by Cowley, Joy
She stands up so quickly that her chair falls over. ‘You know what I think? I think you should go to sleep or you’ll be snoring off during the Rosary,’ and she goes to her room.
I pick up the chair, wondering what I said to offend her. Does she think that a good Catholic soul should not wander across the world on its way to heaven? Has Rome not said anything about that? Or does she think I made it up?
I guess that now is not the time to tell her that I won’t be going to the Rosary tonight.
I wake from a deep sleep and a dream that I am fighting my way through a crowd at Grand Central Station. I am hot. Motels over here have no air-conditioning. Bea is knocking on the door and calling, ‘Six o’clock, Diddy. You awake? We leave in half an hour.’
I kick off the sheet and lie on top of the bed in the orange glow from the closed curtains, wondering why motel rooms all over the world are so ugly, so predictable. If a decorator were employed, function could be combined with aesthetic quality so that instead of feeling institutionalised, our senses could take a vacation. Originality. Beauty. They’re not expensive. This motel boasts ‘all the comforts of home’ but don’t folk want to be away from home? Isn’t that precisely the point? Oh Bea, will you stop knocking like a demented woodpecker?
‘I’m awake.’
She opens the door. ‘It starts in an hour.’
I sit up on one elbow. ‘Bea, I’m not going to the Rosary.’
She has one hand on the doorknob, the other one the wall. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘There’s nothing wrong. I’m going to the funeral tomorrow but look, I don’t do this other stuff. I told you. I’d feel a hypocrite.’
‘But it’s not about us, Diddy, is it? It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. It’s for Dad. You know the devotion he had to the Rosary. He and Mum every. Diddy, you went to Mum’s Rosary. I remember.’
‘And I felt a hypocrite.’ I sit up and pull the sheet around my knees.
Her hand slides down the wall to her side. She leans against the doorway, holding her breath. After a while she says, ‘Diddy, this means a lot to me. You being there.’
‘I’m sorry, Bea. I really am sorry. I feel I’ve been dropping one disappointment on you after another. I’d understand if you threw something at me.’
‘People are expecting you to be there. I told them. I told Father O’Donnell.’
‘Say I’m jet-lagged. That’s the truth. Tell them I’m asleep.’
‘The truth is you don’t want to go. Suppose I tell everyone that? My sister has flown halfway around the world to pay her respects to her father and now. Why not? I don’t know. She fails to put in an appearance because. Well, she’s lapsed. So what? What’s that got to do with her father?’
‘Bea, don’t push!’
‘It wouldn’t hurt. You could do this one thing instead of always thinking of your precious self. You could do it for Dad.’
‘No!’ I swing my legs over the side of the bed. ‘I’m not going!’
‘How much time did you give? Tell me! A visit on your way to somewhere else. Postcards. Mum and Dad’s fridge was covered. New York, New York. I was sick of the sight of wonderful New York. Where were the letters, huh? Where was the time?’
‘That’s not fair, Bea. I used to call them.’
‘After Dad had his stroke. What then? One visit in five and a half years. Oh whoop-de-doo!’ Out she goes, slamming my door.
I fall back on the bed, my heart hammering, wonka, wonka, like an old piston. I’m much too old for such altercations, although I can’t confess to surprise. I put my fingers to the pulse in my neck and wonder why it is that in fifty-five years I have not developed some immunity to my sister Beatrice. Or she to me.
A few minutes later she is back, dressed in a flowing suit the colour of rust, her hair clipped back with a comb. She has gone into her quiet phase. ‘You are definitely not coming.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know what I can tell Frank and Chloe.’
‘Tell them what you like, Bea. I don’t mind.’
‘They know you had a nap this afternoon,’ she says, still trying.
‘Then tell them in all honesty I can’t. Tell them that old stuff is no longer my scene.’
‘They won’t understand, Diddy. This is about Dad. Not your beliefs.’
‘Look, will you do me a favour, Bea? Don’t call me Diddy. It’s Delia.’
She sucks in her breath.
