This Is How It Ends (24 page)

“I don’t remember her,” she was saying. She was sobbing bitterly into her hands. Bruno rubbed her back. He was still struggling to understand what had happened.

“I thought I had some memories of her, but now that I see her I know I don’t. I must have made them up.”

She looked up at Bruno, her eyes red and confused.

“I don’t know why I’m so upset. It’s just that she’s different from how I remembered her.”

She laughed at herself as she wiped her nose with the sleeve of her jumper.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m so upset. I suppose it’s just that I wasn’t expecting it. It took me by surprise, that’s all.”

“You don’t need to explain,” said Bruno, “there’s no need to explain.”

“You’re lucky,” she said to him afterwards. After they’d eaten the fish, after they’d cleared the plates away. They were talking about it calmly now. Addie was over the shock of it.

“You’re lucky,” she said, “you have a lifetime of memories of your mum.”

“Yes,” he said. But his face was so sad. “Sometimes it seems to me there are too many memories of her. The end especially is very vivid to me. I sometimes wish I could forget the end.”

H
UGH HAS THIS
way of sighing when he talks about his patients. He will suck in his breath and let it out again in a long weary sigh, before he even says anything. As if he knows there’s only one way all of this can end, as if he can hardly muster the energy to explain it to you.

That sigh, that’s exactly what Addie’s doctor did when he sat her down to tell her the results of her scan. That was how she knew. She knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

He had asked her was there anyone she wanted to phone. He suggested that maybe she would like to have somebody with her.

She heard herself saying no, no, there was nobody she wanted to phone.

He sighed again, tracing the edges of her file with his finger. He didn’t open the folder, he just traced the perimeter of it. His nails were well cared for, she noticed. He had beautifully manicured hands.

“The news is not good,” he said. At last, he looked up at her. “But I think you knew that.”

She nodded. And it did seem to her that she did know. It seemed to her in that moment that she’d always known. She nodded, ignoring the tears that were welling up in her eyes.

He spoke in short, pithy sentences. She found herself agreeing with everything he said.

He was just drawing a diagram for her on the inside cover of the file when his mobile phone rang. It took him a moment to get the phone out of his pocket. When he did, he squinted at the screen. Then he glanced up at Addie, holding his index finger up in the air as he answered the call.

“Doherty.”

He had an air of boredom about him, a languid demeanor. His sun-splotched face spoke of Sundays on the golf course. Holidays in the Algarve. He had a fountain pen in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. It unsettled Addie. Was he not worried that it might run?

“That leaves us one theater down next week.”

He shifted his gaze to Addie, raising his eyes up to heaven in a gesture of complicity. She found herself smiling back at him sympathetically.

“Do I have a full list on Monday?”

As he listened he worried his teeth with his tongue. Addie watched him, intrigued. He had the exact same mannerisms as Hugh. They could have been brought up in the same house.

“For God’s sake,” he was saying, “we’ll be weeks catching up.”

He was tipping his chair back, like a schoolboy. Abruptly he let the front legs come crashing back down as he disconnected the call.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, tucking the phone into his jacket pocket. “I need to pop outside for a minute.”

He asked her was she OK to wait, would she like one of the nurses to come in and wait with her.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m grand, thanks.”

Even as she was saying it, it seemed like a silly thing to say.

If you’d seen her there, she would have seemed like a woman in a painting, she was so still. She was sitting with her feet planted on the floor, her hands limp in her lap, her face lifted up to the light coming in the window.

She looked out the window at the big shifting sky. She looked at the soothing shape of the mountains. The quivering trees. The rude green of the golf course. The women in their knee-length trousers and their visors, their golf carts shaped like stooping vultures.

She looked at all of these things and thought, nothing. She was processing the words she had just heard. Groups of words, whole sentences. Words like untreatable. Not feasible. Worst-case scenario.

She heard the pop of a golf ball, like something bursting. She heard the TV in the next room, the unnatural patterns in the newsreader’s voice. A creak from the window frame, it was groaning in the sunlight. Footsteps in the corridor outside, she heard them approach and then she heard them move away again. She heard all of these things and thought nothing of them.

The sky was starting to make her feel dizzy, it was moving too fast. The trees were unsettling her, a chaotic pattern to their rustling. Only the mountains could still her, the solid dusky blue of them, their smooth rolling gradient. As long as she looked at the mountains she felt all right.

They had wanted her to call someone but she didn’t want to. All she wanted was to go home.

AFTERWARDS, SHE MADE
her way back down the corridor towards the lift. As she walked, she was conscious of the extraordinary ease of her movements, of her body and her mind working together as a finely tuned instrument, as if she were floating through space. She pressed the button for the lift, watching as the digital display showed its progress down through three floors. When the doors opened she stepped in. She stood with her back to the mirror, watching as the doors closed. One floor down, she waited for the doors to open again, then she stepped out into the hospital lobby.

