The Spare Room

by Helen Garner

  ‘Brutal, isn’t it. And I have to tell her here.

  ’ He sat down beside me and took a pad and pencil out of his pocket.

  ‘You need to know this. Look.’ He sketched part of a spine in deft lines and curves. ‘This is Nicola’s vertebra C7. Know where that is?”

  ‘Neck?’

  He nodded. ‘C7’s been almost totally devoured and replaced by tumour. Which is now bulging out towards the spinal cord.’ He cross-hatched vigorously: a crude lump almost touching a long canal of darkness. ‘If something can’t shrink the tumour, or if the remains of the vertebra aren’t cut out and replaced with metal, she’ll end up quadriplegic.’

  I gaped at him.

  ‘I won’t tell her the quadriplegia part now,’ he said. ‘But she is not to do yoga, right? She’s not to lift heavy or awkward things, or carry them. Understand?’

  He shoved the pad into his jacket pocket, and looked at me with a twisted little smile.

  ‘What about the Theodore?’ I said. ‘What if she wants to go back there?’

  He puffed out air through his lips like a Frenchman. ‘I’ve never met this Theodore guy, but he’s given me a lotta grief. They send people on to me. The treatments in there are bullshit.’

  At that moment the suite door opened and Nicola stepped out. Like a suitor, Maloney leapt to his feet. Her dazed smile of greeting faded. He put out his hand to her, and led her to a chair.

  We drove home, stunned and silent, through peak hour traffic. As we swung on to Flemington Road she said in a low voice, ‘I don’t think I’ll go back to the Theodore any more.’

  ‘Good,’ I burst out, jerking the wheel. ‘They’ve brutally wasted your energy. And your money. You should demand a refund.’

  She turned away. There was no point in apologising. We were both stricken, in shock. At home I scraped together a meal, and we picked at it with faces down-turned. She retired to her room with the cortisone and Panadol she had been prescribed by Maloney, and shut the door. Before long I heard her snoring: it sounded like someone choking.

  I called Leo.

  ‘C7?’ He breathed in sharply.

  ‘She’s seeing a surgeon on Friday, for an opinion.’

  ‘Who’s the surgeon?’

  ‘His name’s Hathaway.’

  ‘Hathaway! I knew him at high school. Oh, he’s very good. The best.’

  ‘Maloney says he’s technically brilliant. But apparently he tends to be a bit…abrasive.’

  ‘You’ll like him, Helen. He’s the Charlton Heston of neurosurgery.’ He laughed. ‘Those guys have to be very brave. It’s a bit much to expect charm as well.’

  In the night she needed me. She was sweating hugely from her head and neck. Her pillow was a puddle. I changed the bedding again and again. It was labour. It was Let me turn the mattress. It was Here, drink this, and No, you must drink, and What else can I bring you? And Lie down now, and Go back to sleep. It was hard and I was tired, but rarely had I felt so useful. I knew I only had to haul myself to the end of the week: Maloney had told us that once the cortisone kicked in for the pain she would be fit to fly home.

  I would go in to the Theodore Institute and say her farewells. I would be carrying a bag full of hand grenades.

  When I looked in at dawn she had run out of dry clothes and was asleep in her damp bed wearing nothing but a holey old rose pink cashmere jumper.

  After breakfast I hauled her mattress into the sun, and ran load after load of sheets through the machine. She came out into the yard as I was hanging them on the line. I put down the pegs and turned to her. I was not tall enough to contain her as a mother or a husband would, but I held out my arms. She stepped into them and stooped to rest her head on my shoulder: oh, her terrible thinness. We both cried. Her hot tears ran under my collar.

  ‘I thought I was on the mountain top,’ she said in a voice that splintered. ‘But I’m only in the foothills.’

  All day she kept dissolving into quiet weeping. Sometimes I would put my arms around her; sometimes we would just go on with what we were doing. The hard, impervious brightness was gone. Everything was fluid and melting. There was no need for me to speak. She looked up at me and said it herself, as I put a cup into her hand.

  ‘Death’s at the end of this, isn’t it.’

  MR HATHAWAY the neurosurgeon had rooms in an old red brick house behind the Epworth Hospital. He was a large, powerful-shouldered fellow with thick hair and delicate hands that toyed, on his timber desk, with the fattest, blackest, shiniest Mont Blanc pen I had ever laid eyes on, twice the normal length and thickness of barrel, and sporting a colossal golden nib.

