, slightly, but not as much as usual. So I started searching for songs that spoke to the mood of the day. I came up with a promising opening trio: “Life on Mars” by David Bowie, “She’s Leaving Home” by the Beatles, “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman.
I was starting to become engrossed in the task when I heard a knock at the bedroom door and Mum asked if she could come in.
I had to think twice before granting her access, fearing another outbreak of violence. Eventually I closed the laptop as quietly as I could and put it on the floor beside the bed, lying back as though I had just been woken up. I said that she could, but used a weak, tired voice so that she’d know to be gentle.
When she came in she started fussing about my desk, putting used tissues in the bin and pretending to be dead interested in the homework I’d left open to prove it was actually being done.
“I know you weren’t asleep,” she said, sitting on my bed. “I could hear you closing the laptop.”
From downstairs I could hear the Coronation Street theme tune playing, which meant it was ten o’clock and Grandma was catching up with the soap opera’s repeat.
“Sorry I skipped,” I said. I wasn’t really sorry; I was pleased I’d had the day to myself. I wasn’t even that sorry for scaring Mum anymore, not after her outburst. But I said it anyway, to try and make her feel better.
“That’s okay. Sorry I went off on one. It wasn’t my finest moment.”
I shrugged. I was not quite ready to accept my mother’s apology. She needed to know that this sort of behavior could not be condoned. To normalize it would only encourage a repeat performance.
“Oh, Francis, what are we going to do, eh?” she said eventually.
I told her that I’d go to school every day from now on, even weekends if she wanted me to, and never skip again. She just wafted her hand and took a sip of water from my cup beside the bed.
“That’s fine. It’s over and done with. I mean . . . this has blown a hole right through me, Francis, you know? And I feel like I shouldn’t say that because the last thing you should be doing right now is worrying about me.”
She was right. My energies were best reserved for the battle ahead. I didn’t say as much, though, just nodded sympathetically.
“I’m not very good at all this,” she said, teasing the feathers of my dream catcher. “I can cope, just about, in my own way. But I don’t know what you need me to be. That’s my problem.”
“You’ve always managed before.”
“Well, before was different. I’m having a bit of a crisis of confidence here, Frankie. Good timing, eh?” she said, and laughed. “I suppose all I’m saying, Francis, is that whatever it takes, I’m going to get you through this. And I’m going to be whatever you need me to be, whenever you need me to be it. I just want you to talk to me. Not to close up. Not to go inside yourself and save it all for the blog or for Chris or for that cretin you knock about with. Just let me know, Francis. Everything I do is for you. It might not always seem that way but it is. So, that’s it really, love. Just let me know what you need, and I’ll be it.”
I nodded and went to hug her because suddenly I had forgiven her, and felt awful for scaring her, and just wanted to show her that she was always what I needed her to be, even when she was going off on one.
When she hugged me back she felt weaker than she ever had before. Normally when she hugs me it’s the way she shakes hands with men at work, determined and solid, like she’s proving a point. This time she just sort of sank into me, like she had finished a marathon and I was wrapping her in a foil blanket.
“Good night, love. No more Internet tonight,” she said. “Try and get some sleep.”
She turned off my lamp and closed the door behind her. I waited until I heard the creak of the last stair before I picked up my laptop and carried on making my playlist.
CHAPTER FOUR
“In the face?” Chris said, genuinely shocked. I hadn’t intended to say anything, but once he had arrived and we were alone I thought I had better address the issue, just so he knew where we were at as a family.
“Yeah, but not hard. At first I was angry and thought about pressing charges, maybe even divorcing myself from her, like a Culkin or something.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“It’s okay. I’ve forgiven her now. I just think it’s all a bit much for her. She’s doing really well, mostly. . . . She’s all right.”
“She’s the sort of woman they name hurricanes after,” said Fiona. She was kneeling on the kitchen bench, stretching her arm to the very back of the food cupboard. Mum had taken Grandma out shopping and told Chris he had to come and spend some time with me. The second the car had left the drive Fiona turned up with an empty carrier bag and she and Chris began swarming the supplies.
“She’s started hiding the good stuff at the back, behind the flour and stuff. Just dig deep,” Chris said, opening the fridge and fleecing a tub of margarine and two packets of string cheese.
“Don’t tell her I told you,” I warned him.
