The Sisters

 
“If you don’t understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child.”

‘I’M AFRAID that the prognosis isn’t good. It has come back.’

Richard sat back in the chair and finally exhaled the breath that he’d been holding since he’d stepped through the revolving doors of the hospital twenty minutes earlier. It was a different room to the one he’d been in five years ago. That room had been windowless, with a lopsided reprint of Monet’s water lilies hanging on a wall that had been wiped clean too many times. The room he was now sitting in was bright with a large window behind Dr. Marcus’ head. On the windowsill there sat a pale pink orchid. Someone must have given it to him, thought Richard. Maybe his wife or his daughter. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Is it my prostrate again? I haven’t experienced any of the symptoms that I had last time. I mean, I haven’t been feeling great but…’

‘No. Your prostrate is fine,’ Dr. Marcus said. ‘But your blood tests results have produced the CA19-9 markers that we’d expect to see for pancreatic cancer.’

Richard nodded his head as if he understood but he didn’t know what a CA19-9 marker meant. He wasn’t even sure what his pancreas did.

‘The scans show a mass on your pancreas, but thankfully your liver seems clear.’ Richard stared ahead at the pale pink orchid.

‘I suppose I better cancel my trial at Chelsea next week,’ he finally said.

‘Chelsea? I always had you down as an Arsenal man.’

‘I am. But Chelsea would pay me more.’

Dr. Marcus laughed. ‘If you watched the match over the weekend you might change your mind.’

‘The less said about that the better. I was thinking of calling up Wenger and having a word. So what happens now? I mean, how bad is it? Do I need to get a refund on my season ticket?’

Dr. Marcus shook his head. ‘First, we need to book you in for a laparoscopy and take a biopsy just to be absolutely sure and to confirm the stage of the cancer. Considering that it hasn’t spread to your other organs I suspect that we’re dealing with stage two cancer.’

‘And then?’

‘We’ll discuss your options; chemotherapy and maybe surgery. But I want you to understand that this isn’t the same as before. We caught the prostrate cancer early but pancreatic cancer is different. It’s aggressive.’

‘So am I dying? I mean technically we’re all dying but am I actually dying?’

‘Richard, you know that I can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen to you but if your cancer is advanced, as I suspect it is, then…’ Dr. Marcus hesitated. ‘…there’s an 18% chance that you’ll still be alive in 12 months. And only a 4% chance that you’ll still be alive 5 years after being diagnosed.’

Richard had woken up that morning optimistic that Dr. Marcus would give him the all clear. Instead he left the hospital with confirmation that he was carrying a cancerous growth. Eight months ago he’d retired from his job as an engineer for British Airways. Five months ago his wife, Felicia, had changed his diet and he’d started walking the dog twice a day. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Cancer had not been part of his retirement plans. Maybe if he returned to the hospital Dr. Marcus would tell him that there’d been a mistake – that his results had been mixed up with someone else’s.

‘Fliss. Where are you?’ Richard threw his keys into the bowl on the sideboard table, ignoring the unopened post.

‘I’m in the guest room. The other one,’ Felicia shouted out.

Richard took off his shoes and walked up the newly carpeted stairs to the third floor determined not to stop and look at the family pictures on the wall. The guest room, the other one, was the converted attic that used to belong to his youngest daughter, Emma. Emma always used to joke about installing a stair lift and as he reached the top step, slightly out of breath, he started to think that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea.

‘How can you call it a guest room when it’s still got Em’s stuff in it?’ Richard said as he walked into the room and sat on the double bed that had been stripped and had piles of neatly folded clothes on top of it.

‘Stop being so pedantic,’ Felicia said as she closed a box and sealed it with brown tape. ‘I can’t believe that the girl has so many books. She has three copies of Great Expectations. Why would she need three?’ She moved past Richard and sat next to him on the bed. ‘She should be giving all of this away to charity. I have no idea where she’s going to find room in that tiny flat of hers. So tell me. How did it go?’

Richard swallowed. His throat suddenly felt dry and he looked away, unable to look his wife in the eyes.

‘What happened? What did they say?’ She said it in the tone of voice that she usually reserved for her students who knew the answer but weren’t confident about speaking it out loud in case they were wrong.

‘Richard,’ Felicia said again, more sternly.

‘I’m sorry sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’

It seemed the most natural place to be. Sitting at the same kitchen table where they’d made all of their plans. The back door had been left open allowing a gentle breeze to flow into the bright, sun streaked room. It would have been perfect if the news hadn’t been so dire. Even the dog had sensed something was wrong and was sitting quietly under the kitchen table, close to Richards’s feet. Felicia sat with her right hand under her chin and her left hand on top of Richard’s. The tea that she had made them both had long gone cold.

