by PJ Vye
Ipo slept a lot. Almost all day and all night. She carried the bed into her room at night and he slept on the bed beside her, his gentle snores more a comfort than an annoyance. The company at night somehow soothed her, more than she’d expected. During the day she’d carry the bed out into the living room, and he’d watch her through naps and sleepy eyes as she spent her day, moving from mindless task to the next. Television for a couple of hours, a game of Solitaire for another hour, cook and eat toast.
The first walk outside had been harrowing. Ipo refused to walk down the stairs, his belly too low on his short legs to reach the next step without his belly scraping, and she’d pushed him down, one step at a time. She’d stumbled and almost fell on the last step because she couldn’t see over the dog where the stairs ended. They’d both yelped in pain as their bum hit the ground, their feet upended beneath them.
They’d walked the length of the street, past the concrete gardens, the weed ridden yards and large industrial sheds, turned and went back again. She waited with him at the bottom of the stairs, hoping he’d take the hint and do his business, but he kept looking up at her with bored eyes, wondering when he’d be lifted back to his bed.
How do you make a dog go to the toilet? She waited another ten minutes, resting on the bottom step, the dog sitting also. She began to compose a song.
Why won’t you poop,
I bought the scoop,
oh why do you just sit and droop,
oh why oh why won’t you poop.
When the dog let out a long sigh, she said, “Am I boring you?” and pounded loudly up the stairs, leaving Ipo to make his own way up. He had to hop with both front legs simultaneously and he missed a few, but eventually made it to the top alone. “Well, that’s something.”
At the landing, as she searched through her keys to unlock the door, she turned to see his leg cocked up to the corner of the metal stairs, the pee escaping onto the floor, and tumbling over the side and onto the ground below. Sunny leaned over to see where it landed. Mat’s front door mat. Perfect.
“Fine. You want to use my landing as your toilet? Go ahead. I guess it’s technically still outside, and its good air flow. Good dog.”
In a few days they’d established a good pattern of walks, night and morning. Ipo even began to get excited when she put on her shoes. It didn’t take him long to realise it was the only time she wore shoes.
She loved mealtimes the best, watching him wolf down his cup of crunchies like there was no tomorrow. No savouring, no tasting, no appreciating the meal. Just eating to satiate the hunger. He’d sniff around a while longer, looking for something he might have missed, and when he was satisfied that that was all there was, he’d curl back up in his bed, rest his head on his feet and drift off to sleep again.
Sunny found him fascinating to watch. Mostly because, after quitting her job, it was something new to do. She spoke to her father, putting on a happy face and introducing Ipo to him. “Looking after him for a friend.”
“Who’s the friend?” Her dad knew Judd’s schedule as well as she did and knew he was on the rig at the moment. He tried to sound casual but Sunny could hear the concern in his voice.
“Not really a friend…a neighbour.”
“You’ve never mentioned him before.”
Easier to lie than explain Mataio to him. “New guy—just moved in downstairs.”
“What happened to the other guy—the rude one.”
Her dad had a superhuman memory. “He left. This guy is a doctor.”
“Well, that’s handy. He can write you a medical certificate anytime you want to get off work.”
Dad was always working an angle.
Sunny did her best to spin the conversation away from herself and listened as he talked about his trip. He’d hired a car in Madrid and was taking his time driving south, leaving the Alhambra till last. He loved everything about Spain and thought he’d come back again in a year or two. Sunny wondered how he’d feel about Spain when he looked back at it as the last time he’d spoken to her.
Sunny opened her Skype contact list and scrolled down.
Maybe she should call a friend and talk about her feelings.
It wasn’t a long list.
Erika—she’d be kind, ask about her life but only be half listening as her three kids kept distracting her attention.
Sibeon—she’d be honest. Tell her to get a new boyfriend. Sibeon had little patience for Sunny when she complained about the same things every time they spoke. And who could blame her? So did she. Sibeon wouldn’t put up with a boyfriend like Judd, not even for a minute. Last time she’d called, Sibeon didn’t answer.
