Henry's Sisters (27 page)

‘I got pain-cree-at-ick cancer. Say it like that. Ick. Because it’s icky.’

‘Yes, it is icky.’

‘Isabelle’ – he raised himself to whisper in my ear – ‘I no get better. I sick.’

I paused mid-pat. No one had told Henry that he wasn’t getting better.

‘Why do you say that, Henry?’ The pain in my chest got worse, spreading like the wings of a sick eagle.

‘Because in the dream Jesus said I come to him soon.’ He smiled.

I could hardly move. ‘Jesus told you that?’

He bit down on his lip, a big grin. ‘Yep. I go to heaven soon. I go see Maries.’

Maries was a cat we had when we were younger. It was gold. It had got hit by a truck.

‘Yeah, yeah. Jesus smile at me. He said I done good. He said I go up up up to heaven.’

What do you do when someone’s dying and they talk about dying? Deny it? Dismiss it and miss out on an honest conversation the dying person needs to have? Offer up hope of a miracle when there is none coming? Henry was special, but he wasn’t stupid. The tears started sneaking out of my eyes and I snuffled and I coughed.
I wish you weren’t going to die
,
Henry
.

‘Hey, Isabelle! You no cry! No cry for Henry.’

That made me cry harder. I knew I had to be strong, but inside I felt like I was folding in on myself. I was devastated beyond devastated. The only reason I believed in hope was because of Henry. He was the only constant joy in my life. My truest friend.

‘I love you, Isabelle.’ He stroked my cheek. ‘Don’t cry or I cry!’

I couldn’t stop.

So Henry started crying. ‘Don’t cry, Is!’

I couldn’t stop. ‘I’ll miss you, Henry.’
I cannot tell you how much I’ll miss you
.
I can’t
tell it to myself because then I will die of grief
.

‘Yeah, yeah!’ He wiped his tears. ‘Me too. But you silly, Isabelle. I right here.’ He touched my heart with his pointer finger. ‘I right here. All the time. I right there.’

My heart thumped and thumped and I reached for Henry and hugged him tight.

‘You my sister.’ He smiled. ‘I your brother. We the Bommaritos. We always be together.’

I buried my face in his shoulder.
Why Henry? Why him? So many horrid
,
murderous people in the world
,
why not them?

‘Jesus loves you, Is, and he take care of you when I in heaven. I catch a moonbeam or a sun ray!’ He grinned. ‘That fun.’

No, that not fun. Because I would be here, at the end of the moonbeam, at the end of the sun ray. Alone. Without my hope.

‘I sleep now, Is. I go back to sleep. Night night, Isabelle. You pretty.’

‘And you’re beautiful, Henry, so beautiful.’

He touched the tip of my nose, then slept.

I grieved, deep, seemingly endless grief. ‘I love you, my brother,’ I whispered.

Henry being in my heart wasn’t good enough. I wanted Henry with me. With us.
With the Bommarito family
.

More test results came in over the next few days, which confirmed what we already knew.

Janie and I alternated days at the bakery along with Cecilia, who often brought the girls. Dad also took shifts, when he wasn’t at the hospital, his hands flying as he made one confectionary miracle after another.

We kept our word and hired Lytle. He came with a different brother each day and they cut out cookies with cookie cutters. Lytle smiled the whole time.

Momma was at the hospital every day, going home when exhaustion took over or she was too overwrought to function.

If we went to the hospital to keep Henry company, we were hardly needed. I had called Father Mike and Janice at church, Mr Howard at the senior centre, and Paula Jay at the animal shelter and told them the situation and that Henry wanted to tell them exactly how to do things in his absence.

Shocked and saddened, they all understood the situation exactly. They came with pencil and pen and wrote down word for word what Henry said.

‘I don’t know how we’ll do it without you, Henry,’ Father Mike said. Father Mike does not believe in hiding emotions from Jesus or anybody else. He blew his nose in his handkerchief. ‘I can’t wait until you come back.’

‘Yeah, me too, Father Mike. But you can do it!’ Henry cheered. ‘You can do it!’

