Head Over Heels

by Felicity Price

  ‘You poor thing, home alone with no one to throw you a biscuit.’ I patted his smooth head and gently pushed him down off me. ‘I can see you’re going to have to go to the doggy dentist soon, with breath like that.’

  Unlike the other members of the family, Tigger didn’t argue.

  That’s what I love about our dog. Unlike a teenager, he never argues, never questions my judgement, never tells me I’m ruining his life or that he needs money for something. And he always treats me as if I’m the only person in the world he wants to be with. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing, how grim I look or how long it’s been since he’s last seen me, he never takes me for granted and always acts excited to see me. A dog like Tigger was the complete antithesis of my children and therefore the perfect companion, especially at that moment, when I was feeling a tad low.

  He raced downstairs ahead of me and stood expectantly in the kitchen, his tail wagging frenetically, parking himself right in front of the pantry containing his Meaty Bites.

  ‘You are like a teenager in one way,’ I chuckled, opening the pantry door and scooping up a handful of dog biscuits. ‘Or at least a teenage boy. You’re preoccupied with your stomach.’

  Having satisfied Tigger’s cupboard love, I opened the fridge and poured myself a small glass of pinot gris — for medicinal purposes, of course. If the big dribbly ice cream didn’t do it for me, surely a large swig of wine would make me feel better.

  • • •

  On Tuesday morning Charlotte had an unusually tough bout of morning sickness just as I was levering Adam out of bed.

  ‘Ew, gross,’ he said as the unmistakeable groans reverberated along the hallway.

  It was sufficient to put us both off breakfast so by the time I’d rushed into work and ticked off several items on my to-do list, then hurried to meet Dad at St Joan’s (he’d changed his mind and insisted on seeing the geriatrician after all), my tummy was rumbling loudly. But all I had was water and a stick of gum.

  No sooner were we sitting down in front of Dr Tomahawk — Dad’s nickname for him had caught on — than I quickly forgot about my hunger and found myself almost babbling, pouring out all the worries and concerns that I had kept pent up for months. Dad, however, sat there in a silent stew, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  I mentioned seeing Mum lying in bed in the foetal position, seemingly awake but incapable of speech; the sight had been preying on my mind ever since, haunting me as I lay in bed at night, trying to get to sleep. It was, the doctor said, a sign of the retrogenesis that dementia patients exhibited in the later stages of the disease.

  ‘The later stages?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s the case,’ he said, joining his fingertips together and forming a triangle with his thumbs. ‘Your mother … your wife, Mr Rushmore … is nearing the end of the progression of the disease. A semi-foetal regression like that will become more common. It’s part of her “growing down” if you like.’

  That’s when I realised he was telling us, as gently as such news can be imparted, that Mum was on her way out of this world — physically as well as mentally. It hit me like a whack in the solar plexus. After all the struggles and indecision, after all the angst and insecurity of not knowing how she’d be each time I visited her, after watching her gradually slip away from the world, she was coming to the end of her own journey.

  Yet she had no idea and there was no way we could tell her anything of such — or any — significance.

  A lot of dementia patients, Dr Tomahawk continued, were deeply unhappy, and the sad thing was that often nobody could find out why. It appeared that Mum was upset about something, as suggested by the frequent moaning and crying out, but it was unlikely we would ever know what the problem was. She couldn’t tell us.

  ‘Is there anything we can do to make it easier for her?’

  ‘It’s hard to know,’ he replied. ‘This stage can go on for months, sometimes longer.’

  That’s when he started talking about the resuscitation question and asked what we wanted to do if the situation arose. I looked at Dad, nonplussed. I had no idea. It struck me as deeply ironic: here I was, the savvy businesswoman who always had an answer for all my clients’ issues and dramas, totally thrown by the sort of question I should have known ages ago would be coming.

  ‘What I’m saying is, would you want her to be resuscitated if she went into heart failure, for example?’

  I looked at Dad. He seemed not to have heard, staring fixedly at his hands.

