by A. J. Betts
‘Have you heard the story about the family who moved from Melbourne to Darwin, and then six years later the cat showed up, like nothing had happened?’
I shake my head. In this light, her skin is pale and uneven. Blotched in the inner arms. Puckered at the neck. Like Zac’s. Like mine.
‘Even after six years, I still think there’s a cat heading to my door.’
The codeine trickles into my bloodstream, bringing the promise of relief.
‘I still get headaches. Insomnia. I still worry. But I don’t … hurt like that anymore. I don’t hurt … like you.’
My words come out as a confession. ‘I hurt all the time.’
‘There are some things you can’t change,’ Trish says, inspecting her arms. ‘And there are some things you can.’
The drugs flood me, swamping my leg and its pain. But my chest, fuck, it still burns.
‘It’s not fair, hon.’ Trish speaks in Zac’s voice. In mine. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not …’
‘No, hon, it’s not fair.’
‘It’s not …’
‘It’s not fair …’
Our voices overlap and I let the tears fall as I’m rocked like a baby in the ugly light.
In the morning I clip on the leg, pull on jeans, brush out the wig. I steal some more painkillers only to find two fresh boxes already in my backpack.
Trish brings lattes and pikelets to the balcony, but I can’t meet the eye of this woman, made womanly again with a wool-knit top. At the table, Trish and Zac pass each other plates and maple syrup. They talk about school, the baby alpaca and the new Italian coffee grinder, as if these things matter. I watch them, two relatives with unlucky genes, discussing coffee beans.
How the hell do they do it? He’s got someone else’s marrow and she has a butchered chest. How do they coast through each day with this illusion of control? Ever since my surgery, all I’ve done is swing from pity to rage. Pity to rage. How can I not? Everywhere I look I’m reminded of what’s missing.
My instinct is to howl at the joggers below. I imagine breaking their legs and clawing out their hair. Why should they be so lucky? So obliviously lucky? And those cyclists, riding in symmetry—I want to push them off their bikes. I want to punch anyone who dares to be happy.
I watch Trish playing with her necklace, and I wonder where she hides all her anger. I study her face and her hands, but I can’t find it. Has she forgotten what it’s like? Or has she become an expert at pretending?
She slides a pikelet onto my plate. ‘Go on. It’s the one thing I can actually cook.’
What if all this—the crocheted tablecloth, the breakfast rituals and small talk—is just pretend? Is Zac in on it too, faking normal? If so, the world should stand up and clap and give them both Academy Awards.
I try to take their lead. I swallow the coffee. It’s too strong, but I don’t complain. I add more milk. I hold my tongue. I count to ten. To twenty. I mirror the way they spread butter and pour maple syrup. I slice another triangle of pikelet. I lean forward on my elbows and, like them, I let the sun find my face. I fake a smile and I think they buy it.
Before we leave, I put on lip gloss and a brave face. I draw my crutches close, arming myself. Today I need to pretend, because today isn’t about me. It’s about Zac and his memory of Cam. I’m just along for the ride.
29
ZAC
Fifty metres out, men and women sit on boards with their legs dangling. They’re easy bait, but sharks must know better than to hunt this coast today.
Cam’s service is taking place out there, but Mia and I are up in the dunes. She keeps getting bogged in the sand.
She chucks the crutches. ‘Useless.’
‘You need four-wheel-drive ones.’
She flops onto the sand and I join her.
‘No, Zac. Get down there before it’s over.’
‘Says who?’
‘We’ve come all this way.’
To be honest, I don’t really want to be in that crowd in the sea. They’d be friends of Cam’s from way back, long before his tumour.
He was a mate, I can imagine them saying. A character. A legend. I’d feel like a fraud.
‘Go on. He’d like it.’
‘Who?’
‘Cam.’
‘Cam? He’ll be halfway to Rotto by now.’
Mia’s eyes bulge. ‘You can’t say that.’
‘He can’t hear us.’
‘Shh. He can so.’
