Five first chances, p.25
Five First Chances, page 25
“All right, chief gardener,” she said.
“And, Marion, please take the family photos away.”
“What? What are you on about?”
“Do it,” I said. “You know, that drawer with all our albums? Empty it, and keep them safe.”
“Okay,” she said. No sarcasm this time. “Happy Christmas, Sis. And, Lou?”
“Yeah?”
“Looking forward to seeing you and Nick in a few days.”
All families take work, but it’s easy to forget when you’re immersed in your own. Nick only recently told me one of his childhood memories, walking through town when Debbie moved them from their council housing into Abe’s flat. A single mum, she had met Abe soon after Charlotte was born, which Nick said had made it easier for Charlie, who hadn’t known their dad. “She’s always been Abe’s daughter,” he said, smiling with a melancholy that didn’t escape me. He’d carried all his possessions in a child-sized backpack. He told me how bare his new bedroom had looked, even after he’d emptied the bag. How he pined for his real dad to come and take him away from the big, echoey rooms with the model cars that weren’t for playing with and the TV so huge it gave him a headache. He told me how, if he could, he’d go back and be a more grateful stepson, ignore his embarrassment when Abe would come to pick him up after school in his roaring Porsche, which wasn’t designed for families, not correct the teachers when they assumed at parents’ evening that Abe was his father. “If I’d been Abe,” Nick said, “I would have given up on me much earlier. But he’s been there for me since day one.”
These memories were new to me, new to this version of us, and the more I learned, the more I tried to give him space to share more. He told me he still said no to Abe’s offer of financial help, even after Abe gifted Charlie the deposit for her flat. “I feel like I would be taking advantage. If I’d been a nicer teenager, perhaps I would have said yes.”
“I can’t imagine you ever not being nice,” I told him as I stroked his hair.
“I don’t always like thinking about it,” he said. “But I actually don’t mind sharing that with you.”
We all eat the Nigerian cake, delicious and moist, Yuki, Charlie, and Nick chattering away while, every so often, Abe meets my eyes and winks. We are the quieter of the party, sharing a mute complicity. I wonder what Dad is doing. Probably eating cake with his new family, a glass of wine in hand, watching his vines in the smoldering sun. Whatever. I’d swap a father running out on his family to “find himself” for a stepdad like Abe any day.
“Nick looks good,” his mother says to me as she pours more tea into my cup. “I think he’s happy.”
“Ah, Mum,” Nick grins. “Please.”
“But it’s true,” she says. “Finally.”
Nick meets my eyes, and I give him my best shy smile. Finally indeed.
“Debbie, don’t embarrass the boy.” Abe chuckles, winking at us.
“Well, speaking of happy,” Charlie says, “and given that all the most important people and dogs in the world are here, Yuki and I have something to tell you.”
She leaves a silence after this in which we all stare at her, and Yuki blushes deep crimson. Debbie gasps, bringing her elegant hands to her mouth. Nick looks surprised.
“We got engaged,” Charlie says. “In fact, I have a present for you.” She turns to face Yuki, producing a small box.
“And here’s yours,” Yuki says, doing the same. We wait until they’ve opened the boxes and put the rings on before we jump up and congratulate them. Many tearful hugs follow and admiring coos at stones so shiny they even eclipse Yuki’s golden manicure—effusions that seem to confuse Chomsky greatly, as he puppy bows around us, hoping that somehow, the fuss is all for him.
“Your dog’s trying to steal your thunder, Charlie,” Nick says, holding her tight.
“Ah, whatever. He’s such a diva, but I’m used to it.”
Once it has all calmed down and Abe has gone to the kitchen to look for more champagne, Debbie says, “So this might actually mean grandchildren soon? We need a new generation. Christmas isn’t the same without little ones around.”
I’d rather we didn’t talk about children. I know from a previous life that Nick wants them, though he hasn’t mentioned anything since we started dating again.
“Come on, Mum,” Nick gently scolds her, putting his arm around her shoulders and squeezing. “Patience.”
