The Tower Mill

by James Moloney

  Terry was on his back as ever, head and shoulders slightly elevated this time and with the mask gone from his face. His eyes were open, focused on the ceiling as I crossed from the door to his bedside.

  ‘Terry.’

  He didn’t turn his head, didn’t smile, didn’t respond at all.

  I squashed the disappointment and leaned over him, pushing my face into his line of vision. ‘Terry, it’s me. Susan.’

  I was looking down into empty eyes.

  The shock snapped me to attention. His face seemed made of plasticine and not a muscle moved beneath the skin. But the movement had attracted his attention and, slowly, his head turned so that his eyes could follow me. They stared at me, seeing nothing. Then his jaw moved up and down once, twice, in a parody of speech, but no words came out. The only sound was the dull flap of meeting lips, amplified grotesquely by the hollow mouth behind.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I demanded. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!

  I turned towards Mrs Stoddard, seeing her properly for the first time and found her weeping quietly, her rosary beads nowhere in sight.

  In icu, I hadn’t been aware of other patients. Even when they’d moved Terry to this ward in the Rehabilitation Centre, I’d had eyes only for him. That morning, for the first time, I began to examine this new world he’d been brought to, made up of bodies beneath white sheets, mostly, no different from his own. Many were old, grandad old. Some stared into the same space above their beds, mouths open and slack on one side. Stroke victims.

  A man was being helped from his bed, his scrawny legs barely able to support his body. He leaned on the wardsman, utterly dependent and with every ounce of concentration devoted to this simple task.

  ‘That’s it, Mr Pendlebury. Much better than last week.’

  The patient’s reply was half-moan, half-whimper like the cry of an animal left to die slowly in a forgotten snare.

  The cold winds of August gave way to the cloudless skies I’d always loved. There was no joy in them that year, and no change in Terry’s condition, despite what the doctors said. On an afternoon in mid-September Mike Riley drove me home once again, following a familiar route through the Valley, across the Story Bridge and along Main Street. At an intersection near the cricket ground the light was red, but I kept right on going.

  ‘That bloody hospital, the nurses, the whole fucking lot of them. They’re not doing anything. Last week the doctor tried to sell me some bullshit story that Terry would have to walk with those metal rod things on his legs. Can you imagine? They’ve given up on him completely, just shove food in his mouth like a baby in a highchair and his useless mother stands around crying, bamboozled by the whole doctor-knows-best routine. I won’t let it happen. He’ll get better, I know he will. He’ll be like he was before.’

  The light went green, signalling Mike’s turn.

  ‘You have to face facts, Suze. There’s only so much they can fix. I mean, it’s the brain.’

  ‘So you’ve given up, too. The hospital can go on treating him like a vegetable and you don’t care, either.’

  He sighed as though he’d expected me to go at him like this, no matter what he said. So why did he say it? It seemed he’d appointed himself the voice of reason in all this but that wasn’t what I wanted.

  ‘I didn’t say we should give up,’ he continued, in a level tone that irritated me even more. ‘I’m saying we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. If you expect too much, you’re going to end up disappointed.’

  He’d flogged the same caution on me a dozen times already and looked pissed off that he wasn’t getting anywhere. That was when he said, ‘You know, Sue, I saw this movie a while back, about a skier who broke her neck. She wanted to ski again, and of course she couldn’t, but the movie was about how she came to appreciate the things she could do. It was a triumph, really. If you’re in a wheelchair, then walking with callipers must feel like flying.’

  ‘I don’t believe this! Now you’re quoting some feel-good movie at me. I’m not listening to this crap. Stop the car. I’d rather walk home.’

  Mike ignored me, which was a red rag to me. ‘Stop the fucking car!’

  He began to pull over and I wrenched opened the door before he’d even stopped the car. But I didn’t get out. I didn’t want to get out and I felt stupid because I’d known as much even as I was shouting at him. I just wanted to shout.

  ‘Don’t get out,’ he said.

