by Meg Bignell
Then she went on about her gardenias, said goodbye and hung up. I smell a fishy fish. Her voice sounded like she had something caught in her throat. Perhaps she’s feeling bad about the birthday viola and is scheming with Hugh to send me to one of those health retreats where no one’s allowed to speak to you for two days and you eat spiralised zucchini and come out transformed, patient and moderate.
Still no reply from Ria. She’s extending the silence for full instructional impact. Or perhaps she’s coming to the health retreat too. Perhaps she’s waiting for me there.
THURSDAY 21st SEPTEMBER
Without you, I’m just a sad song,
I’m just a sad song.
My notes are loud and startling,
As they carry across the water of my tears.
I wonder whether it’s possible to cry every bit of water out of your body so that you shrivel up and fall to bits and blow away in the wind?
MONDAY 25th SEPTEMBER
Perhaps she’s waiting for me there.
I can’t find her here. There don’t seem to be any trees to search in. Can’t even see the trees. What happens when you can’t see the wood or the trees, Ria? When you can’t see for tears. What happens then? What happens to the music when you can’t hear it? Can you answer me, Ria? I had so many more questions for you.
Should I have asked? Should I have known?
And, Ria, I thought …
Perhaps she’s waiting for me there.
But you’d already gone.
Everybody was somewhere, flapping about, trying to work out how to tell me before some news headline screamed it at me. And no one wanted me to be by myself at the end of a phone line. Alone with the children and such a horrible big bombshell. Ria’s brother Mac tried Hugh, then phoned Mum; Mum tried Hugh, then phoned Dad as she sobbed her way home from Richmond Golf Course. Dad made it in time. Poor Dad, not his brightest moment, not his scene. He hates a tear. And his Saturdays while Mum’s at golf are his sacred and peaceful pottering days. How to spoil a peaceful pottering day.
I was still trying to work through my to-do list and had happily let the children go off to the park with Josh and Isobel. I was up to making something with broccoli, which was bolognaise with hidden broccoli. Remember, we used to make it with cinnamon and chilli and we’d strain the tomatoes?
‘Zannah, love, I’m sorry. I have some terrible news,’ Dad said, when he found me at the stove.
‘Oh, no. It’s Valda, isn’t it? Poor Valda.’ My voice wobbled because to my surprise I felt very, very sad. ‘I was just about to take her some bolognaise with broccoli. That would have done her good.’
And Dad said, very gently, with a hand on my arm, ‘No, Zannah. It’s not Valda. It’s Ria. They’re saying she killed herself.’
And there must have been some sort of creature in my chest because it punched me in the throat and doubled me over and sent up an ugly, ancient wail. And started the tears that won’t seem to stop.
But, Ria, there were still roses and ocean and birds and sparkling wine and days. Still days: some of them not yours to take.
FRIDAY 6th OCTOBER
I’m sitting in the car outside the supermarket. I’ve just done the groceries. People, I suppose, have been doing their groceries these last weeks as per normal. Which seems so very wrong. Life goes on even when it doesn’t. The days have piled up in the wash basket, sent up the weeds and eaten all the food in the pantry. These wet and grainy days of tears and sigh. There wasn’t even a wobbly bean in the bottom of the crisper drawer.
What does Ria think about it all? I have her note here, folded up inside my Sparkle Pages, which are now struck-through with pointlessness.
I’ve read the note only once, when it arrived in the post a few days after I’d been told of her death. Like a missive from beyond. And now, outside the supermarket, while people are keeping on and ordinary things are doing their ordinary thing, I’ll read it again.
Dear Susannah,
I have Motor Neurone Disease. Look it up if you don’t know it. It might as well be called Major Nightmare Disease. I couldn’t tell you because you would have tried making everything all right. And I might have believed that you could, just long enough to lose all control. No one needs me lingering around and dribbling on things. Least of all me. I can’t watch my hands fumble the piano keys, Zannah, and they’ve started already. It’s only the second secret I’ve ever kept from you, I promise. I know you understand. I know you’ll be sad and do that crying face but just remember it’s really fucking ugly. Talk about me and don’t forget me but then get on. And don’t be sad for me. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do. I’m only afraid of living now.
