by Zane Lovitt
But then, at the precise moment of Beth’s fourth call, I find this postscript on Blake’s LEAP file: he was moved to a prison hospice in Fairfield last year. The treatment he received, is probably still receiving, appears only as ‘severe psoriatic arthritis’ and ‘SCLC extensive stage’.
Words that mean very little to me.
What I might do next is squeeze my way into the Adult Parole Board database, wallow in that glut of information. But an exploit like that is a monumental timesuck and isn’t going to answer the biggest question of all.
By the time of Beth’s fifth call, I’m in Mum’s old Mitsubishi Magna, heading east.
62
There’s an entrance off the street that’s as sad as I imagined. The concertina wire around the carpark appears to serve no purpose but to reinforce that this is indeed a correctional facility. Inside, the absence of windows serves likewise. Young faces of security personnel meet me at the archway of a metal detector, but even as I step through they don’t appear to notice me. Like I’m the ghost, despite their translucent skin and walled eyes.
My mother died in a place like this. Except that the inmates could come and go as they pleased, if they were capable of it. Most of them weren’t so I suppose it probably felt like a correctional facility. The same stench of sweat, bleach and microwaved soup as I walk the long corridor. No posters about the strength to be found in hope or the miracle of each day; the echoey beige walls are nothing more than functional and the beige lino is somehow less colourful for the coloured lines that lead you where you want to go, chipped and faded and entirely worn away in parts. At the end of this walk is the visitation wing where weak green light struggles out from the fluorescent tubes with a buzzy moan. Another uniformed stooge at the reception desk tries to look busy, but if his job is to preside over an overwhelming sense of hopelessness I can’t imagine what more there is to be done. Saddest of all is the set of bench chairs and the shiny spots on the wall behind them, the paint worn away by a thousand heads tilted back to ponder the reality of a loved one dying in jail. But for now, at least, no one else is here.
The uniform seems to roll his eyes as I approach the desk. Not another visitor in the visitation wing.
I’m like, ‘Good afternoon.’ Try to be cheerful.
He says nothing. Beyond him there’s a set of heavy double doors with enough steel around its frame to indicate a magnetic lock. On the reception desk are three displays, two of which feature live vision of what’s going on behind those doors, broken up into nine segments apiece with running timecode. Most of the segments show hospital beds, people in them.
‘I was just wondering how I can arrange to see Desmond Blake?’
The uniform doesn’t look at me, presses keys on his keyboard.
‘Visiting times don’t start for another fifteen minutes.’
He’s got a lisp, I think. But it might just be how little effort he’s putting into speaking with me.
‘So I can see him in fifteen minutes?’
‘There’s a stipulation on Desmond Blake.’
And he looks back flatly, like that settles it.
‘What does that mean?’
A digital bell rings somewhere. The man analyses his displays and his hand moves under the desk. One of the heavy doors swings open and a female officer exits, another cool blue uniform. She walks past, purposeful, back the way I came. As the door falls shut I glimpse an empty bed and a curtain in a bleak hospital space. Less like a hospital, more like a dorm.
The uniform says, ‘No one can see him without written permission.’
‘Written permission from who?’
The man sighs. This means clicking a button on his keyboard and it’s awful for him.
‘Franklyn Blake,’ he reads. Desmond’s son.
‘How do I get in touch with him?’
‘Can’t give you that info.’
‘Then how can I get permission?’
He shrugs with a dour face, like that question’s a doozy but it’s not his problem.
‘You can tell me I need permission, but not how to get it. So you’re, like, the Riddler?’
The man says nothing, seems to wait for me to go away. For less than a second I consider blindsiding him, triggering the doors from under the desk. But who am I kidding?
‘Is there a manager I can talk to?’
‘Only me, mate.’
I sigh in search of a remedy. If Franklyn Blake came to visit today, maybe he’d let me in to speak with Desmond. I can wait. And sooner or later this blue-clad power trip has to be relieved. Maybe by someone more helpful.
