The Weight of Loss Read online

  ‘It’s been six months. Perhaps this is the time now for some sense of closure – by writing about your sister—’

  ‘No,’ Marianne said.

  She had never been abrupt with Anna, but she was no longer interested in the consequences. Anna couldn’t cross the line where Marie was concerned.

  ‘I don’t want to write about her. I don’t owe it to anyone.’

  Anna was about to speak and Marianne broke in, ‘I don’t owe it to myself either.’

  ‘Right.’

  Anna had her hand on her mouse now and Marianne suspected she was being demoted to one of several tabs on Anna’s screen. At least she wasn’t on view. She raked a hand quickly through her hair and scratched her scalp.

  ‘Marianne, I’m going to be frank with you because it’s the least I can do,’ Anna said, not quite looking at Marianne but presumably at her inbox. ‘We’re considering limiting your input to the magazine.’

  ‘It’s already limited.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when you say limiting, you mean reducing to zero input.’

  Anna paused. ‘It’s been six months. You haven’t been to the office in all that time. Showing your face now and again is important and you’ve missed a lot of key meetings which outline the direction of the magazine. You’ve had a lot of sick days and you don’t really give us any advance notice for having the day off. One day tends to become a week. In that time, you just go completely offline, never answer your phone, so none of us can reach you. And as for deadlines…’ There was a hollow pause as though to create suspense, but nothing in Anna’s face or voice had changed. She clearly couldn’t be bothered to create the desired effect. ‘They’re not being met. I’ve given you several extensions for the piece you’re working on at the moment. And you still haven’t mastered the right tone.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I really thought you might have seen a therapist by now. Or someone who can at least prescribe something that will help you.’

  ‘I’m on medication.’

  ‘I mean, what do they call it – hypnotherapy?’ The way Anna’s pupils moved informed Marianne she was looking at her again on the screen. ‘Don’t you want to try it at least? So you can travel into London again. Seeing your colleagues might be motivating.’

  Marianne said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say that would profit her in a larger sense, and she wasn’t interested in the smaller sense.

  ‘I am sorry, Marianne,’ Anna said in a softer tone that was alien to her. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  Anna let go of the mouse and appeared contrite for a moment.

  ‘Look, if you want to meet for coffee soon… It’s the least I can do. You’ve been a solid writer for us. I want to help you. I can talk to people – check around for the best clinic in London, pull some strings, see which psychotherapist has a new opening on their waiting list.’

  ‘No, really. I’m not interested.’

  The silence made them both uncomfortable. The door opened in Anna’s office and Marianne saw a woman about to enter. Anna turned abruptly.

  ‘OUT!’

  The door closed and the woman was gone. Marianne felt mildly honoured.

  Anna turned back to her and her face began to assume its usual tightness.

  ‘Think about what I’ve said, about writing for our issue on trauma.’

  ‘Anna, I’m not traumatised.’

  ‘Well, I can’t dispute you on it. It’s not my place. But there’s a reason you can’t take the tube. Right?’

  Marianne said nothing.

  ‘You won’t move past that episode if you don’t at least admit to yourself that you’re deeply affected by it in a way that is preventing you from returning to work and doing your job.’

  ‘I thought working remotely was fine.’

  ‘To some extent. But we both know the ones who succeed here are those who network and hustle, and show up to all the fashion conferences, health and beauty festivals, feminism workshops and award ceremonies. Nobody has seen your face in half a year.’

  Marianne couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I realise that.’

  Anna looked into the right-hand corner of the screen.

  ‘I’m going to have to leave it there. We’ll keep in touch, alright? I might have to move around a few meetings but I’ll make sure we have time for a catch-up. Dinner perhaps. Somewhere in your neck of the woods.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Look after yourself.’

  After speaking to Anna, Marianne took a shower. She stripped and threw her shirt in the laundry, then changed her mind and stuffed it in the little bin under the bathroom sink. Then she stared at herself in the mirror. She was paler than she realised. The concealer hadn’t really concealed anything. In fact it had settled on her skin without reducing the puffiness, creating the impression her eyes were sinking. She had never been a stranger colour. She turned around so that her back was facing the mirror and peered over her shoulder.

  Along the ridges of her spine, not one, not three, but a steady line of hairs that grew all the way up from the tailbone, just above the crack of her bottom, towards the middle of her neck. There were too many to count. Perhaps as many as fifty. She felt duty-bound to count otherwise she’d be admitting defeat. If they defied a limit, they had become as essential to her form as the hairs on her head.

  She pulled a handful from the middle of her back and watched the skin rise without releasing them, growing redder the harder she pulled. She turned and rooted through the cabinet behind the mirror for a pair of tweezers. Precision didn’t make it any easier; the pain was simply more concentrated. She took a pair of nail scissors next and tore through the hairs so quickly she clipped her skin several times. It wasn’t until the blood reached the line of her bottom and curved into the darkness there that she dropped the scissors into the sink.

