Other Facts of Life

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘… and I want to thank my staff for their hard work and my family for their understanding and support.’

  Di relaxed and smiled and applauded with the others.

  Ron slipped his hand into his pocket and brought out her sewing scissors.

  ‘I hereby declare Guthrie Wholesale Meats open for business.’

  They all applauded again and he turned and cut the ribbon.

  The cold-room doors slid open.

  Inside hung a row of beef carcasses with red ribbons tied to their back legs. But it wasn’t at these that the assembled onlookers gasped with shock and amazement.

  It was at the small bald boy hanging from a hook by the collar of his jacket holding a blow-up of a photo of a campfire and looking steadily at Ron.

  Ron saw the stunned expressions on the faces in front of him and turned back to the carcasses.

  He saw Ben.

  Di watched in horror.

  Ben opened his mouth to deliver his carefully rehearsed plea but instead watched helplessly as Ron gasped for breath, clutched at his chest and collapsed.

  The thought flashed through Ben’s mind that this was more acting but he saw his mother scream and the guests yell for somebody to get an ambulance and he saw his father’s face twisted in agony and he knew it was really happening.

  ‘Dad!’ he yelled. ‘Dad!’

  He tried desperately to get down to where Ron lay gasping and groping at his shirt front but the meat hook had pierced his collar as deeply as the pains that were stabbing into Ron’s heart.

  Then Ron stopped gasping and lay still.

  ‘Dad!’ screamed Ben, ‘Dad!’

  18

  Talking Turkey

  Ron didn’t die.

  Wal gave him the kiss of life and thumped his chest which restarted his heart. It was a supreme act of friendship from a man who at no stage in his life had even remotely considered kissing another bloke.

  Then the ambulance arrived, by which time Ben had been lifted sobbing from his hook and held tightly, together with the wailing Claire, to Di’s pounding ribcage.

  They bundled Ron into the back of the ambulance with an oxygen mask over his face and plugged him into a shelf of monitoring equipment. Then they sped through the streets, siren screaming, Di, Claire and Ben huddled in the back clinging to each other and Ron’s hands.

  Nothing Ben had ever seen on a television screen had filled him with as much dread and terror as that little wavy green line flickering across the tiny screen of the heart monitor.

  At the hospital there was an extra moment of panic when a group of orderlies slid Ron, still connected to the monitor, out of the ambulance onto a trolley and ran away with him.

  But Di and Claire and Ben gave chase down brightly lit corridors to where they stood now, in an intensive care ward, looking at Ron lying in an oxygen tent surrounded by banks of beeping, flashing equipment.

  Ron lay there, still and grey, his only signs of life electronic ones.

  One of the doctors came over to them.

  ‘There’s a very good chance that if his condition continues to stabilise and we don’t experience any adverse trends towards deterioration he’ll be okay,’ she said. She gave a smile and squeezed Di’s arm.

  But they could see from a glance exchanged between the other two doctors that it had been a close thing.

  And still was.

  Ben looked at his father and knew that if it was in his power to sacrifice the lives of a thousand people in another part of the world so that Ron would open his eyes and climb out of the plastic tent and hug them all and drive them home he’d do it.

  Ten thousand.

  A million.

  It was his fault.

  He looked up at his mother and gripped her hand tighter.

  ‘I just wanted Dad to start caring again,’ he said. ‘You can’t just stop caring.’ He let go of her hand. ‘Can you?’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Di softly, stroking his bald head.

  She struggled not to show the fear she was feeling.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s learnt his lesson,’ she said, looking at Ron.

  ‘… no … no … Wal, listen, you can get a better price than that …’

  Ron heaved himself up onto one elbow with difficulty, cursing nurses who tucked the sheets in too tight and the electrodes still taped to his chest which almost ripped the skin off him if he moved more than six inches.

  His face was still pale and tired, nowhere near as pink as the stuff that had him gripping the receiver with frustration.

