“I love you,” I whisper afterward into his chest. Robert says nothing, then hiccups loudly. A strange whimper from somewhere deep inside reverberates in the room. At first I think it might be the cat from next door, but as I lift my head I realize it is the sound of Robert weeping. I pull myself up and wrap my arms around him, cradling him to my breasts. My swollen, aching breasts.
“It’s going to be all right. You’re not going to die yet, Robert. Robert? Come back to me, baby….”
“Sorry. Just give me a minute to pull myself together.” He sits up and turns his back to me, ashamed.
“It’s not that simple, Maddy, they’re going to have to test the lymph nodes. The weird thing is, I didn’t have the fucking thing yesterday morning. It just sprang up overnight. Funny how your whole life perspective can just change like that.”
“What do you mean overnight?”
“Just after you rang last night my face began to itch, then when I looked in the mirror…bang! Right there on my cheek.”
The hair shirt was slung over the back of a chair at the end of the bed. It hung innocently, rippling slightly in the last of the evening sun. How powerful was it exactly? How much control did I have over whom it affected with its magic?
I was distracted by Robert cupping my breasts.
“You’re larger, have you changed your pill or something?”
“Well, there have been some hormonal changes, but not quite the ones you might be expecting,” I said, smiling.
Robert fingered my nipples thoughtfully. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” he asked, almost casually.
I’ve just had the ten shittiest days of my life. One of those windows of time when God throws everything he’s got at you, like your life is a skittle in some funfair sideshow, and the best you can hope for is that when the Supreme Clown Upstairs stops pelting you’ll bounce back, preferably upright. Am I upright? I don’t know anymore. All that defined me, Robert Tetherhook, married man, successful record producer, has been bashed, shattered, and finally softened beyond recognition.
I’m lying on a hospital trolley in a consultation room in the cancer ward of St. Vincent’s hospital. At this point in history I don’t feel well. I am hoping this is psychological not physical, but frankly in the last few weeks the lines have completely blurred. In about five minutes the specialist is going to come in and tell me whether the cancer has spread to my lymph nodes. If it has, I have a 40 percent chance of surviving—with the help of radiation and any other treatment they can think of. Believe me, with my recent luck I’m not feeling very confident.
Georgina’s with me. Ever since I had the biopsy she’s developed this irritating optimism that reminds me of a born-again Christian and has taken to smiling banally 24/7. Which makes me feel like a dying child who’s being lied to. Not a great sensation.
She’s looking at me now, seriously overdressed in Chanel and the string of pearls I gave her for our anniversary that look incongruous with the walker. What is this—a funeral? But when I look closer I can see that she’s scared too and just for a second I love her for it. Can I leave her? I don’t know anymore. All I know is that I’ve needed her more than anything the past few days and she’s been there. I’ve even reached for her in the night and fallen asleep in her arms a few times; something I haven’t done in years.
What the fuck am I going to do? I always thought it was an emotional cliché to say you could love two women, but here I am in that very predicament. For so long I’ve kept the two compartmentalized, neither impacting on the other. There was Georgina: the house, consistency, domestic intimacy. Then there was Madeleine: excitement, lust, youth, the clandestine. Like running two simultaneous acts, both so different they require entirely different skills. But then Madeleine had to go and get pregnant. More than four months pregnant.
God, I was furious when she told me. Shouting, jabbing my finger at her, furious, until I saw her face shrivel with grief and the sight of it brought back a picture of my father screaming at my mother. I stopped instantly, deflating with regret.
Four months. Me, a father. Inconceivable a month ago. Me, dead at forty-seven? Also inconceivable a month ago. If I were honest I’d tell you that a kernel of excitement flares up at the base of my belly when I say the word Daddy. What am I going to do? Will Georgina survive without me? Of course she will, she might even thrive, but will I? Am I ready to take on the responsibility of a child and a much younger wife? What about the divorce? I love my house; I love the life my wife has made for me. Madeleine is so gauche, so raw. But she’s having my baby. My baby.
Okay, here it is: the verdict. Life or death? Father or corpse? The door’s opening, the specialist steps inside, file in hand, and he’s not smiling. And I decide there and then: if it’s life, I will leave Georgina and parent my child properly. If it’s death, I’ll stay with Georgina until the end. Let fate and the schmuck upstairs with the bowling ball choose for me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about DNA recently, how vulnerable we all are if it gets into the wrong hands. I don’t mean film stars worrying about being cloned from fragments left on a napkin in a restaurant; I’m talking about far more devious practices. You see, I believe that we leave particles of ourselves everywhere. Invisible shimmering dust paths that stretch through our days like undiscovered galaxies. And should someone want to harm us, or manipulate a piece of information to their own advantage, all they have to do is access a particle of our DNA. That’s why we have to be very careful about who we let into our beds and into our hearts, and about where we leave fingernail clippings, flakes of dead skin and strands of hair. The n
aïveté of love is no protection.
Naturally I’ve never bothered to explain my hypothesis to Robert. He thinks I’m mad as it is, but I’m a great believer in mixing feminine intuition with a smattering of scientific knowledge to make the kind of lateral leap that would, in another era, simply be labeled good sense. Don’t get me wrong; I am protective of my husband. You don’t live with someone for sixteen years without developing a strong sense of when they’re in danger. The challenge is to make them discover that for themselves before it is too late.
Bizarre things have begun to happen to us and our marriage. Steering wheels don’t just suddenly twist out of control and cancers don’t just appear overnight without some external manipulation of the malevolent kind.
The door clicks open and I jolt back to the reality of clutching Robert’s hand as he lies in a stunned paralysis that I suppose must set in when waiting to hear whether one is to live or die. The specialist is a smug man in jeans and Cuban heels who informs us that he was dragged away from his third honeymoon to operate on Robert. With the practiced eye of the womanizer he assesses my face, cleavage, and legs before he turns back to Robert who is now two shades paler than the wall behind him.
“Well, Mr. Tetherhook, it looks as if you’ll live to cause at least a few more decades of mischief,” the specialist announces as flippantly as if offering a coffee with milk and two sugars. Much to my amazement, Robert bursts into tears and collapses into my arms. Like I said—DNA.
“You look so ripe. It’s kind of hard to believe—my child hiding in there.”
He stares at my belly, running his hands across its curve. I watch him, smiling. All is as it should be: Robert won’t die, he will leave his wife, move in with me, we will have the baby in five months, it will be a boy.
The afternoon he was getting his result I was also in a hospital room, by myself, shivering as they ran that cold slippery thing across my skin and staring at the fuzzy outline of life floating defiantly on the ultrasound screen. An undeniable manifestation of our love. Thinking: whatever happens I will mother this child.
I prop myself up. We’ve just made love and he was gentle, too careful, as if he was frightened of hurting the baby. It’s ironic: of the two of us I have the power now. No more waiting around for the phone to ring; no more clandestine meetings stolen between work and home.
“When are you going to tell her?”