by Rebecca Lim
When it pulls up, Justine clutches at my sleeve. ‘Would you come with me? I don’t want to go in by myself. He might be there. And you must live cloa jy seeing as we get the same bus. It won’t take long …’
I can feel her tension as she waits for my answer.
I check Lela’s watch and see that Georgia will still be with Mrs Neill for a few hours yet. The council carer should be there, too.
‘Sure,’ I reply, making another decision almost in the same instant. ‘And you’re welcome to stay at our place tonight. Just in case, you know. We have plenty of bedrooms.’
Bedrooms filled with dried flower arrangements, foot massagers and doilies, overflowing with books and papers, cushions, clothing, hat racks draped in more clothing, plastic bags, shoe boxes, walking canes and filing cabinets. Rooms and rooms of stuff that soon no one will want.
‘I can’t promise it’ll be tidy, though,’ I caution. ‘You’ll have to dig yourself out a place to sleep.’
‘Best offer I’ve had in years,’ Justine says gratefully.
She gives the driver her address, then falls silent and stares out the side window for the entire ride. The cab’s filled with the smell of well-worn leather, stale sweat and pulsing bhangra music. When we get to Bright Meadows, I hand over forty-five dollars, waving away Justine’s embarassed thanks.
‘All my stuff’s still at the club,’ she says.
She gets out with as much grace and dignity as a person with smeared eye make-up in an oriental costume can manage. The middle-aged cabbie gives her a hard sideways look as she slides out the door, keeps looking at her as he executes a slow U-turn and heads back the way he came.
We’re standing in front of a 1970s mission-brown brick apartment block with crumbling balconies in a nice, contrasting light beige. She can tell from the appalled expression on my face that it’s no kind of place to call home. She buzzes someone’s doorbell and they let her into the building. The stairwell smells of cooked cabbage and inadequately aired clothing, cats’ piss, dead rent, lost opportunities, a failure to capitalise.
‘Got a credit card?’ she says when we fetch up outside her apartment.
I’m not sure; hand her Lela’s red wallet to rifle through. A second later she takes out a thin plastic card and plays around with the lock on her front door. About two minutes later, the door swings wide open.
‘There’s a reason it’s cheap,’ she says. ‘Can never lock yourself out. One of the benefits. Wait here for me.’
I do as she says, noticing that the narrow hallway is unrelieved speckled concrete. There’s rising damp along the skirting boards, the florid 1970s wallpaper bubbling up in places as if fed by a subterranean stream. The ceilings are low and there’s a pervasive smell of mould, or bacteria.
I shudder and move further back into the external corridor. Oh, Justine, I can’t help thinking.
A block and a half later and I’m unlocking the door to Lela’s house.
‘Mum?’ I call out softly.
Georgia rises, gathering her things as I enter Mrs Neill’s bedroom with Justine in tow. She nods at Justine, not batting an eyelid at her weird get-up.
There’s an awkward expression on Justine’s face as she looks around the room. ‘Lela,’ she says quietly. ‘I had no idea.’
‘She’s sleeping now,’ Georgia whispers, ‘but she’s been asking for you. I’ll be here at the usual time tomorrow, but call the number on the fridge if she gets worse overnight. One of the team will respond. She might … Not that I trust myself, but it’s just a feeling I get.’
I nod, my face grim. ‘Me, too. And thanks.’
Justine perches in the chair I usually sleep in, so I clear a footstool for myself to sit on.
‘That you, Lel?’ Mrs Neill murmurs without opening her eyes when I draw the stool closer to the edge of the bed.
‘Yes, Mum,’ I reply quietly. ‘And I’ve asked a friend to stay. Her name’s Justine.’
Justine leans forward. ‘I won’t be any trouble, Mrs …’
‘Neill,’ I interrupt quickly at Justine’s stricken look. We are practically strangers.
‘Mrs Neill,’ Justine repeats awkwardly.
Lela’s mum opens her eyes, turns her head slowly, giving us both an unfocused smile. ‘So lovely to meet you. Lela used to have friends over all the time. It’s been months since she’s done that.’
