This Is the Life

by Alex Shearer

  “I’m starving. I’ve had no breakfast.”

  “I got you this.”

  So he’d eat the danish while I fetched him some tea. Then we’d drive away and go to the shops, or there would be another appointment. You could be in that hospital all day, mostly waiting. There’s an awful lot of waiting when you’re ill. There are social workers to see, occupational therapists, consultants, doctors. A lot of the time, we’d just go home, and Louis would crash for three or four hours, and I’d try to sort out his impenetrable paperwork and fill in his insurance forms, and his claim forms for the government. When he woke I’d get him to go out for lunch.

  “We’ll go and see the Malaysian girls for lunch. Have a panini.”

  “How come we’re spending so much money on lunch? I’ve been out to eat more times since you got here than I have in the last five years. We can stay in and have cheese on toast.”

  “Louis, I’m feeling cooped up in here.”

  But once out, he was different. He’d sit at the table, watching the traffic go by, and say, without irony, “This is the life.”

  Though it wasn’t. It was the opposite.

  In the afternoon, he’d crash again. I’d go to the supermarket. Some of his friends might stop by in early evening, bringing beer and encouragement.

  Don and Marion lived a few doors down the street. One night, entirely seriously—while Louis was asleep in the back and not there to hear her—she said, “You know why Louis has the tumor in his head?”

  “No, Marion. But I’ve looked on the Internet and it says no one knows the cause. There are theories, but no solid causes.”

  “Well, I know.”

  “So what was it?”

  “Thinking. Louis—always thinking. Every time I see him—thinking. Never stops. Always thinking.”

  “But, Marion, isn’t everyone constantly thinking all the time? But we don’t all get tumors.”

  “Not like Louis. Louis, I believe, always thought very deep.”

  “Deep thinking gave him a brain tumor?”

  “I believe so. He overdid it.”

  “Well—I don’t know. I mean, say you got stomach cancer instead, what would cause that?”

  “Eating the wrong things.”

  “So Louis thought the wrong things?”

  “It’s possible.”

  I didn’t want to argue it, so we moved on to something else.

  * * *

  I can’t go with the being-responsible-for-your-own-disease theory either. All right, you can unarguably eat, smoke, drink, or indiscriminately fornicate yourself to death. But every disease? Leukemia? Motor neuron disease? Typhoid? The endless list of bad things that happen to people? You’re responsible for the mosquito that bites you? For the infection that gets you? For the multiplying cells creating havoc in your body?

  Nor am I deeply impressed by the intervention of prayer and the laying on of hands and the phony “healing” that seems to cure only those ailments that would cure themselves anyway, given time. If prayer cures people, why does everyone die?

  I was watching the news and some twenty people or more had been killed in a multiple car crash. But a woman who had been due to travel along that route that day had had her journey delayed.

  “I think God must have been watching over us,” she said.

  It seems like a highly selective and random business—who gets forgotten and who gets saved.

  16

  Free Lunch

  To get on the Internet, it was necessary to tie a dongle to the end of a bamboo pole and stick it out of the window, for otherwise the reception was none too good. Louis showed me how to do it.

  “Louis, why don’t you just get cable broadband?”

  “It’s pricey.”

  “Louis, it isn’t, not really. And think of the convenience. You wouldn’t have to tie a dongle to a bamboo pole and then wave it around outside the window looking for a hotspot.”

  “It’s no good anyway—we’re screwed.”

  “Louis, it’s a small problem easily fixed.”

  “I’m going to lie down.”

  So he went to bed. Getting cured is an exhausting business. And hospitals are no places for sick and vulnerable people. And everybody knows that, but no one has devised an alternative.

  After some heavy persuading, I got Louis and his debit card to go to the appliance warehouse.

  “I still don’t see why I need a new washing machine.”

  “Louis, it doesn’t work. It’s twenty-five years old and it sticks on each cycle. It doesn’t wash clothes, it massacres them. You put pullovers in there and they come out as balls of wool.”

  “And the fridge isn’t that bad.”

  “It’s got diseases in it. And it’s rusting through.”

  “It’s lasted this long.”

  “Well, it’s come to the end of its useful existence.”

  That was a mistake, saying that.

  “Anyway,” I hurriedly added, “let’s go and look at them.”

  Louis chose a fridge/freezer as near as possible in shape and form to the one he had already.

  “I want a top-loader washing machine, like the old one.”

  The salesman did a deal since Louis was buying two items and threw in free delivery and the removal of the old fridge and old washing machine.

  I noticed there was an offer with the washer.

  “Louis—you see this? You get a year’s supply of detergent, free, when you buy this one.”

  “How much is a year’s supply?”

  “Says twenty-five pounds.”

  He looked at me awhile, as if doing slow but accurate mental calculations.

  “That’s more like twenty years.”

  “Well, if you can eke it out that long, so much the better.”

  So Louis managed to recollect his PIN and he tapped it in and delivery was promised for Saturday, and so we left.