“Sure,” Charlie says. “But give us a little time, okay? We might, I don’t know, get married first.”
I know Yuki’s always said she doesn’t want children. But equally, she always said she hated dogs. I glance at her. She’s blushing even more than before, turning her new ring around her finger. We’re sitting next to each other, and as Debbie and Charlie engage in an intense discussion about wedding dresses, sleeves or no sleeves, and Debbie scolds Charlie for refusing to consider a dress without pockets (“It’s a wedding dress, love. You’ll have bridesmaids to carry your things”), I whisper, “All good?”
Yuki nods.
“So when is this wedding?” Abe starts pouring champagne into flutes.
“August,” Charlie says.
“August?” Debbie says. “That’s a bit soon, don’t you think?”
“Not this August, Mum. August next year.”
Nick was reaching out to pick up his glass, but somehow, he must have miscalculated, because he knocks it over. The delicate crystal around the rim smashes on the table, fizzy liquid gushing everywhere.
“Shit,” he groans before jumping up and jogging toward the kitchen. Chomsky starts barking, and Charlotte pulls him toward her.
“Why are you all upset?” she soothes the dog. “Hey, boy?”
Nick comes back with a tea towel, starts mopping up.
“For a PE teacher, Nick, you have shocking hand-eye coordination,” Charlotte teases. Now that Chomsky has settled, she’s folded her legs under her and is watching Nick hard at work. Proper siblings.
“Ha ha,” Nick says.
“It’s the excitement,” Abe chuckles. “Are you all right, Son?”
“Fine.” But he’s pale. Nobody’s looking at me, but I know I’m the same. Because I’ve never lived past July 2019. And, more importantly, neither has Nick.
Late in the evening, in the car, I watch Nick’s profile as he navigates intricate junctions and roundabouts. His steering is smooth, the leather of his jacket squeaking as he changes gears. He hasn’t plugged his phone into the sound system as he usually does, so only the purring of the engine is keeping us company.
After the smashed glass episode, he recovered quickly, and the rest of the evening was lovely, but something has been on his mind since. I don’t want to ask him what, because I’m scared that it is what I’m thinking. As the white markings on the road rush beside the car, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, I imagine us stuck in this time loop forever. It wouldn’t be so bad at all. I know we’re the happiest we’ve ever been.
The roads aren’t too busy. In Switzerland, families would be traveling, like us, driving back from celebrating with loved ones. I remember spending long Christmas Eves in the car, counting the farms’ lit-up trees along the motorway with Marion. Here, I think everybody might be down at the pub. Marion and Fabio have surely left Mum’s now, and I paint the quiet picture of her silent flat on the car’s window, the backdrop of my face in the mirror. Mum is there, sitting on the sofa still, in the same self-conscious defensive posture she adopted on the video call. You’re not alone, Mum, I silently say to her. Happy Christmas. Sorry I’m not there. I love you. My face is staring back at me, and I’ve never looked more like myself.
“Are you okay?” Nick asks, pressing my knee briefly before returning to the wheel. I have no idea where we are, no idea what route we’re taking. He could take me anywhere, this man; he could ask me to do anything. I trust him, his decisions, his judgment, with all my heart.
“I think so,” I say. “Are you?”
“I think I’d better go get another checkup,” he says. “When I went in July, they said everything was fine, but… I’m feeling grand, it’s just… I don’t know. I could get an appointment when we’re back from Switzerland, maybe.”
“Sounds good.”
I want to say more but I have to clear my throat first. I put my hand on his knee and squeeze.
“By the way,” he says, “I love you.”
“I love you too. Always.”
Sunday, March 18, 2018
The baby elephants are doing great. They’re not exactly babies anymore, though. They’re great. Just awesome. Everything is grand. Nick and I watch them in their paddock, their mischiefs of trunks and shoves, despite the cold. The bench I sat on last, the memory of Nick’s pain shimmering at arm’s length, is empty.
