Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

  Phillip swings around, almost knocking the bottle from his hand. ‘Not just now,’ he says sharply.

  Bea, looking straight at Connie, grasps her daughter’s hand and draws it through her arm.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Geraldine asks. ‘I don’t want to intrude. I just thought it would be nice to surprise Mum … it was just … just a surprise …’

  Connie takes her bag from the back of her chair and slings it over her shoulder. ‘It certainly is a surprise and indeed a shock,’ she says in a voice that cuts through the tension like an ice pick. She turns to Flora. ‘I’m leaving,’ she says. ‘You should probably stay here and get to know your niece.’ And she wrenches her hand free from Flora’s and makes her way briskly between the tables and out through the restaurant door.

  Twenty-three

  ‘This is soooooo boring,’ Brooke says, ‘not a bit like I imagined. Nothing’s happened for ages, not since they moved you up here and that doctor came. I thought there’d be things happening all the time. Emergencies and stuff.’

  ‘Well, there was quite a bit happening when we were in Emergency,’ Andrew says. ‘There was a lot happening to me at any rate: needles, oxygen, stitches in my bum, bandages, blood pressure machines … do you want me to go into cardiac arrest so you can see them put those electric pad things on my chest?’

  Brooke sighs and he imagines her rolling her eyes but he can’t see that because he is flat on his back and his head is fixed in position with a neck brace and cloth bags filled with something that feels like pellets.

  ‘Duh! ’Course not, but I thought the whole place would be, like, exciting, you know, like Grey’s Anatomy.’

  ‘It’s Saturday afternoon in Melbourne, Brooke, not a stormy night in Seattle, but I’ll try to do better next time. Get a pair of handlebars lodged in my chest instead of just bits of a phone in my bum.’

  ‘Shut up, Dad. You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just that it’s all so slow, we’re just waiting all the time.’

  ‘That’s hospital for you,’ Andrew says. ‘It’s mostly waiting. Waiting for a doctor or a nurse, a meal, medicine, a bedpan or something bearable to watch on TV, or just to be able to go home. The rest of it is uncomfortable, or excruciatingly painful and life threatening, so I’m happy to settle for boring.’

  To Andrew the accident itself is a bit of blur. In fact he doesn’t remember that he landed on a car, but he does remember hitting the road, feeling confused and wondering what had happened, and then seeing Brooke running towards him, and feeling it would be unwise to move. There was blood from the cuts on his head and arm, but the worst pain had been in his bum. Then there’s not much more he remembers until they got him up here to the spinal unit.

  ‘Shall I try phoning Mum again?’ Brooke asks.

  ‘Could do. It is a bit weird that she hasn’t called back.’

  Brooke dials and waits. ‘Still no answer. No point leaving another message, I already left three. Are you sure you can’t remember where she’s staying?’

  ‘’Fraid not. The only place I stored it was in my phone. But Kerry and Chris will be here soon, so it doesn’t really matter. They’ll look after you.’

  ‘Dad! I told you, I don’t need looking after.’

  Brooke has been absolutely brilliant, ever since they got here about eight-thirty this morning. He has a vague memory of her at the roadside, calling the ambulance, talking to the police, and arranging to drop their bikes off at home with a guy in a flatbed truck who had pulled over to help. And once they were in Emergency, she did all the talking, and filled out all the forms in her neat round writing, so he only had to sign them. It was almost midday when he was finally moved up here to the ward, and then the doctor, who had introduced herself as Helen Reese, came and broke the news about his neck. That had really panicked Brooke, and it had put the fear of God into Andrew too although he tried not to let her see that.

  ‘But he says his neck doesn’t hurt,’ Brooke told the doctor, tears running down her face. ‘If he’d broken it, wouldn’t it hurt a lot?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ the doctor had said. She was a quietly spoken woman in her forties and Andrew was thankful that she could see that reassuring Brooke was as important as reassuring him. ‘Lack of pain isn’t a reliable indicator in these situations. Quite a lot of people sustain a break or fracture and feel no pain. So we just have to keep your dad flat on his back with his head straight until we know what’s happened.’ She’d turned back to Andrew then. ‘We need an MRI, Mr Hawkins, and I’m afraid that means sometime Monday. Meanwhile we’ll keep you as comfortable as possible.’ She looked down at the notes and grinned. ‘I see you had an argument with your phone as well as your bike.’

