Death and Other Happy Endings

by Melanie Cantor

  This is so hard but I refuse to fall for his slick patter.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” he says, sighing.

  I shrug in a gesture that says, does it matter anymore?

  “Well, I don’t blame you,” he says. “I wouldn’t believe me either. I guess I’ll just have to prove myself to you.”

  “Not to me, Harry,” I say. “I’m not part of this anymore. You need to prove yourself to you.”

  He taps his hands on his thighs and looks around the room, like he’s hoping for his muse to appear to give him backup. “I understand,” he says. “But I still wanted to say sorry.”

  He’s starting to sound like he means it. Or maybe he’s slipping back under my skin.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He gives a half smile. “I know you’re not convinced,” he says. “But I don’t want you to think badly of me . . .”

  “I don’t, Harry. Honestly. Thanks for coming round.” I stand up. “I really ought to be getting ready. I’m going out and . . .”

  “Of course,” he says and he stands up too. He’s right to suspect I’m trying to get rid of him but it saddens me. I may no longer love him, but I can’t hate him, either. And I don’t want to hurt him. He means well and I’ve made him beg enough.

  “Hey!” I say, dropping my guard. “No hard feelings. Life’s too short. I know that now.”

  “We both do,” he says and I nod.

  His face breaks into a sad smile. “Hug?” he says. “For old times’ sake?” and he opens his arms for me to move into. I hold my breath for a moment, not wanting him to infiltrate my heart. But he doesn’t. Not in the way he used to. I’m more in control than I realized. We hold each other for a long minute, two people, once intimate, both acknowledging that part is over.

  “Good luck,” I say, stepping back. “I hope you find the person you’re looking for.”

  He grins. “I’ll send you postcards. Keep in touch. I’d like to hear your news . . . about the baby.”

  “I’ll put an announcement in the classifieds.”

  He stares at me in that disconcerting way. “I’m quite jealous, you know.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of you. Of him, whoever he is.”

  “You’ll get over it as soon as you pack your passport.”

  He puffs. “Are you still angry with me?”

  “No, Harry. There’s no anger left.” I lean forward and kiss his cheek. “Get on that plane and go find yourself. Leave the rest behind. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  He puts on his coat. Hesitates. Looks back at me with genuine sadness. “I’m sorry I fucked up. But we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

  “You should know the answer to that, Harry.”

  He smiles with his eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess we’ll always have that movie. Good-bye then, Sally.”

  8

  I’m standing at the Belfast sink, the enamel crackled and chipped but still beautiful, peeling potatoes. “What are you going to make with these tonight, then?”

  “Just mash again,” says Mrs. Mumford.

  “If I was a cook, I’d make something for you but I think you probably make a better job of it yourself.”

  “Oh, you do more than enough for me already,” she says. “Anyway, you shouldn’t stand for too long. Not in your condition.”

  “Ha! That’s funny coming from you.” She has terrible arthritis in all her joints. Her fingers are gnarled with it, hence I’m peeling her potatoes because she no longer can.

  The first time I knocked on her door to offer to fetch her shopping, she looked at me with wary suspicion.

  “Are you from Social Services?” she says.

  I guess they must be the only legitimate people to visit her. It makes me sad. I laugh awkwardly. “No, Mrs. Mumford. I live down the road. Just over there.” I point toward my house.

  “Oh, yes, dear,” she says. “I’ve seen you. Are you all right? Do you need something?” She’s staring at my belly.

  “Actually, I was wondering if you needed anything? I’m going shopping and I could tag your list onto mine.”

  She clacks her false teeth. “That’s very kind, dear. But I’m a bit nervous of strangers what with everything you read.”

  “I do understand but . . . you know where I live. I promise you, I only want to offer a bit of help.”

  “Wait there.” She shuts the door and I stand on the step feeling foolish for a few long minutes, wondering if this wasn’t a stupid idea until she appears again and hands me a short shopping list scribbled in pencil on the back of an old envelope. She gives me a £5 note.

  “I promise I’ll be back.”

  To her obvious surprise, I return with her shopping and a small amount of change and she decides I am trustworthy enough for a cup of tea.

  “I’ll make it,” I say.

  “I may be eighty-seven, dear, but I can still make a good pot of tea. You’ve done quite enough. You should be putting your feet up. Look at you.”

  She makes an excellent pot and puts a few biscuits on a plate. She asks what my husband does and I tell her I’m not married and she looks surprised. Now, having gotten to know each other, she’ll occasionally bring up the subject, saying she thinks I should find a man. She thinks I’m a bit foolhardy.

  I get her shopping every Friday. I peel her potatoes then we sit and chat over tea and cake. She loves the Battenberg I buy her. She tells me off for spoiling her. I love that she can feel spoiled by such simple things, and I’m glad I finally knocked on her door and made the offer I had intended to suggest for so long.

  To be honest, it’s not totally altruistic. We are company for each other. She tells me wonderful stories about her life, how as a young girl she used to polish the silver for some grand family in a stately home in Norfolk, which was where she met her husband. He was the chauffeur. So very Downton. I could listen to her for hours.

