The Things We Promise

by J. C. Burke

  ‘That simple?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think he and Mum were some great love story.’

  ‘Does your dad know Billy’s sick?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But isn’t that like the Zane thing all over again?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  My brain was suddenly a mishmash of flying words and pictures. Zane; my father; sitting in the kitchen this morning with Billy; Andrea with her hands on her hips; Saul with purple spots all over his face; the mottled bruises around Ralph’s eyes.

  ‘Gemma? I’m not trying to …’ My fingers were wrapping themselves around the doorhandle. ‘… to pry or be …’ I heard the click of the door opening. ‘Gem? Gemma?’

  ‘Fuck off, Ralph.’

  I was out of the car and on my feet, brushing down the skirt of my uniform, wrestling my bag onto my back.

  ‘Gemma! Please get back in. I’m sorry.’ Ralph was leaning over the passenger seat. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m an idiot …’

  I started walking. Now Ralph was driving next to me, calling through the open window. ‘Gemma? Get back in. I don’t want you walking through the park. It’s pitch black. It’s not safe.’

  ‘I’ve done it before!’ I yelled back. ‘Not so long ago actually.’

  I kept going, wondering if Ralph was watching me disappear through the trees.

  26

  WHEN I ARRIVED HOME OUR PLACE WAS dark and silent. Mum was out, God knows where. The only light was a sliver of gold at the bottom of Billy’s closed door.

  Tonight, I wasn’t going to accept any ‘please leave me alone’ requests. I badly wanted a fight and Billy was the perfect one to give it to me. I bet that he’d been cooped up in his room all day. Seething away in his own self-inflicted solitary confinement. The way he lived for days after he’d fought with Matt. Billy would be ready and waiting.

  I bashed on the door and marched in.

  Billy didn’t even look up. He was lying on the bed, playing with the Rubik’s Cube.

  The first thing I noticed was how thin he’d suddenly become. As though he’d lost weight since the morning. It caught me off guard, catching my words with it. I stood there, mouth open and ready, but nothing coming out.

  ‘Do you hate me because of what I told you this morning?’ Billy said, his eyes still focused on the coloured squares he was twisting this way and that. ‘Do you? Hmm?’ Suddenly, he chucked the cube at the wall. ‘I’m sure you do,’ he spat. ‘Saul’s mother hates me. I hate me.’

  ‘Stop having a pity party!’ I was ready for battle now. It was like a switch had just clicked on. ‘It’s not always about you, Billy.’

  ‘Swap places then?’

  ‘No!’ I barked. ‘You know I think the whole thing sucks, so don’t say that!’

  Billy glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve been out a long time,’ he crooned in a fake I’m so concerned about you voice. ‘Thought you’d be in a better mood after being with spunky monkey. Did something happen? Did his dad not like you?’

  ‘If you want to know,’ I growled, ‘we had a fight. About you!’

  ‘Well, come on.’ Billy was almost gnashing his teeth. ‘Spit it out. I’m dying to hear all about it.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘Ralph thinks we should tell Dad.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Billy sat up and crossed his arms back at me. ‘What do you think? Actually’ – he waved his hands at me – ‘I know what you think.’

  ‘And I know you have a letter to Dad. In your top drawer.’

  ‘Correct, Miss Snoopy.’

  ‘Are you going to post it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  ‘It depends on how sick I get. If you get my drift?’

  ‘You don’t seem very sick at the moment. If you get my drift?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he answered. ‘I have a filthy big lump in my neck.’

  ‘You said nothing was wrong with your neck!’ I yelled. ‘I asked you about it this morning!’

  ‘I didn’t know then, did I? But I’ve been at the doctor’s today, and now I’m just waiting for the results. Woo hoo! What surprise will they have for me this time?’

  I watched my brother’s cabaret of sarcasm as he clapped his hands and pretended to cheer. And for a second I actually hoped he had the cat cancer in his brain because I didn’t want to think he could naturally be this horrible.

