Dennis was sitting in a chair in the opposite corner, still wearing his AC/DC t-shirt, his head down as he picked at the fabric on the chair’s arm. Dan moved closer to his cousin, noticing the thick brush of hair covering the back of his neck, so dense it was like a coat of fur, disappearing into the t-shirt.
As if they were an audience at a play awaiting the opening scene, everyone had formed a half-circle around the end of the bed. His mother took a place on the opposite side of the bed to her unsmiling sister. She bent down and kissed the old woman’s sunken cheek. ‘Hi, Mum, how are you?’
The old woman stared blankly. A catheter was in the raised blue vein above her wrist, clear fluid dripping into her from the bag above the bed.
‘She doesn’t know who you are.’
Dan’s mother ignored Bettina and spoke quietly in Greek to the old woman, who didn’t show even a flicker of recognition. ‘Come here, Danny,’ said his mother, beckoning, ‘come and say hello to your giagia.’
There was a slow steady clicking from the heater; the room was overheated and smelled overpoweringly of antiseptic. He walked over to the bed and stood beside his mother.
‘Mamá, this is Danny. This is your grandson.’
Now that he was looking down at her, Dan could see that the old woman’s eyes were glazed over, a murky film of silver veiling each pupil. Her breathing was erratic, terribly shallow. He couldn’t believe how delicate her skin was, as if it were made of the flimsiest tissue; it looked as though it would tear at the slightest touch. The old woman’s hair had fallen away, she had no eyebrows. There was no muscle on her, no flesh; just the insubstantial skin and the contours of the bones beneath. He was acutely aware of both the lightness of her body and the dead weight of the fear in the room. His mother was sobbing. Dan looked down at the extinguishing life and felt perhaps a little pity, nothing more.
Bettina’s gruff voice said something in Greek. Then she shrugged and looked across at Dan. ‘Don’t be offended. She doesn’t recognise any of us anymore.’
‘I’m not offended.’ It made him feel more warmly towards his aunt, even though she’d been horrible to his mother, despite her lack of forgiveness. They must have thought that he was part of them, must have even wanted him to be part of who they were. But surrounded by his cousins and aunts and uncles, standing by his grandmother’s bed, he knew he would never be part of what they were. He thought of his granddad’s musical Glasgow accent, his nan’s fierce, protective love. He was them: they were alive, they were flesh and muscle and blood, they were real memory and history. They were love. He felt as much for this old Greek woman as he did for the sad circle of old people in the common room: useless pity, nothing more.
Dennis got out of his chair and Bettina snapped her head around. ‘Where are you going?’
Dan could just make out the word, the three syllables of cigarette extended and twisted into one tortuous moan.
‘Make sure you come straight back here,’ Bettina said. ‘You know how to get back here? Room eighteen?’
Dennis seemed to be looking past all of them to something high on the wall above Dan’s head, invisible to everyone else but obvious and fascinating to him.
Dan saw his opportunity to flee. He nodded over to his cousin. ‘Hey, mate, I’ll come out with you.’
‘Sm-smoke?’
Dan had left his jacket behind in the room, and the wind was brisk, glacial, but he didn’t care. It felt so good to be outside, away from the artificial heat of the hospital room, the disapproving strangers.
His cousin was a full foot taller than he was, and was all muscle, thick-necked and broad-backed. Dennis didn’t seem to feel the cold as the rising wind whipped around them, though Dan could see a spray of goose pimples on his forearm. Dennis spoke again.
‘Pardon? Could you say that again, please?’ Dan asked.
It was the longest sentence he had yet heard Dennis utter but he had understood none of it. Dennis finished his cigarette and put the butt out under the sole of his sneaker. He still seemed to be looking at something invisible playing out above Dan’s head.
‘Sho, sho. Yar. Ma Ma Ma. Cuz. Een?’
’ So you’re my cousin? ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘And and yar yar fru fru frumma Mel Mel Mel. Burn?’
’ Dan wanted to finish the sentence for him. He had to stop himself. ‘Yeah, you ever been there?’
