by James Hannah
Who the hell is it?
I can’t make him out.
He’s looking at Sheila like a scolded schoolboy. All I can hear is the placatory ascent and descent of the tones of his explanation. Tones that say he didn’t know he was doing a wrong thing, that it wasn’t his fault he was doing a wrong thing, that it was someone else’s fault and he was only following orders, and why was it a wrong thing anyway?
Sheila’s voice is calmer. But still matronly. I catch a few bits. “Patients in here…very serious condition…how would you like it?” Phrases that have their own signature tone.
The man beats a sheepish retreat, and Sheila fixes the window back shut.
“Bloody useless, aren’t they?” she says. “It’s the NRG maintenance guys again. I’ve told them they have to come straight to reception, but they think they own the place now. Are you all right?”
“Not really, no,” I say, grasping for my oxygen mask.
“Sorry about that,” she says, coming to assist.
“Anyone could get in. It could have been anyone.”
“No, I know what you’re thinking,” she says, “but it couldn’t have been anyone. They need a special pass to get past the gate; it’s all secure around here, OK? They’ve all been checked. He came in the wrong way, that’s all.” She straightens her mouth and looks down at me. “Come on now, let’s get you back on the straight and narrow. You know how important that is.”
I close my eyes, take a few breaths.
“I can’t do it. There’s too much. I need more help.”
• • •
An amplified crackle shocks my mind and flings my attention to the two speakers bracketed by the ceiling of the Baurice Hartson Rest & Recuperation Room. They fire out a burst of vaguely Eastern soothe music, and Karen is quick to drop the volume to an appropriately ethereal level.
“A bit of something to evoke a more pleasing atmosphere.” She smiles.
She has a nice smile. And a clipped little accent. Not completely English, although almost completely. She says esses instead of zeds. Odd shape to her ohs. It sounds sweet. Swedish, I presume, if this is a Swedish massage?
“So if you could remove your pajama jacket for me, what I’m going to do is massage your chest with this oil, which should help clear your airways and assist your breathing. Sheila tells me your breathing has been difficult?”
“Yes,” I say, beginning to unbutton my pajama jacket.
“Well, this ought to help to clear those lungs.”
Nod.
“I’ll just close this…” She kicks twice, thrice, at the rubber doorstop, lets the door drop shut.
“Here we go,” she says, helping me off with my jacket. “I hope you’re not shy like all the English, are you?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so.”
“I’m glad to hear it. English people always seem to be so shy.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s very rude. Women come into our saunas in their swimming costumes. It’s very unhygienic.” She sounds like she’s telling me off, but she’s still smiling sweetly. They are difficult signals to interpret. “A body’s a body. Why should you be ashamed of it?”
I get settled on the table and try to give off an air of nonshyness.
“Now, I’m warming the oil up in my hands here, so it’s not too much of a shock to the system. Are you OK for me to start massaging you now?”
“Sure.”
She lays her hands on assertively, smearing my chest with oil. She must be used to it, of course, but I’m not. I’m not quite prepared for the feeling. The contact. I close my eyes. Just her hand shapes impressed on my chest, this way and that, this and that, working up and around my chest. I can feel a surge of electrical tingles, my nerve-endings recalling when I was last touched like this. Ten full years since. Sensations so long locked I’ve forgotten they ever occurred. Far down in the sightless, silent deep, my muscles have retained lost knowledge. Physical, unthought, unforgettable memories.
“And if that’s the way you think about your body,” Karen is saying, “then it says to me there is something wrong in the mind. My mother, when she was very frail, we used to take showers together, and I would help her wash, in the same way she helped me wash when I was a baby. What could be more natural than that?”
I start coughing, and she leans away but leaves her oily hands in place on my chest.
“Sorry,” I rattle.
“No, no, not at all. That’s why we’re here.”
She starts up again when I have settled down, goes more gently, working her fingertips firmly into the top and middle of my chest.
“Is that pressure OK?”
“Yeh—” I gurgle and have to clear my throat. “Yes, that’s fine, thanks.” Superconscious now of my wheezing. Not coughing, at least.
Back to relaxing. Exhale, carefully. Forget the improvised audio, the magnolia walls, the failed double glazing, its condensation skulking around the lower left corner. Concentrate on her touch. Think of the feel of her hands. Steady rhythms swash, swash, on my chest. Yes, yes.
“So, how long have you been a resident here?”
“I don’t know—I forget. My third week, I think?”
“It’s hard to keep track, isn’t it? Have you been happy with your care?”
“They’ve been brilliant.”
“Yes, everybody says that. They’re very good here.”
“I love Sheila.”
“Very smart woman,” she says, almost confidentially. “Really knows her stuff.”
There they are, the tips of your hair brushing my neck and cheek, your flat palms pressed to my chest, fingers clutching searchingly around my jawbone and earlobe, cupping my cranium, fingertips drawing up tight and scratching into my hair. Tracing your fingertips around my back until you find the place just below my ribs—the unbearable place…just…
No.