  I didn’t want a fight anymore. There was a bad feeling in this room. It danced around my brother’s silhouette like a buzzing electric current. If I didn’t get out it was going to zap me too.

  Apparently, the doctor suspected that Billy had an AIDS-related lymphoma, which was a fancy way of saying he had cancer. And it wasn’t just the lump in his neck. There were also lumps under his arms and in his groin that he hadn’t bothered to mention. The doctors had booked all sorts of tests for Monday. My brain went into overload and shut down when Aunty Penny read the list: full blood count, bone marrow biopsy, chest scan, stool sample. On and on it went.

  The boogieman was back. But he couldn’t wait till Monday.

  On Sunday afternoon, after Billy’d been shut up in his room coughing for most of the day, he suddenly called out to Mum.

  We burst into his room. Billy was trying to stand up. His palms were pressed against his chest and his lips wide open in a perfect ‘O’. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he managed to mouth between gasps.

  Even though it was much worse than ever before, Mum didn’t panic. It was as though she’d rehearsed the moves. She picked up the phone, called the ambulance and very clearly told them our address.

  Mr and Mrs C and me followed Mum and Billy in the ambulance. As though the first time had been a dress rehearsal. The Fiat groaned to keep up with the red flashing light in front of us. Mrs C draped her hand over the seat and I gripped it tightly.

  Over and over and over, I told myself that I had to be Polly Positive. Now, it couldn’t matter what I knew or how I felt about my brother, or that things between Ralph and me had gone down the toilet. I had made a promise and I had to try and keep it.

  Billy bypassed casualty and was taken straight to have an X-ray. We were told to wait up on 9 South West. Mum made a fuss, saying that she wanted to stay with her son. Hospital staff wheeling machines and wearing goggles, gloves, masks and gowns were trying to get through. Nurses were also attempting to squeeze past us.

  Dr Sally Haste, according to her shiny name badge, stopped shouting orders, turned around and took Mum’s hands. ‘Mrs Longrigg, I understand that you’re very worried. We’re trying to assess what’s wrong with Bill as quickly as we can. You can help by going up to the ward. As soon as I know what’s going on, I’ll come and let you know.’

  When the lift doors opened onto 9 South West, it was like walking back into one giant hospital smell. Mum grabbed my arm as we stepped out. ‘You okay, Mum?’

  She nodded, which probably meant she wasn’t. In the lift, I had noticed a new wrinkle on her forehead that I was positive hadn’t been there yesterday. Deep, like I could run my finger through it.

  Darren was at the nurses station, swinging the keys that hung around his neck on a red piece of string. He waved. Then he came over and performed some strange welcome that was probably meant to make us feel better.

  ‘Hi, Longrigg family,’ he said. ‘How are we doing? It’s been a while.’

  I tried to smile and play along. Mostly because Mum was stuck in her stunned mullet act and I didn’t want the Longrigg family to seem rude.

  ‘We’re pretty good,’ I lied. ‘How have you been? How’s Anna?’

  ‘Sadly, Anna has only two weeks left with us and then she’s away on another adventure,’ Darren told me. ‘She has the weekend off.’

  While he chatted, we followed him around the nurses station and down the corridor. I completely and
totally missed where he was leading us. Until we were there, standing outside a single room. Room 12.

  ‘Oh?’ Mum uttered, suddenly pulling up at the doorway like she’d just slammed on the brakes. ‘Is … is this Billy’s room?’

  ‘It’s the only bed we have,’ Darren answered. ‘We’re chock-a-block.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Polly Positive said. ‘There’s a nice view from this room.’

  ‘Sea view,’ he joked back. ‘This’d usually cost you a fortune.’

  ‘Do you know how long it will be before they bring Billy up to the ward?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Not sure, Maryanne. I think the doctors will put a drain in his chest while they’re down there.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mum said, a sudden bounce in her voice. ‘It’s pneumonia!’ If Mum’d added ‘only’ to ‘pneumonia’, then I would’ve totally got what she meant.

  ‘Let’s wait for the doctor,’ Darren said, patting my mother on the shoulder.

