Handle Me with Care (9 page)

‘That’s me,’ she said, dipping her brush into the sunshine yellow paint and adding a strip to either side of one of the heads to represent her blonde, straight hair. ‘And the other one is my sister.’

Evan tapped Gabriel on the shoulder as he sat, tongue jutting out between his lips in concentration, painting streaks of brown for the trunk of a tree. ‘You need to do up your shoelace so that you don’t trip over.’ The boy obediently crouched down and did a pretty good job of it. The best lesson Evan had been taught at the school where he began his teaching career was to never tie a boy’s shoelaces if they were wet. There was every possibility the child’s laces had trailed along the floor in the boy’s bathrooms.

Come five o’clock, Evan was exhausted. He’d dealt with stragglers running in for forgotten lunch boxes, left-behind cardigans and school hats; he’d had back-to-back meetings for lesson planning; and he’d gathered together the marking he needed to do tonight. By the time he left school, his tiredness hit like a tidal wave as he passed a few children making the most of the sunny, still afternoon by whizzing on the supernova and clambering up and down the climbing net.

As he drove home his mind churned with the two women in his life he knew he needed to speak to, to explain. Jem knew something was up already, she had quizzed him over the phone, but he knew he would have to tell her about the cancer face-to-face, and tonight he didn’t have the energy to manage it.

The other woman was Maddie. He was still fighting the inner battle as to whether he should contact her, or whether it would be fairer, easier all round if he didn’t. But when every spare moment seemed to feature her, how could he possibly ignore that?

Chapter Eleven

Maddie reached out and found the glass of water beside her bed. Each swallow echoed around the room as she sat upright and pulled her sheets around her as a shudder took hold. When she lay down, the colours of the parachute in her dream were still there: red, gold, lime green and a white that matched the clouds. She had been skydiving in her dream, with Evan and Riley. All three of them had been holding hands in a circle, smiling as wide as the biggest rainbow as they fell through the air with a feeling of freedom and peace. Then Maddie had pulled open her parachute, but the men fought over the single parachute remaining, wrenching it back and forth, and when Maddie saw the burst of colour and one man floating safely towards the ground, she had no idea who had survived, Evan or Riley.

That was when she woke up, and lying there now, big fat tears rolled out the corners of her eyes and on to the pillow. The nightmares had passed over the years, but ever since Evan appeared in her life, they had resurfaced. It was even getting to the point where she dreaded going to bed, knowing when she shut her eyes, she may see things she wished she wouldn’t. Last week she had spent a quiet night watching
The Wizard of Oz,
and she had fallen asleep part way through, waking with tears already streaming down her cheeks. She had dreamt Riley was walking around Oz when Maddie’s house fell, trapping him beneath it just like the witch wearing the ruby slippers.

Her happy-ever-after felt as though it was getting further out of reach all the time, and some days she wondered whether it would ever come. 

Maddie checked the clock: almost 4 a.m. Her alarm was already set for 4:30 a.m., anyway, with her next masterpiece awaiting decoration so she could deliver it to her patient, Arnie, when he came in today.

She switched off the alarm, and in the kitchen she pulled out ingredients, clattered around in the utensils cupboard and pulled out everything she needed to make the icing. She did her best to ignore the dull ache behind her eyes that reminded her of her nightmare and the resulting lack of sleep.

The night before, she’d made one sponge using a pudding basin – this would form the domed part of a mortar board for Arnie’s daughter’s graduation cake – and another sponge in an oblong tin to make a textbook that would have ‘Congratulations Jess!’ piped along its spine.

Once she’d wiped down the surfaces to clean up the icing sugar that had escaped during weighing at this incredibly early hour, Maddie spread each cake with the butter icing. She used a decorating comb to pull along the edge of the oblong cake to create the effect of pages. She carefully balanced the chocolate slab on top of the domed part of the hat and attached the fondant tassel to complete the mortar board.

Maddie wondered what other things she should add to her shopping list if she wanted to launch this hobby into a real business. She already had plenty to fill her kitchen – tins in all shapes and sizes; spatulas large, medium and small; stainless steel kitchen scales as well as a digital scale for when small, precise quantities were essential; piping nozzles; a decorating comb; a fondant ribbon cutter; half a dozen moulds with everything from a Santa face and reindeer heads, to a Halloween mould. Since Evan’s confidence boost at dinner that night, she had dared to dream of one day owning her own premises: a shop where people could buy over the counter, sample before they placed an order. But for now, if Rachel Khoo of
The Little Paris Kitchen
fame could run The Smallest Restaurant in Paris from a tiny studio flat, then Maddie Kershaw could make do with her apartment.

