‘How much longer will you be?’ he asked, looking at me mournfully. If he’d been Batman’s dog, he couldn’t have looked more pathetic. His ears practically drooped. His shoulders slumped. I spied the biscuit tin near the urn. He took a handful and trudged back to Lily, leaving a little trail of shortbread crumbs after him. He looked like Hansel lost in the forest.
Soon it would all be over. I wished I could give Jeremy some of my confidence. I felt quite energetic sitting there, sort of springy, as if anyone could hurtle lightning bolts at me and I’d just catch them in my teeth. Maybe it was just the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast—you weren’t allowed to if you were having IV sedation. Not having lunch makes you stay alert. Still, I’d made a decision—all on my own. I wasn’t doing this to please anyone else. It was just something I had to do. And I was doing the best I could.
You might think it’s pathetic, a girl sitting there in that clinic, congratulating herself in a situation like that. But I’m telling the truth, once you make a decision, you feel better. You really do. And that’s the way it was.
THE IV SEDATION method was definitely the best choice. You mightn’t agree. Everyone is different. But it worked for me. They attach a little cannula to your vein, and drip the stuff through. It makes you sleepy and the world crumples softly all around you. The softness is like a downy pillow, and you want to sink into it, pressing your head down further and further into the feathers, and there’s only ever deeper layers of softness.
Sometimes I wish you could have a permanent cannula attached to your brain. But I suppose your conversations would suffer. You’d only talk mush, like a paddock after too much rain.
As the doctor and nurses worked, I floated away again. I thought I saw Richard. I smiled at him. It seemed stupid now, not telling him. The world was infinitely understanding. I couldn’t wait to see him again. I’d tell him everything, and he’d say I was the one who was brave.
I think Rosa was there for most of the operation. She pressed my hand and murmured things to me, but I can’t remember what she said. For a minute, when her back was turned, I thought she was my mother. My mother with her hair brushed.
Afterwards, they wheeled me into the recovery room.
Other women were lying on stretchers too. We all had our sheets up to our chins. We were too tired to smile. We were like those white pools of light dropped by street lights. We lay silent and pale, enclosed in our own circles of thought.
I was quite content to lie there forever. Time passed softly. The doctor came round to see how we were. I had an ache in my belly. It was a dragging feeling, like when you have a period. He said I was doing well.
I began to notice things. There was a print on the wall. It was a Van Gogh, I think, the one with the butter-yellow sunflowers in a vase. I propped myself up on my elbows. I looked at my watch. It was 6.30.
God, Jeremy. Lily would be gone by now. Jeremy would still be sitting at her desk. I hoped he had plenty of paper. Would anyone have noticed him there? Surely Lily would have given him a drink. I wondered how much longer I’d have to stay here.
When a nurse came in, I asked if she could find Jeremy. ‘Tell him I won’t be much longer, will you?’ He must have been starving. He’d usually have had dinner by now and be choosing a toy to take into his bath. It would be dark outside.
It seemed ages before she came back. As soon as she walked in, I could tell something was wrong. You could see it in her face.
‘There’s no one by the name of Jeremy in the clinic,’ she said.
My heart clamped in my chest. Then I breathed again.
‘Oh, sorry, I forgot,’ I laughed with relief. ‘His stage name is Robin—you know, as in Batman?’
But her face wasn’t changing.
‘I’m sorry, but there are no children out there in the waiting room.’
‘Did you look at the reception desk? Maybe he’s hiding under it, or in the toilet? Sometimes he plays games like that.’
The nurse bit her lip. ‘I’ll just go and have another look. Don’t worry, just try to relax.’ She helped me lie down. ‘We’ll find him.’
I twisted the sheet in my fingers. I was completely awake now. I looked at each of the sixteen Van Gogh sunflowers.
She was coming back already. I could hear her feet on the polished floors. Tip tap, tip tap. It was a cheerful trot. It didn’t sound rushed, like an emergency.
She was smiling. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I spoke to Jenny.’
‘Who’s Jenny?’
