Maria in the Moon

by Louise Beech

I stood at the window. It had begun snowing while I was in the booth. The world could softly change while you were on the phone. I’d half forget that outside I was Catherine with a semi-built home and a dead-end job. It was very tempting to close the shutter on it all, leave Catherine in the snow and get lost in being Katrina, the woman people needed.

  ‘You OK?’ Christopher had put down the book.

  ‘Do you think we’d even leave this building if the three-minute warning went off for a nuclear attack?’ I let go of the shutter.

  ‘Am I definitely going to die in this scenario?’ he asked.

  ‘They won’t warn us,’ said Kath, her yellow ball of wool tiny now. ‘It’d be kinder to let us die without knowing.’

  ‘I just don’t know where else I’d be,’ I said.

  Christopher stared at me but I couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘Like, where else is there?’ I continued.

  He seemed to ponder this, but offered no answer.

  ‘I wouldn’t get to finish this cardigan,’ said Kath, holding it up.

  The phones rang only twice before the end of the shift, both calls from flood victims who wanted to rant about their inept builders and the local council. I checked my mobile twice for messages from Fern but had none.

  It was dark when we shut off the phones, pulled the shutters closed, cranked down the heating and washed the cups. Christopher wheeled his bike down the frozen path and said he’d see me Wednesday, his smoky breath silver in the moonlight. Condom Kath hurried past to be picked up by her neighbour in a van.

  Back at the flat I climbed the metal stairs, hoping Fern would be sitting on the sofa, full of sorry’s and smiles. But the door was locked. The place was as I’d left it that morning: impossibly, pathetically tidy. I longed for her chaos and was tempted to smash the glass I’d carefully washed and turned upside down on the drainer. Instead I made a cup of tea and squashed the bag five times.

  With only two hours until my nightshift I hunted for my overalls under Fern’s bed. I saw Aunty Hairy’s shoebox of pictures. I’d forgotten about them. Curious now, I carried it to the living room and took out the one of me sitting on the edge of a boat in Devon. Next I found one of Dad near an over-adorned Christmas tree; his smiling eyes were even brighter than the stars. Sitting cross-legged, I sipped tea and pulled out image after image. Pictures of me with missing teeth, of Dad hugging my mother, of relatives I didn’t know. A faded one of my mum, perhaps a teenager, smiling shyly. She looked like me.

  Halfway through was a picture of a rabbit. A black-and-white rabbit in my skinny child’s arms. I had no idea whose it was and couldn’t recall the white dress I wore. Though there was no menace in the photograph, and I grinned for whoever had taken the picture, my throat felt like I’d swallowed grit.

  I picked up the phone.

  ‘Mother,’ I said over her customary civil greeting. ‘There’s a picture in Aunty Mary’s box of me with a rabbit. Whose is it?’

  ‘Catherine, I’ve got chicken soup on. I don’t remember now.’ I heard The Carpenters on her radio singing about birds suddenly appearing – but I wanted to know about rabbits.

  ‘You must have some clue,’ I snapped.

  ‘You might have had one when you were nine or ten,’ she sighed.

  ‘So who got me it?’

  ‘…Aunty Mary…’ She didn’t sound altogether sure.

  ‘And was it a girl or a boy? What was it called?’

  She thought about it. ‘Geraldine.’

  I looked at the picture and the word ‘tiger’ popped out of it and dissolved like a burst water bubble, splattering my nine-year-old face with tears.

  ‘Did I ever call it “Tiger”?

  ‘No. You called everything Geraldine – your dolls, your cups, your—’

  ‘So what happened to her?’ I demanded.

  ‘You had one of your funny turns and set her free,’ said Mother. ‘You left the cage open and watched her escape under the fence. I told you I’d not buy another, but you were unapologetic; you even seemed to think it was funny. You just laughed when I sent you to bed early.’

  ‘Mother, why don’t I remember?’

  I tried so hard; I willed my memory to bring the photograph to life for me. If only there was a password, some simple door-code, like the one for the Flood Crisis building. The word ‘tiger’ was merely a nausea-inducing clue.

  ‘Catherine, I have no idea at all.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me about the rabbit?’