For the first time, his cousin looked at him. The man’s eyes were limpid and deep-set, the grey of wet granite; his nose had been broken in the past and there was a small scar on his left temple that disappeared into the dark wave of his hair.
‘Ya.’ Dennis breathed wetly, preparing for the struggle to form the next words. ‘I dad ant like. Mel Ba Barn. It waz. It. It waz too big-ah!’
‘I guess it is a big city.’
‘Ya.’
‘Should we go back in? It’s freezing out here.’
Dennis didn’t respond. He was looking away again, as if he hadn’t heard Dan, as if Dan wasn’t even there. ‘Ya ya. She—she is. Is. Dha-dha-dha-dha-ng.’ His words were a blur of hard consonants and slithering sibilants that made no sense to Dan.
‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t get that.’
Dennis angrily wiped spit from the sides of his mouth. He looked flushed, embarrassed, as though he were furious at Dan. ‘I-I wi-wish sh-sh-she wouwad. Wad. Wad. Wad dj dj djusshtd die.’
Dan was shocked at the cruelty of his words but then he saw that his cousin’s eyes had watered, he was trying hard not to cry. He wondered how long he had been coming to the hospital, watching the old woman slowly disappear. Watching her death. He hadn’t thought of his giagia as anything but a stranger. But for Dennis she would have been a real grandmother, she would have looked after him, changed his nappies, watched him grow, told him her stories: she would have loved him. And he would have loved her.
‘I’m really sorry, mate.’
‘I-I-I hate hate this ho ho hos pi. Tal.’ It was said so vehemently that a spray of spit struck Dan’s cheek. ‘I-I fuck fucken hate. It.’
I’d fucking hate it too, thought Dan. I’d hate to be here every day, having to watch this old woman whose soul has already left, who’s nothing but skin and bone. What was happening to her wasn’t life. All of that had finished.
‘Dennis,’ Dan said, ‘why don’t you and I just go and hang out? Why don’t we just get the fuck out of here?’
His mother and his aunt had not moved from their positions on either side of the dying woman. They were both visibly surprised at Dan’s suggestion that he should drive his cousin home. For a moment Dan hesitated. His mother looked lost and fragile and he knew he was abandoning her, but the heat and the smell and the whisperings in a language he didn’t understand, all of it was overwhelming, and when his aunt Bettina handed him her keys he felt nothing but relief.
‘Come on, Dennis,’ he said brightly, then blushed at his transparency. But his mother winked at him and he knew it would be alright. He kissed her goodbye, and then looked down at the old woman on the bed, at her vacant eyes, and he knew his cousins and uncles and aunts would be expecting him to kiss his grandmother. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, he thought it would be like kissing death.
As he and Dennis were leaving, his aunt said, ‘Don’t let Dennis drive.’
So Dennis could drive. Or he must have known how to at some stage.
In the car his cousin was cheerful; not that he said much, just pointed to which streets Dan should turn into, but he had a big grin on his face as he looked out to the clear blue sky above them. They skirted the border of a giant park on the edge of the city. The trees had started to shed their leaves, their mottled blue-grey branches spiking and twisting high into the sky.
Bettina’s house was a small weatherboard cottage, with an overgrown front yard and a sleek grey cat asleep on the porch. The cat opened one eye as the men walked past it, then stretched out on its back purring as Dennis tickled its belly.
The fr
ont part of the house was dark, the corridor tiny, but at the other end a renovation had opened up the kitchen to make room for a long dining table; large windows looked out to a small, immaculately neat courtyard. Dennis headed straight for the fridge and took out a bottle of Diet Coke and poured a glass for both of them. There were photographs everywhere of the family, of Dennis and his mother, of Dennis with his grandmother and grandfather, and Dan recognised a young, slim Joanna. As in Jo’s house, there were no photographs of Dan’s mother, nor any of their family. There also seemed to be none of Dennis’s father, whoever he might have been. There was so much Dan didn’t know about his cousin. Dennis was twisting his solid body on the revolving seat of a high stool, still grinning, still looking up, through the tiny skylight in the ceiling up to the sky. He suddenly stopped twirling.
‘Do-do-do ya wanna wanna see. Do do ya wanna see ma ma rumm?’