Satisfied, Maddie clipped the cake carrier in place, ready to transport the cake to Arnie when he came in for his appointment today. The distraction of baking had worked wonders yet again, and for that Maddie was grateful as she headed to the shower to wash away the final traces of last night’s nightmare.

*

‘Thank you for bringing me, Evan.’ Jem linked her grandson’s arm as they walked down Collins Street.

‘Don’t be silly, you should’ve told me before, and I’d have made the appointment for you.’

‘I’ve hurt one wrist, Evan. I’m perfectly capable of making a telephone call.’

Evan held the door open to a glass-fronted building for his ever-independent, one-hundred-year-old grandmother as Jem checked a piece of paper with the address. ‘Which floor?’ he asked.

‘Fourth.’ She followed him into the lift and up they went.

It was only as they made their way along the carpeted corridor that he saw the sign saying Palmers
.

‘Jem, did you know this is where Maddie works?’ He waited for her answer, but she came over all innocent.

The sensation of his heart soaring took him by surprise. Half of him hoped Maddie would be here, on duty, but the other half of him didn’t want to see her. He hadn’t called her since the day he saw her on the beach and now he felt like a prize bastard for the way things had worked out. She knew he had his reasons, but it still didn’t seem like much of an excuse. ‘In limbo’ – that was what an ex-girlfriend, Bec, had said she’d been when he never got in touch. Bec had told him she couldn’t care less if he never wanted to see her again, but it would’ve been nice to be told.

He gingerly pushed open the heavy glass door and held it for Jem, whose face wasn’t giving anything away. She stood behind a man in the queue.

‘Evan, would you look at this cake?’ Jem was admiring the cake tucked inside a plastic container by the man’s feet.

It had to be one of Maddie’s, no doubt about it. Evan looked at the cake, clearly for a graduation. With talent like this, Maddie had a real shot at turning her hobby into a business. She’d be crazy not to, crazy to stay in a job for which she lacked a genuine passion.

She was close by, he could tell. His heart quickened as Jem launched into a repartee with the man about the cake and the talents of its creator.

Evan pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans in case they were shaking, and he was about to take a seat when he saw caramel, wavy hair shining beneath the downlights as Maddie came into the reception.

‘Evan?’ She looked about as shocked as he was, and he had had prior warning given that they were about to cross paths.

‘G’day, Maddie.’

He didn’t have to think of something to say because Jem had already launched into fancy-seeing-you-here’s and lovely-to-see-you-again’s. Maddie took Jem through to a treatment room and Evan ignored Jem’s request that he go too.

‘I’m fine just here, Jem.’ He picked up the broadsheet on the table and opened it to stop any more protests. He didn’t focus on a single word.

Twenty minutes later and Jem was back in reception accompanied by Maddie.

‘It’s not broken, just strained,’ Maddie explained. ‘I’ve bandaged it up so that it’s easier to rest it, and it should come good. If it doesn’t’—she turned to Jem—‘please come back and see me.’

Evan wondered whether Jem had really hurt her arm; it seemed a miraculous recovery given her insistence that it needed to be seen to.

‘Jem, I’ve been thinking,’ said Evan. ‘Perhaps you should give more thought to moving in with Mum. You know, if you’re going to hurt yourself like this.’

He noticed Maddie stifle a laugh.

‘I’ll worry about you on your own now.’

‘I’ll just go and pay, Evan. Thank you again, Maddie.’ And with no reference to Evan’s suggestion, and perhaps because she knew she’d been sprung with her engineered injury, Jem scurried over to the reception desk.

‘That’ll teach her to mess with me,’ said Evan when Jem was out of earshot. ‘The looming threat of – heaven forbid – accepting some help and moving in with Mum will teach her for trying to throw us together again.’

‘She’s a lovely lady, Evan.’ Maddie smiled, her cheeks flushed. She spoke softly. ‘You’d be surprised at how many elderly patients come in with ailments that really don’t need attention from a physio. I think some of them are just lonely.’

He wished she weren’t so nice; it would be easier to walk away then. ‘I don’t think Jem has that excuse. She has loads of people around. But it’s nice to see you anyway.’

‘And you.’ He saw her swallow, hard. ‘Does she know?’

‘That we went out on a date?’

She shook her head.

