Free Falling

by Ana Simons

  Oh, kids! Nobody really cared and the chatter carried on.

  But then Emma began to stomp her feet furiously, her little hands clutching the hem of her dress, her face flooded with tears, her high-pitched voice again at ear-shattering levels.

  “Come here, princess.” My father came to her rescue and held her, suspending her over the table, so that she could hold the whole bowl of popcorn. “Take it, now it’s all ours! Let’s just share with Uncle Brian, because he’s such a jolly ugly chap and I need to talk to him.”

  Emma nodded in between sobs and my father sat next to me, on the sofa, where he tugged her closer into his lap and stole a handful of popcorn.

  She frowned. “Grandpa!”

  He put on some silly face, looking like a little boy who just got caught doing something wrong and she giggled.

  “How’s the Jefferson project going?” he eventually asked me.

  “Smoothly. We’re having a meeting this Wednesday, just to settle a couple minor design modifications and some specifications too. Don’t worry, I’ve got it all covered.”

  “I know you have. Just don’t let that old grumpy git get on you, he can be a real pain in the arse sometimes. And make sure you talk to Andrew tomorrow. He’s having some problems with those new landscape architects from Reading... Hey, where’s Olivia?”

  That was a very good question, I thought to myself. It was getting late already and we should be leaving soon. She has a plane to catch very early in the morning and, sure, for obvious reasons I didn’t feel like socialising any longer. All I wanted was to spend the last few hours alone with her.

  I shrugged as I looked around. “Don’t know. Maybe with Sue, I think. Why?”

  He gave me a soft tap on my leg. “Just wanted to tell you how glad I am that you two seem to have sorted things out. She’s a good girl and...”

  I wasn’t really listening anymore. My eyes just kept scanning the room, my head shifting in different directions trying to track her among all the family and friends my sister had invited. A light rain had started to fall again and the room was now packed.

  “We should be heading home. In fact, I was just going to look for her and–”

  My father pinned my leg down with his hand. “No, wait. I need to ask you something else.”

  “Come on, Dad. Can’t we talk about work tomorrow? Just knock on my door or call me whenever you’re available. We have to get up at five and–”

  “This is important. I need you to be there for your mother. Because she’s the one who will most need your support.”

  Excuse me?

  “Another one, Grandpa?” Emma turned and stuffed some more popcorn into his mouth.

  “Thank you, sweetie! Why don’t you go now and share those with Nana too?” She immediately crawled out of his lap and ran somewhere inside.

  “What’s this crazy talk about Mum?” I asked under my breath, trying to make him look at me. “What have you been up to? Wait, you’re planning on asking her for a divorce, is that it? What’s wrong with you, people? This grey divorce rage now, what sort of new fad is this one?”

  He didn’t look at me, though. He just kept looking at all other guests, even raising a toast with some relative I hadn’t seen in years. “No, leaving your mother has never been on my bucket list.”

  “What bucket list? How much have you been drinking?” I tried to study his face, highly suspicious something wasn’t right, but he just kept looking and smiling around, advertently avoiding my gaze.

  “No, not much. Okay, just a little bit. Yeah, maybe I’m slightly tipsy. But that’s irrelevant, anyway. What’s important and you should know is that I’m surprising your mother and in a few days, we’re flying to Barcelona. From there, I’ll take her on that Mediterranean Cruise she’s been talking about for ages. So I need you to hold down the fort. Man, I can’t stand her nagging me about it anymore,” he concluded in his usual half-serious, half-witty fashion, with a broad smile playing on his features.

  But I know him well. That smile was faked. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He grimaced as he began to pinch his nose with one hand, the other one drumming nervously on the armrest. “I’ve been seeing some doctors lately...”

  “And?”

  “And after a battery of exams I’m afraid the results were quite conclusive.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, probably louder than I should, as a couple of heads turned to look at us. “Mind explaining yourself?”