  He’d laughed. ‘That’s the most painful part of me right now,’ he said.

  ‘But think of the fun you can have showing off your scar,’ Dr Reese said, and they both laughed, which made the stitches hurt more. ‘You don’t actually need to stay here, Brooke,’ she’d said then. ‘Perhaps your mum … ?’

  Andrew had cleared his throat. ‘Her mother and I are separated. She’s in Singapore and we can’t get hold of her. But I’m going to call my sister – I’m sure we’ll organise something for Brooke.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Brooke said. ‘I want to be here with Dad.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, but we actually need to have a contact person – a next of kin who is over sixteen,’ the doctor said.

  ‘I’m perfectly capable …’ Brooke began.

  ‘I can see that,’ Dr Reese said, ‘but you must be exhausted. You and your dad both need someone else as back-up over the next few days.’

  When she’d left the nurse brought Andrew some tea and helped him drink it through a fat plastic straw.

  ‘I could do that,’ Brooke said and took over the straw before cutting a cheese sandwich into tiny pieces and feeding them to him. He hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and the food helped, stopped him feeling quite so light-headed, and he managed to swallow it all flat on his back without once choking.

  ‘You should go and get something to eat now, Brooke,’ he’d said then. She too had missed out on the planned breakfast but he’d seen her tucking into a huge muffin when the morning tea was brought round earlier. She’d disappeared for about half an hour and came back armed with magazines and a couple of Mars Bars, which were his favourite chocolate, and a plastic knife from the café which she used to saw one into bits for him. He dozed off after that, and Brooke had either been buried in the pages of Hello! or Madison, or plugged in to her iPod. Then she’d helped him with another cup of tea and gone out for a walk in the hospital garden. But in the last hour or so her boredom and frustration have reached irritating heights, and her whingeing and moaning are wearing Andrew down. This morning she was a super thoughtful and efficient young adult; now she has reverted to grumpy teenager.

  ‘Look here, Brooke,’ he says now, ‘you’ve been great. I don’t know how I would’ve got through any of this without you. But right now you’re being a pain in the arse. I know it’s boring but it’s no picnic for me either. Kerry and Chris will be here soon, so do you think you could shut up for a while, or go for a walk again or something?’

  Brooke is silent for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ she says, her tone subdued now. ‘I’m a bit frightened, that’s all. I want them to do stuff to help you and nobody is doing anything.’ She takes his hand and he feels a tear drop onto it. ‘I do love you, Dad, you have to promise to get better.’

  ‘Of course I’m going to get better, whatever that bloody MRI shows. And I’ll get through it because you’re around to make sure they look after me. But just take it easy in the meantime, will you? Maybe get yourself a coffee from the machine or go out and get some air. Nothing’s going to happen tonight so you won’t be missing anything.’

  She was sitting in a low chair at the side of his bed and although he couldn’t see her he could sense that she was nodding. ‘I’ll go for a walk then,’ she said. ‘I
s there anything you want before I go?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks. And, sweetheart, I love you too, and I promise everything is going to be okay.’

  *

  Everything is grey as Brooke walks out of the hospital and crosses the road into the nearby park. It’s trying hard to rain, she can feel the first few drops that stop and start, then stop again. The grass, the flowers, everything, even the people, look grey in the stormy, late afternoon light. She wanders along the path kicking at some leaves, swinging back and forth between anxiety and terminal boredom and wondering why everything in her life has suddenly been turned upside down and inside out. There is a buzz in the back pocket of her jeans and she pulls out her mobile and swipes the screen to read a text from her Auntie Kerry.

  ‘Just landed. Will be with you very soon. Kerry xxx’

  ‘Brilliant!’ she texts back. ‘Can’t wait to see you. I’ll be hanging inside the main entrance. B xxx.’

