Disembark by Jen Currin

Author:Jen Currin [Currin, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2024-04-24T13:33:56+00:00

My Tumour

In the letter her brother used the phrase “my tumour” several times. “I’m sorry to have worried you about my tumour,” he wrote. “I should have thought more carefully about it before I wrote you. I regret telling you about it and I won’t speak of it again.” He went on to say he was unwilling to tell her about any medical decisions he made about his tumour, if it even was a tumour. It might just be a swollen gland. He realized now, he explained, that telling her meant she would be concerned and would ask him what he was going to do about it. He wasn’t willing to share this information, he stated.

He emphasized several times that he appreciated her concern and hadn’t meant to worry her. “You may feel angry, sad, or disappointed about my decision not to tell you more,” he wrote. “And all I can say is talk to God or whatever you believe in. We each have our own path to walk in this life. This is mine.”

Lise had come down to the lobby to get her mail and, seeing the sun streaming in through the large windows, decided to step outside into the day, to sit on the concrete steps leading up to her apartment building while she read the letter. It had been raining for weeks, and she wanted to feel the mid-March sun, weak as it was, on her face, her hands. A second cup of coffee to rest near her feet and sip on would have made the moment perfect, but her half-full French press sat cooling up in her studio.

She turned the envelope over in her hands. Matthew usually decorated them with the most elaborate drawings in rich burgundies, violets, gradations of blue. This time he had covered the front of the envelope with swirls of rainbow and small orange roses. A large blue-green turtle spanned the back, its mouth opened to snap. Beautiful. They were always so beautiful. It was sometimes hard for her to believe he’d actually made them, when she read the words that were inside.

Her brother’s letter before this one hadn’t been much of a letter—just a scribbled note on lined paper, “for your information,” shoved into an envelope with two articles he’d printed out from the internet that detailed the perils of vaccination—the dangerous allergic reactions, children getting autism, the government using it as an opportunity to slip in a substance that would mind-control the populace and create a new world order populated by sheep-people, “sheeple,” a term she’d heard him use before in conversation. Neither article was written by a doctor; when she looked them up online, she found that neither author had a background in medicine or science of any kind, although they both had posted many photographs of themselves holding guns. These were the experts her brother liked best—disgruntled people on the fringes who believed they knew the real deal, the truth, and weren’t afraid to share it.

Matthew had sent

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