The Alphabet Sisters (46 page)

Bett told her the latest stories. Ellen had invited two of her friends over to play after school. Lola had caught them tying hats to Bumper’s head. They had been rehearsing their own mini musical, for when Mum came home.

“She’d better hurry it up, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve made a decision, Bett.” Her voice became serious as she explained what the specialist had told her that afternoon. That there was still another course of treatment ahead of her. More radiation. Another course of tablets. Still in the experimental stages. “I agreed, Bett. What did I have to lose?”

“But isn’t it dangerous?”

“What? Might it kill me?” She laughed softly at the expression on Bett’s face. “I can joke about it, Bett. It’s me who’s dying of cancer.”

“You’re not dying of cancer. There’s still lots of things they can try.”

“I’m too tired. That’s the worst thing about it. If I wasn’t feeling so sick I’d be interested in thinking about it and talking about it. But if I wasn’t so sick I wouldn’t be dying, would I?”

Bett was shocked by a sudden flare of temper. “That’s not what I meant. How can you joke about it? Why aren’t you angry? Why am I the cross one? Why aren’t you raging against the light and the night or whatever it is you’re supposed to be raging about?”

Anna was calm. “I am, Bett. I don’t want to die yet. I’ve no intention of dying yet.”

“Then don’t be so bloody passive about it. Fight it.”

“You don’t think I am? You really think I want to bow out here and now, slip off, leave all this? Bett, I hate this. I hate every tiny thing of it. Lying here like this, being pumped full of this drug and that drug, getting X-rayed, feeling my lungs trying so hard. All my life I was never conscious of what my body was doing to keep me alive, and now it’s as if I can hear every cog turning, every cell doing its job. Of course I hate this. I see a sunrise, or a bird or the smallest beautiful thing, and I treasure it and I want it forever and I can’t have it. I might not have any of it for much longer.”

“What would you like? If we could get you anything, make anything happen for you before you went.” Bett stumbled on the word. “What would you want?”

“It’s not the obvious things. It’s not seeing Ellen walk up the aisle, or holding my first granddaughter. It’s the ordinary things. I want mornings in a coffee shop with her when she’s about twenty-five. I want her rushed, saying, ‘I can’t stay long, Mum, I have to go and meet someone.’ ”

“What else?”

“I want more drunken nights with you and Carrie and a call from you the next morning to tell me I was all right, that I hadn’t been badly behaved. I want you to ring and not introduce yourself—you know, you never do that, you always launch straight into a conversation. And I want to hear all those stories again about your misadventures. Please, Bett, tell me the one about you falling off the treadmill again? I love that story.”

“You’re very cruel.”

A smile, vivid in the pale, thin face. “I know. Shall I start you off? Once upon a time, you were in a gym and …”

T
he new drugs haven’t worked. It’s spread even further.” Geraldine spoke as soon as she walked into the kitchen two weeks later.

Jim, Lola, and Bett stopped what they were doing. They had known Geraldine was ringing Adelaide and talking to Carrie, who’d been in with Anna for the previous two days. They had known that crucial X rays were taking place that morning, to check on the growth of the tumors. All day each of them had kept busy, filling the hours. The bar was cleaner than it had ever been. The kitchen had been completely reorganized. Bett had got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the showers in all fifteen rooms, playing the bedside radio at top volume in each, blasting sound into the air to keep her thoughts from pummeling her.

Geraldine spoke as if she was reading from a list, her voice expressionless, her eyes distant. “The radiation hasn’t worked either. It’s spread into her lymph nodes. And her spine.”

A few weeks ago Bett hadn’t known what a lymph node was. “Did Carrie talk to Anna’s specialist? About what Anna’s decided to do?”

A nod. “He said that if that was Anna’s decision, he fully supported it. He told Carrie afterward that he felt it was the right option.”

Anna had made her decision three days before. If the latest, more intrusive attempts to stop the cancer hadn’t worked, she was going to stop all the radiation, the scans, the invasive procedures.

Jim spoke. “So she’s coming home?”

Geraldine nodded. She didn’t need to spell it out. Anna was coming home to die.