I’ll haunt you somehow, my dearest friend. I’ll watch and I’ll know and don’t forget that everyone’s still waiting for that key change.
Always and always and ALWAYS, Your RIA. Xxx (INSERT CHEEKY LITTLE GHOST EMOJI HERE)
Outside, the people are still doing their people things. I’m doing my ugly crying face. There’s a chance the wind changed a while back because this is how I seem to look now. My family has started to look away.
Is Ria here somewhere? It’s quite a still day but in the top of a nearby tree I can see a breeze. Is that something? Who said something about the wind and goodbye? When does the haunting happen, Ria? Are you watching now? And who’d have thought I had so many tears? I can’t see the memories either. They are clouded with the strange fact that you’re gone. But you were just here. You were just here. And you always said always.
Oh, but Eloise has camp coming up so I have to think about dehydrated food and where the sleeping mat is. The crying might stop if I just don’t think. Eloise hasn’t cried.
What’s Ria’s first secret?
THURSDAY 12th OCTOBER
On the goodbye wind came a cold, cold sigh. And it put out your fire.
This isn’t something I remember knowing. I suppose, when things get broken, bits and pieces can make their way back in through the cracks.
DON’T THINK.
SATURDAY 14th OCTOBER
Mary-Lou and I are sorting out her wardrobe. School holidays. She has four stripy blue T-shirts and no shorts that fit. I will have to get her some shorts. The weather is warming up.
WEDNESDAY 18th OCTOBER
Pine bark has arrived. Valda has been moved to the rehab ward. April has gone to Antarctica. She sent Hugh a photo of bioluminescence.
THURSDAY 19th OCTOBER
Today while I was busying myself in Valda’s room, she said, ‘Unspent sorrow will sour, curdle and clog up the sink. Eventually things will burst.’ She patted the chair next to her, then thumped it and said crossly, ‘You will go pop.’ I sat. ‘Think about her,’ she said. ‘Thinking has never been a trouble for you in the past.’
And we sat in absolute silence but for the tick of the clock. At first I thought, Well, this is ridiculous. I could be doing parent help. Then I went a bit blank and listened to the sound of Valda breathing. She was staring straight ahead and, after a minute, closed her eyes. I closed mine too. And found myself drawn to the dark, icy pond inside my head. I dipped a toe in. It hurt. The tears threatened. (How can there be any left?) I recoiled, and Valda put her hand on mine. Firmly, as if to make sure I didn’t sink.
There is music. Humming? There we are, Ria and me. We might be thirteen. I’m in a green cotton dress. We’re standing on the lawn of a beautiful sandstone house with pretty laced verandahs. It must be one of the families that Ria’s mum Netty worked for. She’d sometimes take one of us with her if there were big gatherings. There are huge rolls of hay dotted about the paddock beside and lots of people around. A garden party? Christmas? There’s something sticky about the memory – icy poles or fizzy cordial. Probably something Netty had bribed us with to stay out of trouble. We are standing together, avoiding the gaze of people, leaning in on one another, like Siamese twins joined by shyness. Someone is trying to get us to play a game. There are roses and punch and laughter and a stri
ng quartet. The violist has a perfect blonde, flicky-out ponytail, a silver bangle and a humble, kind smile, which she sends to me. I smile back and imagine myself with a viola and a ponytail. The brothers call us sissies or something. We hide behind a nearby tree so we can listen to the music without being bothered. There, we whisper and laugh and listen to the happy chatter of birds. They might be saying that everything is all right. We pretend that the house with the laced verandah is ours, that we are sisters and the viola player is our governess. We decide that we will stay there forever and ever, always and always. The humming is louder now, a song, sung by a shimmering soprano that sounds like water.
And I opened my eyes then, because the sound of that singing was so close and so real. And it was real. Valda was singing. I don’t know what it was she was singing but it was so, so beautiful. ‘Why mourn,’ she sang, ‘since death presents us peace, and in the grave our sorrows cease?’
