by James Hannah
“Hey,” you say. “Then we could go back and have pancakes for breakfast, couldn’t we? I’ll make you pancakes for being my amazing helper.”
“With bacon and maple syrup?”
As we make our way along King’s Walk, the sun splits the horizon and strikes the landscape through with a clean, clear light.
Come on now, come on. I wouldn’t be seeing this view on any other day. It’s almost worth the cold, and there is satisfaction to be had from hard work. It’s not all lying back and letting it all come to you, like so many bacon-and-maple-syrup pancakes.
“You OK, gorgeous boy?” you ask, linking your arm in mine.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to walk less like a frozen robot. And yeah, I am.
You look at me fondly and say, “This is all a terrible waste of time and effort; you do know that, don’t you?”
“You reckon?”
“I don’t know why you tolerate me. It’s sixteen below zero.”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
You laugh. “And you’re tying hearts to trees and lampposts to please a whole lot of people you’ve never met.”
“Well, I think, if I ignore the cold and the earliness, it’s…probably what I’d choose to be doing? If I had the imagination.”
“Ah, you do! I’d never thought of putting anything up on King’s Walk. I think it’s a tremendous idea. Very creative.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And I love how kind you are about it, and really patient with my silly ideas. I don’t know too many men who’d put up with that.”
So simple, to nudge me with a little appreciation, but I can actually feel my heart growing warmer as you say this. Even at sixteen below zero. It’s my mini furnace. Yes, yes, yes, it’s agonizingly cold. And yes, yes, I’d much, much rather be in bed.
But I’d much, much, much rather you had someone to do this with. And I’ll be pleased it was me.
“Well,” I say, “what else was I going to do with these redundant early hours? More meaningless sleep? Come on.”
God, I’m so easily manipulated.
We’ve stopped where the path curves back on itself as the town drops away spectacularly into the valley and the river wriggles off into the distance. The usual breath of traffic has yet to start up, and so far only one or two chimney pots are beginning to spill their early morning smoke. I hand you the jute bag and launch myself at the lowest bough of the target tree, hoist myself up onto it.
“Careful!” you call. “It’ll be frosty.”
“I used to do this all the time when I was a kid.” I successfully cover up my mild surprise at how much effort it takes to get me up there today. It’s been a few years. “Pass me up a bunch.”
You pass me up ten hearts, and I bite off my gloves before starting to tie them among the twigs.
“Lovely,” you say, directing me from place to place. “They’re going to look amazing here.”
“Here you go,” I say, and I inchworm my way along the next bough up, which stretches out over the speared iron railings and hangs over the section where the land tumbles away down to the road below. “I’ll put one here, and no one will know how on earth it got so far out over the road.”
“Careful,” you say. “If you kill yourself over a yarn bomb, I’m going to feel bad.”
Just as I find myself a prime spot for tying, I recognize my fingertips starting to tingle, and I realize my limbs have drained of all energy. I’m feeling properly wobbly. Insulin wobbly.
Hypo time. Shit.
I take a quick glance back along the distance I’ve traveled, make a quick calculation about how to get back, but—not easy. I’d better just… The uncertainty in my body is transferred into the bough, which I’m sure is shivering beneath me. My mind flits through its tick boxes, and of course: early morning, no breakfast. I look down at you and smile confidently, but your look of concern is not diluted.
“Are you OK?”
“Yep, yeah,” I say. I could black out here. I need to get back. If I blacked out I’d drop like a stone and tumble down to the road fifty feet below. I edge back a bit, with the pretense of looking for a better place. Edge back, edge back.
My fingertips are fumbling the fraying thread as I try to tie a simple bow, and it keeps misbehaving—if there’s any…thing that makes me believe in a God it’s the way…fucking inanimate objects…behave when you really—real—what?
There’s a sudden deep, thick silence, and gravity shifts and sweeps around me until I’m punched solidly in the lower third back of my body, with a hump and crackle from the pavement, and all I know is my head is in the gutter with all the leaf mold and bird shit and dried-up Friday night piss, probably.
And there’s you, looking down on me.
“Oh my God, are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, scrambling to my feet and trying to ride out the dizziness.
“Stop. Sit down a bit. You really banged your arm. Come and sit on this bench.”
I consent to sit.
“Sorry,” I say. “My fingers froze, and I lost my grip.”
“I’m so sorry,” you say, mortified. “Have you got any pain? How’s your arm?”
“Fine, fine. No damage done. Look,” I say, pointing up at the tree. “Looks good?”
“It looks fantastic,” you say, squeezing my arm and inadvertently hurting it. “In the morning, everyone in town’s going to see these little hearts dangling all over the place and think, ‘What kind of mad person would be bothered to put those out there?’” You look at my face for the laugh, but you can see something’s wrong. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“Yeah, yeah. I just need some food.”