Chapter Thirty

H
er favorite room in the motel was prepared. They hung bright curtains in the windows. Lola chose a colorful bedspread and a new rug for the floor. Ellen picked fresh flowers and put them in vases. Lola had tried to explain to her that Anna was still very sick, but Ellen hadn’t seemed to take it in. She’d been too excited by the fact that her mother was actually coming home. Jim went to the garden center and bought plants and trees in pots, arranging them outside the room, to give Anna something green and restful to look at from bed. Bett scoured every surface, washed the windows, wiped down the walls, until she had touched every inch of the room.

She smiled at Richard as he carried a box of Anna’s favorite books into the room. She was helping him arrange them on a shelf when he spoke, his voice low.

“I should leave, Bett. This is a time for close family.”

She was struck by the deep sadness in his expression. “No it’s not, Richard. It’s a time for anyone who loves Anna to be close to her.” She touched his arm. “I know it’s been very hard on you. When things had only just started between you. But you make her very happy.”

“I’d like to have made her happier. For longer.”

Bett blinked away tears which had suddenly come into her eyes. “So would we,” she answered softly.

A
nna arrived home the next day in the car with Carrie and Geraldine. She’d traveled in a nest of pillows, fragile from the treatment and the illness, but refusing to make the trip in an ambulance. She was even thinner, her hair a dark little cap around her face, now even more gaunt. “I know my hair’s a mess, but at least I’ve still got it. You should have seen some of the bald heads in that ward,” she tried to joke.

She had to be helped into the room. The oxygen came everywhere with her, pushed on a small trolley beside her. Her voice was changing, becoming weaker, but she was still bright, interested.

“Ellie, did you do those drawings for me? They’re gorgeous.” She leaned and kissed her daughter, who was clinging tightly to her hand. “And all the flowers. And look at that bedspread. It’s beautiful, everyone. Thank you very much.”

As Anna was settled, Ellen skipped around, unable to stay in one place, running up to her mother, hugging her, then running away again. She sidled up to Bett, as she stood outside Anna’s room, arranging a chair and table for the times Anna felt able to sit up, outside in the morning sunshine. It had been Richard’s idea.

“My mum is very sick, isn’t she?”

Bett stroked her hair. “She is, Ellie. She’s very sick.”

“When she gets better, Daddy and Mum and I are going to go on a holiday.”

“Did he say that?”

She nodded. “He said he would take me on a long trip, maybe even to Disneyland.”

“That’ll be fun,” Bett said, keeping her voice bright. She knew what Glenn had been trying to do. She also knew Anna wouldn’t be going with them.

T
he days fell into a pattern. Anna had more energy in the mornings. She could sit and talk with one or the other of them, eat a little, before needing to go back to bed again. Now and then she managed to go for a short walk, or would let them push her in a wheelchair, in the cool of the morning, or after dusk, when the heat of the day had passed. The palliative care nurses visited twice a day and monitored her pain. They showed Bett, Carrie, and their mother how to measure the morphine, answered their questions, calmed and soothed them.

Anna slept a great deal. When she was feeling strong enough, she came into the kitchen in a brightly colored silk dressing gown and sat in a corner, watching all the activity around her. Ellen continued going to school, but ran in each afternoon, with a new drawing, or a love note, which Anna would exclaim over and put into her pocket.

When Anna was too tired to get up, they all took turns spending time with her in her room. Geraldine was there the most, tidying the room, counting the tablets, straightening the curtains, or just sitting quietly by Anna’s bed. She seemed to know when Anna was feeling any pain, when she needed more oxygen, what she might like to drink or eat, almost by instinct. No one remarked on it, but everyone noticed.

C
an I get you anything, love?” Anna looked up from the bed. Ellen was tucked in beside her, asleep. The two of them had been watching cartoons together. “No thanks, Dad.”

“A cola? A squash? A rainbow drink?”

“A rainbow drink? Now you’re talking. Not for me, but for Ellie when she wakes up.”

“You’re not thirsty at all? Or hungry?”

She shook her head. Her appetite had almost gone now.

He had turned to go to the bar to make Ellen’s drink when she called after him. “Dad, can you make Ellie’s drink later?”

“Yes, of course. Is there something else you want done instead?”

“Would you just sit here with me for a while?”

He sat down in the chair beside her bed, taking her hand in both of his. “Of course, sweetheart. For as long as you like.”