I didn’t feel the tears but they were all over the place and it was searingly wonderful to have shed them for something other than sadness. Valda. Valda, the soprano: the keeper of that silken, searching voice – a voice I’d heard so often wafting and dancing from her windows in the mornings. She was still sitting beside me but her gaze was on something far, far away. When the song reached an end she blinked, sniffed a little sniff and took a sip of tea.
‘Valda,’ I breathed. ‘You sing.’
‘I do.’
‘Opera.’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘You didn’t ask. People never ask for the stories of the wizened and wise.’
‘I’ve heard you, from the window in the mornings. I thought you were a recording.’
‘Ah, I have been enjoying those showtunes. They’re very common but easier for my old vocal folds.’
‘What was that you just sang?’
‘It’s an elegy, set to music. It always brought me comfort.’
‘Did you sing on the stage, Valda?’
She sighed. ‘Yes. Sometimes. But not since Neville …’ She looked at something very far away.
A nurse came in then, all bustle and boss, and said, ‘Time for your walk, Mrs Bywaters.’
‘It’s Kent,’ Valda snapped. ‘Valda Kent. And I’ve been all the way around the lake, thank you all the same.’
I kissed Valda on the cheek and left them bickering. But to think that Valda can sing like that!! I suppose she sings now to bring Neville back. I don’t remember her singing while he was alive. Did she perform onstage until he died? That’s not so long ago. Must ask her next time.
I’m grateful for that old memory of Ria and the birds. Memories can polarise even as they go through the washes of time and fade. Then you can pop them out to brighten up grubby greys and ponds of sable sadness. They can stir up trouble, though. It’s properly dark outside now and I’m wandering, wondering, as my mind does at this hour. Why, if under the tree with the birds Ria can whisper secrets, couldn’t she tell me this one? No one was with her when she was diagnosed, nor afterwards in what must have been a quicksand of despair. She didn’t tell her brothers, her work people or me. I can’t bear the thought of her alone with that horrible heavy secret. Can’t bear.
Ria’s brothers weren’t surprised that she hadn’t confided in them, but they couldn’t believe I didn’t know. I should have known. Damn it, Ria, I should have known. They cried for you, those big noisy boys. All three of them. Imagine! Mac, with those shades on, his teasing mouth all upended. Trent and Bax, who’d brought their little tiny sister home for a Tasmanian funeral, as you’d wished. They had the enormity of you etched into the lines of their faces. Did you see? Were you there, laughing and calling them sooks? I’m sorry I didn’t play at your funeral. Even Hugh tiptoed the idea up; he said everyone would expect it. Henry played the cello, though. He was amazing and he had tears all the way down to his fancy shoes, bringing everyone undone. He played the requiem from your Charlotte’s Web adaptation. Oh and oh! I know you’ll be cross it wasn’t me. But I can’t stop these tears. And my heart is broken, Ria, and you know where that takes the music. The viola would have been strung with my heartstrings and the bow laced with icicles. The instrument might have screamed, or been weakened to some sort of prickly glissando harmonics. No one wants their funeral music to be violent. Frederick Federici died from a heart attack just after singing a final note of morbid old Faust.
She said that this MND is the second secret she’s kept from me. What is the first? Perhaps she’s coming back to tell me. Tears. Stop thinking.
Raffy says he knew Valda could sing like that! Should I talk to my children more?
SATURDAY 21st OCTOBER
We got presents from Ria today. A posthumous present. (You are really creepy, Ria. I suppose you left instructions for Joseph. For goodness sake. How many personal assistants have to undertake posthumous duties?) She organised her ashes to be swished through five glass paperweights, for distribution between her brothers, Hugh and me. Mine has delicate sweeps of white and a blue the colour of her eyes. (Is that particular blue the colour of grief?) Hugh’s has yellow. They’re horribly kitsch. Ria must have laughed when she was planning those. I wish I could have been there for that. I should have been there.
