In My Sister's Shoes (18 page)

I had to take control of my life: throwing myself at past loves was not a good idea, and ignoring my appearance wouldn’t help either. I would cut out all junk food, except maybe the odd bar of chocolate, and walk to and from Fiona’s house… as long as it wasn’t raining. Sighing, I popped another biscuit into my mouth. After all, as Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow was another day.

22

After Fiona’s fourth chemotherapy session she got mouth sores. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, eating became increasingly difficult and she began to lose weight.

I was really worried about her and did mybest to build her up with tasty blended food so she could fight the cancer. But no matter how nice the ingredients, mushed food is just not appetizing. Unfortunately it tends to look like vomit. The only thing Fiona seemed to enjoywere the fruit smoothies I made in the morning. I put as many super fruits into them as I could. In my days of starvation in London when I was really hungry, I’d allow myself as a treat to buy a superfruit smoothie from the deli around the corner. I bought kiwis, strawberries and blueberries in bulk and tried to get Fiona to drink the home-made smoothies. Most of the time she’d manage one, and on the days when she didn’t feel up to it, the twins hoovered them down. Theyloved them.

I also cross-referenced food and cancer on the Internet and discovered that breast-cancer survivors favoured certain herbs and supplements, so I read up on them to figure out which would be safe to put into Fiona’s smoothies.

Ginger was supposed to help with nausea, and echinacea, in small doses, to fight colds and flu. Ginkgo improved the memory(Fiona certainly didn’t need that: she had the memory of an elephant), the blood circulation, and might block a chemical that caused tumour growth. Ginseng was thought to fight disease, which was obviously a bonus. And then some weird thing called St John’s wort was listed as easing depression. Of all the names, wouldn’t you think they’d have come up with something a bit nicer-sounding to aid depression? I decided to stick with small amounts of ginger and ginseng for the moment – I was no herbalist and I didn’t want to give her an overdose and have her bouncing off the walls.

She was definitely getting weaker with each dose of chemo and it was taking her longer to recover. The awful thing was that by the time she was feeling well again she’d have to go back for another blast. Although she tried to keep her spirits up for the boys, I could see it was really wearing her down.

I read up on alternative therapies for cancer patients and found out that visualization was supposed to help. Some people even claimed they had cured themselves by relaxing deeply and imagining their white blood cells battling the cancer cells. You could visualize the white blood cells as anything – maybe Fiona could pretend they were the knights on the chessboard, and the bad cells could be the opposition’s pawns or something. It couldn’t do any harm.

I booked us into a visualization class and only broke the news to Fiona when we were sitting outside the meeting place. I knew she’d never have agreed to it otherwise.

Her head whipped around. ‘I thought you said we were going to the cinema.’

‘Well, in a way we are. It’s a cinema inside your head.’

‘I don’t want to sit around with a bunch of bald sick people talking about cancer,’ she snapped.

‘You won’t have to talk at all. It’s not therapy, it’s visualization so it’s silent. Besides, it’s supposed to be brilliant at helping patients cope, and destressing and all that.’

‘I’m not going in.’

‘Come on, Fiona, give it a try. If you hate it we’ll leave.’

‘I’m not a group person, you know that. I like to deal with things on my own, in my own way.’

‘Maybe it’s time you tried something else.’

‘No.’

‘Jesus, Fiona, just get out of the bloody car and give it five minutes,’ I said, losing my temper. She looked shocked. I’d been tiptoeing around her for months but now I wanted her to help herself. ‘Stop trying to pretend you can do this on your own. Not talking about it won’t make it go away. You have cancer. Accept help.’ I got out of the car and marched towards the door.

‘Don’t tell me how to deal with my disease,’ she shouted after me. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to wake up every day thinking you might die, and be terrified of not seeing your kids grow up. It’s hell, Kate. It’s a living hell. Don’t assume you know what’s best for me because you haven’t got a clue. Shaving your head doesn’t make you a cancer patient. If I choose not to talk about it then you should respect that. This is the way I always deal with things – alone. I’ve never been a talker and I’ve got through a lot of problems without your help, so don’t you dare try to bully me into doing something I don’t want to do.’

