Eclipse
Eclipse
Illness changes everything. It changes your daily routine, it changes how you live, how you think, how you look at the world. But there is one thing it doesn’t change - love.
Will and Elise are making a long and painful journey. But they are making it together, and there are still some beautiful things in their life…
You used to bake. Anything and everything. Rich cakes, full of fruit in brandy. Lovely light cakes that disappeared at the soft touch of a tongue. Fresh bread, dusty white or else brown and shining. You got up early every Saturday, and left the bedroom while the birds sang from the branches outside our window. Meanwhile, I yawned and moved into the small, warm place you left behind in the bed. A little later, when I woke, there would be a hot fog of smells. Sweet, heavy smells that filled our little flat. I would walk into the kitchen and find you standing there, hot coffee in your hand as you watched your cakes cooling down on the table.
That last time, you were baking because I had asked for something special. Something you hadn’t tried before. A round cake - one my mother made for me when I was ten, to make me feel better because I was ill and had to stay at home all day. You and I were in bed, comfortable, reading our books. I had pulled at your side of the blanket and asked,
‘Could you, would you make that cake for me?’
‘How did she make it?’ you wanted to know. ‘What did it taste like?’
‘Eggy. And not very sweet.’
You looked interested. ‘Eggy?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And it was a very pale yellow in colour. And it was soft and light.’
‘Eggy, soft and light. All right.’ You smiled and moved your back close to mine.
The next morning, when I walked sleepily into the kitchen, I had forgotten about asking you for the cake. It was there, still warm, on the table. You cut a delicious, perfect slice and put it in my mouth.
That was almost a year ago. I remember now how sick you had become the day after. At first I thought it was because of the cake. Felt sure it was nothing more than a stomach cold. Silly of me. Remembering, I cannot stop myself laughing out loud. The sound comes out strange. One of our neighbours, a little old lady who always seems surprised to see me - I am too tall, too foreign-looking for this place - stops to smile. I return the smile, wondering at the difficulty of making the muscles round my mouth work.
I open the door of your favourite baker’s shop. The first time you took me there, you told me you had known the place since you were a child. I imagined you, five years old, reaching up to pick out a soft, sugared cake. Every week we used to stop there on the way to the market and look at the cakes in the window. One of them would catch your eye, and you’d spend the rest of the afternoon reading your richly coloured cookbooks, your fingers dancing over the words. There is, you always said, a cake for every occasion.
Now in our kitchen, instead of the eggs and butter and fruit, instead of the shining bowls and well-used bread boards, instead of all that, there are large tins piled high on the table, containing enriched milk and the powdered food which you hate so much, and a blender. The blender is a white, plastic, plain-looking machine. Ugly but necessary. I use it every morning and afternoon to make the thick, tasteless kind of soup which is the only food you can eat.
A bell rings as I enter the baker’s. The only customer, an old Chinese man, is walking slowly up and down past all the cakes on show in their glass container. He stops, stares at me for a second, then walks back and starts looking carefully at the cakes again.
The lady owner, who has grey hair, looks up. Her hands, which she places in front of her, are small and covered with a fine dusting of white. I see that she recognizes me. ‘How nice,’ she had said, when I asked for the words Happy Lunar Eclipse to be written across the cake I was ordering.
‘Hi, I’m here for my cake,’ I say.
‘Hello, yes, we have it ready.’ She goes into the back of the shop to fetch it.
The old man is still trying to decide which of the cakes he wants. He bends over the glass container, then straightens up and smiles at me.
‘I’m choosing something for my granddaughter,’ he says, in clear, unhesitating English. ‘Her mother’s bringing her over to visit.’
I say nothing, only smile back in return.
‘You have children?’ he asks.
I learned a long time ago that the local people think nothing of asking personal questions. They ask them so warmly and with so much real interest that I answer right back. I surprised myself the first time that happened.
‘No,’ I say, thinking about the names you said you liked. Lara for a girl. Mark, if it’s a boy.
‘Oh. But you’re married?’ he asks, his grey head a little on one side.
‘Yes. Just, not yet…’ I give another smile, as best I can. He is about to say more when the lady returns with my cake in a box. It is a relief to stop talking to him, and I’m so pleased that I smile warmly at her. She puts the box down in front of me.
‘Here it is,’ she says, pushing it towards me and lifting the lid. ‘OK?’ she adds, smiling.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’
‘Candles are inside the box,’ she adds. ‘Bye bye.’
I take the box from her carefully and turn to go. Behind me I hear the old man ask the lady for some help - he can’t quite decide.
I check my watch as I walk home. Just past six. Over an hour to go. The birds are calling out from the thick trees. I look up and watch a few clouds make their way quickly across the blue sky. As I stand there, red and brown fallen leaves, caught by the wind, collect around my shoes.
