So I did, feeling ridiculous, while woman and child watched.
‘Do it ten times,’ Bridget bossed and I did.
‘Now you have to go into the water,’ Bridget said, and Carrie touched her shoulder.
‘I should be getting dinner. Would you mind if I went back to the house? Is it okay with Jenny if you stay here for a bit without me?’
What? I practically yelped. Take care of an eight-year-old?
But the boot, it seemed, was on the other foot. ‘I’ll make sure she’s okay,’ Bridget said seriously, as if they’d already discussed this, and before I knew what was happening, Carrie had lifted her out of the wheelchair and onto a rug.
‘I’ll come back in an hour. Or Jack will,’ she said and she took off before I could as much as bleat a protest.
‘Go into the shallows now,’ Bridget informed me while I was still opening and shutting my mouth. ‘In the really little waves. Lie on your board like you did on the sand. Put your feet on the back of the board—the reason you’re getting wiped out is because you’re too far forward so the wave pushes you headfirst into the sand.’ She was obviously intoning a lesson long learned. ‘You need your weight to be nearer the back. You paddle like crazy before a wave reaches you, let the wave catch the board while you’re lying flat and then grab the sides, and push to your knees or your feet like I showed you.’
I tried.
Once I was back in the water my teacher was yelling to be heard. I came back in, tugged the rug and we got her down close. Then she abandoned the rug and her jacket and dragged herself into the shallows.
Drifter arrived from somewhere to watch. She got around, that dog.
‘Don’t you lock her up?’
‘She was your grandpa’s dog. She likes it here. She likes the hospital, too.’
A dog, free to roam as she willed.
A disabled kid, waiting to teach me to surf.
This was all so far out of my universe I might as well stop fighting.
So I tried. Over and over, as Bridge yelled instructions. ‘Faster. Paddle faster. That’s good. Steady. Steady. Okay, balance, grab the rails—the sides, I mean—PUSH! Yes. YES!’
And as I surged towards her, sort of kneeling and sort of wobbling. Bridget yelled, ‘UP!’
On approximately attempt number four hundred and seventy-six I did it. I rose to my feet, flung out my hands and stayed standing as the board surged forward. I stood for a whole two seconds at least, and then toppled sideways, to splash in a laughing, giggling tangle of arms and legs in the shallows beside Bridget.
I must have been hysterical. I hugged Bridget and Drifter in turn, then lifted Bridge up in my arms and whirled her around in triumph. We sank down together while Drifter barked beside us. But as I did … for a split second … was I imagining it, or had Bridge put weight onto her legs?
Before I could voice the thought, there was Jack. Striding down the beach, looking incredulous.
‘Jack! Uncle Jack!’ Bridget’s triumphant yell sounded over the deserted beach. Drifter rushed up to greet him, shaking surf and sand all over him. ‘Jenny can surf, Uncle Jack,’ she told him as he reached us, her voice breathless.
‘Jenny has surfed on her knees twice,’ I told him. ‘And on her feet for two seconds.’ But for the moment I’d forgotten the control thing. Me and Bridge and Drifter were like three pups with three tails apiece. Champions.
‘Come in and show Jenny what it’ll be like when she can catch the big waves,’ Bridget urged.
‘I don’t have my swimmers.’ Jack was looking … well, flummoxed might be too small a word.
‘Wear your boxer thingummies,’ Bridget told him. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘Do we have to make announcements about my thingummies for the whole beach to hear?’
‘Jenny won’t care.’
‘You’re right,’ I said roundly, rolling over in the shallows but carefully not looking up at him. Concentrating on remembering how it had felt to stand up. I’d stood on a surfboard. I’d stood on a surfboard. ‘I don’t care in the least about your thingummies, Dr McLachlan,’ I told him.
‘That’s just as well,’ he said, his ready laughter surfacing. ‘Carrie told me to come and collect Bridget. She didn’t tell me it was an ambush. Blush not then, fair ladies, but you’re in for a display of my finest.’