‘Thank you for telling me about Bursom, King Nap, and Lady Elizabeth, Henry,’ Paula Jay said, her hair messed up from the motorcycle ride. ‘They have tricky personalities. I didn’t know that Lady Elizabeth was stealing King Nap’s treats. Do you know how I should handle Scotty?’

‘OK, let’s go over it one more time,’ Mr Howard croaked. The man must have been eighty-five. He had come with three other people who could not have been any younger. ‘Help us out, Henry. Tell us the order again for getting ready for lunch, then Bunco.’

Henry had told his visitors, ‘Visit Henry! Tell all my friends I happy to see them!’ So they did, and people came.

Lytle arrived with his brothers who brought a checkerboard and checkers for him and Henry to throw.

People from the senior centre came in groups, and the staff and volunteers at the animal shelter visited in shifts, as did three noisy groups of teenagers from church, many sporting Mohawks and pink hair. Customers from the bakery, Bao and Belinda, friends from his day centre, neighbours, and most of the rest of the town, including the mayor and town council, firefighters, police officers, and teachers from Cecilia’s school, also visited.

It was a good thing he ended up being there for six days, or we would not have had time for all his visitors.

When Henry was released from the hospital, he hugged his doctor. ‘Hey, you get those dogs married! They in looooove!’

Dr Remmer assured him she would.

He high-fived the nurse, a man with tattoos up his arms of his mother and grandmother. They were homely women. ‘You be good, Henry. Hang gently.’

‘Hey, hey. I good. See ya, Mac. Mac the Big Mac.’ He laughed.

Outside the hospital, I handed Henry a helmet.

‘Here goes Henry! I on a motorcycle with Is!’

‘I still can’t believe you’re doing this,’ Momma protested.

Dad put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s what Henry wants to do.’

She tried to protest again.

‘Let him, River,’ Dad told her. ‘Let him go.’

Momma snuffled as Henry got on the back of my bike.

I started the motorcycle and pulled out, slowly, with Henry holding my waist, whoo-hoo-ing. Carefully we pulled away. In my rear-view mirror I could see Momma waving and waving.

Waving goodbye to Henry and me.

Henry, for his part, was holding on tight, screaming, laughing, smiling. ‘This fun, Is! This fun! Go fast! Faster!’

When we pulled in front of the house, Grandma and Velvet were waiting on the porch. Velvet was waving, Grandma was saluting.

As soon as Henry saluted back, Grandma ran down to the motorcycle.

‘My co-pilot has returned in victory!’ she shouted. ‘In victory! I’ve kept our secret hidden in the tower!’

Henry guffawed and hugged her, then hugged Velvet. ‘You need some mashed potatoes and gravy to put some meat on your bones, Henry!’ Velvet twanged. ‘And some of my grandma Ellen’s pecan pie!’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Henry said, still weak but fighting. ‘Henry home. I home!’ He put his arms straight out like a plane and hobbled after Grandma.

We met in the sunroom that night, the moonbeams shining through the trees. I hated the moonbeams now, I did.

For three sisters who talk almost incessantly while together, or fight, or laugh, we were strangely, ghastly quiet.

About five minutes later, I heard Janie muttering.

‘What are you counting?’ I asked.

‘I’m counting the tiles in the floor.’ She made marks on the journal she was holding.

‘You’ve already done that,’ Cecilia said. ‘Many times.’

‘I’m counting them again,’ Janie said, her voice wispy, like wind. A lost wind.

Cecilia was gobbling down a cherry pie, as if it would fix her life if she ate fast enough. Her mouth opened and I watched her shove one bite in after another. Maybe that’s why I was rarely hungry: because Cecilia ate so much, I always felt full.

Her hair fell forward and one of the gold strands dipped into the red gook. When she put her head back, the gook landed all over her sweater.

‘You have cherry gook on your sweater, Cecilia,’ I said.

‘Who cares?’

I sat there for a second. Who cared?
I cared
. I cared that Cecilia was inhaling a pie. An entire pie was going straight down her mouth. I cared that she was huge.

She took another bite, her mouth stretching like a rubber band. This time, hair on the other side dropped in the red gook.