She remembered to take her parking ticket out of her handbag, slipping it into the slot in the machine at the front door. She found the correct coins in her pocket and fed them in. She watched the reading on the machine count down the parking fee until it reached zero. She waited for her ticket to reemerge. Taking it in her hand, she tucked it carefully into the pocket of her coat. She stepped outside, pausing for a moment in the set-down area as she tried to remember where she’d parked her car. Oh yes, over by the tree.

She opened the passenger door first, tossing her handbag onto the seat. Then she walked round to the driver’s door and lowered herself in. The radio came on when she started the engine, and she leaned over to turn it off. She followed the arrows on the ground towards the exit, pausing at the barrier to feed her ticket in. The barrier went up and Addie drove out of the hospital.

The traffic was thin and she was home in less than ten minutes. She opened the door, throwing her keys onto the hall table. She took off her coat and hung it up. Then she stepped into the living room.

Lola was lying on her mat behind the door. When Addie came into the room she raised her head expectantly. She started swishing her tail backwards and forwards along the floor.

Addie got down on her knees. Letting herself fall to the side, she curled herself around the dog. She wrapped her arms around the dog’s hot little body and nuzzled her face into the back of her neck. She breathed in the compost heap smell of her.

There are no words to describe what she felt.

THE WORDS ONLY
came in installments. It seemed that her mind could only assimilate them morsel by morsel, like an equation that needs to be broken up into several pieces before you can work it out.

She processed the things they’d said, arriving at their meaning painstakingly slowly. They mean I’m not going to get better, she thought, they mean I’m going to die. The others will go on without me. Lola will still be here, Bruno will be here. Hugh and Della, and Simon and the girls, their lives will go on. But mine is going to end. I won’t be here anymore.

The enormity of it was measured by the number of times it went through her head, by the frequency of it. In the same way that you measure the proximity of a storm by the space between the lightning and the thunderclaps. By that measurement, this storm was near.

S
HE TRIED EXPLAINING
it to Della.

“Do you remember when we were kids and we used to toss a coin? To do something really horrible, we’d toss a coin. Or if there was a bunch of us we’d pull straws.”

Della was crying. She hadn’t stopped crying since Addie had told her.

Addie was trying to comfort her. “It’s OK,” she kept saying, “it’s OK.” Until Della wailed, “Would you stop saying that? It’s not OK.”

“No,” said Addie quietly, “I suppose you’re right. It’s not OK.”

She tried talking Della through it.

“Do you remember that feeling? We used to pull straws and whoever lost would have to climb over the wall into the bad lady’s garden. You knew someone had to lose, you knew it could be you. But it never really sunk in. Not until that moment when you were left holding the short straw and everyone was standing there looking at you. They were all standing there holding their long straws and they were looking at you with this awful pity on their faces.”

Della had tears rolling down her face as she listened. Addie felt strangely removed, she might just as well have been watching someone cry on TV. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Della cry before.

“Anyway,” said Addie. “That’s what it’s like. It’s a lonely feeling.”

“Hugh,” said Della all of a sudden, her eyes huge and haunted. “Does Hugh know?”

Addie shook her head.

“Oh Jesus, Ad. How are we going to tell him?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. It’s up to me to tell him.”

“And what about Bruno?”

Addie shook her head vigorously.

“Not yet. Not until after the inauguration.”

Addie was in charge now, she had to be. For the first time in her life, she was the leader. She was the one who had to lead the way. It was a good feeling. She felt strong like never before. She knew she was going to be able to do it.

“Are you not angry about any of this?” said Della. Her eyes were all red, her forehead furrowed, as if she were trying to understand it. “I can’t believe you’re not angry.”

“Maybe I would be,” said Addie, “if there was anything I could do about it. But there doesn’t seem to be. So what’s the point?”

DELLA WAS ANGRY,
she was in a rage.

As soon as Addie left, she raced back through the house and out the back door as if she were going to vomit. She staggered down towards the bottom of the garden. When she got there she didn’t know what to do with herself. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. It was like a nightmare. She wanted more than anything for it not to be happening.

She sat down on the brick edging of the flower bed, buried her face in her hands, and howled. The noise came from deep within her chest, a terrible moaning sound. She had her fists tightly balled, her nails digging into the fleshy palms of her hands. She cried dry, retching tears as her mind hurtled through a dark tunnel, realization after awful realization jumping out at her like neon signs in the dark.

Her life would never be the same again. She would be left alone in the family with Hugh. She would have to live out the rest of her life as Hugh’s only daughter. She would have to live with his grief. She would be the only one left to take care of him in his old age.

Her tears were wet now, they were wet and real. She could feel them forming in her heart, hot globs of them rolling up through her throat, coming down her face so fast that she couldn’t wipe them away.

Who would she be without Addie? Less glamorous, without Addie to compare herself to. Less wild, without Addie to be shocked by her. Less interesting, less loved. Less, less, less.