The bench chairs are empty because no one else has shown up early, but as I slump into one a slow trickle commences, emerging from the wide corridor, registering at the desk. They look like people who would leave stains of misery on the walls. None considers this a pleasant Tuesday outing. Some are more stoic than others.
A woman sits next to me and immediately breaks wind. She’s about as old as people get, but apparently she’s come to visit someone else who’s dying. What a maudlin row of pain we make, me and her and the Sudanese man next.
My mother died in a place like this. Only it had fewer security guards and more windows, some with flowers on the sill. But the spirit of death was ubiquitous there, too. Is it the smell of the place, or your state of mind?
Facing me is a Japanese woman with a rugged-up kawaii
A gentle tug on my sleeve. I wouldn’t have known what it meant on any other day but I leaned in close, put my ear to her lips because that’s the only way I would hear. She said, ‘Jason.’ Like she wanted me to know that she knew who she was talking to. She said, ‘Don’t go.’ I told her I wouldn’t. She whispered again and I couldn’t understand, thought to go to the door and beckon a nurse, someone who could maybe translate. But I just nodded like a dingus and told her I was here.
baby in a pusher. They remind me of the family I saw at the court a week ago. Dads disappear—the lucky ones get to witness their child’s first steps—then Mum unpacks the stroller and just gets on with it.
I’m flicking too hard at the lacker band. Turn to my phone for a distraction.
Severe psoriatic arthritis means that Blake’s skin is inflamed and topped with silvery scales like he’s turning into The Fly. I have to prepare myself for that. Along with it comes permanent, disabling joint pain, especially in the fingers and toes, as well as a ‘loss of skeletal architecture’. Which also sounds like The Fly.
‘SCLC extensive stage’ is more straightforward: small cell lung cancer, the aggressive kind of lung cancer. Extensive stage means it’s spread somewhere like the lymph nodes. It’s inoperable, the survival rate is minuscule and most people don’t make it twelve months past diagnosis. Chemotherapy is rarely effective, probably isn’t an option if Blake is losing skeletal—
‘You looking for me?’ A man is seated beside me on the bench, has slumped there without me noticing.
I try to speak but my throat catches and I don’t manage any words before he clarifies: ‘I’m Frank.’
He’s my age, wears a dusty jacket and jeans, messy hair the way some men choose not to care, a beard that’s also unkempt but which seems at least to be deliberate. A crucifix hangs around his neck, matches the silver in his eyes.
He shakes my hand with a dry, callused paw. Frank works for a living; a tradesman or labourer with time off to visit his dying dad. I wonder if he tells his boss what kind of hospice this is.
‘Frank. My name is…’
I realise I don’t have a cover story. All this time to kill and I didn’t come up with one.
‘Um…My name is Jason Ginaff.’
63
The blood thuds up the back of my neck and brute forces my brain, so hard and quick that my skull impacts the spot on the wall so many heads have impacted before. Franklyn looks me over like a farmer looks over a broken-down tractor, his lip hoisted in a sneer not of disdain but merely bafflement.
‘Um…’ I say. He ca
n see me thwacking away at the lacker band around my wrist but that’s not going to stop me doing it. ‘I wanted to visit your…Desmond Blake.’
‘Right.’
Nothing from him except that sneer.
‘I need to see him today…It’s important.’
‘How come?’
‘Cheryl Alamein.’
Franklyn’s eyes freeze over and at first it seems that he must recognise that name. His body goes rigid and he grasps at the back of his chair. Then I realise what it is that’s freaking him out.
‘You were in Severington?’
I should have remembered to wash the black teeth off. For now I cover them with my left hand, keep flicking the rubber band and my heart shoots another warning shot across my brain.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Just…it’s a long story.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been hearing a few of those lately.’
Flinty eyes in a sun-damaged face. I peer back and they don’t falter.
‘So…like…what? What have you been…heard?’
That Des killed his mother. He would have heard that. But the toughness in his voice, the shaking of his head…It’s like he doesn’t want to be impugned by what I’ve come to say.