‘Ah, you mean the dreaded C word? No, haven’t quite got around to that yet.’ He wondered again what made it easy to tell one person and not another. ‘I probably should’ve kept my big mouth shut the other night too.’

Maddie looked distracted as another patient pushed through the doors. ‘I’m glad you were so honest with me, Evan. Not every man would be quite so bold.’

Or quite so stupid, he decided.

He cleared his throat nervously. ‘I suppose what I’m really sorry for is that we hadn’t had more dates before I told you. I would’ve liked to get to know you better.’

‘Can I ask you something, Evan?’

‘Go on.’

‘Why did you go out on a date with me when you knew that you could have cancer?’

The truth was that ever since he met Maddie, he couldn’t imagine
not
asking her out. Women had come and gone from his life over the years, but she was the only one who had ever stayed in his mind long enough to consider more than a casual encounter with. And it had thrown him.

‘I didn’t know before I asked you out in the supermarket that day. I probably did what most blokes do and hoped that the problem would go away by itself. I still can’t believe it didn’t.’

He watched her chew on her bottom lip. She had no idea how sexy that was. All he wanted to do was to put his arms around her, breathe in the smell of her hair and feel her body against his.

‘I hope it all goes well for you, Evan.’

‘Thanks.’ He took a deep breath and then said, ‘I need some time to get my head around this, you know?’

‘I should go.’ She put an end to their encounter and any hint at another date later down the track. She turned, waved to Jem, who had kept her distance, pretending to be engrossed in the pamphlets on the front desk, and showed her next patient through to the treatment area.

What he didn’t want was Maddie’s pity. He wanted her to fancy him, to look at him as though she couldn’t get enough. He wanted her to see him as the dependable strong man he had always been, and he didn’t want her to be witness to his weakness – what kind of a wuss would he be then, ball or no ball? No, when it was all sorted out, that’s when he would make his next move.

Chapter Twelve

After school came to a close on Friday, Evan went over to Jem’s place to sort out her garden. It had been three days since she’d pulled her stunt and taken him to see Maddie, and he knew he couldn’t wait any longer to tell his grandmother what was going on with his health.

Evan folded in the wing mirror of his Audi TT so it didn’t get sideswiped outside Jem’s place – it had happened twice before in the skinny road – took a deep breath and clicked open the wooden gate. After he rapped on the door, he stood back so Jem would be able to see it was him through the peephole he insisted she use. He made the obligatory crazy face with his tongue hanging out to one side, cross-eyed and a big frown on his forehead, a tradition between them that he never grew tired of when it was met with laughter from his grandmother when she opened the door.

‘Evan, come in!’ She pulled him into a hug, his large frame enveloping her.

‘How’s the wrist? I’m surprised you didn’t call me before today.’

‘It’s much better. Your Maddie worked wonders. And I can manage perfectly well on my own, young man, have done for years.’

Jem had no idea how much he wished Maddie was ‘his Maddie’.

‘It’s a miracle.’ He smiled. He had to admire her persistence in throwing them together, even when she knew nothing about their date nor about the bombshell he had dropped at the end of it. After the physio appointment the other day, Evan had called Jem and quizzed her enough to find out that she had phoned several physiotherapists in the city before she found out where Maddie Kershaw worked.

‘I’ll get started.’ He made his way through the house and out into the rear courtyard – gardening first, explanations later.

‘Don’t you want a cuppa first?’ Jem called after him.

‘Best not.’

The tiny courtyard showed signs of neglect: the agapanthuses on the far wall were in a bad way; the small patch of camellias had seen better days. The entire courtyard looked as though it felt sorry for itself, much like Evan, and he vented his frustration in the small space now that the morning rain had stopped.

His emotions had ebbed and flowed this week from the thrill of seeing Maddie to the misery of adjusting himself in his running shorts that morning and feeling the lump. He took his frustration out on the spent purple agapanthus, ripping off the heads. He tore out the debris from the terracotta pot in the far corner of the courtyard and wrestled with wisteria vines.

‘Don’t you get rid of too much of that,’ warned Jem, stepping over to the lavender flowers that grew from the vines littering the back fence. She leant in, closed her eyes and inhaled the fragrance.

‘You should get rid of all of it.’ Evan forced his foot hard on the spade to push it into the soil of the flowerbed that ran down one side of the courtyard.

‘Fuck!’ His hair caught on a vine that looped low. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered without looking at Jem. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and knelt on the ground in the middle of the dead plants and mud that was strewn all over the place.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Don’t.’ His voice barely a whisper, he wiped the stinging tears from his eyes.