“I think we’d better call it a day,” Fiona said, pulling out a family-sized carton of stir-in pasta sauce before closing the cupboards. “Little and o
ften . . . that way she’s none the wiser. She’ll just think Punch-bag’s got his appetite back.”
“Spoken like a master criminal,” Chris said, sealing up the bag. “Oh, one more thing.” He opened the freezer and took out a packet of chicken breasts and two bags of chili Mum had frozen for emergency midweek meals. “For protein,” he said to me, half apologetically.
Fiona grabbed the bag and ruffled my hair before fleeing the scene of the crime. We heard her shut the door behind her and we were alone.
“Do you want to watch a film or something?” Chris asked.
“In a bit,” I said, texting Mum to say we needed butter. I didn’t want him to starve but even I wouldn’t tolerate dry toast on his behalf. She texted straight back, asking me to relay to Chris that he was to stop foraging in her cupboards, and that Fiona was to vacate the premises and perhaps ask her own mother for food donations. I will not recite what she said word for word due to my modesty and discretion.
By the time Mum got back from shopping it was the in-between hours, when it’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner.
“Just have a biscuit or something,” she said when I moaned that I was hungry. It seemed cancer was not like having a cold, where everything was brought to you on a tray in bed. Because I was coping so admirably, Mum’s sympathies only stretched so far. Not so far as an afternoon sandwich, apparently.
Later that afternoon Jacob visited for a bit and brought me a present.
“They’re from Mum, for when you go in,” he said.
That was the other reason Mum had made Chris come around. It was Sunday. On Monday I was moving onto the specialist unit to start treatment. I had been trying not to think about it. For some reason the thought of trying to get better seemed scarier than everything that had gone before.
The present was a pair of striped pajamas, which seemed like a bleak reminder to someone in my position, but I thanked him anyway.
There was also a Get Well Soon card with a five-pound gift certificate from a local shop inside.
I showed Mum the presents and she said it was very kind of Jacob’s mum. She liked her even less than she liked Jacob, thanks to an incident at our elementary school’s bake sale. Mum had bashed about some shop-bought cakes and sent them in for me to sell. Jacob’s mum had pointed out that they were on special offer at the grocery store that week, and when Mum found out she went off it.
Mum is good at grudges.
I told her I thought the five-pound gift certificate would perhaps pay for writing supplies—maybe a notepad and a fountain pen—that I could use to document the coming months, but Mum said I’d be lucky if a fiver would get me a carrier bag in that store these days, and that if I wanted a notepad and pen she’d buy them for me. After some bartering we came to an agreement whereby I would give her the gift certificate, so that it would afford her a magazine or similar, and in turn she would buy me whatever I wanted from the shop. Usually she’s far harder to bargain down.
“He’s not stopping for dinner, is he?” Mum had asked at the top of her voice when I’d gone into the kitchen to get Jacob some soda. I said no and she said, “Good, it’s a family meal tonight, so he can’t stay long.”
It suited me down to the ground. We’d played a computer game even though I never really knew what I was doing with them. Mum had been given it free by one of the people she worked for, and handed it down to me in the hope I might find a hobby that was normal for someone my age. All I ever really used it for was to fill in the silences when Jacob came around, of which there were many that day.
“You scared?” he asked at one point.
People kept asking me this. The stupidity of the question never seemed to dawn on them. There could be only two answers. Either the answer was no, in which case there was no point in talking about it. Or it was yes, in which case I certainly wouldn’t want to talk about it. Plus nobody really wanted to know. If I’d opened my mouth and told Jacob how I really felt at that point, he’d have bolted. He was going through the motions and I hated him for it.
“No,” I said, lying.
At first it had all seemed slightly exotic, like a foreign neighbor or a famous family member. The words being thrown about were ones I only knew from films or TV. But the closer it came to moving onto the unit, the closer I came to wanting to burst into tears at every given opportunity. Treatment could only go two ways, I kept thinking. Nothing said it would go the right one. It didn’t help that luck hadn’t been entirely on my side of late.
“I wouldn’t be either,” Jacob said, shooting me in the face with a machine gun.
I paused the game and told him he had to leave because Mum was starting dinner.
“But I was winning,” he said.
He was not. I was luring him into a false sense of security. That he’d fallen for it was proof of my prowess.
“Well, you’ve got to go, Mum says. Dinner’s nearly ready. Thanks for coming around, though.”
“Fine,” he said, and got up to leave. “I hope you’re okay. Do you want me to come and visit?”