‘Cam!’ I shout, startling a guy walking past. ‘Safe travels, mate. Send me a postcard from Indonesia.’
Mia punches me.
‘Hey, Cam, do you remember this chick from Room Two? Yeah, the drama queen who hits like a girl.’
Mia pulls a towel over her head like a teepee.
I nudge her. ‘Cam says hello.’ But I can’t see her expression.
The thing is, I’ve thrown enough corpses over fences to know that nothing stays behind once you’re dead. There are no trumpets or rising up of spirits. Sheep don’t go to heaven and goats don’t go to hell. It’s just flesh turned cold, soon to be another step in a food chain where nothing is wasted. There’s nothing mysterious about death or what comes after. There’s just nothing. Whatever’s left of Cam is drifting northwest in the Leeuwin Current, being nibbled at and shat out by fish.
‘After my grandma died, she came to visit me.’ Mia’s voice comes from inside her towel. ‘I woke up in the night and she was there.’
‘Your grandma?’
‘Her shape. But I knew it was her. It felt like she’d come to check on me. I said, “Grandma?” And then she walked backwards, until she … vaporised. I don’t know what happens, Zac, but there’s more than this. People stay around for a while. Sometimes there’s too much energy in a room. Cam’s still here—’
‘Then go play pool with him.’
Mia stomps her right foot. ‘Cam is here and he reckons you’re being a fuckwit.’
I laugh. She’s right about one thing, at least. I lean back onto my fists, looking out to the sea. I should be grateful for this: a beach, the use of the car, and Mia, who’s just trying to be kind.
‘I miss him,’ I admit to the ocean. ‘I wish I’d gone for that surf.’
Two girls in bikinis make a detour around us, whispering. Mia’s head tracks them, then she lies on her back, the towel still in place.
‘Mia?’
‘Don’t use my name.’
‘You know them?’
‘They know me. They’re from school.’
The girls stop further down the beach and sit down. Mia peers at them through a gap in her towel. ‘Cellulite.’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Do you think they’re cute?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘Do you like them?’
‘No.’
The towel falls away. Below the blonde fringe, Mia’s brown eyes stare up at me.
‘Why do you like me?’
With the palm of my hand, I smooth crescents into the sand.
Why do I like Mia?
I like that she’s tough on me, knowing I can handle it. She doesn’t tiptoe around the bad stuff or hide what’s going on in her head. If she feels something, she says so. She shows it. She says and does all the things others hold back. She’s not predictable or safe. She doesn’t talk bullshit, the way most other girls do. She’s alive, despite everything, kicking and screaming and swearing. Fighting, still.
‘Zac?’
‘Because you don’t have cellulite,’ I say.
She blinks. ‘What about my shit-hot sense of humour?’
Yeah, there’s that too, those razor-edged comments that come from nowhere like nunchuks. She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for.
She squints at me for a while. ‘I like you, Zac, because you treat me like I’m up here.’ Her hand makes a circular motion around her face, like she’s a model on The Price Is Right. ‘And not down there.’
‘And the other reason I like you is that you’re good to your friends. So shut the hell up, stand the fuck up, walk down that beach, and say goodbye to Cam from both of us.’
I do as she says, even though the service is falling apart now. People are pointing their boards to the shore, some lying, some standing, until they’re scooped up in the shallow palms of waves, gliding to the sand where they step off and shake out with a laugh.
Nina’s on the shore. She meets me halfway, shoes in hand.
‘You made it, Zac.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s good you came. You look great.’ Mascara’s made smudges under her eyes.
‘Helga delivered after all.’
‘Patrick says you got a Make-A-Wish. What are you asking for?’
‘I’m still hoping Emma Watson’s free …’
‘Fingers crossed. You’ve done well, Zac. Cam would be proud.’
It’s ‘proud’ that does it. For some reason, the word plugs my throat. I try to swallow but I can’t. My eyes sting.
‘He always liked you, Zac.’