‘What’s going on, Evan? Is everything okay at work? Is it Maddie?’

He wished it were quite so simple.

Jem lowered herself into the wooden chair beside him in the courtyard. ‘What is it, Evan?’

He didn’t look at her when he said, ‘I need to have an operation.’ He felt a papery hand on his own. He knew Jem was trying to instil confidence, but her hand shook as much as his heart pounded.

‘What sort of operation?’

‘They think I’ve got testicular cancer.’

He heard her gasp, and when he looked up her eyes were filled with tears. Neither of them spoke when Jem pulled him closer, and he felt as comforted as when he was a child who’d grazed his knee and sat on her lap.

‘I don’t understand, Evan. You’re so … you’re so young, so fit and strong.’

He ducked inside the back door and came back with a box of tissues. Jem took one as he said, ‘Whenever the next vacancy comes up, I’m having an operation to remove the testicle. It’s the only way the doctors can see what’s really going on, how serious it is. I was going to wait to tell you, until after the operation was over with. But I knew that if you found out I’d kept it from you, you would’ve had my other ball on the chopping block.’

She was smiling now, albeit through tears. Jem had always kept her family close, and for him to keep this a secret would’ve crushed her regardless of the prognosis.

‘Listen, Jem. Let’s not worry until I know what I’m dealing with. Okay?’ He grabbed both of her hands in his own, her cool skin vulnerable beneath his. ‘The best case scenario is that it isn’t cancer at all. But I’m afraid that the bloods and the ultrasound strongly suggest it is, so the next best thing is that we’ve caught it early enough that it hasn’t had the chance to spread.’

Had he been indoctrinated into talking like the specialists?

‘Have you spoken to Martha?’ asked Jem.

He hated seeing the pallor that replaced his usually rosy-cheeked grandmother when she spoke.

‘I’ve decided not to tell Mum for the time being.’

‘Oh, Evan, are you sure that’s a good idea? She’d want to be here for you, you know she would.’

‘Yes, and I know how great a time she’s having in Canada and the U.S. She’s had this travelling planned for such a long time, and she deserves the chance to see it through. She worked long and hard for us kids, especially after Dad died. Now it’s her turn to do something for herself. Her racing home won’t change the outcome.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it will. So if it’s cancer, what happens then?’

‘The doctor says that if we’ve caught it early enough, then a single round of chemotherapy should be all that’s needed to eradicate the cancer cells.’ He just hoped they were right, but reciting those words to Jem actually helped – without those words he would go crazy with the possibilities of what could happen.

‘Listen to you.’ Jem clasped both of his hands in her own. ‘You’re counselling me when it should be the other way round.’

‘It’s funny. Out in the courtyard I was so angry—’

‘I did notice.’ She managed a smile.

‘Telling you calmed me down in a way, and putting the whole story into words somehow helps to rationalise what’s going on in my head.’

He didn’t discuss the ins and outs of the operation. If it were a different cancer, then he probably would have done, but he couldn’t sit and talk about his testicles with his grandmother. She was pretty liberal, but he drew the line at that.

Evan began piling the garden debris to one side. ‘It’s made me think about the future, Jem. I never gave much thought to long-term, but now all I seem to be able to fixate on is meeting the right person, settling down and having a family. All the normal things in life.’

The smell of damp grass and foliage hung in the air as he busied himself with the rest of the courtyard. ‘This Winter Daphne will produce white flowers eventually.’ He smiled over at Jem as he emptied potting mix into an enormous terracotta pot. He’d already lined it with a piece of plastic fly wire to prevent the soil from seeping out when it was watered.

Jem reached out to run a hand along the vines of the wisteria that had moulded to the fence over the years. ‘You know, Bernie and I planted this when we first bought the house.’ She didn’t look at him when he stopped to listen. ‘Oh, we were in a terrible panic that it would never take. Neither of us knew a thing about gardening, but we both had visions of a beautiful oasis out here where we could relax, be together. And look at it now.’

Evan looked around the tiny rear courtyard Jem had put her mark on over the years; he looked up at the thin, weatherboard house that had as much character as she did with its signs of determination to beat whatever went on around it. 

‘I’m sorry for snapping at you to get rid of the wisteria.’ His comment got the smile he was hoping for and Jem squeezed his hand reassuringly. He calmed when he felt her familiar, cool skin. No matter how warm it was outside or in, Jem’s hands always felt the same.