  “The big-bad-fuckin’-C has caught me too,” he leans over and whispers into my ear. “Total crap, I know.”

  An icy fear took hold of me and I froze. And then a strained, deafening silence erupted around, isolating us from everything and from everyone. Looking into each other’s eyes, we communicated in silence. And my chest constricted, my throat tightened and my senses became numb. My father had always been my pillar of strength, everyone’s pillar of strength. It’s very difficult to envision a life where he’s not present.

  “Dad, cancer is no longer a death sentence. We have to run further exams, look for different opinions, try all the treatments–”

  “It’s a nasty stage four son of a bitch. Right on the spot. If it were the bloody lottery, I’d be a millionaire and I could finally retire.” He let out a loud laugh.

  My world was spinning fast, violently, in an abominable mess, as if the solid ground was just taken from beneath my feet. I made an effort, though, to fully comprehend the sheer enormity of what I had just been told.

  Everyone in this family is quite familiar with these staging conventions. It’s already spread to other parts of the body. His own father had gone through that ordeal, fighting until the end in a merciless battle that we all, deep down, knew he could never win. It took quite a toll on all our lives, but when he was finally defeated, my father was probably the one who suffered the most, because, as he used to say, we’re never ready, it is never the right time to let go.

  “You’re telling me this in a room full of people talking and laughing? With kids screaming and jumping around? Have you gone bloody mad?” I asked, anger dripping from each word.

  Fear is what ignites anger and he knew well mine was not against him.

  “No, it hasn’t hit the brain. The sneaky bastard has only clawed its way to the liver and lungs. It’s pancreatic, by the way,” he replied with a crooked smile on his lips.

  Each person reacts in their own way, I was well aware of that, but that was ridiculous. “Please, Dad, can we go somewhere else and have a reasonable conversation?”

  “No, we can’t. Because the kind of talk you want to have is the kind I want to avoid!” he said harshly. “Because worse than the idea of dying is seeing the pain on the faces of those you care about, trust me. And if I had known this before, I would have handled the situation with my own father a whole lot differently.”

  Fair enough.

  We were quiet for a little while, in a room full of people, but oblivious to the amused, relaxed atmosphere. I let his words sink in, slowly, as I recalled his grief and anger when my grandfather passed away some years ago. Because all the efforts to cure him were far more violent and cruel than the disease, my father used to say, drowning in his own bitterness and frustration. A lung cancer that started off with what seemed a normal cough and wiped out everything in its passage in less than six months. In the end, he died in an unimaginable agony, looking like a ghost, a shadow of the strong, great man he used to be.

  “Listen,” he continued, his tone more relaxed and soft now. “Death is hanging over me and I’m not chuffed to bits about it either, but that’s how life is: a sarcastic, relentless cow. No more, no less. Like it was for your grandfather who had never smoked a day in his entire life, rarely drank and did it all right, yet he had to end his days like that. So, I guess for some it arrives later, for others sooner than expected. You never know what the future has in store for you.”

  “But there must be other options. Let’s talk to
Olivia, first. Maybe she–”

  “There aren’t, I checked that myself. And I decided I don’t want to buy a few more months so that I can spend them miserably, listening to everyone’s words of false hope. And I’m not going to let myself drown in self-pity either. Instead, I’m counting on you to run the Firm from now on, so that I can push it to the back of my mind a little and live each day as normally as I can, for however long that may be, with your mother and the kids, trying out a few new, fun things I’ve never done before.

  “I was thinking snorkelling and deep-sea fishing, what do you think? And maybe I’ll finally take those salsa classes your mother so badly wanted—oh sod, I’m so going to hate that! But that’s what I’ll do: a few crazy things to keep sane.”

  “When did you find out about it? And you’ve been dealing with all this by yourself? How could you have kept it from us? Mum knows?”

  “You ask way too many questions. I’ll talk to your mother once we’ve returned. Until then, I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself. I want her to get the most out of this trip,” he said sternly as he got up again.