‘Well, maybe it’s time you accepted help. Maybe all that dealing-with-stuff-on-your-own is bullshit, and maybe it’s the reason you seem stressed all the time. I’m not just talking about now, I’m talking about before as well. Let people help you, Fiona! Stop trying to protect everyone! Scream, shout, cry about the injustice of it. It’s
not
fair. You shouldn’t have cancer. It’s shit. Let out your anger. Stop being such a control freak.’

‘Fuck you!’ she screamed, clearly taking my advice. ‘Swanning back here with your Florence Nightingale cape on! You have no idea what my life is like. You didn’t have your childhood taken away when Mum died – I
did
. I’m the one who had to run the house while Dad buried his head in the sand. Your life didn’t change, but mine was turned upside-down.’

‘She was my mother too!’ I yelled. ‘You seem to forget that I suffered just like you did.’

‘You didn’t get up to soothe Derek in the middle of the night. You didn’t make the school lunches, wash the uniforms, cook dinner, give up your youth. While you were out having fun with your friends I was running a home with a broken heart.’

‘You didn’t have to do it all, Fiona. You could have asked Dad for help.’

‘He needed me to be strong.’

‘He thought you were all right because you never let him see how upset you were.’

‘I was a child, for God’s sake.’

‘He’s not a mind-reader – although I agree he should have helped you. It was wrong of him to leave so much up to you.’ What had he been thinking? Fiona was only a little girl and shouldn’t have had to take on so much responsibility. But I knew he regretted it because since she’d got older he was always trying to make it up to her. He told anyone who’d listen how wonderful she had been when Mum died. He had paid for a very lavish wedding, been nice to Mark, even though he thought he was a prat, and doted on the twins.

She shrugged. ‘He didn’t mean to lean on me, it just happened that way.’

‘You were twelve. You should have been out having fun.’

‘Like you,’ she said.

‘Am I supposed to feel guilty for being a normal kid?’

‘Don’t you think I’d have liked that too?’

‘You were never normal. I mean, you were always super-bright and into maths and chess and things most kids find boring. You were different,’ I said, as Fiona’s face darkened. ‘In a brilliant, more mature, clever way,’ I added, in a lame attempt to soften her up.

‘Being bright doesn’t mean you don’t want to play Spin the Bottle and giggle with your friends about boys.’

‘I thought you found all that silly and childish.’

‘I was pretending, so I wouldn’t look like a total reject.’

I looked at my sister. All this time I’d had no idea she’d wanted to be a silly teenager like everyone else. I’d always assumed she was too mature and clever for that carry-on. But she’d been lonely and miserable the whole time.

‘I really thought you preferred playing chess.’

‘I did like playing chess. I loved it. It was a link to Mum and it ended up giving me a social life. At least I met people at chess competitions. A lot of them were devoid of personality, but at least it got me out. That was why I liked Mark so much when I first met him. He was so much fun.’

Mark…
fun
? I tried to remember back to the first few times I’d met him. He’d never struck me as fun, but I suppose that was because most of his stories and jokes went over my head. I did remember him and Fiona laughing a lot, as Derek and I watched them blankly.

‘I know Mark hasn’t been much fun in the last few years but that’s because his career has taken off and he has so little spare time now,’ said Fiona, reading my mind.

‘Doesn’t that bother you?’

‘I mind him not being around, but I’ve been so busy with my teaching and the twins that I haven’t really had much chance to think about it.’

‘It must be hard not getting any time together.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, it is. I miss the nights we used to spend drinking wine, talking about prime-number sequences and formulas for computing
pi
and analysing the Reimann hypothesis. You know,’ she said ruefully, ‘the last time we had sex was after a passionate debate about Fermat’s Last Theorem, which carried on into the bedroom.’

Fiona really needed to revise her view of normal. No one I knew got aroused by theorems. ‘Well, it’s good to hear that the passion’s still alive,’ I said.

‘It’s a while ago now,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, sure you’ll be fighting fit and ready for action after this treatment’s over. The two of you’ll be at it like rabbits,’ I said lamely.

