Читать книгу Ippi Ever After - Martin Jr. McMahon - Страница 8

Ten stone on the button. Six months on interferon and I had shed two stone. Food and I were enemies. Fatigue weighed me down like an old nags yoke. Some days were worse than others but none were fun. I was still able to do things but I was slower and needed frequent rest breaks.

Cheap, tacky, plastic statues of the Virgin Mary had appeared in the kids bedrooms. Iris again. My home was no longer my own, it wasn’t even Mary’s. Iris had taken over. She planted plants in my garden put condiments in my fridge and dragged my kids to church. Mary was as glued to her as Kathleen always was.

“You’re even dressing like her” I told Mary. Mary used to be a stylish dresser, it was a big turnaround to see her wear the same drab stuff as Iris.

“I have to do what my mammy says” she told me “I have to conform”.

“Why?”

No answer forthcoming and then she was gone. Mary could barely hide her disgust.

“Cancer is not I crime” I was left talking to myself “it’s not contagious”.

My body wasn’t my own. Weight was dropping off but I was only remotely aware of it. When I looked in the mirror I didn’t see a difference. The weighing scales told a different story. Once a month I went to day oncology. Bloods were checked, a once over from the doc and I was at home again. Leah and Judy were great. Judy hadn’t yet started school and we spent lots of time together. I was teaching her how to play chess. Leah was good at chess, she’d learned the basics at about the same age. Digging holes out in the back garden Mary was oblivious to us. If someone called to the house Mary feigned concern, when they were gone it stopped.

I was proud of the en-suite bathroom. DIY is not my best thing, I can fix an engine but hanging a shelf straight might take a few tries. Despite not being bob the builder I persevered. Some things worked out better than others, it was a trial and effort process. The en-suite was a success story. I’d covered the floor with marine ply spending hours with a hand saw cutting out every tricky angle around the loo, the sink and the shower tray. I got someone else in to do the tiling. The shower doors were a bargain. I’d seen them on sale in a DIY store. There was only a display model left. I haggled the sales assistant down to a hundred quid and helped him dismantle it. I was chuffed. I drove home with the doors hanging out of the boot. When I put them up in the en-suite they fitted perfectly.

Years on and the shower doors became the focus of Mary’s attention. Over the years it had been different things, certain foods, the house, pretty much everything and anything she chose. When Mary focused on something she was unrelenting. Screams, tantrums and stamping feet were all par for the course.

“It has to be perfect” she once explained to me, “everything needs to be perfect”.

The shower doors were bugging her now. She couldn’t stand to see any water marks on them she told me. So there I was, down to nine stone, skinny, sick and sore, after every shower I had to stand there buck naked, dripping wet, shivering and scrubbing the inside of the doors. If I didn’t the bomb exploded.

Looking back now I ask myself how it ever ended up that way. It doesn’t happen overnight, it happens by degrees. It starts small, but before I knew it, I was jumping through hoops to try and prevent the bomb from exploding and still the bomb exploded. Something that was not a problem yesterday was suddenly the most excruciating problem today and then suddenly a day, a week or a month later it was not, it was something else. Over the years I dropped all the personal pursuits I enjoyed, I was far too busy placating Mary. Why? Why is more complicated. I grew up with a strong sense of family. Mam and dad rode out all the tough times together. They were indivisible, we could all try and get around them but it rarely worked and even when it did it was never big stuff. Whatever chance we, the kids, had of dividing them no one else stood a chance. That’s how I thought it should work. I was a rebellious teen, if it was dangerous, stupid and against the rules, I was bound to be in the middle of it. Despite this, I still felt valued by my family and I in turn value my children. I am committed to being a dad. I love it. At the very core of why is the most basic of reasons, I loved Mary and I wanted Mary to love me. I trusted her when she said she did.

So I scrubbed the shower doors clean. It hadn’t yet dawned on me that I was scrubbing because Mary saw me as dirty and infectious. In February we had booked our flights to Spain for the last two weeks in July. In February I was relatively ok by June I was a shadow. I weighed a little less than nine stone. I was skinny like I had never been before. Clothes didn’t fit me anymore. I needed something to wear on holidays. I went to a shopping mall a few miles away. I didn’t get out much partly because I was too sick and tired and partly because I was embarrassed by how I looked. I picked up a few t-shirts and knee length shorts. It wasn’t easy to find a twenty eight inch waist in men’s clothes, I ended up getting shorts in a teenagers section.

I saw the holidays as a chance for Mary and I to get close again. I was confused by the way she was acting toward me. I thought some of it was because of the way I looked. I was sure that Iris’ constant presence was a major influence. I desperately wanted Mary to be nicer to me.

The flight over was uneventful. Mary was still as terse as ever but the kid’s excitement was contagious. They loved it all, they couldn’t wait to get into the pool. I’m sure neither of them had slept much the night before.

The journey had exhausted me. I was really struggling to stay going. When we got to the apartment, I put the bags down and went to sit on the balcony. Mary followed me out and sat down. She immediately accused me of having an affair. I was dumbstruck.

“Why are you saying this to me?” I asked.

“I saw a message on your mobile”. For as long as I can remember Mary has checked my mobile phone, my mail and computer. If I complained then she was convinced that I was hiding something, so I didn’t complain anymore. It was a no win situation.

“Someone asked you to go for coffee”.