  She sighs with relief and slips the phone back into her pocket, checks the time and adds forty-five minutes for them to get here from the airport. Six-thirty they’ll be here, she thinks, and she closes her eyes, wrapping her arms around herself and imagining Kerry enveloping her in one of her huge hugs.

  As soon as Brooke was old enough to recognise and take notice of people other than her parents, she had fallen for her Auntie Kerry. And once she could move around independently she would lurch or stagger across the room and collapse into Kerry’s outstretched arms, attempt to clamber onto her knee, or clasp her leg and hang on to it like a limpet until her arms were prised free. Kerry was different from her parents and grandparents, all of whom cossetted her and admired everything she did. While her mother groomed and guided her, constantly corrected her, turned her straight hair into curls or plaits, read stories, and did all the things mothers were supposed to do, her aunt teased her, argued with her, growled like a fierce dog, ran around the room flapping her elbows and quacking like a duck, tickled her until she screamed for her to stop and then screamed for her to start again. She threw her into the air, pushed her higher than anyone else did on the swings, and chased her around the garden pretending to be a wild bear. And although Brooke only ever saw Kerry when they all went to her nan and granddad’s place for holidays, it was always as though no time had passed nor distance intervened since the last time they had seen each other. It was like that every time, until suddenly it wasn’t.

  Brooke was seven when things started to change. They went to Hobart one summer and when Kerry put on her bathers to go into the pool Brooke noticed that she had a very fat tummy.

  ‘I’m having a baby, Brooke,’ Kerry had explained. ‘I’m so excited. Here, put your hand on my tummy and you’ll be able to feel it moving.’ And she had grasped Brooke’s hand and held it against the side of her huge belly.

  Brooke had flinched away at first but Kerry hung on to her hand, so she stood there, staring and waiting and finally feeling something moving around. All she knew about babies was that they were boring; they cried a lot, made messes with their food and pooed in their nappies, and everyone made a huge fuss over them when they weren’t really interesting at all.

  ‘There,’ Kerry had said, ‘did you feel it?’

  Brooke nodded.

  ‘He’s turning over making himself comfortable.’

  ‘Is it a boy then?’ Brooke had asked.

  Kerry had shrugged and grinned at her. ‘I don’t know for sure, it could be a girl, but I’ve got this feeling, Brooke, that it’s a little boy. Won’t it be lovely to have your very own cousin to play with?’

  Brooke had paused, thinking. The prospect of a baby was not appealing; she liked being the only child in the family and didn’t want a baby coming along to mess things up. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she’d said as firmly as she could, so as not to be misunderstood. ‘If you don’t mind, Auntie Kerry, I’d rather not have a cousin.’

  Kerry had looked both shocked and hurt and it was Uncle Chris who broke the silence; he had swept her up into his arms, laughing. ‘You don’t want any competition, do you, Brooke? Can’t blame you for that, but you know we’ll all love you just as much when the baby comes. And we’ll be needing you to help out and teach it all sorts of things that you can do already.’

  Two months later they were all back in Hobart to see the baby whose name was Ryan, and who did all the boring, messy and disgusting things that Brooke had expected, and drew gasps of delight and wonderment from all the family. Kerry was far too occupied to chase Brooke around the garden, or do the duck thing, or do anything at all that they used to do together. She wanted Brooke to sit in a chair and hold Ryan on her knee, to have her photo taken, and then she would feed him or change his nappy, and talk about boring stuff like whether he was smiling or just had wind, and then she’d feed him again and was always too tired to play with Brooke.

  For a long time Brooke had believed that it was all Ryan’s fault that everything had changed and she had continued to treat him with disdain. But then she began to notice that other things were happening. She knew Granddad was sick; everyone talked about it. He had to rest a lot and he was obviously getting worse. His hands started shaking and he often dropped things; he sometimes choked on his food, and his voice sounded sort of wobbly. The next time she saw him he was using a stick, then two sticks, and then a wheelchair, and he was lying down a lot on an old sofa that had been moved into the alcove off the kitchen. It was Nan who had told her that he had an illness and wasn’t going to get better.