  The shower was still running, so she washed her hands and waited for the hairs to disappear down the drain. When she stepped under the shower head she took her razor from the floor where Richard had knocked it over and straightened so she could steady it on her tailbone. In a quick, savage motion, she raked it along her spine. It split the skin instantly, but it was necessary; the skin had to be broken for the roots to give way. She sliced herself continuously in this manner, reaching over her shoulder to razor the top of her back, then parting her buttocks to shave as close to her anus as she dared, frightened that they would begin to grow there too. Thankfully, this part was clear. But it took her several attempts to wrench them from her back. They were so thick she couldn’t believe the pores on her skin were wide enough to contain them.

  The sting was almost unbearable at first but she soldiered past it, raking the blade over her back without allowing herself a second to recover, censoring the part of herself that was witness to what she was doing, barely registering the damage. It was a task that could only be completed with mindless industry. The ridges of her spine enforced a rhythmic rise and fall. Sometimes a cluster of hairs presented a bigger problem and halted her progress; she had to use her fingers to eke them out from the torn skin. Then she grew careless. She could no longer keep the razor straight. What does it matter? she thought. She swerved off course, catching a mole she’d forgotten she had, somewhere on the right side. There was a burning sensation. She carried on.

  This lasted for much longer than she later wished to remember, and it was much easier than she’d thought it would be. Far too easy. It was the cloudy blood on the floor of the shower that shook her from the spell. She gasped and dropped the razor. With a trembling hand, she managed to switch the water off.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said quietly. She sounded stupid to herself.

  She ran, dripping, down the hallway to retrieve a pile of towels, all of them regrettably white, and carried them back to the bathroom, trailing a steady line of blood along the carpet. Her legs began to quake. Her hands went next. And she couldn’t find her face in the misted mirror, confused and aggrieved by its opacity.

  Then she suffered. The pain had finally arrived. Marianne saw strange shapes on the back of her eyelids, bathed in red shadow. The sting was spreading towards her chest, as though the hairs had roots extending towards the end of her life, creeping inward and curling round the vertebrae like ivy to an arbour. A taut network of invisible lines existed and she’d barely scratched the surface of it.

  She lay on her stomach with the towel pressed to her back until the fibres dried in the blood, knitting themselves to her skin. It would be hell having to pull it off again. She rested her left cheek on the tiled floor, and then switched the pressure to her right. Then she grew cold.

  The phone rang and she wondered whether it was worth answering. But it might be Richard. Her joints were stiff when she lifted herself up and the sting returned like a whip. She moved slowly along the hallway with the towel hanging from her back like a cape. Every time she moved her arms and legs, the sting broke through so she tried not to move her upper body, keeping her spine erect. Her hair was still wet and she realised, with horror, that it was trapped beneath the towel. She scooped it all up in one hand and tugged the ends off her back.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  She picked it up, gasping as the sting rippled along the ball of her shoulder. It was an old phone that came with the flat, though she wasn’t sure why neither of them had thought to upgrade it. There was something antiquated now in the absence of a name or customised image that accompanied the call, something hostile about the caller’s veiled identity. Her fingers were slightly numb, so it took a while for her to dial the number that would trace the call. It wasn’t Richard, though she recognised the number as a local one.

  Then it occurred to her it was most likely going to be Doctor Hind.

  She’d placed the phone in its cradle again so when it rang out a second time, she shuddered. Perhaps the more blood she’d lost, the quicker she gave rise to panic. Everything that seemed anodyne, even slightly offensive in its mundanity – the unmade bed and the wardrobe door hanging off its hinges, the phone itself with its knotted white coil – now presented a very real threat to her continuing existence in the room. The red eye of the machine flashed out of time with the ringing, and she was convinced it was trying to translate something, a malice beyond comprehension, between each interval of sound. She snatched the phone to her ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi – what’s up with you?’

  It was Richard. Marianne placed her hand on her chest.

  ‘Nothing. Sorry.’

  ‘You sound angry.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just called to check up on you. How was the thing with Anna?’

  ‘She’s letting me go,’ Marianne said quietly.

  There was a silence at the other end. Marianne thought she heard him swear to himself.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with her?’ he said. ‘Is she so heartless that she can’t give you more time?’

  ‘I’ve had time, Richard.’

  ‘Yeah, but she hasn’t a clue how much you’ve suffered.’

  ‘I’m not writing what they want.’

  He was breathing heavily, which she hated. ‘Why are you – what’s got into you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t sound like you care. I bet you didn’t even fight for yourself! Why not?’

  ‘I don’t care.’ She said this quickly but there was a lump in her throat. ‘I was relieved actually…’

  At that point, she felt breathless, like she couldn’t muster the energy to speak. And she’d lost her train of thought; it seemed to be branching off in different directions, little offshoots ending nowhere. The pain was terrible.

  ‘I want to lie down.’

  ‘Are you alright? You sound faint.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  The pain was starting to develop a rhythm. It was one note, a throbbing bass. She could hear its passage, a wave of sound in her blood that caused the cells to spiral upwards. Something pulsed forwards, rippling across the gap from spine to skin in one fluid movement. Inside these undulations, Marianne found relief in being materially vague. She was so taken in by it, she had an urge to answer Richard with something other than her mouth, to speak through the palm of her hand. For a second, she couldn’t recall what it was that released the thought into words, and the divorce between the two paralysed her.

