Thirty Days Read online

  Various venues were considered, but pragmatism won out: a wedding in a marquee in Kerryn’s sister’s garden, where we had celebrated Gabe’s barmitzvah. And if Kerryn got tired, she could retire upstairs and watch the party through a window, or listen to the music from a bed.

  From then on, all the arrangements went ahead, with one exception: Kerryn resisted giving the go-ahead for the family to send out invitations. But she continued to orchestrate the details of the wedding with the family, and with caterers, decorators and florists.

  And then there were the clothes. Kerryn went on her own to Chadstone. She sent a photograph of herself in a black-and-white dress, standing between mirrors so we could see the back and front. She paid for the dress, aware of the return deposit option, and appeared ready to walk down the aisle with her son for an autumn wedding.

  But there were days she could barely lift her head off the pillow.

  During a brief interlude when she felt stronger, she found an alternative dress online. I drove to the shopping centre with her. She stumbled out of the change room, modelling a colourful gown with geometrical patterns.

  ‘I like it,’ I said.

  ‘At least we have a choice of two dresses,’ she answered.

  As I paid and carried the bag, I had to hold on to her because she was so weak. The saleswoman looked at us and said, ‘You’re a good husband.’

  I turned back and whispered behind my hand, Cancer.

  Kerryn and I didn’t need to say what we were both thinking: history was repeating itself.

  ‘Do you remember that night at your house when we tried to plan our wedding?’ Kerryn said.

  I sure did. ‘The clash of the Titan mothers.’

  Sally was insisting that Paul not attend our wedding. It was one of the first times I had witnessed the full force of her hostility towards her ex-husband. She never mentioned Paul’s affair but it was clear his misdemeanour had deprived him of the right to accompany his daughter to the canopy.

  Kerryn put up a good fight. The scene around the table turned into an embarrassing shouting match. It was no longer about wedding halls and budgets and invitation lists but about whether a reception would take place at all. Kerryn leaped up from the table and announced that we would elope to avoid all the family drama. Everyone was sulking in a corner, especially my mother, who found herself a pawn in a feud not of her making. But Sally played the cancer card: she was getting weaker, she reminded us; she might not even make it to the wedding. That tempered the discussion. We almost surrendered, until my mother played her own card.

  ‘Do you think that after all I’ve been through during the Holocaust, I’m not going to dance at my second son’s wedding?’ she shrieked, inhaling on a cigarette.

  When I repeated that line to Kerryn as she lay on the couch, we both chuckled at my mother’s chutzpah.

  In the end, a compromise was reached: Paul came to the ceremony but was not invited to the reception.

  ‘Can you imagine Gabe not inviting you to his wedding?’ Kerryn said.

  ‘There’s no comparison,’ I answered. ‘None at all.’

  ‘I was never as strong as my mother,’ she said. ‘She would never let her cancer stop her from sending out wedding invitations.’

  We have a family album of our wedding day in 1982, but Kerryn reminded me that the photographer hadn’t sealed the camera properly and many of the staged shots were ruined. We had to regroup in full regalia for a post-wedding reunion. Some of the pictures are scattered around our house—in one, Kerryn, in her white bridal dress, faces her mother, whose blonde wig and make-up hide the fact that she was fast approaching her death. Death, I have learnt, creeps up on you slowly, but those afflicted by illness can cover up the signs.

  Our wedding, held on 28 November 1982, is also recorded, so I can describe it frame by frame. I always knew where to find the DVD but neither Kerryn nor I mentioned it, presumably because it would have been too painful.

  I watched it on my own, a week after she died, lying on the same spot on the couch where she rested after her chemotherapy.

  It was a hot day for our spring wedding and there were hundreds of sweaty guests. I laughed when I caught a first glimpse of myself in my grey suit, because only I was aware of the flannel pyjamas I wore under my tailored trousers, to protect me from the itchy material.

