A Lifetime of Impossible Days

by Tabitha Bird

  Harry’s words mix with the silent screams inside me. This is my Grammy. The rules are different for her. Grammys are people you fly to the moon for because they taught you to bake jam drops and feed possums, and so you bloody well ignore paperwork.

  ‘I’m coming. Right now.’

  I have no memory of pulling my jeans on or finding my car keys or getting in the car. Only the foggiest understanding that Sam held me, begged me to let him wake the children so he could come too. The drive to the hospital is too long and full of blurred headlights.

  Harry is standing by her bed when I arrive. The smell of bleach stings my nose. Instantly, I feel eight again: Lottie is broken in the hospital bed and there is nothing I can do.

  Grammy’s bedroom is thick with a stillness broken only by the doctor’s movements as he listens through his stethoscope and administers an injection.

  ‘To keep her comfortable,’ he says.

  I nest her hand in mine, but this isn’t my Grammy. The hand is limp and cold. Though Sam asked if I wanted him to come, I didn’t want to wake the kids. I should have woken the kids.

  I try to take her in: eyes closed, lips slightly parted. Try to marry the image of the Grammy before me with a woman so big she gave away her dog, Tuppence. All I want to do is shake her out from under the wrinkles. This isn’t you, Grammy. Fight!

  Her eyes are closed, hair the white of a winter sky. This cannot be a journey that she has decided to go on without me. A fine adventure, I imagine her saying.

  I think of all her midnight teas and jam drops. I think of her painting snails, and of her words of the day. Her words that run through my life. These aren’t things you merely say thank you for. It cannot be too late to tell her what it all meant to me.

  Tears fight to free themselves from the edges of my eyes, but I don’t want to cry; I want to remember.

  A light hand on my shoulder. It’s Harry. ‘I’d like to stay – I mean, if you want me to?’

  I nod. The clock ticks. Footsteps echo in the halls outside. But these sounds aren’t right. Grammy will get up any minute and put the kettle on, saying, ‘Out here, poppet,’ and, ‘Bring the fruit loaf when you come.’

  Harry asks the doctor questions I can’t bring myself to ask. I find a phone and eventually get hold of my mother, but she says she won’t come.

  ‘A last chance for tea?’ I say. I beg.

  If only I could call Lottie. She’d want to know about Grammy, I’m sure. We could link fingers and pinkie-promise to always be there for each other.

  When I return to the room, Harry is holding Grammy’s hand. ‘You listen to me now, Grace.’ He moves his hand to touch her cheek. ‘You can’t leave, you hear? I won’t let you. Willa is here and there will be possums to feed.’

  Someone brings tea. Nurses come and go. Harry and I sit in the small room holding tea, letting it go cold.

  Murmurs crackle from between my Grammy’s dry lips, and she turns her head ever so slightly.

  ‘What are you saying, Grace? You’re telling me I’m being a bugger, and I’ll bloody well let you go when you’re ready? Go mow the lawns and look out for the possums? Is that what you’re saying?’ Harry refolds the top of her bedsheet and plumps the edge of her pillow. I wish I had flowers, a whole spring garden.

  Harry reaches around to stroke Grammy’s hair.

  The room fills with neighbours, and then empties. Grammy was loved by so many that even the lateness of the night will not keep her friends away. The air freshener continues its rhythm, as does the clock. The night wears on and Grammy’s rasping attempts to talk cease.

  A nurse appears in the doorway. Susan, her nametag reads.

  ‘This is Grace’s elder granddaughter, Willa.’ Harry’s face looks hollow.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Susan says, gruff but gentle all at once.

  Then her gaze rests on my Grammy. Susan doesn’t carry a clipboard or check her watch. She doesn’t write notes or take measurements. ‘All you can do is be here, and you are doing that wonderfully. It is a great privilege. Grace is waiting for her angel to come and lead her away,’ she says.

  Susan speaks low, answering my questions. ‘You have some time, but not a lot,’ she says, rubbing my Grammy’s arm.

  It’s 12.33 am now. I begin to wonder how to store the minutes.

  Later, I make tea in the visitors’ kitchen. The doctor is with Grammy, and I can’t bear to watch him honour her wishes.

