A LIFE MADE OF LAVA Read online

  I take out my cell phone and call the pizza parlour and then I set about cleaning the kitchen. There are two wine glasses in the sink, one still half-full. Evie’s tolerance isn’t what it used to be. I watch the burgundy liquid pooling in the plughole. It looks like old blood and new pain.

  “I’m hungry.” Jesse stands in the doorway, his face set in a scowl. I don’t know when he became this angry young man, such a far cry from the hot, pink bundle we brought home from the hospital. He’d slept through the night before any of the other babies in our ante-natal class, which Evie had boasted about every chance she got. A good student and an excellent sportsman, Jesse has always been a good kid. Until recently. Until four months ago when we came back from the hospital and Evie spent two days in bed, overwhelmed and terrified. She had roused herself on the third day and had gone on to act like nothing was wrong, but it was too late. Jesse knew. He knew that something was very, very wrong and no amount of damage control could undo it.

  “I know kiddo,” I tell him now. “I’ve ordered pizza. It’ll be here any minute.”

  “I need someone to test me,” he adds pointedly. “And mom’s sleeping.”

  “She needs to rest, Jess. Bring your books in here, I’ll do it.”

  By the time Jesse has unpacked what looks like the entire school library, Casey has waddled into the kitchen.

  “Can I have a cookie?”

  “After dinner.”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Pizza.”

  “Gross.”

  “Dad,” Jesse growls, pencil hovering.

  “Right!” I snatch up his words book and clear my throat dramatically. “Disappeared.”

  A puff of impatient air. “That was yesterday’s. It’s the next page.”

  “I want a cookie!”

  “After dinner, Case. Problematic.”

  “I need one!”

  “No. Gigantic.”

  Casey lets out an enormous fart and I burst out laughing. She grins and shakes her ass around.

  “Dad!”

  “Sorry,” I quickly glance back at the page. “Gigantic.”

  His pencil slams down on the page so hard it leaves a blunt grey line through the date. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, gathering up his books.

  “Jesse! Calm down!”

  “No! I’ve got a test tomorrow and nobody has time to help me. If I fail, it’s not my fault!”

  “Give me five minutes. I’ll put a movie on for Dylan and Casey and then you and I can go into the dining-room and do this together. How’s that?”

  He’s considering it, his angry blue eyes slowly clearing.

  Then Dylan steps into the kitchen. “The pizza guy’s here,” he announces innocently. Jesse storms out.

  3

  Evie

  I’m not sleeping, but I’ve closed my eyes and I’m pretending to sleep. I need time to think. Nick lied to me. He’s never done that before and I can’t help but wonder what it means. Did something happen between him and Steph? The thought is crucifying, but my mind doesn’t play fair anymore. It always used to gravitate toward the best-case scenario but now it likes to fuck with me every chance it gets. Cancer doesn’t just ravage your body. It takes everything else as collateral damage.

  The first time I was diagnosed I had just turned thirty. Thirty, flirty and thriving, according to the birthday card Kat gave me that year. Thirty, flirty and dying, I corrected two weeks later.

  The thing is, breast cancer isn’t as scary as you might think. I personally know of seven friends of friends of friends who have had it, kicked its ass and gone on to live a healthy and happy life. Granted, I’ve never met any of these women, but when people told me their stories, I got on board. If they could do it, so could I. Better, even. I might even scare cancer so much that it would never raise its ugly head again, anywhere. I would be the universal cure for cancer and I would go down in history as the woman who had terrified cancer into remission.

  My prognosis was good. There was a lump, it was malignant, it would have to be cut out. Doctor Moxley smiled. He told me that if there is any type of cancer one would want to have, this would be it. I’d asked him if his breasts had told him that and Nick had kicked my foot under the desk.

  I spent seven years in remission. Six-month screenings proved that I had indeed kicked cancer’s ass. Cancer doesn’t come here, I told Nick in my best impersonation of that awkward-looking kid on Twilight who was replaced as soon as the producers realised that they’d hit pay dirt with the rippling naked torsos of the wolf-pack.

  He’d pronounced the floor hot lava and I’d jumped into the broom cupboard.

