Indelible Ink (54 page)

Marie smiled. ‘Well, well, I hadn’t expected to see you this early!’

Through the grey fuzz, Leon could see bald patches. And the bones in his mother’s face, how her ears stuck out. She had aged so much in just one week. She looked like a prisoner, at once
tough and fragile, her eyes enormous violets pooling the sky. Leon pulled up a chair as the clippering finished, and Marie introduced him to Rhys, who smiled as she flicked a soft brush over
Marie’s upturned face. ‘How are things at Sirius Cove?’

‘I haven’t been in the garden much. I’ve been doing Susan’s. But the xanthorrhea has scale.’

Marie looked crestfallen.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice it.’ His remark seemed to float towards her in slow motion, like a missile. Now he had sat down, Leon felt unable to ever get up again,
let alone make an attempt to retract this casual cruelty. ‘It looks like it’s been there for a while. I sprayed it with white oil, but it’s pretty entrenched.’

Marie wondered what else she hadn’t noticed. Rhys removed the sheet and the air bit her neck. Leon looked bad, unkempt. He even smelt bad. There was an irritable redness in his eyes that
reminded Marie of Ross when he’d been drinking, and made her a little afraid. It seemed such a terrible portent that Leon’s totem plant was diseased, the bugs multiplying under her nose
all this time. He lolled in his chair stroking his beard, aware of his powerful good looks.

‘I’m sure you can cure it. Leon’s a gardener, Rhys. He’s been a great help.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Leon liked the look of Rhys, running a broom around their feet to collect his mother’s hair.

I’ve heard it’s good to burn them,’ she said. ‘That’s what Stew did with his.’

‘Stew’s a friend from the studio,’ Marie explained. She felt exhausted. Willing a connection between Rhys and Leon. A sense of futility about that. Let alone the garden.

Rhys packed up her clippers. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

‘You’re not going? I thought we were having brunch together.’

Rhys hesitated, glanced at Leon. ‘I can go and get you something and bring it back up.’

‘It’s alright. I’m about to go down,’ Leon said, then remembered he had run out of money, and that the cafeteria was unlikely to have EFTPOS. He felt increasingly prickly
and fragile.

‘I really should get going,’ said Rhys.

‘Nice meeting you.’

Marie shivered and asked Leon to fetch a scarf from her room. ‘And the blanket,’ she called after him. ‘It’s on the chair.’

Getting up took an age, his thighs hurt with every step, there was a faint ache in his balls. He stopped in the bathroom to splash water on his eyes and drink from the tap. He draped the blanket
around his mother’s shoulders and helped tie the scarf around her head. He wanted to do these things for her, but he felt mechanical and knew it showed.

‘I must look a bit of a fright,’ Marie said.

‘You look fine. But I thought you’d get that done at the hairdresser’s or something.’ Again the curt tone. At that moment, Leon hated himself.

‘At Mosman Junction?’ Marie gave him that unnerving violet stare. ‘I wasn’t game. I wanted to have it done by someone I trusted, in private.’

‘It’s not very private out here,’ Leon said, indicating the Chinese woman he had spoken to earlier, settling her gaunt, bald companion at the end of the verandah.

‘She doesn’t care. She’s dying of ovarian cancer,’ Marie said coldly. ‘And she’s the same age as you.’

Leon looked at the ground. Marie wanted him to look at her. She was disgusted with her love for this selfish boy-man, and filled with a bitter pride at her deformities. She wanted him to look at
her. ‘Would you have shaved your mother’s head, Leon?’

‘Of course I would,’ he said in a small voice.

‘You can hardly bear to look at me. Is it because I’m sick? Or is it the tattoos? Or is it just because I’m a woman?’

When Leon finally lifted his eyes, she saw they were filled with tears.

Brian knocked after dinner to see if Marie wanted to come down to the television room. He was still in a ward with three others whereas Marie was now alone in a double room,
her neighbour having left that day. She was hours after a pethidine shot, trying to last as long as possible, and more alert than she had been all day. She was watching the late news on her own
television and invited Brian to join her. He had his hipflask, and into the little plastic cups he poured them a nip. He took out a joint.

‘Next to the window,’ said Marie, getting out of bed.

They smoked the joint in silence, looking out at the night sky. A half-moon was rising. Marie felt fuzzy when she went back to bed: a warm blanket had spread over the aches and pains and the
nausea was gone. As Brian sat beside her, his gown rode up, revealing the leg tattoo. He saw her stealing glances at it.