L
ola carefully draped the scarf over Anna’s bedspread, then stepped back and looked critically at it. “It will do for the moment. I’ve got my eye on a rather nice pink one down at the charity shop. I think I’ll put in a bid for that and bring that home for you as well.”

Anna smiled up at her. “I love you, Lola.”

Lola stopped still. She gazed down at Anna, then gently, slowly, lifted her hand and stroked the soft cheek. “Not as much as I love you.”

D
o you believe in heaven, Bett?”

“I want to. I want to know that you are going somewhere special, somewhere that you’ll love, and that you’ll get a good spot ready for us when we arrive.”

“I will, I promise. Sun or shade?” She was trying hard to sound bright.

“A bit of both, I think.”

“Bett, will you do something for me?”

Her voice was getting weaker. Bett had to lean in to hear her. “Anything.”

Anna reached under her pillow and took something out. “Would you look after these for me?”

It was an envelope, filled with small pieces of paper, each neatly folded. “What are they?”

“They’re birthday cards for Ellen. Little notes. Until she turns twenty-one. I was going to ask Glenn to give them to her, but I’d love you to do it instead. If you don’t mind.”

“If I don’t mind? I’d love to give these to her.” She realized she had a lump in her throat. “I’d be honored.”

“And you’ll help him look after her, won’t you? Even if it’s hard sometimes. I know you and he haven’t always—”

“Of course I will. We love her dearly, Anna. You know that. I love her dearly.”

“And, Bett, will you tell her about me? Please? I don’t know how much she’ll remember.”

Bett blinked away tears, so used to them now she barely noticed them. “Of course I will. I’ll tell her how beautiful and how kind and how brave—”

Anna’s smile was frail but full of mischief. “Well, you don’t have to get too carried away.”

R
ichard moved the chair in close to Anna’s bedside and reached into the box beside him. “I’ve Jane Austen or Seamus Heaney or even a bit of Ian Fleming.”

“Don’t read to me. Talk to me instead.”

“What about?”

“Anything you like.”

“Anything? Then in that case I want to talk about you.”

Anna didn’t speak, just kept looking at him.

He started, haltingly. “I want to talk about how unfair this is. And how much I wish this wasn’t happening. But that would all be about me, not about you.” His face was very sad.

“I’d liked to have made you so happy, Anna. I’d liked to have gone traveling with you. I’d liked to have made you laugh, and heard more of your stories. I’d liked to have got to know Ellen. For the three of us to have got to know one another.” He paused. “I’m sorry; it’s about me again, not you. What I would have liked. But it’s the truth. All I would have wanted was to be with you. Making love, on orange bedspreads in motels all around the world. Drinking wine and talking all night. Telling you how much I loved you, every day, until you got tired of hearing it.”

Tears formed in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have got tired of hearing that. I’d have liked that.”

He gently wiped away the tears. “I’d also like to have spent one entire week doing nothing but lying in bed and listening to your voice.”

“You wouldn’t have let me sleep?”

“Not a wink.”

“I’d have liked all of that,” she said softly.

He didn’t say anything more then, just picked up her hand and pressed a kiss against her palm. Then, still holding her hand, he quietly started reading to her.

C
arrie learned she was pregnant a week after Anna was brought home from Adelaide. Bett was in the room with her when she told Anna. “It’s still early, only a few weeks. But I wanted to tell you.”

“Carrie, that’s fantastic news.” Anna’s smile was almost luminous now in her thin face. “That lucky little baby. I’ve so many clothes and toys of Ellen’s in storage in Sydney. I’ll make sure to ask Glenn to send them down to you.” Because she wouldn’t be needing them. All the things that didn’t need saying anymore. “And you’re feeling okay? Not too sick? Oh, you’re lucky. I was sick every morning. I actually lost weight in the first few months. The first time I wasn’t dieting in years. The freedom of it. Enjoy every minute of it, Carrie, won’t you?”

Carrie kept the smile fixed on her face. Anna was now virtually skin and bone, her face gaunt, her eyes large, yet managing to laugh about not having to go on a diet.

“If you get morning sickness, dry bread is supposed to be good, but only if someone brings it to you. Is Matthew being good? Obeying your every command?”