Lionel Shriver - So Much for That

“Thanks,” said Shep sourly. “That really helps.”

“Look, whadda you want, I should tell you fairy stories? Glynis is a ‘tough cookie’ who’s gonna ‘pull through in no time’ and be ‘right as rain’?”

“Sorry. No, I’d rather know. We might as well be prepared.”

“Don’t bother. You won’t be.”

Jackson shot a contemptuous glance at the heavy jogger (whom they walked past) clutching his Evian with that distinctive sense of righteousness conveyed by bottled water. It was a wonder how the Western frontier was ever crossed, their forefathers trudging between watering holes hundreds of miles apart, when after five minutes without a chug modern Americans like tubby there were parched.

“I wondered if you and Carol might come to dinner,” said Shep. “Next Saturday, if you can find a sitter. Just the four of us. It’s a last … It’ll be our Before Picture. I know it sounds inconceivable, but I’d like us to try and have a good time.”

“We’ll do better than try. Wouldn’t miss it,” said Jackson, calculating that the timing was not ideal. “Though if you want it to be all happy as Larry – should we be sure and avoid the asbestos thing? Get the feeling it’s a sore subject.”

“If we avoid sore subjects, we won’t talk about anything.”

“She still holding that against you?”

Shep snorted. “What do you think?”

“That it keeps her warm at night.”

“Toasty. Far as I can tell, cancer doesn’t change people.”

“You wouldn’t want her to change.”

“I walk around feeling awful. I’d feel awful anyway, so it’s hard to tell how much of the awfulness is this whole thing being all my fault. I was sloppy. Inconsiderate. I’m starting to understand how gays feel, when they give their partners AIDS.”

“Plenty of those sausage-stuffers know damn well they’ve got HIV and keep porking away without a casing. But you didn’t know. It’s not even certain that the fibers were from you, that doctor said. You’re fellating …” Jackson said unsteadily. “I mean, whipping yourself. Because you feel guilty about Pemba.”

“Glynis is determined to sue, to make ‘them’ pay. But we can’t go for any company if I can’t remember what I could have worked with that was contaminated. How am I supposed to remember the brand of the cement I poured in 1982?”

“Yeah, I’ve done like you asked and put my mind to the same thing, but I can’t remember, either. That whole list of products you gave me – a brand of roofing tile, well, it’s just not the kind of thing that sticks in your head twenty-five years later.”

“But if she doesn’t get her hands on a corporation, she’s going to keep wrapping them around my neck. I’d bear up if having someone to blame really seemed to help. But I’ve apologized until I’m blue in the face, and every time, after I’ve finished, she still has cancer.”

They were good friends and all, but it hadn’t been the form for Shep to get all choked up, about anything, so Jackson did him the favor of watching a cyclist ride the wrong way around the park while the guy got himself together.

“Nuts,” said Shep, in hand again. “Between now and Saturday, I’ve got to tell everyone.”

“About the surgery?”

“About the fact that Glynis is sick at all. Nobody knows yet, except you and Carol.”

“You don’t think Glynis should do the honors?”

“Nah. It’s better for everyone if I do it. Especially with her family in Arizona. You know Glynis. She’d probably call up and lean back and let her mother go on for half an hour about how the Mexicans next door have five pickups and don’t separate their recycling. Once her mother had hung herself good, Glynis would call her a racist, so Hetty’d get huffy and offended and say something insulting back. Whoom , in for the kill! ‘Is that so? Well, I just wanted you to know that I have cancer!’ Bang , down with the receiver.”

“I can hear it!” Jackson chuckled. “God, I love her.”

“Yeah. I do, too.”

Nearing Handy Randy, Jackson started to whistle “Greensleeves.”

“You fuck!” Shep exclaimed, though at least Jackson had made him laugh. “I’d finally got rid of it!”

Shepherd Armstrong Knacker

Merrill Lynch Account Number 934-23F917

January 01, 2005 – January 31, 2005

Net Portfolio Value: $697,352.41

After work, Shep had to swing by and pick up Beryl, who’d called earlier in the week hoping to come up to Elmsford and “hang,” meaning invite herself to dinner. The timing was bad in one way – that is, as the timing of anything was bound to be bad for the indefinite future – and good in another. Since Zach was spending the night in another boy’s rank, cable-strewn bedroom again, Shep could practice delivering the news in person to Beryl. They’d resolved to tell the kids tomorrow, and he wanted to work on the wording. He was still unsure whether to share the prognosis when he hadn’t discussed it with Glynis herself.

“Swing by” was an inaptly carefree expression, since picking up his sister in Chelsea meant crawling from Brooklyn into Manhattan during rush hour. It would never occur to her to take the train. (Were the situation reversed, of course, Beryl would never have offered him a lift, nor would Shep have expected one. But he was resigned to the fact that he gave and his sister took, as if they simply had different jobs. It was Jackson who railed about how his friend was constantly doing favors for people that Shep himself would never demand of others in a million years. But he’d rather the double standard work that way than the other way around.) For that matter, Beryl’s volunteering to take time away from her busy creative schedule to slum with her boring brother meant that she wanted something. Something more than dinner.

Mesothelioma kept frustration with his sister at bay, likewise whatever sense of mourning he might otherwise have felt about Pemba. He had not been lying to Jackson. He didn’t think about it. He thought about one thing and put all his energies into one thing only. Glynis’s cancer facilitated the same laser-like focus that Zach found in computer games, perfectly replacing the driving single-mindedness previously provided by The Afterlife. Merely relinquishing Pemba with nothing to put in its place would have left him lost, fractured, at sea, and for once in his life maybe angry. As it was, he still hewed to a prime directive. He would do anything to make Glynis more comfortable, or to keep her from going to any trouble. He would do anything to save her.

With Beryl coming over, he’d stayed up until 3:00 a.m. the night before assembling a pan of lasagna and washing salad greens. He had never cooked very much or been interested in cooking, but now his interest didn’t matter. He looked up recipes. They suited a man who was constitutionally obedient, and he followed them to the letter.