‘Yes, of course. But that’s not really the point, though, is it?’
Apparently not. ‘So, what’s he like?’
‘What do you mean?’ Helen frowned.
‘Is he good-looking?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ said Gemma. ‘Does he wear a mask?’
‘I don’t care what he looks like,’ Helen insisted. ‘He could be . . . I don’t know –’
‘Johnny Depp?’ suggested Phoebe, sighing.
‘Fine, he could be Johnny Depp, it wouldn’t make any difference.’
Phoebe and Gemma looked at her as though she had completely lost her mind.
‘Come on,’ said Gemma, ‘are you telling me if Captain Jack asked you –’
‘Don’t you get it, Gemma?’ Helen interrupted her. ‘He has no right to ask me out. It was completely inappropriate. I’m a married woman.’
Gemma and Phoebe were staring at her. Helen recognised that look. They thought she was crazy.
‘You’re just trying to say that it’s too soon,’ said Phoebe helpfully. ‘That you’re not ready yet . . .’
‘Because you do realise,’ added Gemma, in a tone Helen had heard used often at the nursing home, ‘you’re not married any more.’
‘But I am. I’m still the same person, nothing happened to me. I’m still David’s wife.’
Helen looked earnestly at Gemma and Phoebe, while they looked gobsmacked back at her.
‘Look, I’m not crazy,’ said Helen. ‘Think about it. If something happened to Noah, I’d still consider myself his mother, forever. If something happened to either of you, you’d still consider yourself sisters, wouldn’t you? You may not have a sister any more, but you’d still be a sister.’ She paused as they contemplated that. ‘It’s the same for me. I may not have a husband any more, but I’m still a wife. I didn’t choose to be a widow, I don’t feel like a widow.’ She sniffed. Tears were nudging their way into her eyes.
They sat in silence for a minute. Gemma could see the logic, kind of, but it didn’t stop it from being absurd.
‘But, don’t you think you have to . . . move on, eventually?’ Phoebe suggested carefully.
‘Why?’ Helen sniffed again.
‘Well, lots of reasons –’
‘Sex for one,’ said Gemma. ‘You do want to have sex again in your lifetime, don’t you?’
Now it was Helen’s turn to look gobsmacked. ‘I’d better go and run Noah’s bath,’ she mumbled as she got up from the table and left the room before either of them had the presence of mind to stop her.
Phoebe was glaring at Gemma across the table.
‘What?’ Gemma said innocently. ‘I was only stating the obvious.’
‘To you maybe,’ said Phoebe. ‘Gem, the woman couldn’t cope with the idea of having coffee with another man, let alone sex.’
‘Well, maybe she needs to be snapped out of it. It’s not normal.’
‘It’s not normal that her husband was run over by a bus. Give the poor woman a break. I don’t know how I’d handle it if anything like that happened to Cam.’
Gemma found herself daydreaming about Cameron being run over by a bus, which was a strangely satisfying thing to dwell on. She glanced at Phoebe, who was eyeing her suspiciously. Quickly, a diversion.
‘So, do you think my belly looks big in this?’ she asked, standing up and pulling her blouse taut over her stomach. ‘Can you tell I’m pregnant?’
Phoebe tilted her head, considering her sister’s midsection. ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ she shrugged. ‘I know you’re pregnant, so that probably affects my perspective.’
Gemma’s jaw dropped. ‘So you’re saying that there is something to see?’ She looked down at herself, aghast. ‘I thought the MD was giving me a funny look the other day.’
‘You’re imagining things,’ Phoebe scoffed. ‘He probably just thinks you’ve put on weight.’
‘Thank you. That makes me feel so much better.’
‘What does it matter to you? You’re going to get a lot bigger soon enough. Have you worked out what you’re going to do yet, once you can’t hide it any more?’
Of course she hadn’t. No lightning bolt had struck out of the blue. No magician had waved a magic wand to fix everything. ‘Something’ll come up,’ she said offhandedly.
Phoebe gave her another withering look from across the table.
