This Is the Life (13 page)

22

Good News

I had to clear the books out and empty the wardrobes of paint-spattered T-shirts and ragged shorts. There was little fiction on the shelves. Louis seldom read it. Out of his collection of hundreds of books, maybe ten were novels. The rest were technical, or how-tos—how to build a boat, a canoe, a xylophone, a guitar, a table; how to work with stained glass; how to do metalwork; how to take an engine apart; how to build a house from straw bales.

And then there were the biographies of men who had sailed oceans in homemade dinghies, or who had lived on rugged farms, or walked up Everest in their old shoes. And there were books on Zen and Buddhism. He had eclectic interests; he just didn't like made-up stories much, and why did he have to? Why should anyone? It's all lies anyway. And while much fiction is said to contain some inner and relevant truth of how life is, a lot of it doesn't, and just holds many false depictions of reality. Not that there's anything wrong with escapism—until escapism is all you've got.

In books, there are men who solve the cases and fathom the clues and bring order and justice to the world, and while they know how to take a beating and even a brief hospitalization, they always make a comeback and are ready to go to work again in up-and-coming sequels. And while it's good to read about them every now and again, they don't seem to square with anybody you meet while you sit in the hospital waiting area, and the consultant still hasn't seen you yet, though your appointment was for an hour ago.

The guys who walk down the mean streets and solve the cases never have those problems. They deal with the things that fiction can fix. And that doesn't include tumors.

* * *

I was bagging things up and putting them out on the deck, prior to throwing them into the back of the ute and driving to the dump.

The front half of the Queenslander house was rented from Bella by a young couple, Tony and Beth. They had a yappy dog that Tony was always shouting at, telling it to be quiet and to behave itself. Tony was taciturn and unfathomable and sometimes surly. Louis believed he had offended him somehow, but I think he just didn't know what to say to him.

So I was out on the veranda and suddenly there was Tony, out on his veranda too, right next to me. It would have been impolite to ignore him, so I said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said.

“Just clearing stuff out here,” I said.

“Right,” he said.

“Holiday today?” I asked, for it was midmorning on a weekday and he usually worked. He put up and took down
For Sale boards for real estate agents. Or he turned them into Under Offer boards. Or Sold boards. Though he told me once that his heart and ambitions lay in aircraft maintenance, only it was too late for that. But as he was still in his twenties, I couldn't exactly see why, but maybe didn't know enough.

“No,” he said. “I'm taking the day off. Beth's inside. We're very upset.”

“Oh?”

“Tykie got run over last night.”

“What?”

“Nobody's fault. He slipped the leash and ran out into the road. The driver was upset too, but it wasn't his fault.”

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”

“We loved that little creature.”

Really? I thought. Because you shouted at it a lot. But maybe we all shout a lot at the creatures we love.

“Well, I'm very sorry to hear that, Tony.”

“I mean, I know it's not like losing a brother—”

“No, no—it's still—you know—a living thing.”

“Anyway, we're taking the day off.”

“Of course.”

“I'd better go in and see how Beth's doing.”

“Yes, of course. Sure.”

He went inside. I carried on bagging things up and putting them out on the deck in boxes and shopping bags. Things for the Salvation Army to the left, stuff for the dump to the right.

As I brought some more books out, I heard footsteps. Two women, one middle-aged, one slightly younger, were filing up the steps to the veranda. I noticed that each one carried a thick book with a black leather cover. They were
well but soberly dressed. They had a healthy, wholesome look about them. They were well-fed verging on plump, but by no means obese.

“Good morning,” the middle-aged one said as they advanced. “We're here this morning with the Good News and—”

“Can I stop you right there?” I said. “This isn't a good time, I'm afraid. My brother just died and I'm clearing out his house here, since I have to go home soon.”

They held their Bibles tightly. Maybe this contingency hadn't happened before as they did their rounds, spreading the Good News and the pamphlets and telling anyone receptive enough to listen all about Jesus.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” the older woman said, and it seemed she probably did most of the talking and the other one was there for observation and backup. “We're very sorry for your loss. Maybe we could call back another time.”

If she says she's going to pray for me, I thought, I'm going to lose it.

She didn't. She just turned and they retreated back down the stairs.

But they hadn't finished yet. They walked along the path and came up the stairs to Tony and Beth's place, and they tapped upon the door.

“Look, I . . .” I started to say. But something stopped me. I don't know what.

They tapped on the door a second time and Tony came to open it. He didn't look so great—stubbled and even hungover.

“Yes?”

“Good morning,” the same woman said, and they both gave him smiles. “We are here today to spread the Good News. Have you heard that Christ is risen and that—”

“Our dog got killed last night,” Tony said. “It was run over by a truck. No one's fault. It just happened.”

The two women looked embarrassed, but more than that, a little suspicious too. They glanced across at me, maybe looking for signs of faint amusement and well-stifled laughter and guffaws. Perhaps they thought we'd seen them coming and had stitched the stories up between us. But, in the circumstances, they could scarcely call us liars.

