That somehow gives me the wherewithal to pull myself together.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s not stand here chatting all day. Let’s go meet your sister.’
Larry smiles and steps away from the car. ‘You’re going to like her, Helen,’ he says as I get out. ‘And she’s going to like you.’
I take his arm as if it is the most natural thing in the world. As we walk in, I realise Larry hasn’t broached the issue of Mike again.
‘I need to pop in and say hi to Mike first,’ I say. I feel Larry’s arm tense very slightly beneath my hand.
‘Sure thing.’ He changes direction. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’
‘You can come in. It’s not like you haven’t before.’
‘I know,’ says Larry. ‘But I think you need to be alone with him today.’
He’s right, and I am so grateful. I want to say something, but instead I just squeeze his arm. I think he understands, because for a moment he puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close.
‘It’s all going to be okay,’ he whispers into the top of my head. ‘We just don’t know what okay means.’
Julia
My belly feels tight around the baby, but I have too much to do to let a bit of discomfort stop me. As well as painting the walls – I mean, what was I thinking with that colour? – I really need to unpack my childhood books, and I don’t know how I haven’t realised this before. I know they’re somewhere in the spare room cupboard – the room that’s now mine. I called it the spare room in my head for a long time, convinced that living with my mother was a temporary measure, but now that the baby is about to be born, I realise I’m going to need her for the foreseeable future. Maybe that’s why I got the room colour wrong. Maybe it was a subconscious rebellion against staying.
I think about phoning Alice to ask what she thinks, but then I realise this might not qualify as a therapeutic emergency. When I phoned earlier to tell her the colour was wrong, she reminded me that I’m only supposed to phone for emergencies, otherwise I must save it for therapy. And then, when I told her the names of the colours, she paused and said we would definitely talk about it next time she sees me. And who knows when that will be because I could have this baby any minute.
I go into the bedroom and start digging through the cupboards. There isn’t an awful lot – my mother’s not the type for sentimental keepsakes, so the stuff I do find is mostly mine. There’s a box I’ve marked ‘Do NOT throw this away, Mum’, but inside are old school books, and I can’t think why I would have thought it was so important to keep them.
I put them back in the cupboard. The only other box has my matric dance dress and my mother’s wedding dress in it. When I was little, my biggest treat in the world was to take out the wedding dress and touch it. My mother wasn’t mad about me doing this, and she only let me do it very occasionally – which meant that it kept its magic and always felt like a treat. When I was a teenager I once tried it on when she was out. It didn’t fit me well, and looked a bit frumpy. The disappointment was huge, and I never asked to look at the dress again.
I touch it gently now. As an adult, I can imagine how painful my mother would have found my obsession with her dress. Not that she showed it. In fact, she might not have even realised herself that it was painful. But it must have been.
Anyway, my books are not in this cupboard. I think of phoning my mother, but I send a message instead. She doesn’t reply, so I start wondering where else they could be. Perhaps in her room.
Going into her room feels naughty. I am determined my child will never feel like this – that my bedroom is a forbidden space. My child will always feel welcome and safe in my bedroom.
Opening the cupboards feels even sneakier. First, I just look at her clothes, hanging neatly, sparse enough that they don’t even touch each other. My cupboard is always jam-packed with clothes – most of which I never wear – but my mother throws away anything she hasn’t worn for a year. Once I asked if she doesn’t feel attached to her clothes and sad to see them go, and she looked at me like I was speaking another language. Maybe I was.
Her neat cupboard is an unlikely home for a stash of ill-sorted children’s books. But I don’t want to give up. I feel another pull across my belly and I absent-mindedly rub it.
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell my baby. ‘We’ll find your books.’
So I get the stool from my mother’s dressing table and stand on it. I have a moment of hope as I see that the top shelf is uncharacteristically messy – a tangle of old jerseys and scarves – none of which I can remember my mother wearing. I reach in and feel, but there’s no box and no books. Just a mess. I feel a stab in my stomach.
