Take care of yourself and do stay in touch.
* * *
As I am running, I watch the water hens and seagulls wade across the mudflats, drinking water from little canals in the sand. I jog past the yacht club on the estuary, the veterinary clinic and the old Methodist church, and then start to accelerate up the path that snakes along the river.
It is late spring, but the sun is blazing, hotter than it should be for this time of year, and my T-shirt and shorts are wet with sweat. I power into a slight incline, through a tunnel carved into the rock, until I get to the railway bridge, a Victorian viaduct that spans the valley. I overtake two swans, slowly gliding, their heads pointed downward, scanning the surface of the water for food.
I come here every day now. To the bench under the viaduct. Perhaps it is the solitude, the calming effect of the red rock, but it is easy to think up here, without the booze clouding everything.
The world has a certain crispness now, like a morning frost, so delicate and pristine you are afraid to take a step. I am noticing things around me, details I haven’t seen before: the worn-away edge of a sideboard; the way the sun, reflected through a lampshade, makes a rainbow of light on the carpet. Because now, when I really listen, when I sit in the calm under the viaduct, feeling the breath of the wind, the tang of river-salt in the air, I am feeling, seeing, hearing the world with a new hypersensitivity, as if a blockage has been removed from my ear and I can hear the crash of a dropping pin.
I should have listened to my dad. He liked a drink, but hated drinkers. It’s all about them, son, he had told me, boring old bastards, always droning on. All them clever thoughts, son, but the boy could hardly stand. Because it gets you like that, the booze. It makes you think you’re unwrapping the world. But you’re not. The world is unwrapping you.
* * *
I come home and sit in the silence of the kitchen and drink a glass of water. The woman I have been speaking to—naws09—was right. Keeping myself busy has helped. Before, my whole day was governed and punctuated by drink, propped up, like the pillars of the church, or the call to prayer. I have had to find things to replace that, mostly chores around the house: organizing the spoons by size in the drawer; preparing elaborate lunches; spending a week reading various review sites on the best studio speakers to buy for my laptop. I have been doing some extra work for Marc, more than I can handle, but I know I have to keep myself occupied, keep myself off the booze.
The things I have started to remember are still so hazy, I cannot be sure if what I am remembering is true. Because they tease you, memories, revealing a little bit here, a little bit there, and you are never quite sure if they are real, like an imagined spit of rain.
I remember Anna telling me how I had pissed over her sunflowers. How I pissed over the memory of our unborn children. I shudder. There are no mitigating circumstances, no equanimity of blame, but just the sordid truth of how awful I was.
I remember what she said, when things were bad at the end. How I would never live up to my father. She was right. He faced tragedy like a man. He was not weak like me. He looked after his family to the end.
For the first time in days, I feel an overwhelming urge to drink. I could get in the car and be back home in twenty minutes with fresh supplies. I can think of nothing better now than to open a bottle of vodka, or wine, and hear that glug, that little dog’s cough, as the liquid is poured into a glass.
No, I will not. I will go for a shower; I will clean the filter on the dishwasher. I will not drink. It is the only thing I can do to try to make amends.
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Thu May 19, 2017 3:21 pm
From: Rob
Recipient: naws09
Thank you so much for your message, naws09.
I’ve been trying to follow your advice and stay busy and I really think it’s helping. Just having a project to do each day, even if it’s organizing a cupboard or something.
I know you’re right about the Newly Diagnosed thing. I would love to be able to do that, to help people in that way, but I’m not sure I can. I just don’t think I have enough to give. Also, given that I took my son to Dr. Sladkovsky’s, I’m not exactly the right person to advise people.
How are you, by the way? I always talk about myself but I don’t know anything about you...
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent: Fri May 20, 2017 8:50 pm
From: naws09
Recipient: Rob
Of course you’re the right person to help people on Newly Diagnosed. You’ve gone through all of this, you’ve lived it. You know how it feels better than anyone.
You asked how I was, well, if you must know, I have been going through a bad patch recently. Every little thing seems to be setting me off. I was watching one of those 24 hours in Casualty documentaries and there was this mother whose son was hit by a car and she was so distraught and beside herself and I had this horrible feeling of guilt that I was never like that, was never like that mother.
I’m sure there was more I could have done to make it easier on Lucy, to help her enjoy her last few months. Sometimes I am paralyzed by fear that she knew: that she knew that she was dying and she was scared and I wasn’t able to take that fear away. Some days are worse than others, but I feel like
