14
Alice knocked on Paul’s door fifteen or twenty times before finally letting herself in with her key. She’d driven an hour to get here; she wasn’t leaving without seeing him. Something heavy was behind the door and she had to put her whole shoulder into it to edge it open. A wet rolled-up towel, as it turned out. She didn’t want to know why that was there. The last time Alice had let herself in to her brother’s apartment, he’d been in bed with a woman. Sleeping, thankfully. Passed out, actually. That time it had taken several hard slaps before Paul came to, but today he was awake, plodding wearily into the living room.
“Alice!”
He grinned. It was something, she supposed, that he was pleased to see her even if it did raise the odds that he was still drunk.
“I knocked,” she said.
He nodded, sheepish. “I heard.”
She looked around. She hadn’t remembered the place looking this bad. It had never looked good—a decrepit apartment with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The carpet, which had once been cream, was now gray and littered with beanbag fill. The curtains had just three hooks still attached; the rest had been affixed with electrical tape so they were permanently closed save for one corner where a triangle of light beamed in. The glass coffee table was covered in ashtrays and coffee mugs and half-empty bottles of wine and Jack Daniel’s and Coke. There was a faint smell of vomit and whiskey.
Paul glanced at her empty hands and failed to conceal his disappointment. Usually Alice brought food. She knew better than to bring cash. He had enough to survive. Alice collected his disability payments and had set up an account for him, releasing funds in small amounts every few days so he couldn’t kill himself on a booze-filled bender. Still he did, invariably, spend the majority on booze, so he was always happy when she arrived with groceries.
Well, not today.
“So,” he said. “What brings you by?”
She sighed. “Take a seat, would you?”
Alice swept a crisp packet and a coffee mug off the chair and sat herself. Paul did the same, a serious expression registering on his face.
“Is it Zoe?” he asked.
“No, thank God. It’s me.” She decided there was no point in sugarcoating it, especially for Paul. “I have cancer.”
Paul blinked, presumably in shock, but it only served to make him look like more of a stoner. She braced herself for him to say something like “Fuck, man.” She ached, in that moment, to have a brother who actually had his shit together. A brother she could have this conversation with over sushi during his lunch break, a brother who would grab his suit jacket, call his secretary and tell her to cancel his meetings for the rest of the day so he could spend the afternoon driving around to specialists he knew, to get a second opinion. At the very least, a brother who could say, “Well don’t worry a bit about the financial side, I’ve got you covered. And Zoe will have a home with us forever. She’ll never want for anything.”
Instead, Alice had Paul.
“Shit, Al,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s … that’s shit.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“What kind of cancer?”
“Ovarian.”
“Same as Mom.”
“Yep.”
“Fuck.”
He was so out of his depth. It was like Alice was having a conversation with a teenager rather than a forty-three-year-old man.
“So … how bad is it?” he asked.
“I have an operation scheduled tomorrow,” she said. “They’re going to take out my ovaries and fallopian tubes.”
He waited a few seconds, at least, before reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table. “Do you mind if I…?”
“Actually I do.” Alice took the bottle. “If you could just wait until I leave, I’d appreciate it.”
He nodded, as though he’d expected it. “Well … what can I do?”
It wasn’t so much the question as the way he said it. Emphasis on the “I.” What can I do? As if she had asked him how to single-handedly solve the world’s hunger problem. It pissed her off. “What can you do?”
“I mean…,” he stammered, “I don’t have any money, and I … you wouldn’t want to leave Zoe with me, surely?”
Alice couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. That this was her only support person. Alice held her hands to her mouth and nose, trying to hold in the crazy. “Do you know what I want you to do? I want you to grow the fuck up.”
Paul winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“What do you want me to be?”
She laughed—a light airy sound, tinged with rage. “I want you to be a man.”
He stared at his hands.
“I realize you don’t have any money,” Alice said, when she’d calmed slightly. “And no, I wouldn’t want to leave Zoe with you. But here’s the situation. We don’t have any parents. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have any family … except you. And in the next little while I’m going to need some help.”
“What kind of help?” he asked warily.
“As I said, I’m going into the hospital tomorrow. It would be great if I had someone to stay in the apartment with Zoe while I’m gone. After I get out, I might need someone to drive me to and from appointments, in a sober state. I might need someone to be my family.”
Alice didn’t know at what point she’d started crying. It hadn’t reflected in her voice. Paul sat back in his ripped vinyl chair, bone-white, and on the verge of tears himself. Then he started crying too.
“Paul—”
He reached for the bottle in her hand and this time she let him take it. And just like that, Alice realized there wasn’t a chance in the world that he was going to be able to be the person she needed. That she was, pure and simple, in this thing alone.
15
Alice arrived at the hospital at 7 A.M.—half an hour before her scheduled arrival time. She’d awoken early with a strange sense of calm. Yes, she was short on family support, but she’d been short on that for years and she’d always done okay. And today was the day they were going to take the cancer out of her! It was all going to be all right.
A social worker named Sonja had joined her in the waiting room a few minutes earlier. Alice had, of course, insisted that she didn’t require a social worker, but apparently she didn’t have a choice. Sonja was one of those curiously ageless people who could have been forty as easily as sixty. She was attractive without being beautiful, tall and impeccably dressed, right down to a string of pearls, but she was a nervous type, rattling off a list of services that Alice was entitled to while patting her repeatedly with a cold hand.