  The video begins with the ceremony of the bedecken, in which the groom lifts the veil to check that he has chosen the right bride, a custom developed after Laban tricked his son-in-law Jacob, by switching Leah for Rachel.

  It is Kerryn under the veil, and there is no question I’ve chosen the right bride. The words of our speeches confirm it, as well as the look in our eyes.

  And Kerryn, a garland of flowers around her head, speaks of her love for her dying mother.

  Is this Kerryn speaking, or is it our own children speaking about their mother, thirty years later?

  Turning to me, she acknowledges the different worlds we inhabit, but upon which our union was founded:

  I watch us swirl in a circle, holding a kerchief between us for the traditional bridal dance, sung to an Andy Williams tune more suited to my parents’ generation. Oh, how we danced, how we danced, through the night, which is exactly what we did, in traditional horas, on tabletops, and in a waltz, holding each other close.

  If I’d known it would end this way, would I have chosen the same bride?

  Yes, I said over and over, as I rewound the film and watched the lifting of the veil for the umpteenth time, dancing from the end of time all the way to the beginning.

  I must have left the film of our wedding in the DVD player, because I returned home a few days later and found the three children watching it, tears in their eyes.

  ‘You were so young,’ they all said. ‘Younger than we are now.’

  ‘It was different in those days,’ I answered. ‘Most of our friends married in their early twenties.’

  ‘But how could you have known at such an early age that you would stay together?’ said Rachel.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t think our generation can preach to yours. Look at divorce rates. Almost fifty per cent. And of the couples who remain together, how many are happy?’

  ‘So will getting married later reduce the divorce statistics?’

  ‘I truly don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I think it’s just different. When we got married we had life ahead of us. Marriage always involves a leap into the unknown. Perhaps that’s harder to do when you’re older and more settled in your ways.’

  ‘How is marriage relevant to our generation?’ said Sarah.

  Gabe, on the cusp of his own marriage, rose to the defence of the institution. ‘It’s a symbol of your love. On the one hand, it doesn’t change anything, but on the other hand, it does. My marriage to Gabi is like a public declaration that we intend to stay together forever.’

  The arguments went back and forth and turned to a different question.

  ‘So what makes a good marriage?’ Rachel wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know. Commitment. You have to work at it.’

  ‘You must know,’ Gabe said. ‘You were such an amazing husband to Mum.’

  ‘I think we were a great couple. But you’re not blind. You can see that I became a better husband after Mum got sick.’

  ‘You showed her so much love. You were inspirational. I don’t think many husbands could do that.’

  I didn’t want to contradict his idealisation of our marriage.

  ‘It’s impossible to sustain the passion of your early days,’ I said. ‘I read an article that explains the science.’

  ‘But that’s so sad,’ said Rachel. ‘Surely there must be a way.’

  ‘I think Mum would say there are different phases of love,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she would,’ said Sarah. ‘Her library is full of books about couples therapy.’

  I could have told them about the time several years ago when Kerryn said to me out of the blue: ‘Maybe we should
go for therapy.’

  ‘I already have a therapist,’ I answered.

  ‘I mean us. Together.’

  ‘What would we talk about?’

  She never answered, or asked the question again, and I never had the guts to ask her what she meant.

  It felt too revealing now to talk about our private lives with the children, even—or especially—in the permanent absence of Kerryn.

  ‘I think the most important thing is openness,’ said Gabe. ‘You have to be able to share your feelings. And know how to express them even after a fight.’

  ‘Did you talk openly after you and Mum fought?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I think we could have done better.’

  ‘There must be a way of keeping the magic of love alive forever,’ Gabe insisted.

  ‘I agree,’ said Sarah. ‘But I don’t think you need to be married to do that.’

  They flicked on the movie again, and watched to the end.

  ‘You look so in love,’ Sarah said. ‘Exactly like you were with Mum before she died.’

  ‘Thirty-two years,’ I said. ‘That’s not a bad run.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ said Gabe. ‘What year did you say you were married?’