  He did not spare Nicola.

  ‘I’ve had a good look at your scans,’ he said. ‘If you should fall or stumble, if you jerked or jolted or twisted your neck, the lump of tumour that’s replaced your C7 vertebra might collapse. And if it does, it’ll squirt tumour and scraps of destroyed vertebra all over the place, in there.’

  From my seat near the door, scribbling madly in my notebook with a shaking pencil, I saw her gulp and swallow. She made no other response, but sat as upright as she could, looking him straight in the eye.

  ‘If that happened,’ he went on, ‘you’d immediately become quadriplegic. And that’d be the end of you.’

  He told her that he was the only neurosurgeon in Australia who could put in a titanium post, as distinct from plastic or a bone graft, to replace the cancer-devoured C7. He listed for her, and I noted, the days of the week on which he operated. He told her she would have to wear a neck brace for three months after the operation. Then he shoved back his chair, and sat regarding her from under his brow, dexterously rolling the mighty fountain pen between his finger and thumb.

  He lacked Maloney’s sweet, almost tender style; but I could not help liking him, and I admired his merciless candour. Surely it couldn’t be true though, I thought, putting away my notebook, that he was the only one who could do this procedure. It was out of the question that he should be the only one. No—Maloney would find his counterpart in Sydney and she would fly home tomorrow morning, as she had originally planned.

  Nicola stood up carefully, with a small sigh. She gave him her hand, and said, ‘We’re going back to see Dr Maloney. We’ll make a plan with him. I’ll call you this afternoon.’

  He got to his feet. ‘I would most seriously advise you,’ he said, ‘not to delay.’ Picking up her old-fashioned manners, he almost bowed us out.

  Nicola climbed out of the car in front of Maloney’s building and I drove on, looking for a park. I found a spot at once, but I sat in the car for ten minutes, filing my nails, full of dread. I called on the mobile a respected health journalist I knew in Sydney.

  ‘Of course she can have the surgery up here,’ she said, astonished. ‘Only yesterday at St Vincent’s a friend of mine had cancerous vertebrae replaced—a bit lower down the spine—three of them. Her husband told me they were very impressed with the result. You can’t be expected to deal with this on your own. Where’s her family?’

  Her impatient toughness should have strengthened me, but in fact it gave me an urge to defend Nicola, to find excuses for her. How would anyone dare not to be impressed? Anything else would be too terrifying.

  When I got to Maloney’s waiting room, I found Nicola settled on a chair beside a middle-aged woman who was draped in fanciful, brightly coloured clothes. They looked conspiratorial, murmuring urgently to each other, their bowed heads bobbing and bumping. As I approached, the other woman was called in. I took her empty seat. Nicola greeted me with a hectic smile.

  ‘That was Melanie,’ she said. ‘She’s from the Theodore too.’ She lowered her voice to a hiss. ‘She was telling me about a sort of alcohol treatment that can be injected straight into the tumour. She said doctors are allowed to do it in Africa, but not here. And she said she’s read on the internet about a special camera. In Russia! That might be available here, soon.’

  ‘A camera.’

  ‘Yeah—she says it
picks up cells that are irradiated by spirulina. The only trouble is, it can’t tell you whether the cells that glow are cancerous or pre-cancerous.’

  I stood my bag on the carpet.

  ‘I should go back to the Theodore, anyway,’ she rattled on, shifting awkwardly on the hard chair. ‘I haven’t paid them for the third week yet.’

  I folded my arms and closed my eyes. Let me pass out now. I want to lose consciousness. Please, Dr Maloney, take me to a hospital. Put me in a bed and spread a cotton blanket over me. Let me lie there alone in silence till this is over.

  ‘Actually,’ said Maloney from behind a desk that was half the size of Hathaway’s, ‘it is true. He practically invented this particular titanium post. If that’s what you want, Nicola, he’s your man.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor John,’ she said fervently. ‘That’s what I want. It really is what I want.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the doctor, ‘you’ll be having the surgery in Melbourne, at the Epworth. Probably early the week after next.’

  Maloney must have seen my face drop. For a couple of beats he sat motionless. Then he said, ‘Now you two had better go home and have a brutally frank talk with each other.’

