None Of Us Will Be Okay

The petals came away with nothing but a tweak of protest. One day in that sun was enough to suck the life out of anything. He had found the rose on the bench encircling the magnolia tree in the centre of the courtyard. The only trace of the wedding party from the morning before, which they had watched from their bedroom window. Its largest bride he’d ever seen kept shaking a sparkling scarf and returning it to her shoulders. Like a kid would. With her magazine bridesmaids and weed of a groom, it had looked like a scene from a bad sitcom.  

Not to Claire of course. ‘She looks happy,’ had been her little contribution.  

Leaning back so that the crown of his head met the rutted surface of the trunk, he took in the treacle branches criss-crossing the clean blue of the sky. The pink bleeding into cream flowers. From this angle they studded the view like huge butterflies pinned there for effect. She was going to drag him around again, have them join queues and lick ice creams. The fact that it was their last day in the city made no difference. It would just be more of the same in the next place. 

When her voice rang out his name, he loved her not. There she stood beneath the archway, in a skirt and a red t-shirt which, he knew though could not see, revealed most of her back. Not the dress then. Most likely not the first outfit tried on either. She had done something to her hair too, so that now it coiled around the nape of her neck like a sleeping snake. Before this holiday, he never noticed how vain she was.

‘It doesn’t look weird does it? Like I’m trying to look like your Princess Leela or something?’

‘Leia. No it doesn’t.’

Down the cobbled street they walked, towards the Duomo that waited with the sunlight.

‘So what do you think?’

        ‘About what?’  He waited for the shrunk voice asking if he had not been listening.

        ‘An outdoors day. Walking about. At the end, we can go to that wine bar.’

        He forgot. She was doing the upbeat thing. Had been ever since they arrived.

        ‘Okey-doke?’ she said, tapping the top of his head with her rolled up map.

        ‘Okey-doke.’

A gradual build-up of a series of errors. So said Notes on Anatomy and Oncology.  The errors, it said, keep happening until one cell acts against its function. When this happens, the mutation transmits itself to neighbouring cells. The body, turning itself into a maze of collapsing dominos. Everywhere, camera-swinging tourists mowed through the network of thin streets and anorexic pavements. All the city wanted was for them to go home. Iron bars crossed the front of every window.  Each door, massive, dark and studded with thick nails, was closed.

She didn’t seem to notice anything that wasn’t on her map. Now and then, she stopped and studied it and then on they would march, sometimes taking a left turn, sometimes a right. As though they had somewhere to be an hour ago. Once, at a market, watching her try to choose between two leather bags, he felt sorry for her. She had not tried to hold his hand today.  Yesterday he complained of the heat and she had taken hers back without comment.

‘I’ll wait over there,’ he said, pointing to the steps leading to a large church the colour of rust. Trading shade for space. The sun burned his face and sandalled feet. A drop of sweat trickled down his chest. Wiping the back of his hand across his forehead he found a layer there too. His body regulating its temperature. The first night he saw Sam with the sweats, he thought he had just taken a shower in his jocks and t-shirt. No one could tell him how or why the cancer caused them. Not a single book or article addressed it. It was a symptom, they said, and that was all.

That was the first night he stayed home, sending the parents down to the pub. Before Sam fell asleep, they passed the time by taking photographs of each of their younger sister’s 24 pairs of shoes and then posting them, along with her mobile number, on a website for the free exchange of things no longer wanted by their owners. They laughed for so long, you would think they had been stoned. When they finally stopped, Sam said - the first and only time he said anything like it to him -

‘I’ll shake this thing, won’t I, Dave?’

Shake it. As though it were a cold.

‘Jesus. Of course you will.’

He hadn’t noticed her walk up the steps. Standing before him, her silhouette hid the sun and it hid her. All he could see was the bottle of sun factor she held out, a glimmer from her sunglasses.

‘You’ll burn up sitting here,’ she said.

The Boboli gardens, it turned out, were built on an incline. Another crowd versus pain dilemma. Apparently, this one was not his to solve. One avenue after the other, Claire walked, never pausing to enjoy the shade from the looming Cypress trees on each side.

Close to the top, he sat on a bench, called her name once. For a while, he occupied himself by ripping a large leaf into small shreds, until the edgy tang of sweat reached him from the other edge of the bench where she had sat without his noticing. Her mouth was pursed shut, her eyebrows scrunched over her closed eyes. He was not convinced she would not start crying.