  ‘Catherine, do not fuck on the phone please. How could I know you didn’t remember? How could I know to tell you about it? You didn’t ask.’ She paused. ‘While you’re on the phone, Aunty Mary is having her operation on Monday afternoon, so we can see her on Tuesday. It’d be nice if you showed your face. And for goodness sake please don’t swear on the ward.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘I have a few days off work this week.’

  ‘The soup’s boiling, I have to go.’ She hung up.

  I still had so many questions. How long did I have Geraldine? Did I take care of her? Why had I set her free?

  In the photograph, I held her cheek to cheek; but my smile was betrayed by sad eyes. The photographer’s shadow cast darkness across my left side, blackening the white dress like I was Geraldine’s monochrome twin. Who’d taken the picture? I recalled Dad touching my nose and promising me a rabbit when I was nine. His moustachy, fatherly scent wafted from the picture. But he couldn’t have been there. Aunty Hairy must have honoured the promise, perhaps to cheer me up.

  So why couldn’t I remember?

  I propped the photograph against the TV, and a flash of red watch-strap caught my eye. It chafed my skin. I loosened the fastener but wouldn’t take it off. I started to put the lid back on the box to put it away, and an envelope corner appeared between two pictures. I pulled it free, frowned. It was yellow with age. Inside was a handwritten letter, the loopy letters familiar. I slowly read it.

  ‘…The heart is the first organ that forms. It beats as early as two weeks after fertilisation. Some bodily functions continue after death, like nails growing and urination, but without the heart beating we’re doomed. We die. We’re supposed to listen to it. Follow it. Everything we need to know is in there. Mine was yours. Now, soon, you’ll have to share it with…’

  The paper was torn there. What was it all about? I was sure it was my dad’s writing. Who was he writing to? My mother? My mum? Someone else? And why would she have to share his heart?

  More mystery. More confusion. More questions I couldn’t answer. I was so tired of them. On crisis-line calls we weren’t allowed to respond to questions. We had to bring the conversation back to the caller and let them find their own answers. As Catherine, I constantly asked them. Night and day they begged for answers. I had no room for more.

  I put the letter in my coat pocket. I would ask Aunty Hairy about it. I had to or I might go mad. There was only one thing I was sure of today. Only one thing I knew for certain.

  I went to the sink, rummaged in the cupboard beneath. A candle. Just one. I turned on a gas ring on the hob and lit it, then carried it to the coffee table and let it dance there.

  ‘Happy birthday, Nanny Eve,’ I whispered. She would have been 101. ‘Let’s pretend there are another seventy candles.’

  Because some things refuse to be forgotten.

  18

  A hospital visit

  ‘The colostomy bag is only a temporary measure. I’ll have it for a few months so everything heals fully, then they’ll do surgery again to restore my normal, you know, functions. I think my bikini days are over.’

  Propped up in a hospital bed, Aunty Hairy smiled like she was describing a trip to the garden centre. She whispered the word ‘functions’. That was the offensive one. She squeezed my mother’s hand and added, ‘It’s not all doom and gloom you know, Jean.’

  I stood at the end of the bed and pretended to read the jargon on her chart. The drugs they were pump
ing into my aunt via a long, spiralling drip must have been good. If she thought cancer and colostomy bags weren’t too bad she must be high. I was glad; she didn’t deserve to be miserable.

  ‘You’re in good spirits anyway,’ said Graham.

  He sat in the chair near her stiff NHS pillows, visibly uncomfortable but trying to be jolly. I wondered if anyone had ever proposed drugs for visitors so they could enjoy their time on the ward.

  ‘Where’s Martin?’ My mother swivelled her head, unable to escape Aunty Hairy’s consoling grip. He had gone to get cups of tea, saying that would make us all feel better. My mother looked with distaste at the grimy tiled floor and brown checked bed curtain and asked when Mary would be out.

  ‘Perhaps ten days.’ Aunty Hairy seemed to have lost half her weight in a week. Though she spoke with colour, her white skin emphasised her black, bristled chin. I’d kissed her cheek when we arrived; it smelt of antiseptic soap.

  ‘Was it successful?’ Mother pulled free from Mary’s hand and took a wet-wipe out of her bag to clean her fingers. ‘This hospital is filthy,’ she said, not giving my aunt a chance to reply. ‘Mary, you need to be careful when you go to the toilet.’

