He remained there, his back to her, until she left the room. It felt like a long time before she did so. When at last she went out the door, down the hall and out front to the car, he changed into a pair of XXL jeans, put on a shirt and followed her. She had the engine running and the radio on when he climbed into the car beside her. They didn’t say a word until they were sitting before Doctor Bradford. And even then, they didn’t say much.
They’d met at uni. Clive, a rugby player and business student; Prue one year into nursing at UTS. He was tall and thickly built with shoulder-length, knotty hair, sun-bleached and just a little feral. They were in a bar on Saturday night. Clive had rolled his ankle saving a try that afternoon. Two back rowers, his friends, had carried him to and from the bar on their shoulders. After a few jugs, they’d dumped him in a corner, surrounded by beers. It was then that she’d come to speak to him. She noticed him arrive, she said. Something about his size, and yet his softness, had impressed her. She wore a Wallabies jersey (they’d play later that night) and no make-up. He could see tiny freckles scattered across her cheeks like flakes on a cappuccino. She had a high, girlish laugh that reddened her face, shy of it, Clive could see, and this had made him like her straight away.
Until then, he’d had one girlfriend, in high school. She’d dumped him after three months for a guy named Steve Crick, the class wit, and a long-time antagonist of Clive’s. He hadn’t only picked on Clive, most of the time he’d spared him, but every so often he’d turned around in English when the teacher had asked Clive a question, leered cruelly, waited for Clive to speak. He’d never done well with words. Maths had been his thing, commerce, but when it came to words he’d struggled. He’d made it into business through rugby. Without that sport, he’d have gone to TAFE. Who knows, maybe he’d have been better off.
After graduating, he spent two years trying out a finance job. He couldn’t hold the concepts, which moved and turned and twisted around inside his head, still enough to see them. He struggled on Excel. As much as he was liked – his soft, droopy eyes and shaggy mop of hair made it impossible not to smile at him – the firm had had to let him go. He found a new role in admin, where he’d been ever since. Prue never minded. She loved him because he was Clive, not for a job, or a skillset. She wasn’t about to leave him for Steve Crick, anyway. No, Prue hadn’t seemed to care at all, and life was sweet.
That is, at least, until the episode.
Gazing at the courtyard now, he wondered what to say. The pavers gave off grey steam; a weak spray of light had fallen through the clouds. The dark moss, the wet-looking plants that lined the square of outdoor space, appeared to Clive drained and dull, even now in that yellow smear of sunlight. Prue was still watching from the kitchen, her eyes on his back. She was waiting for him to say something, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t help thinking his words might get stuck and instead of coming clean and whole, an awful, croaking squeak would issue in their place. Then what would she think? That he couldn’t even speak anymore. That to his weight, his dependency, she could add speech impairment. Then what would she make of him? The truth was, he didn’t know what to say. He still loved her. He wanted her as much now as he ever had. But something held his giving back, as if his weight had squeezed at his loving and choked a part of it off.
He heard his wife at the bench behind him make a long, deliberate sigh. She waited for a moment. His neck prickled. Then she turned around and walked upstairs, leaving him alone. He opened the door and went outside. A magpie stood dead still on the pavers, as if caught in the midst of a scheme. It considered him briefly, then, seeing he wasn’t a threat, returned to pecking the grime.
The episode had happened at work, as he sat before his computer at the insurance firm. His post: information specialist. Which meant he entered data every day. He went to work in the mornings at nine, and casually punched numbers into his screen for eight hours. He didn’t even have to add them up. To most, a boring job, but for Clive, who’d struggled so much in his previous role, a congenial way to spend his days.
He was liked. People stopped by his cubicle to ask him how his week was going, knowing they’d see his soft, kind face look up at theirs, refreshed by his innocent smile. Life at work, and home, was good. Prue worked long hours at Royal North Shore, but she liked her job and despite the fatigue it sometimes caused, she rarely let it drag her down, at least not as far as Clive could tell. Once a year they went to New Zealand or Tassie or Melbourne, somewhere colder than beloved Sydney. They would, soon enough, try for a child, something each had wanted from the beginning and now, as much as possible, were ready for.
But one morning a year ago, Clive arrived at work, sat down, logged into his computer and froze solid on his chair. He couldn’t move his body. He couldn’t turn his head or even shift his eyes from left to right. When the ambulance officers arrived, he was stuck in the seated position. They couldn’t stretch him out. They put him in a wheel chair and took him to the ambulance, where he stayed, silent and frozen, until the hospital. He didn’t move or talk for three days. His brain showed no signs of swelling. The CAT scans didn’t pick up any bleeding or fluid or tumour tissue. He didn’t have a bug. He hadn’t caught a virus. It was, they decided, psychological. And this, for Clive and Prue both, was somehow more concerning.
Bradford’s office was tiny. Clive had noticed this on their first session. The desk sat in the middle of the room with just enough space for chairs either side. If he’d read books, he didn’t parade them in bookshelves like you saw in the movies. There wasn’t room for bookshelves. Even the chairs seemed small; Clive’s squeezed at his hips.
