Hard Word (8 page)

‘That's very good, Laura. You got the whole lot. You're not only very pretty, you're clever as well.'

And that's when I thought how stupid doctors really were, and they dress up like they're so smart and famous and everybody just goes,
Yes, Doctor
or
No, Doctor
like they're the Pope or the Dalai Lama or something, but if they're so smart, how come they say such stupid things?

Anyway at this point Dr Gerontics escapes back behind his desk, and now he doesn't talk to anyone but Mum. It's like Grandma Vera and me have peed on his carpet or something and we're standing in the corner with our backs to him in disgrace and we don't even exist any more. That's what doctors are like. Because when they're asking you questions and want to know something, they're all over you like a rash but as soon as you've given them the answers, they're saying, hey, you, garlic breath, you go and blow in the corner and see if you can't knock yourself out that way. But Grandma Vera was all happy again, and she kept patting me on the hand and saying, like she was Gerontics or something: ‘Very good,' she's going. ‘Very good, you were very good.'

‘Well, you can see for yourself,' Gerontics was saying to Mum. ‘Of course, this is just a very basic clinical screen …'

And I looked around, but there wasn't even a screen in the room, just his own big fat desk and these chairs and some paintings of red desert and stuff on his wall or people on verandahs in the outback when I bet he's never been north of Penrith.

‘We'll have to start a battery of technical tests,' he says. ‘Histolory, NRMA, CAT scans and so forth …'

It was like he was suddenly a foreigner or had forgotten how to speak English and had to learn how to spell.

‘… but even now, you'd have to say we'll be looking for evidence that it
isn't
what you and I have suspected.'

‘Why do you need a cat scan?' I said. I was sick of all this talking, and all this
what you and I have suspected,
like they're together in this and no one else counts, and he's looking at Mum like Philip sometimes does, or he used to, like all over her, and Katie and I knew we could do whatever we liked for the next hour or so, but he's not Philip, and I remember thinking, why is it that men look at Mum like that? And in my mind, even though I've just asked about the cat scan, I don't wait for an answer but sit right back for a moment, just like Dr Gerontics is leaning back in his chair behind his desk, and I look at her. And I swear this is the first time in my life I see it. Till that moment she's just been my mother, and I love her and that, and I like the way she looks, and she's always bright in the face and looks straight at you like she really thinks you count and she wants to know whatever you're thinking, but this is the first time I look
at
her – from the outside, if that makes sense. I mean, it's difficult if someone's your Mum to see her from the outside, but just then I do, and I don't look at
her
– I mean as my Mum – but just as a person like on the bus that you've never seen before, and her hair's short and it's kind of cropped like a boy's round her ears, because that's how Philip likes it now, and it's brown with these blonde streaks like people have to go to the hairdressers to get put in but with her it's natural, but because everyone else has to go and get it done, she doesn't say it's natural any more cos people just go
Oh, yeah?
And she's got these weird eyes that are a bit like Yogi's, that aren't blue at all like Katie's or Philip's or black like mine or Dad's but are nearly green, like a cat's. Except they're not green either, and have a bit of yellow in them. And I'm looking at her and thinking about this, and that's when I realize this thing about Mum I've never noticed before, and that is she's very beautiful. And I suddenly realize why men always look at her and want to talk to her and ignore everyone else, like Dr Gerontics, but they're also a bit frightened of her and want to stay, and don't want to, behind their desk. And the other thing I notice is that people are always talking to her in this fake way. Men especially. Like the fact that she's pretty means they can't talk to her like a normal person. And this makes me unhappy, and that's why I go again:

‘Why do you need it, and what's a cat scan anyway?'

Which sounds a bit rude, I admit, coming out like that, but that's how I feel. And Grandma Vera wants to go, I can tell. The way her hand keeps plucking at her skirt like it's covered in lint or something and it's a competition to get it all off before she leaves the room, but there's nothing there and Mum cleaned her skirt before we came. But she always does that, plucking at things, when she wants to go, and it makes me want to go too. But Dr Smarmy Gerontics is laughing this pretend laugh, and I know underneath he thinks I'm rude too, but the laugh is for Mum to show how he understands children, and underneath all the time he's thinking,
What a rude little girl.
But I don't care.