  It was pneumonia, or PCP as Dr Haste called it. One of his lungs had collapsed and they had inserted a drain into his chest. But on top of it, they confirmed that Billy had lymphoma. She said it was B-something lymphoma and then went off on the long medical spiel that shut down my brain and put me into numb mode.

  My ears perked up when I heard her asking Mum if Billy had once had glandular fever. ‘Yes!’ I beat her to the answer. ‘He was still at school.’

  ‘Was he?’ Mum asked.

  ‘I remember you made me that yellow top with the sunflowers and Billy was learning how to drive and you both drove me to Mandy Zoran’s birthday party.’ I suddenly felt embarrassed, like I’d shared a bit too much.

  ‘Mandy Zoran?’ Dr Haste said. ‘Did she have a much older sister called Steph?’

  Mum and I nodded like a couple of puppets.

  ‘My sister was friends with a Steph Zoran. It’s quite an unusual surname.’

  Then it was back to business and stories of Mandy Zoran and my yellow top with the sunflowers were put on hold for another time.

  ‘Tonight we’ll keep Billy comfortable,’ Dr Haste was saying. ‘Then tomorrow we’ll do more tests. We can’t even think about starting chemotherapy until Bill’s lung has reinflated and he’s a bit stronger.’

  ‘Chemotherapy?’ Mum said, as if she had heard my thoughts and asked the question for me. ‘Billy has to have chemotherapy?’

  ‘It’s the only way to control the lymphoma, Mrs Longrigg. It’s very aggressive and it’s a gloomy picture without it.’

  I barely needed to give Mum an excuse for why I couldn’t go to school. I think she was grateful to have me there next to her when we walked into Billy’s room the next day.

  ‘I’m not having chemotherapy.’ They were Billy’s first words to us. Our Monday morning greeting. ‘Just want to get it out there now so that we’re all clear on the situation.’

  ‘Let’s not make any decisions at the moment,’ Mum said. The new wrinkle in her forehead looked like it might cave in and split her face in two. It made me want to put my arms around her and hug her tight. ‘Dr Haste says we need to wait until your lung reinflates and then—’

  ‘Mum, you’re not hearing me,’ Billy said. ‘My body. My decision. No chemotherapy.’

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘Mum, please. Chemotherapy’s not going to fix it. It’s not going to change the ending. It’s only going to make me really sick and steal whatever time I do still have. Please understand.’

  Mum walked out, muttering under her breath. ‘No chemotherapy? No AZT?’

  I kept standing by the window, watching a ship way, way out on the horizon, wondering where it was going and who it was taking with it.

  The foamy white horses gently rocked across the surface of the sea. My father once told me that if you saw a white horse it meant they’d just dropped off a mermaid. He said they were the taxis of the ocean and that’s why some days they were everywhere and other days you couldn’t find one.

  ‘Do you want me to send that letter to Dad?’ I asked Billy.

  ‘You might as well,’ he groaned.

  ‘Okay,’ I said and I went off to find Mum because I couldn’t stay in this room with my brother for a second longer.

  When we arrived home from the hospital, the answering machine was flashing with four messages.

  ‘I wonder who they’re from?’ Mum said.

  ‘No idea.’ I yawned.

  Mum didn’t know about my fight with Ralph. She didn’t know about the T-shirt awareness campaign my friends had organised either. When she’d opened my bedroom door that Friday night and whispered, ‘Gem? Gem, are you awake? Did it go well?’ I’d pretended to be asleep.

  Mum pressed the answering machine and the messages spat out, one by one. The first was from Aunty Penny, telling us she’d pop in to see Billy before her night shift started.

  The second and third were from Ralph. ‘Hi, Gemma. Call me back.’

  The fourth was him again. All he said this time was, ‘Hello?’

  Mum was studying me. ‘Is everything all right between you and Ralph?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘He sounded a bit gloomy.’

  ‘That’s just his phone voice.’

  ‘Well, he’d better not get a job in a call centre,’ Mum said, disappearing into the bathroom.

