Part 9 (2/2)

”I'm sorry, Paul.”

Nothing more for her to say, and nothing for him to confide. Except that Lisanne was making his life excruciating any way she could, exacting revenge for some sin he had not consciously committed-the sin of not caring enough that she was leaving him, perhaps.

”My wife may have drawn the article to Candy's attention herself,” he told Vivian, suddenly filled with longing to tell her everything. She motioned with her hand, a closing gesture which he interpreted as distaste for tattling. Very well. He said no more. Away with it, let it go.

Everything ends. The motion of the bus and his lack of responsibility for that motion were equally soothing, crossing the empty inland sea of prairie.

They had not slept together-Paul corrected himself, they had relentlessly continued to share a bed-had not made love since she missed a period eight years ago. For the first few days, because they thought Lisanne was pregnant; then because she was in mourning; then for a few months because they hated each other, or at least she hated him; then for nothing. Because they didn't make love any more, that was not them.

Are not the trees green, The earth as green?

Does not the wind blow, Fire leap and the rivers flow?

Away melancholy.

She had told her sister, in his hearing, that she wouldn't care if she never had s.e.x again. Carol had bridled and whinnied, but Lisanne was set, something admirable in her unbreachable self-possession. Admirable, implacable. Words flittering in his head.

He had trapped her by agreeing with her, giving her no opportunity for rage. They had married too young, and he had not been careful enough to keep some dignity or authority or respect-which he could only have maintained by behaviour which he did not believe in: by coldness, or insistence on his own sovereignty. He had given over to her, and that was weak, and she hated him. Paul could not find it in his heart, not even in his brain, to blame her. But he deeply wanted not to be married to her any more. Maybe they had let it drag out so long, so painfully, in order for the pain of the actual event to be lessened. Telephone poles clicked past the bus window, tallying the distance, the wires swooping him on from point to point, back to his empty house. She had not been a good wife, even at the beginning. He knew of one affair and suspected others. She was selfish and base, and he was a fool, and between them that had been the best that they could do.

His head hurt where he had b.u.mped it on the bunk bed. He leaned the lump against the cool bus window.

12. Comfortable, understandable.

Because of the crowded schedule, Lorraine's chemo couldn't begin until Tuesday. Darwin wheeled her around the halls while they waited for her chemo training session. For an adventure they explored the fourth floor, the osteo ward: unfamiliar peach walls, and more art. This hospital was big on art.

”Can you believe the death pictures?” she asked. ”Little plaques beside them: in memory of Grampa, with thanks for the life of Myra...They creep me out. There's one on my floor where the boy is fis.h.i.+ng with a ghostly grandfather beside him, all whited-out, smiling at the boy like he's going to pat his head. Or maybe drink his blood.”

”I saw that one,” Darwin said. ”It's just a print. Must be thousands of them, hung around hospital wards all over depressing the h.e.l.l out of everybody.”

They trundled past patients trying to walk, mostly old. A woman close to Lorraine's age kept her eyes weirdly still, her whole face turning as she used her walker. She gave them a beautiful smile. Lorraine knew that same beauty hung in her own smile now, in her eyes. Bad trouble makes you feel loving, she thought. Nine days ago she'd been crying in the Dart because she could not find Darwin.

Back in Lorraine's room, a crop-haired, athletic nurse popped her head in the door.

”You're here. Great. So! I'm going to go through what you can expect from chemotherapy,” she said brightly. Her nametag said Nola. She fanned a set of pamphlets on the rolling table and pulled over a straight chair.

Lorraine shut her eyes for a minute. She couldn't stand to hear this. Darwin was listening, he would tell her about it later. Phrases fell through the air, names of chemicals, T-cell types, cras.h.i.+ng around her like thin, thin gla.s.s, like the first film of ice on the puddles on a northern morning. Her boots crinkling through the delicate half-formed panes. Darwin was absolutely still beside her, the root of the world grown up through the floor.

The nurse was practical, not frightening. ”Chemotherapy affects tissues with a high rate of cell division, like cancer cells: the lining of the mouth, the lining of the intestines, the skin, and the hair follicles. That's why hair falls out with some kinds of chemotherapy, and why it grows back again very nicely.”

