Australian Love Stories (29 page)

The air is mild and it's nice to be sitting, but what next? What what what next. Rathdowne Street. Enzo smiles at the young woman, who has picked up a bunch of grapes, and she smiles back. Enzo stands and the grocer glances his way. Enzo gives a nod that's returned by the grocer's big head, it's a nod with enthusiasm, the kind used to encourage a potential customer.

‘Can you tell me the way to Rathdowne Street?'

‘Driving or…'

‘No I walk.'

‘You need the bus. Number 68. The stop's right on the corner there.'

The woman with the smile who is laying her vegetables and fruits on the counter looks at Enzo, considers him for a moment. ‘Would you like a lift? I'm headed in that direction.'

‘To Rathdowne Street?'

‘I'm going back to Nicholson so I can take you past on the way.'

She smiles again, the freckles on her nose bunch up—a small, kind, bunny nose she has. The woman pays. ‘This way,' she says, directing Enzo to her hatch back that is a green shade of the ocean. ‘You remind me a bit of my pop,' she says.

Enzo offers to help load the groceries into the car. She hands him the lighter bag and he places it in the boot and smooths his hands over his chest. Inside, the car is toasty, like a cocoon.

‘You don't live near here?' she asks.

‘I live on Amess Street. That is where I live, but I stay in the prison.'

‘The where?'

‘In the place where they don't let me cook. They are all dying there, all dead in the head already.'

‘And you live on Amess Street?'

‘I live there usually but not recently.'

‘Do they know you're gone?'

‘They know nothing. This is our secret.'

‘A secret? Okay.'

Magnolias line the unfamiliar streets and their pink blossoms make a blur out the window. Enzo watches, trying to catch sight of something he knows.

‘Is there someone you want to visit, where I can drop you off?'

‘I will make a surprise with my Neville.'

‘And he lives on Amess Street…'

‘He lives in our house. He has my garden but I am going to fix it today, but first I will get some fruits on Rathdowne Street. I will visit my friend. He has a shop.'

‘That's why you didn't get fruit just now?'

‘This is why I go to Gemeldi. He is my fruit guy.'

‘Do you think we should call where you're staying to let them know you've gone out for a bit?'

‘No we don't call them because they don't know that I need to go home today. They always say I go another time.'

The sun through the windscreen is warm and Enzo presses his hands to the heat on his cheeks and grins. ‘I will close my eyes in this beautiful sun,' he says. ‘I rest my eyes now and later I will smell the basilica in the garden.'

Enzo dreams of the cockatoos on the front lawn digging their hard beaks into the earth searching for things. He dreams of them digging around for morsels that satisfy, that allow them to be as they are and to do the things they do, to be cockatoos. In sleep he is on the lawn with them, feeling them earthed there, grounded before flight, fuelling up for distance, for soaring.

The car is still when Enzo's eyes open. His head is thick with a molasses sleep. It is busy where they are. There are more women now. They are young—two in white and the bunny-nosed girl. One of them opens the car door and offers her hand to him. She wears a serious face, the kind Enzo has seen before. He knows this face.

‘I have two hands, I have two legs.' He undoes his seat belt and gestures with his hands for the Whities to move out of his way. Bunny Nose is standing, her freckled face is scrunched a little and she is not smiling now.

‘Are we on Nicholson Street?' Enzo says.

The Whities are gentle but firm; they take his hands like the new girls at the place he stays. Like the girls who don't know him and don't know about life. Wet behind the ears, Nev would say. Wet and thick as two planks.

Enzo pulls his hands away from the Whities. The one with thick hips wraps her hand back around his wrist, her fleshy palm is firm and tight. Again he wrestles himself free, yanking his fingers from her chubby grip. Untangled from the girl, he pulls his arms back and shoves her with a strength that is foreign to him. The girl falls, the solid-boned lot of her in a pile. Enzo rummages in his pocket for a hankie. There is none. He looks at Bunny Nose, ‘You didn't tell me your name.'

The corridor is fluorescent lit and the walk from the nurses' station to the elevator is draining. The lift doors open and Nev leans into the chill of the metal behind him. His stomach lurches as the lift plunges and he closes his eyes, breathes in, and out. The suffocating feeling starts to drain away. Enzo is here, right here, safe on the next floor. They told him that. They said he
was okay. The silence is still, thick and full; his ears feel like they are ringing. The doors open and Nev wanders down the hall, follows it round but ends up where he started, back by the lift. He can't find the room number. The hall is void of any defining features. The walls are a pale shade of nothing and a crucifix intermittently appears like a Post-it note, a reminder for the wavering of faith.

Nev backtracks, making another loop past rooms, past the nurses' station that is devoid of nurses. The staff in these places always seem to be around to put in their two cents worth where it's not wanted but no one is around to ask a question when you really need them. He takes a right. Again it all looks the same, smells identical…but that changes. Here there is something else in the air. Right here in this part of the floor there is the most familiar fragrance that dominates. Nev stops, breathes deeply. His heart palpitates. He knows this smell. So well. He knows the brand, knows the potent fullness of the scent, heavy. The scent that's caught on cotton pillowslips for all these years.

Nev nears the door to the room and then there he is. He catches a breath and relief settles into his bones. Enzo lies on the bed, a rumpled sheet and cotton blanket pushed aside. His eyes are closed. He looks worn, his body deflated, but the essence of him fills the space somehow like the echo of laughter in a room. Nev stops and takes him in; the olive skin, the curve of his cheek, not as fleshy as usual but still there. Nev is motionless in the lowlit room, there is the sound of the fluorescent light above the bed and nothing else. He watches Enzo's breath rise and fall, his body heavy on the bed and then sees the damp patch that begins to spread across the sheet. With a hand on Enzo's cheek, Nev leans in and kisses him on the lips that return the motion.

