“Yeah.”
“And how was he?”
“Oh, just Scott being Scott.”
Anna was about to say something, to probe further, but she stopped, bit her lip. “Okay,” she said, standing up. “I think I’m missing a page.”
I looked at her, confused.
“Of the spreadsheet.”
As she went to the printer, I opened the laptop so I could research the doctor that Scott had mentioned. In an open browser window, there was a page of search results. Anna had been Googling “miscarriages and brain tumors in children.” In another tab, there was a story from The Huffington Post: “How My Miscarriage Caused My Child’s Cancer.”
I didn’t read it, but just looked at the stock photo of a woman, her head bowed, clutching her stomach.
* * *
Anna had always done her Christmas letters, a tradition she inherited from her mother. I had teased her about them in the past. They were awful, I said, from another age. Middle-class humble-brags: “Jonathan has had another fantastic year at Oxford, but sometimes we wish he would spend as much time on his studies as he does on his rowing and fraternizing with members of the opposite sex!”
They don’t have to be like that, Anna said. Hers weren’t like that. And besides, it was a good way of keeping in touch. So every year, despite my mocking, she carefully folded a sheet of paper into her Christmas cards.
I had not been sure about sending the email. I was worried we would have to spend our time answering messages of support, fending off friends armed with food baskets at the door. But Anna convinced me. It was better this way, she said. Let everyone know together, and then it would be easy for us to manage. Her word bothered me a little—“manage”—as if it was one of her clients, a crisis at work where everyone had to be on-message.
Subject: Jack
Sent: Mon May 12, 2014 2:00 pm
From: Anna Coates
To: (Undisclosed Recipients)
CC: Rob
Dear Friends,
We hope you are all well and apologies for the mass mailing. We wanted to let you all know that Jack has recently been diagnosed with astrocytoma, a type of brain tumor.
He will soon have surgery to have the tumor removed and the doctors are optimistic that he will make a full recovery.
This has obviously been a tremendous shock, but we are hopeful and positive we will get through this. We thank you all for your support.
Best Wishes,
Anna and Rob
I had added the “positive we will get through this” part. It was true, I told Anna, and, besides, we didn’t want people to worry unduly, to think that Jack was going to die. I didn’t understand her at times. Her genetic impulse to look on the negative side of things. She got it from her parents, handed down like a cursed heirloom. The glass-half-empty family, she used to joke.
The replies came quickly. People wrote to say they were sorry, shocked, saddened. They told us stories: mothers, fathers, friends of friends, who had taken on cancer and won. They told us about little children they knew who were diagnosed with the same—or something similar—and were now doing very well. They told us to stay positive because that, they said, was the most important thing. They told us they would pray, that they would carry Jack in their hearts and be thinking about him from morning until night.
I read and reread Anna’s note. A full recovery. That was what she wrote. So why did they all act like he was dying? Did they know something we didn’t?
9
I sat at my desk, buzzed with caffeine, my fingers twitching as I checked my email. I preferred to work on the sofa, or in bed, anywhere I could position my laptop on my knee, but Anna made me set up the home office. We went to choose a desk and a comfy office chair and she bought some organizers and stationary. It was important, she said, for my state of mind, so I felt like I was going to work.
I scrolled through my in-box. The tech-incubator organizers were still chasing me, now offering to pay my expenses plus a speaker’s fee. Marc wanted some input on one of the programmers. There was something from Jack’s nursery, which I couldn’t bear to open, and then, hidden between an advertisement for a garden center and a PayPal receipt, an email from Scott.
Subject:
Sent: Wed May 21, 2014 1:05 am
From: Scott Wayland
To: Rob Coates
hello mate just wanted to say sorry about the other day in the pub. I know you’re going through so much right now and probably wasn’t as attentive as I should be.
btw, I spoke to the doctor friend of mine, pulled a few strings and he said the best in the business is dr. kennety on harley st. he really knows his stuff apparently. lemme know if u want to go down that road and I can hook u up...
regarding other stuff, I still desperately need to talk to you about the China thing, selling I mean. they’re pestering me and I don’t want to lose the window on it. time to chat about it? if you don’t want to come by the office we could meet at The Ship or I could pop by the house.
in other news, Karolina broke up with me and ive taken it pretty hard, so not going through the best time myself at the moment...
anyways, chin up mate. hope to see u soon.
Sent from my iPhone
Chin up, mate, as if West Ham had been crushed at home. Did he not realize how he sounded? With everything that was happening, was I really supposed to care that Scott’s latest Slavic fuck-buddy had moved on to better, richer things?
After I had calmed down, and made more coffee, I started to do some more research. As I was
