In Sickness by In Sickness (retail) (epub)

Author:In Sickness (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

I wish I could say that Jane’s near-death experience reset the way we communicated with each other—that we were now more honest and forthright or that we began having heart-to-heart talks about why she had hidden her cancer. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, secrecy continued to be Jane’s highest priority, and her wish to maintain it went unchallenged. Only Eric and I knew how hard she had worked to keep her cancer hidden and for how long. Her Herculean efforts now had a momentum of their own, one that impelled me to participate in the fiction that her breast cancer had been discovered incidentally—by accident—when she had her pulmonary embolus. This was laughable. It would have been obvious to anyone, but especially to her medically sophisticated colleagues, that the story made no sense.

It didn’t matter. No one had the nerve to ask Jane the tough questions that might have forced her to reveal the truth. I understood the reluctance of her colleagues and family members to confront her—Jane could be quite intimidating—and even though difficult questions asked in a caring way might be fair game for close friends, Jane didn’t have any.

What I have a harder time understanding is my own disinclination to ask her about her secrecy. This was of a piece with my failure to press Jane about her cancer when she first revealed it on the bathroom floor. Since then, my diffidence had hardened into habit. It, too, seemed to have its own momentum, which made me unwilling to revisit the past and question Jane about her emotional and physical withdrawal. I justified my stance by chiding myself that it was Jane, not me, who was really suffering—she was dying of breast cancer—and it would be unfair to torture her with awkward questions. Yet another of my lame excuses for avoiding an uncomfortable confrontation in favor of letting her dictate the narrative of our marriage.

Instead, something different happened. As the year went on, rather than having heartfelt talks or making tearful confessions, Jane started telling me stories. She would describe events and divulge details that helped explain what, at the time, had been inexplicable behaviors. Mostly, though, she seemed to be using her stories to try to excuse hurtful actions. They were sad and moving tales, but they weren’t true apologies and they never fully explained the reasons for her secrecy.

* * *

One morning in November, following the dressing change and Flo’s departure, I stayed in Jane’s bedroom for a while watching TV with her. After about fifteen minutes, with her eyes fixed on the television screen—not once looking at me—Jane started talking about what had happened to her the last time she traveled.

I pricked up my ears—this was going to be significant. Travel had been an important part of Jane’s life for decades until, suddenly and without explanation, it wasn’t. She didn’t enjoy traveling for its own sake, but she’d been more than willing to take trips for important purposes. Like all academics, she’d spent a lot of time on the road attending meetings or presenting her research findings to her colleagues.

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