‘You know, Phee, there’s really no reason for me to get in touch with Mum and Dad when I get all the disapproval I can handle from you.’
Brookhaven
‘I haven’t seen you around for a while, Helen.’
She was sitting in the office of Dr Chris Taylor, one of the small team of visiting medical officers at Brookhaven, and her mother’s personal physician since she’d moved there. Marion liked him; she tended to be drawn to men who had at least a vague likeness to Tony. And Dr Chris had the requisite height and hair colour, and he was around the same age as well. Which made him young for a geriatrician.
‘Well, this is Mum’s regular six-month evaluation,’ said Helen a little defensively. ‘I would have seen you six months ago.’
‘Sure,’ he nodded. ‘I was just commenting I hadn’t seen you around lately.’
‘I’m still visiting regularly, I might have missed a day or two a few months ago –’
‘Helen,’ he interrupted, his voice kind, ‘it wasn’t an accusation, just an observation. I’ve probably missed you in the corridors, that’s all I’m saying.’
She nodded, pulling her cardigan around herself and crossing her arms in front of her chest. ‘So, anyway, the evaluation?’
‘Right, well.’ He opened Marion’s file. ‘As you’re probably aware, there’s been some significant deterioration in the past couple of months.’
‘Significant?’
‘Well, it’s significant insofar as the symptoms your mother is beginning to exhibit are generally classified as severe.’
‘Such as?’ Helen said in a small voice.
Chris hesitated, watching her closely. ‘You know all this, Helen.’
‘Could you just go through it, please,’ she said, avoiding his gaze.
He sighed, though not with impatience. ‘Okay. Loss of speech, loss of appetite and associated weight loss, loss of bladder and bowel control.’ He paused, allowing Helen to take it in. ‘These symptoms are only now beginning to present, and they’re still intermittent, but they do signal the beginning of further decline, as I’m sure you’re aware. My biggest concern at the moment is your mother’s loss of motivation: she’s just not interested in anything. Probably the single most important element in keeping Alzheimer’s patients healthy is to keep them active and engaged. But unfortunately your mother’s hallucinations and paranoia are becoming distressing for her, and we’re going to have to think about anti-psychotics. The newer medications have fewer side effects but they still cause drowsiness, which leads to lethargy and further lack of motivation.’
‘And depression,’ added Helen, ‘which is how it all started.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know her history, Chris, she was depressed after the death of my father, she never got over it.’
‘And you know as well as I do, Helen, that Alzheimer’s is a degenerative illness that damages the connections between brain cells, causing the brain cells to die eventually. That’s not caused by depression.’
‘Couldn’t it be a trigger?’
‘There’s no evidence to support that. In fact, it’s more likely that her depression was an early symptom of Alzheimer’s.’
Which Helen should have picked up.
‘Are you all right, Helen?’ Chris asked suddenly. Invasively.
‘Pardon?’
He leaned forward. ‘This can’t have been an easy time for you, since the loss of your husband.’
Why did everyone have to know that? Why was it everybody’s business?
‘Are you seeing anyone?’
Helen was startled. ‘What . . . I’m sorry?’
‘Are you seeing a counsellor?’
She breathed out; for a minute there she thought he meant . . . ‘I have seen a grief counsellor a couple of times.’
‘Is that helping?’
Helping what? she wanted to say. She wanted to say a lot of things, like It’s none of your business, Dr Chris. But Helen had never been able to say things like that, least of all to someone with ‘Dr’ in front of his name.
So she just nodded. ‘Yes, thanks, it’s been helpful. So, I was wondering,’ she went on, changing tack, ‘are there any new treatments worth considering? Anything experimental even?’
He took a second to catch up with her. ‘Oh.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘They start off with promising ideas that largely turn out to have little or no benefit. It’s frustrating, dealing with the brain, like trying to get a computer to function when the hard drive is damaged. The most success they’re having is with mild cognitive impairment in the early stages. Early intervention is as important as ever.’
Go ahead, rub it in.
‘That’s not going to help my mother though, is it?’