Kristie—she’d probably answer, but she’d spend the whole time talking about how busy she was teaching teenagers and how she never had any free time and hang up without even asking about Sunny.
Karina—well they hadn’t spoken in years, and she was the one person Sunny would have liked to confide in the most. Maybe she should apologise, make things right with her. She had nothing left to lose. If Karina rejected her apology, at least she wouldn’t have to live with it for long.
Making friends didn’t come all that easily to Sunny and she hadn’t a single friend since moving to Australia. Except maybe the girl who worked at the liquor store up the road, but only in so much as she knew her name and her price range for bottles of white wine. Even her new agent wasn’t all that friendly. She’d stopped calling to notify her of auditions after the first few failed rounds. Now the notifications came via email and even they were sent by the girl on the desk. She hadn’t got a single job from the new agent. A few offers to join a quartet for events, and an offer to be in a new touring ensemble that never got off the ground. She checked her emails again and found nothing but spam.
She googled ‘painless ways to die’. Then, using an incognito window, she searched ‘ways to die and make it look like an accident.’
Suicide was just one of the solutions she’d found herself considering over the last few months. Back in June, when she’d received her last royalty cheque—before Judd had taken it—the urge to run away back to the UK was overwhelming. There was enough for a one-way ticket, she could hang out there until she worked out her next step, live off her dad a while until the next royalty cheque came. But Judd had demanded the money the day he returned from the rig, he knew her payment schedule better than she did, and she didn’t have the energy to stand up to him. She’d convinced herself Judd was right, he needed to take care of all the money. She’d saved nothing in the beginning, when her fortnightly pays were enormous.
When she met Judd, he taught her how to budget, and after a few disasters, it just became more practical to let him take care of it. When the work ran out, she still had some sizeable royalty cheques to support her—her agent had signed her a percentage of all merchandise from the Michel Meier tours. But things had slowed down over the last few months and when Judd wouldn’t let her have access to her savings, she’d taken a job as a masseuse.
She’d considered waiting tables, working a fast food restaurant, even a call centre but she needed a job where she didn’t have to be nice to people, make small talk. Nice wasn’t her default position. Funny, self-depreciating and princess diva were her defaults. The work as a masseuse suited her well because her clients tended to like silence as she rubbed their bodies.
Sunny stretched her neck and tucked her legs up under her on the couch, trying not to notice how hard it had become to cross them. She’d been mistaken for a man the other day at the supermarket. Her frame combined with the added weight, was an easy mistake. A woman pushed past her in the self-serve line and said, “Excuse me Mister. You’re in the wrong line.”
Sunny had turned and smiled and threw her voice as low as it would go. “Was this your line? You’re right. This one says ‘impatient, rude, long-sighted middle-aged woman’. I can’t use this line for another twenty years. But this line is perfect for you…you go right ahead.”
Was this what
depression felt like? Blasé? Distant? Mean?
She pushed the memory aside and browsed some online chat rooms. Fat and furious, Fat Chicks R Us and Overweight and Depressed. She certainly wasn’t in the mood for those extremes right now. Besides, she couldn’t remember which ones she’d been officially banned from for making inappropriate jokes. Some people were so sensitive. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so miserable.
She checked her emails again. Nothing.
Sunny slammed down the lid of the computer and stared at the dog. She felt restless. An unusual unease. She’d been happy in her misery before. Now the dog needed to be walked and fed and loved…and so did she.
“Come on boy, let’s go again.”
He jumped repeatedly until he found his legs and tried to lick her face as she put her shoes on, making the task difficult. Maybe they’d walk as far as the park today. On the way back she’d stop at the supermarket and get a frozen dinner, the Thai chicken curry she liked. She stuffed the last of her packet of chicken Twisties in her mouth and binned the package. She’d buy more of them too—her new favourite. She picked up her phone, checked it then returned it to the bench. No need to take it with her—no-one would be calling. She picked up her keys and wallet, attached Ipo to the lead and headed out the door.