  ‘It makes him very weak and we have to take special care of him,’ Connie had said. ‘We all have to try and support him as much as we can. Sit on the stool beside him, don’t try to sit on his knee, because he’s not strong enough to hold you. He can still read to you, but a bit more slowly now.’

  The next time Brooke saw him he could no longer hold the book and struggled with the words. By this time Ryan was almost three and Kerry was pregnant again, and had very little time for Brooke. She always seemed a bit cross and distracted, and Brooke had watched and listened, and waited for things to change, but they didn’t. And so she had transferred her affections to Chris, who was always the same, always cheerful, always listened to her and talked to her and told her about the children at his school and how terribly badly behaved they were, unlike Brooke herself.

  In the last couple of years, though, Brooke has matured enough to understand that there was more to the change in Kerry than could be blamed on Ryan. Granddad had been ill for a long time, long before she herself had been aware of it, and he was getting much worse. She knew he was going to die and had kept expecting it, and she was shy of him because the person she had known was gone, and in his place was someone who couldn’t speak or feed himself, and seemed unaware of anything or anyone around him. She was scared of going into his room and finding him dead, and she stayed away from him as much as possible. Brooke thought about how it would feel to see her father disappear little by little until he became a stranger, and while that helped her to understand why her aunt had changed, she still couldn’t completely forgive her for it. The distance between them remained. And so it had been hard for her when Andrew, flat on his back in the hospital bed, had asked her to call Kerry.

  ‘You simply can’t deal with all this without some support, Brooke,’ he’d said. ‘We don’t know how long I’ll be here. And you know, it’s not really your mum’s job to turn up for me now, although I’m sure she’d come for you.’

  And so, reluctantly, Brooke had dialled Kerry’s number and told her what had happened, and then Andrew had spoken to her too.

  It’s dark outside now and Brooke, bored with wandering around in the damp evening air, heads back into the hospital foyer checking her watch for about the hundredth time – ten past six, not long now. She drops down onto a long bench seat inside the entrance where the taxis drop people off. It’s a good spot, she thinks, if she stays here she’ll see them arrive. Quite suddenly she feels overwhelmed with relief and exhausti
on, she’s so tired she can barely keep her eyes open, and she rests her head back against the wall and closes her eyes. Her limbs are heavy with fatigue, and she feels herself drifting into a replay of the moment when she saw Andrew’s bike rear up and his body sail, as if in slow motion, across the low brick wall and land with a thump on the bonnet of a four wheel drive before bouncing off onto the road. She can hear it now too, the screech of brakes, people yelling. She can feel the fear – a hard knot of pain in her chest as she leaps from her own bike and runs towards him screaming.

  ‘Brooke, Brooke,’ a voice says, and she feels a hand on her arm. ‘Brooke, are you okay?’ And her eyes fly open and sitting beside her now, in the vast hospital foyer, is Kerry, putting a hand up to stroke her hair just as she used to do. And behind her, smiling down, is Chris.

  ‘Hey there, sleeping beauty,’ he says. ‘How’re you doing?’

  And in a great surge of relief Brooke throws her arms around Kerry’s neck and bursts into the tears that have been building up since that first awful moment on the bike path.

  *

  ‘So tell me about your mum,’ Kerry says some time later when they have seen Andrew settled for the night and taken a taxi back to the house. ‘She’s in Singapore and not answering her phone? Doesn’t sound like Linda. She’s always on her phone, fiddling with messages and emails and returning calls.’

  ‘I know,’ Brooke says, ‘it’s weird. I left three messages and she hasn’t called back.’ She reaches into a cupboard to pull out plates for the fish and chips they have stopped to pick up on the way home.

  ‘Lost her phone perhaps?’ Chris suggests, opening a bottle of wine that he has selected from Andrew’s rack. ‘Or maybe forgot to take it?’

  ‘She usually puts all the details up on the corkboard in the kitchen when she’s going away,’ Brooke says. ‘But I’m not asking him to look for them. Claudia at the gallery will know where she’s staying too but she won’t be there ’til tomorrow.’