Chapter 14 #6
When she comes to the end of the story the three adults sit in silence.
Wendy pulls another tissue from the box and wipes the tear-splattered table and then her eyes, and then, because still no one is speaking, and because the silence in the room is unbearable, she stands and goes to the bathroom to wash her face.
She wishes she had a secret bottle of vodka in her handbag and only barely manages to be thankful that she doesn’t.
When she returns to the dining room, her brother and sister-in-law are still seated. They don’t seem to have moved a muscle. It’s as if time has been suspended in her absence.
‘I’m sorry,’ Neil says, once she has sat back down. ‘We didn’t know. I suppose we thought we knew, but we didn’t.’
‘No,’ Sue says. ‘But how could we? You never said a word.’
Wendy nods thoughtfully at this. She clears her throat before, speaking with difficulty, she says, ‘It was so… awful… that I blanked it out myself. So I couldn’t have told you even if I’d wanted to.’
‘You see?’ Sue says, as if this somehow vindicates her. ‘We couldn’t possibly have known.’
Wendy blinks slowly and turns to look out at the wet garden.
Something is happening in her body and it’s a moment before she recognises the sensation as rising anger.
She’d hoped to avoid that today, but here it comes, bubbling up.
She takes a few deep breaths and then turns back and says, in the flattest tone she can manage, ‘If you’d been there then you would have known.
That’s how you could have known. By being there for me. ’
‘That’s true,’ Neil says. ‘And I’m sorry we weren’t there for you.’
Wendy nods at him slowly. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘OK.’
She looks out at the garden again, and tries once again to calm herself with deep breathing, but this time it doesn’t seem to help. When she turns back to face them, she catches a glimpse of something unspoken, something complex going on between them.
‘So is that it, then?’ she asks after a moment. ‘Like, sorry, and we’re all OK? Is that how this is supposed to work? After I… After I… Actually, I can’t even go there.’
Sue is biting her bottom lip.
‘I’m trying here,’ Wendy says, fresh tears springing up in spite of herself. ‘I really, really am trying. But I’m not sure that “sorry” quite cuts it.’
Sue turns to Neil now and strokes his shoulder. ‘I think you need to tell her, honey,’ she says. ‘I don’t think there’s any other way.’
‘No,’ Neil says, squeezing her fingers and then pushing her hand away. ‘No, you’re right.’
‘Tell me what?’ Wendy asks, glancing between their faces, trying to read meaning into their troubled expressions.
‘Look, there’s a reason why we couldn’t be there,’ Neil says. ‘And I know you think I’m an arsehole – and maybe I am that, too – but there was a reason. That’s the thing.’
‘OK,’ Wendy says doubtfully, drying her tears again and blowing her nose.
She can feel a fresh bout of anger rising again, already pushing away the sadness.
She knows, she just knows that whatever Neil says next is going to make her explode with rage.
Because what possible justification could there be for leaving her alone with their dying mother?
‘I had it too,’ Neil says, blindsiding her. ‘That’s the thing. I had cancer as well.’
And just like that the balloon of Wendy’s anger pops. ‘What?’ she asks, unbelieving at first. Her mind is trying to tell her that this is some kind of trick.
‘I found out I had cancer almost the same time you found out about Mum’s,’ Neil says. ‘Talk about timing!’
‘It was just a few weeks before,’ Sue says.
‘No!’ Wendy says. ‘Neil… no…’
Neil nods. ‘Stage two. Testicular. Horrible.’
‘No,’ Wendy says again, fresh tears springing up. ‘But how can…?’
‘It’s OK,’ Neil says, using the flat of his hand to make a calming gesture. ‘I’m fine now. I’m in complete remission.’
‘Complete remission,’ Sue repeats.
‘But for a while back there, things were pretty full-on.’
‘For a long time, really.’
‘Yeah, we had a bad couple of years.’
‘I don’t… How can I not know this?’ Wendy asks. ‘I mean, Christ, Neil. I’m your sister.’
‘I know,’ Neil says. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘We…’ Neil glances at his wife and she sighs and nods. ‘We were worried about you, really,’ he explains. ‘We were worried about you even before Mum. What with the drinking and… your general… I don’t know… stress levels… And then…’
‘We were worried it would send you over the edge,’ Sue says. ‘I thought you had enough to deal with.’
‘And you weren’t that easy-going about anything,’ Neil says. ‘So I didn’t want you making a fuss.’
‘A fuss?’ Wendy splutters.
‘Yeah. You know what you can be like. You’re hardly the best person to have around in a crisis.’
‘I’m not?’ Wendy asks. She’s shocked about this. She’s always considered herself great in a crisis.
‘No, you’re not.’
‘OK. Well, I guess I didn’t know that,’ she says. ‘And did anyone else know about this, about the cancer? Did Harry? Did you tell the kids?’
Sue shakes her head.