“Let’s be getting back. I’ve got some cookies in my pocket here. Have a couple of those.”
“What are you doing carrying cookies around with you?” I say, tearing into the packet.
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagined I’d probably need them one day. Come on then, let’s go home and get those pancakes sorted.”
We stroll arm in aching arm back along King’s Walk as the town is flushed through with the onset of morning, and my heart is pounding, and I’m resisting the dizziness with all my might.
I only have to get back to yours. That’s not far, down into the valley and over the bridge, but then uphill and into the terraces.
But no, no. Not too far.
As I amble, I catch sight behind me of the result of our labors: a cluster of colorful hearts, hanging happily in the tree, dancing and fluttering in the early-morning breeze.
Worth it, yes.
• • •
What’s…? What’s the time?
It’s light. Afternoon light.
They must have left me to sleep through the day.
I was awake all night.
I look up, and I’m surprised to see, crackling at the doorway to my room, loaded with blowsy colorful flowers, Amber.
“Oh, hello!”
“Hiya.” She gives me a weary smile. “She’s gone.”
“Amber, I’m so sorry.”
“She went last night.”
“Come in, come in.”
“We’ve just come to collect a few of her things. Hospital bag and nightie, slippers. We’re going to take them home and… I don’t know, wash them or something.”
She looks up at me and smiles.
“How are you?”
“I’m…I’m doing OK at the moment, thanks. It’s a relief mostly, I think. She’s…she did so well. I’m so proud of her.”
I nod, smile.
She looks down in her lap and seems to see what she’s carrying. “I brought you some flowers.”
“Ah, man, how have you found time to do that?”
“I wanted to go have a look at some flowers for Mum, and I thought
you’d like some to brighten up your day.”
“Ah, wow, they’re lovely.” She hands me the wrap of about twenty stems. “Man, just amazing. Ranunculus, absolutely my favorite. How did you know?”
“You said you used to work at the garden center up by the junction.”
“Are these from there?” I turn the tag over and see the familiar old logo.
“I went out there this morning and mentioned you, and they said they thought you’d like these best.”
I’m stunned.
“I know you don’t want many visitors, so you can’t get many flowers or anything. So I wanted to let you know I’ve been thinking about you, and I’m really, like, really thankful to you. And all the people you used to work with are thinking of you as well.”
I catch my breath, rattle, and there’s nothing else I can say.
What can I say?
She is golden.
“Twenty-two years I worked there,” I say.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “It seemed like…it seemed like a thing to do.”
“Just…thank you.”
She gathers up the flowers and sets about arranging them neatly in my water jug. I watch her, amused. Not sure Sheila’s going to like the smattering of rebellion.
“What?” says Amber, turning and seeing my look. “I’m improvising.”
“You go for it.”
While she finishes her little act of vandalism, I straighten myself in the bed and try to slap my face into some kind of being. With permission, Amber rinses her fingertips in the bathroom and flicks the excess onto the floor on her way back to the visitors’ chair.
“I…I wanted to tell you,” she says, “I didn’t exactly go to the garden center just to get flowers.”
“No?”
“Not at first. I wanted to…I wanted to see if I could find her.” She gestures at my blanket. “Your girlfriend, who crocheted your blanket. You spoke so warmly about her, and you seemed so much in love, I wanted…I wanted to see if I could get you to see her again.” I feel absolutely still. Absolutely calm.
“I asked the man there if he knew her, and where I might find her. He told me. She…she died, didn’t she?”
Silence.
“Yes,” I say. “She did.” I look down at my blanket, settle a couple of the stitches.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t want to know and then pretend I didn’t.”
“No. I wouldn’t want you to.”
She looks up at me and smiles. “I cried in front of the man.”
A warm ache rises through my chest as I picture it.
“Oh, Amber, I’m…I’m really sorry. I should have told you.”
“No,” she says, “no, no… I shouldn’t have… It was a dumb thing to try to do.”
I shake my head slowly. “A lovely thing.”
“It just made me feel so sad for you.” She sniffs. “I’m sorry. That’s probably not what you want to hear, is it? It’s just…everything’s really on the surface for me at the moment.” She half laughs.
“It is sad. The saddest.”
“When…when did she die?”
“Ten years ago, now.”
“What happened?”
And there it is again. I might have asked the same question before I learned all the questions you’re never supposed to ask.
What’s that in your throat?
My chest swells again as the question washes over me like a sluice of icy water.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No, no,” I say. “I—”
“It seems so unfair. From the way you were talking about her—everything—she seemed like…she seemed incredibly special.”
“Yeah,” I say, absently cupping my arm through the blanket.
“I don’t know if I could ever be that special to anyone.”
“Oh, you will.”
She laughs quietly to herself, evidently weighing up her invisible options. “I don’t think I’d know where to begin.”
“Just be. Just be yourself.”
She looks down at her knees, and I feel like I know exactly what she’s thinking.