That first session, Bradford had talked about trust. He’d sat with crossed legs, his hands joined at the fingertips, and spoken about comfort. Much was said about honesty. Clive had gazed at his own lap. He’d picked at his nails beneath the desk. Every so often Prue had glanced down at his hands, a kind of reprimand. But he couldn’t help it. He went on picking.
On the drive home after their first session, Prue had said nothing for a while. She’d looked straight ahead through the windshield, her hands on the wheel. The inner-city buildings, drab, silver, black, flashed past. The busy web of streets at Central squirmed with bustling people, and Clive wondered, among all of them, who were truly happy.
‘Are you hungry?’ she’d asked, finally, ten minutes from their house.
And Clive had said, ‘Nup,’ though he was starving as usual.
‘Well, we’ve gotta do a shop anyway. I’m working all weekend on roster and we need to do one, Clive.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to do one.’
She sucked her teeth. ‘I bet.’
‘What?’ he said, though he knew what she was getting at. Ever since the episode, she always had to go with him, or go alone; he’d never do a shop by himself. In the beginning, she was fine with that. He’d been scared that he would freeze again. In the meat aisle or the produce section, or worse, at the check-out. Nearly a year had passed without relapse, though. The doctors had said the chances of another episode were lower with every month. He simply had, she’d said, to have a little faith.
‘It’s just like…I’ve got to hold your hand with everything.’
‘You do not.’
‘Clive.’ She put the blinker on, slowed the car; Woolworths was a hundred metres on the left. ‘Did you listen to Doctor Bradford? No more shirking the truth, please. We have to be honest, remember?’
They pulled in and parked. She got out and closed her door. Clive didn’t move. He sat still with his seat belt on and stared at his hands. She came around to his side and stood by the door. Then he sensed her shoulders slump at the edge of his vision, and she turned around and walked, alone, to the supermarket.
Throughout their six sessions with the counsellor, they had come to talk about themselves as if the other wasn’t there. As if it were Clive and Bradford. Or Prue and Bradford. Not a three-way scene. This freed them up. Prue had even gone so far as t
o mention Clive’s weight, something she’d never done before.
‘It worries me,’ she said, across the desk. ‘I sometimes lie in bed at night and listen to his chest wheeze and I worry that he’ll not wake up.’
Clive sat there, fighting back the urge to cry. When his turn came, he talked about her nagging. How with every new entreaty, a sharp feeling, like a pin prick, would pierce his neck, and make him feel worthless, which inclined him towards inaction even more. He said his piece in slow, disparate chunks, not knowing if it was helping or causing more damage. And every time he finished, Bradford looked at him, as if expecting another comment, which he could see, lurking in Clive’s eyes, but which Clive never made. And he was right, the counsellor. Clive did have something else. But he didn’t want to talk it out, lest the fear come true. For while he’d not frozen stiff since that first time a year ago, he felt shudders, vibrations, vast and violent rumblings in his bones, as if at any moment, the hinges that held him together would seize up once more.
He’d returned from the hospital a year ago to find that Prue had transformed the house. She had changed the positions of the lounge, the arm chairs, the coffee table. The courtyard was swept clear and the paving stones scrubbed back to new again. She had bought paintings of landscapes and hung them in the rooms, and down the hallway. Even the plates and cutlery were new. At first, Clive had been grateful. She had always been caring, ‘born to nurture’ he had often said, and this was yet another expression of that love. But after she’d led him down the hall and into the revived living room, she’d turned around and stood, her hands on hips, watching him. He hadn’t been able to look at her. He’d walked around, running his fingers across the surface of things, hoping she’d let him be for a while, or at least stop staring. It was as if she wanted an answer and wouldn’t budge until he gave it to her. Not knowing what the question was, he just said, ‘Thanks for coming to pick me up,’ then went outside to the courtyard.
The next few days seemed to Clive beset by tension. He knew, if he could just sit down and hold her, stare into her eyes like he’d always done, he would feel himself refill again, with the strength she’d always given him. But something held him back. He was better now. He could move his limbs freely. It had been a week since he’d frozen and now he had thawed completely. But he felt a strange giddiness, a kind of vertigo, in his core, as if with every little move he made he were stepping near an edge, and there was wind gusting up its crumbling face, and if he wasn’t careful, he would tumble off, and tumble, into an abyss. So he sat by himself in an armchair, while Prue sat on the lounge. She would glance at him every other moment, as the news or The Block or The Bachelorette flickered on the screen. Clive didn’t watch it. Instead, he eyed the new painting which hung above it. A wetland, it looked like. Several large ponds fringed by long yellow grass and in the sky, low and arrowed close together, a flock of birds flying west, towards a patch of orange twilight.