  ‘Hey!’ The old petulance returned to his voice.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said automatically.

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your words are slurred!’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘Okay, sorry.’

  Richard lowered his voice suddenly. Marianne knew someone in his office must have wandered close to whatever secluded part of the building he’d gone to to phone her.

  ‘Just lie down for a bit. I’ll try and come home for seven but might have to stay longer. Are you going to be alright? I’m sorry I snapped.’

  Marianne frowned at the bed and said nothing.

  ‘Ah shit,’ he said. ‘Can I call you back? I’m supposed to be in a meeting in five minutes.’

  ‘Don’t. There’s no need,’ she said.

  The pain had subsided, briefly, but it was a second in which her anger took charge. It was always there, endless reserves of it.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve nothing else to add!’

  ‘Right. Look, don’t be upset. Don’t do anything drastic.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Mari, please don’t be angry at me. I’m on your side. I just – have to go.’

  She couldn’t bear it when he announced he had to go and then still had plenty to say, almost as though he was prepared to be chivalrous in spite of pressing demands. Sometimes she was convinced he made these things up, that he had a meeting any minute or the phone was ringing, so that she might think him so compassionate to continue the call for as long as he could to ensure she was alright. And why wouldn’t he be on her side? What other side was there? What did he mean by that?

  ‘Bye, Richard.’

  She didn’t wait for him to say goodbye. It gave her a tiny thrill to cut the call without ceremony.

  Then she saw herself in the mirror on the wall.

  The blood had dried along her forearms and she’d managed to smear it over one side of her face. Her hair was also dark with it.

  But when she turned around to view her back, her nausea returned – not because there were streaks of blood but because there were none. There was a series of lacerations, all of them conveying a manic energy, applied without precision, some as far out as her shoulder blade and hip bones. But they were so faint she might have scratched the skin weeks ago. There was no blood. The scars criss-crossed her spine like the scratches of a biro over a false sentence.

  WHEN MARIE’S BLOOD TEST RESULTS were ready, she was summoned to the hospital to see a haematologist.

  The underlying gravity of this phone call, its complicated balance of power – in that Marie knew nothing, but somebody now knew something and had deliberately withheld that information on the phone – was enough to make anyone fret, though there was no malice in the process. No deliberate cruelty in adhering to protocol. Marianne knew how doctors managed to terrorise their patients simply by maintaining that formal distance, reducing one to the status of a client waiting in line for a petty transaction, as opposed to someone hanging by a thread, unable to proceed without the facts or function without their pills.

  Marie finally explained what was going on to their parents. And she did it on the morning of the appointment, while everyone was still in medias res, mid-conversation, half-ready for work and still sluggish from sleep. David took another gulp of his coffee but he looked like he regretted it; he winced as it went down and then his cheeks grew blotchy. Heather exhaled slowly and rested the pads of her fingers in the corners of her eyes. They might have been bracing themselves for an unannounced visitor, something that threw their plans into disarray, as though the sheer unpredictability of life was what had immediately saddened and appalled them. Marianne could tell they were brimming with questions, but Marie’s answers were stilted and vague, like her thoughts weren’t connecting that morning.

  Preparing for the appointment resulted in a panic over trifling matters – being held up in traffic during rush hour, whether they would find a spot to park – perhaps to delay a greater anguish that wasn’t readily voiced. Heather deliberated whether they should all accompany Marie – was it tempting fate if they came to the hospital en masse? Would they trigger some sort of catastrophe that wouldn’t otherwise have existed by assembling in a frightened, expectant manner for it? How superstitious they were in thinking they could circumvent the inevitable. Heather finally decided that they would all go together to confront whatever it was that was lying in wait. And they tacitly agreed not to talk on the way there.

  When Marie was called in the waiting room, she followed the doctor to her office with Marianne and their parents in tow. There was nothing in that corridor with its neatly carpeted floor and fading photographs of previous doctors on the walls to suggest anything other than a bland continuity, a safety in datedness.

  ‘Take a seat,’ the doctor said.

  She must have been used to people eyeing her for clues as to their future, for she had a habit of ducking her chin down and turning slightly away from everyone when she spoke.

  ‘Marie, the blood test shows that your red blood cell count is low. Your bone marrow stem cells are creating too many white blood cells that are DNA mutations and don’t work in fighting off infection. These are leukaemia cells. It’s a very rare type and it’s referred to as hairy cell leukaemia. Young people like yourself don’t usually have it but your symptoms – the weight loss, the bruising, the exhaustion – did point to something wrong with your blood cell count.’

  David grasped Heather’s hand. Marianne was struck by the disparity of their expressions. Her father’s mouth sank so low that she saw new lines emerging where she’d never noticed around the corners. Her mother frowned deeply. The frown guided everything else, her eyebrows bending towards the tiny crevice above her nose.