Without Addie, her life would be impossible. How could Addie just die? How could that happen? She couldn’t imagine the sequence of events, she couldn’t put it together. This was all about Addie, that thought occurred to her now. This was Addie’s tragedy. The rest of them would mourn her and they would miss her but their lives would go on. It was Addie who was going to die. Della’s heart broke for her.

At least it’s not one of the children, she realized with a shudder of relief. Imagine if it was one of the children, even Addie wouldn’t want that to happen. But then fear gripped a hold of her. If this could happen to Addie, what was there to say that one of the children wouldn’t be next?

 Her mind was racing through it all so fast now that she couldn’t keep up. She had no way of knowing where it was all going to end. She rested her forehead down on her knees and wept.

WHEN ADDIE TOLD
Hugh, he looked at her as if she were mad.

“What on earth are you
talking
about, child?”

Addie spoke to him very gently.

“They’re sure, Hugh, they told me they’re absolutely sure.”

His face was screwed up in disdain, his chin drawn back into his polo neck in a gesture of disbelief.

“Do you even
know
what you’re saying, Adeline? Do you have any idea what it is that you’re
saying
?”

Addie said nothing.

“You see,” he said, as if he’d proven his point. “This is all some kind of a misunderstanding. We’ll have it cleared up in no time.”

“It’s not a misunderstanding, Hugh, you have to listen to me.”

“Who was it that you went to?”

“Dermot Doherty.”

He gave a snort, breathing a harrumph of air out of his nostrils.

“Oh Christ, Doherty. And he was the one who told you this?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was the one who gave me the diagnosis.”

“What diagnosis?” he roared. “Jesus, child, you don’t realize what it is you’re talking about. You can’t just
say
things like that. You can’t just toss around these words as if they don’t mean anything.”

“Hugh,” she said gently. “You’re shouting at me.”

“Of course I’m shouting at you! I’m trying to get some sense out of you.”

So quietly that you could hardly hear her, Addie pleaded with him.

“Please, Hugh. Stop shouting at me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

SHE LEFT HIM
rifling through the drawers of his desk for his address book. Muttering to himself, a stream-of-consciousness rant.

“My own daughter,” he was saying. “How do you think this makes me look? My own bloody daughter.”

He was down on his hands and knees now, wrenching open the bottom drawer of the desk. He didn’t even notice Addie slipping out of the room.

“How do you think this makes me look? That I didn’t even notice! Christ, this takes the bloody biscuit.”

With a grunt he fell upon the address book, heaved himself up onto the chair, and started flicking through the pages. Dennehy, Devane, Doherty. He pounded the number into the phone, but it went straight to voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message. Next he rang the hospital switch and asked for Doherty’s rooms. A delay as he was transferred through to another voice mail, this time the voice of the private secretary. She began to take him through the opening hours of the clinic. He looked at his watch and saw that it was already half past seven. He hung up the phone in disgust. He tried ringing Della’s mobile but it rang out. He tried it once more and once more it rang out.

He started leafing frantically through the address book again. He was looking for the name of a guy he’d met at a conference in Philadelphia, was it Bristol where that guy was based? An Irish guy, he’d mentioned he was trialing a new treatment. But could Hugh remember his name?

Letting the address book fall out of his fingers onto the desk, he flopped back in his chair as if he’d been punched. A dazed expression on his face, his hair was wild, his eyes milky as he tried to process what was happening to him. He was still holding the receiver in his left hand, a faint beeping sound coming out of it. He slammed it back onto its cradle.

WHEN SIMON CAME
home he couldn’t find Della anywhere.

He went looking for her all over the house. None of the kids knew where she was. They couldn’t say when they’d last seen her. They’d taken advantage of her absence and were all sitting up on top of the double bed eating cream crackers and watching
Sabrina
. The crumbs were everywhere.

The back door was wide open. Simon stepped out onto the dark patio, an irrational fear rising in him.

“Della,” he called out. The sound of his own voice spreading through the darkness only made him more nervous.

He walked down towards the back of the garden. With every step he was becoming more afraid of what he might find there.

“Della!”

She was hunched down on the ground behind one of the flower beds, a small dark shadow. She hadn’t even heard him approaching.

“Della, what on earth’s the matter?”

She raised her head and looked at him as if she were seeing a ghost. Her skin was splattered and blotchy in the moonlight, her face a deathly white.

“It’s Addie,” she said, her voice cracking as she spoke. “It’s Addie, Simon, she’s sick.”

And Simon got down on his knees beside her and he said who, he kept asking who’s she seeing, who’s the oncologist, who’s the radiologist.

“Would you stop asking me that, I don’t know!” screamed Della. “Does it make any difference who she’s seeing? I don’t see how it makes any difference.”

“No,” said Simon, leaning his forehead against hers. “You’re right. It probably doesn’t make any difference.”