Of the doctors’ various suggestions, that Clive lose weight had been the primary one. With exercise and a healthy diet, he could reduce the risk of another episode. They told this to Clive while he recovered in hospital, and to Prue when she came to take him home. He took to late night walking, every second day and once on the weekend. It was cooler at night and the sparse traffic and empty footpaths eased Clive’s spirits enough to let him think. Or at least that’d been the idea. In truth, as he meandered the blocks around his home, down to Wentworth Park, past the fish market and back to Glebe again, his mind hung in a fog some way in front of him. He could see it there, shaded and draped and occluded, just beyond his reach. He couldn’t remember when it had left him, perhaps it had always been disconnected, or maybe it was the episode. All he knew was that he couldn’t hold his thoughts still enough to see them, like the finance concepts he’d struggled to understand, all those years before. One night, after trying, he found himself at the end of his walk, outside the front gate of his house, his chest expanding massively with every breath and his hand, pale and plump in the streetlight, outstretched to open the latch, but not moving, frozen in a state of limbo that dragged on for an awful time, five seconds. Ten…
At last, he managed to move his arm, and in turn his hand, flick the metal latch up and walk through the gate to the front door, which he opened also, to his relief. He stood in the hallway, his back against the door, breathing and looking at his feet.
Prue waited six months. Clive felt her watching on as he returned to work, found a routine, took his walks, tried to put the episode behind him. She gave him space, and time, and then one night, or so it seemed, decided she couldn’t wait any longer. She came home from work at nine to find Clive lying on the lounge. She walked in front of the TV and stood blocking it.
‘We need to talk,’ she said, and he sat up.
Hands akimbo. Blue nursing scrubs. Her hair tied back.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
She waited, gazing at his face in that way she had since the episode, like a teacher standing before a naughty student. It was as if she wanted him to work it out. But he couldn’t. Or he wouldn’t.
‘Clive,’ she said. There was a silence. ‘Would it kill you to look at me?’
He did so, reluctantly.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Was that so hard?’
He quickly looked down at his lap.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong, Clive? Ever since your scare you’ve barely made eye contact. It’s as if you don’t know who I am. Or you’re afraid of me. Clive? Clive!’
‘What?’
‘We haven’t made love in six months.’
He flinched at this, not knowing what to say. Then he stood up, his eyes on the ground, and left the room. Over the months to come, she would try again to confront him, and he would passively evade her every time. She’d shake her head at him after he’d left the room, or as he was leaving, so he’d know she’d meant him to see it. He’d eat his meal on the lounge those nights she wasn’t working, and she’d sit up at the bench alone. When they went to the supermarket, he’d drag his heels as she walked on ahead with the trolley, while he traipsed in her wake like a child.
Bradford had been her last resort. Up until the episode, they’d had it good, in bed and out of it, so Clive could understand her bafflement. It wasn’t as though his freezing stiff had had to affect their relationship. It wasn’t a natural consequence, as far as the doctors had said. But the truth was, it had. And now, six sessions in, he stood on the courtyard pavers and tried to work out why. The moss, growing and spreading before his eyes like a disease, had overwhelmed her scrubbing. The magpie, bored perhaps, ambled across the stones, took one last look around, then flew up and out of view.
If he could just get his thoughts straight, he thought, watching the ground. If he could blow away the fog and see his mind. And he was trying to, there in the grey glare of afternoon, when he heard a crash from inside the house. He didn’t move straight away. He cocked his head to hear again.
‘Clive,’ he heard. ‘Clive.’
He turned around and went inside, crossed the living room boards, walked down the hall. At the foot of the stairs, Prue was sitting, her palms flat on the floor behind her, one knee bent.
‘Clive, I fell. God Clive, I’ve broken something.’
He stood beside her, looking down at the damaged limb.
‘Can you get the ice pack?’
‘Yes,’ he said, after a pause.
‘It’s in the freezer door.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
He walked out to the kitchen and stood before the fridge. But as he stared at the silver handle…
He knew what he had to do. If he just put his arm out, used his hand to open the door, he would find the ice pack, cold and hard and sky-blue. If he just raised his arm, got the pack, turned around, and turned, through the great rolling mess of himself, with all the layers weighing him down, he could go to her, his wife, and give her what she needed. He willed himself to do so. He closed his eyes
tight, scrunched them up into wrinkled slits, and sought it from himself. From his distant mind, and from his body, came stiffness, like a door that won’t budge, rusted, buckled.
‘Clive,’ she was saying. ‘Clive.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He whispered it. ‘Yes.’
I’m coming honey.
Farewelling Time
‘Where were you yesterday?’
‘I was here.’
‘Here? You didn’t come in.’
‘But…we worked on the Fletcher case all day.’
‘That was on Monday.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Yesterday was Tuesday.’
‘Come again?’
And that was how it began. McCarthy would leave the office of a Monday night and return on Wednesday morning. He’d arrive at his usual time of ten minutes to nine, expecting to face Tuesday with all its buzz and liveliness, only to see it was Wednesday. His boss let it go on for a month, supposing McCarthy overworked. He was the best liked and highest performing lawyer at the firm. Clients called him to talk about their personal issues as often as they did to discuss legal matters. He always gave people a sense of self-worth. It was enough to spend time with McCarthy in a lift or at the coffee machine to feel relieved, to see the anxieties of life and living in the modern world alleviate, for just a moment. He was a good man. He carried a concern for others in his heart, always.
No Neat Endings Page 8