‘It’s called a
pe’a
.’ He pronounced the vowels distinct yet close as though separated by a pane of glass, then spelt it. ‘They tep the ink in with chisels.
You wanna see me other work?’

‘Yes.’

He took off his gown and stood in his boxer shorts while she angled the light towards him. He was like an ancient tapestry, worn and embroidered over the decades. He pointed out different
tattoos and told their stories. The first, from his adolescence in Auckland, was a whale rising murkily over the left pec. Around it were prison scratcher’s lines and crosses. The names of
his three wives were on his left arm, one after another. On his right arm and back were a skull, a dragon and a naked woman done by a favourite tattooist in Casula whenever he was free and Brian
had the money. For his son, he’d had a carp tattooed on his stomach.

‘The
pe’a
is my favourite,’ said Marie, admiring what she could of the black organic shapes and fine gridding: unlike the other tattoos, Brian made no effort to show it.
The left one rose in a curve over the hip, the right was much lower. Marie remarked on this.

‘It’s not finished,’ Brian muttered.

‘Why not?’

‘I had to go back inside.’ He looked ashamed.

Marie retreated from his private territory.

Brian sat in the chair and frowned. ‘Fucken Brazilians, eh.’ He had lost even more weight and in places his thighs seemed to be folding in on themselves. He grabbed himself in
frustration. ‘Sometimes I feel like a balloon after a party. You know, with the air come out?’

‘My work’s not finished either,’ Marie said. ‘Do you want to see it?’

‘I’d love to.’

She parted her clothes to show him the vines; she was more protective of her belly and showed only a portion of the flames. ‘They’re so bright!’ Brian exclaimed. She turned on
her side to show him the moth. She felt the warmth of his gaze on her skin and drank it in like a plant. ‘She really is the best,’ Brian said after a while. He bent to her hip.
‘What’s this?’

‘
Angophora costata.
My favourite tree in the world.’

‘The unfinished one, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Frish, isn’t it?’

She quivered at his touch. ‘About four weeks old.’

‘It’s peeling a bit, y’know.’

Marie worried about her deterioration. She felt remiss, as though she had hung her most precious pictures on a soiled wall. They heard the night nurse passing and lowered their voices. ‘Do
they really look alright?’

‘They’re fucken awesome.’

‘I’m itchy.’

‘Where?’

‘My back, right in the middle, where I can’t reach.’

Brian gave her a gentle scratch between the shoulder blades. ‘Your skin gets really dry in here, eh.’

‘Oh yes, that’s lovely, lower, yes, to the left to the left.’

They began to laugh. Footsteps passed again and they covered their mouths. The footsteps receded. ‘I have some cream in that drawer,’ said Marie.

Brian obliged, every movement quiet and careful like a thief. She could feel the blades of his fingertips through the cream. He went over her back with meditative strokes, then wiped his palms
down his thighs. Then he began to squirm in his chair. ‘You got me goin’ now, I feel itchy everywhere.’

‘Come up here. I’ll do yours.’

‘We’re both so skinny we fit on these fucken log beds, eh,’ he whispered as he lay alongside her. He glanced at the cloth folded on the end. ‘
Sam
oa,’ he
affirmed. ‘He was your boyfriend, eh?’

‘No. We just went out a couple of times.’ Marie squeezed cream into her palm.

He tensed initially at her touch, then began to relax. ‘Oh?’

‘I mean, his name wasn’t worth tattooing on my arm.’

‘And the flowers.’ Brian gestured. ‘You’re loved, Marie.’ He turned and gave her a sharp look. ‘You put those flowers in my room?’

‘I couldn’t fit them on my table. I hope it’s alright.’

Brian said nothing. He propped his head on his hand and looked out the window as Marie continued anointing him. His skin was fever hot, rough and cracked. He said quietly, ‘I’d like
to go back to Rotorua when I get out of here. See the folks.’

‘Maybe you could get your — what is it again? — tattoo finished?’

‘
Pe’a.
No.’

‘Why not?’

Again Marie felt a sense of trespass.

‘The tattoo master I went to died,’ said Brian after a while.

‘Couldn’t you see another one?’

‘I’m too old. I hed my chance and I blew it.’

‘Didn’t we all.’

‘What?’

‘Blow it.’

‘No, Marie,’ he said harshly. ‘We didn’t all do fifteen years in the nick.’

‘Sorry Brian.’

