by Aimee Said
It started off well enough – I did a few high kicks and shook my imaginary gold hotpants for a couple of tracks – but then I remembered what Mum had said about her and Kylie having something in common now and I kind of lost it. I reminded myself that Kylie was now cancer-free, but then I got to thinking about how she was much younger than Mum when she was diagnosed, and how she could afford the absolute-best medical team and best treatment, which Mum definitely can’t, especially with me and Ziggy to support. And then I started crying and I couldn’t stop, and then I felt as if I’d run a marathon and I fell asleep. My bedside clock says it’s now 6.18. I was asleep for hours.
I go to Dad’s study to tell him we should get going for the hospital, but the only sign of life there is Boris’s swishing tail. He follows me to the kitchen where I see a note on the table, written in Dad’s barely legible scrawl.
Hope you slept well. Zig and I have gone to see Mum. Will pick up something for dinner on the way home.
Dad
13
The creaking garage door and the wheeze of the Volvo’s engine alert me to Ziggy and Dad’s arrival.
Ziggy comes into the kitchen with two bulging bags. “Dinner is served,” he says. His wicked grin tells me they’ve chosen something from Mum’s list of banned foods, even before I smell the deliciously greasy scent of fried chicken. He plonks the bags in the middle of the kitchen table and rips open a box of chips, shoving a handful into his mouth.
“Do you have to be such a pig?” I ask, grabbing plates and cutlery from the dishwasher, which is still waiting to be unpacked from last night.
Ziggy makes a happy porcine snort and reaches for more chips while Dad unpacks the rest of the food.
I survey the spread of fried chicken, nuggets, chips and mashed potatoes. “Where are the vegetables?”
“Potato is a vegetable,” says Ziggy through a mouthful of nugget. “Right, Dad?”
Dad half-nods.
I give him an inscrutable death stare. “You could at least have got corn. Or coleslaw. What’s Mum going to say?”
Dad looks like a dog that’s been caught going through a garbage bin. “It’s just one meal, Fray. We’ll have lots of vegies tomorrow to make up for it.”
“Stop whingeing and have a nugget,” says Ziggy, thrusting the box in my face.
Ever since Siouxsie told me about how nuggets are made, they’re up there with sausage skins on my list of Foods I Won’t Eat. I select the crispiest looking drumstick instead and devour it in four bites before reaching for another and a tub of mash.
“Mum seemed a bit more herself this afternoon,” says Dad. “She lectured the dinner lady about overcooking the broccoli and the lack of wholegrains on the breakfast menu. I promised we’d take some of her homemade muesli tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming,” says Ziggy through a half-chewed mouthful of chips and nuggets. “Me and Biggie have stuff to do.”
“Well, you can come and see Mum first,” I say. “She’s more important than Biggie.”
Ziggy rolls his eyes. “Rack off, Fraymond. Just because you have no life, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t enjoy ourselves.” He pushes his seat back from the table with a deliberate scrape, making the noise that he knows sets my teeth on edge, grabs the last of the chips and heads for the garage.
“Go easy on your brother, Sausage,” says Dad when the oomph-thwacking starts. “Seeing Mum like that gave him quite a shock.”
“He’s not a baby any more. And don’t call me Sausage.” I pick up my plate and scrape the bones and gristle into the bin on my way out of the kitchen, leaving Dad sitting alone at the table.
By the time I get to my room I wish I could rewind the last five minutes and just give Ziggy the death stare for being such a brat and let it go. Or at least not walk out on Dad like some whiny little kid. If Ziggy hadn’t made that snide comment, I would’ve been okay, but it’s just about the last thing I need to hear right now. Make that second last. The last thing I need to hear is Dad stacking the dishwasher when it’s my week to do it.
“I’ll do that,” I say, taking the dirty plate from Dad’s hand. “You go and relax.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. You should check on Boris, anyway. I think he’s got a furball.”
Dad gives me a small, grateful smile. It disappears when the phone starts ringing. “Do me a favour and get that will you, Fray? I can’t face another conversation with your grandmother today.”