‘Listen, I just met the guy, okay? Two weeks back the chaplain here calls me up out of friggin’ nowhere, says my dad’s in here and didn’t have long.’ He raises his hands in surrender. ‘So I just met the guy. I don’t know anything. I just come along and, you know…This is all new.’
‘Did he tell you about Cheryl Alamein?’
‘I don’t…’ He’s confused by how to answer. A long sigh. ‘I don’t know what he told me.’
The band snaps loud against my wrist. He seems to decide not to wonder about it. Meanwhile I’m pulling air into my lungs by the metric fuckload, fighting the urge to flee.
‘Um…He’s awake? He…He can talk?’
‘Not really anymore.’
‘Can I see him?’
But Franklyn is already winding up. His sneer turns apologetic. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think people should be, like…’
‘But…Can I…’
‘He can’t really talk anymore. That’s why there’s this stipulation thing. The psoriasis is everywhere now. I mean, it’s spread and it’s infected. It’s all over his body. I mean, you don’t want to know. And he can’t even really open his mouth.’
With no sound at all, the lacker band breaks. The absence of the snapping sensation or any registration on the pain scale sends another pump of blood upstairs and I think I’m going to faint, blink hard to
One hand swung wildly to her side, enough to be on purpose, and I saw she was pointing in the most feeble way to the wooden cabinet bedside her bed. My flowers were there, chrysanthemums like she liked, as well as her purse. Something I hadn’t rummaged around in since I stole from it as a teenager. It was the only thing she could have been pointing to and I opened it. Did she want to give me money? But no. Inside was the scrap of white card, the one where I compared my love for her to some stooge in a movie.
wipe the green flashbangs from my eyes. I shake my head, tip back and forth but it doesn’t clear. With my lids squeezed shut and while I’m poking them with my fingers I realise Franklyn’s still talking.
‘…A test. Like, friggin’ biblical.’ A bitter laugh, water in his eyes. ‘You grow up hating the guy because he’s not around. Then all of a sudden here he is, and you have to watch him die in more pain than you thought was possible.’
I’m guessing he doesn’t have a lot of people to pour this out to. He’s taking the opportunity, despite how obvious it must be that he’s chosen the wrong person.
‘Father McLeod says it’s not a sin to wish him a quick death. He said it’s okay to pray for mercy. Whatever the mercy is.’
‘But…How long?’
‘Oncologist reckons days. But he’ll suffer like this for as long as he has to.’
I’m pinching my eyes so I can’t tell what this is supposed to mean. Can’t see whatever has come over Franklyn now. It’s in his voice when he says:
‘He’s got a lot to do penance for.’
I manage to blink my eyes open despite how my brain is an ocean and I’m drowning in it.
‘Apart from his mother?’
Franklyn stares at the lino.
‘Sounds like you know.’
‘Cheryl Alamein,’ I say again. I have to grind it through my teeth because it’s hard to breathe.
‘It’ll all come out. Once he passes.’
‘What? What will?’
The broken band that held to my skin by way of static
She clutched it in her hand which had no strength but which could still destroy that flimsy slip of card it was so old. With a titanic effort she hoisted her arm onto her chest and held the clenched fist against her heart. Her eyes rolled back then settled dimly. Then another gesture for me to come close. I obeyed and really stuck my ear in her mouth and she said, ‘Love you.’
I was crying all over again and I turned to face her so she could see that I was.
I said, ‘Of course you do. You’re my mum.’
‘No,’ she shook her head, mad sidelong twists. I leaned in again.
‘I love you because of who you are.’
electricity loses its grip on my wrist hair and falls to the floor.
‘He wrote it all down,’ Franklyn says. ‘When it happened. He wrote it down and gave it to his lawyer.’
‘Wrote what down?’
‘Sorry, mate.’ He plants his hands on his knees and stands up, moans like an old man. ‘Even if I knew the details, I’m not allowed to tell. And he can’t now. He’s done all the confessing he’ll ever do.’