He surfed just as I’d seen him from the house—like a champion. A natural.
First he paddled the board far out, piercing the oncoming waves with such skill that he barely faltered until he was way out. He went way past where I’d ventured, to where the long, low swells had no hint of white, but surged with building power before the long run to the beach.
Jack caught the third massive swell.
Bridget and Drifter and I crouched in the shallows and watched. At first the rising crest had him far out, a lone figure riding the wave as if he belonged; almost a figure in a scene from a movie. Distant. Unreal.
Then the wave curled up and over. Using my long board he had to move to maintain momentum, but he moved like a dancer. He rode its length and Bridget whooped with delight as Jack swooped endlessly under the tunnel it created as it broke. He was using the force of the wave to sweep from one end of the cove to the other, teasing every last trace of energy from the massive breaker, which too soon eased back in the shallows to the soft white foam I’d been practising on.
He was suddenly close to where we crouched.
I’d been watching a demonstration of surfing skill but suddenly I was distracted.
Boxers? Thingummies? What Jack was wearing didn’t seem like underwear. His tartan boxers were just … a part of the man. He was all sinewy muscle, all tanned and lithe and free.
Free.
Where had that come from? He wasn’t free at all. None of us were free.
But in that moment, holding Bridget, watching Jack surf towards us, illusion or not, it felt fine.
12
cactus juiced adj. suffering an injury so bad you’re unable to surf.
‘I’m surfed out.’
‘Already?’ Bridget was all for pushing me on, but I’d fallen for the last time.
‘One more push-up on the board and your Uncle Jack will be pushing me up the beach in your wheelchair.’
‘That’s silly.’
‘Not so silly.’ Drifter was digging a hole and I was ducking, trying to avoid a sand spray. We were on the wet sand just above the shallows where I’d ended up after my last attempt. On my last try I’d knelt for a whole four seconds—my record so far. Bridget was beaming with delight.
Jack was smiling, too, but for a different reason. He was watching Bridget’s pleasure, and I could see his tension lift.
There was so much I didn’t understand.
When I was a kid, I wanted to know how my body worked. I remember staring at my fingers, trying to figure why my thumb didn’t move the same way as the other four digits. And why my knee didn’t bend forward. And why my hair was frizzy when my best friend Rachel’s hair was straight. I was fascinated with bodies—all bodies. ‘Stop staring,’ Muriel would hiss if I saw a veteran without a leg, but I was trying to figure out how he got that artificial leg to kick forward, how bodies repaired, why some things healed and some things didn’t.
When I finally learned how babies happened it was like I’d been given this great, glorious jigsaw puzzle and I had a lifetime to figure it out. How babies were formed, how they fed in utero, how they breathed. Then there was the genetic puzzle, and how some births ended in grief. How to predict and minimise risks.
So it was that kid now, that medical student, that obstetrician who sat back on her heels and asked, ‘How come you’re in a wheelchair, Bridge?’
And the world seemed to still.
I should back off, I thought. I should apologise and change the subject.
I waited.
Jack looked appalled but he didn’t interject.
Right or wrong, we both waited.
And fina
lly it came.
‘Both my legs got broken,’ Bridget said, turning her attention to the hole Drifter was digging. ‘In the car crash. When my mum and dad died.’
I decided to help with the digging. Drifter and Bridget were working on depth. I decided to finesse the concept, shoring up the sides. It’d be an ongoing effort. The waves were rushing in to fill it and the sides were caving in as I shored.
‘Did the doctors use pins and traction?’ I asked.
Bridget dug some more. ‘Yep.’ She screwed up her nose at my shoring efforts and tried to stop Drifter undermining me. ‘If we want a really big hole we’ll have to dig faster. Maybe a bit higher on the beach. Drifter, you’re spraying sand in my face. Yuk.’
‘We need Uncle Jack to help.’ I glanced up at Jack who was looking wooden. ‘Dig, Uncle Jack.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and started to dig.
‘So are your legs getting better?’ I said, and Bridget dug for a bit more and Jack said nothing.