‘I hope so, Kate,’ she said, looking directlyat me. ‘I really hope so.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

We found ourselves in a small room with four other cancer patients. Lily, the facilitator, asked us to introduce ourselves. Two of them were very despondent while the others were angry. It was pretty grim.

Fiona was by far the calmest when she spoke. ‘I’m a married mother of twin boys. I’ve got breast cancer and I’m half-way through my chemotherapy. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be upbeat as I’m feeling worse after each session. But my boys keep me going. They give me a reason to get up in the morning. My sister brought me here today. She’s been helping me and I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

I squeezed my hands together and willed myself not to cry.

‘And what about you?’ Lily asked me.

‘Well, I’m here because I wanted Fiona to try something , that didn’t involve poisonous drugs and I thought that maybe she’d find it helpful.’

‘Are you looking to get anything for yourself by using visualization?’ Lily wondered.

‘A nice man would be good.’

‘We’ll see what we can do,’ said Lily.

She asked us to close our eyes and led us through some exercises designed to hone our senses and help us discover which of the five we found most evocative. We were told to imagine the taste of a lemon, the sound of bells, the feeling of silk against our bodies, the sight of a field of sunflowers and the smell of a rose. It was quite nice, and I found it easier to get into than I’d thought I would. When I peeked at Fiona her eyes were closed and she was smiling.

Lily asked one of the angry ladies to describe what she had visualized. ‘A guy with a hammer and a nail,’ she said. ‘The hammer represents my white blood cells and the nail is the cancer cells.’

‘Excellent,’ said Lily. ‘Now, each of you has to come up with your own image, but good versus evil tends to be the most effective. We’ve had cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, a dog chasing a rabbit, a calm sea suddenly infested with a shark… Whatever works for you, run with it.’

‘I can’t do it today,’ groaned one of the sad ladies. ‘I’m too depressed. I lost my eyelashes, eyebrows and pubic hair this time. It’s not fair. I feel like a freak.’

‘Think of the money you’ll save on waxing,’ said Lily. ‘Besides, the Brazilian is all in. You’re at the height of fashion.’

Everyone laughed, then began to compare notes on how bad their post-chemotherapy symptoms were. I felt totally out of place. I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t sick. I was an intruder on these brave women’s lives. I sat quietly, trying desperately to blend into the wall, and listened as they discussed vomiting, hair loss, mouth sores, hot flashes, tactless families and friends, the isolation of being sick…

As they found humour in the darkest places, I was delighted to see Fiona joining in. She wasn’t exactly leading the charge, but she was throwing in a comment here and there.

I decided to focus on my visualization. I imagined Fiona’s cancer cells as the young girl Sam was sleeping with. Naturally
I
represented the white blood cells. When we bumped into each other, the young cancer cells, wearing a frumpy yellow dress, were no match for me, looking sensational in a backless ivory gown. Sam cast Cancer aside when he saw me, the resplendent white-blood-cell queen, and we headed off to bed where I had no trouble visualizing the feel of satin sheets on my skin as we rekindled our passion.

When it was time to go Fiona had to drag me out of my trance.

23

Mark continued to spend all his time at the university, working on his world-shattering paper for the competition. When he told me he couldn’t go with Fiona to the fifth chemo session, I exploded. ‘What do you mean “can’t”? There’s no such word as “can’t”. You’ll just have to reschedule your really important meeting and take your sick wife to hospital. It’s called prioritizing, Mark. You might want to look up the word in the dictionary. It’s on the same page as “prat”.’

Sweeping his hair back from his forehead – which I think he just did to wind me up as I had none to sweep – he sighed.

‘Look, Kate, if I could rearrange the meeting of course I would, but Professor de la Toit is flying in from Paris that morning to help me with the final stage of the paper. I need his expertise to work through a glitch in the findings.’

‘Can’t you let him figure it out while you sit with Fiona, then meet up with him later when I take over as usual?’

‘He’s only here for five hours and I need to work with him on this.’

‘Isn’t that cheating? Getting someone else to finish your homework for you?’

‘It’s called collaboration, Kate. It’s near “common sense” in the dictionary.’