So, “We're so very sorry to hear that. So sorry for your loss. Maybe we can call again another time.”

The expression on Tony's face made the answer to that question a negative. He closed the door and went back inside.

The two women looked back across the veranda at me, and I think I maybe shrugged. Then down the stairs they went, and back out to the street, and they kept on walking. They didn't try any other of the neighboring houses. Maybe they didn't think it would be a good idea. Maybe they didn't think it was worth their while.

Religion is something for the living. The dead already know the truth. Faith isn't something they need now. They have the hard facts. They just don't come back to tell us, that's all.

23

Masks

Louis was going frantic, looking for something.

“What is it, Louis?”

“It's the bits and pieces.”

“What have you lost?”

“The—bits and pieces.”

“Is it the cooler bag?”

“It's the—you know—bits and pieces.”

“Which particular bits and pieces? Which ones?”

“You know. You know. The—bits and pieces.”

He got angrier, more frustrated.

“The drugs? Is it the drugs?”

“Yes. The bits and—”

“Which ones? The chemo?”

“No.”

“Anti-nausea?”

“No.”

“Anti-inflammatory?”

“No!”

“Eyedrops?”

“No!”

“That's all, Louis. That's all.”

“No, no, no. The bits and pieces!”

We found the blue cooler bag and upturned it. The blister packs fell out and the bottles and his cell phone and his will.

“It's all here, Louis. Everything's here. What is it?”

Once, some years back, he had tried to explain to me what he did when he worked in chemistry.

“I solve problems,” he'd said. “The sorts of problems most people wouldn't even understand.”

“How about the problems that everyone does understand, Louis?” I'd asked him. “Can you solve those?”

“Nobody can solve those,” he'd said. “Or we wouldn't be in this mess.”

Louis had degrees and diplomas in things most people didn't begin to understand, but now the words wouldn't come, not even the simple ones.

“Let's try again. From the beginning. What do you think you've lost?”

“The—damn it, I'm so stupid, so bloody stupid—”

“Louis, it's just a bad day, that's all. Sometimes you remember, sometimes you don't.”

“It's the—bits and pieces!”

“Is it the drugs?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then what have we missed? Let me see the sheet.”

I took the drug sheet out of his bag and starting reading through it.

“Nausea, chemo, inflammatory, eyedrops—steroids?”

“Steroids!”

“Okay. They're here. They're in the bottle. There. They're right here.”

He took the bottle and couldn't unscrew the child­­­proof cap.

“Damn it!”

“It's all right. Here—”

“Damn it!”

“You want a glass of water?”

“Cuppa tea. Cuppa tea.”

“Okay. I'll fill the kettle.”

“What are we doing?”

“Just sit down, Louis. I'll make some tea.”

He took the steroids and drank the tea. I put on a DVD we'd bought at the supermarket. A moody and dark-lit spy thriller adapted from a famous novel. It was highly acclaimed, all about the British establishment and a spy service peopled by ex–public schoolboys and Oxbridge graduates, with whom it was hard to have much sympathy, though they anguished in their privilege.

When the film was over, Louis said, “I didn't get a lot of that.”

“Me neither,” I said. “And I'm still supposed to have all my brains.”

He gave me a doubtful look.

“I'll get a shoot-'em-up next time,” I said.

“Get Liam Neeson,” he said. “He did a good one about these guys who kidnap his daughter and he goes after them. But now there's a sequel and they're coming for him again, and this time it's his wife and his daughter they get.”

“Maybe, if there's another sequel, they'll come and get his cat,” I suggested.

“Liam doesn't take any crap,” Louis said.

“Okay. Let's go to Blockbuster and rent it, if they've got it in.”

Sometimes it isn't subtlety you want. It's someone who sorts things out and doesn't take any crap. We forgot about everything for more than a hundred minutes. It was money well spent.

* * *

They kept Louis's fencing mask at the radiation department. When the radiotherapy course was finished, they gave it to him to take home as a souvenir, or in case it might be needed again.

It just looks like a fencing mask. It's really a clamp. It's tailor-made to fit the patient's head and to hold it in place while the large radiation machine loops around and bombards the selected area of the brain with radiation. You don't want to go radiating the good part of the brain—instead of fixing tumors, you'd be causing them.

You lie on a flat bed. The mask goes over your head. The nurse clamps it into place, and you're held rigid. You wouldn't get the mask off on your own. You're imprisoned. It isn't an experience for the claustrophobic. I asked a nurse how they dealt with those who were. “We talk to them,” she said.

Some masks are so large they don't just cover the head, they come down over the neck and shoulders, and even the whole chest. They are made of some kind of rigid white plastic and mesh.

You see people wandering around the waiting room, carrying their masks with them, like bit-part actors from some strange Japanese play. And then they get called, and they're on, and away they go to make their appearance.