“There are people around, people who make you feel energetic,” I say. “And there are people who are just”—I reach around for the right amount of contempt—“they suck the fun out of everything. They’re fun suckholes.”
“Yeah.” She smiles, looking up.
“Well, you give energy. Look at you. You’re going through the worst you’ll ever go through now, and you’re still being creative. That’s life.”
Amber purses her lips and looks to the floor.
“Surround yourself with as many people like that as you can—that’s what I think. Energy givers. Life livers. People who make you feel most like yourself.”
“That was how my mum used to be, before she got ill. Really playful, creative, really fun.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m worried,” she says, looking up at me now with tears in her eyes, “that I’m only going to remember the little frail woman in that big bed and…that’s not my mum at all. That’s not how I want to remember her.”
I set down my mask and look into her tearful eyes.
“Give it time,” I say. “I promise it will change.”
_____
“Knock-knock…”
A singsongy voice. A kind voice.
Who’s…?
“Are you awake?”
Mmm?
Sheila. Her face looking down at me now. Look at her mascara. Thick. A bit much today.
“Hello, lovey,” she says gently. “You awake, are you?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s someone who wants to say hello, and I wondered if you wanted to see her.”
Amber? Is it Amber back?
“What day is it?”
“Still Saturday.”
“What’s the time?”
“Half past eleven.”
I take a moment to clear my throat, try to pull my thoughts into some sort of order. Sheila has drawn away and is talking softly out in the corridor. There’s a mutter and a shuffle.
“Say to come in,” I say. “Let her in.”
And so she appears in the doorway: Laura.
She’s heavily fortified with makeup, like a caricature of what I remember from all those years ago. It’s a mask to meet me with/ But the wrinkles and folds still encroach like bindweed, around her eyes and neck. Everything she’s been resisting over the years. Age creeps up on all of us.
“Hiya,” she says, before her mask creases and she crumples into tears.
Ah, shit.
“Aw, come now,” says Sheila, plucking up a tissue and hurrying over to her. “Come on, let’s get you a chair, eh?” She reaches for my visitors’ chair and draws it safely away to the foot of the bed, where Laura allows herself to be settled.
“I’m sorry,” says Laura, slowly pulling herself together. “I swore I wouldn’t cry.”
“There’s no shame in crying,” says Sheila. “We all cry, don’t we? Everybody cries.”
“Yeah.” Laura blinks, little girl, trying to be brave. “I’m sorry,” she says again, finally able to focus on me, and then, “Hello.”
“Hello.”
She has only fleetingly met my gaze; she’s spending a lot of time looking around on the floor, checking, checking her sitting position, checking the leg of the chair isn’t nudging the baseboard, checking behind her for…for whatever.
“Now, you’ve got your coffee,” says Sheila. “How about you?” she says, looking over at me. “Can I get you anything? How’s your water?”
I shake my head—nothing for me. No water. No visitors. I said no visitors.
“All right,” says Sheila, retreating. “Make yourself at home, and I’ll see you later.”
She exits the room and shuts the door quietly behind her.
Alone together. The shock of her being here at all has quickly given way to…to what? I don’t know. I’m casting around to feel something, but I wonder if I feel nothing.
“So, how are you?” says Laura, finally looking at me properly and frowning.
“Never better,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t, as she begins to cry again.
“I’m sorry, Ivo. I’m sorry. I just…I was so worried about coming here, but seeing you there like that, in your bed, I feel so stupid about all the years we’ve let slip.”
There it is, the last time Laura and I saw each other, a perfunctory good-bye in the parking lot of the Yew Tree as the tires of other mourners’ cars tugged at the gravel around us. Job done, Mum safely in the soil. All organized by me, down to the buffet. Seven years. A lifetime ago.
“It’s such a waste, you know? Don’t you think what a waste of time all this has been?”
And now I’m the one who can’t meet her gaze. You see, face-to-face, I can’t back up what I’ve said so often in my mind. This is bigger than both of us, so should we just give each other up? Abandon hope? “Yeah,” I say. “A real waste.”
She hops out of her seat and comes over and gives me a strong, deep hug. I’m not sure I want it, but I let it happen, and somewhere deep, deep in there, beneath the makeup and jangle of the great gesture, there’s warmth, there’s goodness.
“I’m so glad,” she says, releasing me from her grasp and sinking back into her seat. “I’m so glad I came. I was scared to come. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me. But I thought, screw it, you know, whatever’s gone on, whatever rights and wrongs, you’re my brother, and I’m your sister, and that should mean something.”
“I’m…yeah. I’m glad you came too,” I say with a dilute smile.
“I wasn’t going to come, but Kelvin…he said we should both act like adults, so I agreed to come with him.”
“Oh yeah? Is he here?”
“He’s parking the car. I think he’s going to wait a few minutes to see if we start tearing each other’s hair out.”