  The machines arrived as promised, but no detergent.

  I called the store and queried this.

  “No, you need to apply online,” the salesman said. “Go on the manufacturer’s website and there’s a form there. Just put in the serial number and date of purchase and they’ll send it to you.”

  I got the dongle and tied it to the bamboo pole.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Fishing for the Internet, Louis. What do you think?”

  “No detergent then?” he said, with a kind of complacency and a grim-edged satisfaction—the satisfaction of one who has prophesied the worst and has seen it come to pass.

  “I’m just going to fill the form in online and it’ll be on its way.”

  “You know your trouble—you’re too gullible,” Louis said. “Credulous and gullible.”

  “Louis, it’s a bona fide offer.”

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

  “It’s not a free lunch, Louis, it’s free detergent. A year’s worth.”

  “We’ll never see it.”

  “Louis—why don’t you go and have a lie-down?”

  “We’ll never see it. Not in my lifetime.”

  The website said it might take up to six weeks to come. I stayed with Louis for four weeks, and then I had to go home for a time, and then I came back again.

  Still no detergent.

  “Louis—are you sure it never came while I was away?”

  “Not unless they left it outside and someone stole it.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Not the neighbors, but some passerby.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a lot to carry?”

  “Some people would steal the hairs up your nose.”

  “For what purpose, Louis?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  The detergent still didn’t co
me. Louis got worse. They took him back into the oncology ward and from there he went to palliative care, which was a hospice by another name.

  “My detergent come?”

  “Not yet, Louis, but I’ll e-mail them.”

  “I said we’d never get it.”

  One day Louis was still walking and he was getting visitors and squeezing their hands with bone-breaking handshakes, just to illustrate how strong he still was.

  “Be back up and on your feet in no time,” the visitors would tell him.

  A couple of days after that he couldn’t get out of bed anymore, and then he stopped speaking and all he would do was squeeze your hand softly, and then he stopped even that.

  I went back to the house in the morning, for a break from it all and a change of scenery and to see if anything needed doing. I found a card on the mat saying the postman had been, with an item that required a signature and was too large to go through the letter slot, but it could be picked up from the depot.

  I drove to the post office with ID and the collection card and there was a big box waiting. It was a year’s supply of detergent.

  That afternoon I went back to sit with Louis. His hands were cold and his breathing was slow and sighing. A new nurse came in for the afternoon shift.

  “How are we doing?”

  “His hands seem cold, and kind of clammy.”

  “Ah . . .”

  She knew more than I did, but even I wasn’t that stupid.

  At six I went down the road and ate some dinner. I came back and his breathing was even more shallow.

  At about nine, I dozed off. I heard the nurses coming in to turn him, but I fell asleep again.

  I awoke to silence and darkness. It was half past eleven. I soon realized what the silence was, and why it seemed unusual.

  “Louis?” I said. “Louis?”

  I went to the bed and touched his arm, then held my hand near his mouth, but felt no breath. I rang the buzzer for the nurse to come. As I sat there waiting for her, I remembered that I hadn’t told Louis about his detergent.

  “Louis,” I’d meant to say. “You may not believe it, but your detergent turned up. Twelve boxes. I put them in the basement. All ready to go.”

  But, as is ever the way with prepared and imagined speeches, it didn’t go as it should have done, according to purpose and to plan. And the moment was missed, and the timing was out. There aren’t any retakes, though, in life—no chances to replay the scene a little better, in a different and a more satisfactory way. There’s only the one shot, the one take, and that’s it.

  So Louis died not knowing his detergent had turned up. And what, people might cogently argue, did it matter, and what difference did it make, and why was that important in any way at all?

  To which questions there are only further questions to act as answers. Namely, what does matter? What does make a difference? What is important? And who is to make the judgment and the call?

  I waited until after midnight, then I cycled back to Louis’s house on his bike. The highways were empty, there was hardly a car, and the chill night was splendid and clear, with all the stars of the Southern Hemisphere visible above.

  I got back to Louis’s place and tied the dongle to the pole and hung it out of the window and went online. And in this manner, and by this means, I informed those who knew him, had cared for him, had been acquainted with him, and had loved him, that he was no more.

  The twelve boxes of detergent were still down there in the morning. I opened the carton and took out the boxes, and gave them away to the neighbors and to Louis’s friends.

  I took to riding his bike around the neighborhood, while wearing disreputable shorts and T-shirts with spatters of paint upon them, and I didn’t trouble to shave. I traveled his tracks and went to his haunts, and there must have been those who had not heard of his illness, for I swear that as I cycled along a wide-brimmed street and passed a gang of workmen fixing a roof, I heard a voice call, “Hey, how are you, Louis? How are you doing?”

  But I had no time to stop, so I just raised my hand in greeting and sped on. I cycled through the park and along by the trees where the fruit bats hung, still smelling fruity and slightly off. I rode past the playing fields with the posts and the teams playing Australian rules football. I rode out past Kangaroo Point, where the personal trainers shepherded their flocks and taught them the moves and the recipes for the dish of fitness, youth, and looks.