‘The receptionist who comes on after Lily. She said Lily left her a note—Lily had to leave at six and in the note she said that your boyfriend was picking Robin up. If he was late—Tim, isn’t it?—Jenny was to look after him until he arrived. But obviously he turned up on time.’
‘You didn’t find Jeremy?’
‘No.’ The nurse looked at me. She had one of those round open faces. The kind that don’t tell lies. ‘Tim must have come for him, you see,’ she said slowly. She patted my hand. ‘Are you still feeling foggy? Don’t worry, your brother’s probably at home by now, wolfing down his dinner.’
THEY SAID I had to lie there for another half an hour. Time wasn’t soft any more. It was filled with micro-seconds. It was amazing how many disasters you could imagine in a micro-second. For instance: one of the ‘South Africans’ hit Jeremy with a sign and kidnapped him; or, he hit one of the ‘South Africans’ and they took him to jail; or, a meteorite dropped out of the sky and he fell into the crater.
It was better during those thirty minutes to think about meteorites, things with an absurd statistical probability, than anything else.
I wondered if it were still raining. Jeremy didn’t know this part of the city at all. Was he sitting outside on the steps? Why would he do that when it was raining and cold? I remembered him on the porch when I came home that afternoon. Sitting there in the wet and cold.
Oh please, God, let him be there on the steps. I’ll give anything. Make him wet and cold if you have to. It’s all my fault. All my fault with this stupid sex business and shouting the ‘f’ word at him, and him being too sad to run and me making him wait on a vinyl chair in a room full of sad ladies for three hours.
My legs were twitching. I couldn’t lie there any more.
Gingerly, I sat up. I found my jeans folded neatly on a chair. I pulled them on. My stomach ached. Blood oozed. There was a thick bulky pad between my legs. I bent down to put on my shoes. A line of cramp started under my belly button. It dragged down all the way to where the hair started. But my head was clear. It was so clear it hurt. It was like those windy cloudless days when your skin chafes and your hair goes flat. All the clutter disappears when panic blows through you. It blows everything else away.
DR KAVAN DIDN’T want me to leave. ‘Are you sure your friend won’t be coming?’ he asked. ‘He may have struck a lot of traffic. You know, with the rain, and peak hour. I’d like you to wait a little longer …’ He trailed off. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Look, I’ll get a cab.’ I opened my bag and checked in my wallet. ‘See, I have enough money. I was going to use it to buy a book on contraception but—’
The doctor smiled.
We argued for a little while longer. It was hard to be stubborn with someone like Dr Kavan. He’d been so kind and gentle and he’d seen all my private parts. But compared to Jeremy, everything else was fading in significance.
Dr Kavan waited with me until the cab arrived. ‘The clinic will ring you tomorrow, to see how you are,’ he called after me.
‘No, I’ll ring you,’ I called back.
OUTSIDE, THE STEPS were empty. Ten horizontal slabs of concrete. No little boy.
I zigzagged along the length of each step. Just in case.
Maybe he was hiding. Maybe he’d shrunk like Mrs Pepperpot and fallen into a crack in the concrete. Jeremy could vanish like that. But he always got the giggles.
The street was empty too. The protesters
had gone home. A fine curtain of rain blew across my face. It made puddles in the gutters. Jeremy loved to jump in puddles. I always yelled at him about that, because the water would go through his boots into his socks, and he’d get cold. Then he’d get earache and he’d suffer the onion treatment. I’d tell him all this and he’d stop. He always listened to me.
‘Wait for me,’ I’d said. So where was he, for God’s sake? It was so dark—there was no moon, no pinprick of stars in that blanket of cloud. The main streets were lit, but the alleyways and lanes would be thick with shadow. Jeremy was afraid of the dark, like me. Why hadn’t he waited like I’d said?
The taxi driver hooted. He was idling at the bottom of the steps.
I climbed in the front. I didn’t feel very well. ‘Could you drive slowly along this street and around the block?’ I asked him. ‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘It’ll cost you extra,’ the man said. He was picking his teeth with the wrong end of a match.
‘That’s okay,’ I said.