All of a sudden I was ravingly, smokingly, enraged. Did Cecilia
want
to kill herself? Would Henry die and then her?

‘For God’s sakes, Cecilia,
stop eating
!’

Her head snapped up in shock, cherry juice dripping onto her chin when the fork wobbled. A cherry fell to her lap.

Janie stopped counting.

‘Stop!’ I yanked the fork out of her hand, then snatched the pie pan.

She instinctively grabbed for it, sputtering through the food in her mouth. ‘What the hell are you doing, Isabelle?’

She yanked it back, but I was not going to let go. ‘You are gobbling up an entire cherry pie, for God’s sakes, that’s enough!’

She stood up and glared at me, her hand still on the pan. ‘It’s enough when I say it’s
enough—’

‘No.’ My voice was shrill and naggy. ‘It is enough now. Now, Cecilia.’

She pulled at the pan again. Cherry juice splattered onto my shirt. ‘Give that to me. And don’t you ever,
ever
tell me what to eat or not eat. I don’t need you, you sanctimonious slut, to tell me what to do with my body.’

I hate that word,
slut
, especially when it’s aimed at me. ‘You are the meanest person I have ever met, and you can’t do this to yourself anymore, to your health, to your body, you can’t do it to your
girls—’

‘Do what? Embarrass them because I’m so fat? Puff when I walk down the street? Have a face the size of a cow’s? Enough fat to warm a group of Eskimos? I can’t do that? You think I don’t know that?’ she shrieked. ‘You think I don’t know all that?’

‘You know and you keep inhaling food like a garbage disposal.’ I fought for the pie pan. More cherry juice splattered. She hauled it right back and we were nose to nose.

‘Isabelle, Cecilia, I hate fighting. Please stop,’ Janie whispered. ‘We’ve had such a bad week, come
on—’

‘Shut up!’ we both told her.

‘Don’t call me a slut again.’

‘Don’t call me fat.’

‘You are fat, Cecilia.’

‘And you are a first-rate slut, Isabelle, don’t get hoity-toity with me. I have been with one man,
one
, and you’ve been with enough to fill a US submarine.’

‘That was a bitchy, bitchy thing to say,’ I yelled.

‘And saying I’m fat isn’t bitchy?’ she yelled back.

‘You’re so thick into denial you can’t see straight. Cecilia, you’ve been hospitalised because of your heart! You weigh almost three hundred pounds! Don’t you get it? You are going to die, Cecilia, you are going to die, like Henry, if you don’t stop eating!’

Her face paled. ‘Maybe I should go on the spinach and pineapple diet again? The liquid-only diet? The fourteen-hundred-calorie-a-day diet that made me feel faint? The fruit diet that gave me diarrhoea so bad I had to take a sick day?’ We struggled with the pie plate, cherry filling sloughing around. ‘All so I can lose weight and gain it all back plus some? Give me the damn pie.’

‘No.’ I can shout as loud as her. ‘You are fat enough as it is! Fat enough and that is enough!’

Her face flushed, her jaw tightened, and she reached in the pie pan, picked up a handful of pie, and smashed it into my chest. The cherries slipped down my shirt.

I thought I was going to shove her I was so mad. Mad at her, mad that Henry was sick, mad at being attacked and my scary nightmares, mad at the whole damn world. I was suddenly so mad, I felt as if a blowtorch had lit from my insides, the flames racing from my hair follicles to my toenails.

I picked up a hunk of pie and palmed it into her fat face.

‘You bitch,’ she seethed.

‘Negative choices, negative choices!’ Janie said. ‘Please stop. Take a minute to reharmonise, rebalance yourselves with each
other—’

‘There. Now you won’t eat it. Or will you?’ I clutched the pie plate again. ‘Maybe you will.’ I picked up another handful and rubbed it into her shirt.

She slapped my cheek with crust and cherries. I felt pie juice run down my chin.

‘Reach inside yourself for peace,’ Janie fussed. ‘The atmosphere is charged with
acrimony—’

‘Shut up!’ we both shouted at her, battling for the pie plate.