Ipo padded down the outside staircase like a pro, his nails clipping the metal steps like chalk on a blackboard. At the bottom he sniffed around at Mat’s door and she heard movement inside. Mat was home scratching around in his laboratory again, doing who knows what. She considered knocking but decided not to and Ipo happily followed when Sunny pulled him towards the street, without a single whimper.
As soon as she turned down the end of the first building, she heard the screams.
A man’s screams. Another man yelling for help. An urgent, desperate cry.
She ran towards the echoing sound and into a large factory size shed. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the men on the ground, one lying bleeding, the other holding him down. Both looked panicked.
“Call a paramedic. Call now. I can’t let go of him.”
“I don’t have my phone. Hang on.” She ran back towards the house, ignoring the protests coming from behind. Running felt foreign, like being shaken awake by a grumpy schoolteacher on camp. She dropped Ipo’s lead at the base of the stairs and took them two at a time, fumbling with her keys and cursing at herself. She grabbed the phone and dialled as she ran back down and pounded on Mat’s roller door.
“Mat, there’s an emergency. Can you help?” Some cynical part of her brain hardly believed he was a doctor. Or if he was, it wasn’t medical.
He appeared with his eyes half closed like he’d been sleeping. He had a bag in his hand. She didn’t have time to explain as someone answered her call.
“Triple zero. What’s your emergency?”
“I need a paramedic to 110 Graham St, Reservoir.”
“What’s his condition?”
Sunny looked up to Mat and shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. I’m heading back there now. Just send someone. It’s very bad. Lots of blood. Look can you hang on a second?”
Mat pushed Ipo into his laboratory and shut him inside, then followed her onto the road. Mat heard the screams and ran ahead as Sunny followed with her phone still to her ear.
“I’m going to put you on speaker.”
“We’ve dispatched a paramedic,” said the voice on the phone. “Can you describe the problem?”
Mat knelt down beside the man and grabbed his right wrist, checking the pulse. His left wrist was missing. As far as Sunny could see, so was half his face.
“Dr Mat Brinn here. We have a severed left wrist, large laceration to the face and right-side ear.”
Sunny watched as Mat reassured the patient while he worked, compressing the wound where the limb had been and giving him a shot that made the bloodied man stop fighting. He carefully reset the flap of skin on the man’s face, the right-side ear taking a few attempts before he was happy with its position. The patients colleague sat almost comatose, and didn’t respond when Mat directed him to collect the missing limb. Sunny moved instead, using the inside out plastic bag Mat gave her to lift the severed hand and place it in the fridge, ready for collection. Mat remained calm, his voice low and reassuring, passing out orders like he was in his own hospital.
The sound of the sirens filled Sunny with relief as she moved away from the scene to allow the professionals to do their work. Mat’s t-shirt and pants were covered in blood and he tried to wipe his hands clean on a rag. Sunny suddenly understood why women found doctors so attractive. The sheer control and power, the authenticity of saving another humans’ life—a life in your hands. It was an aphrodisiac she’d never experienced before. She stared as if seeing him for the first time. His arms bulged out of the sleeves of his shirt, his brown skin glistening with sweat. The care and innate compassion for a stranger on his face, his chest taking large, slow measures of air, as if in a yoga class. She watched a man who knew his job well and took no prisoners. A competent man. A man who saved lives.
If he had it in his head to save hers, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to fight him on it.
Rule No. 4
No Money, No Possessions
Sixteen
MATAIO
38 days to go
Mataio sat beside his aunt, neither speaking, the smell of fried chicken in the air. They watched Junior sleep—his loud rasps of breath fought to push through a windpipe crushing under its own weight. He hadn’t eaten in days, had barely spoken since Mataio returned. Junior had lost interest in gaming and television and spent all his time dozing off and on, mostly off.
