before I found the lump on my neck. The lump was the size of a pea. How long it had been there I don’t know. I waited a while, when it didn’t go away I went to see Dr Dawson. He thought it could be a swollen lymph node. I’d had no infections that my body had been trying to ward off; the miscarriage had been my sole health concern although I hadn’t felt unwell with that. It happened in the first trimester. You had held my hand then as we lay on the sofa, then in bed, with the blood pissing. Nature taking an unnatural course. You didn’t know about the lump. They were testing my blood for that.
"Where do you want to get lunch? That is what I meant," you said.
I sniffed, felt that stab in my skull that made the skin over my jaw and shoulders go as cold as the window I leant on.
"I know what you meant," I said, looked into your grey eyes, "sorry."
You used your thumb to wipe away my tears.
"Stop fucking crying, it is not you who has cancer," he had said.
"It affects me. You are my child," she had said, "You’ll understand when you are a father."
Jackson had lifted a cup and smashed it on the kitchen table,
"Fuck! It’s always about you isn’t it?"
He had stormed off; his hand bled a trail to his bedroom. Scared, I stood outside his bedroom and listened. I hoped he would cry and become vulnerable so that he would need my comfort. I was useless. His games console had started to whir and then the click of his controls. I suppose everyone deals with their diagnosis differently.
In the hospice one of the last things I heard Jackson say was
"When you are a father," a tired broken snicker, he had blamed mom.
Jackson thought she had broken her promise, as though she had a say in when he would go. I blamed her briefly too. I don’t know why. I regretted that when I lost my own baby, against my wishes and despite doing all the right things. No raw eggs. No shellfish. Still the blood had come.
You stood up to get off the bus. I followed behind, remembering why I was doing it. It was time to see everything I hadn’t seen. I had compiled a list to experience everything my city had to offer. Then we would travel to Italy, eat real ice cream and stroll up the Spanish Steps. Do the student-type things I hadn’t done when I had been grieving my brother gone too soon.
I would attempt to write a novel during my treatment, do a workshop in print-making if I had the energy. If I recovered I would run the marathon. If I was fine… well I hadn’t allowed myself to believe it could be an option, I braced myself for the worst. If it turned out that I would have more than my twenty eight years I would turn my life around; it began that day, out of Tribeca.
"Here we are Sophia. The Guggenheim," you said, still holding my hand. I felt a flutter of excitement that I hadn’t felt in years, apart from when I had found out that I was carrying your baby.
"This is long overdue," I said as we walked through the doors.
We gazed at Picasso’s monochrome curves and Kandinsky’s abstract colours like tourists. When we were done we walked to Madison Avenue and bought burritos that we ate in the street despite the chill.