  And now, as each week passes, there is joy in the fact I’m getting bigger and contrarily I’m also getting my energy back. My baby is kicking. It’s been kicking for several weeks.

  Isabelle was with me for the first kick. She was helping me sort out the spare bedroom and get it prepared as a nursery.

  “Isabelle, come here!” I shout from the landing. She looks up at me, drops the black bin liner she was taking out to the trash and charges up the stairs. “Quickly. Put your hand on my stomach. The baby just kicked. I felt it!”

  “Jesus, you scared me.” She stands with her hand on my stomach and puts my hand on her pounding heart. “Feel that,” she says.

  “Focus on my stomach.” We’re waiting but there’s nothing. “I promise you I felt it kick.”

  She smiles. “Best thing, huh! That first one.”

  “Shhhh. Wait. It’s going to do it again. I know it.”

  She jumps. “There it is!” Her mouth drops open in wonder as if it’s her first time, too. “Hello, baby!” she sings. “Well, you have a mighty fine kick.” And that was the moment we agreed she should be my birthing partner. I want her to be involved for as much as possible.

  It’s certainly going to be interesting if her attendance at my twenty-week scan is anything to go by. I almost regretted allowing her to come.

  “I don’t want to know the sex,” I say to the sonographer.

  “Why don’t you want to know?” says Isabelle, horrified.

  “Because I don’t.”

  “But everyone wants to know.”

  “No, they don’t. You want to know.”

  “Sure I do. I’m normal.”

  “Isabelle,” I say. “If you’re normal, then the pope’s Jewish.”

  She laughs. “We’re all Jewish,” she says. “Somewhere along the line.”

  I catch her looking rather too closely at the screen. “Stop it!” I say. And sh
e gives a sneaky smile. “I’m looking for balls,” she says. “I’m hoping for balls.”

  “Balls or no balls, I’m hoping for healthy.”

  The sonographer smiles. “I’m not giving anything away, but it’s all looking pretty good to me,” she says.

  At work, even though I’m absolutely fine, they all fuss over me as if I’m their pet goat, making sure I’ve got water and tea and that I don’t outstay my welcome. Seeing the care in their faces, I realize I was truly missed. It’s given me an inner confidence in myself I didn’t know I had. It’s as if I’ve been allowed to read my own obituary and it said the most beautiful things.

  The high point recently, of course, was walking down the aisle, three tiny bridesmaids at my hem, behind Olivia and her father.

  Seeing her standing together with Dan, holding hands, entrusting themselves to an unknowable future, I couldn’t help but cry. It made me want to believe in love again. But I’m always a sap at weddings.

  The inevitable questions were asked.

  “Where are you having it?”

  “Royal Free.”

  “Do you know what sex it is?”

  “’Fraid not. Don’t want to know.”

  “Where’s the lucky father? Is he here?”

  “I’d like to know the answer to that question myself.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He’s not here. In fact, I’m doing this alone.”

  And I’d smile and leave it at that. For them to wonder. For them to gossip. Because I don’t care what they think and I’m proud of that. If Olivia’s wedding had happened sooner, I might have answered those same questions differently. Or hid in a corner to avoid them. But thanks to making peace with Harry, with Isabelle, with all of them one way or another, I’ve finally made peace with myself.

  How it all ends

  Today is a beautiful spring morning. My house is warm. Not just because it’s a beautiful day but because I have a new boiler. Why did I ever put that off? As though I wanted to punish myself because in my heart of hearts I knew I was a coward. But now that I’ve discovered I can be brave, I feel I deserve to be comfortable.

  The sun is shining through my windows and I can hear my mother’s voice in my head. It’s sunny. Go outside in the garden and play. And, forever the obedient daughter, I decide to take myself out for a walk across Primrose Hill.

  I grab a large coat that wraps round my middle, wind my long knitted scarf around my neck, and put on a pair of sunglasses, slinging my bag over my shoulder. I only have to wait a few minutes before the arrival of the C11 bus that takes me to the top of Primrose Hill Road. Today is a good day. It smells of warmed grass, and the trees are no longer naked but bursting with leaves. New life.

  I breathe in deeply, feeling almost dreamlike. It’s Sunday morning and everywhere is waking up slowly. I spot a father, his baby strapped to his front, and mothers pushing strollers, holding their toddlers by the hand, and I’m happy to think I’m going to be part of their club.

  I slowly climb the path toward the top of the hill and stop, slightly breathless, to take in the London skyline. There it is. Clear as a bell, in all its streamlined, razor-sharp glory. Standing proud in its own space, away from the crowded hub of the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, and the Cheesegrater, is the Shard. It no longer pains me to see it. It no longer upsets me to think of Harry, something I thought I would never be able to say. It’s good to know we can recover and move on.

  I leave the path, enjoying the pleasure of walking alone, basking in the sunshine. I take off my sunglasses and shade my eyes to take a good look around. “Hello, world,” I say and I think of Anna Maria and Rita and talking to the energy and that strange time when everything seemed so daunting and out of kilter and final. Time heals. Corny but true.

