The Best Australian Stories 2010 (26 page)

Nick sat on the edge of the bed, arm on my shoulder, looking at our Bobby. Afternoon light angled in through the window and cast Venetian-striped shadows on our son's already mottled cheeks. My finger moved downward, tracing his chin, then onwards across his jaw to his left ear, curving to avoid an open patch of sloughed skin. It wasn't the only one. There were two on his right cheek and a large one on the side of his neck, the full extent of its angry margins concealed by the collar of his Peter Rabbit jumpsuit. Made of the softest white cotton, it was the out-fit I'd planned for our baby to wear on his first trip back to our home. Across the garment multiple little rabbits sat on their haunches, cheeks puffed with chewing, holding a large carrot whose tip was missing. Sewn into the outside seam of the left shoulder was a tiny blue tag saying this was a genuine item. Matching mitts and booties were still in the bag.

I moved aside a fold of blanket so I could see more of him. His left arm was angled, bent at the elbow, resting on the front of his chest. The embroidered cuff of the suit's sleeve was hitched a short way up the forearm. Between the rim of the cuff and the base of Bobby's closed fist circled a thick, clear plastic band, fastly secured. In the pocket of the band was a slip of paper, words typed on it in small letters. The portion visible to me said, ‘Baby of Alicia Rus …' The bend over his wrist's bony prominence obscured the rest. A vein line, its discolouring more pronounced than that of the skin, ran up the back of his hand to the fourth knuckle dimple. Lifting his hand gently I straightened his four fingers and thumb from their loose clench. The webbing between them was puffy and wrinkled, like he'd been soaking in a tub for too long. Such small and frail digits, even in their waterlogged state, the creases over their joints swollen to mere faint lines. On his distal pads were enlarged whorls. Opaque slivers of flesh were peeling back from around the nails. I closed his fingers again, covering his hand with mine.

We remained in silence.

Me, my husband and our baby.

I was conscious of sounds from outside the room – muffled voices, the ping of a call bell and the diminishing roll of a trolley. But these didn't enter my reverie. The only noise that was real to me was the whistle of breath from my nostrils and the clicking of the clock's second hand. A mere moment in time, yet this seemed like forever.

‘Would you like an autopsy to be performed?' Dr Taylor had asked us.

‘Is it necessary?' I said.

‘It's your choice. But it may help to find out exactly what went wrong.'

‘We'll think about it,' Nick said.

Dr Taylor stood there by the side of my bed. His gaze kept shifting between Bobby and the green blanket. From the edge of my eye I saw his hands move to cross each other and rest at the front of his belt. Speckles of blood soiled the cuffs of his white shirt. I wanted him to leave but also needed him to stay. It was as if I believed he would somehow be able to reverse this. He stayed for a few more awkward minutes, then made his excuses and left the room with a final ‘Sorry.'

Nick put his arm around my shoulder and we stayed that way with Bobby cradled against my swollen breasts, which were aching with the need to lactate.

‘You haven't called my mum yet, have you?'

‘Do you want me to?'

I shook my head. Once our families knew, it would be real.

I stared across the room at the wall opposite. Glints of slatted sunlight reflected off the glass that protected a framed painting. A lamb standing on a hill's green slope. Underneath it, against the wall, was an empty cot on wheels. It was the one in which the midwife had brought Bobby back to me once she had cleaned, weighed and dressed him.

I looked back at my son and squeezed his hand gently. His soft nails pressed into the folds of my palm. I turned to look into Nick's bloodshot eyes.

‘Can you ask the midwives if there are any nail clippers around?'

‘Why?'

‘I don't want him to be buried with long nails,' I said. I started to cry.

Island

Lillian and Meredith

Stephanie Buckle

A new resident is moving in. Room 17 has stood vacant for a week, stripped down to its essentials. Even the steel-framed bed that Mr Karamantzis had occupied was gone. I had ventured in at last, and was having a little poke around, just in case there was anything left of Mr K; but there was nothing, not even a bit of soap. Then Nina came in.

‘You're not allowed in here, Lillian, we have a new resident coming.' She shooed me out with her little bustling steps, the spikes of her hair bristling like armour.

I watch them moving the new resident's furniture in – a rocking chair, a queen-size bed. A woman then; men don't have rocking chairs.

But I miss her arrival because the hairdresser chooses that moment to come and cut my hair.

‘Oo, you want a bit taken off here, don't you, dear?' she says, craning towards my reflection in the mirror and twisting a fistful of my hair into the nape of my neck.

She tells me she's seen the new arrival in the foyer.

‘She's in a wheelchair,' she says, ‘a very fancy one. Apparently, she's been in one all her life, can't walk at all. Would that be better or worse than losing your mobility late in life, do you think?'

I watch the tufts of my grey hair falling under the deft snips of her scissors.

‘Mr Chesterton gave her a lovely welcome,' she goes on. Mr Chesterton is the manager. He's a dapper little man who likes to treat everyone like a film star. He kisses my face when he greets me, holding my hand as a lover would.

‘What is her name?' I venture. A kindergarten question.

‘Meredith,' she says. ‘She asked them if she could have the newspaper delivered to her room every morning!'

Meredith. Able-minded and fresh from the world.

I stand in the empty dining room, watching the two Indian girls setting the tables. They have sleek black hair and big fleshy red mouths. The knives and forks and spoons clatter onto the formica table tops. The glasses follow; they fling each one into position as if daring them to break.

‘You're too early for tea, Lillian,' one of them shouts to me.

Nina comes and moves a chair away from the table nearest the door. I take hold of her arm, although I know she won't like it.

‘What is it?' she says, frowning and peering into my face, as if I might be hiding something.

I must be quick and not think about the words. ‘I would like to move to a table closer to the door,' I manage.