We cruised along like hitmen in the Mafia. I peered out through the window. The glass was foggy so I wound the window down. Drizzle sprayed into my face. Cars tooted behind us. Headlights swam down the smooth black streets.
Nothing. The only person I saw was an old tramp rifling through a garbage bin.
‘Listen,’ said the taxi driver, ‘someone’s going to run into the back of us soon. You can’t drive like this in the city in peak hour. Let’s go, okay?’
I nodded. I gave him my address.
Jeremy knew his address. He knew his phone number and his birthday and the velocity of winds on Jupiter. Surely he could figure out how to get a taxi home. Maybe that’s what he’d done. Maybe he’d thought it’d be an adventure, like Robin chasing Tony Zucco through the city streets. He probably told the taxi driver to ‘step on it,’ and ‘follow that car’.
I couldn’t wait to get home now. My heart was pounding. My legs wanted to be running, racing through red traffic lights, making cars screech to a halt.
I’ll make a deal with you, I thought as I stared out the window. If you let Jeremy be all right, I’ll never ask for another thing. Nothing else matters, anyway. Jeremy is everything. He’s as big as Mount Etna. Every other disaster is a pindrop, a silly whisper, the movement of a curtain in an empty room. Jeremy is only five. He hasn’t lived any life yet. He hasn’t even had a candle-length of happiness. I’ve had two. Take me first.
I didn’t know who I was talking to—God? Ganesha? Fate? Who should you talk to in these situations?
I just wanted to talk to Jeremy. We were on the bridge now. In lane three. My stomach hurt. It was a dull ache, like a rope pulling. My throat ached too. My hands felt so empty. I remembered holding Jeremy’s hand. I’d dragged him up the street. ‘Fucking move!’ I’d shouted. ‘I’m too sad to run,’ he’d said. His fingers had soft little pouches of flesh under each knuckle. My hands tingled where Jeremy had held them. Even when people lose a limb, they say they still get twinges in that absent place.
One of the windscreen wipers was stuck. The cab driver fiddled, and swore. The wiper lay there paralysed across the glass, like something too frightened to move. Rivers of light flowed ahead, green running into red.
We were off the bridge. An ambulance screamed behind us. The driver swore again and moved to the left. This is why no one dwells on the happy bits, I thought. They call it ‘blind happiness’, ‘blind love’. Because when you’re happy, you’re not looking. But you need to keep your eyes open all the time, or you’ll lose something. It’s like Dad said, you’ve got to be prepared. Think of all those stars burning brilliantly out there, so proud of their light, and all the while they’re quietly dying.
When we turned into my street, I had my wallet out, ready. The porch light was on.
I fumbled in my bag for the keys. The mulberry leaves dripped onto my hair. I hesitated for a second at the door. I didn’t think I could bear it. Maybe I could just stay this way, hovering, like oil floating on water. There was the chair he’d sat in this afternoon. You could still see the shape of his bottom in the saggy cushion.
I opened the door. Through the hallway I saw the light on in the living room. I heard voices.
Two bulging suitcases leant against the bookshelf. Mum was sitting on the sofa. She was saying something to Dad, who was turning the pages of today’s paper. He still had his tie on. They both looked up when I came in.
‘Callisto, where have you been?’ said Dad.
‘Where’s Jeremy?’ cried Mum. She leapt up.
I felt everything stop in my body. ‘He isn’t here?’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘He was with you, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ I said numbly.
‘Well?’
‘I’ve lost him.’
Mum grabbed onto Dad’s arm. ‘What do you mean? You can’t just lose him—like, I don’t know, a handbag, or an umbrella! Where have you been?’
My stomach twisted. A clump of blood squelched out onto my pad.
‘To an abortion clinic. I’ve had an abortion.’
‘What?’
I looked at my parents. Their mouths hung open. They didn’t move. They could have been figures in a still life of mine. A Picture of Horror by Callisto May.
‘You took Jeremy to an abortion clinic?’ My father’s voice was quiet. Too quiet. My mother closed her eyes.
