Crossing Paths

by Dianne Blacklock

  Mim was watching him. She reached out her hand, ‘Come on, Joe, he’s waiting for you.’

  The house didn’t change so much as evolve, it had been evolving ever since he was a child. His mother had been a mad fossicker and she had loved scouring the antique and second-hand stores throughout the mountains, picking up an old chair for next to nothing and doing it up, then another, then a small occasional table, a desk, a hallstand . . . till the place got so cluttered she couldn’t find any more space no matter how she rearranged things. So then she’d send some of it off to the second-hand dealer, only to make room for whatever she’d bring home next. She had kept that up until the day she died; the last couple of pieces awaiting refurbishment had remained, no one had wanted to change anything afterwards. The colour of the walls was the same, the dark-stained woodwork, the view from all the windows, changeless, and deeply comforting.

  ‘Joe?’

  He turned around. A stout middle-aged woman was standing next to Mim. ‘This is Janice, one of Dad’s nurses,’ she explained.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Joe was momentarily taken aback. He had nurses, plural?

  ‘It’s so wonderful to finally meet you, Mr Bannister,’ Janice said warmly, the barest trace of an accent in her voice, Scottish perhaps. ‘Your father never stops going on about you. He makes me read all your pieces, not that it’s a chore, mind you.’

  Joe roused himself, offering her his hand. ‘Janice, thank you, thank you for all your help.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure, Mr Bannister.’

  ‘Please, call me Joe.’

  ‘Joe.’ She dipped her head. ‘Your father is an absolute delight . . . an inspiration really.’

  Joe smiled faintly, aware of an uneasy pang in his chest.

  ‘Well, I’ll be getting out of your way,’ said Janice.

  ‘Let me walk you out,’ Mim offered.

  ‘I think I know my way by now, thank you, Miriam,’ Janice smiled, patting her arm. ‘Your father’s anxious to see Joe. You should go on in.’

  She retreated up the hallway and they heard the front door open and close.

  Joe turned to look at Mim. ‘He needs nurses? More than one?’

  ‘Well, obviously he can’t be left alone, Joe,’ she explained. ‘We have a night nurse, three actually, on a rotating roster, and he also has regular physical therapy, as well as respite care a couple of times a week.’

  The enormity of his father’s disability was dawning on him, or rather, caving in on him.

  ‘I couldn’t leave the house at all if we didn’t get some respite care,’ Mim added in a quiet, tentative voice.

  ‘Of course, Mim,’ Joe touched her arm reassuringly. ‘Whatever you need. This is just a lot to take in.’

  She looked at him. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  He took a breath. ‘Absolutely. Let’s do it.’

  Joe Senior was set up in the north-facing sitting room permanently now. Clearly he needed the extra space. It looked like a hospital ward. Joe tried to disguise his alarm as he took in the plethora of machines and contraptions and equipment, his eyes gradually, reluctantly almost, drawn to the state-of-the-art hospital bed, and the withered, pale figure reclining there. He felt Mim’s hand on his back, gently propelling him forward.

  ‘Dad . . .’ Joe fixed a smile on his face, hoping his voice didn’t sound strangled.

  His father’s eyes lit up, but Joe noticed that though his lips moved into the approximation of a smile, his face was oddly expressionless. It occurred to him that he may not even have the control of his facial muscles any more. He remembered reading about that when he was first diagnosed. He leant over his father, taking his hand and kissing his cheek.

  ‘Joe, my boy . . .’ His voice was raspy and weak. ‘You look good, son.’

  Joe couldn’t say the same. ‘Mim said I look older,’ he told him, pulling a chair closer and sitting down.

  ‘She’s gotten cheeky, that one.’ He nodded faintly. ‘Tells me what to do all the time.’

  Joe glanced at his sister, who had stepped back a little, but remained watchful. ‘So what’s going on, Dad? Taking things a little easy, aren’t you?’