  Dylan and Casey were born during the seven years I spent in remission, each a miracle that reminded me of how life would prevail. I’d won two battles: I’d beaten cancer and my ovaries had beaten chemo.

  Five months ago, everything changed.

  “This is the cancer you don’t want,” Dr Moxley admitted. “It flies below all of our marker readings and spreads rapidly. I’m sorry Evie, we wouldn’t even have picked it up if you hadn’t complained of the pain.”

  Nick, being Nick, immediately went on the offensive, questioning treatment options and lambasting Dr Moxley for not having caught it sooner, while the kind doctor steepled his fingers and bowed his head. All I could think was that, after everything, I would die of back ache.

  I didn’t ask how long I had. It didn’t matter if the answer was two weeks, two months or two years. Whatever answer they might give me wouldn’t be enough. I wouldn’t see Jesse become a father. I wouldn’t get to celebrate Dylan’s graduation. I’d never witness Nick walking Casey down the aisle.

  I roll onto my stomach, burying my face in a pillow that has soaked up countless secret tears, tears that my family will never have to endure. I breathe slowly, listening to the rhythm of my heartbeat and letting it echo in my head, a steady countdown. I’m spiralling, being pulled under by the depression I fight it every single day, but sometimes the fear wins. I need a distraction and, mercifully, no sooner have I thought this when one is provided. From downstairs comes the sound of Jesse’s raised voice and I open my eyes. I know that tone. I strain my ears and hear him clomping up the stairs. The sound of his bedroom door slamming only a few feet down the hall is deafening.

  I sit up in bed and take a moment to wipe the pain from my face. I can hear the chaos of the pizza arrival downstairs, but behind Jesse’s door it is silent.

  “Knock knock.” I keep my voice low and musical. Of course I don’t wait for his permission before I open it - he’s only ten and a long way from that sort of privilege. “Hey Jesse Knight, what’re you up to?” I ask, slipping inside. Jesse Knight started when he was five. He was obsessed with dungeons, dragons, all things Arthurian. I dubbed him Knight Jesse, but he kept forgetting and called himself Jesse Knight, always in the third person. Jesse Knight needs an ice cream, Jesse Knight never baths, Jesse Knight will save mommy from the dragon. The dragon was always Nick, until Dylan got old enough to pull himself up and sent Jesse’s favourite shield crashing to the floor. One look at the cracked plastic and Jesse had promptly dubbed Dylan the dragon and tried to stick his sword into Dylan’s ear.

  Jesse is coiled like a spring on his bed, his back pressed up against the denim-covered headboard, his legs drawn up to his knees. He’s playing on his tablet, the one my mother-in-law bought for him after I expressly told her not to. For a woman who despises technology, she’s remarkably adept at granting my kids whatever their hearts desire, so long as those desires are in direct opposition to what I want.

  “Minecraft.” It’s a statement all on its own.

  “Ah.” I slip onto the bed beside him, ignoring the way he arches his body away from me. “What are you building?”

  “A castle.”

  I peer over his shoulder. “Does it have a moat?”

  A pause. “No.”

  “Can’t be a castle then.”

  “It’s a castle, Mom.”
/>   “What’s this?” I jab my finger at a towering grey monstrosity.

  “The tower.”

  “It needs a window.”

  “Mom.”

  I raise my hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, Jess, if it’s a castle, it needs a moat. And that tower isn’t really a tower until it has a window. How else does the damsel escape?”

  “There’s no damsel in this castle.”

  “There’s always a damsel, Jesse Knight.”

  He doesn’t argue, but I’m rewarded with a slight upward tug of his lips.

  “You want to tell me why you’re giving your dad such a hard time?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Jesse.” It’s my warning voice, the bridge between my normal ‘Mom’ voice and the roar that finally gets their attention.

  Jesse has the sense to look sheepish. He’s always been a good kid, at heart.

  “I have a spelling test tomorrow and Dad was testing me but he wasn’t really trying. And Dylan and Casey always interrupt whenever I’m trying to do homework.”

  “Ah,” I lean back on the pillows. “Well, to be fair, Dylan and Casey don’t really understand homework yet so they wouldn’t know how much stress you’re under.”