‘You causing trouble, Cockatoo?' Nev says.

Enzo smiles, the corners of his eyes creasing with the grin. ‘I wanted to make a surprise for you. I was coming home!'

‘Come on Houdini. Let's get you in the shower so you feel better.'

‘And then we go home?'

Nev undoes the ties on the gown they've put Enzo in, takes his hands and raises him up.

‘I'm sorry,' Enzo says, ‘for the mess I make. I am so happy to see you I pee myself.'

Nev leads him to the ensuite with Enzo's hands in his, walking backward holding Enzo's eyes. He lays down the bath mat and Enzo steps onto it then jiggles about a bit, doing the twist. Then he is still again, the grin remains and he places his arms on Nev's shoulders. Nev removes the hospital gown and Enzo's underpants and they stand there on the foot mat, their island, the clothes in a pile beside them. Enzo begins to unbutton Nev's shirt, unclasps the belt and Nev lets himself be undressed they way they used to.

Nev starts the water, adjusting the taps. ‘
Uno momento
,' he says and leans back to door, locking it.

‘Welcome to my palace,' Enzo says, gesturing with his arms to the small space. ‘Our hotel room, like we are on holiday.'

They stand under the water and hold each other still, firm as anchors, wet as fishes.

Once Around the Block

ALEXIS DREVIKOVSKY

I've just had a promising job interview and we sit licking celebratory hamburger grease from between our fingers when he tells me.

I feel good, and I feel special, because he chooses to tell me first. He shares this with me alone. I will fight this with him. This; this is what it means to be a wife. Other wives are living on borrowed time, with their mixed netball teams and mutual friends and dirty weekends away. It's easy for them. They haven't been tested yet. I rise up.

The weekend is a checklist of lasts. We go out for steak. We go for a run. We make love. He has man cave time. Because after Monday, who knows what he'll be able to do, see, feel? Not us.

On Monday morning, I make a shopping list and pop in to an empty city supermarket before the work day kicks off. Disinfectant wipes for surfaces, two kinds. Disposable latex gloves to clean up chemo-poisoned vomit and faecal matter. Pump packs of antibacterial gel for kitchen, bathroom, bedside and couch-side. Condoms to prevent conception of chemodeformed babies. Paracetamol. And to the medical clinic for a flu shot. I don't believe in flu shots. I tell the nurse everything, including this. She is sympathetic, but jabs me anyway.

Suburbs away, he goes alone. He always has. He does what he wants. He walks to the hospital, to fight the fatigue to come, and afterward he walks home. I meet him halfway, crossing an eight-lane road, and I am relieved to recognise his gait at that
distance. The next day I go with him, to be able to imagine where he is, what it's like. He is already a favourite of the nurses. He says, I don't know why I didn't ask you to come with me yesterday. It's because we were pretending. Pretending that he is Superman, and I am Wonder Woman, and cancer is just a glitch in our otherwise near-perfect life.

What can we do? ask the well-meaning. And at first it seems like nothing. It creeps in slowly, poison gently seeping into him, swirling around inside. Apart from hiccups so violent they rock the bed, nothing. Then one day after a shower, he calls me into the bathroom excitedly and rips out a handful of hair and I cry at the violence of it. I hear the tearing of Velcro roar through the air as I replay the scene but in fact it slips out smoothly, roots and all. He is fascinated by it. In thinking that can only have been inspired by
Anne of Green Gables
, I insist on a curl as a keepsake. Just in case.

We see our counsellor, one last time, and I shrug and remark that these are things that happen and, man, they seem to happen to us. I am reprimanded. It's the wrong attitude. It's the wrong way of thinking. We need to work on our ways of thinking.

A friend pays for cleaners. I receive a phone call while I am at work. The flat is too grimy, the manager says. Her cleaners can't possibly get through all that they intended to. They put in an extra hour. I am mortified and become more vigorous with the disinfectant wipes.

And then chemo-brain sets in and I start to lose him. He is numb, detached. Confused. We stick a laminated guide on the fridge, reminding us that chemo-brain is normal and can be combatted, so I buy him a book of Sudoku from the chemist. He lies in bed, book on chest, scratching in numbers, erasing them
away. He can't finish them and he despairs. He can't remember our conversation and he despairs. He can't sleep but when he does nightmares tease and torture him.

And all along, we have the perfect excuse for everything. Unwanted invitations, commitments and obligations: Sorry, you might have heard, he has cancer? Drunks on the street begging some change: Mate, I have cancer. The Wilderness Society removes him from their donations list: Cancer. My interest in my work wanes, half days here and there: My husband has cancer. Life was never simpler. Just me, him and cancer. We wake up, we fight it, we rest. For the first time, I don't feel guilty about letting people down. For the first time, I don't really care what people think.

At 3 am the thermometer tells him what he's been suspecting for hours: a temperature. Immuno-compromised as he is, infection moves in and stays. As he lies in emergency, waiting to be admitted, hairs loosen from his scalp. Hours later, after a bed opens up on the tenth floor, he crawls into a wheelchair and leaves the emergency bed layered with a blanket of hair.

He insists I go home for the clippers and becomes cold, withdrawn. We had talked about me shaving his head when the time came, a symbolic evening, red wine, tears and kisses. But no, now he wants to do it on his own while I'm at a friend's for dinner. It's okay, I say, he's not a dickhead; he has cancer. He sends me a text and a photo, bald, shiny. I'm relieved that he has a good head.

I use the quarantine situation to take the week off work. The elasticised mask digs into my nose and my breath becomes a soggy circle in front of my mouth. Every two hours I have to move the car and every two hours I change my mask. I come back in to the
room and he is tiny in the bed, no way to distinguish head from neck. Wrapped up like that, he looks like a worm. I think that this is only the beginning.