‘I guess,’ she said at last. ‘They want me to practise walking.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Uncle Jack. The doctors at the hospital. Everyone. But I don’t need to practise. The chair’s okay.’
‘Mm.’ I worked on the hole a bit more. I felt like I was walking on glass. I had no right. But …
I don’t need to practise.
Surely it couldn’t do any harm to keep going a little longer.
‘If you could stand up, then Jack could give us both surfing lessons.’ That was a gamble of a statement and I could sense Jack’s tension. But he didn’t let it show.
‘Hey!’ he said, feigning indignation, and I summoned a grin.
‘Well, he might as well make himself useful,’ I told Bridget, not looking at Jack at all. ‘He does seem to surf quite well.’
‘He does,’ Bridget agreed, still digging.
‘And you already know the rules. I bet you’d be really good.’
‘My dad taught me. I could surf if I could stand up. But it hurts to try.’
‘It really hurts?’
‘Yes. And they keep pushing me and pushing me. They say I’ll get better. But I can’t.’
‘Why can’t you get better?’
‘Mum and Daddy aren’t better.’
Yikes. I concentrated carefully on digging but I could feel Jack’s tension building even more. Something about his silence, though, was willing me to push.
‘Sometimes people are hurt so much they die,’ I said cautiously. ‘Is that what happened to your mom and dad?’
‘Yes. And they’re gone. They got buried behind the church while I was in hospital.’
‘That must make you feel really, really sad.’ I gave up on digging and sat back on my heels while I thought about it, still not looking at Jack. ‘My mom’s buried in a place called Nepal,’ I said, and it felt like something inside me was cracking open. When did I ever talk about it? ‘That’s so far away I can’t ever visit her grave. I know that hurts.’
‘But you were grown up when your mum died,’ Bridget said with a child’s surety that this would make it so much easier—and maybe she was right. Maybe.
‘I think I might have been younger than you are when my mom died,’ I said and I couldn’t believe I was saying it. Me, Dr Jennifer Kelly, talking about my private tragedy with a kid I’d known for less than two weeks. ‘Or the same age. I was seven.’
Bridget looked up, her face acute with suspicion. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I wouldn’t kid about something like that.’
‘Were you there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘My mom was a bit … silly. She didn’t look after herself and she got sick. I tried to look after her, but I was no good at it. Then she went to hospital and she died.’
‘They let you look after her?’
‘Mostly. Until things got really bad.’
‘You were seven,’ Jack said, sounding startled, and I dug some more. Fiercely.
‘There was no one else to do it.’
‘No one let me look after my mum and dad,’ Bridget whispered.
‘But you were hurt yourself.’
‘They should have kept them alive ’til I was better.’
‘I bet they tried.’ I glanced at Jack and found his face impassive again. ‘I bet your Uncle Jack tried really hard to keep them alive.’
‘I bet he was too busy looking after his girlfriend,’ Bridget said bluntly. ‘But she died, too.’
His girlfriend died?
I did glance at Jack then. Somehow he managed to give a reassuring nod. Keep away from the sympathy and keep going, his nod told me. His little niece seemed to be letting down a guard I suspected had been up for a very long time.
Okay. I’d started this. I had no choice but to go on.
‘Where’s the church?’ I asked casually, as if it didn’t really matter. ‘Where your mom and dad are buried?’
That had Bridge distracted. ‘You say Mum funny. You say Mom. It’s Mum.’
‘I’m American. I talk funny—remember?’
Bridge gave me a long, hard look, but finally decided to forgive the obvious flaw in American culture. ‘The church is over there.’ She pointed an imperious finger west, to a faint, distant spire.
I sat back and admired the view. Not bad at all. ‘That’s a great place to be buried—if you have to be buried,’ I told her. ‘I bet your mom and dad could see you surf from over there.’
‘They could if they weren’t dead.’