I make a joke of it. ‘It’s fifty-four years since you had trouble pronouncing my name. For goodness sake, Bea, I’m nearly a senior citizen. Have you thought how silly it is for a grey-haired old lady to be called Diddy?’
‘All right, Delia,’ she says, turning to go. She puts her head back through the doorway. ‘By the way,’ she says. ‘It’s Beatrice.’
5
Beatrice
‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.’
I can’t stop crying. I can’t. Chloe passes tissues to Frank – Francis – and he passes them to me without looking, kneeling stiff-backed, eyes front, think, bloody silly mother goes to her Dad’s Rosary without tissues or handkerchiefs but what do you expect? No, no, he wouldn’t say bloody.
‘Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’
It’s not the eyes. Why do we always think eyes when someone says tears? It’s the stuff that runs down the nose that’s so embarrassing.
‘Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God.’
Some of the nurses from the rest home are here. Parishioners they knew. Sister Monica and Father Bill Hanson and Father Daley. Monsignor Loughnan is getting a bit doddery, poor old soul. I remember him sitting out in the back porch. Dad’s smoking place. Talking about football and the price of wool. She made up that thing about Dad being in her office. I know she did. When I phoned her she asked me when it happened. She wouldn’t have said that if she already. Guilt, probably. Guilt and one-upmanship. Maybe jealousy, I mean, it would be. It was always me who helped Dad on the farm. I was Uncle Jack’s favourite. She’s a designer, makes up her own reality. Oh, sweet Jesus, I shouldn’t be thinking like. It’s because all this week. I’m not myself when I’m tired. Threnody. Now why did I think of that? What does threnody mean when its at home? Something to do with grief? They should have a pill for it, some little aspirin. Because it is physiological, this pain that fillets me like a fish. My chest is full. It runs down the inside of my arms and into my fingers. It’s in my bowels, my legs. But I know it’s not aspirin I need. Not tea and sympathy. There are women friends any number. We dress up, all beads and bunions and sit in a circle, printing our lipstick on bone china cups, all thinking the same. All feeling empty and unused. Not much I can do about it, though.
Frank puts his arm around my shoulder. That’s nice. He’s a lovely boy and he lives in Sydney. He removes his arm to give me another tissue.
‘Blessed art thou among women.’
Should it be among or amongst? You hear a thing a million times and don’t remember. In winter we’d kneel in front of the wood stove. I’d get creases in my knees from the. It was coir matting made from coconut fibre, really hard. Little bits of wood chips and ash. They were slow, both of them. One word, another word, ages and ages for just one decade. At school, Sister Patricia used to say the Rosary like lightning. Us girls kneeling in class and her words all running together in that lilting. Irish as paddy’s pig, she used to say. Rattling her big black beads like Jaffa lollies. Frank’s got amethyst rosary beads. Never saw those before. I bet Chloe bought them for him. Merry Christmas, Francis, here’s the present you’ve been waiting. Oh shut up, Bea. You’re at it again. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned uncharitable thoughts about my sister and about my. She could have told me she was pregnant again without me hearing it from Frank. Frank? Who’s Frank? You know any Frank around here apart from the one ly
ing in the coffin? Named him after his grandfather but now it’s got to be Francis. Sweet Mary, Joseph and Jesus, you’d think I could stop this bloody crying. I reach across to Frank for more tissues. I’ll have to do better than this at the funeral tomorrow. It’s all turned out so. She says she’s going to the funeral but what if. You never know with her. It’s not fair. She just swans in when she feels like it. Oh shit, you’d think you could turn off tears, wouldn’t you, as easy as blinking your eyes or closing your mouth?
The flowers look good. Molly’s work. I don’t know what Diddy will say about sunflowers. Delia now. That’s the way it is. Sunflowers on the coffin but she wasn’t here, was she, and that’s what. Every year he grew them. The undertaker said they were. Not beautiful. Not perfect. Radiant was the word. The sunflowers were radiant. He must have a long list of words for. His job, of course. I forgot that sunflowers close up like cups in the evening. Although it’s not yet. Long rays of sun like searchlights through the windows.