I thought I was going to explode. I picked up a handful of gook and this time I went straight for that blonde hair.

She returned the favour and I felt cherry juice on my scalp, slipping down the collar of my shirt. ‘Dammit,’ I breathed. I smushed some onto her face.

She did the same to me. It covered one eye, but I could still see well enough to rub some into her hair before she did the same to me again.

I shoved Cecilia and she caught the back of a chair with her heel and I shoved again. She grabbed me on the way down, and it was a rolling, twisting, cherry-gooked mess with Janie pleading with us to ‘be loving, be sisterly.’

When there was nothing left to smash, we pulled apart, gasping, panting, and I got on all fours and glared at her.

‘Well, that worked out well,’ I heaved. ‘Now you can’t eat any more. Most of it is up your nose.’

‘Oh yeah,’ she puffed out, struggling up. ‘Perfect. Next time I’m eating too much, make me wear it instead of eat it. That’ll work.’

Cecilia was covered in cherry filling. I had shown her! I picked a cherry off my forehead and ate it.

‘One two three four,’ Janie said. ‘Let’s be loving!’

I felt hot, hot tears searing their way through the cherry pie on my cheeks. ‘God, I’m going to miss Henry,’ I whispered, choking on my own roaring grief. ‘I’m going to miss him.’

Cecilia wiped pie off her face as gurgly, strangled sobs erupted. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know. I can’t stand this.
I can’t stand it
.’

‘Henry’s my favourite person,’ Janie said. She sunk down between us, uncaring that cherry pie was now on her butt. ‘No offence.’ She ate a bit of crust off the floor.

‘None taken,’ I weeped out. ‘He’s mine, too.’

We held each other, tear to tear, right there in that cherry pie.

A moonbeam lit the porch and I threw a handful of cherries at it. Oh, how I hated those moonbeams.

The world stops when someone has cancer.

The days start to swirl around that person as if he’s the centre of a tornado. Your life? Gone. Your schedule? Don’t even think about it. Your plans. Put ’em aside.

Henry was to rest for a few days before going back to the hospital for chemo.

The problem was that Henry didn’t want to rest. The morning after leaving the hospital, Henry woke up and insisted on going to pet the dogs and cats.

‘They miss me! Even Barkey. He bites! Watch out! Ouch!’

Janie went with him while I went to the bakery.

‘They all love him,’ she told me later. ‘The people in reception, the vet that came in, the other volunteers. He brings light and inner harmony to them all. And the dogs. As soon as we went to the kennels, the dogs went crazy. He takes four dogs at a time and leads them to play in the field out back. It’s spiritual, cosmic
love—’

‘How did he feel?’

Her face crumpled a little bit. ‘He didn’t seem like he had his usual energy, but he was so happy. He told everyone there about the cancer.’

I nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Henry didn’t have a filter. He said what he thought. Most of his thoughts were pretty angelic in nature, so it worked out.

‘He went around and said, smiling, “Henry sick. Henry has pancreatic cancer.” You should have seen people’s faces, Is. It was awful. The vet hugged him, then cried into her lab coat. The receptionist kept patting Henry’s arm and blowing his nose, patting his arm and blowing his nose. And one guy in there who came in on his motorcycle wearing leathers – he volunteers with the cats once a week – he put his head in his hands and had to sit down.’

I could imagine that scene all too clearly.

‘So they’re all upset and Henry shouts, “Hey, no crying, no crying or I cry. I cry!” No one stopped, so Henry burst into tears.’

‘Sheesh.’

‘Yes, absolutely, sheesh. But you know how Henry is. He got upset, but then all of a sudden he was done with all that worldly sadness and he started his job. He got the dogs out and took them into the field.’

I thought for a minute. ‘You’re doing incredibly well, Janie. You’re a new Janie.’

She knew what I was referring to. ‘I was scared to death to come to Trillium River, but now I hardly recognise myself. I work in a bakery and I take Henry to the animal shelter. I actually talk to people. You know how I’d get stuck on a scary thought and couldn’t get it out of my head? Like I’d be dying, or you and I would be in a train accident with no help around for miles and you’d be bleeding to death, or Cecilia would have a heart attack and I’d be doing CPR but there was no one to help and what would I do? I’m so busy I don’t even have time for those thoughts to swirl around anymore.’ She pulled at her beige bra strap. ‘I feel a lot better.’

