He knows I’m going to tell him he’s wrong. Only this time, he’ll sound a little more certain, I’ll sound a little less convincing. And only Leo will be able to tell us who’s right.
“Dr. Kumalisi,” he begins.
I hate you, I think at him across the sleeping form of my son. It’s not often I can hate a person, but I hate you.
CHAPTER 52
K eith thinks I should call my family, even though it is late now, and tell them what the doctor said.
We are standing in the corner of the hospital room, fighting in whispers about it.
By not calling them, he thinks I am lying again. My husband thinks I am a liar because I choose to not say things. He’s probably technically right about that, but I never omit things for personal gain. If I do not tell something, it is to protect someone else. But for Keith, lying is lying, no matter what your motivations. This is where his view of the world—that wrong is wrong and right is right and there is no middle ground—differs from mine. This is where his view of the world, which gives him such strength of character and conviction in everything he does, creates a gnawing irritation that reminds me why Keith sometimes pisses me off.
“You have to tell them.”
“You want me to get on the phone right now, and tell a group of half-asleep, already upset people what the doctor said? That the coma is so deep now that he’ll never wake up? That we’re looking at forty-eight hours at the most? I’m supposed to do that to the people I love?”
“It’s the truth,” he states.
“Yeah, well, fuck the truth.”
“Nice,” he replies, the word double-dipped in disdain and disgust.
“Forty-eight hours, Keith, yeah?”
He nods, reluctantly, looking down upon me from his high horse, letting me know I’m honored that he has even bothered to acknowledge me now that I have stooped to swearing in the same room as my son about something so fundamental and pure.
“How do I want them to spend the next forty-eight hours? Crying, grieving, wishing there was something they could do but feeling powerless? Or full of hope? Thinking that it’s possible for things to be OK? And how do I want them to spend tomorrow, probably their last day with him? Sitting around here, crying and talking quietly, bringing gloom and sorrow in here? Or chatting and playing and reading and crocheting like it’s just another day in this bizarre situation?” I pause, then add, “And am I supposed to allow all that anguish to surround Leo, before it’s necessary?”
Mr. Truth says nothing. He knows I’m right, but like me, he’d rather have his nipples removed than admit it straightaway.
“No one is going to say goodbye before they absolutely have to. I want them to look back on the last day and think of it with happiness, not sorrow. I’ll tell everyone Monday morning and they can all go in one at a time and say goodbye.”
“You’re going to have to lie again about when you found out,” Keith says, which means he definitely knows I’m right about this.
I glare at him in the gloom of the room. “It’s a really good thing I love you, because I fucking hate you sometimes,” I tell him.
“And I sometimes wonder with the way you can hide things, if I know you at all,” he replies, to get the final word.
“Well, we’re even then,” I add, to usurp him, and march across the room before he can say anything else and sit down in his chair just to further needle him.
“You know what, Leo,” Keith says to our son as he sits in my seat, “you’ve got a really silly mummy.”
I pick up Leo’s hand, imagining how he’d roll his eyes at how childish we’re being, even at a time like this. “You’ve always known how ‘difficult’ your dad is, haven’t you, sweetheart? Well, he’s being really very difficult today. I think I might ban him from the PlayStation.”
Keith jerks his head around to me with such horror on his face, and a protest on his lips, I actually laugh at him. It is such a Leo expression of injustice. Keith starts laughing, too, at his reaction. We keep on laughing until Keith’s laugh becomes breathy and hiccupy, and light from outside the room catches the tears on his face.
As his hiccupy laughter subsides, he gets up and stumbles over the chair as he leaves the room.
I keep laughing, long after he has gone to find a quiet corner where he can cry in peace and solitude, where he can stop being a big strong man with principles and a failing marriage and just cry his heart out.
I keep laughing because once I stop, the only sound I’ll hear is the bleeping machine, counting down the heartbeats Leo has left.
CHAPTER 53
A ll I can do is wait.
Smoke and wait.
Mal accepted my apology by dismissing how I had been on the phone and saying he was sorry, and that he missed me. He is going to call when there is any news.
All I can do now is wait. And smoke. And hope that it’s going to turn out all right.
CHAPTER 54
I ’ve had that song, “Perfect Day,” lodged in my head since this morning.
It’s all rather corny, really, hearing that on loop and watching all the important people in Leo’s life gathering round his hospital bed, carrying on as normal.
Mum has been crocheting and trying not to tell Cordy how to mother Randle and Ria—Mum thinks they’re a little bit on the spoiled side, and she should know since she’s done a hefty amount of the overindulging.
Dad has been completing the stack of Times crosswords he has brought with him in between beating Mal at cards. Every hand Mal loses he puts a look on his face that says he’s let Dad win, but we all know it’s not true. Aunt Mer, Keith and I have been taking it in turns to read aloud; there aren’t that many chapters left and Keith and I both know that we’ve got to get it finished today.
Randle and Ria have been remarkably well behaved, and have been either rapt listening to the story or playing with the array of toys on the floor, with Amy and Trudy, who have focused on the children all day.