  Eventually, I decide to wander down the hill to the stretch of shops and cafés, along Regent’s Park Road, thinking I’ll grab a cup of tea somewhere. I amble down, through the open gate out onto the street, turn the corner, and wait to cross. It’s quiet, perfect, as if the world is preoccupied with the beauty of the day.

  I start to stroll across the road when, WHOOSH! From nowhere! The air around me sucks in and there’s a pounding through my ears as the screech of a car roars toward me.

  In the vivid sensation of that moment, I know that this is it. That I have been reprieved from dying but not reprieved from death. In those few seconds I realize I have been looking back, allowed to feel good about my life before it is cruelly snatched away like a repossessed gift. The short-lived months of my unborn baby feel like a brutal joke as I stand frozen in time, waiting to feel metal against bone, overwhelmed by the knowledge that this merciless, cruel end is my destiny.

  Then BOOM! The air changes. With that same sense of out of nowhere, I feel the hand of fate push me from my freeze frame into fast forward. I’m practically thrown toward the opposite side of the road.

  “What the FUCK!” shouts a voice somewhere in the distance of my out-of-body haze. “You crazy lunatic driver!”

  The voice shakes me from my intense vision of death and I’m drawn back into my body, alive! Held by the hand that saved me.

  “You okay?” he says. He looks back at the road, now permanently scorched with the inky swerve of skid marks. “Jeez! That was some close shave. No way should that lunatic be allowed on the road. Must have been some crazy rich kid or—”

  He turns his attention to me. I’m shaking. I want to keel over. I wrap my coat around me like a blanket.

  “You need some water,” he says. “Come and sit down.”

  I nod. I can barely speak. He leads me to one of the tables outside a café but before I can get near it, I throw up, spattering his trainers.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sit down and put your head between your knees. You’re in shock. I’ll get you some water and a paper bag for you to blow into.”

  “Or put over my head.”

  “I’ll be back in two with supplies! You’ll be all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I think so.” I’m saying this to the pavement, my head between my knees. My sunglasses slide off my slippery nose and I let them lie there, in front of me. No energy.

  I see his trainers return and slowly roll back up. He unscrews the top of a bottle of water and hands it to me. He’s tall, with long hair that curls over his coat collar and a big bushy beard. He’s holding some brown paper sandwich bags.

  “Thanks,” I say, guzzling the water, aware that he’s watching me really closely. Studying me. I put down the bottle and smile at him and he nods his head, like he’s waiting for something.

  “Thank you so much for saving me,” I say. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  His scrutiny continues. Overly intense. Uncomfortable. More than general concern should allow. Then it dawns on me. My skin prickles.

  I reach down for my sunglasses and quickly slide them on. My hands are now shaking uncontrollably. My whole body follows. It’s him. The guy from the heath. With a beard. He’s saved me.

  He whips off his jacket and puts it over my shoulders. “You need to get warm. Maybe best move inside?”

  “No, no,” I say. “I need fresh air. I’ll stay out here.”

  He pulls up a chair and sits down next to me.

  I feel tongue-tied and gauche, not sure what to say. “I can’t thank you enough,” I repeat, teeth chattering. “Really. I thought I was a goner.”

  He nods. “I thought you were a goner, too,” he says. “I’m glad you’re still here. And all in one piece.”

  I look at him and smile. Now I know he knows.

  There’s a long, loaded silence.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s me.”

  He laughs. “It damn well is you, isn’t it?” he says, beaming.

  “Good bear
d,” I say. “Is that a disguise?”

  He laughs and passes his hand over it in a loving stroke. “Just laziness,” he says. “I’m a hipster manqué. Nice sunglasses. Your disguise didn’t work.”

  “Never been my forte.” My teeth are still chattering.

  He sits back and looks at me sideways. “Are you feeling better?”

  I laugh. “What? You mean apart from the shakes and the vomit?”

  “Are you going to vomit again? Because if so, I’ll move my feet out of the way.”

  “I’m so sorry!” I say. “I feel awful. But your feet are safe now.”

  “That’s a relief.” He’s still staring at me, his eyes burning for candor.

  “You want to know how come I’m still alive, don’t you?”

  He tilts his head. “I’m glad you said that!”

  I drink some more water. “I wasn’t lying to you. It wasn’t some kind of sympathy ploy and it certainly wasn’t a come-on. I really had been given a fatal diagnosis.” He’s looking at me, like he never doubted. “For a couple of months I was preparing for the afterlife or the void or whatever. But my doctor’s office made a mistake. They gave me the wrong test results.”

  “Wow,” he says. “That’s some kind of mistake!” He leans forward, horrified. “And to think, you nearly blew your second chance.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Thanks for sparing me. Sorry about your trainers.”

  “It could have been worse.”

  I nod.

  I gulp down more water.

  He drums his fingers on the table. “This is a bit weird, isn’t it?” he says. “A bit formal . . . considering.” He laughs.

  “A little bit.”

  “How are you feeling now?”

  “Better, I think.”

  “Fancy taking a walk with me?”

  “No funny stuff?”

  “No funny stuff,” he says.

  “You can have your coat back now. I’m okay.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I have several layers.”