  This time it was me who pulled him down. “Dad, sit down, please. I need some answers, I need you to–”

  “No, son, I need you to be strong and help us all go through this. I want us to celebrate the great life we’ve had together, not the end of it. And I wouldn’t really want to see any of you crying, please tell that to your sister. That would be far worse than whatever this fucker is doing to me.” He looked intently into my eyes, right before a gentle smile returned to his face. “I know you’re going to be all right: you’ve got each other. And that’s the greatest consolation a man can have.”

  He got up, but before leaving he turned around and pointed a finger at me. He still had another request, “Hey, and if you ever have a boy, make sure he becomes a loyal Arsenal supporter! And for Christ’s sake, teach him how to kick a ball without embarrassing himself, will you? Mark is a moron; if it wasn’t for me, Josh would be doomed.”

  And he laughed, really loud, like he always had in all the memories I cradle in my head, and then mingled with the guests, leaving me there, lost, needing to play back our conversation over and over again, until I finally acknowledged it had indeed happened.

  28 When bubbles burst

  “Nice job, asshole! That was very, very clever!”

  Friday morning and Jake is leaned against my office window, casting a vacant look outside, emotionless, as if numb with disbelief. “I screwed up big time, didn’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m on Claire’s side here. In fairness, what were you expecting? What would you do in her position?”

  His take-no-crap wife has just kicked him out of his own house and, heck no, the state he’s in isn’t a pretty thing to see.

  “I know... But damn it, it’s not like I planned this! One moment I’m drunk and kissing some other woman, then the next thing I know I’m having the most mind-blowing and adventurous sex I’ve ever had! She’s blown me away completely. And then the situation got so completely out of hand... it was like a drug and I couldn’t let go.”

  “You broke the most sacred rule in the book: no bonking around unprotected!” I tell him as I focus on my laptop screen, scrolling down my email inbox. “Mate, you should have known better: no bag, no shag!”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself! Don’t tell me you’ve never gotten so carried away that you ended up doing it anyway!”

  I’d be lying if I said I haven’t. “Sure. A few times. But there was more than just sex involved. It might surprise you, but I’m not that stupid!”

  “Can I crash on your sofa for a few days? That selfish, mean-spirited, manipulative cow doesn’t want me around either and I don’t know where to go now.” He means Patricia, his pregnant mistress.

  Long story short: mistress gets fed up with it, corners him and forces him to choose. Either he gives her 100% or nothing at all. The affair fantasy bubble bursts, he chooses the latter, tells her it was all a mistake, that he loves his wife. He takes wife on a romantic getaway and tries to wash out guilt.

  A few days later a massive amount of shit hits the fan in the most terrifying way: mistress sends a text with some nasty ‘You’re a fucking prick, I hate you. Never show up again, we don’t need you’ line and with an even more catastrophic attachment: a picture of a pregnancy test. Every guy’s nightmare come true, God forbid.

  Because there isn’t really any possible escape route, he comes clean with wife, breaks the news about the baby on the way and life kicks him hard in the bollocks. It happened last night. Oh-shit, he thinks he might as well run back to mistress before he ends up alone. But then all goes definitely down into hell: mistress tells him to shove his lame excuses up that place and kicks him out too.

  Proverbial end result: he loses both, ends up sleeping in the office and now looks like he was run over by a freight train.

  “All right, mate, but you only have a few days to get your shit together. When Olivia comes over again, I want you out.”

  “Damn! She told me it’d be okay, that she was in her safe period.”

  “So now you know, contraceptive math is not a very exact science.”

  He continues to stare blankly out of the window, distraught, clearly unable to function properly this morning.

  “What am I going to do now?” he asks me with a rough voice, for the hundredth time.

  My mobile rattles on the table. It’s Olivia and I finally have a reason to smile. I needed to listen to her voice; it’s the only thing that could brighten up this so far shitty morning.