  ‘Lamb’s on the way down, Wal. Hold out … Call their bluff …’

  He heard voices outside the door, hung up and stuffed the phone under the bedclothes. His pulse was up, he could hear it beeping away on the 747 flight deck next to the bed.

  That was one way to get out of this place and back to running the business he thought as he tried to breathe slowly and steadily.

  Fly yourself out.

  The door opened and Di and Ben came in.

  ‘Ben!’ cried Ron delightedly. ‘You finally made it.’

  It took Ron several seconds to realise what was different.

  Ben’s hair.

  A blond fuzz covered his entire scalp.

  Stack me, thought Ron, with the jeans and T-shirt and, well it’s virtually a crew cut, he looks like a normal kid.

  Ben walked over to the bed and stood looking at Ron.

  It had flashed through his mind in the lift coming up that his fantasy a week ago in intensive care had come true. A million people had died in other parts of the world.

  But Dad’s recovery hadn’t depended on it so he didn’t care. All he cared about at the moment was …

  ‘Dad,’ he said softly, ‘I’m sorry I gave you a heart attack.’

  Ron felt something in his rib cage cavity that had nothing to do with heart attacks or electrodes ripping out his chest hairs.

  He leant forward and put his arms round his son.

  ‘Ben, don’t be silly,’ he said, shocked.

  Di bent over and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘I’ve tried to explain to him,’ she said with an edge to her voice, ‘that you had a heart attack because you abused your body for years and years with far too much work and not enough exercise and relaxation. Isn’t that right?’

  Ron let go of Ben and looked up at him. He wanted desperately to put Ben out of his misery but a bloke couldn’t in all honesty agree to something that exaggerated.

  ‘Ah …’ he said, ‘… well …’ He wriggled awkwardly.

  A doctor breezed into the room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a briskness that may not have been meant as a joke, ‘the patient mustn’t have any difficult questions. Just easy stuff like who’s going to win the test.’

  He turned a knob on one of the pieces of monitoring equipment and the room filled with the ‘beep beep’ of a steady heartbeat.

  ‘Still,’ said the doctor turning the volume down a bit, ‘for a week after stalling the motor you’re sounding pretty good.’

  Di looked at Ron and her eyes glowed.

  The doctor looked at Ron and his eyes narrowed.

  He stepped over to the bed and pulled the phone from under the covers.

  ‘And if you take it easy,’ he said, giving Ron a long hard look, ‘you might just stay that way. Otherwise we’ll all be up to our armpits in blood and gristle.’

  ‘You can’t scare me,’ said Ron, ‘I’m a butcher.’

  The doctor stopped at the door.

  ‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘don’t eat so much meat.’

  He swept out.

  ‘He can’t scare you,’ said Di, ‘because you’re a stubborn fool.’

  Ron blew her a kiss. Then he beckoned Ben to come back to the bedside. Ben went over.

  ‘Mate,’ said Ron, staring at the sheet as if he’d never seen a phone come out of a bed before, ‘when I was coming round after the … after the scare, there was one thing tha
t kept nagging at the back of my mind.’

  An alarm bell went off in a ward corridors away.

  Ron looked at the ceiling and continued.

  ‘Something I chickened out of. Ben … if there’s anything you want to ask about …’ he looked Ben in the eyes, ‘… anything in the world, fire away.’

  Another alarm bell went off. This time it was inside Di.

  No, thought Di, not the Starving Millions. Please, not now.

  Ben looked at his father steadily for a long time. Two desires took shape inside him. I want to keep Dad safe and I want to make him happy. Ben knew that if the first was to happen, the second wouldn’t always be possible. So he took the opportunity to make Ron happy now.

  ‘Dad, where do babies come from? I mean, is it actually the ovary or the endometrium?’

  Di mentally hugged Ben.

  Ron looked around in alarm. Babies? Endometrium? What about the Starving Millions?

  ‘Um …’ floundered Ron, ‘… ah … right …’

  Suddenly they realised the heart monitor was beeping at an almost continuous rate.