‘How’s the writing going?’ I had heard her working on her laptop last night about two in the morning.

‘Better. My positive energy is gone and my negative energy is boiling over and somehow all that emotion is coming out in my writing, and I wrote this great scene last night for my book. Jack’s trapped in this ship container, you know the type they load up on boats? The killer locked her in there and she’s going to get loaded up and sent to China and by the time she gets there, she’s gonna be dead, so she’s got to figure her way out before she starves to death or suffocates—’ She went on for another ten minutes and she explained the graphic parts graphically.

‘OK, I got it.’ I held up my hands. ‘Please.’

‘Well.’ She fumbled a bit, deflated, disappointed. ‘Well, OK.’

I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. ‘I want to save all that excitement for when I read the book.’

Her face brightened. ‘Right! I don’t want to spoil it for you.’

‘No, no, please don’t.’

How does she think of these things?

The next day Henry went to the senior centre to help with lunch and Bunco. I went with him while Janie went to the bakery. He didn’t need me there, but I didn’t want to let him out of my sight yet. He was pale and yellow around the edges.

It was like being the bodyguard of a celebrity. He was mobbed by senior citizens.

‘I have pain-cree-at-
ick
cancer,’ he announced to a group of older people leaning on canes and in wheelchairs. He smiled. ‘Henry sick. Henry sick.’

He said this with a smile.

The room suddenly froze, the quiet rocking off each wall and back into the middle.

‘Dear heavens,’ one man muttered, pulling on his tie.

‘Oh no, honey,’ a woman with pure white hair whispered.

‘I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry,’ an old man, wrinkled as a prune, said.

‘Young man!’ a woman shouted. ‘I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?’

‘Hi, Grandma Tasha!’ Henry waved. ‘I said I have pain-cree-at-
ick
cancer! It icky!’

‘Holy shit,’ she said, shaking her white head. ‘Holy shit.’

On Sunday at mass, Father Mike announced a special time of prayer for Henry. We were all there. Cecilia, the girls, Janie, Momma, Velvet, Grandma in her green flight outfit, Dad, and I. Henry got up from the front row and stood beside Father Mike and he smiled and waved at people, smiled and waved.

‘Ladies and gentleman,’ Father Mike said, his tone low, gruff. ‘Today we’re going to put our hearts out there to God and we’re gonna pray for Henry.’ He stopped. I saw his jaw working. ‘Henry’ – he cleared his throat – ‘has been diagnosed with pancreatic
cancer—’

‘No, no! You not say it right,’ Henry said, smiling. He put his face close to the microphone. ‘It pain-cree-at-
ick
. Like that, Father Mike. Pain-cree-at-
ick
. You have to say the “
ick
” part because it’s
icky
.’

‘Thank you, Henry,’ Father Mike said. ‘You’re right. Bow your heads. Let’s pray so the good Lord hears us.’

Father Mike prayed and prayed. He prayed. It was a long prayer, which was surprising, because Father Mike believes that God does not like to listen to prayers that go on and on. ‘Say what you want,’ he told our congregation once. ‘He knows your heart. No need to blather on.’

I heard muffled snuffles and tiny gasps and little sobs, and they weren’t only from the Bommarito gang. When Father Mike was done, Henry said, still grinning, ‘Hey! Father Mike. I do a prayer. I pray.’

Father Mike was a mess, so he wiped his eyes and handed the microphone to Henry.

Henry grinned at all of us. ‘Hi, everybody.’ He waved. ‘I Henry. I pray now. I pray for you.’ He did not bend his head, he did not shut his eyes.

‘Dear Jesus! Hi ya, Jesus! I pray for all my friends and my sisters, Henry’s sisters, and my momma and my dad, my dad back, he right there, my dad back.’ He pointed at Dad. Dad clenched his jaw, but the tears came out on their own accord. Momma reached for his hand.