C for Cam didn’t deserve to die and I don’t know if he’s watching or not as I let the tears come and let Nina hug me. I imagine him dying quick and hard, still gripping the steering wheel, his chest ripping apart. Did he realise those were his final, liberating breaths? Did he regret anything in those seconds, or did he smile and welcome it and go fearlessly to wherever he is now?
God, of course I want Mia to be right. I want to believe that Cam goes on, that he’s here in this hug, or better yet, out riding the next wave. Anywhere but nowhere.
Nina holds me tight. In the distance, I see Mia. Standing with her crutches, she’s looking at the dunes with fear.
I wait out the front of the shops holding two kebabs, a Coke and an iced coffee. Mia’s been ages in the public toilet block. I hope she hasn’t done a runner.
But she finally emerges with Nina.
Once she’s made it up the path, I ask her if she wants to see a movie. I’m not ready to drive her home, or a bus station, or anywhere else that’s final. She says she can’t.
When I offer her the kebab and iced coffee, she shakes her head and looks at the concrete. She’s already somewhere else.
‘I’m tired, Zac.’
‘Actually, there’s this place I know …’
But she turns and retraces the path to where Nina is waiting. Her crutches remind me of the first tap, tap, tapping of her knuckles on the hospital wall.
A lonely Morse code.
And there’s not a thing I can say in reply.
PART THREE
Mia
30
Mia
Where ru Mia?
With Nina
Where ru going? I’ll come.
Go home Zac.
In Emergency, a doctor takes my temperature and looks at my leg. He writes in a folder then phones for a wheelchair. Nina pushes me along the ground floor to an elevator, where there’s a map of the hospital, with eight levels and colour-coded areas. Oncology is lime green, but we don’t go there. She wheels me inside and presses the button for level three. We go to the blue ward, for infections and burst appendices.
‘You’re not a cancer patient anymore,’ Nina reminds me.
My cancer’s gone. The ultrasounds and blood tests prove it, though I have to check them over to be sure.
They hook me to a drip then phone my mum—I’m only seventeen, after all. She’s here in twenty minutes and stays, sleeping in the reclining chair at night. She doesn’t ask where I’ve been, if I’ll run away again, or if I’ll follow the doctors’ orders. She buys us magazines. Sometimes she stands by the window, looking out over the street.
‘You can go have a smoke,’ I tell her. But she says she’s trying to give up.
Zac calls but I don’t feel like answering. I don’t want him to hear how sad I am. After all my talk of adventure, I’m back in hospital, like a fool.
A prosthetist fits me for a permanent socket and gives me another HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR NEW PROSTHETIC booklet. I’d thrown the first one away. She tells me the new leg, when it’s made, will be better than the temp. I’m supposed to wear it for only an hour each day for the first week, building up week by week, to break it in.
She inspects the wound. ‘You should’ve had this looked at. The temp was a bad fit.’
Understatement of the year.
A physio teaches me to bandage myself. He shows me how to roll on the silicon lining. He’s young and cute, and careful when he touches me.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘It’s better than it was.’
After a week, I’m prescribed antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and antidepressants. Mum pays the pharmacist and drives us home.
Mum’s knowledge of the last few months is sketchy. She knows that I was given weekend leave and spent one night at home, then took off with a fistful of drugs, money and a change of clothes. I stayed with girlfriends, who made tea and toast, then came home plastered after clubbing to tell me their dirty, guilty secrets. Hung-over, they phoned my mum to say I was safe. She would’ve guessed I went to Rhys’s house next. I slept on his couch because my leg hurt too much to share his bed. Rhys was the only one who knew the truth, but he withdrew. Became distant. He didn’t have the guts to deal with this. He wasn’t the man I thought he was.
When I enter my bedroom, it looks like someone else’s. Silver high heels are on the table where they’ve been for thirteen weeks. My formal dress glitters from a curtain rod, its beads glinting, waiting for the old Mia to step in and zip it up, to pose in front of the mirror, judging the best angles. Had I really loved this dress? It seems too loud now. It’s still got the price tag hanging from it.
