The House on the Hill

by Susan Duncan

I helped her stand, feeling with shock the soft emptiness in the flesh of her arms. She wobbled for a moment, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. ‘If you die, don’t blame me,’ I only half-joked.

  ‘Lead on, Macduff,’ she ordered, struggling upright. Outside, hunched with determination, she shuffled up a gut-busting hill (stop-starting but nevertheless at a quite impressive pace for a woman who was too ill to throw a few pills down her throat only a few days before) and landed wheezily but triumphantly on the sofa.

  Mistrust oozed out of every pore. If it weren’t so sad, I would have laughed. ‘This is the plan,’ I said. ‘I’m going to pack whatever you don’t need in boxes and store them in Bob’s shed. If suddenly you want something, all you have to do is ask. I’ll find it and deliver it. So you don’t have to discard anything you love.’ I’d discussed the strategy with Bob, worried that if I tossed out even a single chipped glass or cracked plate I’d be accused of theft or abuse. Held accountable forever.

  She flopped back against the sofa, as though she’d won a significant battle and foiled a dastardly plot with her presence. I went to the fridge. Searched the freezer for an ice-cream. ‘Here,’ I said, irresponsibly handing her a Magnum but thinking, what the hell, carpe diem. ‘You’ve got some whisky, too. Let’s make this a party.’

  She unwrapped the ice-cream. Bit into the chocolate. I found a towel and gave it to her to dry off the drizzle. Roughly wrapped a crocheted afghan, standard issue for the aged, around her shoulders. Set the heating on high. Watched a piece of chocolate drop on her shirtfront and melt. Decided whisky was a bad idea.

  In a switch worthy of Machiavelli, she waved an arm around: ‘I don’t have much space in the new place. Tell me what you want and it’s yours.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, sighing inwardly. Her face fell. Play the game, I told myself. Make her feel important for a while. ‘Anyway, you’ve already given me all your good stuff. And I gave you most of this stuff.’ The sofa on which she was planted (given to her after the pink chintz snapped in the middle while she was sitting on it). The table for the television. Pots and pans to replace the ones she’d burned beyond repair. Clothing I’d handed over when she admired it, even though we both knew it wouldn’t fit.

  She pointed to a storage cupboard. I crossed the room and opened it. It was stuffed with glassware that hadn’t been shifted since I’d unpacked it five years earlier when she moved from her four-bedroom home into the unit. I shook my head. ‘Nope. Have more glasses than I need now. I’ll pack them. You might want them later.’ Ridiculous. We both knew it. But it was meant to sound hopeful instead of hopeless.

  ‘What about the dining table and chairs?’ I asked. ‘They’ll take up too much space.’ She thrust out her bottom lip. ‘Ok, ok, we’ll store them in case you need them sometime,’ I said, giving in immediately and refusing to think about the effort involved in shipping them across the water, getting them up the hill and then finding space in Bob’s shed where the bush rats would have a field day.

  Without warning, she suddenly shrank – collapsed – into the sofa, her face gloomy and despondent: ‘No point, is there? Not really. Not unless you want them.’ I was about to shake my head but her quiet acknowledgment of a limited future stopped me. Did she really need me to tell her that the possessions she’d fought so hard to acquire had no value to anyone else?

  ‘Dad’s old writing desk, the watercolour of the Murray River. Do you want them?’

  ‘No. Let’s get rid of the lot,’ she said, reverting to the boom-or-bust mentality that had so often brought her undone and that rears up in me more often than I like to acknowledge.

  The writing desk was falling apart but, like the unsigned watercolour, had been part of my life since I was born. ‘I’ll look after those, then,’ I said, appalled at the idea of sending them off to Vinnies. The gloom lifted from her face, replaced with sunny smugness. She’d set the trap and I’d fallen into it head first.

  ‘All your paintings? What about those?’

  She perked up. ‘I’ll take them with me. They’re much admired, you know. Everyone comments when they see them.’ There were about twenty left from an original stock of about eighty, the result of a one-year art course where the cost of framing every single painting emptied her bank account.

  ‘Right.’ Thank god, I thought, she’d given most of them away.