  ‘Er, I don’t know … I haven’t thought,’ I stuttered. ‘Dad?’ I reached out and touched his arm. ‘What do you think, Dad?’

  There was a lengthy silence.

  At last Dad looked up and said quite clearly, ‘No.’

  I started. It sounded so definite, so final.

  ‘Are you sure about that, Mr Rushmore?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ Dad stared straight at Dr Tomkinson. ‘No resuscitation.’

  I couldn’t believe it. My Dad, faithful companion to my Mum for nearly sixty years, was saying he didn’t want her life prolonged unnecessarily. And yet, as I struggled to think dispassionately about it, I could see it made sense. Resuscitate her for what sort of existence? Her quality of life had long gone. Just the same, it sounded so callous, so unfeeling. I felt totally torn.

  The doctor went on to talk about whether we wanted to withdraw active treatment as well, such as Mum’s blood-thinning stroke medication.

  ‘The time has come to think about maintaining life, but not necessarily prolonging it,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but Mrs Rushmore is now at a stage where these questions need to be asked.’

  Dad said no, he didn’t want to do that. She should keep taking her pills, he said.

  ‘I think she spits them out half the time anyway,’ he added.

  The doctor looked surprised. ‘Really? The nursing staff have strict rules and checks to make sure that patients take their medication.’

  ‘I’ve seen her store up pills in her mouth and spit them out after they’ve gone.’ Dad laughed bitterly. ‘You could never make Colleen do something she didn’t want to.’

  ‘Didn’t you make her take them?’ I asked, astonished. Dad had never mentioned this before.

  ‘No, lassie, of course I didn’t. She’d take even less notice of me than a registered nurse.’ He stood to go. ‘If you’ll excuse me, doctor, I’d like to see her now.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Rushmore.’

  I stood too, though my legs felt like crumpling under me.

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ I said, not meaning it for a moment.

  He apologised again for having to bring up such sensitive issues.

  ‘That is quite all right, doctor, I’ve been thinking about these sorts of things for a long time now,’ Dad said. ‘It’s been preying on my mind, what we should do when she’s in a bad way.’

  Well, that was news to me, too. Dad had never said anything like that either.

  ‘We talked about it, you know, Colleen and me,’ he said when we were back in the corridor outside the doctor’s office and well out of earshot. ‘About what we’d do to help each other if either of us ended up like this.’

  ‘Did you, Dad? Did you decide anything?’

  He looked at me and smiled sadly. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if we had,’ he said. ‘That’s between Colleen and me and nobody else. Not even you.’

  • • •

  Midweek in our PR firm tends to look like opening day at a department store sale — everyone is rushing hither and yon without seeming to have actually achieved anything. The projects we began on Monday are far from being completed while the end of the week is rushing at us with deadlines seemingly impossible to meet. So it was with considerable reluctance that I set aside time on Wednesday morning to phone Stephanie’s chequebook-waving Rottweiler magazine editors to set them straight: Stephanie was not, I repeat not giving an interview. Not for any amount of money.

  But it’s n
ever as simple as you think. Both editors were — surprise! — in editorial meetings and couldn’t be contacted for at least another hour, their bored-sounding PAs told me. I could visualise them filing their French-manicured nails as they spoke. So that meant I had to set aside even more time to chase the two Rottweilers later in the day, because I had to get down to court, where Ginny was escorting the daffy diva for her case to be heard at ten.

  Outside the court was the usual mix of lowlifes and down-on-their-luck ordinary people who had come to support their relatives who’d been nicked for anything from shoplifting to murder. Santangela di Palmavera was, for once, wearing something muted instead of her usual rainbow of frills and furbelows, and was allowing Ginny to escort her as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible up the back steps and through the door before the media caught sight of her. She almost pulled it off — just one photographer managed to snap her fleeing form and, with me so close behind, I suspect the picture would have had as much of my departing back as the diva’s long frizz of hair.

  So far, so good, I thought as we trudged down a corridor to the right room and found a seat. There were several people seated at the back already, apparently having their cases heard straight after the mad diva. Ginny pulled Santangela behind her into a side row and plonked herself next to a man covered in so many face studs he looked like he’d been attacked by a nail gun.