The table creaks rhythmically beneath me.
I open my eyes, see Karen’s face working intently, concentrating on the job. She catches me looking, briefly smiles.
“OK?”
I do a smile, though I doubt it reaches my eyes. Close them again.
Positive thinking. Think something else. Anything, anywhere else.
But you’re everywhere. The memories of you, the shape of you.
All the parts of my body seem to come together and remember you. I’ve got your textures at my fingertips, your scent in my airways, the balance of your weight in my arms and my back. In every part of my body, there’s a space for you, and all I need is for you to come back again and fill it.
The electronic beep of the alarmed door strikes suddenly out in the corridor—my muscles suddenly tense, and my heart instantly starts thudding twice as fast. Karen’s hands pause briefly before working on through the noise.
“Oh, it’s only the door alarm,” she calls through the noise. “They must be testing it.”
The alarm stops abruptly after a few seconds, leaving a door slam to slowly subside and allow the music back through.
I have to relax.
“Can you think of any body parts that begin with O?” I say.
“Oh,” she says, stopping her work for a brief moment with a knowing smile. “I see. Are you playing Sheila’s little game?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, she likes to get people to play that one. Gets people to open up a bit.”
“Yeah,” I say, although it doesn’t sound quite as nice to have it put like that.
“Let me have a think. O… I know what I’d do for O. Because I’m a qualified aromatherapist, I’d have lots to say about the olfactory nerve. Yes, that’s definitely what I’d do.”
I break out once again into gurgly coughing and hold my hand up in apology. “What’s the olfactory nerve?”
�
��It’s what enables you to process scent. It’s an amazing thing, very mysterious. I’ve got reams and reams of research showing how your olfactory senses are some of the most effective in tapping into the brain. They’re starting to utilize it with coma patients to lift them out through these associations.”
O
Olfactory Nerve
I don’t know what the olfactory memory of my life would be. Vetiver: that’s the scent of you.
I’ve caught it a very few times in the last ten years of working on the checkouts, the scent of vetiver. It’s an immediate hyperlink back to you, to you and me.
No.
Something else.
• • •
Mr. Miller, holding out the polyethylene bag before him.
“In this polyethylene bag is one of those most incredible, unforgettable smells known to man. It’s astonishing, really, that it’s possible to store it inside something so simple. Astonishing.”
The whole class in the palm of his hand.
“Who wants to sample the delights?”
Twenty-four right hands shoot up. Four left hands. He comes to me.
“One scientific sniff, if you please.”
He’s acting weird. Why is he acting all weird and sort of…respectful?
I sniff tentatively.
“Fuck! Aww, fucking hell!”
Acid explosion in my brain and eyeballs.
I’m back. I’m backward, up off my stool, and I’ve just said fuck in front of everyone, twice.
Everyone is laughing. Kelvin, close by me, is laughing hysterically.
I snort out my sinuses, get rid, get rid. Eject the stench. Is my nose bleeding? I’m bleeding, surely?
Miller has the bag closed. He observes the spectacle before him.
“Ammonia. Now, if everyone will stop being so childish, please, what we have learned here is that we need to be far more cautious when sampling odors in the laboratory.”
He holds the bag at a distance, wafts the odor toward his nose with a queenlike hand wave.
• • •
Vetiver: it’s the scent you’ve brought with you now, into my childhood bedroom at my mum’s house—at my house.
We’ve talked those few times on the phone, but the fact that we haven’t been in each other’s presence since we split up—what, seven weeks ago?—is made absolute and physical by the fact that I can smell your scent.
So there you definitely are, a full-grown woman in a heavy, woolen outdoor coat, stylishly tailored for grown-ups who mean business, sitting on a young teenager’s desk chair. You look awkward.
I’m sitting on my squashy single bed with its double duvet. There’s nowhere else.
Rolling up the walls around us, the old wallpaper, James Bond–style rockets, carefully rendered. It had never occurred to me how carefully rendered they were. Like someone cared about the engineering. Just for a child’s wallpaper. You wouldn’t get that now. Mum has had no reason to redecorate, so the incongruous matchup remains.
This could be my past looking into my future.
“So you’ve finished your exams?” I say.
“Finally. Don’t ask me how I did, because I don’t want to think about it. I’m heading off back to the Lakes for a month to stay with my mum before I start work.”
“Oh right. Well, give her my best.”
“I brought this…” you say meekly, holding up the crochet blanket. “I don’t really know why. You probably don’t want it.”
“No, I do. I do.”
I take it from you and hold it, folded in my lap. It too smells of vetiver, and I remember you spritzing it before you went on your last work placement, months ago. You did it so I wouldn’t forget you. Now it means I won’t be able to.
“Thank you,” I say.
