This Is the Life

by Alex Shearer

  “So we just need to wait and see how it will respond to the treatment. In the meantime, if I were in your situation, I’d maybe make contact with the palliative care unit. Just as a safeguard, that’s all. Just so that you’ll have been in touch if it comes to the point that they’re needed in any way.”

  After he had gone, we sat in the wheelchairs where we had parked ourselves for the interview.

  “I’ll shout you a flat white,” Louis said. So we went to the café, and then later we went up to meet the people who ran the palliative care. They were easygoing and pleasant to talk to. It was like you’d gone around to some travel agent’s to book a vacation.

  “Do you remember Mum’s gravy?” Louis asked me afterward. “And the soup with all the fat congealing? I used to look across the table at you, thinking, Is this as bad for you as it is for me?”

  “You certainly needed to eat that soup quickly,” I said. “Before it solidified. I suppose if you’d left it long enough, you could have used a knife and fork.”

  Louis groaned.

  “It’s the same for everyone, Louis,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “You think so?”

  “In different ways, but in principle. They’re all walking down the road, wincing about the past.”

  “No,” Louis said. “They can’t be.”

  “Let’s get some food.”

  We tried somewhere new. Louis looked at the menu but didn’t say it was pricey, though it was. We sat outside on wicker chairs, lounging back, watching the street life. The waitress brought us food and coffee. The sun was warming. We stayed nearly two hours.

  I nearly said, “This is the life, Louis.” But didn’t feel it was the right thing to say.

  “This is the life,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s certainly nice out here, Louis.”

  “Let’s get the bill.”

  We went back to the house and he slept. The word that kept coming to me was “uncontainable”—though I was not a hundred percent sure what it meant, nor, perhaps more importantly, what I meant by it.

  But that is what it was and what it is. Life is uncontainable. Our past was uncontainable. The situation we were in was the same. I could not encircle it. It was a thing I could see, but it was like a landscape, I could never put my arms around it, or hold it to me, the way you could hold a baby, a loved one, a child. It was all too immense and too amorphous. All I could do was fetch DVDs from Blockbuster and make more tea. There was no big red button I could press, to bring salvation running. And even when you have received a death sentence, you still have to live.

  Louis collapsed the next day while he was on the phone to the oncology nurse. I was out getting groceries. She sent an ambulance and they took him in. I found him back up on the ward.

  “Hi, Louis, how are you?”

  “We’re screwed,” he said.

  And I thought this time he was probably right.

  * * *

  Some things go wrong dramatically and catastrophically, others take the dripping-tap and the stalactite and glacier route—slow accretions of imperfection eventually amounting to disaster.

  Louis and Bella the sun-kissed blonde washed up in Sydney and things were fine for a while. Louis had a high-paying job with company car and accommodation on the beachfront. He worked as a chemical engineer for a water treatment company. Bella worked as a bookkeeper. There were barbecues, boats, friends coming around, weekends away. Bella kept horses at the livery stables and rode twice a week. Money, as the saying goes, was no object. And yet it usually is.

  But Louis got to not liking the job anymore, as was his way.

  “It’s the arse-licking and the politics,” he told me when he called. “I hate the damn politics and I’m not licking any arses to get ahead. And the management are halfwits who don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Only this, I felt, was a refrain heard before.

  “I’m thinking of striking out on my own,” he said. “I don’t like working for other people.”

  Bella had faith in him back then. All the stars pointed in a propitious direction. She and Louis were still young. He was bright, intelligent, possessed of skills.

  “I’m going into stained glass,” Louis said, “and opening a shop.”

  I still have one of his stained-glass pieces hanging on my wall. It was and is beautifully made. But it took Louis a week to make a piece, when he needed to be selling one a day.

  The shop did badly and he could not renew the lease.

  The company car had gone and the house had gone. They moved up the coast and lived in a small trailer now, in a mobile home park. An awning at the front of the trailer gave them an extra room. In summer the place was stifling. Louis took some stopgap jobs, laboring and in factories and repairing roofs. Bella still worked as a bookkeeper and her regular wage kept things ticking over. She decided to study for accountancy qualifications as her long-term aim. She still had faith in Louis and was supportive of all his schemes. She’d tell her friends what he was doing, and what plans he had.

  “Louis is going into boatbuilding.”

  And he built it. But it took six years and much angst and dark nights of souls and black dogs at the heels. He also went into jewelry, and eked out a living that way. But it was only ticking over and they were still living in the tiny trailer. The only way to get a mortgage was to get a regular job. So he went to work in a factory.

  They bought the Queenslander. But Bella was losing confidence. Twelve years had gone by and they were in their forties now, and Louis was so long dropped out, he’d have trouble dropping in again. You go and turn your back on the world, it turns its back on you.

  Then they split. She lived in the front unit of the house, Louis in the back. She had a vacuum cleaner and a dustpan and brush. Louis did too, but he wasn’t one for using them much, as his mind was on other things.