  He let out a weak laugh. ‘Yeah, that’s it, I’ve got lazy, son.’ Joe noticed he had to take a breath every few words. ‘I’m so lazy, I even got a new computer, does everything for me.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Joe leaned over to reach the computer on its mobile stand, wheeling it closer. His dad proceeded to take him through the various bibs and bobs he’d acquired to help him work the computer more easily. His speech was so halted and laborious, it was like listening to someone with a severe stutter. Joe wanted to interrupt, fill in words, or tell him to stop when it seemed as though he was struggling, but of course he didn’t. He listened patiently, hoping his father did not sense his distress at seeing him like this. He was demonstrating a one-handed keyboard that strapped onto his arm, so he only had to move his fingers, though it did require a whole new approach to typing.

  ‘Have you tried voice recognition, Dad?’ Joe asked him.

  ‘I bought the software, but it wasn’t as effective, I get too breathless these days.’

  Joe waited while he wheezed, catching his breath.

  ‘I want to try out a headmouse next,’ he managed after a while.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Attaches around your head . . . has a wireless sensor . . . means I can just turn my head slightly, point to a keyboard on the screen. Tedious, but the time will come . . .’

  Joe didn’t know what to say, it was beyond his comprehension that his dad would eventually be unable to write. How would he go on living then?

  His father was watching him. ‘So what are you up to, son?’

  ‘Looks like I’m working for Leo Monaghan. He said hi by the way.’

  He nodded. ‘Little Leo, that lad had an ego . . . short men . . .’ He gave a weak laugh, but it made him wheeze again. Mim was instantly at his bedside, and had strapped an oxygen mask to his face before Joe knew what was happening.

  ‘You need to rest now, Dad,’ she said. ‘You can talk later, Joe’s not going anywhere.’

  Joe squeezed his hand gently. ‘I’ll see you in a little while, Dad,’ he assured him, leaning over to kiss his forehead.

  He walked out of the room, shaken. He turned down the hall, striding past the kitchen and out onto the back verandah, where he bent over, his hands on his knees, catching his breath. His chest ached, and he could feel his eyes filling. He sniffed, shaking his head as he stood up tall again. He rubbed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, gazing out at the view he loved, the purple haze enveloping the ridge beyond. But the ache from his chest was rising into his throat. He wanted to shout out, to yell at someone, to kick something.

  ‘Joe? Are you okay?’

  He swung around as Mim came out through the back door. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, fuck, look at him, Mim, he’s dying.’

  She quickly closed the door behind her. ‘I know.’

  Joe frowned, dropping his voice. ‘Does he?’

  ‘Of course, Joe.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘What could you have done about it?’ she said calmly.

  ‘I could have been here sooner.’

  ‘He didn’t want that. I told you.’

  ‘Bullshit, Mim! He was just saying that, he doesn’t want to put anyone out. You should have told me. You should have let me make the decision.’

  ‘I think Dad has a right to make his own decisions.’

  ‘Oh, sure, even if he can’t take himself to the bathroom.’

  ‘Joe –’

  ‘I get emails almost every day, smart, informed, witty emails,’ he went on. ‘What, have you been writing them for him?’

  ‘No, he writes them himself.’

  ‘Oh come on, the state he’s in? It’d take him all day.’

  ‘It does,’ she said in a level voice. ‘His mind’s as sharp as ever, Joe. He can still read as f
ast and as much as he ever did, but writing takes a huge effort. But I’m sure it’s helped keep him alive.’

  Joe just stared at her.

  ‘This is the way he wanted it, Joe,’ Mim went on. ‘He still had his dignity while he could write to you, while you couldn’t see how much he’d deteriorated. I didn’t want to take that away from him.’

  ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t have come home?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘It’s time. But you have to find a way to deal with the reality of his condition, Joe, not make him feel self-conscious. He’s at peace with it, you have to be as well.’

  He sighed. ‘You’re right. It’s just a shock,’ he said quietly.

  She stepped closer and put her arms around him. The lump rose all the way into his throat and he wept silently, holding his sister tight. It was really happening, they were going to lose him and there was nothing Joe could do about it. The grief, the helplessness, was overpowering.

  He drew back to look at her. ‘How do you manage, Mim?’

  ‘I’m okay. Question is, how am I going to manage without him?’