‘Bernie and I were lucky, Evan. We married young, had three beautiful children and we got to enjoy our grandchildren and now great-grandchildren. I realise how lucky I am, but only because I’m so old that I have time to sit around and contemplate what life has thrown at me. I’ve done pretty well dodging any curveballs.’

He chuckled at Jem’s modern saying that had to have come from watching too many American sitcoms or movies as she tried to stay in touch with the times.

‘Is that what you think the cancer is, a curveball?’

‘I think sometimes we can get swept away in the business of everyday life, and we forget about the big picture. Think of it as a problem that must be overcome, a bit like the wisteria.’

‘You’re comparing wisteria to cancer?’

‘Of course not, but Bernie and I pulled together with that wretched wisteria. We had no idea about gardening, but we had our future dream. The wisteria represents something we had to learn about, to work our way through to get to the good stuff – the oasis we envisioned when we bought this place. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t let cancer have the last word as to what your future will be. Never, ever give up on what you want, Evan. The chances are you’ll get it, cancer or no cancer. You’re a Quinn, after all.’

Evan grabbed the broom propped up against the house and swept up the debris, piling it into the garden waste bin.

‘I don’t want to speak out of turn,’ Jem began.

‘But you will,’ he teased.

‘I was wondering whether your sudden frustration is about more than the cancer, whether it has something to do with Maddie. I saw the way you two were with each other at the party and at the physio the other day. Is she the reason you’ve suddenly started thinking about the future and what could have been?’

‘Has Holly been talking?’

‘She may have mentioned that you two went on a date.’

‘We did, and I went and told her about the cancer.’ He pushed the last of the debris into the bin and swiped a beetle surreptitiously creeping up his forearm. ‘I want to see her again, I really do. But I don’t want our time together to be tainted with talk of losing a testicle, having chemotherapy, a recurrence of cancer.’

‘Evan Quinn. Since when have you been afraid to take a chance? Right from a little nipper you were all about taking a risk and dealing with the consequences later. Do you remember your first athletics carnival when you were nine years old?’

He squinted as the sun crept above the rooftop and fully graced the courtyard.

‘Well I do,’ she continued. ‘You weren’t the slightest bit nervous. Your friend Jack was in a terrible state, worried he would come last, worried he wouldn’t be able to finish the longer races. I can remember you standing there, sipping from your drink bottle, telling him that he would never know if he didn’t at least try. You told him to stop being such a big girl’s blouse – admittedly Martha and I were in fits of laughter at that expression coming from a nine-year-old – and you told him to get over to that start line.’

‘I sound like a bossy girl.’

‘You’re not so different to Holly, you know.’ Jem chided. ‘My point, Evan, is that you won’t know how Maddie feels if you don’t give her a chance to tell you, a chance to react and deal with what’s going on.’ She puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. I knew that girl was meant for you the second I saw her.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Okay, enough of this chit-chat.’ She headed back into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, ‘The rest of this can wait. You need a cup of tea and something to perk you up, and so do I.’

He very rarely needed a cup of tea. In fact, he mostly drank it to humour Jem, who he could have sworn had tea running through her veins like blood. But Jem’s baking? Now that was another matter entirely.

How had he not detected the smell seeping from the pan on the stove? He must have been in another world when he arrived. The smell filled the kitchen, wrapping a cloak of familial love around Evan as he took a scrubbing brush to his hands and fingernails.

‘What’s cooking, Gran?’ he asked.

Jem gave him a don’t-mess-with-me look.

‘Sorry, “Jem”.’

‘That’s better.’ The smile that could light the way for a thousand ships reached her eyes and reminded Evan she hadn’t always been this age. The photograph on her bedside table was testament to that: a slip of a woman on her wedding day standing next to his grandad Bernie, looking beautiful, happy – her life ahead of her just as his should be now.

‘Is this what I think it is?’ Evan’s eyes widened as Jem carefully lifted the pudding basin out of the water – no sign of any problem in her wrist, he noted – and untied the baking paper lid secured by a string.

‘Syrup Sponge.’ His mouth watered as he looked at a deep golden sponge, his childhood favourite.

Jem ran a knife gently around the edge of the pudding basin and then tipped it out on to the waiting serving plate. She warmed extra syrup in a milk pan and then tipped it over the top of the golden sponge, letting it ooze through the air bubbles. She cut a thick slice and placed it in a bowl in front of Evan.