‘Harry only knew—’ Neil starts.
‘Are we doing that?’ Sue says, interrupting him.
‘Oh, OK. Sorry, no. Maybe not.’
‘What?’ Wendy asks. ‘Are we doing what?’
‘Nothing, really,’ Neil says. ‘Never mind.’
‘But all this was going on when?’ Wendy asks, trying to reframe her internal narrative of the last six years.
‘Well, they found it in, what – 2018, wasn’t it?’ Neil asks.
Sue nods. ‘It really was a couple of weeks before you told us about your mum.’
‘And I was going to tell you. I was, you know, prepping myself to tell you. But then you called about Mum, and I somehow couldn’t.’
‘There wasn’t really any space to tell you,’ Sue says. ‘If that makes any sense.’
‘You were all about Mum, which was normal. And you were really upset about Mum. Which was obviously normal, too. But we did think that you might find out. And we sort of decided to deal with that as and when.’
‘Neil was having his first surgery while you were in and out with your mum as an outpatient,’ Sue says.
‘So we thought we might bump into you then. Or at one of the check-ups. We thought you might find out that way. Or that one of your nurse friends might tell you. But you never did find out, so… so we just… left it, really.’
‘We were maybe a bit spineless about it, looking back,’ Neil says. ‘I still don’t know. And if we were, I’m sorry.’
‘We honestly didn’t know what was best,’ Sue says. ‘We couldn’t decide whether to tell you or not.’
‘We talked about it all the time,’ Neil says.
‘All the time,’ Sue confirms.
‘Your surgery,’ Wendy says, sifting through the conversation, grasping at words that might help her understand. ‘You said surgery…’
‘Yeah, they had to remove one,’ Neil says. ‘Replaced it with a plastic fantastic.’
‘You can barely tell,’ Sue says, resulting in a brief glare from Neil. ‘Well, you can’t,’ she insists.
‘God,’ Wendy says. ‘And you said your first surgery? So there was more?’
‘Yeah, lymph nodes,’ Neil replies. ‘They had to take those out, too. But that was a bit later on.’
‘Oh, Neil!’ Wendy exclaims. ‘You should have told me! I would have been there for you.’
‘It’s OK,’ Neil says, shaking his head. ‘You were there for Mum. And I do appreciate that, sis. Because I really couldn’t be there, myself.’
Wendy starts to cry again so Neil stands and moves his chair to her side.
‘Hey, I’m fine,’ he says, caressing her hair. ‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for Mum. But we really were in the wars for a while back then.’
Wendy sighs and shakes her head. It’s too much to take in in one go. She wishes she could go and lie down – wishes she could take a break in her mountain cabin, alone, to digest it all. ‘But you’re honestly OK now?’ she asks, again.
‘I am.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘One hundred per cent sure.’
‘Thank God,’ she says.
‘Nah, thank chemo,’ Neil, says.
‘And are there…? Have you, you know… God, I can’t think of the word. Have you got secondary issues? From the chemo and whatever?’
‘Side effects, you mean?’ Neil asks.
‘Yes. Exactly. Have you?’
Neil glances at Sue, silently asking her a question by raising one eyebrow.
Sue nods sadly and chews her bottom lip.
‘D’you want to…?’ Neil asks. ‘Or shall I?’
Sue shakes her head. ‘You.’
‘So, yeah,’ Neil says, turning back to Wendy. ‘We can’t have kids. So that put a bit of a spanner in the works.’
‘Kids?’
‘Yeah. I’m infertile now. Sperm count is a big fat zero.’
‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you wanted kids, anyway,’ Wendy says.
‘Oh, of course we did!’ Sue says. ‘We love kids. And I was… Sorry, Neil. I’ll let you… whatever you decide.’
Neil nods and wipes his face with the flat of his hand.
He clears his throat loudly. ‘So, yeah… Sue was actually pregnant,’ he says.
‘She was pregnant when I got ill. And so we didn’t – we kind of thought one was enough, one could be enough – and it wasn’t 100 per cent sure I’d be… you know… infertile.’
‘And I would probably have been too old to try again, anyway,’ Sue says. ‘I mean, it was a miracle I got pregnant then, in the first place. Well, we thought it was a miracle.’
‘So yeah, we decided, well, if we can’t have more, well, one’s enough. So we didn’t, you know, freeze any spunk.’
‘But I lost it,’ Sue says quietly, looking out into the garden. ‘I lost it at four months. It was a boy. And we lost him. So…’
‘We think it was the stress,’ Neil says.
‘Or my age,’ Sue says.
‘Well, they said it might be stress,’ Neil says.
‘And they also said that my age didn’t help,’ Sue insists.
‘OK, yeah, so we don’t know, not officially. But I think it was probably stress. All that business of me being ill.’
‘And I think it was probably my age,’ Sue says. ‘But whatever it was, I was devastated.’