I did get that I had a responsibility to at least go see him, but I couldn’t fathom how I was supposed to do it. The only possible way to get through this, on what minimal resources I had, seemed to be to pull my head deeper into my cave, slam everything shut as tightly as possible, take plenty of painkillers and refuse to even think about the whole thing until it was over.
I was still standing there with the phone in my hand when the buzzer made me shy sideways: Melissa, with a massive cardboard pizza box and a funny story about how the Italian guy in the restaurant had been in genuine pain at the thought of putting pineapple on her half. And, since I couldn’t find a way to tell her what had just happened, I laughed and put my phone away and started on my pizza.
But my appetite was gone again, and after one slice I gave up and told her. I expected shock, hugs, compassion—Oh Toby, that’s all you needed, are you OK? Instead Melissa surprised me by saying, instantly, “When are you going?”
She looked like she was ready to jump up and start packing for me. “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and focusing on my pizza. “Maybe in a few weeks. Depends on how I’m doing.”
I thought for sure that would be the end of that, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Melissa sitting up very straight, cross-legged—we were on the sofa—pizza forgotten, one hand cupped in the other like a supplicant. She said, “You should really go. Like, right away.”
“I know that.” I almost managed to keep the flash of irritation out of my voice. “If I can go, I’ll go. Right away.”
“No. Listen.” The barely controlled urgency made me look at her. “That night, when your mother rang me—” A quick intake of breath. “It was five in the morning. I threw on clothes and got a taxi. No one knew what was going on. No one knew if you were going to—”
Her eyes were too bright, but when I reached for her she put my hands aside. “Wait. I need to finish this, and if you hug me I’ll . . . I was in the taxi and I was screaming at the driver to go faster, actually screaming at him—I was lucky he was so nice, he could easily have put me out on the side of the road, but instead he just went faster. Everything dark, and no one on the roads, and we were going so fast the wind was roaring at the windows . . . And all I could think was that I couldn’t bear it if I was too late. If you woke up and wanted me and I wasn’t there, and then . . . It was pure selfishness, I knew you probably wouldn’t even know whether I was there or not—I just couldn’t bear going through the rest of my life knowing I hadn’t been there when you needed me.”
When she blinked, a tear ran down her face. I reached out and brushed it away with my thumb. “Shh. It’s OK; I’m right here.”
This time she caught my hand and held on tight. “I know. But if you don’t go see your uncle, Toby, that’s what it’s going to be like. You’re so shaken up right now, it might not sink in till you’re feeling better, but by then it could be too late.” Squeezing my hand tighter, when I started to say something: “I know you can’t even think about what things will be like when you’re OK again. Believe me, I understand that. But I can. And I don’t want you to be left feeling that for the rest of your life.”
It went straight to my heart, her total and ludicrous faith in me, in a future where I was OK again. I had to swallow back tears too—that would be just great, the two of us sitting on the sofa bawling into our pizza, like a pair of teenage girls watching Titanic at a sleepover.
“Even if you think I’m talking rubbish, can you just trust me on this one thing? Please?”
For my sake more than hers, I couldn’t tell her that this magical future wasn’t going to materialize. And with that realization something surged up in me, a confused reckless swirl of defiance and destructiveness: fuck it, everything was wrecked anyway, what the hell was I trying to salvage? why not go for broke, gun the motorcycle straight for the burning bridge, bring the whole doomed mess tumbling down? At least it would be my call this time; and at least it would make Melissa happy, and Hugo—
Out of nowhere, before I even knew I was thinking it, I said, “Come with me.”
The surprise stopped her crying; she stared at me, lips parted, hand loosening on mine. “What? You mean . . . like, for a visit?”
“For a few days. Maybe a week. Hugo won’t mind. You got on great at my birthday thing.”
“Toby, I don’t know—”
“Why not? We’ve always had people in and out of that house. One time Dec had a fight with his parents and stayed for basically the entire summer.”
“Yes, but now? Do you think your uncle really wants anyone but family around?”
“It’s so big, he’ll barely even notice you’re there. I bet Leon brings his boyfriend, who, God, I can’t even remember his name. If he’s not a problem, neither are you.”
“But—” My rush of giddy energy had caught her; she was almost laughing, breathless, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. “What about work?”
It was hitting me that maybe it hadn’t been a crazy thing to say, after all. Maybe with Melissa there, my small shining amulet, I could handle the Ivy House, maybe— “There’s a bus straight into town. It’d only add like ten minutes each way. Not even.” And when I saw her wavering: “Come on. It’ll be like a holiday. Only with shitty weather. And brain cancer.”
I already knew she was going to say yes: to keep me like that, fired up about something, joking even, she would have said yes to almost anything. “I mean, I suppose—if you’re sure your uncle won’t—”
“He’ll be delighted. I swear.”
With a watery laugh, she gave in. “OK. But next year we’re going to Croatia.”
“Sure,” I said, and a part of me almost meant it, “why not?” And before I knew it, Melissa was singing to herself as she tidied away the pizza things and I was pulling up Hugo’s phone number, and just like that, I was going back to the Ivy House.
Three
The drive to the Ivy House, that Sunday afternoon, felt a lot like an acid trip. It had been months since I’d been in a car or been anywhere much outside my apartment, and the sudden torrent of speed and colors and images was way more than I could handle. Patterns kept popping up everywhere, frenetic and pulsing, dotted lines leaping out at me from the road, strobing rows of railings zooming past, grids of apartment-block windows replicating themselves manically into the air; the colors were all too lurid and had a shimmering electronic zing that made my head hurt, and the cars were all going much too fast, whipping past us with a ferocious whoosh and smack of air that made me flinch every time. We were in a taxi—Melissa’s car was somewhere else or being fixed or something, she had explained but the explanation had been too complicated to stay in my head for any length of time—and the driver had the radio up loud, some talk show with a woman getting hysterical about being housed in a hotel room with her three kids while the host tried to make her cry harder and the taxi driver shouted an outraged running commentary over it all.
“Are you OK?” Melissa asked in an undertone, reaching over to squeeze my hand.
“Yeah,” I said, squeezing hers back and hoping she wouldn’t notice the cold sweat. “Fine.” Which was sort of true, at least on some levels. As soon as the initial rush of reckless abandon wore off I had started wondering what the fuck I had got myself into, but luckily I had managed to get an appointment with my GP and ask for a top-up on painkillers and a hefty Xanax prescription—which he had had no problem writing, after he skimmed my hospital records and I whipped out the full-color heartrending story of my sleep woes. I had zero intention of taking downers as long as I had to spend nights in my apartment, but I had made sure to swallow the first one right before we got into the taxi, so I would be good and spacey by the time we reached the Ivy House. It was kicking in: while the thought of walking in there like this still broke my heart, I found that I didn’t much care, which made a refreshing change.
“Wait,” Melissa said suddenly, leaning forwards. “Isn’t the turn around here?”