‘Braxton Hicks,’ I tell no one. I like the words ‘Braxton Hicks’. I will get the baby a puppy called Braxton. I’d think about calling the baby Braxton, given the number of Hicks I’ve been having, but I already know what I’m naming the baby. I’ve always known.
I keep expecting my mother to ask about the name, or suggest a name, or anything. But she doesn’t. And for some reason I feel awkward initiating a conversation about it. You’d think it would be the most natural conversation in the world, but I guess by now I should be used to the fact that nothing between my mother and me will ever be natural – no matter how different she’s been lately. I consider sending her a text saying that I’m naming the baby ‘Braxton’, just to see how she’ll react.
That’d be hilarious.
I carefully climb off the stool – I will not be the statistic who falls off a chair and goes into labour – and I take my phone from my pocket.
I’m naming the baby Braxton, I text my mother. And then, to be clear, I send another message: After the Hicks.
As I push send, I feel another sharp pain – this one gives me such a fright that I drop my phone, which falls under the bed.
‘Dammit!’ I yell. ‘Enough with the Hicks, baby!’ Bending down is the biggest mission with my huge tummy, but I need my phone. After all, I could go into labour any minute. I manoeuvre myself onto my knees with my face flat on the floor to see where the phone has gone. I lift the bed frill and spot it quite far under the bed. Peeping out from behind a box.
A box.
‘Eureka,’ I whisper.
I reach under the bed, my belly pushed against the floor, and catch hold of the box. I expected it to be dusty, but it’s not. My mother’s housekeeping is clearly of a very high standard if an old forgotten box of books under a bed is dust-free.
I’m expecting the box to be taped shut, but it’s not. Its flaps are loose, and I open it.
It’s not books. It’s a photo album and some other things.
And lying on the top is a photograph of a very little boy carefully holding a baby.
As I try to figure out who these people can be, a hard cramp grips me. And I realise – these aren’t Braxton Hicks. This is the real thing. I drop the photo, and reach for the phone again – I can touch it, but I can’t get a grip. I reach farther, almost grasping it, and it shoots out from under my fingers, farther under the bed. ‘No,’ I yell, as another contraction hits.
Helen
I don’t spend long with Mike. I’m jumpy and restless, and I can’t seem to sit still. I need to get meeting Miriam over with. There’s something else nagging at my mind. I thought it was Mike, but now that I’m with him, that doesn’t feel like the answer.
But I do lean down next to his ear and whisper, ‘Julia’s baby is due any day now. And then we can decide what to do.’
I desperately want to convince myself that he has reacted – that there is a change in his position or his impassive face. But I can’t. Mike is still far away from me. Close to Mike’s ear, so Larry won’t hear me, I say, ‘Miriam’s woken up. Stupid cow. It should have been you.’ I look at him again. Nothing.
I sigh. I can’t feel him today. This happens sometimes, but it seems to be happening more and more. Since the nightmare about Jack. I pat his hand and leave.
Down the p
assage from Mike’s room, Lizette is standing with Larry. When she sees me, she flings her arms around me.
‘Isn’t it exciting?’ she says. And then before I can answer, she peers around me, at the door to Mike’s room. ‘Is your husband in there? In a coma?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Should I come and speak to him? I’m the sort of person a person would come out of a coma for.’
I try very hard not to catch Larry’s eye as I pat Lizette’s arm. ‘I am quite sure that if I was in a coma, a visit from you would be just the thing,’ I say. ‘But let’s leave Mike for another day. One person recovering is quite enough.’
Lizette beams at me. ‘You are so right,’ she says. ‘And also so thoughtful. I am not one to repeat myself, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you’re the sort of person who puts other people first. You know,’ she says, slipping her arms through Larry’s and mine – quite a feat given how tall Larry is and how short she is – ‘I was just telling Miriam how wonderful Helen is, and how she’s not the sort of person to blow her own horn. I’m always one to give credit where credit is due, you know.’