‘Really?' she says. ‘Any particular reason?'

I try for an expression that conveys, ‘It's a bit embarrassing to talk about.'

‘Well, that shouldn't be a problem,' she says, pulling her arm away. ‘There's a space next to our new resident.'

*

Meredith has short, thick, white hair, but her eyebrows are black, and jut across her face like two deft strokes of a Japanese artist's paintbrush. She must be old, to be in here, and yet the skin of her face is extraordinarily smooth. She has the direct and curious expression of someone who is in complete possession of all her marbles.

She eats her dinner with gusto, and between mouthfuls, asks me a lot of questions. How long have I been here? Where did I live before? Why did I come here? (In a blessed surge of spontaneity and whimsy, I tell her it was because I couldn't be bothered to cook any more, which is at least partly true, although Suzie said I should take the bed while it was offered, even if I didn't need it yet, as no one could say how rapid my deterioration might be.) She is intensely interested in everything I say, no matter how odd.

In return, she tells me she lived on a farm out west somewhere, and it got too much for her. I want to ask her how she managed a farm by herself in a wheelchair, but my question is too urgent and too complicated, and slips from my grasp. She smiles though, as if I have asked it.

‘I never married, and never had children,' she says. ‘Never looked after anyone except myself and my animals.'

‘I, too, have been an independent woman,' I say, ‘though there have been—' The words scatter in all directions. Is it,
friends who
shared certain things
? – no, too complicated to remember or explain. Is it,
moments of terror
? – ha, plenty of those.

‘Yes?' Meredith says, encouraging.

‘There have been times when I wished I'd taken my mother's advice!' Meredith laughs as if she understands perfectly, and explanations are unnecessary.

Pushing her wheelchair, I feel stronger straight away. My legs steady, my feet become firm. Only the question of direction remains difficult, as all the corridors look exactly the same, and seem always to return to the same vases of flowers and rows of chairs. But Meredith points confidently ahead, and I follow, all down the winding way to her room.

*

Now that Meredith is here, I have no need of my own room. I sit in her wooden rocking chair quietly, my hands folded in my lap, but I don't rock. I want no distraction. Sometimes, Meredith reclines on her bed, propped by many cushions, her bright eyes settled on me. Sometimes, she sits in front of me in the wheelchair. She has the air of a benign doctor, who is prepared to take the time to get to know her patient. She asks me questions, as if there is a great deal that she needs to understand. Was I ever married? Did I ever have children? What was my career? Did I travel? Did I ever live overseas?

Even if I had the words, my answers wouldn't matter. There is nothing to know about me that has any relevance. I laugh at some of her questions, and shake my head. I say, ‘Ah well!' and ‘I can tell you one thing for certain!' and she hangs on my words, waiting, and the silence stretches, balloons, mutates around us, changing its meaning a dozen times, until we are done with it, me with trying to find the words, and she with wanting to know the answers, and we just sit, nodding and smiling together, as two elderly women will do.

‘Come on, Lillian, go back to your own room now!' Nina says, flicking her purple nails at me. ‘You're disturbing Meredith.'

Meredith has fallen asleep on the bed. Her head has lolled to one side, and her lips are slightly apart.

‘Come on!' Nina says again, so loudly I am afraid she will wake Meredith, so I follow her out of the room. On the way, I take the little wooden horse from the top of Meredith's chest of drawers so that I can look at it more closely back in my own room.

‘It's afternoon tea down in the dining room!' Nina calls after me. ‘Go down and have a cuppa!'

Is she going towards the dining room or away from it? I walk slowly to the end of the corridor where it branches three ways. There is a large fabric collage hanging on the wall here, of a midnight blue sky and bright yellow, gauzy stars. I gaze at it, holding the little horse deep inside my jacket pocket, and I think of the glittering stars in the black bowl of night above Meredith's farm.

‘Has the plumber arrived yet?' an ancient gentleman enquires of me, passing slowly through this junction.

‘I can't help you, I'm sorry,' I say. Meredith's corridor is empty again, so I turn and go back to her room. I close the door quietly behind me, and settle again in the rocking chair to wait for her to wake. Peace settles round me like an old shawl.

*

I'm in love, of course. It's unmistakeable, that flood of exhilaration and relief, which washes everything else away. It's like returning to a landscape I thought I'd never see again.

But as soon as I have it, I begin to dread that it will be taken away. I'll lose Meredith, she will leave again, or someone else will claim her. I can't risk a single moment away from her.

‘Leave Meredith alone while she's got her visitor,' Nina says, hauling me from the chair, pulling me from the room. I am a house torn apart by a tornado and the wind howls through me. I must be with her. I stand outside the door, where I can just see the visitor, sitting in the rocking chair where I was sitting. She is a coarse-skinned woman with cropped orange hair. Nina opens a door into the courtyard, and taking my hand leads me through it and shuts the door behind me.

I lie on top of my bed, staring at the dark. If I had stood up to Suzie, and refused to be bullied into coming here, I would never have met Meredith. But if one idle day, out of so many indecisive weeks and desultory years, I had said to myself firmly, ‘Come on, Lillian, what you need is a good old fashioned walk in the country,' I could have chosen the road to her farm, I could have seen her, by the pig pen perhaps, struggling with a bucket of kitchen peelings, and offered to help her. My arms would have been strong, my flesh young and firm, I could have lifted her from her wheelchair then.

Suzie rings me, but I have nothing to say.

‘Who is Meredith?' she asks.

‘I want you to know ... I want you to know ...' is all I can say, because my words have taken instant fright at the phone.

*

‘Would you like to walk over to the park?' says Suzie.

‘Ah!' I say, and I think of trees, and the wide empty spaces between them.