  Sunday

  Jo was waiting on the west side of Sutherland station as usual, and as usual Belle was running late. She supposed with three littlies that shouldn’t be surprising, but it was the weekend, which meant Darren should be around, so how hard could it be for two adults to look after three toddlers and be on time? They always had the same arrangement, so Jo was more than a little frustrated that her sister couldn’t get her act together when she went to the trouble of coming all the way out to visit her. If Jo could get to her place any other way, she would, but Belle had insisted on planting herself out here in the ‘the Shire’, in the shadow of a nuclear reactor, for godsakes, and the train only came as far as Sutherland. There was a patchy bus service on the weekend, and Buckley’s of getting a taxi, without taking out a second mortgage at least, so Jo really didn’t have any alternative but to rely on a lift. It was Belle who always gave her such a hard time about not visiting enough, not that Jo could ever get her to come into the city, so you’d think she’d at least make an effort to be here on time to pick her up.

  As Jo went to check her watch again, Belle’s thumping big, gun-metal-grey four-wheel drive careered around the corner and pulled up in front of her, its giant tyres scraping against the kerb. Jo opened the door to be met with, ‘Caelen, I swear, if you keep tormenting your sister, I will put you right up the back seat. Now keep your hands to yourself and not another word. Hi Jo, sorry I’m late, I was going to leave the kids with Darren, so what does he do? Starts the mower up five minutes before I have to walk out the door. I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “What does it look like?” and I said, “But I’m going to pick up Jo”, and he says, “So?” And so I go, “What about the kids” and he says, “They’ll be fine.” Bloody typical. I said I’m not leaving the kids here in the house with you outside with the mower going, you won’t hear a thing. So he’s trying to insist it’s all right, they’ll be okay, what could possibly happen? And I’m going “Are you serious? Falling down, banging their heads, running with scissors, choking, broken glass, stitches . . .” and you know what he says? “No worries, I’ll whack on a DVD and they won’t budge.” Oh if it was only that easy. What does he think I do all day? He’s got no idea, honestly. Are you right there, Jo?’

  She had finally managed to clamber up onto the front seat. Bloody oversized cars were not suited to undersized girls. ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she panted, leaning across to kiss Belle on the cheek.

  ‘Say hello to Aunty JoJo, kids.’

  There followed a warbled chorus from the back. Jo turned around to smile at her nephews and niece and experienced that familial tug of the heartstrings, a kind of strange pride in the knowledge they were related to her, combined with an enormous sense of relief that she wasn’t responsible for them.

  Caelen thrust a sticky lollypop towards her. ‘Wanna thuck, Arnie JoJo?’

  ‘Tempting, but no thanks, Caelen.’

  It never ceased to confound Jo how Belle had chosen to name her children, considering what the two of them had been through. But Belle insisted that Caelen, Cascey and Carsyn were a far cry from Bambi and Tinkerbell. Still, Jo had persisted, why make up something when there are so many perfectly good traditional names to choose from, names that everyone could spell and pronounce . . . John or Jane or Tom or Anne, for example. Belle had turned up her nose. If they had names like those, she maintained, they would stand out around here.

  Belle weaved the bulky vehicle rather inelegantly through the streets, routinely hitting roundabouts, corners and anything else apparently outside her peripheral vision. They attempted conversation, but it was virtually impossible with the constant stream of interruptions coming from the back seat. It didn’t seem to faze Belle at all. She could be halfway through a sentence and veer off to correct one of the children, solve a dispute or answer a seemingly bottomless well of inane questions, and then pick up again where she’d left off without missing a beat. Jo was the one struggling to keep up, so she did what she always did and gave up trying. They’d have time enough to catch up as the day went on, so Jo decided the best tack was to ask Belle a question that would keep her going for the remainder of the trip home and not require any input from her.

  ‘So how’s things with the in-laws?’

  ‘Ugh, don’t get me started.’