  ‘Is your mum coming?’ Harry asks.

  I try not to notice how sad he sounds for me.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I can’t look at his face when I say it. ‘At least I told her. At least she knows.’

  A hole opens inside me. My mother and grandmother have not spoken in years, but I still thought she would say her goodbyes.

  Harry rests a gentle hand on my shoulder when we return to her room. ‘We are being with her, and that’s what she would want.’ He thinks for a minute. ‘You know what else she’d like?’

  ‘What?’ I say, hopeful.

  ‘A story.’

  I let myself rest on the chair, while he settles on her bed. ‘Hmmm. Did I tell you about that bloody Mercedes driver?’ he says to me.

  I lean closer, knowing I must be looking at him the way Lottie did when I told her stories to calm her shaking.

  He rests the teacup on Grammy’s bedside table and takes her hand. ‘Well, her truck broke down one morning on the road between –’ He stops to think. ‘Oh … I forget where now. Anyway, I happened along and saw your grandmother with her tyre blown in the middle of nowhere. She says she doesn’t need any help – “Fine and dandy, thank you” – but invites me to chat and keep her company while she changes the tyre.’

  ‘Fancy car pulls up, driver gets out, and there he is. Nice suit and everything. Anyway, he walks over. “You got a moment?” he says to Grammy.

  ‘“Sure,” she says. “It’s just me standing around changing my own tyre.”

  ‘“Can you change my tyre too, then?” the bloke says. “The front left one feels wonky.” Damn straight! Turns out this guy doesn’t want to get that suit dirty. Your Grammy called him a name I can’t repeat. Changed his tyre, though.’

  I can picture the scene, Grammy with her apron over the top of overalls and boots. I’m surprised the story doesn’t involve jam drops being hurled at the man.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Harry pats her hand. ‘No-nonsense woman who likes heels and gumboots. Said she’d never remarry and I respected her wishes, but she was a special woman for sure.’

  At some point I call Sam. His tenderness reaches through the phone and makes it difficult not to dissolve into a mess.

  At 3 am the morphine is increased and a nurse stays in the room with us. My Grammy is falling and I am falling with her.

  I count a full fifteen seconds between each breath. Again and again, her breathing stops. We count. She gasps. We exhale.

  The doorway is empty. She is not coming, Willa. Your mother isn’t coming.

  Then Harry moves closer. We check the pulse on the side of Grammy’s neck, the way the nurses showed us.

  ‘Grammy?’ I say. ‘My special Grammy?’

  No breath comes. The flicker of a pulse fades to nothing. She is leaving me.

  ‘She’s gone.’ Harry takes me under his arm. There is no rush to call anyone.

  Death has gathered together the soft soul of a woman that cannot be replaced.

  Sam is asleep when I crawl into bed beside him. I sleep hard for the rest of that day.

  Sam notifies Solomon, who asks me over the phone if I want to come in and talk about my Grammy. I don’t. There is no bandage I can place over that gaping wound. I’m haemorrhaging from the collateral loss of too many people, of too many things. Lottie. Frog. My childhood. Even the loss of my mother and father. Not the parents I have, but the parents I was desperate for them to be.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  1990

  Willa Waters, aged 33

  Grammy le
ft instructions for me in her will. Don’t eat jam drops alone. Never forget your stories.

  The song ‘Stayin’ Alive’ plays at Grammy’s funeral. My mother doesn’t approve, but Grammy is adamant in her last will and testament: Wear bright-coloured clothes. String up balloons and fairy lights. Play my favourite songs.

  Her instructions were to blow bubbles as the cask is carried out. I watch it happen in silence. Sam holds Eli’s hand and has Seb on his lap. I feel nothing. I try to squeeze some feeling out of me, but I’m ashes waiting to blow away. A ghost of myself.

  Grammy wills her house and everything in it to both Lottie and me, but her special gift for me is a 1930s typewriter. I don’t know what she was thinking giving it to me. My stories never saved anyone. When I try to write with it, the keys jam, the ribbon cannot be re-inked and the body is rusted.

  At Sam’s insistence, I drive to see Solomon the afternoon after the funeral. Halfway there, I pull over. A dust devil spins in a nearby paddock.