He’ll be here all night. In the dark with the little red sanctuary light and the smell of flowers. And Joseph with his chipped toes. And Mary. And her son up there. And the pew he sat in. They sat, we, four of us, three when she was playing the organ for the choir. He never knelt or stood up fast enough. Everyone on their feet, Frank Munro still coming up. Like an echo. Big hands never turning over the missal page fast enough. Handkerchief coming out of his pocket. Unfurling slowly like a white sail. To blow our noses after we’d wiped them on our sleeves. They were married in this church. Well, no. I told Chloe that. But I think it was a church in Hastings. Doesn’t matter. We were baptised here. I forgot to say to Diddy. Delia. What about her baptism? What does she think about that? It’s the first time he’s been in this church for five and a half years. Hospital, nursing home, back to hospital. He’ll never come here again. Never. I know she didn’t make it up. He’d have done just that. I was by him all night, the whole bloody night. The minute I went into the cafeteria. It’s not fair!
But it’s not Dad. Not really. Who am I trying to deceive? I’ve known it forever, the empty tea cup, the filleted fish on the slab of ice, threnody, threnody. Dear God, I don’t know why it never lasts. There is always something happens, always a reason. And when love is dead it’s as bad as anything dead. That’s what I’m feeling. That’s it. My own death spreading like frostbite inside. Hail Mary, full of grace. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour.
The truth is I’m not alive if I’m not in love.
She’s not in bed. She’s sitting on the couch in her dressing gown watching a games show on TV. She gets up to turn it off but she doesn’t ask me how it went. She can see. Well, I’m not going to say anything. There’s only so much a person can.
‘Do you feel like some supper?’ she asks.
‘No thanks.’
‘You must be hungry.’
‘No.’ I notice she’s left a coffee mug on the bench. ‘We had tea and sandwiches at the presbytery.’
‘Oh, well, that’s fine.’
‘Yes. I’m going to bed. Good night.’
‘You don’t want to talk?’ she says.
‘What about?’
She fidgets with the remote control gadget. Turns it end over end. ‘When you called me, I said I was looking forward to talking over a bottle of wine. I haven’t got any. Are you really going to bed?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘I didn’t bring any wine, so – is there a liquor store where we can buy some? Or does everything still shut down at sunset?’
‘It’s not only America that’s in the 1990s,’ I remind her.
‘Well, great. We’ll go in your car. You lead the way.’
‘In your dressing gown?’
‘Sure. I won’t be getting out. I wouldn’t know what to buy anyway. The wine we had at lunch was really good.’
‘All right. If that’s what you want.’ I pick up the car keys. ‘But I do not want a late night.’
‘Who does?’ She strides to the door, wrapping her dressing gown tight around her. She’s thin. Thin as a rake.
‘You’ve lost more weight,’ I tell her.
She grins. ‘I know someone who found it.’ Then she says, ‘Oh come on, lighten up, will you?’
That’s okay. She can say what she likes. I just go out to the car, unlock it, get in and wait for her to do the same. It’s a warm night. The heat of the sun lingers in the darkness and there are stars. It’ll be a fine day tomorrow for the funeral.
She says, ‘In New York we wouldn’t drive at night with the windows down.’
‘I didn’t know you had a car.’
‘Not a car. What do you call them? Vans, I guess. Covered trucks for work.’ She wraps her dressing gown around her knees. ‘I keep thinking we’re going to have a head-on collision. I just can’t get accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road.’
‘You should stay a little longer,’ I tell her. ‘You’d get used to it again.’
I park outside the Esplanade Tavern bottle store. She gives me a handful of money. I accept it. She says she remembers I always liked cabernet merlot and maybe I could find a couple of bottles of good stuff. I buy three bottles of chardonnay and three of sauvignon blanc. There is no change.
All the way back to the motel she tries to make conversation. At one point I nearly tell her it’s not that easy to put right, but it would have been too. It would give her an opening. She comments on the motel gardens and asks about the horticulture course I did when I left school. Oh whoop-de-doo! Nineteen fantastic sixty-one!