‘I thought you’d beaten it. I prayed that you’d beaten it. I was only telling Mary this morning that once you got the all clear we should celebrate. Throw a party or something.’

‘A wake is a party,’ Richard replied.

‘This is not funny.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And stop saying that you’re sorry,’ Felicia said as her eyes began to fill with tears.

‘Fliss. Please don’t cry. Come on love.’

‘It’s just so unfair. I wasn’t expecting this. You’ve only just retired. I’m retiring next year. We’ve been making plans, Richard, and now this…’

‘We can still make plans. They’ll just be with co-op funeral-care.’

‘Oh for crying out loud.’

He got up, taking the two cups of tea with him and pouring them down the sink. ‘Well at least I got to see the last episode of Breaking Bad,’ Richard said as he opened the fridge and took out a bottle of Chablis.

‘Oh my God. Look nuh! Enough of your jokes.’ Despite the fact that she’d lived in London since the age of 12, her Grenadian accent still had a way of escaping from the recesses of her subconscious when she was upset.

‘Ok. I’ll stop. No more jokes.’ He handed her a large glass of wine, which she took without telling him that she thought alcohol was not the answer, and took a large sip.

‘Twelve months,’ Felicia said as she placed the glass down.

‘18% survive for another 12 months and four percent make it to five years.’

‘It’s hardly any time at all.’ Felicia said as she wiped away the tear that had fallen down her cheek. ‘No time at all.’

WHILE RICHARD and Felicia sat at their kitchen table in Greenwich, their eldest daughter, Lucinda, stood in her kitchen, in New York City with a bank statement in her hand.

‘As I’ve already explained to you, I’m not asking for a loan. What I’m asking for is for you to extend my overdraft until the end of the month.’

‘Mrs. Morgan, I’m afraid that facility isn’t available to you.’

‘It’s not Mrs. Morgan,’ Lucinda said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s Ms. LeSoeur. How many times do I have to tell you?’

‘I’m sorry Ms. LeSoeur but that facility is not available to you.’ Lucinda silently counted to ten to stop herself from screaming down the phone. This was the third call that she’d made to HSBC that week. It was hardly her fault that her ex-husband had been late with the alimony cheques for the past two months.

‘Ma’am if you were to manage your accounts satisfactorily for at least six months then perhaps…’ Lucinda didn’t let the so-called relationship manager finish as she ended the call. She wished she had an old-fashioned rotary phone so she could slam it down dramatically.
Manage her accounts satisfactorily
. What did that even mean? Money was deposited into her account and she spent it. For the fifth time that morning she called her ex-husband no longer surprised that it went straight to voicemail.

‘Where’s my money Paul? How do you expect me to feed your children? You cannot put fresh air in a pot to boil. Call me back.’ Lucinda sat down at the breakfast bar unsure of what to do with herself. It was far too early to start drinking. The twins were at school, her best friend was at work and she couldn’t afford to
do lunch.
She wasn’t used to this lifestyle. Living from alimony cheque to alimony cheque was a life that belonged to someone else.

Her marriage to Paul, one of New York’s most successful music producers, had ended in divorce after 12 years. There had been so-called friends who had told her that she was being foolish to go knocking on a divorce lawyer’s doors but Lucinda had her pride. There was no way she could have continued to share her life with Paul after she caught him with his latest signing, Alanna De Costa, doing her vocal exercises with Paul’s penis in her mouth.

Lucinda picked up a pen and smoothed out the pages of her bank statement onto the kitchen counter. The monthly alimony cheques were $18,500. The monthly mortgage payments were $10,220. On food and clothes she guessed she was spending roughly $5,000 per month. The car payments on the Land Rover Evoque were $1200 per month. Logic told her that there was no way that she should have been calling the bank and begging for an overdraft. The landline in the hallway began to ring but she knew it was probably creditors so she ignored it. A few seconds later her mobile began to ring but she ignored that also. However, after feeling sick to her stomach after going through her bank statement again, she thought that maybe, just maybe Paul had seen the light and decided to call. When she saw the +44 on her screen, the dialling code for the UK, she knew it was unlikely that Paul had emigrated to England and was phoning to let her know that the cheque was in the post. It wasn’t a number she recognised and the last thing she was going to do was call back a number she didn’t recognise, especially if it meant she had to pay international call rates.

Jessica breathed a sigh of relief when after six rings the phone went straight to voicemail.

‘Did you speak to her?’ Felicia asked.

‘No. There was no answer,’ Jessica said as she walked into the kitchen regretting that today of all days she’d found herself in the area and had decided to just pop in. The second that she’d walked into the house she’d known that something was wrong. It was too quiet. Whether it was music being played or the TV being on, her childhood home had always been noisy. To find her parents sitting at the kitchen table barely talking, instantly told her that something was wrong.