  Never before had I considered myself to be particularly sneaky or dishonest. But I was amazed at how quickly I slipped into my brother’s room, took the letter to Dad out of the top drawer and then called to Mum through the bathroom door, ‘Going down to the phone box, Mum. To call Ralph.’

  The door sprung open. ‘No, you’re not, young lady. It’s almost eight-thirty. It’s dark outside. You can use the phone here.’

  ‘You let Billy go.’ The speed of my answer surprised me too. ‘When he wanted some privacy to call Matt.’

  ‘Billy was a big, strong boy.’

  ‘So? What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Gemma? Please, I’m tired.’

  ‘Mum, I promise I won’t be long.’ That was a promise I knew I could keep. Five minutes later I was back. I just knew that if I didn’t post the letter to our father then, I couldn’t be sure that I’d do it tomorrow.

  The next day I was going back to school and my life would be back to normal. School all day. Hospital at night. The little extra slice of normal would be Ralph and I back to where we probably belonged. Not together.

  This morning there was no lime mobile waiting outside my place. I did leave earlier than usual so I could get to Nigel in time to meet Louise and Andrea. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  Louise was suss about Ralph and me. When we were at Ralph’s place, I’d caught her looking at us. Louise hadn’t tried to drag it out of me. Nor was she acting all I’m your friend and you have to tell me everything, which would have been Andrea’s tactic to make me confess.

  I wondered if Andrea felt bad for being such a cow, telling me I was ‘milking the situation’ after the Fink and Ralph’s fight? She deserved to. But maybe there was some truth to what she’d said.

  Not the ‘milking the situation’ part. The bit about Ralph paying me attention. If Vanessa hadn’t known Billy and Billy hadn’t become sick and Simon Finkler hadn’t done what he did, would Ralph and I have ever existed? And if that was the reason, or at least part of it, then should I feel bad that something good came out of something much worse? Not that any of it mattered now. And if Andrea turned up this morning and grilled me about Ralph, I could look her in the face and tell her truthfully that nothing was going on.

  Up ahead, I could see Louise swinging around the pole that was Nigel. As I got closer, I could hear her singing the Roxette song.

  Soon we’d be getting ready for the formal. I’d probably be sitting at the kitchen table. Billy would be doing my hair or maybe he’d be doing Louise’s and I’d be standing there while Mum zipped up my dress and brushed down the velvet. Now it was impossible to see Ralph and Andrea in that picture.

  But And
rea had never been a fantasy. She was the one thing I could be sure of. Yet our friendship was floating away from us like a prized balloon that we’d accidently let go. We were watching it float away and neither one of us could jump high enough to catch the string and save it.

  ‘Hey!’ Louise’s lopsided face broke into a smile and she started waving. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  ‘It’s a bit silly me getting lifts to school,’ I started. ‘It’s not like there’s any—’

  ‘But what about Ralph? Don’t pretend there’s nothing going on. It was a bit obvious the other afternoon.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Vanessa told me he was a total sad sack all weekend.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Are you still excited about the T-shirts? They’re going to start printing them this week!’

  ‘Billy’s back in hospital.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really.’

  In second period I had English. I made sure I was the first one to class so I could take the desk at the very back that was in the Nigel no friends corner.

  Without even looking up, I knew when Ralph had arrived. I could sense him. As though his presence had sucked up all the oxygen in the room.

  When I dared to peer up, I saw that he was sitting three rows ahead of me. Not once did he turn around.

  Lunchtime I spent up in the library. Out the window, I watched Ralph in the quadrangle, his hands in his pockets as he stood next to Martin Searles in the canteen queue.

  Look up, Ralph, I whispered. Look up.

  The next afternoon, like the one before, I purposely dawdled out of class and through the quadrangle, killing time until everyone was out and loading onto buses, or lining up for lifts. Then, the locker room would be almost empty. No Andrea to hunt me down. Or Ralph pretending he couldn’t see me.

  But when I walked in, Ralph was leaning against my locker. His hands were in his pockets, and he was staring at the floor. A second, that’s all I needed to turn around and slip away.