  There is no point in going to counselling. What magic is there for refuting the weight of my father’s words? Liar. Slut.

  I’m tired, in the way you are when it seems no amount of sleep will ever restore you. Heavy-boned. I simply want to close my eyes. All the years of trying to figure things out and save my family and then running from everything. And then I let my honest thought, the one that has been chasing me for days, slip from my lips. ‘I don’t want to be alive anymore.’ It shocks me even as I say it. But I know it’s true.

  An hour later, I drive home. Sam is in the shower, unaware that I sat in a park and never showed up for counselling. Unaware of how the darkness waits inside me. The boys are in the living room playing. The hum of life in my house seems so removed from the emptiness inside me that it doesn’t sound real to my ears.

  Grammy never spoke much about death. She spoke about living, because to her death was a part of the same story. A seamless passing, like turning pages. She didn’t tell me how to be left behind, though; how to live without hope. Where to take myself when I am dripping, my life cupped in my hands.

  While Seb is crawling into the toy basket in the living room I slip into the children’s bedrooms to say goodbye. Some part of me screams out that they won’t be okay without me, that they need me. But the part now in control says that I am a burden on them, a broken woman who could never mother them the way she wants to with this brokenness inside.

  I run my fingers across the colourful spines of Seb’s board books, the ones Sam reads to him every day. Lion looks at me, her head to one side. For a long time, I stand there holding one of those books. I look at the title. Goodnight Moon.

  ‘Yeah, goodnight,’ I whisper to no one and everyone. Lion pads behind me as I walk into Eli’s bedroom.

  Wozley is lying on the floor. I pick up Eli’s stuffed dog, the ears now threadbare. How many times have I held it? How many times have I held my son?

  I snuggle the teddy into Eli’s bed and hear my boy’s little voice. I love you, Mummy. You’re the bestest Mummy in the world.

  Seb toddles in some time later to find me on the floor of his room. Lion sits in my lap, refusing to be moved.

  ‘Mumma?’

  I can’t talk. Instead, I reach out for his little hand.

  ‘Shh, now.’ I sit him on my lap with Lion.

  Later, Sam bathes the boys and I busy myself in the kitchen, trying to make a meal fit for the little kings I love. The happy splashing in the bathroom reaches my ears, and I try to soak the sound of it into my very being.

  When I finish cooking, I ladle chicken pasta into a dish, put it in the oven to keep warm, and go to have a quick shower before dinner. Lion watches me constantly as if she knows. If dogs aren’t in heaven when I get there, I will ask to go wherever they are.

  ‘Where’s Mumma?’ I hear Seb ask Daddy.

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s go find her,’ Sam says.

  Moments later, they are at the door to our bathroom. They find me drying my hair, trying to pretend I haven’t heard their sweet voices.

  Seb says, ‘Mumma!’ like he’s found something very special.

  Sam reaches out to pull me close. ‘I know this might not be the right time, but the private investigator called. No news on Lottie yet, but she did find out where your father lives.’

  I nod. I don’t know what I would say to Lottie at this point anyway. Sorry. A thousand times, sorry.

  Seb reaches for me, but I pull away from them both.

  I would take these children’s mumma away? The empty one, yes. The mother who will only make things worse in the future if she lives, by divorcing their father and splitting up their world? Super Gumboots Willa, who can’t tell me what happened that night in the art shed and never fixed anything for Lottie? Silver Willa, whose mind lives in the past, still desperate to heal what can’t be remembered and mend what is irreparably damaged? Yes, I will take all of these Willas away.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  1965

  Willa Waters, aged 9

  It’s late at night, maybe early the next morning. What time is it when you hate yourself ’cause you can’t help your family? Middle Willa thinks it’s my fault that Daddy hurt everyone ’cause I never told about the bad stuff. It’s my birthday, but I don’t deserve to have one.

  Lottie sleeps. I stand beside her bed watching her chest. Up. Down. Air in, air out. But watching her doesn’t stop her from falling down stairs. One day maybe she’ll do more than break her leg and will end up like Frog Dog, because I know now that watching over someone doesn’t keep them safe.