  The diva visibly shuddered when she saw him and shrank back towards me, enveloping my entire right side with her ample flesh. I held my ground. Edging in towards me on my left was a woman so pale, thin and gaunt she must have been a serial junkie, her eyes indicating that there’d been nobody home for quite some time. There was a pervasive smell of stale BO and sweaty socks.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ I whispered across the diva to Ginny. ‘Couldn’t we have done this in private somewhere?’

  ‘Sorry, sweetie, but this is the real world.’ I squirmed and looked around me as Ginny’s voice resonated around the court; she never whispers. ‘Courts don’t have private rooms like in private hospitals. You have to mix and mingle with the riff-raff, just like everyone else here. If you steal, loot and pillage, you’re in with all the other looters and pillagers.’ She cut Santangela a mean look, but it missed the target. The diva was keeping her hands, her purse and her eyes all to herself.

  The man with the piercings gave Ginny a strange stare, a cross between disdain and a desire to no doubt loot and pillage her highly visible bosom, but Ginny carried on undeterred.

  ‘Look on it as part of life’s rich tapestry of experience,’ Ginny continued. ‘And, hopefully, if Santangela does what she’s supposed to do, we won’t need to darken these doors again.’ She cut the diva another meaningful look and nudged her in the fleshy part where her ribs should be.

  ‘Nnnfff,’ the diva said, turning sharply to Ginny. ‘What are you doing?’

  Ginny lowered her voice marginally so only the row in front could hear: ‘Just reminding you that if you want to get out of here today you have to stick to your script. Don’t deviate for one second, okay?’

  ‘Sure, honey. No grandstanding, you told me.’

  ‘Good.’

  The court clerk came in and made us all stand. She was followed by the judge, who looked suitably severe as he seated himself behind his long, high bench. The court was in session and Santangela’s name was called first up.

  I squashed back in my seat to make room for her to pass, but she still managed to envelop me. Even the skinny druggie next to me didn’t miss the press of her flesh.

  The diva managed to stand in the dock and look every bit the martyr, head held high, her eyes feigning pathos. When her name was called again, her lawyer, who’d been parked in the counsel benches, leapt to his feet and started to make submissions on her behalf.

  ‘And how does she plead?’ the judge asked.

  There was a pregnant pause. The diva had always been a good judge of timing. ‘Guilty, your honour,’ Santangela said clearly, still affecting her martyred look.

  There was a flurry of surprised activity from the media desk.

  The lawyer began another line of submissions, then the police prosecutor added his bit, sounding a lot more conciliatory than last time, from what Ginny had said.

  Her lawyer said his client was keen to leave the country to get to her next engagement. The police prosecutor said they had no problem with that — in fact, they welcomed the idea, providing suitable reparation was made to the shop from which the diary had been stolen.

  ‘But your honour,’ Santangela interjected from the dock. ‘You don’t understand …’

  ‘Oh no!’ Ginny hissed. ‘She can’t ruin it now.’

  Ginny’s phone started ringing loudly. She plucked it out of her pocket, the ridiculous Lone Ranger ringtone trilling around the courtroom.

  ‘Sorry, your Honour,’ she said loudly, fumbling with the phone and seemingly unable to stop it ringing. She tripped over the pierced man’s foot, causing him to yelp with pain as her stiletto found an entry point, then fell into his lap, no doubt making his day. The Lone Ranger continued to ride the airwaves, bringing the court proceedings to a temporary halt. This fortuitously gave Santangela’s lawyer the opportunity to leap out of his seat and rush over to the dock, have a stern word with his client and dash back to his seat again before anybody seemed to have noticed.

  Ginny brought the Lone Ranger to a standstill.

  ‘Young lady, please remove yourself and your phone from my court,’ the judge said sternly. There was a silence as Ginny picked herself up off the grinning bovver-boy’s lap and made a graceful exit, tipping me a wink. ‘You are lucky I don’t have you held for contempt of court,’ his Honour concluded as she departed.