  In a sort of bandy-legged shuffle like a toddler, one hand on the walls for support, she followed me into the bedroom, carrying the dripping ice-cream out in front of her like a chalice. She fell on the bed, signalling thumbs up, thumbs down as I exhibited one item of clothing after another. ‘Chuck that. Keep that. Ooooh, chuck, no, keep that. And that.’

  ‘What about your fur coat?’

  ‘Your father gave it to me as a thank you when I nursed his mother through cancer.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  She shrugged: ‘There’s a lot you don’t know.’ Her comment made me hesitate.

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know,’ I said in a hard voice.

  She gave me a funny, half cross-eyed look. ‘You’re my daughter. I know you inside out.’

  Now, I thought, ask her now about her father, my grandfather, and what she knew or didn’t know about the man. Butterflies took flight in my stomach, I felt short of breath and, in the end, I couldn’t find or form any words. Esther waved the ice-cream stick. I took it from her. Placed it in a bin in the kitchen. I returned with a damp cloth to wipe the stain, telling myself that to question her would achieve nothing anyway. Life is life. You play the hand you are dealt. No one escapes a share of tough times and, hopefully, good times. But some things eat away at you no matter how often you slam the lid on them. They rise like demons if you let down your guard in a weak moment. Dirty little secrets gain power from the very act of keeping them secret. The deeper you try to bury them, the more alive they become. But I waited for the butterflies to quieten. Kept on sorting clothes. God forbid I should rock the boat now or ever.

  ‘Keep it?’ I asked, picking up the fur again and giving it a shake to attract her attention.

  ‘Yes. I promised to give it to Lisa. Make sure she gets it when I die.’ Curly-haired Lisa from our Christmas lunches who untiringly wooed Esther with flattery and humour.

  ‘Ok. I’ll make a note. I’ll tell her not to hold her breath, though.’

  It took three days and about forty trips to the clothing charity bin, conveniently located next to the high-care nursing home, to reduce Esther’s possessions to necessities. Two sheet sets. Two duvet covers. Two duvets. Two pillows. Four towels. Seven summer outfits. Seven winter outfits. Extra shirts and trousers. Five pairs of shoes. One set of fluffy pink slippers. Low storage drawers that could double as a coffee table. A large chest of drawers that would fit against a wall.

  ‘What about the bed?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. I’ll take the sofa.’ My mother had slept on sofas round the clock for as long as I could remember. I’d always believed it eliminated the need for bed-making (‘If the beds are made and the dishes done, a house always looks clean and tidy’) or justified her claim that the birth of my brother and me ruined her sleep forever (‘Never slept a wink after you two kids were born’). But in the old days, people died in bed instead of a hospital, and perhaps it was a risk she wasn’t prepared to take.

  ‘I think a bed would make more sense,’ I suggested.

  ‘The sofa cushions snuggle into my back,’ she snapped, ending the discussion.

  Bob and I dismantled, lifted, carried and transported what my mother had chosen to take with her into the next stage of a rapidly compressing life, including my father’s writing desk and the Murray River watercolour. Which turned out to be the only two things she really wanted, after all. Apart from her own paintings, of course.

  Three weeks or so later, she asked me to return some grape-festooned silver-plated goblets I’d packed away and stored in the loft. ‘The writing desk looks bare without them,’ she said.
r />   I mentally raised my hand in a high five of victory. ‘Easy. Can you wait a couple of days?’ She looked vaguely disappointed. ‘Anything else?’ I asked, angelically.

  During those three days of packing and sorting under the watchful and suspicious eye of my mother, her carer had knocked on the door. ‘Your mother asked me to come and help,’ she’d explained. I’d glanced at Esther, her body hunched forward over the coffee table, playing with a bowl of rings as though they were dice. She’d looked shifty, as though she’d been caught out. I’d realised she still didn’t trust me.

  ‘Great!’ I’d said. Then I’d marched to the glass cupboard, thrown open the doors. ‘I’m sure Esther would like you to take whatever you want.’