  That made it easier for me. I closed the door, relieved. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about Terry in a wheelchair,’ I warned. ‘I don’t want to hear about how they’ll teach him to talk again, to say ‘water’ when he’s thirsty, or say my name when he sees my face. He’s going to talk to me like he always did.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, Sue?’

  ‘I have to,’ I said, too quickly.

  ‘You’re fooling yourself and you know it, don’t you? I’ve stood beside Terry’s bed, too. I can see how bad it is. It’s not a bunch of broken bones that mend themselves good as new, it’s brain damage. He’ll never be the same, never, and you have to accept that.’

  ‘No!’ I slammed my clenched fist down on the Cortina’s glove box and when the violence of what I’d done made no difference, I found myself rocking forward and back, forward and back, suddenly helpless.

  ‘It’s horrible, Mike,’ I heard my voice say. ‘I can’t bear to see him like this. I can’t look at the others in the ward, dribbling, pathetic, their minds gone. He’s just like them.’

  I looked across at Mike, my eyes surprisingly dry because this wasn’t a play for sympathy. I was just so desperate.

  ‘The way his mouth opens and closes . . . it’s disgusting. I wish they’d tape it shut. And his eyes, they just stare at me, with no idea who I am. I want to put dark glasses over them so I don’t have to see. He doesn’t even know what a human being is,’ and this last was a terrible lament I wrenched from so deep within myself it might have brought blood.

  ‘I feel so guilty that he does that to me, Mike. I loved him so much and now I can’t stand to be near him. I can’t tell them at the hospital, can’t tell Mum. Bloody Mum, she goes on like this is a trial sent to test me and all the time I can see behind her eyes how relieved she is that there’ll be no more Terry, not the way it was before.’

  I stopped, expecting Mike to be angry with me, yet what I saw in his face was pity, not for Terry but for me, his eyes like outstretched hands and then I was launching myself across the seat, latching on to him.

  ‘Help me, Mike. I’m so ashamed.’

  TOM

  All children are suckers for the story of their own birth: they are fascinated by pictures of a mummy unaccountably younger than the one who now tucks them into bed, her hands resting on a watermelon that’s been shoved up her front. She’s invariably smiling. Maybe that’s the attraction. That’s you inside my tummy, darling. I’m smiling because of you.

  Some must ask how they got out, I suppose, and are told it happened at the hospital, which isn’t the answer they were looking for, but distracts them enough to avoid the need for diagrams and blushes.

  ‘Did you ever take a photo of Susan while she was pregnant?’ I’d asked Dad when the fascination overtook me years ago. I guess I must have been sixteen, maybe seventeen.

  ‘A few,’ he said. ‘They’re at Grandma’s, in with the other albums,’ and the next time we visited, he hunted them out.

  Did he save them for me? He didn’t keep the wedding photos – I asked about those, too, soon after, and was told they were gone, not destroyed, just let go, left behind and best forgotten, like the marriage itself, I suppose.

  If it took me longer than usual to show any interest in my genesis it was because I’d always known the mum in my daily life wasn’t the one who’d carried me around like a melon. But I’m not
that different. I did gestate inside my mother for nine months, like everyone else.

  Susan was pregnant right through those terrible weeks while she waited to know whether Terry would live or die and once that was no longer her fear, while she suffered assaults of grief, anger, shame and finally despair. I was with her through all of it.

  That’s you inside my tummy, darling, even though you are too small to see, too small to make my dress bulge outwards, too small even to remind me you are there.

  SUSAN

  Late September, 1971

  ‘Judging from the dates you’ve given me, Susan, I’d say you’re thirteen weeks.’ She was the first woman doctor I’d ever been to, and worked at a place I hadn’t known existed until a few days before. Not that I would have made an appointment at the uq clinic any earlier even if I had known she was there. My head was too full with other things.

  Afterwards, I sat alone in the refec, with a coffee going cold in front of me. I wasn’t afraid of public tears; I’d shed so many over the weeks since the Tower Mill that I knew the signs, but this time they didn’t come, even as I made myself think of Terry.