  I hardly trusted myself to get behind the wheel. I drove in a dumb panic, stupefied; I kept grinding the gears, and could not picture the route home. We went droning north along Nicholson Street. I could feel her looking at the side of my face.

  ‘Nicola,’ I said. ‘You can’t have the operation in Melbourne. You’ve got to go home to Sydney and have it there.’

  ‘No no no no darling,’ she said, ‘I want to have it here. Hathaway’s the best in the country. Dr John said so.’

  I raised my voice. ‘Nicola. This is crazy.’

  ‘I trust Dr John,’ she said. ‘If I have it here, Dr John will come to me.’

  ‘But we don’t have the back-up. There’s no one here to help me.’

  I glanced at her as we bounced over the railway line. She was staring straight ahead, grinning like a lunatic.

  ‘Dr John’s not like the other doctors,’ she crooned. ‘He really likes me—I can tell. He cares about me. I need him to look after me.’

  She refused to hear me. I would have to sink the knife.

  ‘Will you fucking listen to me?’ I said shrilly. ‘I. Can’t. Do it.’

  She sat very still.

  ‘I paced myself for three weeks,’ I said. ‘I thought I could just about make it through to tomorrow. But now you’re assuming I’ll run the next lap as well, and the one after that. I’m trying to tell you: I’m worn out. I can’t go on.’

  She stared through the windscreen. I thought I might have to stop the car and throw up in the gutter.

  Then she took a quivering breath, and in her noblest tones began to praise me. ‘And what a splendid relay runner you’ve been! What a fabulous race you’ve run, darling. Of course you can hand the baton over. I know what I’ll do! I’ll rent a serviced apartment. Or I’ll move into a motel.’

  My palms on the steering wheel began to sweat. ‘You will not, you cannot,’ I said, ‘move into a serviced apartment or a motel.’

  ‘Of course I can. There must be charming places over there near the hospital. I can look after myself. All I have to do is wear a neck brace.’

  ‘Listen to me, Nicola. This is not about a neck brace. You’ll need a team of people to care for you every day, and through the night—to change your sheets and wash them, and buy food and cook it. Your family and friends will not let you move into a motel. It’s not going to happen. You must go home to Sydney.’

  ‘I’ll fly home in the morning. You’ll come with me, won’t you. I can’t fly alone. I’ll organise things with Iris, and pick up a few things I’ll need. Then I’ll be back here next week. I have dozens of darling old school friends who live in Melbourne. They’ll take me into their homes with all their hearts!’

  A wave of sickening rage swept through me. I wanted to smash the car into a post, but for only her to die—I would leave the keys in the ignition, grab my backpack, and run for my life.

  The house, from the moment we pushed open the front door, began to hum with ugly feelings. Anger and fear, rigidly suppressed, sang in the air. The fridge was empty. I rode to the shop and bought food for our lunch. As I chopped and toasted, I made an awkward twisting movement and pulled a muscle in my lower back. Even as the grunt of pain crossed my lips I flushed with shame. What pathetic rivalry, a tweaked back muscle versus a tumour that threatened to collapse and fill Nicola’s body with debris and poison. But she didn’t hear me. She was lying on the couch, raving in a febrile excitement.

  ‘There’s Verity,’ she cried. ‘And Tory and Flick, but she might have moved to Paris. Verity married that barrister who was so successful, I forget his name. They used to own a divine little cottage across the road from their house. And the au pair lived in it. I could move in there!’

  ‘How long is it since you were last in touch with them?’

  ‘Oh, only a few years.’

  ‘Nicola,’ I said, ‘shouldn’t you maybe check with Verity? To see if this is real?’

  She beamed right into my face, with glazed eyes. ‘Oh no, darling. I know she’d have me at the drop of a hat. She adores me.’

  ‘But it’s a twenty-four-hour commitment. Maybe she’s got, you know, family responsibilities, or a job?’

  She froze for a second, then clicked her tongue and made a brushing motion with one hand. She seized a pencil. ‘Well, if that doesn’t suit, I’ll—I’ll book everyone into a hotel. The Windsor. I’ll take a suite at the Windsor.’

  ‘Everyone? Who’s everyone?’