The idea had words running out of him.  

‘You know plants can get cancer?’ he said. Her eyes opened.

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Makes sense when you think about it, it’s all about evolution anyway.’

Another quick glance to check she was listening.  

‘It’s why it spreads. One cell mutates. That one’s more likely to survive than the others. Then they all start copying it.’

‘Oh.’  

By the time they had taken their seats by the window of the small, ancient bar, a glass of white for her, red for him, it looked like Claire’s efforts to exhaust herself had only been partially successful. All of her face except her eyes looked tired.

‘This is nice,’ she whispered, looking at her glass. When he said nothing she said,

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Great.’

‘Have you enjoyed yourself?’ she asked.

He wasn’t imagining the sarcasm. He would dive in. It didn’t matter.

‘Not really. Have you?’

No lip quiver, nothing. She just looked out the window at the people walking home. Would they fly back early? Together? Would she go on alone? The questions flew at him like disturbed flies. He looked into the still red surface of his wine. The day they first turned up at the clinic, he was in what his mother called one of his moods. Who takes a morning off work because their little brother has the mumps? Little brother of 21 years after all, who is more than capable of taking himself. Then they found out about his white blood cell count. Nineteen thousand per micro-litre of blood. More than twice that of a normal count. Sam’s body, no longer giving a shit about Sam. Starting to get everything screwy. No, that was wrong. Sam’s body never gave a shit about him.

‘I just don’t get your fascination with all these places. Like yesterday. Why did we spend an hour looking at the plates some dead prince slobbered over?’

Rule number one of breaking up with somebody – always let them do the ranting. A slit of dark between her lips as she stared back at him, wide-eyed. A fleck of wetness on her cheek that must have come from him.

Then she said it.

‘Sam got better, David.’

‘We don’t say better.’ He was standing now. The blur of people in departures presenting itself.   ‘Not until five years, remember?’

        ‘They said he was okay.’          

Everyone else was going in the opposite direction. He didn’t let that slow him down, not even when some of them threw angry Italian words after him.  He kept walking until he got to a large, tourist-ridden square. By now, the sun was about to disappear behind the buildings on the west side and half the square was the colour of warm gold, the other half in shadow. He phoned him there, right in the centre, where the crowd seemed to thin a little.

        ‘Well. How’s the man?’ His voice crackled.

        ‘Dave? Are you at the circus or something?’     

‘What’s going on?’

        ‘Not much. Played footie yesterday. Just five a side on the green with the lads.’

He got to the edge, sat in the shade of a loggia that ran along one side of the square. At the other end, a violinist was playing a fast classical piece, her body moving with the music. He kept his gaze on her because he had to keep it on something.

‘I’ve known him as long as I’ve known you, you know. That’s three years in case you’d forgotten.’

It was Claire, standing before him again, the rims of her eyes matching the colour of her top. As she spoke, the music stopped. A burst of applause clattered from the fat doughnut of tourists gathered around the violin player.

‘And I know what this feels like.’

        ‘You just said he got better.’ He was standingagain, ready to throw back this new attack. Her cute little heart-shaped face was all crumpled.

        ‘I’m not talking about Meg. Not exactly.’

        Her sister died in a car accident when Claire was thirteen years old, ten years before they met. Since Sam’s diagnosis, he hated her for it. The realisation turned something down. He felt his shoulders slacken. A well-adjusted girl, his father had once said of her. He knew what he meant. She never let anything phase her. Always happy to go with the flow. Always the first to shrug off something not going to plan. On occasion in the past, it had irked him. Left him wondering how deep her feelings went for him. Went for anything.

Now, for the first time, he understood.

‘I need to know he’ll be okay.’

‘He got through this.’

This time he took her hand. Laced their warm fingers.

Later that evening, they sat together on the balcony of their hotel bedroom, wrapped in bathrobes, finally ready for sleep. In the courtyard below, the magnolias signalled up to them like unlit candles.

Long after the flowers had sunk into darkness and she was in bed asleep, he returned to the balcony. Just the day before, Sam played football on the green again.  That crazy beanpole body jostled against others, threw shouts out of it when called for, weaved around the ball, danced in and out of the long shadows of the trees thrown across the grass by the late afternoon sun.

For now, working in his favour. For now, letting him be.  

This new happiness was like falling.

***

Published in Issue 46, Mslexia Magazine

Shortlisted for the RTE Radio 1 Short Story Competition