She swallows painfully, closes her eyes, polite to the finish. ‘Please make yourself at home,’ she adds, her voice like something carried back on the wind from the afterlife.
She slips immediately into an uneasy sleep, as if the effort of speaking is too great to sustain. I must bend low to perceive that she is still breathing, still with us.
I stand and Justine immediately stands, too.
‘Kitchen’s here,’ I say as we approach the entrance to it. ‘We can offer you …’
I open the refrigerator and see a solitary jar of apricot jam; look in the freezer, see half a loaf of bread — provenance unknown, age unknown — and boxes and boxes of a frozen brown pureed substance. Food for Lela’s mum, I figure, and I’m loath to serve it because I don’t know what it is.
‘… jam sandwiches for dinner,’ I finish apologetically.
I’m not often hungry myself, only eating or drinking mechanically when the body I inhabit feels hunger or thirst. It never occurred to me that I might need to actually go shopping for food.
‘Jam sandwiches are fine,’ Justine laughs, a genuine sound of delight. ‘I like jam sandwiches.’
We leave the kitchen, go down the corridor towards Lela’s bedroom. ‘Let me show you where you’re going to sleep,’ I say.
‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Justine says as she pads after me in her Chinese pyjamas.
I give her a speaking look.
‘It would come up lovely with just a small tidy,’ she demurs, something like longing in her tone.
I clear a space on Lela’s desk for Justine’s bag, and tell her to make herself comfortable while I go out to the linen closet in the hall and bring in some new bedding, changing the bed efficiently while Justine looks around the room, runs her fingers along the old fireplace built into the wall, pulls back the curtains to look upon the neglected garden.
‘It’s lovely underneath,’ she whispers. ‘Just needs someone to give it a bit of attention.’
And that gives me an idea that I file away for thinking on later.
I tell Justine to help herself to whatever she needs, point the way to the icy bathroom with its 1950s fittings and 1950s concept of water pressure, and retire to Mrs Neill’s bedroom, to my usual seat.
I stay there late into the night while, before me, Mrs Neill slowly ebbs away.
Or maybe I imagine it, because I open my eyes and it’s morning.
Friday morning.
Ryan gets in in just a few hours, I think, suddenly wide awake, every nerve ending thrumming.
I say softly, ‘Mum?’
Mrs Neill doesn’t respond, and I touch one hand to the side of her face and realise that she’s gone beyond hearing, beyond speech. Her weightless soul has already begun cleaving away from the flesh. I know with certainty that there is only a little time left before Azraeil returns to complete the division of soul from body.
The first thing I do is call the palliative care team and tell them to send someone over.
‘I think it might be today,’ I say quietly.
‘I’ll send Zoe right away,’ the woman tells me kindly. She does not question the certainty in my voice. ‘Georgia will take over at her usual time. If she’s needed.’
Though it’s only 5.35 am, Justine’s already awake, and agrees to stay with Mrs Neill while I head out to the Green Lantern.
‘Ther s just something I need to do at work. I’ll be back around midday and you can head off,’ I say.
‘I’m in no hurry,’ she tells me. Wrapped tight in a woolly robe she’s brought from her damp-infested apartment, cartoon slippers on her feet, she looks you
nger, softer, a world away from the teary, edgy woman I accompanied home in the taxi. ‘I was planning to give in my notice at that dive anyway — I’ll just need to call in at some stage and pick up my share of the tips for yesterday and the pay they owe me. So I’ll be officially unemployed as of today. Might do what Mr Dymovsky suggested and get a regular job.’ She gives a soft laugh. ‘Might even take up his offer of some work at the Green Lantern.’
‘You mean it?’ I say, delighted. I give her a wide smile. ‘You couldn’t suck at it any worse than I do! And you’d soon show Reggie who’s boss.’
Justine giggles. ‘I’d be top dog in no time — Reggie’s a choirgirl compared to the broads I usually work with.’
Her smile disappears, and she’s probably unaware of how wistful her voice sounds. ‘Then maybe that Sulaiman guy will have to start taking notice of me, instead of looking away whenever I come near him …’
‘He wasn’t looking away yesterday,’ I point out.