Larry extricates himself gently. ‘Well, let’s take Helen to meet Miri, shall we, and she can judge for herself.’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Lizette, walking purposefully down the passage I have known intimately for more than two decades. ‘Follow me, I know the way.’
Larry and I look at each other. ‘Do you think she is actually taking the mickey and laughing at us all?’ I whisper.
Larry looks serious. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘She’s not the type of person to do that at all.’
We are both giggling like naughty children as we follow Lizette.
When we get to the room, Eddie is standing at the door. He hugs me. ‘Come in and meet Miri,’ he says. And then to Lizette, ‘The doctors have asked that she not have too many people at once, and I know you’ll understand.’
Lizette nods emphatically, her blonde bun falling loose from its clips and hovering near her ear.
Eddie and I open the door and step in, and Eddie quickly closes it behind him.
‘Did you manage?’ whispers a voice, and I look over and see Miriam sitting up in bed, a pair of glasses perched on her nose. ‘Did you keep her out?’
Eddie laughs. ‘Yes, my love. Your wish is my command.’
Miriam turns to me. ‘I’m sorry, Helen,’ she says like we are old friends. ‘But I couldn’t take another minute of Lizette. I sent her to find you to get rid of her. So I already owe you an apology, and we’ve barely met.’
I don’t know what I expected – that Miriam would be weak and hoarse and lying in bed sipping water, perhaps. Being in a coma for so long should leave you feeling a bit done in. But Miriam looks like she’s just popped into the hospital to have an ingrown toenail removed and is very likely to leap out of bed at any moment. Indeed, her next words confirm this.
‘I’m so annoyed with those doctors because they say I mustn’t stand up at all. Because my muscles are apparently too weak, and I could have unforeseen complications or some such codswallop. And I would just love to give you a hug.’ She beams at me. ‘Eddie has told me so much about you that I feel I owe you a thank you. And as for Larry . . .’ She gives an exaggerated wink and then a loud laugh that turns into a cough. ‘Oh, God Almighty,’ she says when she recovers from a coughing fit. ‘My body seems to be catching up on all the things it hasn’t done. You should hear me farting.’ She starts to laugh again.
‘You look fabulous,’ I say, quite overwhelmed.
Eddie is just standing looking at her like she’s the cleverest child in the class. Which I suppose she is because she woke up, which is more than some people have managed despite a generous head start.
‘Do you know,’ she says, ‘I’ve lost twenty kilograms. Twenty! With no effort at all. I’m thinner than I’ve been since my twenties.’ She starts laughing again. ‘Not eating will do that to a person. I’m sure I’m going to have the most wonderful time putting it all back on!’
I smile. ‘Eddie told me what a cheerful, positive person you are – but I thought he was idealising you. It’s very easy to do in our situation. But I see he was actually spot on.’
‘Do you idealise Mike?’ she asks, leaning slightly forward and wincing at some discomfort. This should feel like an intrusive question from someone I have just met properly, but it doesn’t.
‘I must,’ I say. ‘I remember the time before Mike’s accident as idyllic. And part of me knows that can’t be true. But it’s been a long time and it’s all I really have.’
‘You have Julia.’
The woman has just come out of a coma, and she’s made time to study up on my family. I am awed, and I say as much.
‘No,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘You visited me that time. You told me about everyone. You were so funny about Ed cooking.’ She smiles.
I gape at her. ‘You heard everything?’
‘Well, of course I did.’
‘Did you hear everything everyone said?’ I’m thinking about Mike. I’m thinking about twenty-six years of talking to him. I’m feeling so vindicated, like I want to run down the passage and hug him because he has been hearing me. I always knew it, but it’s different hearing it for sure.
