Scrabble
Scrabble
From the outside, they probably look like a normal family, thinks Eve. If you glanced in through the window, you’d see a normal, happy family, gathered around a Scrabble board on the kitchen table.
Only as you came closer might you notice the expressions on everyone’s faces and suspect something was amiss. Because they look variously tense, grim, tearful, disbelieving, and shell-shocked. She feels a bit shell-shocked herself, to be truthful. It’s out. Finally, after all the agonizing and debating and worrying, it’s out. All the family knows.
“Right,” says Nick, and it’s only from the faintest tension in his voice that she would have known anything was wrong. “Everyone take seven tiles. OK, Izzy? Take seven tiles and pass the bag along.”
“Can you still come and see my play?” asks Isobel in a wobbly voice.
“Of course I can come and see your play,” says Eve. “You won’t stop me! I’ll be in the front row, waving and cheering!”
“Thanks, Izzy,” says John, taking the bag.
He looks less shell-shocked than Izzy, but then the news was not news for him. They’ve kept the three older brothers in the loop all the way along, then worked toward telling the younger ones at a good time, with the whole family gathered. The half-term holiday began yesterday, so there’s no school for several days, no pressure, no other people. There will just be chilling around the house, lots of hugs and family time and answering all their questions.
A box of tissues sits on the table and every single member of the family has taken one. It’s been an intense half hour, carefully planned and scripted and discussed by Eve and Nick for weeks.
“You know Mummy had an operation,” their little speech had begun. “And you know she’s been ill. Well, her illness is a form of cancer.”
And so the speech went on, until Nick’s eyes were glistening and Izzy was fully crying and even John was reaching for a tissue.
Five children. Five bundles of love. And five bundles of grief.
Can you call it grief? Nothing’s happened yet. She feels fit and strong. She’s recovered well from surgery; she can walk again; she’s undergoing treatments. But the cancer she’s been stricken with is incurable and aggressive, with scary survival statistics.
Maybe “pre-grief” is a better term. Or there again, maybe all of this is overkill. Unnecessary. Her optimism surfaces again. A cure will be found. Her scans will be clear as a bell for years and years. They’ll laugh about it one day. Do you remember when we thought you had incurable cancer?
But, “You must tell the children,” the oncologist had said, and he was God, after all. And the worst thing would be if their children heard a clumsy version from someone else. Some well-meaning friend or neighbor. I’m sorry your mother is so ill . Or, even worse, playground gossip: Is your mummy going to die?
It’s not a secret exactly, this cancer of hers, but it’s not something she’s spread to the whole world, yet it’s amazing how many people have spotted her in the street and texted Nick. Eve’s looking very thin, is sheOK?
And so they’ve got used to breaking the news to others—and thus being reminded of how shocking it is. The truth is that to some extent they’ve already normalized it in their own lives. The doctors and the pills and the appointments at the cancer center. They’ve got used to it. They can even joke about it, when they’re not crying.
It’s only when they see the reactions of friends to the news that they remember how unusual and shocking this new reality of theirsis.
And so they formulated their little speech for the children carefully—not too scaremongering but not too glib either. Realistic yet optimistic and full of hope, which is basically how Eve feels when she’s not racked with guilt.
“They will ask lots of questions,” the counselor had told Eve and Nick. “They might ask the same questions again and again. You will have to be patient.”
“Don’t worry,” Eve had replied, raising a half smile. “Nick’s used to that. I ask him the same questions every day.”
Now she looks around at her beloved children’s faces, wondering if they’re OK, hoping that they’re resilient, wondering as she does approximately every five minutes how much longer she has on this earth and feeling—yet again—an overpowering guilt.
She has read about the stages of grief and can identify in particular with denial. For great tranches of time, she can be in denial. She goes about her day, she does her exercises, she watches TV. Only her constant fatigue gives away the fact that anything is wrong. That and the memory loss, but she was never good at remembering things anyway.
Then she’ll read a headline about cancer, or just see her pills on the bathroom counter top, and her diagnosis will come back to her in a terrible whoosh. It seems surreal. It can’t be her.
“If you’ve got brain cancer, how can you speak?” asks Isobel. “How can your brain still work?”
“Luckily I kept the speaking bit of my brain,” answers Eve. “And I kept the silly-jokes bit. But one thing that does happen now is, I keep losing my phone.”
This raises an almost-laugh. Eve is renowned within her own family for constantly losing her phone.
“You always lost your phone anyway!” says Isobel, her trembling voice on the edge between tears and laughter.
“You think having cancer is an excuse?” says Leo, and Eve looks at him gratefully because he’s following her lead, trying to find the funny in a ghastly situation.
“Might they find a cure?” asks Arthur, the fifteen-year-old.
“They might, darling,” says Eve. “Everything is possible. They’re trying new things all the time. But they don’t have one at the moment.”
Isobel gives a sudden sob and Eve feels the heat of tears springing to her own eyes. “I know,” she soothes Isobel, reaching over to rub her back. “I know, my love. It’s hard.”
I may never see you grow up, my beautiful girl, and I can’t bearit.
“It’s unfair,” Isobel manages between sobs, scrubbing her face with a tissue. “It isn’t fair. Why did you get it?”
“I don’t know, my darling, and I know it’s unfair.”
“But you’re healthy,” puts in Reggie. “I mean, all you ever eat is bean salad.”
This is another family in-joke and there’s another ripple of almost-laughter.
“The doctor said this cancer isn’t due to that kind of thing,” says Eve. “It’s just down to good or bad luck and I’ve had bad luck. I’ve been lucky in so many ways over my life—and this is where I’ve had bad luck instead. But at the same time, I am lucky. I can walk and talk and, look, even play Scrabble. Lots of people in my situation can’t.”
“You can’t win at Scrabble, though, Mum,” says John, heroically lightening the mood. “Because I’m going to win.”
“ I’m going to win,” Arthur contradicts him.
“ I’m going to win,” says Leo. “I’ve already got the most epic word.”
“ I’m going to win,” chimes in Reggie, not to be outdone. “Because I’m awesome.”
The mood has lightened even more, and Eve glances at Nick. He gives her a tiny wink and she can tell he’s thinking the same as her—they’ve got through the worst ofit.
“Isobel, did you have another question?” asks Eve, seeing that Isobel wants to talk. “You can ask anything you like.”
“Yes, I do have a question,” says Isobel. “Only I think I know the answer already.”
“Ask anything,” says Eve, remembering something the counselor said. “It doesn’t matter if anyone knows the answer, it can be good to ask the question anyway. And then we can all think about it and talk about it, maybe.”
“OK,” says Isobel. “Well, here’s my question. Is ‘yit’ a word?”
Eve feels a jolt of surprise, followed by a flood of immense relief. Isobel is already thinking about Scrabble. She’s already bouncing back.
“?‘Yit’?” echoes Arthur derisively. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a boat,” asserts Isobel with a degree of bravado.
“You mean ‘yacht.’?”
“No, yit! I’m sure a yit is a kind of boat.”
“Use it in a sentence,” says John, and Isobel takes a deep breath.
“He sailed there in his yit.”
The whole family collapses in laughter, and Eve feels almost buoyant. If you glanced in through the window, you’d see a normal, happy family, gathered around a Scrabble board in the kitchen, all laughing, with not a care in the world.
She knows she’ll plummet in spirits again—they’ll all plummet in spirits again at some time. But right now she’s smiling and her family are laughing and it’s all right. Just for now, it’s all right.