  “When they start getting homework I’m going to interrupt them as much as I can.”

  “That wouldn’t be very nice.”

  “They deserve it, Mom! They have no idea how hard it is, and they need to be taught a lesson.”

  “True, but still, that wouldn’t be very nice.” I hold his gaze and a silent communication passes between us. I know he’ll see reason. Jesse is mature for his age. He gets angry quickly but it never lasts. “Why don’t I test you now?” I offer. “While there are no distractions.” His finger hovers over the screen of his tablet and I take it from him, setting it on the bedside table. “Homework first, Jess,” I say firmly.

  4

  Nick

  By the time Dylan and Casey have finished eating and I’ve settled them in the living-room with a DVD, I’m exhausted. I never really appreciated how much work the kids are until Evie got sick. Even when she was initially diagnosed with breast cancer, she soldiered through it, not missing a beat. I put it down to our kids being easy. Now I know better. It’s more to do with Evie being Evie. She’s always marched through life with single-minded determination.

  We honeymooned in the Bahamas. Evie dragged me kite-surfing, scuba diving and even to a night club called Gutsy’s, where she drank four local fishermen under the table. She’d been tired on the plane ride back but I’d put it down to her recovering from such an action-packed holiday. When we arrived home, she’d spent three nights in hospital. It turned out she’d developed bronchial pneumonia. She’d been sick on our wedding day, but she’d refused to acknowledge it until we’d enjoyed our honeymoon. My mother had called it irresponsible, Kat had snuck a bottle of red into the ward and I’d just held Evie’s hand and laughed so I wouldn’t cry. I wasn’t even surprised. It was just so Evie.

  I glance up at the photograph on the mantel of the heart-shaped rock she’d discovered on the beach in Harbour Bay. She’d refused to remove it in case we were stealing someone else’s sign. If I close my eyes I can still picture her face perfectly, the damp tangle of her hair falling over one shoulder, the almost transparent white shift-dress she wore over her bikini. Her skin had tasted of salt, and the sun had coaxed out a sweet canvas of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her toes had been painted coral, but the black and white Polaroid doesn’t capture that. Only our feet and the rock - proof that our love was forever, Evie had claimed at the time. I haven’t thought about that day in ages. It seems that the closer I come to losing her, the more I’m determined to remember every memory we’ve ever shared.

  I drag my feet up the stairs, two slices of steaming pepperoni pizza on a plate as a peace offering for Jesse. When I reach his door I hear voices and I peep inside.

  “Beautifully,” Evie says, her voice slow and deliberate. Jesse’s dark head is bent over his writing book as they sit, shoulder to shoulder on the bed. “You’re doing great, Jess.” Evie is using the same voice she always has when helping him with his homework – the one that calms him and makes him believe he can do it, even when he’s struggling.

  He finishes the word and stares down at the page, waiting expectantly for the next.

  “Olive juice,” Evie says, but her tone has changed and I can see the dimple prominent on her cheek as she tries to fight a smile.

  Jesse’s dark head whips up. “That’s not in my book.”

  “Olive juice,” Evie repeats, her mouth exaggerated around the word. Jesse opens his mouth to argue and then she says it again, only this time, with no sound. Even from here, I can see that the shape of her mouth forms three little words. Jesse finally gets it, and even though he’s trying to be cool, he is, after all, only ten years old, and the stupidest of jokes is hilarious when made by his mother.

  He smiles up at her. “I love you too, Mom.”

  They don’t move for a long time, Jesse’s head buried under Evie’s shoulder, his homework forgotten and I tiptoe downstairs to fetch more pizza.

  “Dinner is served!” I announce, entering the room and depositing two plates on the bed.

  They’re under the covers now, doing something on Jesse’s tablet. By the light of the bedside lamp, the shadows beneath Evie’s eyes look almost black.

  “There!” she announces happily, her eyes fixed on the tablet screen. “Now it’s perfect.”

  “Mom says a castle isn’t a castle without a moat,” Jesse tells me, grabbing a slice of pizza and shoving it into his mouth.