“Do you want to sit down?” I ask him.
“It’s a bit chilly.”
Debbie bought him an actual winter jacket, a garment that looks like the love child of a duvet and a mattress, khaki and, of course, armed with a hood. Nick being Nick, he would have stuck to his leather jacket and piled on the hoodies. He’s wearing the Fair Isle jumper Charlie got him at Christmas underneath. His scarf has come undone, one side hanging along his arm. I wrap it around his neck.
“All right, Lou,” he chuckles. “Don’t fuss. Treating me like I’m a delicate flower.”
“You wish,” I say. “It’s asymmetrical, and it’s annoying me.”
“Ah, I see. Nothing to do with you caring about me.”
“I bet you’re happy to have a control freak in your life”—I produce a KitKat from my satchel—“because I brought snacks.”
“You legend.” He might feel delighted or sick at the sight. I never know at the moment. I thought it was worth a shot.
I tear off the wrapping paper. Its crackling sound is akin to the half-frozen puddles under our boots in the parking lot earlier. I know Nick won’t be able to eat much, so I break the first bar off and offer him half of it.
“How generous of you,” he teases. I raise my eyebrows at him.
He wraps his arm around me as we munch, watching the ambling elephants. It’s easy to forget how much weight he’s lost since his surgery because of all the layers he’s wearing. But it’s still him, as handsome as ever. My body fits perfectly against his, and I’m hoping so hard that this will remain the case, as we are bracing ourselves for a worse time.
Chemo is looming. I realize now that chemo used to be only a word, something thrown about in films, that meant people disappearing and reappearing with a scarf on their head. It becomes real next week. A testing experience that I’d do anything to spare Nick from, yet the only thing that can save him. The worst that has to happen. Because I could ask a million questions of the oncologist and paint it all in my head in advance, I am finding myself in this strange comfort zone: an anticipated disaster.
“Was it in Thailand, Nick?”
“What?” He’s still holding me, and his lips speak through my bobble hat. I thought for a minute that he’d fallen asleep as I felt his weight rest against me. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Was it in Thailand you found out that baby elephants can die of loneliness?”
“Yeah,” he says after a pause, and I think he’s going to stop there, but he continues. “I’m sorry I’ve never told you about Thailand before. It was hard, you know. I don’t like talking about it.”
I say nothing. I wait as we watch the youngest elephant half-heartedly kick a huge ball.
“I guess I had what you would call a breakdown,” Nick says, and my heart jolts.
“What happened?”
“Actually, can we sit down? Sorry.”
We go to the bench I’d watched him from last time. His ghost is still standing by the barrier, with that look of recognition as he sees me, takes a step forward—something that couldn’t be then, against the little miracle of today. The cold seeps through my jeans. I wrap my arms around Nick to keep him warm, the fur of his hood tickling my cheek.
“Well,” he says with a weak smile, staring straight ahead, “just the usual. After school, I’d been helping Abe with his business, but I was just wasting time, wasn’t good at it either. Katie—she was my girlfriend then—and I had saved up for a year traveling around the world. We lasted two months before she broke up with me. She was the one who’d wanted to travel, I’d followed her, but she got tired of it. And of me. We were different. She’d gone to uni, her parents were well off. She said I wasn’t ambitious enough, that we weren’t going anywhere. She went straight back to the job in her dad’s company she claimed she didn’t want. I carried on on my own, became a little wild, I guess, too much alcohol and partying, even got this old thing”—he points to his tattoo, under all his layers—“but all it achieved was to make me lonely, really messed up, and I ended up on Railay Beach, ready to make it all go away.”
He stops then. He’s frozen still, and I don’t know if it’s the cold.
“Did you…?” I start, hugging him tighter.
“I was going to. I sat on the beach and waited for it to get dark. I hadn’t booked a hostel for the night, that’s how sure I was. Then a British woman came up to me, asked me if everything was okay. She wouldn’t leave until I reassured her, and I couldn’t, so she stayed. She got me to sleep on one of the twin beds of her hotel room and flew me back to my parents herself.”