  She began to scribble down the names of the Sydney friends and country relatives who she knew would rush down to Melbourne, in shifts, to care for her. Her sister Pip would be there in a flash. Iris would drop everything and come. Clare would leave her kids in Byron and jump on the next plane south. Harriet would hoon in from Yass. Everyone would be on deck! Nicola would fly them to Melbourne, Nicola would book the tickets, Nicola would pay!

  I stood at the griller, giddy with panic. ‘But that’ll cost—’

  ‘Anyone who puts themselves out to look after me,’ she declared with a regal gesture of her pen hand, ‘deserves the best that money can buy. Now. I’ll be in hospital for three days, so that means—’

  ‘Three days? Didn’t Maloney say seven to ten?’

  ‘Nonsense, Hel. I’ll be out of there so fast. OK, which were the days Hathaway operates? Tuesday and Friday?’

  For this at least I had evidence. I pulled the notebook from my bag and read out in an authoritative tone what I’d written in his rooms: ‘He operates on Mondays and Fridays.’

  Her brow came down. She shook her head. ‘No. It wasn’t Monday. It was Tuesday.’

  She picked up the cordless and called his receptionist. As she listened, her cheek-bones went pink. Power surged through her. She tossed the handset on to the carpet. ‘I knew I was right. It’s Tuesday.’ She hauled herself upright against the cushions and hit me with a bright stare of triumph. ‘By the way—while you were at the shop Bessie knocked at the door. I pretended there was nobody home.’

  I put the rubber band round the notebook, limped off into my room, and lay on the bed. From there I could hear her on the phone, jabbering, bursting into fountains of laughter, organising the troops, lining up reinforcements. In a while she called to me from the hallway: she was going to take the train downtown to settle her account at the Theodore Institute. The slammed door shook the house to its foundations.

  Somehow I dozed off. Soon after four o’clock there was a light tap at my window: Bessie’s eyes gleamed between the blind slats. I got up and opened the front door. She stood on the mat staring up at me, the dark brim of her sun-hat pressed back off her brow like a cavalier’s. She bounced straight on to my bed and we lay down. She had been thinking; she wanted me to hear the fruits of it.

  ‘When a person dies,’ she said, ‘a little bit of them
flies away from their body.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard people say that. What a beautiful idea.’

  ‘It’s called a soul.’

  She took hold of my wrist and gently moved the skin up and down over it. I felt the crepy looseness of what covered me, the fragility of the joint.

  ‘Everyone has to die,’ she said. ‘Even me. Even Hughie. And Nanna, if we died, you’d die too. Because you’d be so sad.’

  I DIDN’T know then, as Bessie and I lay on my bed and reasoned about fate and the universe, that Nicola’s mad dream of flying her carers down to Melbourne and putting them up at the Windsor Hotel would come true, and that in ten days she would return to Sydney for good with Mr Hathaway’s titanium post flawlessly implanted in her spine.

  I didn’t know yet how many times I would fly to Sydney to play my small part in the remains of her care, or how often, when I buzzed at Iris’s apartment, the door would be opened by Harriet from Yass, her round, weather-beaten face sweating and wild with fatigue, or by Marion the Buddhist, white, composed and stoic after a five-day stint without relief. I had not prepared myself to sleep on the floor beside Clare from Byron, when Iris, half out of her mind, pulled on a backpack and fled north, on foot, along the coast of New South Wales.

  I could not imagine the urge to start drinking that would seize me every time I entered the high, airy rooms of the apartment and found Nicola enthroned on the sofa where, propped against its hard padded arm, she woke and slept and laughed and coughed, commanding the stewing of Chinese herbs, planning brown rice fasts and drastic alkaline diets, turning her face up each morning to the sun that streamed in through the uncovered windows. Nor could I foresee that one day, with her swollen legs propped on a stack of cushions, she would announce brightly, ‘I’ve suddenly realised why I feel so terrible—I must be anaemic.’ Or how dull my life at home would seem between my visits to Sydney, how I would write to her on a postcard: ‘I miss you. I’m bored. I’d rather be scrubbing shit off Iris’s bathroom tiles.’ For this too would be required of me: like her other carers, whom I came to love in the intimacy of our labour, I would have to help carry her to the lavatory, where I learned to wash her arse as gently as I had washed my sister’s and my mother’s, and as some day someone will have to wash mine.