  Order was restored, not only to the courtroom but also to the diva’s demeanour. She made no further attempt to intervene in the proceedings and the case was soon closed with a hefty fine and general agreement that Santangela would be on the very next plane out of town.

  ‘Yes!’ Ginny said, giving me a high five when I joined her out in the foyer. ‘She’s going!’

  ‘Careful, she’ll hear you.’

  ‘Nuh, she’s got a lot of paperwork to sort out first. She’ll be in there with her lawyer and the police prosecutor until it’s all sorted. You go back to the office. I’ll wait here for her.’

  ‘You did well.’

  ‘Just doing my job.’

  ‘There’s just one thing I can’t understand, though.’

  ‘Yes? What’s that?’

  ‘How did a technophobe like you manage to get your phone to ring right at that crucial moment?’

  ‘Ah, maybe I’m not as much of a techno-klutz as you think.’ She gave me a big grin and headed off to a side door, where apparently Santangela would be sorting out the payments and the paperwork so she would be free to leave the country. I took Ginny’s advice and scooted back to work.

  • • •

  There were phone messages from both magazine editors waiting for me when I got back, so I phoned them in turn and told them Stephanie wouldn’t be telling her story after all.

  ‘And who did you say you were?’ the first one asked imperiously.

  ‘Her sister, Penny Rushmore.’

  ‘And how do we know you have her authority? We only deal directly with Stephanie Scanlan or her agent as a rule.’

  ‘Well, you’re dealing with me, her sister, now. She’s asked me to tell you she’s not interested in doing a story, not for any amount of money.’

  ‘How much are the others offering her? We’ll up it by a thousand.’

  ‘Only a thousand? My, magazines have fallen on hard times,’ I teased. I couldn’t resist giving them back some of the stick they sometimes gave me when I was trying to sell them a story.

  ‘How much are they offering, then? Tell me and we’ll beat it.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ I said, kicking myself now for starting a bidding war I didn’t want to win. ‘Look, there’s
no deal. The money doesn’t matter. She’s not doing it. Nada.’

  Feeling very much the wheeler-dealer, I hung up. I tried to be more circumspect with the second magazine, but still got the inquisition about what the opposition was offering and had to use much the same tactic to escape.

  Then I phoned Stephanie to report my success and had to listen to her for another twenty minutes telling me all about her plans for a romantic island getaway with Marcus.

  I figured Marcus must either be a sucker for punishment or he was missing a few buttons on his remote control. Or perhaps he didn’t care, it suddenly dawned on me. Perhaps Marcus was having a bit of a fling himself. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t surprise me. These advertising types always came across as having their Moët and drinking it too …

  ‘So Marcus has forgiven you?’ I probed.

  ‘Well, not yet …’ Stephanie let out a loud sigh. ‘He’s extracting all sorts of promises from me and making me sign things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. It seems to make him happy so I’m going along with it.’

  ‘But Stephanie, you could be signing your life away, or at the very least your money.’

  ‘I know, I know, don’t worry, it’s not that sort of thing.’ She put on a little-girl voice, ‘I promise on my honour to obey the rules and be a good girl and not run off again. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, I hope you take notice of them. He’s quite right, you know, and you’re very lucky not to have lost him.’

  ‘Oh, don’t lecture me, Penny. You’re worse than he is.’

  I wished her well on her make-good island getaway and went back to catching up on everything I’d missed by being out of the office for most of the morning.

  Checking my emails, I found one from Liz, sent to all members of the Ladies’ Philosophical Society.

  From: Elizabeth O’Connor

  To: Penny Rushmore; Diana Jones; francesd@datasve.com; Helen@radionet.co.nz

  Subject: It’s time

  Well girls, it must be at least two months since we met. I don’t know about you, but I’m in dire need of cheering up. In fact if I don’t see you all soon, mass homicide is likely — and that’s just starting with my clients! Don’t even ask how the kids are getting on. The sooner they all grow up and go flatting the better. No, forget that — they’ll never grow up, they can go flatting now!