Everything clicks into place. It was all there, all the pieces, the panes of glass, lining up perfectly.
“Eden,” I say.
“Yeah,” Nick says with a probing glance. “Her day job helped, you know. She had an instinct, spotted something wasn’t right.” He takes a breath. “And that’s how a random therapist tourist saved my life,” he finishes with a kind of flourish. “I continued seeing her back in the UK. She got me on meds, and I got better, little by little. What a lucky bastard I am.”
“I’m the lucky bastard,” I say. “She found you, and then I was able to.”
“Think you’ll find I found you,” he grins.
“What did it feel like?” I ask.
“What did what feel like? Finding you? Bloody amazing.”
“No…having a breakdown.”
He thinks for a bit. “This is going to sound weird, but it felt like I was stuck in Groundhog Day. I was reliving the same day over and over again. Like no matter what I did, nothing could ever move forward. I suppose it felt like I had no future.”
My chest thumps with recognition. I’ve never felt more connected to him. “I know the feeling,” I tell him, trying and failing to do this very feeling justice.
We talk quietly on the cold bench as people come and go, little girls in green jackets and boys with tiger faces, about Eden’s trainers streaked with red mud, which, in Nick’s confused mental state, he’d mistaken for blood. How she flushed the pills down the toilet and watched him all night. The next day, before they embarked on the small boat that would take them back to Krabi, the airport, Bangkok, home, she had insisted on taking a photo of the beach, so Nick would remember there was always a next day to be lived. He describes his parents and teenage Charlie picking him up at Heathrow, how she’s been his protector ever since.
“I do look back at that photo,” he says. “And I come and check in on the elephants, every anniversary of the date. I suppose it’s a way of doing something nice.”
“So today is the tenth anniversary?”
“Yeah, and these little ones seem in top form,” he says, pointing at the elephants in front of us.
“Yes, they do.”
“Proves that things can get better.”
“For the elephants?”
“Yeah. And for us.”
“But not for the otters, though.”
“God no. Hopeless cases.”
“Good, because the otters are our next stop. We can walk there or drive to a closer parking lot. Do you need a break?”
I’ve planned our day carefully, taking into account the amount of time Nick can move around for, how often and little he eats, the cold, his energy levels. I don’t boast about it in his presence, but I have a spreadsheet. He wouldn’t be surprised, as he’s already seen the map I took with us, with optimal timings and highlighted toilets, indoor cafés and car itinerary. Since he underwent surgery, I have channeled my forward planning abilities into supporting him. I have even started to drive his car so I can ferry him around, despite everything being on the wrong side. He gets a little bashful about it and sometimes even grumpy. Teasing me is the best way for him to cut through the fact that he does need somebody to look out for him at the moment, but I know he’s grateful for it.
“I’m fine—I can handle the walk. I’m not quite dead yet,” he says, but he’s exhausted, I can tell. Talking about his breakdown has taken a lot out of him. However, I’ve learned it’s better not to mollycoddle him too much.
“It’s not funny,” I scold him, though I can’t help but smile, because he’s grinning at me.
His cancer was never caught this early before. I know it in my heart. In none of our previous chances did Nick visit the zoo on March 18, 2018, having recovered from successful surgery. Looking to start a six-month course of chemotherapy, which the doctors are optimistic about. In the appointments I’ve attended with him and his parents, the prognosis always seemed hopeful. I was the only one sitting there trying to remain cautious. I’ve decided to look at it as borrowed time, and I’ve embraced all of it. I’ve researched all the unfamiliar terms: oncologist, Whipple, FOLFIRINOX, CREON. In another world, miles and centuries away, Creon was a king who denied a deceased his funeral rites, buried somebody else alive, and lost everything for it. In the world I share with Nick now, they’re capsules that allow his body to digest his food. A world smelling of hospitals, a well-oiled machine of tablets and drips and dressings and many afternoons spent asleep on the sofa.