  I’d seen my mother flinch. ‘Well, I’d like to keep the crystal,’ she’d said quickly. ‘And the red jug. And –’

  ‘How about these?’ I’d interrupted her, holding up a set of frosted glasses and dessert bowls.

  ‘No! Not those!’ she’d yelped.

  I’d begun wrapping them. ‘There’s no space where you’re going. They have to go.’

  The carer, embarrassed, had put up her hands to say no. But I’d grimly insisted. Esther had backed off.

  Knowing she was unhappy, a petty little victory, nevertheless, gave me a momentary thrill followed very quickly by shame.

  Each night, I returned to Pittwater and lay awake, counting on my fingers all the ways in which I’d been fortunate, matching them against the ways in which my mother had been unfortunate. If it were a competition, I would have emerged the undisputed winner. A long time later, I asked myself if unfortunate was the correct term for the form my mother’s life had taken. Disappointing was more accurate, and strongly littered with self-destruction. Even when she was handed the one thing she insisted would bring her unbridled joy, it was never quite right, never added up to her expectations, never quite good enough. So many gifts over so many decades resulted in disappointment. It was years before I realised that, even though my mother’s ego was boundless, her self-esteem was rock bottom. Her bucket could never be filled because why would anyone give her anything unless it was worthless? Thinking back, there was a single gift that gave her unadulterated pleasure.

  On a trip to New York, Bob suggested buying her a gaudy red feather boa from a magic shop. She adored it and pushed aside the little blue box from Tiffany’s with the remark, ‘Did you get that from the cheap third floor?’ She flung the boa around her neck and preened, chin raised, looking down her nose, in a sort of 1930s screen siren-ish way. I could’ve whacked her.

  Each week, as was our custom, I continued to collect my mother from the hotel-like reception area of the retirement village to take her to lunch. Each week, from a bent position over her walker, she eyed me up and down and asked, ‘Is your iron broken?’ Or: ‘Is that shirt meant for going out or have you been gardening?’ Or: ‘Why don’t I ask my hairdresser if she can do anything about your dry hair.’ A thousand more little digs too pathetic to even make an effort to recall. I’d hoped that after heart surgery, which was said to soften the toughest individuals, we’d manage moments of gentle, even honest and accurate conversation. I longed to crack through the fantasy-laden accounts of her life to reach into the roiling mess of experience that had made her. And, in the process, understand what had moulded me. Instead, we slipped straight back into our traditional combative habits.

  One day, to break the monotony of our lunches, I suggested a shopping expedition to buy a couple of armchairs to go on either side of my father’s writing desk, so visitors to her unit would have somewhere comfortable to sit. ‘Let’s go!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘I can do anything.’

  In the store, my mother charmed the sales staff. Coming up with a heap of witty one-liners, cracking jokes, bursting into short sprints to check out one chair after another. I would have thought her amazing too, if she’d belonged to someone else. But out of sight of an audience, she fell apart, her breath coming in short bursts, her face grey. By the time I delivered her back to her room she could barely speak.

  ‘They look great,’ I said when two red leather chairs in a streamlined style you might find in a club in Cuba were delivered. ‘This could be a swish studio apartment in New York.’

  She looked pleased. Shuffled around the coffee table/storage drawers in the new, tippy, arms-outstretched-for-balance, toddler-style waddle she’d adopted since surgery. Delight and anticipation scrawled on her face. She lowered her backside, dropping the last couple of inches heavily and with a loud grunt. In a blink, she slid to the floor, like a kid on a slide.

  ‘Slippery little suckers, aren’t they?’ I said, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Might stick with the sofa in future,’ she replied. I went to hoist her upright. ‘Not that arm, that’s my bad arm.’

  ‘Yeah, ok, sorry.’

  Bob installed her paintings. I bought her a new kettle and toaster in red to match the chairs. Left enough space near the sofa for the walker. Vital for her to make the six- or seven-step journey safely to the bathroom. Her meals – cereal and toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, hot dinner – were delivered to her room. She was not ready yet, she told me, for the physical effort involved in reaching the communal dining room. So death still sits cross-legged on her lap, holding her captive. Her choice, I thought, her choice. If I’d run into the specialist with the bedside manner of the Rottweiler, I would have hugged him. None of this was my doing.