  But that’s exactly what she did. Jo tuned out almost immediately, she’d heard it all before. They crossed the bridge over the Woronora River and officially entered the aspirational mortgage belt. Jo found suburbia unsettling; she’d heard it said that people go to the suburbs to die. But that wasn’t quite accurate; they go to the Central or South Coast to die, preferably to a small fishing village with a bowling club. The suburbs could be called the destination du jour of the middle-aged, and that was even more depressing. Jo stared out at the houses parading past the car window. McMansions all: super-sized, mass-produced, all the same but for a choice of standard variations, like a brick veneer McValue meal. Faux-Tuscan, Neo-Georgian, Fediterranean, a couple had the facade of a suburban shopping mall. Good God, there was even one with a turret. Did they need to maintain surveillance on enemy forces in the next cul-de-sac?

  Jo had never understood what attracted Belle out here, and since she’d moved they didn’t get to see each other as often. When Belle still worked in the city they used to meet regularly for lunch, even after Caelen was born and she went part-time. But when the twins came along, she stopped work altogether. Jo used to try to talk her into coming into the city for a night on her own, but Belle always dismissed the idea. She couldn’t leave the children yet, they were too little, Darren would never cope. Jo loved her sister dearly and respected her choices, but in the end they were living markedly different lives, with very little in common any more. Except the past, and that would bind them forever no matter how little they saw each other, or how far apart they lived.

  Jo suddenly became aware that Belle was driving into some kind of SUV convention. But no, it was just the carpark for the local shopping mall. Jo held her breath as her sister swerved into a space that didn’t look nearly big enough to contain the tank. Miraculously, she somehow managed to avoid hitting the adjacent cars, despite the weird angle she ended up on.

  ‘I’m just going to run in quick, I’ll be two secs,’ said Belle, leaping from the car.

  Jo blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Gin or bubbly?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’ll just get both, ay? Darren is so on duty for the entire afternoon.’

  And then she vanished. Jo didn’t even see which way she went, she was swallowed up in the sea of oversized cars. Jo slowly turned around to look uncertainly at the children, just as Caelen jabbed Cascey with his lollypop stick. She opened her mouth, wider than Jo thought possible, and let out a wail that was similarly louder than Jo thought possible from a person of her size.

  ‘Caelen, why d
id you hurt your sister? Look, you made her cry.’ But he would have been hard-pressed to hear her over the siren wails. Jo gingerly reached out a hand to pat Cascey on the knee, but that was just met with more wails. She tried a feeble ‘Shhh’ which had no effect either. Carsyn was blocking his ears and trying to outbellow his twin with pleas of ‘Qui-yettt, Caythee!’ and so Caelen started yelling ‘You be quiet butt-head!’ and pretty soon people were staring.

  Jesus. Jo unbuckled her seatbelt and went to open the door, realising just in time that there was only a whisker between them and the adjacent assault vehicle. She opened a crack in the door and slithered out, sidling to the rear of the car, then dashing around to the other side where there was enough space to open the door. She climbed up and leaned across Caelen to reach Cascey’s seatbelt as the little girl screamed like a banshee. Surely she’d have to take a breath eventually?

  ‘Ow! Arnie JoJo, you’re squishing me,’ Caelen whined. ‘I can’t breeeeve!’

  ‘Yeah, well, you should have thought of that before you poked your sister, bud,’ Jo said through gritted teeth.

  ‘I didn’t mean to, it was juss a assident!’

  ‘Caelen, jabbing your sister with your lollypop was as much an accident as two planes flying into the World Trade Centre towers.’

  Now Caelen was crying, but at least it made Cascey stop long enough to gawk at him. Jo finally managed to undo the buckle, wrestle Cascey’s arms free and scoop her up before performing a kind of abseil movement backwards out of the car.

  ‘There now,’ she said, flipping her niece around to inspect her. Yuck. Her face was covered in tears mixed with snot, thick and green oozing from both nostrils. Jo instinctively thrust her out at arm’s length, which only served to set her off again.

  ‘Oh for . . .’ Jo groaned. She looked in the back seat for tissues, a baby bag, an old rag even, but there was nothing. She went around to the back of the car, propping Cascey on her hip facing outwards as she opened the heavy rear door. No nappy bag there either, dammit. She supposed Belle didn’t bother to pack a survival kit when she was only popping out briefly. A little oversight that Jo might point out to her for future reference.