  I rode on by the river and past the Spiegeltent, which looked tawdry in the daylight, with its sparkling mirrors seeming chipped and only half reflecting. Then I headed for Stones Corner and the Chinese girls, and I went in and got a haircut. And I said, “Do you remember my coming in with my brother? Lots of hair and eyebrows and plenty of beard?”

  But they didn’t recall.

  And then, with trimmed eyebrows and fashionable haircut, I walked a short way down the street and sat at our usual table and I ordered a flat white and a panini from the Malaysian waitress.

  When she brought it over, I said, “I feel kind of cold today. I wonder if you could light the burner?”

  And she looked at me as if I was crazy, because it was getting on for eighty-five degrees.

  “I’m on my own today,” I said. “My brother’s not with me. We’d usually both be here, as you might recall. But he couldn’t make it today.”

  So she lit the burner for me, and I sat there perspiring. I left a decent tip for her, and then cycled on. She turned the burner off, soon as I went. After that, I didn’t look back.

  I stopped off at the supermarket to get some food, but I didn’t buy any strawberries, as they looked kind of pricey.

  Then I went back to the house and I sat at the kitchen table, and I made some tea. And that was what I did. It was the only tune I knew how to play.

  Into the world we tumble, and we have no choice. We love whom we find—parents, siblings. We must love them somehow or other, and there is nothing we can do. They might not be right for us, or suit our tastes, or be incompatible, or entirely wrong. We might end up hating and resenting them somewhere down the line. But never entirely, rarely without a glimpse of possible forgiveness and reunion. We love whom we must, and then we grow, and love whom we will. But still we’re caught, like a fish with a swallowed hook, and we can swim downriver nearly all our lives, but end up getting tugged back to the past, to childhood, to our defenseless selves, and we are reeled in.

  17

  Ashes

  “I need to get rid of the boat. It’s probably worth twenty thousand,” Louis said. He was sitting there, looking agitated, with a demand for money in front of him.

  “Yeah, maybe. That only trouble is it’ll cost forty to ­do up.”

  “Still a bargain,” Louis said.

  “Why do you need to get rid of it?”

  “The mooring fees are due. Five thousand.”

  “You’ve got the money. Why not pay it and keep the boat?”

  “I can’t keep it—the boat. I can’t drive to the harbor anymore. If I’m not fit to drive a car, how can I sail a boat? I can’t even manage the bits and pieces.”

  “What do you want me to do, Louis?”

  “Find a buyer.”

  Easier said.

  Louis had built a boat himself, then sold it and put the money toward a twenty-six-foot ketch, and he and Kirstin—when she had come along—had sailed it up the east coast and to the Great Barrier Reef, taking a long and easy six months to do so, there and back.

  The photographs showed sunny days and the two of ­them smiling, and the magnets on the rusty fridge saying: ­Depression—you are not alone were forgotten. But then they came back, and the old black dog must have been waiting in the kennels, for a few months later Louis was brooding again over past losses and present dissatisfactions, and it was back to the bum jobs and no strawberries. And then he and
Kirstin broke up. And I knew why, but wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.

  * * *

  We tried to sell the boat but could find no serious buyers. So Louis decided it was best to cut his losses and to give it away to a good home.

  I put an ad online on Gumtree—Free twenty-six-foot ketch. Needs some work but otherwise sound. Collect.

  It is a widely held opinion that too many people in this world want something for nothing. But when you actually try to do that—to give something away, for absolutely nothing—you find that the contention is not based on the facts. People are suspicious of something for nothing. They approach it warily, and kind of sniff at it, and give it a poke, ready to run off as if it might lunge at them.

  Or they are choosy. More choosy than if they were actually paying. Were they paying, they might think, “Yeah, it’s not a hundred percent, but it’s a bargain. Needs some doing up, but so what? I’ll take a chance.”

  But when it’s free, they want to know what the catch is, and what they’re letting themselves in for, and they don’t trust you much at all.

  There were time-wasters and fender-kickers and guys who tapped the mast and said, Hmmm—they’d need to think about it, or check with their wives, or, on second thoughts, they didn’t know how to sail a boat anyway and it might be too late in life to learn.

  Or they wanted to live on it, or grow marijuana plants in it, or go around the world in it, or escape their troubles in it, or more likely they just wanted something to do to kill a Sunday afternoon. Or they lived two hundred miles away, though they promised to be there on Thursday, and come the Saturday after, you still hadn’t heard from them.

  Eventually a woman and a man who lived a few miles away said they’d take it, and they came around and we exchanged documents and Louis gave them the keys.

  “When we’ve fixed it up, Louis,” the man taking it said, “you’ve got a standing invitation to come out in it. Anytime. Just call. Whenever you like. Many times as you like.”

  But Louis just looked sad-eyed under his beanie and shook his head and said, “It’s your boat now. You do what you want with it, Cliff. It’s yours.”