  Ben turned to Di, horrified.

  He hadn’t meant … He’d been trying to …

  The door burst open and a nurse rushed in, flung back Ron’s sheet, tore down his pyjama pants and jabbed a syringe into his buttock.

  Ron slumped back onto the pillow and gradually the beeping slowed back down to a steady rate.

  The doctor swept in, checked the reading on the monitor and turned to Di and Ben.

  ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ he demanded.

  19

  Frozen Beef?

  Di hovered outside the bathroom door wrestling with her conscience.

  To listen or not to listen?

  Ben had been in there for almost an hour and she was pretty sure he wasn’t regrouting the shower cubicle.

  Two weeks ago she’d have known what he was doing. Shaving his head and using up another tube of her instant tan lotion. But now she wasn’t so sure.

  Since the heart attack there had been developments.

  The first had been on a wet Saturday afternoon when Ben and Jason were in Ben’s room watching a tape and she had taken them in some chips and drinks.

  She hadn’t even looked at the screen, assuming it would be just another distressing scene of starvation or nuclear suffering. So she’d seen Jason clumsily trying to slide the cassette box out of sight under the bed. And she’d seen the title.

  ‘The Last American Virgin’.

  Then, a couple of days later, Jean had rung up excitedly to say that she’d just seen Ben walking from the bus stop with young Tracy Anderson from Stringybark Crescent.

  Okay, they could just have been talking about homework or instant tan lotion or anything.

  Except for the final development.

  The extra can of deodorant in the bathroom cabinet.

  She had to know what he was doing in there.

  What he was doing was standing in front of the bathroom mirror combing the locks of blond hair that curled over his ears and almost fell into his eyes.

  It wasn’t easy trying to look normal again.

  He decided to try the parting on the other side and set to with the comb, tearing it through the stubborn locks with a grimace.

  Hair was a real pain after being bald for so long. He didn’t know why people bothered. Shampoo, dandruff, split ends. He’d got used to being bald. Still, some people found it harder to cope with. Girls and people.

  He stopped combing and looked at the result. He looked like a Wookie. No, nature was going to have to go it alone.

  He took off the hair and dropped it in the sink, hoping that Jason would be able to sneak it back into his mother’s wig drawer without Jean noticing they’d trimmed it.

  Then he set to with the comb again, trying to get a part in the stubble that covered his scalp.

  Outside the bathroom Di’s conscience was winning.

  She looked at the bathroom door. So easy just to go over and put her ear to it. But she couldn’t.

  She took one step closer to see if she could hear anything without actually listening at the door. Nothing. Silence.

  Then the phone rang and she nearly wet herself.

  She snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  Probably Jean wanting to yak.

  She listened to the few words spoken at the other end and her face filled with delight and amazement. She struggled to keep these emotions out of her voice.

  ‘Er … just a moment, please.’

  She pounded on the bathroom door. Ben stuck his head out looking startled.

  Di looked so casual that if she’d been any more relaxed she’d have nodded off.

  ‘Phone for you,’ she murmured. ‘Someone called Tracy.’

  Ben took the phone and went into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  Di eagerly pressed her ear to the woodwork.

  Two weeks later Ron was able to ruffle Ben’s hair for the first time since the fateful barbie.

  Ron was sitting up in bed and looking well. There were still bags under his eyes but much smaller than before.

  Or as Wal had put it when Ben and Claire bumped into him as he was leaving the ward, ‘wallets instead of potato sacks’. They’d left him gathering invoices off the corridor tiles.

  ‘Wish I could grow mine back that easy,’ said Ron, when he’d given Ben’s hair a ruffle. ‘Bet the girls go for it, eh mate?’

  Ben looked at the floor and went red.

  Some parents just didn’t deserve to be kept safe.

  ‘They’re just kids from school,’ he mumbled.

  Claire, whose romantic confidence had increased by bucketfuls since boycotting pizza following the heart attack and actually talking to the boys, stepped in to save Ben.