I had no idea what she was talking about. I hadn’t gone for coffee or anything else with anybody and I hadn’t seen any messages asking me anywhere. Mary often decided that I was cheating on her for no apparent reason. When I tried to say that she had no reason to do so she always used the same rational. If she couldn’t find any evidence that I was cheating, that was her proof that I was hiding something. Before I got sick Mary knew where I was every minute of every day. It wasn’t difficult. If I wasn’t at work, I was with her. I hadn’t gone any where without her in over a decade. Work was a kilometre away from home and I was never late home. Since I became ill it was home or hospital. That didn’t stop the accusations.

“When?”

“Two weeks ago”.

“And what, why didn’t you say it to me then?”

“I wanted to see how it developed”.

“And what did?” I was exasperated.

“Nothing” she answered.

“So why are you attacking me?”

Mary didn’t give me a reason. For the next hour she berated me. The kids stayed in the living room watching the television. Nothing I tried to say made a difference. I’d been on interferon for eight months. I looked terrible and felt worse. I didn’t have the mental capacity to defend myself against what she was accusing me of. I knew what she was saying wasn’t true.

For the first time I really realised that Mary was deliberately lying. It wasn’t just a suspicious streak. She was doing all that she could to hate me, she didn’t want to get closer, she wanted to be further apart. She had waited until I was totally isolated in Spain where there was no one else to see and then she set out to abuse me unmercifully. This was the first hour of the first day and it only got worse after that.

Mary fired hate at me every waking moment. It came off her in waves. By the tenth day I was utterly beaten down. Mary’s younger sister was due to arrive the next day. I literally got down on my knees and begged Mary to stop hurting me. She seemed, no not seemed, she actually took pleasure in emotionally torturing me.

The last night of the holidays we went out for something to eat with Mary’s sister and the children. For months I’d been vomiting after I ate. Some times it stopped quickly other times it lasted for hours. It was always accompanied with gut wrenching cramps. Eating out made it worse, I think it was the fear of being ill in front of others especially Mary. I didn’t want to be sick that night. It was a posh restaurant and I was very anxious so I decided to have only soup. It was the safest thing on the menu. Mary and her sister were drinking wine. I stuck to water, I hadn’t had a beer since the previous holiday twelve months earlier. As soon as I swallowed one spoonful of soup the gut wrenching started. I broke out in a cold sweat.

“I have to go” I told Mary.

She sighed disapprovingly.

“You go with him” she ordered Leah and went back to her wine.

The restaurant was very good and a taxi turned up instantly. It was only five minutes drive to the apartment. I fought the entire journey not to vomit in the taxi as cramps bent me double in the seat. As soon as we got into the apartment I was violently ill. I was ill all that night and the next morning. I retched on an empty stomach hour after hour. I lay on the floor beside the toilet bowl wishing, hoping, wanting it to stop. There was no way I could fly home. I could have gone to a Spanish hospital but I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t want to be stuck there. That and I didn’t have travel insurance, I couldn’t get it.

“You can’t be sick” Mary was standing over me. Her fists were clenched, her face red with anger as she spat the words at me.

“I’ll have to take care of the kids on my own” she roared at me.

Mary and the kids were gone. Her sister was still there and I was in the bedroom alone. I had a small bin lined with a plastic bag in my hands. I stayed there retching and retching until I eventually passed out from exhaustion. When I awoke the nausea wasn’t gone but it had receded to a point where I could overcome it. I picked up the small bin and was about to take the liner out and dump it when I noticed that it had already been changed. I guessed that Mary’s sister had changed it. I was overcome with gratitude, in the previous twelve months, Mary had never done anything like that for me.

For the rest of that morning I sat on the balcony and sipped from a bottle of water. Muscles in my chest and abdomen ached from the previous days heaving. My flight had been rescheduled for that evening. I dared not eat anything. When the time came a taxi arrived and took me the forty five minute journey to the airport. I kept the window rolled down as the driver chatted away. This time there was no delay, I boarded the aeroplane and took a seat right at the front opposite the toilets. A couple of times during the flight I thought I was going to start vomiting again but I fought it down. I’d bumped into a guy in Malaga Airport, Gerry. We had worked together for years before I became ill. Although he was sitting elsewhere on the plane, it gave me comfort that if I did start to get sick again at least there was someone who knew what was wrong with me. I feared that I looked like some strung out junkie. When we touched down in Dublin I was more than relieved. I should have gone straight to accident and emergency in Beaumont but I couldn’t face a night on a trolley. Instead I decided to stay at home that night and go to day oncology in the morning. That day was the first time in nine months that I didn’t take interferon, I couldn’t face it. When I got home I hugged the kids and went to bed. By dawn I was heaving again.

Day oncology had just opened its doors. Mary was with me. I made it into the tiny waiting room and collapsed onto a seat. I was heaving uncontrollably. All my reserves of strength were gone. I was totally wasted. I was transferred to a bed in double quick time. All the smells of the hospital made me heave even harder. In the next cubicle, a man talked to someone about take away food, I don’t remember if I actually asked him to stop but I wanted to. The next I knew I was alone in a small room on a different ward. The nausea stopped when I fell asleep but it was back a few hours after I woke. That was the pattern for the next two weeks. Hour after hour heaving, exhausted, sometimes forty eight hours at a stretch. Only sleep stopped it but sleep was practically impossible. I couldn’t keep anything down no matter how hard I tried. I had convinced myself that I could restart the interferon if and when this horrible sickness passed. One morning an oncologist sat and talked with me. He was convincing me that I was finished with interferon. I didn’t want to give up, I explained to him that I was determined to finish the course. By the time he left the room I conceded that I couldn’t keep going. My best shot at getting rid of cancer was gone. I was consoled that the nine months I’d done were not a waste of time, if interferon was going to work, I’d given it the most that I physically and mentally could.