She looks down, scuffs at the threadbare hallway rug. ‘No, he wasn’t, was he?’
She heads off to the shower while I prepare her something to eat. The act of making a toasted jam sandwich hardly calms my strange feeling of nerves. Every sense seems heightened this morning, everything seems brighter, more beautiful, as if newly minted just for me. Even the motes of dust that drift through the air in the sun-stained, cluttered, silent rooms of Lela’s house seem beautiful, like tiny winged creatures.
I am impatient to get away; almost leap out of my skin when the doorbell rings, signalling Nurse Zoe’s arrival.
I hear Justine answer the door and place the sandwich I’ve made for her carefully in the centre of the kitchen table. I catch myself wiping Lela’s palms on the ankle-length, black tiered skirt I’ve chosen for her to wear beneath a whisper-thin, black, empire-line, long-sleeved top. Nerves. Since when do I suffer from nerves? But I feel oddly fallible today, sure that my skittish inability to settle to anything is showing on Lela’s face.
I head through to Mrs Neill’s bedroom, and the nurse walks in wheeling a heavy medical kit. She takes one look at Lela’s mum and says quietly, ‘Do you want the dosage … adjusted today?’
I place my hand on Mrs Neill’s brow and shake my head. ‘She’s not in any pain,’ I say, wondering if my own inner turmoil is obvious in Lela’s voice. ‘She’s gone beyond pain.’
Zoe searches Mrs Neill’s features, places the wrist she’s been holding back down gently on the bed. ‘I think you might be right.’
Justine, in an oversized purple tee-sirt, peers in through the doorway, her wet hair down around her face, cartoon slippers still on her feet, munching on the sandwich I made her.
I step away, give her and Zoe a searching look. ‘Just stay with her, will you? Stay with her until I get back, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I don’t want her to be alone. Not for a second.’
They nod, and I head down the corridor after one last lingering look at the still figure on the bed. I’m unable to rid myself of the strange sense that it is the last time I will ever see Mrs Neill. Well, in this life anyway.
I hear Zoe snap open the lid of her medical kit and Justine ask shyly, ‘Do you want me to help you prop her up?’, and close the door behind me with a sense of finality, with the certainty coursing through me that everything is about to change.
Chapter 17
The bus ride into town seems to take forever.
I sit behind the driver and bid a silent farewell to Bright Meadows, to Green Hill, to the straggly, fragrant trees, to the powerlines and car-wrecking yards, the gambling dens disguised as family-friendly restaurants, the pharmacies, the bakeries, the banks, petrol stations and supermarkets, as if I will never see them again.
When we finally reach the stop across the road from the café, it’s as if I am crossing those four lanes of murderous traffic borne by wings.
He’s coming today.
He’s in the air right now.
He’ll be here in a few hours.
Mr Dymovsky smiles at me over the till when I explode through the plastic curtain smiling broadly.
‘Somebody is in the good mood today!’ he cries.
He doesn’t comment on the fact that the clock’s showing it to be 6.50 am. That I’m almost an hour early for work.
Tempus fugit, they say. Time flies. Of all days, let it be true of today, I think, because it hasn’t been doing that so far.
I grab an apron and tie it on. Sulaiman suddenly looms up beside me in that silent way he has of moving around. I take from him the gigantic tray of bacon strips and fried eggs he is holding in his big hands, slide it onto the bench. He doesn’t head back to the kitchen immediately. Just stands there watching me cut the crusts off a couple of orders, butter slice after slice of bread.
After a minute or so of his silent scrutiny, I stop doing what I’m doing, turn my head to look him full in the face.
‘What?’ I say, refusing to let anything bring me down today. Today he can be as cutting, as dismissive, as disapproving, as he wants to be. I will meet all of it with a wreath of girlish smiles. ‘What am I doing wrong?’
A small frown creases the space between his strong, dark brows.
‘You should go home to your mother,’ he says in his deep voice, his words uncharacteristically urgent and uneasy. ‘Now. Right now. Ask Mr Dymovsky to give you the day off. He will understand. There is no time to be lost.’
I feel Lela’s brows shoot up in surprise.