He walks past the ringing phone to his study, shutting the door softly behind him. I take a deep breath and answer, ready to accept my karmic punishment.
“Sorry I couldn’t call sooner.” Or perhaps my karmic reward. The sound of Dan’s voice instantly makes me feel ten times better. “How’s your mum?”
I tell him about Mum looking grey and about the tubes going in and out of her and the drain from her side. It feels good to be able to talk to someone about it finally, and Dan seems happy to listen. The only thing I don’t mention is that Mum had a mastectomy, partly because it seems too intimate to talk about her actual breast, and partly because I’m worried that it’ll freak Dan out to know that my mum only has one boob now.
“I’m really sorry I was stuck with Dad all day,” he says when I finish venting. “I wish I could give you a big hug right now.”
I almost ask him to ride across the park and do just that but I figure if he really wanted to, he would. “Maybe tomorrow?” I say instead. “I’ve got this op-shopping trip with Sooz and the girls that I can’t get out of, but I’m going to the hospital first if you want to come. I know Mum’d like to see you.”
“I don’t know, Fray, me and hospitals aren’t a great mix. You don’t mind, do you?” We both know there’s only one answer to that question. “I do want to see you though. How about we go for a long ride next time you’ve got a few hours free?”
“That’d be great,” I say, overly cheerful to hide my disappointment. “Mum should be home in a couple of days – maybe you could pop by and say hi to her and then we could go for a ride or something?”
“Yeah, something like that. Sorry, Fray, but I have to get off the phone. Dr Phil’s cracking down on the ten-minute phone call rule.”
According to the timer on our phone we’ve only been talking for eight minutes, but even in my head it sounds pathetic to point that out.
I feel so much better, so much lighter after talking to Dan that I decide to bake Jay’s brownies before I finish tidying up from dinner. If Gran could see me, she’d tsk and mutter her favourite saying about messy cooks making mucky cakes, but I figure by the time I finish the brownies the kitchen’ll be just as messy again and I may as well clean it all up at once.
It’s after nine o’clock and I don’t have time to experiment with a new recipe, so I stick with my standard double-chocolate fudge recipe and add some dried cherries and slivered almonds. While they bake, I stack the dishwasher and wipe down the kitchen benches. It’s midnight when I finally set the brownies out to cool, but the kitchen smells delicious and is gleaming even more brightly than when Mum’s rostered on to clean it herself.
Exhausted, I fall into bed next to Boris and drift off to sleep, imagining Dan giving me that hug.
“The Lockhart Express to the Women’s Hospital departs in half an hour,” calls Dad, jangling his car keys outside my door. “All aboard that’s coming aboard!”
I realise with a start that it’s almost eight o’clock. I’ve been staring at the crack that runs across the ceiling, from the top of the window to the light that hangs above my bed, since 5.07, when I woke up from the dream I was having about Mum’s funeral. When I first noticed the crack, in the pale half-light of dawn, I thought it looked like a path or a road. I imagined it leading someone across the barren, empty desert of ceiling to the window and the trees outside. Now that the sun has risen, I can see it’s deeper and more jagged than I thought. More like a scar.
I glance at the to-do list that I made at half-past six.
Things I have to do today
Visit Mum.
Drop off brownies.
Op-shopping.
Boris’s furball treatment.
Dinner – something nutritious!
I lie in bed thinking that I should get up immediately. Mum’ll be waiting for us – not least because we’re bringing her breakfast – and she’s probably coming down from the drug-induced high and beginning to realise the awful truth about what’s happened to her. A better daughter would have been thinking about that last night, instead of fantasising about her boyfriend. But the more I think about getting out of bed, the more paralysed I feel, as if an invisible force is pinning me down. Until Boris starts his hacking again. I sit up just in time to avoid the wad of cat spit, fur and undigested grass that flies out of his mouth and lands near my pillow with a moist splat. Boris eyes it with the feline equivalent of a smirk before turning his attention to washing his tummy.