‘Listen…’ I can somehow feel the green lights in my eyes. ‘Listen. I know…I mean…’
‘This lawyer bloke, he goes to the cops once Dad passes. And that’s, like, any day now. That’s the deal they made. Dad wrote down what happened. The bloke’s keeping it till Dad dies.’
‘But why?’ I say. ‘Why did he do it?’
My eyes close tight against the heat in my head and I don’t see his reaction.
He says, ‘I don’t friggin’ know.’ His voice is further away. He’s walking away.
‘Just…Just…’ I lean out, almost fall off the chair. Heads turn. I call out to Franklyn, just a blur in my vision. ‘How did the vase… How did the vase get in the workshop?’
‘What?’
‘The vase. How was…How did it get into the…
A nurse entered, ignored me and rushed to my mother’s bed. Something brought him here, a silent alarm that triggered at his station but not in this room. Another entered and I saw Mum’s eyes were wide like she was searching me for a response to what she said but when they unlocked the wheels on her bed and guided her out I realised it wasn’t me she was searching.
The moment she was gone and I was alone in that room, there came a startling discomfort. Not something I’d ever felt, like a rebellion of the blood in my veins. It crashed over me with such a monumental suddenness I had to sit on the tiles. Was I hyperventilating? Was there too much blood in my head? Too little?
I squirmed away on that hospice floor, tried to stay upright. Sweat poured out of my hair and soaked me down to my shoes. I pulled at my clothes until that wasn’t enough and I lay flat and I might not have lost consciousness, or maybe I did…
The thing about that first panic is that I’d invited it. Like a vampire, it knocked on the door and I saw who it was and I let them in. I chose to feel this. To be overwhelmed. Because that would reflect my feelings for the woman dead in the next room.
I mean…How did it get into Piers’s workshop?’
It’s entirely obvious to Franklyn that he’s in conversation with a freak. He says, ‘Sorry,’ and turns and walks away. At the reception desk he points to the security door and says something breathy, wants to be let in. With a long stare at me, the officer obliges, hits the button and the door opens wide.
I peer after him at what I can glimpse…
Is it a man hunched in a cot? His face so flaky and ravaged with disease that it’s impossible to determine his age? Is he sitting up, awaiting his son, a red bandana around his head, making the nurses laugh with his handwritten placards? Or is he setting out a game of draughts with trembling, palsied digits, the black teeth still visible through the crusty scales on his right hand?
Maybe. I’m not sure. The door shuts. Franklyn is gone.
The wind strikes my face like a punishment when I reach the outdoors. I run to the car and get inside and for a minute my hands are too cold to turn the ignition. Though also, they’re too shaky. I need brain clarity, take a moment to breathe. Tell myself I’m not going to pass out. Watch gang-gangs screech in circles overhead.
I follow Heidelberg Road past Fairfield Park and over the train tracks into Clifton Hill. Then I turn right onto Alexandra Parade.
I realise that I’ve pulled over. I’m in Carlton again. There’s a Big Thirst bottle shop dominating Rathdowne, one of the ones the size of a submarine hangar. Automatic doors open and close, sober pedestrians come and go and I watch. The engine is running.
A car horn from somewhere. The ticking of a Don’t Walk light.
And what I think is this:
I’m going to buy some wine.
64
Her phone is closed so probably she thinks she’s going to surprise me, sitting at my terminals, backlit by the streetlights and silent. I trigger the lights, put the wine on the kitchen counter, my keys and gloves too and without looking I say, ‘Hello, Gemma,’ because I am a gaping chadwick. No response while I fire up the heater so now I look. Her eyes are half-closed in a way I’d never seen until she turned out to be somebody else. Now she seems to do it all the time. That pointy tongue wets her lips to speak but then she doesn’t.
‘You want a wine?’
Licks her lips again.
‘Yep.’
I break the seal on the bottle, don’t sniff at the vapours, just pour straight into tumblers from the dish rack and take them over.