  ‘He’s dead. It’s all gone,’ I muttered. I simply couldn’t make a connection between Terry Stoddard and the baby inside me, as though it had lodged itself there spontaneously. It didn’t seem anything to do with me, either. It was just there. A decision had already been made before . . . before, before, before. Oh fuck!

  How would I go about it? Abortion had only ever been an abstract thing, an issue, condemned at Avila without discussion, debated hotly at uni, but never as an act that had to be arranged.

  For weeks I’d lain on my bed without a reason to do anything, yet that wasn’t me. I’d been waiting for a life that was never coming back, floored by my own powerlessness. It was time to break out.

  I stood up from the table and found myself oddly galvanised by what I was about to do, by my own efforts and however hard it might be, it was a challenge I was up for.

  At a phone box on the ring road, I called a number I still knew by heart, even though I hadn’t dialled it for two years.

  ‘Mrs De Jong, it’s Susan Kinnane. Could you please give me Karen’s number at work?’

  I met my old school friend the next day in Anzac Square, finding a bench below the cenotaph away from the paths and prying ears and there I laid out the problem, tearlessly and in a voice that didn’t waver on a single word. It wasn’t heartlessness, I told myself, it was the need to feel in control at last.

  My composure broke a little, though, when Karen started talking about money.

  ‘Where did your sister get that kind of cash?’

  ‘Mum and Dad, of course.’ When I looked stunned, she added in a sardonic tone: ‘Oh, they’re good Catholics on Sunday, but Barbara was pregnant on the other six days as well.’

  Karen promised to ring that night with the phone number. I would take the call in the lounge room, with Mum and Dad watching television only a few feet away. There was nothing suspicious about copying down a phone number, and when I made my own call I would go to the phone box on Logan Road.

  ‘Shit,’ I said under my breath while I waited for the bus in Queen Street. I had no idea where I was going to get that kind of money.

  And money was the biggest hurdle. Friends came good, without asking why I needed whatever they could spare, or when I could pay it back. Others said they couldn’t help, sorry. In the week after meeting Karen, I must have asked a dozen people. Then I came home one afternoon and found Mum sitting on the sofa.

  My wariness flared. A silent television was the clue I’d picked up without realising. She never sat in the lounge room by herself, unless the television was on.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you. Or maybe there’s something you want to tell me.’

  My mouth was instantly dry. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Because I do your washing.’

  ‘My washing! Mum, what are you on about?’ I managed a laugh. This might not be the moment I’d dreaded after all.

  But it was.

  ‘There hasn’t been any blood. You’ve never been careful with pads and things, have you Susan? I have to soak your underwear, only there’s been nothing to soak for months.’

  ‘My period’s playing up because of what’s happened to Terry, that’s all. It’s stress.’

  ‘When you’ve been sleeping with your boyfriend there’s a more common reason.’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘You think it’s not my business if my daughter’s pregnant?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Aren’t you? I should have guessed weeks ago. Your face has been white as a sheet every morning.’

  ‘Mum, my boyfriend’s half-dead in hospital! Why wouldn’t I look pale?’

  ‘You’re anaemic, like I was every time, and Diane’s the same. I’ve made an appointment for you with Doctor Tunbridge. If I’m wrong about this, you’ll have my sincerest apology.’

  That was it. She got up off the sofa and went into the kitchen without another word.

  I struggled through a sleepless night, but in the morning there was no point holding out any longer. After Mum was done with the rush of getting men out of the house, I sat down heavily at the kitchen table and ended the pretence, expecting Krakatoa to flatten half of Holland Park.

  It didn’t happen, and once I saw there weren’t going to be any pyrotechnics, I almost convinced myself the baby was gone, too.

  Phone calls were made. Diane came round with her little Rosanna, gave me a hug and told me it would be all right, really. The boys were left in ignorance, but Dad certainly knew by the time he came home. The anger was there in his face, but he said nothing, his eyes flicking towards Mum.