  And then there comes a time when you realize it isn’t going to be—the things you hoped for and worked toward, they aren’t going to come, and life is what it is, and you have to settle for that and resign yourself to it, or sink deeper, and go crazy.

  Bella met someone else. So did Louis. Bella moved away and rented her part of the house out. Louis’s new relationships endured awhile and then floundered. The place got dustier, his beard got longer, his eyebrows bushier, the water heater broke down, he didn’t get around to fixing it, the years went by, the handle came off his kettle, but he didn’t get a new one, rust began to eat the fridge, the washing machine didn’t work as it should, drops of paint fell on his clothes, car oil dripped onto his T-shirts, marine defouling solvent spattered his shoes, the beanie hat sank lower on his forehead and began to cover his eyes.

  Then one day he called me and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here. But I’m having trouble reading.”

  Such is life. A lot of people say that, but they don’t really mean it, except in a jokey and wry way. But such it is.

  * * *

  I met Bella and her new partner, Ted, to discuss the property. I hadn’t seen her in thirty years, and didn’t recognize her, though she recognized me, not necessarily because I had aged any better, but because I’d always looked this way.

  We sat out with our coats on, at a benched table outside the bowls club. We couldn’t go inside as some big match was on the TV, and the place was packed with noisy fans.

  “I just want to let you know,” I said, “that Louis is changing the nature of the house ownership so he can leave his share as he pleases in his will. Otherwise, the way things are right now, the whole place would go to you, Bella, and since you’ve not been together in more than twenty years—”

  She looked at me with hostility, like I was a swindler.

  “And, of course, the same would apply to you. If you got knocked down or something, your share of the house would go to Louis.
You wouldn’t be able to leave it to whoever you wanted to.”

  “And what if I don’t agree to this?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. Louis can do it anyway. Same as you can. You don’t need the other person’s consent. You just make a declaration. Anyway, that’s what he’s going to do, and he wanted me to tell you. You’ll get a letter from the lawyer, but he wanted you to know.”

  It was an awkward evening. Bella seemed to be nursing some old bitterness.

  “I don’t see why this has to be done now,” she said.

  “Louis has a brain tumor,” I said.

  “I knew a guy, diagnosed with cancer, lived another twenty-five years,” Ted said.

  “Not with a brain tumor he didn’t, Ted.”

  “Knew another guy, diagnosed with leukemia, lived an­­other fourteen years.”

  “Louis doesn’t have leukemia, Ted.”

  “Tell me,” Ted said. “You like books?”

  “Some books,” I said.

  “Ted likes books,” Bella said. “He’s an avid reader.”

  “You know a book called Mein Kampf—written by Adolf Hitler?”

  “I know of it, of course.”

  “You read it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I have,” Ted said. He was, incidentally, a builder by trade. “I have read it, and though it’s kind of turgid and heavy going in places, well—he talks quite a lot of sense in there.”

  I was going to ask Ted about the six million Jews, but the night had got so chilly I was shivering, and so I said I had to leave and see how Louis was.

  Bella didn’t visit him in the hospital, nor come to the funeral. Louis left her 60 percent of the property.

  The phone rang one morning. An angry woman shouted down it before I could even say hello.

  “You’re screwing me,” Bella screamed. “You’re screwing me. Your brother screwed me and now you’re screwing me too.”

  A copy of the will had arrived for her.

  “Bella, what’s the problem? Louis has left you sixty percent of the house.”

  “And what about the rest? What about my contribution?”

  “Bella, you and Louis split up twenty years ago.”

  “What about when I came around to pick up the property taxes check? Once every couple of months. I’d spend half an hour in there every couple of months, hearing about your brother’s problems. Where’s my recognition?”

  “Bella, I’m sorry, but I don’t see why—”

  “You screwed up my life! You and your brother, you screwed up my life.”

  But none of us really needs any help in that department. We can usually do all that quite easily ourselves with no extraneous assistance whatsoever.

  31

  Shell

  When you push open a swinging door, then let it go, it doesn’t close immediately, but swings back and forth a few times, still permitting access and egress. Then, finally, its energy is used up, and it stays still.

  Louis was taken for a CT scan and then an MRI. Despite all that they had thrown at it, all the surgery, chemo, and radiation, the tumor was back, regrowing rapidly, even creating its own small blood vessels in the brain, so it could nourish itself. There was NFT—no further treatment.

  One day Louis was walking, the next not.

  “We’re sending you to St. Peter’s, Louis, because we need the bed here. It’s just because we need the bed, that’s all.”

  They kind of told him, and kind of didn’t. They took him to St. Peter’s and he got visitors there, and he was giving them bone-crushing handshakes, to show that the strength was still in his arms.

  Louis had a deal with his friend Michael Meere that if Louis asked, then Michael would give it to him straight and no bullshit. But he didn’t ask. Not directly. He just said, “I think they’ll be letting me out in a couple of days. Feel my grip, Mike. You feel the strength in my hand there?”