Cordy has been tormenting her Jack. She has been sending him out on missions to find things she doesn’t want—like a stick of Brighton candy that doesn’t have writing imprinted all the way through. Whenever he thinks of protesting, she raises an eyebrow, slides her gaze threateningly over to Mal, her big brother—Jack is usually on his way in minutes, sometimes taking a child with him. He came back in the afternoon with pizza for everyone.
In many ways it is a perfect day. Yes, we’re all crammed into a small hospital room, yes, the nurses and doctors all disapprove, and yes, Leo, the focus of attention, is deeply asleep, but it’s as close to perfect as we’re ever going to get again.
When they look back, I hope they remember this as a happy day. And I want Leo to hear his family around him, being themselves, being exactly as they always were.
The song is still playing in my head as they all start to drift away, back to another evening before they come back again and do it all again tomorrow.
The song is still playing as I turn to Keith, now we are alone. “Do you mind staying here while I go away for a few hours?”
He lays the book facedown on his lap. “It was a good day,” he says. He grins at me like he did the first time I asked him about a job in the bar in Oxford. “I thought you would be my undoing from the moment you spoke to me,” he said in his speech at our wedding. “And I smiled because I thought there couldn’t be many better ways to become undone.”
“Yeah, it was,” I say, smiling back. Such a perfect day.
“You were right, we all deserved it. It’s just what we needed.”
“Did you just say I was right? Pass me the phone, I need to call hell to tell them to expect cold weather.”
“Don’t bother, hell isn’t going to freeze over until you’ve said I’m right about something,” he says with a laugh. “Sleep?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you going to sleep?”
“No. I need to get some stuff from home for Leo. Walk around. Find a way to empty my head. I’l
l come back later and you can go home and sleep till morning. I’ll do the night shift.”
“Yeah, sure, anything you want.”
I slip on my denim jacket, hook my bag onto my shoulder and then go to him, sitting so tall and upright in his chair. I pour myself into his lap and loop my arms around his neck.
He stares at me, a little confused. I take the time to enjoy his face: his big, black-brown eyes, his wide, flat nose, his full lips, his smooth, mahogany-brown skin, and the wonderful, perfect lines that make up his face and shaved head.
The wide spaces between the small moments of great irritation are filled with such an overwhelming love for him. And that’s why I can be irritated with him: I know that at the end of it, I’ll still always love him.
I close my eyes and wait for the gentle press of his lips on mine. When he kisses me, it’s as simple as falling through time. This is how it’s always felt to kiss him. Easy, uncomplicated, honest. His tongue finds mine and I know the exact moment he closes his eyes and drops himself completely into the kiss.
We used to kiss for hours. Just kiss. Lie together on the sofa in my flat in London, kissing and luxuriating in it.
I’d love to do that now. To spend the next few hours kissing and kissing him, but we can’t. Then it was a wonderful way to spend our time together; now we both know the longer we kiss, the further apart we’ll feel once we stop.
CHAPTER 55
W hen he opens the door to his hotel, he knows. Mal knows why I have come to him. He knows what it means.
But he’s known all day. He caught my eye once and held my gaze for a few seconds before looking away, and then avoided looking directly at me all day. Out of everyone, he worked it out.
I need to forget. He offered me a way before and I need it now.
He stands aside to let me in, clutching the doorframe momentarily for support and briefly closing his eyes as he does so.
The room is large, larger than I expected. The double bed is neatly made and he’s obviously been sitting in the armchair, watching television with the sound turned down because the subtitles are crawling up onto the screen one at a time. His mobile and BlackBerry are on the desk, both flashing with unread messages. As the door clicks shut, I stop examining his room and turn to face him. My arms are wrapped around myself, my bag hanging off my shoulder, my hair probably blown wild by the wind on the seafront as I walked here. I no longer have to be strong in front of Leo, with Keith, with my family, in front of doctors and nurses, so I am the disheveled wreck on the outside that I am on the inside.
He hasn’t bothered to throw on a shirt before answering the door, because I think he has been waiting for me. He suspected I’d come and hoped I wouldn’t. But here I am, so he stands in gray jogging bottoms, bare-chested in front of me.
Fear is implanted in his eyes, on his face; fear and agony and understanding, but quickly they are gone, brushed aside so he can do this. His chest lifts and expands as he takes a deep breath, steeling himself as he crosses the short distance between us. Even though he has managed to hide his feelings, his hand trembles as he reaches out for the buttons on the red and white flower shirt Leo picked out for me the last time we went shopping.
He undoes the small pearly buttons and with both hands pushes my shirt and my denim jacket off my shoulders onto the floor. His hands are still shaking as he peels off my white tank top with the sparkly pink smiling-skull-and-crossbones motif—another Leo choice—and lets it fall away. He pulls me toward him, allowing me to feel the solidity of his body. As I feel his heartbeat, absorb his heat, he undoes my black bra, slips it off.
It’s still there.
I can still remember. It plagued me every step from the hospital to here. And even though I’m doing this, I haven’t forgotten, it’s still there.
Leo—
Mal’s fingers are on the top button of my jeans. I focus on that. On him unbuttoning me. His hands tugging open my jeans. On kicking off my sneakers, on him pushing down my jeans and taking them off and managing to take off one of my socks in the process. I concentrate on taking off the other sock, while he stands again.