  “Well obviously. How else would you keep an invading army out? Here,” I add, offering Evie her plate. She shakes her head and my stomach does the nasty twist. “Please?” I prompt, my hand still extended. Jesse looks between the two of us, and then at the cooling slice of pizza on Evie’s plate. His face falls and he starts to set down his own, a gesture Evie doesn’t miss. Quick as a flash, she snatches the plate from my hands, folds a slice of pizza in half and crams it into her mouth.

  “I prefer calzone,” she mumbles around a mouth full of food, “but I guess this’ll have to do.”

  Ten minutes later we’re still lounging on Jesse’s bed while the faint sound of the kids’ DVD filters up the stairs. I feel Evie’s weight shift beside me as she sits up.

  “I think I’m going to go and have a bath,” she says cheerily, ruffling Jesse’s hair so that it sticks up on end. “Do you think you two can survive without me for a few minutes?” She doesn’t wait for an answer but, as I watch her leave, a voice whispers in my head: a few minutes, yes, Evie. A lifetime, no.

  I know she’s not coming back. I could see her wilting in those last few minutes in Jesse’s room and I know that when I go through to our bedroom she will be curled up on her side, facing the window, with one hand tucked beneath her head and the other on my pillow. If Jesse has noticed that no water has started running in the bathroom, he doesn’t comment.

  “Time for bed, kiddo,” I tell him. “Go and brush your teeth.”

  “What about Dyl and Casey?”

  “I’ll go down and get them.”

  “Can I read for a few minutes?”

  “Ten minutes,” I warn, “and then lights out.” I kiss his head and head downstairs.

  Casey is already asleep. Her pyjama top has pulled up, exposing her rounded, pink belly. Dylan doesn’t say a word, but he follows as I carry Casey up the stairs and into her room.

  “Where’s Mom?” he asks, once I’ve pulled Casey’s bedroom door closed. He looks so much like Jesse did at that age, but his brown hair is a shade lighter and his blue eyes not quite as bruised.

  “Mom’s sleeping. You can go in and kiss her goodnight, but then it’s time to brush your teeth and get into bed.”

  “Can I sleep in Jesse’s room?”

  “Let’s ask him.”

  Dylan scoops up his pillow, assur
ed of a good thing. I want to tell him not to be so sure but I don’t have the heart.

  I open Jesse’s door to find him back on the tablet. “Jesse!” He jumps and tries to stow it under his covers but I cross the room in a single stride. “Hand it over.” I’m starting to see why Evie was so set against my mother buying it.

  “I’ll put it away,” Jesse insists.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Dad!”

  “Now, Jesse!” He shoves it toward me, the scowl firmly back in place. I already know what his answer will be, but for Dylan’s sake, I pose the question. “Your brother wants to stay in here tonight.”

  “No,” Jesse snaps. Dylan’s face falls and I wish I could explain that Jesse’s anger isn’t directed at him, that he’s simply an easy target.

  “Sorry, Dyl, it looks like you’re in your room tonight.” I scoop him up, careful not to drop the tablet. “Goodnight, Jess,” I say as I walk out. Jesse doesn’t reply.

  5

  Evie

  It’s two in the morning and I know before I’m even fully awake that I won’t be going back to sleep. My whole body throbs. I curse in frustration as I recall that I forgot to take my pain pills before bed. I ease out from under the covers, taking care not to wake Nick. It’s only after I’ve MacGyvered my way out of bed that I realise he’s not next to me. A brief exploratory mission reveals him snoring softly in Dylan’s bed. I smile down at the two of them, Dylan curled into the crook of Nick’s arm, his legs thrown over Nick’s stomach, before venturing downstairs.

  I curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea and the three resumés Kat picked out. It’ll take a while before the pain medication gets to work. A scraggy black cat sits on the windowsill, flicking his tail in disdain.

  “Hello, you.” The cat has been coming around more and more often lately. I have no idea who he belongs to, but he seems to have chosen our family to endure the most. “You look as bad as I feel,” I tell him, which he interprets as an invitation to leap onto the sofa and make himself comfortable. I scratch his ears absent-mindedly. “I guess if you’re going to be spending this much time around here, you might need a name after all,” I say. The cat doesn’t respond.