  ‘Nineteen eighty-two.’

  ‘Dad. It’s not thirty-two years. Do your maths. It’s thirty-three.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’

  I could still hear the wedding band playing as I held my head in my hands and cried. I felt so blessed to feel the hands of my children stroking my back and calming me. Their mother —my wife—would have been so proud of that sight. But she would have known that it was thirty-three years. Not only because she was good at maths. She would never forget.

  How could I forget?

  And then it came to me. She’d been sick during our last anniversary. We’d ignored the milestone because it was too painful to acknowledge that this would be our last. We never said ‘Happy anniversary’ that day. I never registered the thirty-third year in my mind. So much had been erased that last year. I was catching up. I would always be running in circles. Everything would forever be jumbled. Birthdays that would no longer be birthdays. Anniversaries that would no longer be anniversaries. Like my father, who, when he came to Australia, forgot his age. Time had altered for him during the war. Now it had transformed for me, too.

  Only one date would be meaningful. Kerryn’s Yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death.

  Yitgadal. Kerryn. Veyitkadash. Kerryn. Shmei Rabba. Kerryn.

  •

  The vomiting and nausea started again. Kerryn was immobile in bed and the steroids weren’t helping. There were other signs that didn’t require a blood test to ascertain how serious they were. Her stomach was making orchestral sounds—a Mahler symphony, I called it. I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t bear to listen. Reading on a Kindle was too quiet to drown out the noise, so I put on headphones and turned up the volume on my iPad.

  The day after we returned from Sydney, Kerryn was due to have a CAT scan to check her tumour markers. She was supposed to drink several litres of water to prepare for the scan but could barely manage a sip. I must have called the MRI department at least three times to say we would be late. Finally, I called up the oncologist’s office to explain the situation. The secretary said she’d call back. Within minutes the phone rang.

  ‘The doctor says to bring her straight into hospital.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked. ‘You mean I should bring her to his office?’

  ‘No. Go to the Emergency Department.’

  I went upstairs to our bedroom and told Kerryn.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling a bit better.’

  I called back. ‘The boss says she wants to recover at home. She’s resisting.’

  The secretary answered firmly. ‘Tell her she can resist in hospital. The doctor is worried she has a bowel obstruction. Bring her in straightaway, please.’

  Kerryn’s nightmare was coming true.

  We had made a pact. Don’t let me suffer.

  But all I could do was pack her overnight bag—the same one we had taken to Sydney—and rush her into the car, back to hospital.

  I am ten years old. My father has taken me to Luna Park, where we enter through the mouth of a giant clown face.

  ‘I want to go on the Big Dipper,’ I plead, clasping his hand and leading him to the roller-coaster.

  My father, who has never forgotten his train journey to Auschwitz, accedes to his son’s demands. We wait in the queue, listening to the passengers’ screams and the trains whooshing along the wooden tracks that overlook St Kilda Beach.

  I hold his hand tighter as we get close to the front of the queue. Our train pulls in. The passengers, still terrified from the final drop, lift their safety bars and stumble towards the exit. The train crawls forwards, ready for its next cargo. My father and I are guided to a seat, three rows behind the conductor, who stands tall, one hand resting on a stick lever.

  My father smiles nervously as our hands are parted by the safety mechanism that locks us into our seats.

  ‘No standing!’ the conductor yells, as he releases the lever. I look at my father. He looks at me. I don’t know who is more frightened, but I cry out—no, I don’t cry, I wail, ‘Let me out! Stop the train!’

  The train has begun to crawl towards the first steep incline.

  ‘Shtop,’ my father shouts on my behalf. ‘Shtop.’ He waves his arm.

  The train screeches to a halt. The safety bar lifts and my father and I clamber out while restless passengers stare at us.

  I am saved. The inevitability of my ordeal has been halted.