—is—
Mal’s hands hook into the top of my plain white panties and tug them down.
—going—
Mal stops, then. Tenderly, he stares down at me, silently asking if I am sure. If it has truly come to this. If there really is no hope.
—to—
My body quails. The next word will shudder through my body and cement it in my mind. Make it real. Confirm what the doctor said. I don’t want it to be real. I want to forget.
Reading my mind, reading my body, Mal’s mouth comes down hard on mine, erasing the next thought. His hand digs into my hair, the other grips the base of my spine, clutching me close to him as he kisses me.
I plunge into the kiss with the passion that comes from grief and terror and heart-searing pain. Our skins meld together, almost becoming one as we kiss. I can feel him, firm and ready, against my stomach and I reach down to touch him. He takes my hand away, kisses me even harder, all the while walking me backwards toward the bed.
—d—
The word wells up in my mind and I kiss him more urgently, expelling it from my mind. His mouth still on mine, his tongue still in my mouth, he pushes me down onto the bed, climbing on top of me in one move.
He pauses for a second to tug free the tie of his jogging bottoms and push them off, and then his mouth is back on mine. Slower this time, deeper, but just as unyielding. Constant. Concrete.
—di—
He stops for a moment, stills himself on top of me. Everything stops with him. Our eyes lock and I am lost for a moment. I forget. I understand why he offered to do this. I’m not me. I’m not a mother. I’m not a wife. I’m not me. I am a mass of atoms. Only tethered together by this moment.
Now. It has to be now. Before I come back.
Mal thrusts so hard and forcefully into me, I cry out, and his mouth comes back down on mine, taking the sound, that little escaping expression of pain, into himself.
I dig my ragged nails into his back, clinging to the muscles that move on top of me, puncturing his skin. His lips close around my right nipple and he bites hard, spreading shards of sweet, physical pain through my body; I sink my teeth into the flesh below his collarbone and he moans loudly. He buries his hands in my hair and clings on tight as he moves; I claw again at his back. He is rough, far rougher than he needs to be.
This isn’t about pleasure and desire and lust. Every brutal thrust is a peeling back of the layers of reality. A shedding of this earthly agony. A quest for that black, hot state of pure, blissful oblivion. We are hurting, so we hurt each other to forget; to become a mass of unknowing, ignorant atoms.
His mouth covers mine again, swallowing my groans, pushing his moans into me. I can feel its approach. The end. The point of no return. It rises up from between my legs, the space Mal fills, and rushes through my bloodstream. I am racing toward the edge, he is racing inside me … I am on the edge … I am teetering on that precipice … And then I am falling. I am exploding and I am plummeting, and then here it is: the void. I am nothing. I am untethered. I am free.
Free.
We come apart so easily, I realize, as he rolls off me onto the bed, flopping back to stare at the ceiling. It felt like we were one for a forever, and now we are two again. Separate. Unwhole. Even our labored breathing is unsynchronized.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I know. In my head, I say it. I can’t speak aloud. I can’t do anything aloud. I have to stay perfectly still, not ruffle anything by speaking or moving, because I can still hang on to the forgetting if I am careful. My scalp tingles from how tightly he clung to my hair, my mouth is still bruised from how hard he kissed me, my nipple still smarts from his bite, the space between my legs still aches from how rough he was inside me. If I hug these small agonies close, I can still forget.
“I couldn’t leave her. That’s the reason why. When she said
I had to choose, I knew I couldn’t leave her. I promised I wouldn’t and I couldn’t. She’s like Mum.” He stops. “She’s bipolar.”
Well, of course she is, I say in my head. Of course she is.
He explains it all then. How she first told him. The way she tries to control herself. The crises she’s had over the years, the worst being the time he found her in the empty bath with her wrists slashed and an empty bottle of painkillers and an empty bottle of her lithium, after which she stayed in the hospital for two weeks. The abortion at fifteen. How no one can ever know because she is so scared of being judged and labeled a loony.
I listen to his words and with each one Stephanie finally comes into focus.
“She got scared that she would hurt the baby, that’s why she changed her mind,” he says in his tumble of words.
No, she didn’t, I say in my head. Stephanie knows that the only person she’ll ever be a danger to is herself. Just as we all are dangers to ourselves whenever we take risks. Stephanie got scared that you would fall in love with me. I would have your baby and you would fall in love with me and you would leave her for me. You would take the baby and go.
“I knew you’d be OK, that you were so strong, much stronger than Steph is. You had all these people around you who would take care of you, and you would survive. Steph has no one but me. So when she said to choose between her and you and the baby, I had to keep my promise. She had no one else.”
She was never going to let you go. There was never any choice, because she knows you would never leave her. But she had to be sure, when the fears about you falling in love with me started, she had to move quickly. She had to make sure the choice was made before the baby was born. Afterwards, you might have wavered. You might have seen that there was someone out there who needed you more than she did and you might have gone. That’s why you had to shut me out: if you got to know your son, you might have wanted to be with him.