After I put my sheets in the washing machine, I head for the bathroom. I can tell Ziggy beat me to the shower because the floor is saturated, as is the bath mat, and when I go to wash my hair the shampoo’s empty. Worse, there are hairs stuck on the soap. Dark, curly hairs. I lob the soap and the shampoo bottle past the shower curtain towards the bin and start mentally composing a stern lecture for Dad to give Ziggy about how he’s going to have to pull his weight around the house till Mum’s better.
There’s no sign of Ziggy by the time I get downstairs, but I can see exactly where he’s been. The kitchen that was spotless when I went to bed looks like it hasn’t seen a bottle of surface cleaner in weeks. A trail of chocolate-brown dust leads from the open Milo tin to the empty milk carton to the dirty spoon on the counter to the half-drunk glass surrounded by crumbs from the hunk of brownie he helped himself to.
If Ziggy left the kitchen in this state when Mum was home, he’d be on kitty litter duty every day till school goes back, but he knows Dad won’t pull him up about it. Even if he wasn’t distracted by worrying about Mum, Dad would prefer just to clean it himself rather than have a fight with Zig. I consider telling Mum, but even as I think it I know it’s the last thing she needs to hear right now. Instead, I take the chore roster from the fridge door and write Ziggy’s name in place of mine in the “Boris’s Bathroom” column.
Dad comes into the kitchen whistling, something he only does when he’s either extremely happy or extremely stressed. His eyes are smiling but they are also a bit glassy, and he’s wearing the shirt that Mum reckons he looks sexy in (yeah, love is blind, as Gran always says) but he hasn’t ironed it. Happy or stressed? I can’t tell.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning,” he croons when he sees me standing with a knife poised over the brownie tin, trying to work out how to salvage what’s left after Ziggy’s attack. “Good to see you’re up and raring to go. We’ll head off five minutes early, if you don’t mind. I want to stop in at the twenty-four hour florist on the way and get something un-pink for Mum’s room.”
I don’t know if Dad should be driving in his current state, but there’s no tactful way to tell him that. “Actually, I’m going to take my bike. I have to drop off what’s left of these brownies to Jay afterwards.”
“Suit yourself. Travel safely.” He resumes his whistling, grabs Mum’s muesli from the pantry and heads for the garage.
“You too,” I call after him.
14
Mum’s sitting up in bed, staring out the window. She still has the drain but the IV stand is gone and the beeping monitor is switched off, and she’s wearing one of her own nighties instead of the hospital gown. All in all, she looks much more like Mum than the frail patient I saw yesterday.
“Hello, darling,” she says when she realises I’m standing at the door. “Isn’t it a glorious day? I told your father, when I’m better we’re going to take up bushwalking on the weekends – days like this are too lovely to spend indoors.”
When I’m better. She sounds so sure of it, so convinced that it’s a matter of when, not if.
“Where’s Dad?”
Mum puts on the chatty voice she uses whenever she impersonates me. “Hi, Mum. How are you? Did you survive the revolting mush that passes for dinner in this place?” Even less than twenty-four hours after surgery she has the energy to deliver a sarcastic lesson in good manners.
“Sorry. How are you? And where’s Dad? He left ages before me. He should’ve been here by now.” If he’s been in an accident because I let him drive when I knew he was acting weird, I’ll never forgive myself. And neither will Mum.
“He’s gone to find a vase and get some milk for my muesli. Why are you so worried?”
Relief drains the adrenaline that’s been pumping through my veins. “It’s just that there were some real maniacs on the road this morning. It must be a full moon or something.”
Mum looks sceptical. “I think the moon actually has to be out to have that effect. Anyway, he made it here just fine.” She pats the bed next to her, indicating that I should sit down. I lean on the edge of the mattress, trying not to touch her in case I hurt her. “How are things at home? Is everything still in one piece?”
“Yes,” I answer, because despite the hairy soap and furballs and fried chicken dinner, nothing is actually broken.
My monosyllabic answer doesn’t put Mum off her line of questioning. She’s used to it from our daily post-school interrogation. “And how are you?” she asks.