  My stomach tightened. There was something going on here. By now the house should have been echoing with shouts of ‘slut, promiscuous little fool, family disgrace, brought shame on us all’. The only conclusion I could draw was that Mum was still wearing the kid gloves she’d donned after Terry’s accident. I wasn’t convinced by this, though, and spent a second night dreading the day to follow.

  ‘Susan,’ Mum called through my bedroom door about ten the next morning. ‘Come into the lounge room. Your father and I want to discuss your situation.’ ‘Situation’ was the word my parents had assigned to the news.

  They were sitting side by side on the sofa when I arrived, leaving me the overstuffed chair that faced them. I slumped into it, my body to one side, resting my weight on an elbow. I dared to look across at them, still certain it would turn hostile at any moment.

  ‘The baby is due in March,’ said Mum.

  ‘The nineteenth,’ I confirmed. We’d been over this yesterday.

  ‘The situation has to be faced. You are going to have a baby.’ This from Mum, also, as though she were measuring out her words by the ounce.

  I didn’t interrupt. I knew there would be no drive down to Tweed Heads, no need for the hundreds of dollars I hadn’t yet raised. That was a relief of sorts, at least.

  ‘It’s terrible what’s happened to poor Terry and we don’t doubt that you loved him, and still do. The fact is, though, he can’t help you with this child. Instead, your father and I must step in, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. You’re our daughter and we love you – you shouldn’t doubt that for a minute. We’ll support you one hundred per cent.’

  It all came out so neatly, a speech – no, a tutorial presentation that showed they’d already thought much further ahead than I had. Until I’d come home to find Mum waiting on the sofa, the ‘situation’ wasn’t going to exist much longer, so why would I have thought any further? Even last night, with the landscape changed dramatically, all I could think about was how my parents were taking the news. Their disapproval hadn’
t materialised and now that was making me uneasy in itself. Mum was practically measuring me up for maternity clothes while we sat there.

  ‘I might give the baby up for adoption,’ I said solemnly.

  ‘No, no, darling –’ this time it was Dad who spoke up – ‘your baby will be our grandchild.’

  That was the second time I’d heard them say ‘your baby’. It disturbed me, made it harder to concentrate.

  ‘A cousin for Diane’s little girl, a Kinnane. There’s no need for adoption. You and the baby will have everything you need, a home, a loving family to care for you both . . .’

  Mum stayed mute while beside her Dad laid out how it would be, but it was in her face that I found the real story. I would raise the child myself, in this house.

  No wonder there had been no tirades. Mum was quietly over the moon, and even though she hid behind her silence while Dad delivered the lines she’d primed him with, she couldn’t quite keep the delight from her face. Her wayward daughter would be tamed after all; I would be dependent on them, on her, for everything. The only money I’d have would come from them; when I left the house, Mum would want to know where I was going and when I’d be back, for the baby, of course.

  While I tried to fight off these horrors, Dad canvassed my prospects as a woman. ‘There are plenty of blokes who’ll take on a wife when she’s already got a kiddie. Happens all the time these days. Got a fellow in the workshop now who’s just married a divorcee with two little ones.’

  Divorcee. I had joined the ranks of those my parents gave labels to, looked down upon, patronised. I was to be an Unmarried Mother whose loving parents were guiding her back to respectability, which meant that all the battles I’d fought over the past two years were null and void. I’d lost the war.

  I stared, disbelieving, across the room at Mum’s magnanimous smile, and knew it was all she could do not to dance a victory jig around the room.

  Days passed without interest or meaning. I became aware of the daily rhythms in our house that I had never noticed before – the regular phone calls, visitors at the door, Mum’s trips to do the shopping. That’s what you get when you mope about the place too much, I scolded myself when I realised what was happening, but without enough passion to feel guilty about it. Or to do anything differently. I was just grateful the morning sickness had eased. I’d let it debilitate me more than it should have and couldn’t muster any guilt over that, either. The house had been remarkably quiet concerning my ‘situation’, which had settled seamlessly into fact, and we were all simply getting on with it.