  7

  ESTHER’S HEART ATTACK turned into my own wake-up call. Do it while you can. It jumped around in my subconscious like a flea. Move the goalposts, I told myself. Rearrange old horizons and set new boundaries. Every time I squibbed, an image of my mother repeating I’m well looked after, as though it was something to shout proudly from the rooftops, appeared like a haunting.

  Feel tired and frozen instead of exhilarated and romantic when crossing the water in a tinny on a cold dark night? Do it while you can. Want to wait for a sunny day to do the shopping instead of thumbing a nose at drenching rain? It’s only water. Feel fear when the wind blows hard and the boat burrows deep enough to sink? It’s a short swim to land. Can’t carry heavy loads anymore? Split them into smaller lots. Can’t fling a dinner party together in an afternoon? Plan and prepare ahead. Can’t remember why you walked into a room? It’s not life-threatening. Hot flushes driving you nuts? They’re not as bad as they used to be. Sixty is the new fifty. Only it isn’t.

  My libido was sinking. Sex had become painful despite an apothecary of unguents. Intimacy, the exquisitely complete condition that coexisted naturally and effortlessly with love and friendship in a good marriage, was under threat. No wonder my mother’s generation referred to menopause as change of life. Although, to me, on some days it felt more like I’d been felled by a coup. Violent, subversive, with the enemy invisible. Do it while you can, I’d mutter. And for heady, delusional seconds I’d convince myself I could still throw a change of underwear in a backpack, leap into a car and drive north, south, east or west and begin again. Be that same young risk-taker fuelled by dreams and hopes and damn the consequences.

  Then a young woman would walk past with unblemished legs and firm upper arms. Or I would baulk at a minor physical challenge, such as leaping for a rope. Or my stamina would ebb by mid-afternoon instead of midnight. Or I would turn away from Bob at night instead of reaching for him. As it turned out, there was only so much spin a mind could take before collapsing under the weight of reality.

  Bob couldn’t fail to notice the big shifts in my behaviour, but he let them pass without comment, stepped in with support when he saw me struggling. But it was the subtle, inadmissible shifts that gave strength to uncertainties, had the potential to do the most damage to our relationship. I no longer initiated sex when once I’d dragged him to bed, a cognac for each of us, in the middle of a summer afternoon. I found reasons to retire early or read a book very, very late, so we fell asleep at separate times. And while I yearned for the feel of his han
ds on my skin, his body alongside mine, I also sometimes dreaded it. Sex had become complicated. It required thought and an almost clinical preparation that did more to douse than kindle desire.

  As the intervals when my body behaved and responded became rarer, Bob inevitably opened a dialogue I’d been dreading. ‘I know something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is,’ he said, looking into his wine glass, avoiding my eyes. We were on the verandah. It was the end of another summer. Although I have an almost encyclopaedic memory for meals on unforgettable occasions, I cannot remember a single ingredient that passed my lips that night. I recall pushing my chair back from the dinner table in a way I was aware he could have read as panic or anger when all I meant to do was flee, to dodge making the hardest of confessions. That I was getting old. But he reached across and wrapped his fingers around my wrist without pressure, more to signal that even if I ran off, this was a conversation I couldn’t avoid forever. ‘People who care about each other communicate with each other,’ he added.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. He waited. The night spun out. In the corner, a mosquito coil smouldered, the musky scent all-enveloping. Stars shone through a lacy arbour. Somewhere across the bay, voices muddled. I thought of the two of us. Our short history. We lacked the bond of successes and failures, tragedies and triumphs – children – to fill the gaps with rich memory and shared experience as one stage of life faded and another began.

  From the beginning, I’d believed that underlying the basic human need to love and be loved, sex was the primary force between us. Without it, I could imagine only cool, empty spaces, widening chasms until we might as well be strangers living under the same roof. So I made a weak excuse, began to clear the table, offered dessert. Left him sitting alone. Returned and held up the wine bottle in query, filled his glass. ‘You mean everything to me,’ I said, hoping it was enough. He nodded. We left it there, but we both knew it wasn’t over.