“Fine.”
“‘Fine’ like you were when Dan ran away, or ‘fine’ like you were when he came back?”
“Do you have to bring Dan into everything? I do have other things in my life, you know.” Mum looks hurt and I instantly regret saying it. What kind of person tells off someone in a hospital bed? “Sorry,” I say quietly, keeping my eyes focused on the pattern woven into her hospital-issue blanket. “I didn’t sleep very well, that’s all.”
Bad choice of words. Mum flies into Concerned Mother mode. “Is something wrong? Do you want to talk about it?”
“There you are! I was beginning to worry about you on your bike – the traffic was awful this morning.” Dad has a vase of sunflowers in one hand and a bowl of muesli in the other. He’s grinning and holding them up triumphantly, as if he’s just magicked them out of thin air.
“Fray was just telling me how well you’re all getting on without me,” says Mum, sliding her hand out to squeeze mine gently.
I get to Switch at 11.05, having narrowly avoided being sideswiped by two buses, a truck and a minibus from the Parkville Senior Citizens’ Centre. There’s sweat running down my back, partly from busting a gut to get here, partly because it’s already eleventy degrees in the sun, and all I can think of is a long cold drink. I’d meant to leave the hospital in plenty of time to take the shadier long route but “I have to go and spend the day shopping with my friends” felt like such a lame excuse for cutting my visit short that I stayed with Mum until the last minute.
There’s a rapping on the cafe window behind me as I chain my bike. I turn to see Siouxsie pointing to her watch and then at the bus stop across the road. I nod. Yes, I know we’re catching the bus to go shopping.
Jay is at the counter when I open the door and step into the deliciously air-conditioned cafe. “Here she is, and just in time, too – I sold my last brownie ten minutes ago.”
I hand him the container. “Dried cherry and almond. I’m afraid it’s a couple short of a dozen. Ziggy got to them.”
Jay laughs and hits the No Sale key to open the cash register. “I guess he’s only human, after all,” he says, holding out a twenty-dollar note.
I look at the orange bill, wondering if he expects me to give him change, since it’s not a full batch.
After a few seconds, Jay pushes the money into my hand. “Think of it as a bonus. From what I hear, you’re in for some serious shopping today.”
“If we ever get there,” says Siouxsie, chivvying Steph and Vicky past me, towards the door. “The bus is due
in two minutes and if we miss it, it’s a twenty-minute wait for the next one.”
“Can I just get a glass of water first?” I ask. “It’s really hot out there.”
Steph pours a glass from the jug on the counter and hands it to me. Siouxsie looks like she’s about to pop a vein.
“Take it with you,” says Jay. “You can bring the glass back later.”
“I’ll just drink it quickly.” I lift the glass to my lips, but Siouxsie’s already halfway out the door.
“The bus is coming!” she shrieks.
Steph and Vicky bundle me out in front of them while Siouxsie races across the road to hail the bus. I cover the glass with my hand, but a lot of it sloshes out, splashing down my leg.
“You can’t bring that with you,” says the driver when I go to get on.
“But–”
“No buts,” he says, pointing to the No Food or Drinks sign above the windscreen. “Tip it out or get off.”
If I was by myself, I’d get off, but my friends are making pleading faces from the back of the bus so I turn and pour the water into the gutter. The driver smiles smugly as he hands me my ticket.
I make my way up the aisle, pretending not to notice the other passengers giving me what-kind-of-idiot-carries-a-glass-around? stares.
“What a fascist,” says Siouxsie when I finally get to my seat.
“Actually,” says Vicky, “he’s more of a petty dictator than a fascist. Fascists believe–”
“So, what’s the plan, Sooz?” asks Steph, who hates talking politics even more than I do.
Siouxsie counts off our destinations on her hand. “First we’ll hit the Old Dogs’ Home in Kingston for some classy designer cast-offs. Then we’ll head to Fran’s Frock Emporium for some serious foraging, and if we’ve got any time or money left, we can do the St Vinnie’s warehouse on the way back.”
