I did. It was 22.
For a second this appeased Tilda. The 22 measurement might mean the arm had been swollen but was now thinning back to normal. Or another explanation could be my faulty string tension when I stretched it to the ruler. My tension produced 22. Her tension, the correct tension, produced 24. ‘We’ll have a break, a rest from it, then take a new round of measurements. In the meantime, where are the brochures?’
The brochures Roff gave me to safekeep. We’d put them away somewhere, as if away somewhere would keep the cancer at bay because hiding discouraged cancer. Tilda recalled there was something in those brochures about arms and swelling. Something revolting to do with ‘worst-case scenarios’. First they were kept in a drawer with her medical scans. Then transferred to a suitcase in the wardrobe. Then an even further-off spot under the staircase with the broken venetians.
Would I get them out, please? Would I read what they say on the subject of arms? There were photographs, if Tilda remembered rightly. Ugly photos designed no doubt to scare the wits out of patients, bad taste examples of doctor humour. She didn’t want to see photos of that kind. She asked me to read out what the brochures said and see if anything related to her.
Chapter 49
Lymphoedema. When lymph nodes are removed, as they had been in Tilda’s right armpit, impurities could not be flushed from the affected arm. The swelling was elephantiasis—lymphoedema. There was a corresponding photo for the word. I tilted the page away so Tilda couldn’t see it but she was too upset now not to be shown. She snatched the brochure from me and groaned at the sight of a woman’s arm fat with fluid, an elephant-human, fingernails like toenails on buckled finger-toes. A leg-arm that belonged on an obese person’s hip, not attached to an ordinary-sized shoulder.
I pulled the photo from her. She didn’t resist. ‘That won’t be you,’ I said.
‘How do you know? Are you a doctor?’
‘I’m just saying let’s be confident it won’t be you. Look, here, what it advises. It says there are procedures you can follow. You must put your arm over your head and massage. And you’ve got to keep hygienic with your hand-health. You can’t get cuts or pricks or the like.’
‘Pricks.’ She squinted and repeated the word a few times. ‘When I had the operation, wasn’t there a fuss over a needle in my hand? It was in my right side and should have been my left? Remember?’
I remembered. ‘But they said it was a minor fuss.’
‘I’ll sue them. They’ve made me into an elephant-woman. I’ll sue them for every fucking cent they have.’
For two hours she directed vengeance at the medical profession, cursed doctors and nurses as negligent and heartless; they should be bankrupted for her arm. Then she ran out of logic to support the blame. Her life had been saved, she conceded. That was the important thing. The medical profession had done its best by her in that regard. If her arm was worse off for a hospital prick, so be it. Besides, the swelling was probably her own fault.
‘It’s not about fault.’ I patted her red hand for extra weight of rationality. Her skin was hot as fever but I didn’t dare say. I patted and smiled, careful not to seem too casual. Too casual might be mistaken for not showing sufficient concern.
‘Paints. That’s what I’m talking about. Paints.’ She wiped my hand away. ‘The filth of paints. The lead and cadmium. The turpentine, the dust, the dirtiness of the whole pointless art activity. I will never paint again. Ever.’
‘But you haven’t been painting.’ I said it not too sarcastically.
‘I have been. Well, not painting so much as thinking about it. I might as well give up and have clean hands and not risk swelling from it.’
I suggested she try a dishwashing glove.
She guffawed. ‘Too sterile. Imagine Van Gogh with pink rubber gloves! You either give your all, hands-on, not caring about cleanliness or swelling, or you give the game away and leave it to others.’ She wished she knew someone to bequeath the Vincent flake to. She wanted to pass it on to a real artist. She was not worthy of its ownership.
I re-patted her hand. ‘In my opinion, you need more ideas, that’s all.’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘Maybe I can help you.’ My saying that was not premeditated. I had no help prepared. My bold mouth simply opened and out dropped an epiphany. ‘Why not paint a portrait? Enough of landscapes. What’s the name of that prize for portraits I’ve read about, the big prize for painting famous people?’
Tilda wrinkled her brow. ‘The Archibald?’
‘That’s the one. Paint a portrait and enter it.’
‘I don’t know any famous people.’
Again my mouth opened. ‘You would have heard of Cameron Wilkins?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, he’s very high up in the writing field. He’d be a perfect subject.’
‘The Archibald.’
Open went my mouth but this time it went one word too far. I mentioned Wilkins’s cancer. I meant it as inspirationaclass="underline" he with his trials of it; her with her own. ‘Like a bond you’d have,’ I said. ‘A talking point. A common interest.’
Tilda’s lips tasted the lemon-sourness of my sentence and she grimaced. ‘That’s all I’d need. What a depressing talking point! Jesus. I want to forget about cancer, not give it paint-life.’
Understood, I nodded. Understood. I chided myself to keep my mouth good and closed. Besides, it was tempting trouble, her embarking on a Wilkins project. Imagine her meeting Donna. One look at her splendid mother-to-be glow and it could have stirred up Richard and Alice memories: ‘Cameron Wilkins gets cancer and there’s no harm in him breeding,’ she was bound to say. ‘Where’s the justice in that? There is none.’
As well as brochures the staircase possie contained the Roff questionnaire. In the panic of diagnosis Tilda never completed it. Probably too late to be of use to him now but she filled in the spaces anyway, just in case:
Do you smoke? No. Have you ever? Yes.
How often do you drink? Do you exercise? Do you have a family history of illness?
Page three got intimate to the point of asking about VD. Have you ever contracted it? If so, what variety? She ticked No with an offended flourish.
Have you ever terminated a pregnancy? If so, how long ago? She swotted at the question with the back of her hand, disgusted. ‘Why do they want to know that? What relevance does it have to anything?’
‘I guess it’s a standard question.’
‘But why?’
I gave one of my shrugged don’t knows. I said it probably wasn’t important.
Chapter 50
It was important. In theory at least. Perhaps more than theory. There was certain evidence, there were studies, statistics—what Roff called possible links. He told Tilda this during her two-year check up. I was out in the waiting room chewing my nails for good news and wondering how it was that anyone facing dying would want to waste what life they had left reading Women’s Weekly and New Idea. Yet copies were stacked there on the magazine table for flipping through. Liza Minnelli’s Latest Battle with the Bulge. Ryan O’Neaclass="underline" Booze and Brawling—Ex-lover Tells.
It took an hour but Tilda walked out a free woman. She was sore around the ribs from Roff’s prodding examination but she was clear, she was free. She clasped her hands under her chin to restrain them from wildly applauding. She waited to be out of the clinic door before letting off a hoot of jubilation. She skipped onto a fence, a low brick border for weeds and flax bush. She star-jumped to the footpath with victorious fists, squealing, ‘I’ve done it. I’ve made it. Two years!’