Dan’s cousin slept on a single bed tucked into the far corner of his room. It looked like a gym: there were barbells and weights scattered around, an expensive-looking steel rowing machine, a lifting bench placed perpendicular to a full-length mirror. Posters of bodybuilders, male and female, adorned the wall. There were only two photographs, in simple black frames, both hanging above the bed. In one a teenage Dennis, dressed in a dark suit, had one arm around his mother and the other around his sister. In the second photograph, Dennis was older, wearing leathers and holding a helmet, standing next to a motorcycle. A young dark-skinned woman held his hand, and in the other she gripped a motorbike helmet. Dan manoeuvred himself carefully over the barbells to look more closely at the photograph of Dennis and the girl next to the motorcycle.
Dennis had sat himself on the rower, idly shifting his weight back and forth. ‘Ma Ma Mama. She ha ha hate hates. Ha hates tha tha pho pho phot. To. Pho. To. Graph.’ Dennis was looking high up above himself, at the world beyond the ceiling, a grin on his face. His syllables still struggled to escape but he no longer seemed encumbered or frustrated by them. ‘Tha tha that. That was me. Be be four. Be. Four that ha. Tha. Ax. Ax. Axi. Dent.’
’Dan turned back to the photograph, to the attractive young couple at the end of their teens.
‘Handsome, wasn’t I?’
Dan realised he was starting to hear between the spaces of his cousin’s words, that he could separate the sounds from the spit that pooled in Dennis’s mouth as he strained to enunciate.
‘You were alright,’ Dan teased, and pointed to the young woman in the photo. ‘But she’s the really pretty one. What’s her name?’
Dennis’s only response was to throw himself furiously into working the rowing machine. Dan sat on the bed and watched the man row. Within minutes Dennis was dripping with sweat; it ran down his brow and the back of his neck and plastered his hair to his skin. Dan waited for him to finish but Dennis kept pulling at the bar, pounding backwards and forwards, the gears of the rower clanking and spinning, the mechanism giving a low whistle with every stroke. Sweat had soaked through the t-shirt which clung to his powerful torso. And all the while Dennis looked up, as if urging his body to take flight, thought Dan, as if wishing it could burst through the plaster and beams and slate and break free into the sky. There was a clanking sound as Dennis’s foot slipped off the pedal.
‘Fucking bullshit!’
The wheel was still spinning manically. Dennis reached across and grabbed it, bringing it to a sudden halt.
‘Her name is Christine. She was my girlfriend.’ There was a spitting and rumbling, a battle in his larynx before Dennis could get the sentence out.
‘Did something happen to her in the accident?’
Dennis shuddered. ‘No, God no. She just left.’ And then he turned and faced his cousin. ‘I guess she got tired of hanging around a retard.’
Dan blinked, at the force of the word, the way Dennis spat it out. ‘Do you miss her?’
Dennis’s eyes were wandering again. ‘Not as much as I miss my fucking motorbike.’
A choking sound came from Dennis’s lips that at first alarmed Dan. He was choking and gurgling; there was a rivulet of dribble coming from one side of his mouth. But Dennis’s eyes were dancing. He was laughing.
Dan leapt to his feet, grabbed the car keys and flung them at Dennis, who caught them in a graceful swipe.
‘Come on, cuz,’ said Dan. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’
Cuz. He liked the sound of the word as it fell from his lips.
The two men were playing Mortal Kombat on the PlayStation when Bettina got home. Dan could see that she was unnerved to see the two men comfortably slouched on the sofa together, but she was also pleased. Dan handed his cousin the console and followed Bettina into the kitchen to give her the car keys.
‘We went for a drive. Dennis showed me West Beach.’
‘It’s his favourite place in Adelaide,’ she said. ‘He’s always loved the water.’ She was standing in front of the open pantry, examining rows of cans. She pulled out a can of tuna and a packet of dry pasta. ‘You want some lunch?’
‘No, thank you. I should eat with Mum.’
Bettina grunted. He couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved by his response.
‘I let Dennis drive part of the way to the beach.’