  ‘You vont I should buy you a pink fairy floss?’ my father says.

  I can still feel it melt in my mouth, calming me as we drive home to my mother.

  Those words.

  Stop.

  Shtop.

  Mark, have you seen Kerryn’s scans?

  14

  WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME

  Kerryn was back in the same emergency room where her illness had begun ten months earlier. Over the course of the next hour, several doctors came in to ask her questions.

  ‘Maybe we should match our niece up with that one,’ Kerryn said, after the third doctor left the room.

  ‘No luck. He’s wearing a wedding ring.’

  She was wheeled out from the emergency room to have an MRI. The results came back quickly: inconclusive, but with suspected pleural spread in the lungs, and a bowel obstruction. By the end of the day, Kerryn was admitted to the oncology ward. We were coming full circle. The faces of the nurses were familiar and they greeted us kindly.

  We were put in a room at the end of the corridor and I slept the night alongside Kerryn, juggling vomit bags. The treatment prospects changed repeatedly, but the following day it was clear Kerryn would need an operation. She was booked for surgery at eight-thirty that night.

  The palliative-care doctor came to tell us that it was likely Kerryn was entering a new stage. What stage? I wondered, panicked. The operation would probably result in her having to wear a stoma bag, said the doctor. That was another new word to add to my lexicon.

  Sarah tried to calm Kerryn and get her used to the idea: ‘They’re patches worn on the body. They don’t smell like a toilet, and they can be changed regularly, Mum.’

  ‘Will I be able to wear it under my wedding dress?’

  ‘No one will even know it’s there,’ Sarah assured Kerryn.

  Rachel asked how long she would have the bag.

  ‘Forever,’ I answered.

  That set Rachel off on a round of tears. Even our pragmatic daughter could lapse into a moment of hysteria. We all knew that forever wasn’t long for a life in rapid decline.

  It would be a difficult procedure, the surgeon told us, arms folded, leaning on the wall. The X-rays showed there was a blockage caused by the spread of the cancer, but it was impossible to know more until he went inside. He offered the metaphor
of a hose. If you resect one section and untie a knot, and the knots extend further back, there would be danger of an explosion.

  The news got worse. There was a strong possibility that it would be an open-and-close job. A stoma mightn’t be an option. Either the blockage could be fixed—as a palliative measure, he emphasised—or not.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked, as if it was a life or death choice.

  If not for the wedding, Kerryn might have said no. But it was more than that—the fear of death by bowel implosion must have directed her decision.

  ‘I’ll give it a shot,’ she said.

  An hour later she was wheeled away. For us, it was a rehearsal for the end. The tears and declarations of love were as close as we got to death-scene farewells.

  ‘I love you,’ each of the kids said, hugging her.

  ‘I love you more.’ It was Kerryn’s refrain, not in competition, but her way of saying that what mattered most in her life—always, but especially now—were her children.

  I followed Kerryn’s bed to the waiting area.

  ‘I love you,’ I said, as she was wheeled out.

  ‘I love you more,’ she replied, smiling. Normally reserved for our kids, those words kept me crying as I watched the doors slide closed.

  The only words I retained from the surgeon’s phone call were ‘best-case scenario’.

  We all jumped for joy, repeating his phrase. The best-case scenario was that he had cut out fifteen centimetres of bowel and joined the ends together.

  ‘That sounds like a lot of bowel,’ I said to the children, sliding my finger from my sternum to my belly button.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ said Sarah, explaining that the lower bowel is a twisted tube of about seven metres.

  We celebrated the news on a WhatsApp group with the rest of the family. But we knew, as the doctors had warned, that Kerryn would never be the same. She would never be able to dance to ‘Rock Around the Clock’ at a wedding.

  Two hours later she came out of the recovery ward, and was wheeled into a dark room opposite the nurses’ station. She had tubes and bags protruding from every part of her body.

  ‘Best-case scenario,’ we whispered to her excitedly.