‘I don’t think I heard everything,’ Miriam is saying. ‘I remember bits.’ She pushes her glasses up her nose. ‘And I think I heard more and more recently. I think that time you talked about the cooking was the first time I was actively aware that I could hear but not speak or move. I wasn’t very bothered, but I was aware. I tried hard to laugh, and then I kind of slipped back to sleep.’ Miriam smiles widely. ‘Oh well,’ she says, and then lies down and falls asleep. Just like that – no pause in-between, no warning.
Eddie takes my arm, where I’m standing frozen, looking at Miriam, who is now snoring gently.
‘The doctor says that’s normal,’ he says, steering me out the room. ‘Well, so far as any of this is normal. Apparently waking up after eighteen months is almost unheard of, and waking up completely compos mentis is even more unusual. They’re now saying that she might not have had a stroke like we thought, but actually entered into some sort of psychological fugue state, because people don’t actually wake up from comas. But then they don’t know why she couldn’t breathe alone. They’re awfully interested in her and keep doing tests.’ Eddie sounds almost proud of Miriam, like a certain sort of mother I remember from school days – pretending to lament their bad fortune but actually bragging about their unusual child.
‘Of course,’ says Eddie, sounding a bit more like the man I know, ‘they say she might still die.’
‘What?’
‘The chances of her waking up were almost nil. The chances of her waking up okay are even less. You read these stories on the internet, but the doctors say they’re never entirely true – like they leave out that the person was completely incapable of normal functioning after they woke up. But Miriam is completely okay. That shouldn’t be possible. So they don’t know what’s going on. The best-case scenario is that it was this fugue thing, but then we have to wonder why.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something like that only happens if there’s some huge emotional trauma. Something bad must’ve happened to make her shut down.’
‘But she’s awake for now. And quite jolly,’ I say. I’m not really trying to cheer him up. I’m just saying it like it is.
‘And I am so lucky,’ says Eddie. ‘I always thought she might wake up. But now that she’s awake, it’s like I can finally hear what the doctors were saying all along – that people in comas don’t usually recover. That, mostly, whatever trauma put them there is permanent. They always said it, but I never heard it. The longer she was out, the worse her chances were. And hers was pretty long. Even the best stories on the net are about months, not years.’
I think Eddie’s forgotten who he’s talking to. But it’s not like I haven’t been told – I too know the stati
stics. Mike’s been in a coma for so long, and information has shifted around over the years. But it’s always been a grim prognosis. And every time Mike gets a new doctor – seven at the last count – they sit me down and explain it all over again. And I nod and I smile and I go back to Mike and tell him that his doctors are fools because obviously he is not brain dead like they say, and obviously he might wake up. Jack is dead, but Mike isn’t.
But standing outside Miriam’s room – having witnessed the miracle that should prove to me that all my hope has been based on fact; that people do make inexplicable and complete recoveries – somehow, for the first time, I’m understanding the exact reverse. Maybe it is hearing it from the voice of the one person who had hoped, like me, who had dreamt, like me, who was determined to keep the faith, like me. Maybe hearing it from Eddie makes me take in the words like I never have before. But suddenly I think of Mike – unresponsive, unmoving – and I know. People in comas almost never wake up. And when they do, it’s not pretty.
Mike is not going to wake up. There’s nobody in there. I’ve spent twenty-six years talking to a living corpse.
I don’t know what to do. My whole life seems meaningless in the face of this truth.
I don’t know how I say goodbye to Eddie, but I’m alone and I’m walking as fast as I can towards the exit. For the first time, I can’t be bothered to say goodbye to Mike as I leave. What would the point be?
What is the point?
I can feel a sob building up in my chest, like an animal waiting to be released. I don’t want to release it. I don’t know what to do.
And then my phone rings.
Claire
When I pick up Mackenzie from school, I’m still in a good mood. Julia’s managed to misdial me again, and I hear her yelling ‘No’ in the background, which makes me laugh. Does she realise that I can hear her? It’s been one of those days when nothing’s going to get me down – the sort of day that seems to be becoming more and more the norm.
The Aftermath Page 22