  I wanted to remind my mother that Aunty Hairy had a colostomy bag so she wouldn’t be spending much time in the lavatory but knew she’d consider such an observation worse than my swearing.

  ‘It was a success, they got the entire tumour.’ Aunty Hairy reached for any available hand to squeeze and found Graham’s.

  Mother wanted to know why she still had to endure chemotherapy, then; Mary explained that it was in case it had spread to the lymph glands. She said she’d likely lose her hair but would just get a wig or a jazzy headscarf.

  In my pocket, I wrapped my fingers around the strange letter I’d found: ‘The heart is the first organ that forms. Mine was yours. Now you’ll have to share it with…’

  ‘We’ll do anything we can,’ said Graham.

  ‘I can stay here all day,’ I offered.

  ‘No, dear, you don’t want to be in a place like this all day,’ said Aunty Hairy. ‘Your mother said you have to meet someone at your house.’

  ‘I’ve already been,’ I said.

  I’d met Brian the plumber first thing that morning. He’d lectured me on the plumbing being the bowels of the house. ‘If the waterworks are faulty,’ he’d said, plonking a green flask on the stair, ‘the whole house is at risk.’

  I’d asked how long it would take to install a boiler, and he said you couldn’t rush such things. I’d reminded him that I’d been out of my home five months. Surely single-span suspension bridges had been built faster.

  ‘The electrician will say his work is more important,’ Brian said. ‘But is he here first? Plumbing is the priority. It’ll be done when it’s done.’

  I said I’d call around at the end of the week and left him with his wrench, flask and yards of blue piping.

  ‘How’s the house?’ asked Aunty Hairy.

  ‘Just getting started,’ I said. ‘It may be February now before I’m back in.’

  ‘It’ll be February before I can lift anything,’ she said.

  ‘You can help Catherine move in then,’ said Uncle Martin, putting a tray of drinks on the cabinet. He was as thin and bald as his wife was rotund and bushy, lightning to her slow, rolling thunder. Cancer would make them hairless twins, though.

  ‘You not having a cup of tea?’ my mother asked Aunty Hairy.

  ‘I can’t have anything until the doctor hears my stomach growling. That means the bowels are working. Even then it’ll be water or juice and liquid food for a while. I’m going to be as thin as that lovely girl on TV.’

  ‘Tess Daly,’ grinned Martin.

  I sipped my tea, but the milk was off so I put it back on the cabinet.

  ‘It looks nice,’ said Graham as I leaned over him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The brooch.’

  I touched the topaz-and-silver rabbit with its winking eye. I’d pinned it to my jumper, knowing Graham would be at the hospital. On the bathroom windowsill earlier it had it looked like a lone jigsaw piece, a key segment that might complete an unfinished picture somewhere. I understood now my fascination with rabbit images – I’d had my own as a child. But I still needed a few more pieces to complete the puzzle of my elusive memory.

  Aunty Hairy touched my cheek with cold hands and said it was pretty. ‘You shouldn’t be here on a day off,’ she said. ‘You should be having fun with friends. Jean, tell her she shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I think it’s right that she’s here,’ snapped my mother.

  ‘It’s lunch time – why don’t you go and eat. There’s a cafeteria on the second floor. Martin will stay with me. He had a bacon sandwich there this morning, said it was a bit fatty, but at least it was hot, didn’t you, dear?’

  Graham stood, not needing much encouragement to escape the ward. Mother fussed and asked if Mary was sure.

  ‘Go,’ my aunt insisted. ‘We’ll finish this sudoku puzzle together.’

  No matter how many floral cloths they put on the cafeteria’s plastic tables it was still a hospital canteen, where weary customers took a break from cancer and heart disease, pale aliens in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

  By the vending machine a Christmas tree looked even more tired than the pathetic twig in the Flood Crisis lounge. My mother chose a limp green salad and asked the till woman if they had de-caffeinated tea. I opted for a slimy burger in a roll, Graham the same. We found a table near the door, beside a group of doctors discussing a nurse called Suzanne.