Hugh studied his for ages, as if something might glimmer and wink at him from the greyish grains that are all that’s left of the physical Ria. My dearest cheerful, unflappable Hugh. This has flapped him. Today he cleaned the loos, without being asked. That’s how flapped he is. He said, ‘Do we have any rags?’ And I replied, ‘No. Just use the toilet brush.’ And he said, ‘The what?’(!!!) Has he never noticed the brushes beside toilets the world over?
I think he’s cleaning the loos because it might surprise me enough to stop my crying, which must by now be irritating him terribly. Why can’t I be one of those people who can’t cry no matter how much they immerse themselves in memories? I’ve had to put a virtual sphincter on my memory valve, but it’s very leaky.
Hugh got on the next flight home the minute he heard about Ria. I almost envy the flurry of activity he would have had to enter once Mum had reached him and broken the news. By the time he got home I was in a sort of petrified state where everything on my to-do list seemed ridiculous. And where the things on my should-have-done list were horribly not done. Like stopping Ria from injecting herself with her neighbour’s insulin. I’m not wording this well. I’ll put it into Hugh’s words:
‘When I got home there was an easel set up in the kitchen but no paints, some vegetables chopped, your mother re-ironing my shirts, the children not watching telly and you in the bath. But the most disturbing thing was that there was no music. That made me cry.’
Our stereo is usually on constant shuffle, sometimes with the volume so low it’s like a subconscious murmur. I don’t remember turning off the music.
He came, with his tears, into the bathroom and found me sitting in the bath with my chin on my knees. I was trying to think about honey and how bees love capeweed and capeweed honey is apparently delicious and that’s good because even pesty old capeweed is good for something. And all the while, my stubborn tears flowed into the water. I glanced up at Hugh but his face was so sad that he looked like someone else and I had to turn away and think about potato salad and whether it should have bacon.
‘Susannah,’ he said, in a shaken whisper that reminded me about Ria not being just mine. I stood up all dripping and put my arms around him. And he stepped into the bath in his unironed suit and sat down with me in my tears. Then we looked at each other and laughed a little bit. Then we didn’t and Hugh said, ‘Ria would be laughing,’ so we laughed again. And once we’d gone quiet and thinky and the water had cooled off, he said, ‘Some people are probably too good for this world, Zannah.’ Which is the most spiritual thing he’s ever said and hints that perhaps he has listened to my years of intangible tangents.
When we came out of the bathroom and Hugh went to the laundry to shed his dripping suit, Mum sai
d, ‘The meatballs are on and Jimmy’s done a picture of a tree stump.’ And we all had a brandy.
Later that night, in bed, Hugh held me in his arms until I went to sleep in them. It’s the first time in a very long time that we haven’t had a lying-down cuddle and then had to move apart because someone couldn’t breathe or someone had bad breath or a numb foot. Or an erection. He just wrapped my body in his bandage limbs, pulled together displaced things and breathed newly spun love into the echoey space within.
We haven’t made love like that in such a long time.
MONDAY 23rd OCTOBER
It was the first day back at school today, only it wasn’t. We arrived at the school gates to find them closed. School goes back tomorrow because today is a student-free day. Both schools. I phoned Eloise, who I’d put on the bus, and she said, ‘School’s not on today, is it?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she wasn’t cross, which made me cry again.
Eloise didn’t cry at Ria’s funeral, of course. Everyone else did. We sat up the front of the cathedral and Mary-Lou gazed up at the brass angel-shaped lectern and whispered, ‘Is Ria here, Mum?’
‘She’s in there,’ whispered Jimmy, nodding at the coffin, his eyes huge.
Mac, Trent and Bax had insisted on the coffin being there. ‘People might not believe us otherwise,’ Trent said. I didn’t like it. Ria wouldn’t like it. I couldn’t sit in that crowded cathedral and not picture her in that box, with all those disruptions in her neurotransmitters now sleeping, their job done. And the flowers on top were all wrong. Too much. But her brothers had brought her all the way home so I understand, I suppose … I hope she thought to pop her cyclamen in a sink of water before she went.