The steady beep of the monitor beside the bed felt like a metronome to Mataio’s thoughts. Calculating and re-calculating. Counting the measurements of in verses out. Junior had to be losing weight. The numbers proved it. But his body had begun to shut down.
Aunt Tulula sniffed and took a handkerchief from her apron, wiped her nose and returned it to her pocket. She’d been weeping for hours. With Junior not eating, her days suddenly seemed pointless. The routine of food preparation and cleaning up—these were the things that kept her life in order and on track. Without it, she could see a life stretched out before her with no purpose. She was already grieving him.
Junior murmured and she jumped out of her seat and to his side in a much quicker time than normal for a woman of her age.
“What is it, lo’u alofa?”
“Mamma?”
“I’m here, lo’u alofa. What do you want? I’ve got chicken. You want chicken?”
“No, Mamma.”
“What Junior?”
“I’m so tired.”
She gasped and held onto his arm tightly. “Stay with me here, Junior.”
Junior’s eyes shut and the jagged rhythm of his snore resumed.
Aunt Tulula glared at Mataio with hatred. “You’ve taken everything from me.”
Mataio saw something in her face, like she knew. Like she’d always known. A cruelness in her face that leached out across the room to him, spreading through his heart like a virus. He had to stop himself from grabbing his chest to stop it.
His instinct was to reach out, put his arms around her, comfort her, walk her back to her chair, but her accusation froze him. She was distressed, he told himself. Aunt Tulula would never normally think like that.
Mataio’s mouth felt dry and bitter as he stood and checked the electrocardiogram, wrote down the stats and checked Junior’s colostomy bag. He swapped over the fluid drip and wiped away the sweat on Junior’s face, careful not to make eye contact with his aunt. He waited for her to say something. Take it back. Tell him she didn’t blame him. But she didn’t.
He moved her chair closer to the bed so she could sit and hold Junior’s hand, then returned to his own by the window. He went over the numbers again in his head. Did he get the dosage right? Did he make the last batch of serum correctly? He’d been distracted this time—the emergency in the furnit
ure shed with the amputee and Sunny.
Should he stop with the treatment? Whether Junior died of the treatment or died because it came too late, either way, he would be to blame in his aunt’s eyes.
The days went by in a steady routine of waiting. Tulula became quiet and rarely left the room, not even to cook. Mataio prepared meals for them both—basic, tasteless meals no-one ate but him. Tulula slept in a recliner Mataio had moved for her into Junior’s room and he attended to the IV drip and medication, the measuring, the changing of the bags, the hourly observations.
Outside it rained, the heavy unrelenting thickness that made you want to stay in bed and read a book. Mataio plucked at the guitar, a chord progression from a song he once knew, the thudding of percussion on the roof a melancholy accompaniment.
Tulula dozed in her seat, her arms twitching occasionally in the space between awake and slumber. Each time a small piece of vinyl fell from the arm of the tattered chair and gathered on the floor. Mataio looked around the room at the old furnishings that hadn’t changed since he’d lived here. Where was all the money he sent his aunt? She certainly wasn’t spending it on furniture or rent or clothes. Most likely it was sent back to Uncle Akamu in Samoa. Almost Mataio’s entire wage went into her account each fortnight. The Rules dictated it.
He swore, when all this began, he’d give her a better life. But looking around this house, there was nothing better about it. The door to the bathroom still didn’t shut properly, the carpet was still stained in the hallway where the washing machine had overflowed once, the roller blind in the lounge still only lifted halfway up the window.
He stared out now at the rain and remembered the last two years he’d spent in this house, finishing high school after La’ei’s disappearance. The day he’d committed to The Rules, and his choices from that moment on, were etched in his memory like a tattoo drawn by a madman. Those first few days and weeks were the worst he’d ever known. Worse even than those times as a child when he would run from the dinner table, his father’s rage petrifying, and being caught and beaten, because he didn’t finish his dinner.