‘A CAT scan?' he says. ‘Well, it's nothing you'll need to worry your pretty little head over,' he says. ‘Or we certainly hope not …' He's blabbing on like this, and suddenly his eyes light up behind his glasses like the man on TV in the ad when he hears he's just won Lotto and has won millions and won't ever have to work again but can be on holidays for the rest of his life, and he laughs again and says: ‘But I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't a system of scanning for cats.' And he goes into this
ho-ho-ho
like he's practising for Santa Claus or something, and that's when I get really rude and say:

‘I didn't imagine it was.'

And I don't look at Mum because I think she's probably got her
Behave yourself, Miss
face on, and that's why I get such a surprise when she says:

‘The child's asked a perfectly reasonable question. I get sick of all these horrible acronyms as well.'

And that really wipes the smile off his face. It's like his favourite reindeer's suddenly fallen over and died or something. And his mouth's down at the corners now instead of this big cheesy grin he had on a minute ago, and you can see he's changed his mind, just like that, and doesn't like Mum at all and thinks she's difficult and starts calling her
Mrs Trent-Harcourt
where, a minute ago, he was telling us he liked things to be friendly and we all had to work on this problem together and he didn't like titles and did she mind if he called Grandma Vera
Vera
and Mum
Miriam.
What a hypocrite. And you can see this is the real him when he sighs and taps his pen on the clipboard and sits up straighter in his chair and says:

‘Of course,' he says. ‘CAT stands for computerized axial blahdeblahdeblah …'

And I'm already starting to feel sorry I asked cos you can see, just from looking at his mouth, he's going to blab on for ages and say all these long words that nobody understands – he probably doesn't understand them himself – just to show he's smarter than anyone else and to punish you for asking.

‘And via these imaging processes,' he says, ‘via CAT scans and the NRMA' – and that's weird, I remember thinking, cos what's car insurance got to do with it anyway? – ‘we can get some idea of how far the degeneration in the Sarah Bellum …'

‘The brain,' Mum says, and he looks shocked that she's interrupted.

‘Quite so,' he says. ‘We can see how far it's progressed. The brain,' he says, ‘will normally show some signs of shrinkage and a trophy.' And I remember sneaking a look at Grandma Vera's head and thinking it doesn't look any smaller than normal, and there's absolutely no sign of any trophy. And then he discusses all about history tests and fibillaries, and plaquing and tangled masses in the cytoplasm, which for years after I still hear as the
sight of Plasm
– and I'm wondering who this Plasm's supposed to be when he's at home – and all that blah.

Atrophy.

Cytoplasm.

It's not all that hard actually. Not if you know where to look things up.

But
then
, back then, it was like he was giving a lecture in Russian or Latin or something, and you know how it is, most of the time he's not even looking at us but at the wall behind us as if there's this huge fly-spot on it that he's just noticed and now he's seen it he can't leave it alone but still needs to finish his lecture before he can do anything about it. And maybe that's what it is because at that point he just gives up, and says to Mum:

‘If you follow me …'

‘Yes,' Mum says, in this brisk voice, like she hasn't been asleep with the rest of us for the last hundred and fifty minutes. ‘Thank you,' she says, ‘that's very helpful.'

And he nods his head and gives this little smile like he's really thinking I bet you didn't understand a word, and that's when Mum goes:

‘And this plaquing of the blood vessels …' And this bit I do know cos I ask her to write it down for me later, and she says, ‘Write it down – why?', and I say, ‘No reason, I just want to know,' but it's actually so I can learn it off and say it to Toni and see if her face changes like Dr Gerontics'.

‘This plaquing …' she says. ‘It's often implicated in multi-infarct induced dementia, isn't it?'

This is what she actually says –
multi-infarct induced dementia.