‘I don’t remember much.’ Shall I tell her? Out in the freezing rain pruning the roses while Dad was hanging her painting in the lounge? Diddy’s marvellous painting?
As I park the car, she says, ‘Who’s the young guy in the motel office?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘I thought you knew him.’
‘No.’
She laughs and takes out a bottle. ‘It was the way he spoke to you this afternoon. Sorry. I thought you had a little thing going.’
‘No.’
She runs for the door, the grey silk dressing gown flying behind her like a flag. She could at least have put some underwear. She can’t have forgotten that much. She’s so skinny. Thigh bones sticking out like. The key turns and she rushes in with the bottle while I pick up the bag with the other five, climb out of the car and lock the door. I’m hot. My suit is sticking. Static electricity and perspiration.
* * *
One glass, I tell her, and then I’m into the shower and bed. I sit in one of the armchairs and she passes me a straw-coloured chardonnay. Not bad. Chilled but not too cold. ‘What do you want to talk about?’ I ask. Although ever since we went out she’s been talking non-stop. I suppose she’s coming to it. Wanting to know about the Rosary.
‘Tell me about Dad,’ she says.
‘What about him?’
‘After he went back to hospital. The last days.’ She takes her wine to the couch, wraps herself up in her dressing gown and puts a cushion at her back.
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
She waits, looking at me over the glass. We still have the same-coloured eyes. Eyes change with. Ours have stayed. Mum said it was the only way the world knew we were sisters. Not hers, not Dad’s but our grandmother’s eyes, pale grey with flecks of yellow.
‘It was gradual,’ I tell her.
‘Did he recognise you?’
I sip, wondering if I should say yes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He would have known you were there,’ she says. ‘It would have meant a lot to him.’
‘The nurses said he could hear. Maybe he could. It was hard to tell.’
‘You talked to him?’
‘I talked. I held his hand.’
She nods. ‘I am so glad. So glad you were there. Did he have tubes? You know, intravenous whatsacallit? Were they giving him oxygen?’
‘No. They don’t do that. Just a catheter for his bladder.’
&nb
sp; She shudders.
‘There was one thing. I had a little radio cassette player by his bed. I played tapes. All night, piano tapes. “The Appassionata”, Chopin Nocturnes, some Brahms, some Mendelssohn. Mum’s pieces. Oh yes, that little Mozart sonatina and the “Moonlight Sonata”.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes. They said. He couldn’t see but he could hear.’
‘You played Mum’s repertoire for him?’ She leans forward, dripping wine on her dressing gown.
‘It wasn’t Mum playing. I don’t know where her tapes. They weren’t good quality anyway. With the fridge humming. The wind outside. These were just some old. Peter Frankl, Gary Grafmann, Daniel Barenboim, some others. I thought if he could hear.’
‘I think that’s simply wonderful. Not only were you with him, holding his hand, talking to him. He was cocooned in her music. I know, I know. But for him it would have been her music. It would have been Mum playing for him.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
She brushes the wine marks on her dressing gown. ‘Does this leave stains? Remind me sometime to tell you about my Italian robe. It’s great wine. Want a refill?’
‘I’m going to bed. Tomorrow’s a long day.’
She is already off the couch and holding the bottle by its neck. ‘Sure. But we might as well finish the bottle. It’ll help us sleep.’
I hold out my glass and she fills it almost to the brim. If I had a wine waiter do that, he’d get a right old flea in the ear. ‘Thanks.’
‘You were with him,’ she says. ‘Like a midwife. It kind of got to me that Mum died on her own.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind her that Dad died alone, too. ‘Mum’s was sudden,’ I say. ‘But at least you were over here.’
She shakes the last drops from the bottle. ‘You never know how events will turn in front of you. I flew in for their golden wedding anniversary, thinking they’d be having this huge party.’
‘You didn’t think that!’
‘Fifty years married? Wouldn’t you expect a big celebration? They were a bit thin on relatives and friends but associates? Fifty years’ worth? This is your life, Frank and Agnes Munro and all that jazz? Dinner for the four of us! And not even at a restaurant. They wouldn’t have had a cake if you hadn’t made one.’