‘Don’t you believe in ghosts?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I think I’m starting to.’ Where on earth was I going with this? I dug a bit more, trying to work things out for myself. ‘You know my grandpa lived here for most of his life? Well, ever since I’ve been here I’ve thought that somehow he’s still watching me. Waiting to see if I ever get to stand up on one of his surfboards.’
Bridget was staring at me. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ And weirdly, I was telling the truth.
Bridget’s small face was screwed up in concentration. ‘You think he saw you do that belly whacker?’
‘I hope he didn’t.’
The little girl grinned and the gloom of the conversation dissipated. ‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘Then I guess he’ll moan around the house and clank a few chains in disapproval tonight.’ I grinned back. ‘Can I borrow Drifter?’
‘Drifter sleeps under Uncle Jack’s bed.’
‘Very wise.’
We returned to companionable digging. Jack was fondling Drifter’s ears, untangling a grass seed that was taking all his attention. Still holding his breath?
‘I don’t think my mum and dad would clank chains,’ Bridget said at last. ‘Sarah might.’
‘Who’s Sarah?’
‘Jack’s girlfriend. She was crabby. But my mum cuddled me all the time, and Dad called me Kitten.’
‘What would they do if they saw me do a belly whacker?’
And the answer was prompt. ‘They’d giggle and say do it again for the camera.’
‘They took photographs?’
‘All the time.’
‘They’d be good to see.’
‘Mm.’ But Bridget’s voice was unsure.
‘They’re in the bookcase at home,’ Jack offered. ‘And on your computer.’
He copped a scornful look from Bridget for his pains. ‘I know. But I don’t want to look at them.’
‘Fair enough,’ Jack said, and we all subsided.
The silence seemed to last forever. There was so much to think about.
Sarah was crabby? Jack’s girlfriend? And she’d died.
Right now it couldn’t matter. Only Bridget mattered.
‘Do you really think they can see?’ Bridget whispered, almost to herself, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
‘I don’t know. But if my grandad can see me, I don’t see why your mom
and dad can’t watch you.’
‘They’d watch if I tried to surf?’
‘I’ll bet they would.’
More digging. Then … ‘Can we come back here tomorrow?’
Uh-oh. What had I done? I didn’t mean to stay involved.
But I’d come this far. I’d hooked myself and I had to continue.
‘If Jack says we can.’
‘Will you be jealous if Jenny and me surf together?’ Bridget asked Jack, and Jack nodded, trying to keep his face under control.
‘Yes, I may well be jealous.’
‘But we can still come?’
‘Don’t you have veggie gardening to do?’ he asked me.
‘The weeds haven’t regrouped yet. Apart from my morning clinic, I’m a lady of leisure.’
‘What’s a lady of leisure?’ Bridget asked and Jack grinned. He couldn’t help it. The tension seemed to have gone, and we were suddenly on the other side of something I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
‘Dr Kelly’s a lady of leisure. Mostly. Here she is, digging holes in our beach while over in New York thousands of mothers are having their babies without her. Some even successfully.’
‘Because you won’t let Muriel go home,’ I retorted.
‘Why won’t you let Muriel go home?’ Bridget demanded, but Jack had had enough. He rose, and lifted Bridget up with him. I stayed kneeling on the sand, and I sensed we were as confused as each other.
‘Muriel has a sore leg and she needs to get better,’ Jack told Bridget. ‘Just like you. But now we need to go. Carrie will have dinner ready.’
‘What time do you want me at your place?’ I asked, but apparently he’d forgotten the promise of shared bookwork because he looked startled.
‘There’s no need.’
‘I promised.’
‘I need to help Bridge to bed and …’
‘What if I come at eight?’ When he made to protest, I turned to Bridget. ‘Bridget, do you think your uncle works too hard?’
‘Carrie says he burns the candle at both ends.’ Bridget seemed to be gaining confidence, as if emerging from a shell that was far too tight. ‘We wake up in the morning and Jack’s been gone for hours, and Carrie shakes her head and says, “What will we do with him, Bridge girl?” But I don’t answer ’cos I don’t know.’
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