It takes me less than ten minutes to walk back, and soon I am unlocking the front door. I call out, like I do every time I come home. And, just like every single time, you call back. Your voice is quiet - it’s hard to hear through the walls.
‘Elise, I’m home!’ I shout. When I’m around you, I’m cheerful, bright. Around you, I have to be. I drink a glass of water in the kitchen. Get myself together before I go in and see you. I know you’ve been ill now for months, but when I’m away for just a moment, an hour, I forget.
The first time you went to hospital for chemotherapy, I watched the young nurse, shaky and unsure, push the needle in your arm, one, two, three times before she finally got it right. You had your eyes closed but your face was expressionless. You stayed like that all the way through. The machine kept going, slowly, achingly. Soon you started to shiver and said you were cold. I piled blankets on top of you, and still they weren’t enough. You shook for two hours. At the end of it, you were exhausted. You fell asleep on the ride home in the car. I carried you in and put you to bed. I made sure you were asleep before I went to the second bathroom and bent over the toilet. I thought I was going to be sick. Then I sat on the cold floor until I heard you call out for me. Your voice sounded like a dream.
That same evening, your friends came over. Yan, whom you had grown up with, proudly offered you a rich, dark cake and sang, ‘Happy first chemo, Elise!’
I watched you stop smiling for a moment. But then your eyes shone and you laughed and clapped along with the rest of them. I just stood and watched, hot with anger. You took a few bites, cautious little bites, before the sickness came. After an hour, everyone put their arms round you, said goodbye and left. I went with them to the door, and down to the street. As soon as we were a little way from the apartment, I took Yan by his collar and started shaking him. I think I shouted, ‘Happy first chemo? Are you mad?’
Someone held me back then, but it took a few moments for me to realize what I was doing. When I stepped back, I saw that Yan’s face was red and his mouth was thin. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Will, it’s all right. It’s all right,’ while looking everywhere else except at me.
Back inside, you were already asleep. I calmed myself down. I watched you as you breathed, your face shining in the moon’s soft light.
I make myself busy now, putting everything away. The cake in the fridge, my wallet and keys on the dining table. The table is covered with well-worn books and papers about your disease - information that I’ve read and re-read many times. Then I walk the fifteen steps. That’s how many it takes for me to get to you, from the moment I come through the front door.
You are very pale and painfully thin, lying in bed, half buried under the blanket. I enter the room, feeling my face go red. You look like a stranger. Has someone taken your place in the little time I’ve been away? You used to have rich, dark hair, but lying in our bed there is a girl with no hair at all on her head. She is watching me as I enter the room. Every time I go away and come back again, I feel I am entering someone else’s flat. This is not our home. Not my place. Not our things, the countless silly little things that two people can collect in five years. Five years’ worth of books, clothes, and stones from the beach. And photos taken with a blind hand, while our faces, full of light, are close to each other’s. ‘Where’s Elise?’ I think, while I stand in the doorway. But the minute I get near and you reach up to run your hand over my hair, reach up and pull me in with your small hands and look straight into me with your dark eyes, I see you again. You’re right there. Hidden under that pale face. You’re in there.
‘Hey baby,’ you say, ‘how is it outside?’
‘OK. There’s a bit of wind, though. We’re going to have to watch the eclipse through the window, OK? We don’t want you to catch a cold.’ I bend down and kiss you.
‘Whatever you say.’ You return to your book. I do my usual routine of tidying your blankets and making you comfortable, before you gently push my hands away.
‘Take a rest,’ you say. ‘You’ve had a long day.’
I sigh and give in. I take one of the many books piled up by the bed and let myself lie down next to you. I open the book but simply stare at it, at one line on a page, letting it run in front of my eyes over and over again. Soon I hear you breathing deeply and look around to see you sleeping, with one finger marking the page where you stopped reading. I watch through the window as the sky lights up into bright orange and purple flames, while darkness slowly falls. Quietly I get out of bed and go into the kitchen for the cake and everything else that we need.
When I come back, you’re already sitting up in bed.
‘Is it time?’ you ask.
‘Soon,’ I say, looking at my watch. ‘Just ten minutes to go.’
I put the cake box in front of you. I lift up the lid and we both look inside.
There had been just enough room for the words. Eclipse had been written in the shape of a smile, just at the edge of the cake. You laugh, and tell me to put the candles in and light them. So I do. We wait a little while more. We look out of the window and watch as a dark shadow starts to cover the full moon and the silvery white becomes a yellowish- brown, until in the end all that’s left in the half-light is a deep red ball giving out a dull, pinkish light in the night sky.
‘Look,’ you whisper, then blow out the candles.
I nod and reach for the knife, cutting a straight line down the middle of the cake. And then another. Then I pass it over. A delicious, perfect slice, onto your plate.
‘Oh, red velvet cake,’ you say. ‘We’ve never had this before.’