  “Don’t know. How about trying to get your head screwed on straight and do some work?” I suggest, though I don’t think he gets the irony.

  As he turns, I take another look at him. Jesus, he does look terrible: sagged shoulders, tired and deathly pale face, sunken eyes and an overall life-can’t-possibly-get-any-worse expression written all over him. Dreadful, an absolute wreck.

  “Okay, I’ll head back to my desk now,” he says, dragging his words in a slow, pitiful monotone.

  “Hey, sweetheart, just a second… Jake, wait!” I hand him my keys. “Here, take these. Go to my flat, have a shower, eat something and be back in one hour. The state you’re in, you’ll be nothing but a walking casualty pretending to be working anyway.”

  He hums something indistinct and agrees with a sort of nod.

  “Sorry, Liv. We’re having a crisis situation here today.”

  “What happened?”

  “Long story... how did it go? I’ve talked to my mother already, she was really excited about the whole thing!”

  “She is! The cruise ship is leaving in less than one hour. I just left them at the terminal. She’s so happy to be going on this trip. And your father is too. Oh boy, that thing is huge, you have no idea!”

  I lean back in my chair and rub my free hand over my eyes, finding myself struck by the bittersweet taste of the reality beyond all this. They flew over yesterday and Olivia is telling me how fun it was last night, how they enjoyed dinner and the concert she invited them to in the Palau de da Música, but my mind can hardly stay focused and follow what she’s saying.

  This week has been the most difficult and demanding in my life. I’m struggling to adjust to this new reality, to the heavy weight that hangs on my shoulders now. It sure hasn’t been easy, and damn it, I miss her so much. How I wish she could be around to help me through this. And the fact she’s on call this weekend, and we aren’t seeing each other, is making it even harder...

  Millie, my father’s trustworthy assistant and the other-worldliest woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life, knocks on the door, waits for no answer whatsoever, and enters. No smile, no words. Only a stack of documents and correspondence she leaves on my desk.

  My eyes follow her movements, my eyes transfixed by the scruffy ensemble and her hair, today, a total fashion calamity. What the hell is that? A mullet with a bang? Shorn on top, long in the back, in the front a bang tha
t looks like a sculptural masterpiece! Jesus.

  “Thanks, Millie. New hairdo, huh?”

  She glances at me with her scary Gollum’s eyes and the usual expressionless face, emits a sort of growl—no bloody idea if it’s a yes or a no—and pads out of my office. Suffice to say, she takes the meaning of ‘small talk’ to its most literal sense and that people skills aren’t really her best asset.

  Help me, God. How I am going to make this work between the two of us is a mystery to me.

  But then again, she works her ass off every day and she was the only one who knew what was going on with my father, who supported him during the diagnosis stage, so it can’t be this bad all the time. Hopefully.

  “Brian?” Olivia’s voice breaks me from my inner digression.

  “Hey, already started packing?” I ask, the idea that she’s moving to London at the end of the month the most soothing thought I have to comfort me these days.

  “A few things, I have already. You’ll see, October will pass in a blink of an eye and in no time, I’m there with you. For good. Got to go now, my shift starts in twenty minutes.”

  *

  Josephine | Friday, October 2 | 11:05

  I’m just across the street, at the Penderel’s Oak. Why don’t you come down for a coffee?

  Friday, October 2 | 11:08

  Sorry. Really busy. Maybe some other time.

  Josephine | Friday, October 2 | 11:09

  Come on, let’s catch up a bit.

  Friday, October 2 | 11:10

  I can’t.

  Josephine | Friday, October 2 | 11:11

  If you don’t come down, I’m coming up. Got something for you.

  Oh, shit no, you’re not!

  Enough is enough and I’m in no mood for pleasantries anymore. I have already asked her to stop texting me but, apparently, she didn’t get the message. She’s been doing this the entire week now, it’s getting completely out of line, heading into crazy territory, and I’m about to lose my patience.