They said nothing. They didn’t know what to say. They’d never known what to say to me, either of them.
Mum groaned. She made a little movement toward me. She had tears in her eyes. I’d seen that expression before. She wore it with the sad ladies. I didn’t want her using it on me.
‘What else could I do?’ I burst out. ‘If Mum had been doing her job and looking after her son, we wouldn’t be standing here right now!’
‘Go to your room, you nasty little baggage! I don’t want to see your face.’
‘David! That’s not the way to handle it!’
‘Well?’ he turned on her. ‘Where were you? At one of your absurd little meetings?’
Mum said nothing. Her head hung down on her chest.
‘Well?’ Dad took a step toward her. His voice was louder now.
She flung up her chin. ‘Where were you? When are you ever around to help?’
Dad gave a harsh laugh. ‘I was coming home—by taxi—because my wife didn’t have time to pick me up. She was too busy lying in the dark calling up the spirit world.’
‘And who else is there to hear me? You decided a long time ago to practically live in another country and leave your family to fend for themselves.’
I couldn’t stand listening to them any more. ‘What are we going to do about Jeremy?’ I shouted, and ran into my room. I slammed the door and locked it. Dad came thundering down the hall. He banged on the door. He kicked it. His foot must have hurt, because he only had his thin airline slippers on. I heard him blaring through the keyhole—‘Where’s this clinic? Is it in the phone book? How long has Jeremy been gone?’ On and on.
My heart was booming away. Maybe he’d kick the door down. Mum joined him outside. Their voices seeped through the wood. I heard her bleating about getting the car, going to look.
‘Look where?’ sneered Dad. ‘You wouldn’t know where to start. You go on and on about other people’s kids, you’re like some broken record, a bloody great bleeding heart—’
‘Well, you don’t even see what’s going on in the world. You’re cut off from people. You’re like some sort of robot. You’re useless. What about that other country you live in? Well? You say nothing about what goes on there—’
‘What?’
If Jeremy did get a taxi, why didn’t he come home? Maybe somebody gave him a lift. Oh God, please no. I’ve told him about that. A policeman even came to the kindergarten to talk about it—‘Stranger Danger’, he called it.
Jeremy didn’t have any money. Perhaps he went to Grandma’s. She could have paid the taxi. Maybe he was there now, wolfing down
her spaghetti. I picked up the phone.
‘You didn’t even read about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.’
‘What?’
‘In your beloved South Africa. You acted like you didn’t know—you’re like those people who say after a war, “Oh, I didn’t know that human beings were being buried in shallow graves. I thought they’d all emigrated to Bali.” Or, “I didn’t know what that funny smell in the air was. I thought it was fried chicken!”’
‘You’re crazy, Caroline. You ought to be locked up. I’m very sorry for you.’
‘Sorry, that’s a joke. Robots like you can never say sorry. All around the world real people are waking up—the Germans can say sorry, the Rwandans can say sorry—’
‘Poor Caroline, she’s finally flown off with the fairies.’
‘No, you’re the crazy one—you can’t feel any more. You’re barely human. Look at you, in your neat little airline socks. You’re like some Ken doll you can dress and undress. You come equipped with your own set of clothes. You never get a hair out of place.’
Dad kicked the door again. ‘Callisto, if you don’t come out of there on the count of three, I’ll—’
What, David? What will you do?’
Grandma’s phone rang and rang. I was about to put it down when she answered. ‘Hullo,’ she said, out of breath. ‘Callisto? I was just putting the garbage out. How are you, darling?’
Her voice sounded so normal, I couldn’t believe it. It was like coming out of a horror movie and breathing in calm, fresh air. I wanted to turn the world back four hours. I could curl up on her lounge and she could tell me about the new black hole in our galaxy, or anything else in the universe.
‘Is Jeremy there with you?’
‘No, Cally. Is your mother home?’
I felt like putting the phone down. Jeremy was out there in the dark, in the rain. He was lost. He didn’t even have a coat. He just had two layers of nylon. Super-hero nylon. I hoped it would protect him.
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