‘Ah, don’t worry about it.’

‘There you are.’

‘Thanks.’ Brian turned and pecked her on the cheek. She looked at him in surprise. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. He reached over and pulled another joint from his gown, then
poured them more water. They didn’t bother going to the window this time, just lay back smoking and watching TV. A meteorologist was showing maps of the receding icecaps. ‘Us island
people’ll all drown with this business. My grandfather’s place won’t be there in twenny years.’

‘Neither will we, Brian.’

‘All this talk about refugees from the atolls. Like the Pacific wasn’t already fucked, like we weren’t already leaving.’

She took his hand. He looped his other arm around her shoulders. Her eyes were fiercely dry and when the news story finished she closed them for relief. She felt so lonely in her dying, she
wanted to talk about it. She could hear every little sound in the room. Brian’s breathing deepened, as though he were falling asleep. She opened her eyes to find him looking at her. He
stroked her cheek. His skin was developing a yellow hue, his smell a faint pungency like the beginning of rot. She wondered which one of them would die first. Again came the answer: It
doesn’t matter. They began to kiss, Marie’s tongue tracing whiskey from his teeth. They moved closer, wincing at pressure on the sore spots. Her scarf fell off. Brian’s fingers
electric on her scalp. She knew the last of her hair would be scattering like iron filings. He smelt of medicine and dead skin. He slipped his hand inside her gown. ‘Careful around my
stomach, the tumours are just there.’ He stroked it gently, moved to her breasts. ‘These alright?’ ‘Yes.’ They were smiling through their kiss. The miraculous
throbbing in her cunt grew and she reached into his shorts. He lay back and let her touch him, sighing. His penis half hardened. ‘I’m fucked.’ He laughed softly. ‘I’m
too fucked to fuck.’

‘We both are. Too sick, too old.’

‘We’re not too old. Just too sick.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifty-two.’

Marie hid her face in his neck. She would have said sixty-two.

‘Fifty-three in four months. Gonna have a big party. You’re invited.’

She wanted to slap him and make him face it. She wondered how she looked herself. Bald, emaciated. The extra decade sickness added would make her seventy. Dying, she thought, stroking
Brian’s cock, feeling it harden. He began to pant and felt for her cunt. She breathed in the smell of sweat and sickness and pulled till he cried out softly, drenching her wrist. ‘Touch
me, Brian.’ She guided his hand until she came in a muted way. They fell asleep in front of the weather.

She was woken by Brian fumbling with the bedclothes. The light had been switched on and the night nurse was standing just inside the door. ‘What’s going on in here? And you’ve
been smoking.’

Brian swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘I’m going.’

‘I asked him in,’ Marie avowed. She noticed one of her breasts had fallen out of her gown and pushed it back in. She was in a great deal of pain. The cramps were moving through her
body, joined like carriages in one long train.

The nurse set his mouth. ‘Just because you’re sick doesn’t mean you can get away with this.’

‘What are you going to do?’ said Marie. ‘Kill us?’

The nurse waited for Brian to leave, then shut the door. All night Marie buzzed for pethidine, but nobody came.

The next morning she went into Brian’s room to say goodbye before going down to chemotherapy. He was dozing and when woken needed a moment to focus, then he took her hand
and wished her luck. He told her that in the old days when the chief underwent tattooing, his men were done alongside him to share his pain. The etiquette of the ritual forbade the tattooees to
utter the smallest cry. At night there was dancing, feasting and wrestling matches, the ordeal and festivities lasting several weeks.

‘Do the women get tattooed?’

‘Yeah.’ Brian wrinkled his brow in thought. ‘There’s a Samoan song about tattooing that says women grow up and give birth, men grow up and get tattooed.’

‘Can we do both?’

‘Sure.’ Brian shrugged. ‘I tell you what, Marie. When we get outta here, let’s you and me go get a tatt together.’

‘From Rhys.’

‘Yeah. Listen. Why don’t you look after my hooch tonight? In the drawer here. Don’t trust the buggers around here.’

She decided to go to chemotherapy in a wheelchair, and to remain inside Brian’s dream of a future for as long as possible. But the room now felt cold, each patient enclosed in a private
pod of illness. The woman with ovarian cancer sat holding the hand of her Chinese girlfriend. The chatty woman in the scarf was gone. Marie never knew when somebody left whether they had gone into
remission or died. The bald woman up the end was recognisable only by the husband reading aloud to her.