“And I dug out some of my notes,” you say, “and there’s a few leaflets and things that explain the basics. Stage 2 kidney disease: look at these sections here—they’re going to want to keep regular tabs on you, make sure there’s no more loss of kidney function. But the main thing is to keep your heart in good health. Cut out the smoking, get some exercise.”
And I can hear myself, my own voice, blundering and naive. “Yeah? Oh, that’s a load off, I tell you—”
“It’s serious. Please, please don’t go getting complacent.”
You shift a little in your seat. Maybe I was a shade snappy.
“Anyway,” you say, “it’s nothing that you can’t fold into your life—and hopefully there won’t be any more deterioration.”
I flip through a couple of the leaflets and try to absorb some of it, but I’ll have to leave it till I’m on my own.
“I brought you this too. A bit of light reading.” You hand over a hardback coffee-table book: Piet Oudolf, Planting Design.
It’s so easy for you even now to surprise me with kindness.
You smile happily, pleased I’m pleased. “It’s only a library book, but I thought it would give you some good ideas, a few things to mull over while you start getting used to where you’re at these days.”
I set the book down on the blanket on my lap and pat it to show gratitude. I allow myself to look at you, and you smile. “Thank you so much for making the effort, is all. I really appreciate it.” I thumb the edge of the blanket.
“Happy to help,” you say. “Just because we’ve had our problems doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
“I’m sorry I leaned on you so much,” I say.
You look down in your lap. “It’s my baggage too. It’s…it’s not something I think I can cope with. That whole…trust area.”
“I wasn’t straight with you, and I’m so sorry.”
“Maybe it needed to happen. It was just too much, hearing you say that, and seeing you not looking after yourself.”
“That’s not me. That’s not what I want to be.”
I look at you and try to sustain your gaze, but you look away.
“I can change, Mia,” I say.
You look back at me, and some self-centered part of me had been imagining tears in your eyes. But they’re dry.
“There are times when I want to let it all drop, Ivo. I do miss you, you know. But everything’s so up in the air at the moment. I’m going away, and when I come back, there’s the new job; you’re coping with all this change with your health; and…it’s not the right time. It’d be better, don’t you think, if we just stayed friends?”
I look up into your eyes, and I see the kindness. And I realize I’d forgotten to tell myself what I should have been telling myself all along: remember never, ever to hope.
Crushed again.
“Better to be friends—better than to have nothing at all,” you say.
No.
Not better.
“Maybe I’ll give you a call from my mum’s? In a week or two?”
Oh God, is it a good idea to string this out if it’s not going to come to a happy ending? Shouldn’t I just sever all ties now?
All I can think of is the photo Mal texted me shortly before you arrived. He’s found an apartment.
But I can’t bring myself to tell you.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “That’d be nice.”
P
Palm
Slip and slap of footsteps on the stairs. Bedroom door cracks open as my mum comes in.
I was awake anyway. I’m here where she left me, in bed, in my best church clothes.
It’s dark now.
She reaches down by my bedside table and squeezes the switch to turn the lamp on. She twists it quickly to the wall. Keeps it low.
The house has been silent since the last of the mourners left, and since Laura slammed her bedroom door in tears.
Mum sits on the side of the mattress, and I slide involuntarily into the dip.
She quietl
y raises her hand and strokes my hair.
“How you doing, kiddo?”
I don’t say anything. I tighten the curl of my body around where she’s sitting, the warmth sealed between us. I know I don’t need to say anything. I know she understands.
“Brave little soldier, aren’t you?”
I look up at her from where I’m lying. She’s still got her posh earrings in.
“Are you OK, Mum?”
She looks down at me but doesn’t answer straightaway. She’s exhausted. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed tiredness in her face, though it can’t be the first time, of course.
“I’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’ll get through, you and me.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, you don’t have to go back to school until you feel ready. Everyone understands you’ll want to take your time.”
I frown into the low light. “I want to go tomorrow.”
“We’ll take a few days to…to think about your dad.”
“They’ll think I’m silly.”
“No one will think that, kiddo.”
“I want to go and have it be like every day.”
Mum falls quiet for a moment and sighs heavily. “OK. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”
“OK.”
She smiles down at me. “You’re the man of the house now, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Your dad was so proud of you, you know.”
“He’d want me to go to school,” I say, and return to looking across the low-lit room. She carries on lightly stroking my hair, before her hand slows, and finally ceases, resting on the back of my head.
“Palm of calm,” she says. “Can you feel my fingertips taking out all the worry and sadness? And can you feel the palm is pushing in warmth and love and happiness and peace? Can you feel it happening?”
I can feel it. I’m sure I can.
“Palm of calm,” she says to me.
• • •
I could do with a palm of calm now. The world is beginning to swirl around me. I can’t remember the last time I felt normal. What is normal anymore? I imagine my mum’s palm on the back of my head. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel it.