  ‘We’re really looking forward to having you home,’ she said to Ron. ‘Mum’s been getting ready for tomorrow all week. She’s got you a great rocker/recliner for the patio.’

  Ron flung back his head and roared with laughter.

  Ben realised he hadn’t seen Dad laugh like that since … he couldn’t remember. It was going to be great having him at home all day and as he got stronger they could talk and …

  ‘The patio?’ laughed Ron. ‘Tell her if she wants me to recline she’ll have to put it in the office.’

  Ben felt his heart sink.

  20

  The Topside

  It was just as well trail bikes don’t get offended easily.

  The Welcoming Committee had been lined up on the driveway for hours. The Fairlane, the Cutlet Queen on its trailer, the surf skis and the trail bikes, all gleaming patiently in the sunshine.

  Di’s Mazda had pulled up and Ron had leapt out and rewarded them with a fond gaze that lasted all of one and a half seconds.

  He breathed in a big lungful of air and turned to Di.

  ‘Feels good,’ he said.

  The trail bikes needn’t have worried. There were bricks in his dream home that Ron didn’t even look at.

  ‘Sure does,’ smiled Di, dropping his hospital bags and giving him a big hug. ‘Both my men completely recovered.’

  She called up to the house.

  ‘Ben! Ben!’

  She turned to Ron, bubbling with delight at having him home.

  ‘He’s completely back to normal,’ she gushed. ‘It’s as if none of that business ever happened.’ She gave Ron another hug and dropped her voice in joyful conspiracy.

  ‘I told you about the phone calls from his little girlfriend.’ She glanced towards the house to make sure Ben hadn’t appeared.

  ‘Well look, look at this, look what I found in his room this morning.’

  As she spoke she scampered into the garage and emerged brandishing a bundle of florist’s tissue papers wrapped round a few flower stems and stray petals.

  ‘Our son’s saying it with flowers,’ she beamed.

  ‘Great,’ said Ron. ‘I’ll have a chat w
ith him as soon as I get back.’

  Di’s face fell.

  ‘Get back from where?’

  ‘The office,’ said Ron. He climbed into the Fairlane.

  For a second Di thought her ears had taken leave of their senses. Then she realised it was Ron who’d taken leave of his.

  ‘The doctor said absolutely no work for at least three months,’ she said furiously. ‘And even then, quote “he must on no account resume his previous workload”.’

  Ron revved the Fairlane.

  ‘Easy for him to say,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a business to run.’

  He blew Di a kiss and drove off.

  Di ran down to the Mazda and flung herself behind the wheel.

  Ron strode across the bulkstore, nodding to startled employees he hadn’t even met.

  He looked around for the signs of sloppiness that sprang up like fungus when a boss was away. Floor scrubbed, all the cold-room doors shut, trucks washed, everyone wearing hair covering. Looked pretty good. But then they knew he was coming today.

  Di strode alongside him, talking in a low, urgent voice.

  ‘Ron, medical experts have said if you push yourself now you’ll die.’

  ‘Negative thinking,’ said Ron.

  Wal fell into step next to them.

  ‘Er … Ron …’ he said.

  Four weeks as a stand-in manager hadn’t done anything to stretch his collar and he fingered it nervously as he tried to get Ron’s attention.

  ‘For God’s sake be sensible,’ pleaded Di. ‘Doesn’t almost being killed by a heart attack mean anything?’

  ‘Almost killed?’ Ron was getting annoyed. ‘It was a flutter.’

  ‘Er … Ron …’ said Wal. He scrunched the invoice he was holding into a tiny, moist ball.

  Ron stopped outside his office door.

  ‘Look, love,’ he said to Di, ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to build this company into the biggest meat wholesaler in the state. Those, my love, are the facts of life.’

  Di looked at him and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Isn’t there anything that’ll make you see sense?’ she begged.

  Ron turned away, flung open his office door and stormed in.