The responsibility of deciding was something I could have done without, so I just shrugged.
“If you like,” I said.
I let Chris see him out.
I had three visitors in quick succession while I was packing my things that night, like Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol. The hospital had provided a list of suggested items (pajamas, slippers, toothbrush) but I had second-guessed them and begun thinking outside the box. I was looking for my best shirt to pack so that I was prepared in case I received any special visitors—like a passing princess with a TV crew in tow, eager to touch the sick—when Chris came in and said he was proud of me, even though I hadn’t done anything to warrant that. He gave me a mix CD, which he said would help when I was feeling down. I thought it might have been an inspirational message album. I’d bought something similar from a garden center once when my final exams were giving me sleepless nights. It hadn’t worked. But Chris said it was a fail-safe power drive of the most energizing rock songs he could think of. He told me I’d be fine, and also gave me a fifty-pound top-up card and said if I ever needed him I should ring, no matter what time of the day or night it was.
Then Grandma came in and hobbled over to my bed, sitting down right on top of the three T-shirts I had folded as perfectly as any shop assistant might. She asked me if I had enjoyed dinner. I said I had, but was beginning to worry about Mum’s heavy hand with the salt shaker. Sodium can lead to high blood pressure, heart failure, and death. We had recently watched a documentary about it in Home Economics. Grandma shook her head and said it’d do me no harm, that life was for living. She said Granddad lived eighty-three years on a diet of salt and pastry, and that a piece of fruit had never passed his lips. I told her this was more than likely down to luck. Then she went all quiet and said she was proud of me too. By this point the whole process was becoming wearing. She took my hand and made me sit down close to her so I could feel her bony frame beneath her clothes. With a shaky hand she snuck something out of her side pocket and handed it to me.
“It was your Granddad’s,” she said.
It was a small silver pendant on which there was the outline of a man holding a stick.
“St. Christopher,” she said, proudly. “It’s not real silver, but no one’ll know if you don’t tell them. Supposed to keep you safe when you’re traveling. Your granddad never took it off.”
I did not have the heart to remind her that the heart attack that would eventually kill Granddad got into full swing in the ambulance, as it zoomed past Bargain Booze.
“Oh, love,” she said, hoisting herself up from the bed, using my shoulder for support. “You just look after yourself, flower. You’re forever in my prayers.”
She gave me a big kiss and then left.
By this time I was massively behind with my packing. Added to which m
y T-shirts all had to be refolded, thanks to Grandma’s utter disregard for her surroundings.
Mum came in last and was quiet again.
“Do you want any help with your packing?” she asked.
I told her no, because I had drafted a plan of my suitcase accounting for every inch of space.
“Well, in that case, can I just sit here?”
I said yes. Mum was not given to asking permission of anyone. I thought that denying her my company might lead to further hysterics so carried on with my task as she sat toying with an action figure that had escaped the clutter cull of the preceding spring.
“You’ll be fine, you know,” she said. “If there’s anything you want to talk about, Francis, ever, I’m here.”
I stopped folding my third best pair of boxers and jammed them in the case.
“I know,” I said, but could feel my voice wobbling and my throat getting tighter. “I don’t know why everyone keeps telling me things I know. I’m clever enough to realize them for myself. I understand everything—” Now my eyes were watering and my throat scratched with each syllable. “I just wish people would stop treating me like I was stupid and let me get on with my packing!” I said, and knocked the case to the floor.
Mum looked shocked. I am renowned as the pacifist within the family. Conflict is normally beyond me.
She went to pick up the case, then thought better of it. Instead she just grabbed me and held me tight against her. At first I tried to fight her off, but resistance was futile.
I sat down on the bed, crying hard into her shoulder, and she lay back. I felt my face get redder and redder. I was choking on tears. Each time I tried to say something they washed over the words like the tide around a drowning man.
I must have nodded off sometime soon after, because when I woke up it was morning and I was in bed. My case had been packed too, and even I had to admit Mum had done an all right job of it.
The teenage unit was not like other parts of the hospital. For a start there was a chill-out room attached, which looked like the sort of thing housemates were rewarded with on Big Brother. It had a TV the size of a small car, and every games console that ever existed. There was even a vending machine and two comfy sofas. They looked out of place in a hospital setting, like the relative who turns up to a funeral in a tracksuit. Also everyone there was a little bit more cheery than anywhere else, which I found immediately suspicious given the circumstances.