  “Louis, I think that if you want the doctors to send you home, you’ve got to show them that you can walk around. I’m not sure you can even walk to the bathroom right now, can you, Louis?”

  Louis didn’t answer him, just looked away.

  And that was how they kept their bargain.

  Two days later, Louis was comatose, and the nurses were turning him every three or four hours, to stop bedsores, and I sat with him for a week.

  And that’s what happens. That’s how it is. Just life, taking its course.

  They put the wrong date on the death certificate and misspelled his occupation as chemmical engineer, and Louis’s will went missing. I appointed lawyers and talked to real estate agents and I cleared the house, and there was nothing more I could do.

  My flight was booked for the Thursday, and on Wednesday night, we all went out to Fried Fish, and I said good-bye to everyone and thanked them for all they had done.

  Halley and Don and Mike and Marion came back with me to the house, and we finished off the Little Creatures. I gave Halley keys so he could come and take the fridge away tomorrow, after I had gone. Then we said our good-byes again, and they left, and I slept for the last time in Louis’s house.

  In the morning I finished packing and checked I hadn’t forgotten anything. The place was an empty shell, just the Salvation Army furniture, waiting to go back to where it had come from.

  I checked the cupboards and drawers, in case I had overlooked something. In one of the drawers I found a postcard, of scenery in Scotland. I turned it over. Louis’s address had been written in my hand, but the message had been inscribed by a child.

  “Dear Uncle Louis,” it read. “We are on holiday in Scotland. Thank you for my book and my kangaroo which I love very much.”

  And under the brief message my daughter had put kisses and signed her name. She is now a grown woman.

  Louis had never thrown the card away.

  The whole edifice and structure cracked. You think the building you live in is reinforced against earthquakes. You imagine that your carefully constructed tower, built of experience and past adversity, will withstand all hurricanes, gales, and storms. And then a feather flutters down from the sky, and that’s all it takes. I sat on the Salvation Army sofa and wept to drown the world.

  * * *

  My cell phone rang. It was the taxi driver, saying that he was waiting outside. I put the cases out on the veranda, took one last look, and closed the door. Then carried the bags down to the cab.

  The driver was Indian, maybe an illegal, but what difference does it make? We talked about the cricket and the Punjab, where he came from, and the heat and the humidity.

  We hit the morning traffic, and I got concerned that I would miss the flight. I asked the driver if he thought we would be all right to get there. He thought we would.

  “No worries, sir,” he said. “No dramas.”

  It seems to me that there are—amongst the others—many good and kind people in the world, who do not want you to worry.

  But I fear their exhortations might be in vain.

  * * *

  When I got to Heathrow, my wife was waiting. We walked up to the lot where she had left the car. The day was rainy and cold, and I was still wearing clothes suitable for the warm Australian springtime.

  “You okay?” she said. “You chilly?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t feel it.”

  For Louis and I were always like that.

  We were tough.

  32

  In Time

  Louis had some pension insurance that paid out on terminal illness and death. The pension company needed to be reassured that Louis had no living dependents before they would pay the money to his estate. Dependents included any living parents. We had none. But the pension company needed proof that our parents were no longer alive.

  I found our mother’s death
certificate, but not our father’s. I did, however, find his burial certificate. So I sent that in. It proved not to be acceptable.

  I called the pension company. They insisted I produce our father’s death certificate.

  “But you can see from the burial certificate,” I said, “that he was buried half a century ago.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” the guy taking the call said. “We need proof that he’s actually dead.”

  “He’s been in a coffin for fifty-plus years.”

  “That’s not evidence. That’s hearsay.”

  I got a copy of the death certificate from the government records and posted it on.

  I rang up Halley on Skype and told him what had happened.

  “It’s unbelievable, isn’t it, Halley?” I said.

  He took so long to answer I thought the connection had gone dead.

  “She did that trick with a plastic thumb, right?” he said.

  “Yes. How’s your shed, Halley? How are you doing? How are the bellbirds? How’s the fridge?”

  “I’m going out on the lake with Derek this weekend,” he said. “Fishing for red claw.”

  “What bait are you using?” I asked.

  “It’s right here in the fruit bowl. You know,” he said, “I wish Louis was coming with us.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

  * * *

  Louis, my brother, always went places first, being older. And then, after a time, I would follow.

  I expect he’ll still be wearing the beanie hat.

  He’ll probably say, “What kept you?”

  One of us will know what to do.

  The Origins of

  This Is the Life

  Alex Shearer

  There is often a fine line between fact and fiction—as fine a line as there may be between life and death—but nobody would pretend that they are the same thing.

  Serious illness is a combination of tedium, anxiety, and chaos. You sit and you wait; then you panic and get stressed and fraught. And then there is nothing to do again. You are at the mercy of people and events.