Helen Brown - After Cleo

How could I possibly leave them?

Waking for the third time that night I counted my blessings – great husband, terrific kids, living in a city with exemplary healthcare.

Starting awake the fourth time, I saw the faces of women friends who’d died circling above me. Lydia’s nanny, Anne Marie; a neighbour who’d had a young family; Mum’s friend Vicky; Aunt Edna and more . . . They’d all been felled by the disease that strikes one in eight women. The one that starts with abnormal breast cells.

Sometimes it seemed I knew more angels than living people.

My last thought before falling asleep was that Philip would be hopeless on his own. I’d have to hunt out a new wife for him.

Abandoned

Wilful daughters were born to defy strong-minded mothers

Next morning I waited for Lydia to announce she’d cancelled her trip. After breakfast she sailed downstairs in a pale pink shawl and invited me out for coffee. She suggested Globe for a change, a cafe not far from our old house. I let her drive my car, partly because I couldn’t trust my reactions under the circumstances.

Globe glistened with mirrors and polished wood. Staff had changed since we used to go there. Assuming she was going to tell me about her change of plans, I ordered two lattes (one soy) and prepared to act surprised.

The best thing you can talk about when one of you has a potentially life-threatening illness is something else. I asked Lydia how Ned was going. Apart from chronic lateness and the occasional fanciful idea (taking part in medieval battles with rubber swords in city parks), he was keeping his symptoms under control, she said.

Lydia had always downplayed Ned’s symptoms, but hearing voices inside his head sounded a bit serious. She’d been encouraging him to stop smoking, lose weight and smarten up his wardrobe. He wasn’t responding well. He still smoked and never wore the ‘new’ clothes she found for him in charity shops. I asked what’d happened to the scarf I’d knitted him. She said there’d been no sign of it. I smiled. Man makeovers almost never work.

‘Maybe he’ll wear something decent to take me to the airport tonight,’ she said offhandedly.

The words were too shocking to absorb.

‘You’re still going?’ I asked, suddenly chilled.

‘I can’t change my plans now,’ she said, stirring her soy latte.

I couldn’t believe Philip hadn’t spoken to her, insisted she stay home for a few weeks at least.

‘But I might be seriously ill,’ I said, sounding weak and pathetic.

My daughter stared into her soy latte. If our situations were reversed . . . but she’d seen it countless times. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.

Did she think I was indestructible?

‘This trip is important to me,’ she said in her therapist voice. ‘I’ve been saving for it for ages. And . . .’

‘And what?’

‘It’s hard to explain . . . but . . . I’m thinking of becoming a Buddhist nun.’

‘ A what?! ’ Cafe patrons glanced up anxiously from their newspapers.

There had to be some kind of mistake. The poor child was confused. Youthful experimentation with spirituality was one thing. Turning her back on her education, her family and future to become Buddha’s bride was unthinkable.

I had no problems with Buddhist nuns in theory. If any of my friends announced their daughter was about to be ordained, I’d probably make admiring noises. As ‘quite a spiritual person’, I’d always encouraged people to embrace the non-physical. But I wasn’t prepared for my daughter to take it so seriously. Did that make me a hypocrite?

I’d once seen a Western girl with a shaven head dressed in maroon robes striding down a street near the university. There was no way Lydia could roam around looking like that.

‘It’s that monk, isn’t it?’ I mumbled.

Lydia’s face closed in. She stared back at me defiantly, her eyes brimming with tears.

‘Do you think it’ll be easy for me?’ she said, standing up and preparing to flee. ‘Shutting myself away from everyone I love and kowtowing to nine-year-old monks just because they’re boys?’

She came from a long line of feminists. It wasn’t in our genes to prostrate ourselves in front of anyone.

Rebellion. That’s what this was about. Wilful young women defy their mothers in order to discover who they are. Not so long ago she’d been writing a sex column for a student magazine. I wasn’t sure what was more shocking. My daughter the sex columnist or my daughter the Buddhist nun.

If she wanted to rebel, why couldn’t she just get a tattoo?

‘What about your scholarship?’ I asked, trying to control the tempest whirling inside.

Lydia nudged her chair under the table and glanced sideways.

‘Do you have any idea how many kids would give their eye teeth for a scholarship like that?’ I said, standing to match her height.

‘It’s not working for me,’ she murmured, hurrying toward the doors. ‘I’ve had enough of Economics and Pol Sci.’

I reminded her of Shakespeare’s words, ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’ Convents had been dumping grounds for women for centuries. If a man wanted to get rid of his wife, or an unmarriageable daughter, he packed her off to a life of prayer and chastity. The number of convent ruins in Europe, and the size of them, is appalling proof of that. While I didn’t know much about Asian nuns, I’d heard they had miserable lives, sweeping, cooking and performing menial tasks for superior male monks.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked, following her.

‘Home to pack,’ she said, flushed with emotion. ‘I’ll walk. Thanks for the coffee,’ she added, before disappearing into a stream of shoppers.

I stood at the counter in disbelief. What century was she living in? Dropping a tip in the jar, I recalled how I’d dragged her as a little girl along to some of the antics my New Age friends had got up to in the 90s. Crystal healers and aura readers had seemed harmless at the time, but maybe they’d tipped her into some wacky spiritual zone.

While our daughter walked home to prepare for monastic life in a war zone, I drove into town to enter a different battlefield.

If you want a steady support person, Philip’s your man. He sat beside me in the hospital waiting room later that afternoon, studying a yachting magazine while I worked through a book of crosswords. He appeared not to be emotionally burdened in any way. Maybe this forbearance came from his army training, or from his years at boarding school.

The waiting room had a loathsome smell of fear. A raucous machine spat coffee from a pipe. Undrinkable sludge. Whoever chose the floral arrangement had a sick sense of humour. They’d placed a vase of arum lilies – didn’t they know lilies symbolised death? – in a prominent position beside the tropical fish tank.

I pointed out the driftwood sculpture to Philip. ‘Better left on the beach,’ he muttered. It was his way of saying he hated everything about the place too. I loved him for that.

A cheerful woman called my name and Philip followed me into the surgeon’s office. Lined with pale wood, it was a pleasant room with brochures about handling emotions and various other inconveniences. A regulation box of tissues sat on the desk. A nurse in the corner typed into her computer. I wondered if she was there to provide emotional backup for the patient – or a witness in case patients turned litigious.

‘How did this happen?’ the surgeon asked me in a tone that was alarmingly tender as we peered at images of the swirling planetary system inside my right breast. The nature of her question was unnerving. She sounded like a mother soothing a child who’d fallen off a tricycle. I’d eavesdropped on enough doctors to know they have a good idea what’s wrong long before they tell you anything.