  Maybe I can do what Middle Willa said: call the police. I’d have to tell them that I can’t watch Lottie enough, that I said yes to Daddy in the art shed and that Mummy and Daddy fight ’cause of me. I don’t know if I can find those words stuffed way down deep. What if the police get mad ’cause it’s all my fault? But I have to try. For Lottie.

  I tiptoe down the hall to a phone on the kitchen wall. It’s heavy in my hands. I dial so quietly.

  Someone on the other end picks up. ‘You’ve called emergency. Do you need –’

  I hang up, then creep back to my room and look in my mirror. I poke my ribs. ‘I hate you,’ I say. ‘You hear me?’ I poke myself again.

  Under my bed is a small suitcase. I throw my glasses in. They should come with me, because if they stay here they’ll get thrown out. A crown made out of newspaper, some jam drops Grammy made, a torch and The Magic Faraway Tree, all stuffed inside the suitcase. My gumboots are beside my bed; I was going to wear them when the police came to take away Daddy, but they don’t matter anymore. Shoes don’t make a girl. They don’t make a boy. They don’t make anyone anything. I’m leaving them behind. Lastly, I have my jam jar, which I dug up from behind the mango tree yesterday and have been keeping under my bed.

  Now I have enough things for running away. This is one birthday Mummy won’t have to worry about. It won’t matter if she says the cake’s not perfect, even though I’ve told her I love it anyway. She won’t have to worry about a perfect party or if I get any marks on my dress or if her hair is combed up just right. She can throw my whole birthday out now if she wants.

  Mouse-quiet, I take the book out of my suitcase and stuff it up my shirt. Because … I don’t know why. Because I don’t have Frog Dog, and something tucked up with you is better than everything in a bag.

  I stop at my bedroom door to listen to the house: a ruffle of breeze in the curtains, Daddy snoring. I go back over and stand next to Lottie sleeping in her bed, watching her hard one last time.

  ‘Sorry.’ It’s all I can think to say. If I go away, maybe she’ll be her giggly self again. Maybe Mummy and Daddy will stop fighting. Maybe three people is all this family can take.

  I flatten myself to the wall, trying not to sniffle, and creep down the hallway back to the kitchen. I wish Frog was with me. I’m not very brave without her.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to myself. ‘Keep going!’

  In the kitchen, I po
ur water into the jam jar, screw the lid on and hurry to the back door. Trying to turn the key, I drop my bag. Thud. Loud enough to wake Daddy.

  I stare into the dark hallway behind me and slowly pick up my bag.

  A light goes on in their bedroom. Someone’s talking.

  I reach for the door. Unlock, unlock, unlock. It takes forever, the keys jingling this way and that. The book falls out of my shirt. I don’t rescue it from the floor. The voices are louder now. Someone is standing in the hallway.

  The lock turns and I run. There’s only the air in my face, the jar of water in my hand and the bag bashing into my side. I run into the ocean-garden, unscrew the lid of the jam jar and pour water everywhere.

  I race up to Silver Willa’s back deck. All the lights are off. Is she in bed?

  I stop at the back door. It’s locked.

  Peek through. Take my torch out and shine it around.

  There’s no one there. No furniture in the living room.

  ‘Silver Willa?’ I tap on the back door. No answer.

  I thump my fist against the door. Kick. Scream. No one comes. I drop my bag and search around for something to smash the door. I don’t care about breaking it. There’s a rock in the yard and I throw it so hard I think maybe my arm will come right off. But the rock bounces back and hits my shin.

  She’s gone. She hates you, too, and she’s gone.

  ‘Silver Willa!’ I scream. Everything, every bit of me, is in my screaming. I see Frog biting Daddy’s leg. Scream. He kicks her to the wall. Scream. Lottie, with her broken leg, is locked in the room with Daddy. Middle Willa hates me, Silver Willa has left. Stupid Super Gumboots Willa, just a little girl. Scream and scream.

  I turn and run back towards the ocean-garden.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  1990

  Willa Waters, aged 34

  It’s very early on the morning of my birthday. All night I’ve fumbled through my sleep and every time I woke there was the realisation that Grammy is dead, that I’m still here and don’t deserve to be.