Lorraine felt her hair hanging heavy between her shoulder blades. She saw a quick flas.h.i.+ng slide: Clayton turning her hair like a rope around his hand and wrist, on the porch in Trimalo, just before Trevor was born. She remembered the night sky, and her full belly pressing her down. Clayton's hand with his bitten nails twining and catching her hair.

”We've made some real improvements in treatment for nausea,” the nurse said. ”It's possible to go through chemo nowadays without the violent reactions you've seen in movies.”

I bet, Lorraine thought. I bet it'll be a f.u.c.king picnic.

The other patient in her room came back-a furious young woman in a wheelchair, maybe twenty-five, and bitter. Her husband or boyfriend rolled her in. She stared at the nurse with scorching eyes, hardly blinking, burned down to a bright coal of rage. Try not to be like that, Lorraine told herself.

The woman snapped, ”Get me out of here.” The man dipped his head apologetically at the nurse and Lorraine as he swung the wheelchair around.

Maybe fury was a way of staying upright under this weight.

When they'd gone, the nurse said, ”You don't want to get into the trap of blaming yourself for having brought this on by unhealthy thinking. But I've seen a lot of patients going through a lot of treatment, and here's one true thing about att.i.tude: you can make the process easier on yourself. If you are angry or in despair you're going to have a harder time in the next few months. If you can manage to find some solace-whatever works, exercise or meditation or religion-and a sense of humour, the process will be easier. And we'll make it as comfortable and understandable as we can.”

Comfortable and understandable. Lorraine's head was drumming. She went deaf, she receded from the room. She could hear blood pouring and pulsing through her veins. Darwin put his hand on her neck, cupping the nape of her neck in his warm hand, and she breathed more calmly.

The nurse looked at the paper for some length of time, then up into Lorraine's eyes. ”Yours will be in-patient, twelve-hour drips, eight sessions.”

She paused. Nola, Nola, her nametag flashed, because her chest was moving with her breath. ”My father had non-Hodgkins lymphoma last year.” She looked on the other side of the sheet, maybe needing the time to get her calm voice back. ”It will be a long process.”

Lorraine nodded. No need to go on, the pale father hovering in the air all around them. Nola nodded back.

”Good,” she said.

She shoved her chair back and went off, no doubt to give the good news to others.

”That was good, what she said, making it easier on yourself,” Lorraine said. Trying.

”Cheerful att.i.tude won't change what they do to you,” Darwin said. ”You'll still have to do this.”

He smiled at her though, because he loved her, and that was a help. In a shaky place, she could see that.

13. Doughnuts.

Lorraine was looking well, Clara thought.

”I'm a vampire,” she said when she saw Clara at the door on Wednesday morning. She laughed, but there was a shadow of panic on her blooming face. ”Bride of Dracula. Look at my skin! You can't buy creams for this, they ought to sell it. Fresh blood, prices slashed! They could pay for medicare. I keep thinking, what if we'd been in the States? We'd of been toast. There are charity hospitals though, like on ER-you don't see them turning people away at the sliding doors, do you? Maybe they get thrown out when they get taken upstairs, like my roommate. Like the red s.h.i.+rts on Star Trek, they're toast too. Rubber hospital toast.”

She waggled the limp toast from her breakfast back and forth to show Clara.

Clara's first job was always to calm her down, lately. ”I brought some buns from Mrs. Zenko. She tells me they're made of organic wheat, and she grinds her own flour.”

”Oh goodie, I can hardly wait.”

”She sent soup, too.” Gleaming red and gold, Ukrainian Orthodox borsch with no meat in it. As Lorraine rotated the sealer jar in her long pale fingers, ruby cubes of beets shone and receded; dill splayed feathery against the gla.s.s, then floated off.

”Pretty kind of her for someone she's never met.”

”She likes the children.” And she's met Mrs. Pell, Clara didn't say.

Without warning Lorraine burst into difficult, tearing sobs. ”The chemo is so hard, it's harder than I thought. My white cells were down so far they couldn't find any to count. And they had to give me blood. The nurses won't talk, and you know what that means, they want the doctor to do the dirty work.”

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