But there might have been an arrow pointing to the thing. There might as well have been a big stick-on piece of cardboard with the word CANCER written on it in red marker, because even Constance could see it, there was no doubt it was there. It was a while before she could look away from it and listen to what the doctor was saying.
‘You’re a bit old for one and a bit young for the other, if you know what I mean.’
Was that good?
Constance was lying on the couch. The doctor, who was a woman, had the sonic pen Constance remembered from her pregnancies, and she thought she heard the liquid boom of a baby’s heart through the Doppler machine. Then she realised it was the sound of her own blood, rushing in the flesh of her ears.
The doctor looked to the picture on the light-box, and felt — unerring — for the lump. She moved her index finger around it, while her other hand brought the pen into play and the screen beside Constance jumped into life. The picture was in black and white, and this time the inside of her breast looked like marble, it was mottled in exactly the same way. It was marbled the way a steak was marbled, she thought, because what she was looking at was fat. Before she knew what was happening, the woman had a needle in there — too fine, almost, to hurt, she could see it on the screen reaching into a blob of darkness, and she looked down in real life as it was taken out, and she realised a nurse was holding her by the shoulders so she would not make any sudden movement. As soon as the needle was gone she wanted to sit up and take a breath, and this is what she did. She was wiping the jelly off her skin with some rough green paper towel, she was reaching for the basket of clothes as the doctor said, ‘Hang on.’ Then the doctor repeated what she had just said. Some word like ‘adenoids’ or ‘carcinoma’ and then: ‘I think — hang on — So I am ninety-five per cent — OK? — ninety-five per cent sure this is what it is. And you are a bit old for it, but you’re a bit young for the other, all right? With your history, and what I am seeing here on the screen.’
Constance still couldn’t understand a word of it. This is why everyone took so long in this room. It was because everyone was stupid, like her.
But the doctor didn’t say the word ‘stupid’. She rubbed her hand along Constance’s arm.
‘All right?’
The arm thing was a gesture she had decided on; she did it a hundred times a day. But it felt nice, all the same.
‘All right,’ said Constance, and she shuffled out of the room: her gown flapping open at the back and the plastic grocery basket that held her clothes clutched in both hands.
She was guided up a set of back stairs into a proper hospital ward.
‘Mr Murtagh will be along to you soon.’
This time, the women waited on beds, and each bed was surrounded by curtains, so Constance could not tell where Margaret Dolan was, or if she had already left. Some time later, she heard the woman from Adare go to another stall — she could tell who it was by the sound of her shoes. And while she waited — it must have been the stress — she drifted against the softness of Rory’s skin and the thickness of his unwashed curls. She was like some sea creature among the kelp, grazing the side of her face against his older brother, the moving, small bones of his white shoulder, the sweaty insides of his hands paddling against her as she turned and passed, and pulled herself down into the perfumed depths of Shauna’s red hair. When she woke — minutes later, or half an hour — she was panicking about the salmon in the freezer, thinking, What will I buy for the dinner, if I have cancer?, and then, Fuck. Fuck. Fuck it. How am I even going to drive myself home?
Out on the other side of the screen, Margaret Dolan was saying, ‘I can’t do it next week, I have a wedding,’ and a man’s voice said, ‘Who’s getting married?’
‘My daughter. I have a daughter.’
‘A daughter?’ The man was a fool. There was no need to sound so surprised.
‘Adopted,’ said Margaret, by way of apology, then rallied with, ‘She found me. She was adopted and she found me last year.’
‘Right,’ and his voice had an extra ‘oh shit’ in there. ‘OK. And when is the wedding again?’
‘It’s in Birmingham.’
‘OK.’
‘Doctor, do I not have it in my womb?’
And Constance started to cry for Margaret Dolan, quietly, in her cubicle: the tears ran down. Crying too for her own selfishness — how utterly, utterly selfish she was. Constance McGrath sat on the bed where the starched sheet was folded over, feeling abandoned and small. Because she had everything, more than everything, her life was overflowing and Margaret Dolan had so little to call her own. Constance wanted to put her head through the curtain and look her in the eye — to say what? ‘I’m so sorry for your trouble. Would you like a lift home?’
But the nurse was already leading her to another room.
‘Now Margaret,’ she was saying. ‘Good woman. You’re all right. Good woman.’
They arrived through the curtains in a team: the folder nurse and the ultrasound woman and two children in white coats who must be students, all of them following a small man with very piercing eyes. This was Mr Murtagh.
Mr Murtagh placed his hand on her breast briefly, but he wasn’t much interested. He sort of shoved it away. The way his eyes scanned her, Constance had a sudden panic that she had not shaved under her arms.
‘We are very happy with you,’ said Mr Murtagh.
He did not seem happy, he seemed a bit impatient but, That is because I am well, Constance thought, I have been wasting his time with my robust good health, I have been wasting everyone’s time! Her clever body had been doing a great job. Complex. Microscopic. Quiet. The map of light that was her left breast was not frightful but beautiful, and the marbled black and white of its sonic depths was lovely too.
‘I’m clear,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
Clear.
‘You can slip your clothes back on for me now,’ said the nurse, as though Constance might run out to the car park in her gown, jumping up and banging her heels together in the rain. Constance dressed to her overcoat and pushed the curtain back, exposing the bed to an empty ward.
‘Thank you for everything,’ Constance said to the nurse who liked glitter nail polish but was not allowed to wear it. She was finishing Constance’s notes on a steel clipboard at the end of the bed.
‘Now you heard what Mr Murtagh said. You know where we are. Any worry at all.’
‘Thank you so much.’
‘Safe home, now.’
The air outside the hospital doors was amazing, so packed full of oxygen and weather. Constance could not remember where she had parked the car but she did not mind walking through the spottings of rain, pulling the sky into her lungs. Sipping at the world.
Constance put on the windscreen wipers as the rain set in. She held and turned the wheel with care and the darkness under her left arm flowered and began to fade. A few miles from home, the sun came out. She passed the latest McGrath house — Dessie’s brother the auctioneer, who had built a bungalow, high off the road. The slope of raw clay had been ablaze, when her father’s hearse passed along that way, with red poppies and with those yellow flowers that love broken ground. Less of them came the next year, and this year fewer again, as grass took over and the cut land healed.
She remembered Emmet, helping him down the stairs in Ardeevin. He wasn’t in great shape himself, Emmet. He was back from Africa, or wherever, with a scraggy beard and a hundred yard stare. But he kept his father company through his last months and they were silent and easy with each other, as though dying was like having a glass of stout or watching the news on telly. It was a funny romance, Constance thought — father and son. The chat about politics or scientific advances, because women were fine but prone to foolishness, and why fuss when you could sit on a spring evening and solve the problems of the whole, wide world? Before you die.