‘Thanks for your concern, Sulaiman,’ I reply quickly, unable to comprehend his sudden interest in Lela’s private life. ‘But it’s under control. Someone’s with Mum, if that’s what you’re worried about. I intend just to work out the morning shift and head off around noon. I’m waiting for someone.’ I break into a grin that I can’t hold back. ‘He’s meeting me here and then we’ll leave together.’
Together. Just the thought of Ryan walking through that door, looking for me, makes me feel like putting the bread knife down and hugging myself. I want to jump up and down on the spot like a Japanese cartoon character.
It’s almost as if Sulaiman can sense my underlying glee, my unalloyed joy, because he frowns harder, harsh lines etching the smooth, dark skin on either side of his strong nose and wide mouth.
‘I can’t be any clearer than this,’ he snarls, his face a mask of sudden ferocity. ‘Get out now. Go home now.’
He points one massive arm at the front door and something in the gesture triggers a memory in me wholly unrelated to this dowdy, dated coffee shop. Of a tall man with flaming red hair, emerald-eyed, more beautiful than the sun, extending a flaming sword in one alabaster hand. A gesture of anger. Of negation. For a second, there is a jump cut between past and present, so intense that I feel I could step from one to the other as easily as one would leap between stepping stones.
Then the vision of fury and beauty is gone and I am left looking up into Sulaiman’s dark, angry, mortal eyes.
‘Leave,’ he hisses. ‘Leave before it is too late, foolish creature.’
Cecilia, at the coffee machine behind us, darts a frightened look in our direction. Reggie pretends she’s not listening to our raised voices, but I can tell by the tilt of her head as she hands out coffees and bags of food that she’s hanging on our every word.
If Mr Dymovsky were here, he would find some way to defuse the situation, but he is moving around in the kitchen, whistling a folk song I do not recognise.
I pick up the knife again, something hard and spare, something flinty, rising in me. Who is Sulaiman to order me about in this way? If he knew what he was dealing with here, he would not be so imperious, so hasty.
My words come out more forcefully, more spitefully than I intended. ‘I know what you must think of me, of Justine, of Reggie, of all the women around you, with our loose western ways, our moral fibre that is so weak and wanting in comparison with your own impossiby high standards, Sulaiman. But I refuse to be judged by you. I am past anyone’s judgment these
days. I am done with it.’
I brush back a stray lock of Lela’s hair with trembling fingers and force myself to speak more calmly. ‘Now,’ I say, ‘I am meeting someone here today and we will be leaving together.’
Sulaiman and I glare at each other fiercely, and I refuse to blink, will not back down. For a moment, I get the sense that I can see behind his dark eyes and am disoriented by the fleeting sensation that we have met before.
Maybe in a past life, I tell myself. Stranger things have happened — and frequently do, around me.
‘You misunderstand me,’ he breathes after a moment, looking away, backing down, and the sensation of familiarity dissipates. ‘Forget I spoke.’
He turns and pads back into the kitchen without another word, another glance in my direction.
Reggie looks at me speculatively as she jostles fried dim sum with a pair of tongs. ‘He’ll call a fatwa down on you if you’re not careful,’ she says. ‘What did ya do to upset him like that? That’s more than I’ve ever heard him say. To anyone.’
I shrug, past caring about his good opinion of me, or hers. What is it these people say in their broad, laconic voices? Ah, that’s right. Like I give a shit. I think those words sum up the situation both pithily and well. I’m leaving today. There’s no need to play nice any more.
At that moment, the door opens and Ranald enters, paler than usual, his short hair standing on end. He almost trips over in his haste to get inside, tightening his grip on his computer bag convulsively, as if it is an extension of his body that requires special protection.
And I go cold. I’d forgotten about Ranald altogether, and that stupid dinner date he’d startled out of me at an unguarded moment.
Mr Dymosvsky, back at his usual post behind the till, looks at him, looks at his watch, looks at the clock above us, which says 7.12 am, and I know that he’s thinking the same thing we all are.
Ranald’s over three hours early for his first coffee, but already he seems agitated, buzzy, as if he’s been pulling all-nighters for a week and is surviving on nerves and caffeine alone.