She was scowling as she bore down on him and tossed the tin and pasta onto the bench. She’s frightening, thought Dan. No wonder his mum was so scared of her, she was ferocious.
‘What did I say to you? Do you know what could have happened? How dare you!’
Dan frantically searched for the words to explain that Dennis had only driven down a deserted dirt road behind the beach; that there were no other cars, that Dennis was a good driver. But the words eluded him, though he doubted they would have made any difference to this vengeful, angry woman. He was his mother’s son—he could tell from the rage sparking from her eyes that she was prepared to loathe him as much as she hated her own sister.
‘Mamá, I’m alright, it was safe. It was only for a few minutes on a quiet road. I had fun, I wanted to do it. Don’t blame Danny for any of it.’
In the time it took for Dennis to shape his words, both Dan’s fear and his aunt’s anger had dissipated. Dennis looked exhausted from the effort of making his speech.
His mother’s tone softened. ‘I’m going to drive Danny to Jo’s place. You want to come along for the drive?’
Dennis’s gaze didn’t shift from the ceiling. Dan had to fight the urge to look up.
‘You want to hang out tomorrow?’
Dan didn’t hesitate. ‘Yeah, yeah. That’d be good.’
Dennis cocked his head in his mother’s direction. ‘Nah, I’ll stay and play some more on the PlayStation.’
Dan patted his back pocket, took out his phone. ‘What’s your number, mate?’
Dennis began to recite the number. As Dan started punching in the digits, Bettina was repeating each numeral.
‘It’s OK, Mamá, Danny understands me.’
Bettina was silent as Dan saved his cousin’s number. He typed a quick text and sent it. A tinny treble of techno rang from Dennis’s pocket.
‘All good.’
All good.
Bettina didn’t say much until they were nearly at Joanna and Spiro’s house. It was then she blurted out, ‘Have you worked with disabled people, Danny?’
He shook his head.
‘You’re really good with your cousin. You know how to listen and you have patience. Thank you for spending time with him today. He really enjoyed it.’
You don’t have to thank me, he wished he could say. And stop treating him like a baby. He doesn’t want that, he can’t stand how you treat him like a child not a man. But he couldn’t figure out how to say that without hurting her. And he was confused: his family loyalty meant he should see her as an enemy—he wouldn’t and couldn’t forgive the hurt she’d caused his mother—but he didn’t want to be part of that enmity. You’re really good with your cousin. He was grateful for those words. It was a long time since anyone h
ad said that he was good at anything. That he was good for anything.
His mother was alone in the house, in the kitchen. Two bags of shopping were on the bench; she was slicing chicken breasts. She was still not wearing make-up, in a drab dark top and shapeless black slacks. She didn’t look like his mother—Dan thought he could see Bettina in her, see the shape of Dennis’s mouth in hers.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she said. ‘I’m preparing something for dinner tonight, to thank Jo for having us. How did you go with Dennis?’
‘Great. I really like him.’
‘He seems like a nice man.’
Dan sat down. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He had a motorbike accident when he was nineteen. He hadn’t long had his bike. They thought he was going to die, he was in a coma for four months or so.’ His mother shook her head. ‘It was terrible—it must have been awful for Bettina.’
‘When did you find out about it?’
‘Not till a few years ago.’ His mother’s smile was wry and resigned. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, your aunt and I don’t talk very much.’
‘What about his dad?’
‘He died a long time ago. Cancer—and from what I know, which is not much, it was a slow, horrible death. She’s suffered a lot, your aunt.’
‘She doesn’t have to be such a bitch to you.’
His mother shrugged, wiped her hands on an apron, and started bashing a stem of lemongrass. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about Bettina.
Dan’s phone vibrated. He had a new message, from Dennis: Hope my mum didn’t break your balls. Dan texted back: All cool, and returned the phone to his pocket.
‘Do you want to come with me to the hospital this afternoon?’
Dan couldn’t believe they had to return to the hospital. His grandmother was a vegetable. She’d never know if they were there or not. ‘If you want.’
‘Thank you so much for all of this, baby.’ His mother reached into a shopping bag and pulled out a small plastic bag of chillies, and started slicing one.
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