“Who’s the father, or don’t they care?” Bee asked.
“I think they said they don’t care. And Philip said he’d come to Jinny’s wedding,” Pat said.
Then as she came close enough, Pat saw Bee’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I did think about not telling you, because this isn’t something I want to tell you over and over, love. But it’s fucking anaplastic thyroid cancer, the same as Michael had, and Lorna.”
“Oh Bee, no.” Pat found she was sitting on the ground on the drive with no idea how she had got there. “How are we going to manage?”
“You forgot where I was going, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Pat looked up at Bee. “Have they developed any better treatment?”
“Nope. Six to nine months if we do nothing, six to nine months if we mess about with surgeries and chemo.”
“It’s March…”
“It’s April,” Bee said. “Get up from there and make me some dinner. I’ll make Jinny’s wedding, that’s one thing. I’ll be glad to see her settled. I thought she never would be, over thirty and nobody serious.”
“Bee, you’re talking as if—”
“Well, how do you want me to talk? Like a tragedy? There’s nothing I can do about it. If you like I’ll say we’re totally doomed—I’m dying and you’re going senile, and I think I have the best of it. But what good does that do? Might as well live while we can. Dinner while I can still eat. Sex while we can still enjoy it. Music. Let’s sing together after supper. Graft a few plants and see if I can make some new ones that produce more oxygen for the Mars mission. See Jinny married, maybe see Sanchia’s baby if I’m very lucky.”
“Oh Bee,” Pat said, getting up carefully. “What am I going to do without you?”
“I have no idea. So let’s enjoy the time we have left.”
“Do you want to go to Florence?”
“I want to go in the summer when we always go. For Jinny’s wedding, for the summer. Then I want to come home when we always do, and be here where I have the conservatory all set up to work in. I want to go on as normal as best we can—but Pat? Please try to remember this, because if you forget and I have to tell you again and again it’s going to drive me mad.” Bee’s chair hummed off indoors and Pat followed.
“I’ll try to remember,” Pat said. “I don’t see how I could forget, as it’s the worst news I’ve ever had, but there seems to be no control over what I forget and what I remember.”
“I do know you can’t help it,” Bee said. “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with the cancer, with the stupid Americans who just had to retaliate with an H-bomb and no thought about the winds and who they were hurting, with the equally stupid Russians who thought they could get respect by taking out Miami, and with the Indians and the Chinese. This could be from that just as easily. We’ve only got one habitable planet and it’s so fragile, and we keep on screwing it up. Dropping nukes and burning oil. That’s what makes me angry, not your infirmity.”
“I don’t want to be like my mother,” Pat said.
“You’re going to be seventy next year, and you’re a million times better than she was at that age,” Bee said.
Jinny’s wedding took place in Santa Maria Novella, a wonderful Renaissance church near the railway station in Florence. Jinny had gone through the forms of conversion to Catholicism especially so that she could get married there. (“Though I don’t mind promising to bring the children up in the faith if it means they can be baptized in the Baptistery,” she had said quietly to her mothers the night before.) She piled her dark hair up on top of her head, which made her look very like Bee. Jinny had the same plain square friendly face. Francesco was bringing all the beauty, Pat thought, and hoped Jinny wasn’t bringing absolutely all the brains. Philip gave Jinny away as he had given Flora away. Sanchia, visibly pregnant, and Ragnar were there. Sammy, twelve years old now, was a bridesmaid, along with three of Francesco’s nieces. Flora was matron of honor. Mohammed looked proud of her. It was the first time either of them had been in Florence since their honeymoon.
Pat prayed for Jinny and Francesco, and for Flora and Mohammed, and for Philip and Sanchia and Ragnar, and for all her grandchildren born and unborn. She thanked God for them and for Bee, and prayed that Bee might be cured by a miracle. Looking up at Botticelli’s nativity scene, anything seemed possible. “Come on, God, you can do it,” Pat prayed. “St. Zenobius, patron of Florence, you healed a dead elm tree, and Bee loves elm trees. You could heal her, couldn’t you?”