Mum cooks honey chicken drumsticks. My childhood favourite. We eat in front of the TV, watching whatever’s on.
It’s hard to be home, but running takes effort. I don’t have the energy. I can’t even think about tomorrow. All I want to do is sleep.
My bed doesn’t feel right, though. The last time I slept here I had two feet at the end of me. I’m like Goldilocks in the three bears’ house. Everything is too big, too small, too hard, too soft.
I turn off the lamp. The room switches to black, but soon, a soft light glows by my bed. I watch as the star takes shape on my wall. I must have stuck it here, that night I left hospital.
Zac. He’s one thing, at least, I can count on.
I get good at passing time.
Eleven hours are for sleeping (including an afternoon nap), three for watching TV, two for eating (one spent getting up and checking the fridge and closing it again), two hours online, one for reading magazines, and two for the DVD Mum brings home each day.
And the other three hours? I’m not sure. Daydreaming, maybe. Imagining the imprint my body makes on carpet.
The sound of the postie is the only thing to lure me out of the house. Each afternoon, I put on the wig, grab my crutches, and make my way to the mailbox, which is usually empty. I sometimes see people sitting at the bus stop nearby. I notice how easily they walk up the bus’s four steps. You never think of your legs when there are two of them. I don’t hate these people anymore. I don’t want to break their legs. These days, it’s not rage I feel, or pity. There’s just … nothing.
Weeks pass, I think. I don’t count them.
I sit on my floor with the wardrobe doors open. Shelves are jammed with clothes and shoes and heaps of crap I’d forgotten: jigsaw puzzles, fancy-dress costumes, letters from old boyfriends, collector cards, crumbly make-up and other strange gifts from friends. I throw most of the stuff in the wheelie bin. I tidy the wardrobe and take stock of what’s left. I cry. Then I pull it all out of the bin.
One day, I notice a child’s wading pool in the neighbours’ pile of verge rubbish. It’s still there at night so I ask Mum if she’ll drag it back for me. I clean it the next morning in our courtyard, then fill it with water. It’s no
t as long or deep as Bec’s bathtub, but I can lie in it, limbs draped over the edges, watching the clouds drift across the sky. Sometimes I read a book. Other times I doze. There’s nothing I have to do.
Some days I sit on Mum’s bed, seeing myself in her mirror. I try on her earrings and spray her perfume. I have enough hair for her clips to hold onto. There are more clothes in her wardrobe than in mine. The left side is for her work clothes. The right, going out. The black dresses aren’t as black as they used to be. There are peg marks on her tops. Why doesn’t she chuck the old clothes away?
I pull two photo albums from a shelf and lie on her bed with them. I’m intrigued by younger versions of myself: a fat baby in disposable nappies, a pink ribbon in my hair. Occasionally there are glimpses of Mum. She was only sixteen, younger than I am. Her eyes shy from the camera. When she’s holding me, her expression seems to be asking, Where did you come from?
There are ancient photos of holidays, mostly with grandma and grandpa and their siblings. I am seven or eight beside a little boat they called a tinny. I remember a Queensland uncle showing me how to snatch the empty milk carton from the river then pull at the rope, hand-after-hand, until a crab pot came dripping from the water. Often it only held the snarled bones wired inside as bait. But sometimes it had a vicious crab, brown and murky as the mangroves. The great-uncle—who’s long dead now—would whoop like crazy. He showed me how to grab the flailing back legs and squeeze them together, to lift the angry crab into the air and drop it in the lidded bucket. I would hear it clack and dance for hours.
Sometimes, as we pulled a crab from the pot, a leg or claw would get left behind, gripping at netting. We’d toss the pot back in, tempting other animals with displaced body parts.
Then we’d feast at night. We’d smash open fat claws and suck sweet juice from skinny legs. Even without the absent limbs, there was always enough to go around. Perhaps that’s why crabs have so many legs (eight) and claws (two). Some are bound to be torn away.