Chris looked at her directly. ‘No, it isn’t. So we have to get her interested, find things for her to do that engage the part of her mind that is still functioning. Boredom is her greatest enemy right now.’
Gemma was bored. Helen was out somewhere with Noah, they’d left before she was even out of bed. It was Saturday, a day off. But Gemma didn’t know what to do with her days off any more, except sleep. And she didn’t seem to need as much sleep as she had earlier in her pregnancy. She’d said as much to Helen one day, offhand, and Helen had explained about the glowing middle months of pregnancy, of peak energy levels and optimum health. Which was all well and good, but what was she supposed to do with all this glowing good health? She had phoned Phee, but they were going hiking in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and Gemma was certain she’d rather be bored to oblivion than go hiking in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park with Cameron and Phoebe in their undoubtedly coordinated hiking outfits.
So she tried texting Charlie, twice, but he was either ignoring her or he was still asleep. It was after ten, but it was a Saturday, and he wasn’t in the peak performance months of pregnancy, so he was probably enjoying a lie-in, considering the hours he kept. Charlie was typical of his breed. There was something a little vampirish about computer nerds.
She did think about getting in touch with some of her old friends, though it would certainly be too early in the morning for any of them just yet either. Gemma had not made contact since just after she returned to Sydney. She’d called Kaz and Bec and Johnno while she was still in Brisbane to see if they’d heard from Luke, but they claimed they hadn’t. She called them again when she got to Phoebe’s place, and Kaz gave her Tim’s number that time. Tim was the friend who had brought Luke to the party where they first met. Tim was never home apparently, and though she left messages, he did not get back to her. It had crossed Gemma’s mind that Tim knew something and was avoiding her, but on the other hand, if Tim was anything like Kaz or Bec or Johnno or any of her old friends – or herself for that matter – promptly answering messages was probably not one of his strengths. So after a while Gemma had stopped calling.
The clock ticked over the hour and Gemma remained bored. She did a load of washing, remembering to place her bras in a drawstring laundry bag in the washing machine, and afterwards to hang her work blouses carefully on hangers under the back awning in the shade. Though the garment labels recommended this, Gemma had never bothered to do it before. Boredom obviously had the potential to make a person obsessive-compulsive. She had to find something to do. She wandered around the house restlessly till she found herself pacing up and down the back room, her eyes constantly drawn to the door, the locked door behind the ugly occasional table, with the ugly vase and the outrageously ugly plastic blooms. Gemma walked over and rattled the doorknob, as she had done a dozen times before. It was still locked, of course, barricaded, quite possibly even painted shut. There was a clear, unspoken directive to stay out.
But Gemma was bored.
She started looking around for the key to the door. Not that she was planning to use it necessarily; she just thought she’d see if there was in fact a key. There had to be one somewhere, surely? She tried the drawer in the ugly table; it had its own little key which turned easily to unlock the tiny drawer to reveal a couple of yellowing notepads, a pencil and two packs of playing cards, but no key. Gemma turned her back to the pesky door and surveyed the room. Positioned at intervals around the walls were various bow-fronted cabinets, some with leadlight doors and side panels, chock full of china and crystal ornaments, small animals mostly, but miniature clocks, shoes and assorted cars and carriages also featured prominently. One cabinet had porcelain figurines of little girls and brides and nuns, Lladro and the like. Hideously expensive stuff. Gemma had never understood the appeal, but each to his own. Another held a display of Bakelite pieces, useful things like hairbrushes and mirrors and boxes, that had sadly not been put to the use for which they were intended for years, decades more like. Her mother would have salivated over such a collection; she had a passion for Bakelite, which was yet another thing that Gemma didn’t understand about her.
After she had scanned each cabinet, searching under, behind or inside every objet d’art therein, Gemma was still keyless. But that only made the challenge all the more irresistible.
She went through the house, checking all the doors for keys and trying them one by one on the mystery door, to no avail. Somewhere in the house, Gemma was sure she’d seen a plain steel ring with four or five large old-style keys looped through it, hanging from a hook. She could picture it in her mind’s eye now, high up, beside an architrave. But where? She checked the kitchen, beside the back door. Then she had a thought. She hurried outside to the laundry and poked her head around the doorway. Paydirt. Gemma unhooked the key ring and dashed back into the house, almost running through to the back room. There were four keys altogether. The first one didn’t even fit properly into the keyhole; the next one seemed to fit but it wouldn’t turn. Nor would the next. Nor would the fourth and final key. Damn. Gemma couldn’t believe one of these keys wouldn’t fit the door, so much so that she tried each one again.
They still didn’t fit, not surprisingly. Gemma sagged back against the wall, defeated. She was out of ideas and out of keys. What the hell was in there? She knocked her fist on the wall a couple of times. She wondered how big the room was, whether it had any windows. Gemma went through the kitchen and out the back door again. She stepped slowly backwards into the yard, peering up at the windows, shielding her eyes from the sun rising above the gable of the roof. The back wall of the house continued probably another three metres past the last window, which Gemma recalled butted up to the perpendicular wall inside. The corner of the house was close to the boundary, but it left a path wide enough for Gemma to walk up the side. She spotted a door at the same time as she walked straight into a giant sticky spider web and promptly screamed. Nothing gave Gemma the willies more than spiders. She painstakingly removed every last strand she could find, shaking her head and brushing off her clothes repeatedly. Eventually satisfied there was nothing crawling through her hair or inside her clothing, Gemma proceeded to the door, still clutching the ring of keys. There were more spider webs across the door; she brushed them away with a twig. It was a panelled timber door, with no handle on the outside, just a weathered brass oval base plate framing the keyhole. Gemma tried one key, but it was no good. Undaunted, she inserted the second key into the lock. It was a snug fit. She took a breath and slowly turned the key. Her heart missed a beat as it moved around a half-circle and clicked. The door remained where it was, so Gemma gave it a light push. It didn’t give: it appeared to be stuck. She squared her shoulder up towards the door and pushed with all her might.
The door flung open and Gemma landed on the
floor inside. She sneezed as dust flew about her, as though it was staging a wild protest at the intrusion of light into the room. She quickly got back up onto her feet and looked around. Dust was still whirling about in the shaft of light, and Gemma sneezed again. The air in here was musty, with a distinctly chemical aftertaste. As her eyes slowly adjusted, Gemma could make out the door on the opposite wall, leading to the back room, but there was no light coming from behind it. It must be sealed tight. There was a window, covered by a roller blind, on the outer wall next to the door she had come through. Gemma picked her way between boxes and other unidentifiable mounds on the floor and pulled on the blind. It shot up with a jolt, but the window appeared to be painted black. Gemma reached her hand out gingerly to touch the glass, peering closer. Why on earth would someone paint the only window in the room black? She turned the latch on top of the sash and tried to lift it, but it was stuck fast, possibly even nailed down.
She looked around the room. In the dim light she could make out a couple of bulky wardrobes, similar in style to the one in her room. A bench ran the length of one wall, with a long shelf at head height above it. The room was cluttered with boxes of various sizes and shapes, old trunks, luggage and odd pieces of furniture – a pair of chairs stacked on top of each other, what looked like the parts of a baby’s cot propped against a wall, and a very ornate, ugly old standard lamp with a wonky shade.
Gemma sneezed again, triggering a fit of sneezing that finally ended half a minute later with her eyes itching and her head buzzing. She sniffed loudly and rubbed her eyes, contemplating the door on the opposite wall. There was a sturdy barrel bolt at chest height. Gemma wondered if that was what had been holding the door in place all along. She walked over and tried to open it. It was a bit of an effort – she had to lean hard against the door to slide it across. As the bolt passed through the nib on the door frame, Gemma took her weight off the door and it almost popped open a little, allowing a slender blade of light into the room. But the bottom of the door seemed to be wedged hard into the carpet. Gemma wrapped her fingers around the side of the door and reefed it back, scraping the bottom edge across the carpet. There was the back of the ugly occasional table, the ugly vase and the ugly plastic flowers. And there was Helen’s face, frowning at her.
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