  While Mother checked the cleanliness of our cutlery Graham laughed and said Fern’s column had been funny on Saturday. ‘She said long-time partners grow to look like one another. I loved the line about Victoria Beckham looking more like David than he does. Does she think about writing something longer?’

  My appetite died. I lifted the lid off my roll and poked the fatty meat.

  ‘It was her last column,’ I said, avoiding Graham’s eyes. ‘Someone told the paper she wasn’t really married, and they sacked her.’

  Graham dropped his burger on his plate. ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘Perhaps readers realised what a phony she was,’ sniffed my mother.

  ‘Someone grassed her up,’ I said. ‘She thinks it was me.’

  ‘Was it?’ My mother opened a paper napkin and laid it on her lap.

  ‘Jean, that’s not fair.’ Graham glared at her.

  I shook my head. ‘I thought whoever reported Fern must be a cowardly bastard, but people like you are worse. You judge and make snide comments but don’t have the guts to actually do anything.’

  ‘Catherine! You can’t say “bastard” near doctors.’ She shielded her face from them and pushed her lettuce away.

  ‘You must have told her it wasn’t you,’ said Graham.

  ‘I did – she still left.’

  ‘I thought you looked pale today,’ said Graham, ‘but thought maybe it was the Flood Crisis stuff.’

  ‘I love my volunteer work.’ I took a bite of the burger and then gave up. It was when I wasn’t at Flood Crisis that my life fell apart.

  ‘Why don’t you come home?’ My mother cut cucumber into tiny pieces.

  ‘Why the hell would I do that? I’m not going to slit my wrists or anything.’ I stood and picked my plate up. The questions flowed. No wall prompt needed. ‘How would that affect you, anyway? You’ve got Sharleen to shop with. You’ve got Graham to holiday with. And anyway, you’d have to endure all my swearing.’

  ‘You’re being childish,’ she said.

  I dumped my plate on the metal trolley and walked out.

  In the lift, squashed between a wheelchair-bound man who stank of whisky and two gossiping nurses, I realised I’d no idea what floor Aunty Hairy was on.

  With thirteen options I got out on the eighth and looked for familiar signs. Nothing marked this floor as different to any other. When I pressed the buzzer to a wa
rd they let me in without asking who I was. I peered into the rooms, avoiding the wet patch where a cleaner had just washed the floor tiles.

  I opened the door to what looked like a guest lounge and disturbed a sleeping girl. She’d been curled up with a fluffy rabbit and opened her eyes at the door handle’s click.

  ‘Are you here to see me?’ she asked.

  I said I was lost, and the word sagged.

  ‘Who do you want?’ She sat up, crumpling a blue pyjama top with the words ‘I’m Trouble’ on the front. Her bare arms were thin and bruised.

  ‘Go back to sleep and I’ll ask someone.’

  ‘They never tell you anything,’ she said.

  No balloons floated above her bed. No flowers filled the nearby vase and no cards covered in juvenile images lined the window ledge.

  ‘I forgot which floor my aunt is on. How silly is that?’

  ‘Very silly,’ she said.

  I stood in the doorway, not going in, not turning to leave. I heard a children’s TV show somewhere and wondered why no one slept at her side on a put-you-up-bed like I would if I had a child in the hospital. Rubbing a purple mark on her elbow she told me they didn’t know what was wrong with her.

  ‘This is where they can find out,’ I said.

  ‘I have an aunt too – Aunt Connie. I might be going to live with her.’

  ‘I’d like to have lived with my aunt, too.’ I glanced up the corridor.

  ‘What’s yours called?’ she asked.

  ‘Aunt Hairy.’ I said it without thinking, and the girl laughed.

  ‘Don’t you like her?’ she giggled.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Why would you call her a mean name, then?’

  I couldn’t answer. Why would I do that?

  She pushed back the covers and moved to the middle of the bed, where she crossed her pyjama-clad legs and asked what time it was. I looked at Christopher’s watch beneath my fluffy jumper’s overlong sleeve and told her it was twelve-twenty.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘They bring dinner at about twelve-thirty, but I can’t smell it yet. A girl called Rachel said the food is disgusting, but it’s better than anything I’ve ever had. I love the tiny carrots. They cut them in circles like moons. Can you stay until my food comes?’