There are all kinds of tumors and nobody wants any of
them. But some are curable and some are not, and the purpose of the treatment is not to cure those, but to prolong remaining life. But whether the quality of that life prolonged is worth the struggle and the pain is an individual matter; it's a decision you need to make for yourself.

The doctors will usually advise you to have the treatment. They don't want to be sued. But their treatment is formulaic, and they dare not deviate from standard procedures, for fear of the lawyer's writ again. It makes you think of old-time medical men, with their cupping and their leeches. The point isn't necessarily whether the treatment does a whole lot of good; the point is that it is accepted by the medical profession. No one is going to criticize you for following the accepted medical path.

Tumors of the brain come in various sorts—some primary, some secondary. They can travel into the brain from other parts of the body, but do not go the other way. A primary brain tumor will not travel outward and cause trouble elsewhere. It could, eventually, given sufficient time, but it doesn't get it.

Primary brain tumors come in four basic kinds and are graded accordingly. The most serious is a glioblastoma multiforme, a grade four. That was what Louis had. They are slightly more prevalent in men than women. No one knows what causes them, though there are indications that the causes could be genetic and/or environmental and could be due to exposure to certain chemicals, at some point in the past. Louis had worked in an asbestos mine and in other branches of the chemical industry. But who knows? People who've never even seen an asbestos mine still get them—the way people who've never smoked a cigarette in their lives still get lung cancer.

Why is it that we aren't afraid of death all the time, but only when its imminence is announced? We know what's going to happen. We know there is no choice. Yet when we hear it knocking it always comes as a terrifying surprise, a shock, an injustice. We all have to face it, but it's hard to be brave. The only way to go on is to pretend it won't happen.

* * *

Louis's radiation mask was there on the bookcase. I didn't want to keep it, but I didn't feel it was right to throw it away. But I did. What else could I do? Take it home in my hand luggage? Hang it on the wall, like some voodoo mask?

I drove the ute to the public dump and threw everything over the barrier and into the pile. I thought, There goes a life. One day all my personal effects and papers and the things of no use or value that I have hoarded far too long, they'll all go—things of little use and less beauty; books I kept without any intention of reading a second time.

We accumulate so much stuff, so many things, so many objects. There are so many items we just cannot seem to throw away, thinking that maybe they might come in handy, and sometimes they do, but mostly they don't. They're just left there to bother our relatives and give them something to do to take their minds off things.

When our mother got old, Louis had her come and live with him—in which act he had my admiration, as she would have driven me insane in two days. She died of a stroke, four years later.

Louis had kept all her belongings in boxes in the basement. So there were two batches of personal effects to get rid of. All her plates and cutlery were there, her chocolate-box pictures and her black-and-white photographs of unspecified
relations from decades ago; her rosary and her crucifix and her picture of Jesus with a crown of thorns on his head and blood dripping down into his eyes that I remembered from childhood. A lot of Catholic homes are places adorned with grim reminders. I can think of few other religions whose central, abiding, defining image is that of a man in agony.

So it wasn't just Louis and his past I was throwing away, it was her too. Though I kept a little of each of them—some photographs, some small, personal possessions. It is strange to feel the potency of cheap material objects—things you wouldn't look at twice in a charity shop, were they not impregnated with the scent and the memories of your own past.

Maybe my son would like to have this pen, I thought; perhaps this bracelet would suit my daughter. But I knew that, really, the things were too old-fashioned and of another era. The new generations must look forward. It is those who age and those who lose who look back.

In the end I got it all down to a suitcase to be checked and a small piece of hand luggage. It all fitted into that. Two lives. There they were. Put together, it was one hundred and forty-seven years of life. If I'd been a little more ruthless, I could have made do with the hand luggage alone.

The rest of it was all in my head—once-shared memories that I now shared with no one. I was the only one who survived now, who remembered the rented flats and the bed-and-breakfast places, who recalled the time Louis and I had to sleep in the bathroom, because we had no other space. All the cold and the making do and the mean poverty that was part of so many lives then and no doubt still is. All the love and all the flashes of laughter. A classmate once told me that we lived in a slum. I hadn't known it until he said so. I'd thought we were fine.

There was nobody left to know. There was no other witness to all those ordinary, familiar, banal, dramatic, mundane, extraordinary, devastating events.

I remembered seeing my father in the back room of a pub into which children were allowed. There was a piano there. He sat down at it and began to play—fluently, easily. I'd never known he could play the piano and I never saw him do so again. But to whom is that even vaguely important now? Not Louis. Not anyone.

And so it must be with all lives, and all those who survive for a while longer. All our importances that mean so little to others—and all their recollections, so similar to our own, and yet which barely touch us, except in their evocation.

One and a half suitcases. I checked the large suitcase in at the bag-drop at the airport. The assistant asked me if I had packed the bag myself. Then she read out a list of prohibited articles, and I confirmed I did not have any of them in the case. The objects that it contained could do no harm to anyone.