And you should have seen Dr Gerontics' face then, and the way his jaw drops open. It's like he's just seen his second reindeer fall over, and he's starting to think his whole team's got TB or something.

‘Yes …' he says. ‘That's right.'

‘And evidence of that might show up on a CAT scan or an MRI?'

‘Yes …' he goes. ‘It might.'

And
I'm
not that surprised because I know how smart Mum is, and I know she's been reading all these books and articles and things and telling Philip about it when he just wants to eat his dinner in peace for the last two months. But Philip always goes
Really?
when Mum tells him something new she's learned and says it's fascinating – once you get deep inside it.

And Mum's so polite and agreeing to Dr Gerontics after that, and if you just listened to it without knowing, you'd think maybe she was over-polite or crawling but it's not like that at all, cos something's really changed and it's like she's in charge now and running things, and all the time she's saying things like: ‘That's been very helpful. And now I suppose we should arrange some dates and times for the CAT scans and so on …' and Dr Gerontics is going, ‘Yes, yes, my secretary will contact you after she's spoken to the hospital,' and he's getting up from behind his desk and can't get rid of us soon enough.

But it doesn't happen quite like that because when we get out in the foyer where the lady's still reading her magazine, Mum opens her bag and takes out her car keys and gives them to me and says:

‘Take Grandma Vera out to the car. I'll be with you in a second.'

‘But –'

‘Take-her-to-the-car,' she says. ‘There's one last thing I want to ask the doctor.' And she goes back and knocks on his door which he's just shut behind us and she doesn't wait for him to open it or call
Come in,
but just opens it herself and goes in, and I hear him say ‘Ohh' in this strangled voice before the door shuts.

‘What did you have to ask him?' I say when she gets back to the car.

‘Nothing.'

Nothing
means
something
but the something is none of my business. And that makes me say:

‘He's awful. I hate him.'

She's reversing the car out when I say this, and Grandma Vera's singing away to herself in the back. And that's when Mum says to me in this normal voice:

‘He's par for the course for a specialist, dear. He's a total stuffed shirt.'

I'm still thinking about a stuffed shirt – a total one – when she says:

‘He's got a poker so far up his arse, if he sat down in a hurry his eyes would cross.'

And I laugh. ‘Or his ears would wiggle,' I say back. And we both laugh, and I feel better already.

My Mum says these things to me, but never when Katie's around – she's as strict as anything with Katie and doesn't let her swear or anything – or me, either, unless I'm with her and we're alone. Or we're with Grandma Vera who doesn't notice half the time. And I think it's because of the time in Greece when Mum and Dad were quarrelling and yelling a lot and she'd swear and call him a useless prick and all his brains were in his dick or something, and they'd swear and shout and she'd throw things at him and Grandma Irini, Yiayia Irini, would be peering round the kitchen door all the time under this black scarf with a chook or thistles under her arm. Mum and I never talk about that now, but she knows I remember.

‘So, what's Grandma Vera got?' I ask her as we drive home. And I know she'll tell me the truth, whatever it is. She looks in the mirror, and Grandma's still singing and looking out one window and then the other like she's about four and going for her first ride in a car ever.

‘It's a thing called Alzheimer's,' Mum says. And that's actually the first time I hear it, this word. Except that, at the time, I don't hear it quite right.
Altimer's.
‘It's a disease,' Mum says softly. ‘And people Grandma's age sometimes get it.'

‘Altimer's?' I say.

‘Nearly,' she says.
‘Alts
…
Alts-
heimer's.' But then she gets distracted by the traffic and something Grandma Vera is singing, and doesn't tell me any more.

When we get home, I get a dictionary out and look in that. Mum's got dictionaries all over the house – Toni says our house is like a library or museum or something – but I can't find
Alts-heimer's
anywhere. There's some Alt's, like
Altimeter
and
Altitude
and
Alto
, which is singing, but then I realize they all mean high, so when Philip comes in and says, ‘Where's Miriam?' and I say, ‘She's making some tea and things for Grandma Vera,' and then he says, ‘How did the visit to the doctor go?', I say: