She stepped closer, then further away. What was Jack suggesting? And if he had set her into the painting, then where was he? The man offstage, brush in hand, receiving her smiles while he concocted an oil-colour version of her.
CAMILLE
SIXTEEN
I am due to start work at seven. Rosie wakes at six so I make her a bottle of milk to drink in her cot while I have my shower. Then I put her into the bed with Paul as I get dressed. He rolls over and kisses her tummy. ‘Hello Rosie Posie.’
She giggles and says, ‘More,’ so he tickles her feet until she is laughing too much to breathe properly. After she has recovered she looks up at me and says, ‘Home Mummy.’
‘Not today darling, I have to work. But tomorrow we’ll go to the hospital and get Addie and bring her home and we can all sit on the couch and watch The Wiggles together.’
‘Wiggles!’ she shouts.
I bend down to kiss her cheek then look at Paul. ‘Julie will be here at eight. There’s cereal for breakfast. It’s warm outside so just put her in a dress or something.’
‘Okay.’
I drive to work quickly; it is too early for the traffic build-up. As I walk down the hall to my office I see Nick coming my way.
‘I’m going to get a coffee. Want one?’ he asks.
‘Love one,’ I say and I unlock my office then search in my handbag for a mirror, making sure my hair is neat and my lipstick on. Then I sit down and wait.
He is back in a few minutes with two mugs of coffee and two apples, one of which he hands to me. ‘You look hungry.’
I take the apple from him and bite into it. ‘No time for breakfast.’
‘Or anything else.’
I run a hand over my stomach. The band of my skirt is loose and I don’t know how many kilos I’ve lost over the last month. Being tall, it doesn’t take much to go from looking slim to gaunt. Something a baby will fix within a few months. If I keep it. ‘Busy time.’
‘I heard about your daughter. How long’s the wait going to be?’
He’s a doctor and he knows exactly how difficult it is to get a liver. So I know what he’s really asking me is how long does Addie actually have, for how long can she afford to wait.
I answer him honestly, tell him what I haven’t told Paul because I don’t know if Paul wants to hear it or if Paul will even choose to believe it. ‘I’d say we need one in the next four weeks.’
‘I’ll pray for accidents for you.’
‘Me too.’
We are both silent and then Nick says, ‘A drink might make you feel human for a while. Where’s a good place in Sydney to get a drink after work? And you can tell me about your exhibition.’
‘There’s a bar just down the road.’
‘Meet you downstairs at six.’
I nod.
He stands and smiles at me before he leaves. I pick up the files on my desk and begin to work so that I do not think any more about Nick and his smile and the anticipation of what might happen later.
I do not speak to Nick all day. I am not sure if this is a deliberate act of avoidance on both our parts or whether it is just that our business for the day does not cause our paths to cross. I certainly know where he is a lot of the time and I see glimpses of him in hallways, his retreating back, the profile of his face, the sound of his laugh.
I sit in my office, supposedly preparing a presentation for a local school about the importance of organ donation. But instead of assembling snippets of interesting facts designed to appeal to children I am thinking about the man I am going to have a drink with in just a few hours.
Nick is not like Paul; he is not as tall but his physique is more toned. Nick has a runner’s legs, with sculpted gastronemicus and carved out quadriceps. His eyes are brown, a light, clear brown and in them I can see what he is thinking about me, that he sees a version of me that I sometimes used to see when Paul looked at me: tumbled red hair, clear and pale skin with just a spattering of freckles across my nose, long legs and a smile that takes over my face when I let it.
I am not smiling now though because I am making myself nervous, worried that the lack of care I have been taking with myself of late will quickly show up when I sit next to Nick in a bar. That he will see the dry skin on my legs, the dull complexion I hide beneath foundation, the jagged toenails that need a cut and polish.
I think, briefly, about what it is like to indulge in desire, to bathe in it, to wrap it around you and your lover like a cocoon. I wonder if I will ever indulge in it again. Then my stomach cramps.
I have been sore on and off all morning. I press my hand against the tiny baby in there. Just a dot right now, invisible but present. Alive.
Another cramp.
‘Please don’t die too,’ I whisper because, with the pains and the possibility of a decision being made for me by a miscarriage, I understand that I want this baby. Having an abortion will not make anything better.
I will the baby to be strong enough to hold on with both hands to the walls of my womb because I know it will not be a smooth ride, that I am too tired and worried. That I am not eating enough. That, even though it might be the easiest thing to do, I will not let this baby go.
Because a mother does not abandon her child.
Then it is time to meet Nick so I take my hair out of its ponytail and let it fall down my back, gloss my lips and wait in my office until I am twenty minutes late, giving him the option to change his mind and leave without embarrassment if he chooses. But he does not.
He smiles when he sees me and slips his hand into mine as soon as we are out the doors and away from people we know. We walk to a wine bar that I know will be quiet at this time of evening, quiet enough so we can hear each other talk but with enough music and people that we still feel we are a part of something.
Nick walks in first and he does not choose two stools by the bar which are on view to all, but a table tucked into a corner where we can look out and watch others but where we will not be noticed by anyone. ‘What would you like?’ he asks.
‘You choose,’ I say because I really do not care what we drink; that is not the point of why we are here.
He chooses a Sancerre as if to indicate that he knows what he is doing when it comes to wine, just as he seems to know what he is doing when it comes to everything. He lifts his glass and I lift mine and he toasts, ‘To you. You’re a stunning woman, Camille.’
‘And a married one.’ I feel a need to confirm that he knows this now, before it is too late.
‘I know.’
‘So why not, in a hospital full of single, unmarried nurses, ask one of them to show you where to drink?’
‘Because I always want the impossible,’ Nick says.
‘Which will never make you happy.’
‘As you’ve discovered.’
‘As I’ve discovered.’
I sip my drink and place my glass on the table.
Nick says, ‘I thought I’d at least be able to wait till I’d finished one glass of wine before I did this.’
He catches my lips with his and as our mouths and tongues move against one another’s I remember that first kiss with Paul by the bar where we shut off the world. It is the same feeling again, as if the place we are in does not exist and we are in a space adrift together, my hand pressed against the hard muscle of his thigh, his hand slipping up my back, thumb stretched out to stroke the side of my breast. And I want to take off my blouse and my skirt, to sprawl in a chair, naked and open to him, just as I would in those fantasies I used to have about men I worked with, back when I loved my husband.
But I draw back and the kiss stops and then my phone rings and it is Addie’s hospital. ‘I’ve got to take it,’ I say as I slip out of my chair and move outside.
I send Nick a text message as I drive, saying, Sorry, Addie. Then I press down hard on the accelerator and speed, as fast as I can, which is not fast enough, to Addie’s side.
SEVENTEEN
‘She came in an hour ago.’
Liz, a nurse who used to work with me but who has since transferred to the children’s hospital, has called me with news. What she has to tell me is absolutely forbidden but she does it anyway because she’s known Addie since she was a baby.
In ICU, there is a four year old girl who drowned in her backyard swimming pool. A machine is breathing for her now and her parents are weeping by her side. This girl has a liver, a perfect liver, a liver that would be sized and shaped to fit Addie exactly.
So I do what I am absolutely forbidden to do. I visit the nurse who coordinates the transplants for the liver team. We have a whispered conversation. I meet Liz in a stairwell.
‘There’s an urgent listing from Victoria,’ I say to Liz. ‘That child would get this liver, not Addie.’
‘An urgent listing,’ Liz repeats.
Another child is Most in Need. More than that; an urgent listing means that the other child is in crisis. And because he or she is in crisis, the liver that is here in the hospital will not stay here in the hospital; it will be flown to Melbourne. The child is probably already on a ventilator with just a day or so left of life. Unless they get a liver.
Liz frowns. ‘I had to call you because I thought there might be something you could do, strings you could pull, you know...’
We are walking back to ICU as we speak. Then I see the donor coordinator who is based at the children’s hospital emerge from the drowned child’s room.
‘Can you find out if the family have consented?’ I ask Liz.
She moves off and comes back in a few minutes. ‘They want some time to think about it.’
Time. We all need more of that.
Rosie and I go to collect Addie from the hospital first thing in the morning. We take helium balloons and teddies and other useless tokens of joy that we know will make Addie smile. And she does.
‘Rosie choose,’ says Rosie to her big sister, handing over a balloon shaped like a heart with a picture of Sleeping Beauty emblazoned across it. Addie gives Rosie a cuddle, one pair of thin arms wrapped around one pair of chubby arms and I want so much just to be happy with this moment but, as always, it is the impossible that I want even more.
In between lying on the couch with the two girls wrapped in blankets, eating popcorn and having a Wiggles marathon, I call Liz. There is still no decision.
‘If they don’t hurry up, the donor will just become unstable,’ I grumble. ‘Then there won’t be a liver for anyone.’
How heartless I am, I think as I hang up the phone. Here I am calling the child a donor even though she isn’t yet and here I am complaining about the fact that the parents need time to absorb the fact that their daughter has died. But I cannot sympathise with them. To do so would be to imagine what I would feel in their place.
Liz telephones back a few minutes later. The family have asked to see the list of organs that can be donated. The donor coordinator thinks this is a positive sign.
There might be a liver for Addie. Except for the child in Melbourne.
I remember an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where one of the doctors cut her fiancé’s LVAD wire; she wanted to make him sick enough to leapfrog another patient who was seventeen seconds ahead of him on the waitlist because a perfect heart was there in the hospital waiting for someone. I thought what a foolish storyline it was, that nobody would do such a thing, take someone they love to the brink of death just in case that could save them. Now I wonder how I can take Addie to that same brink without tipping her over.
An accidental overdose of her medication. An accidental withdrawal of her medication. Both of these things could work. Both of these things could work too well.
I sift flour into a bowl, stir in creamed butter and sugar, measure out quantities of ingredients to make fairy cakes with the same precision with which I administer Addie’s medications; double checking the label and the dose against the sheet of paper on which her prescription schedule is noted, always careful to give her the right amount of the right pill at the right time.
The doorbell rings just as I am putting the cakes into the oven. Rosie flies towards the door, calling, ‘Auntie Fliss,’ as Felicity and her husband Richard come inside for their ‘just in case’ visit. Nobody says this though.
‘Camille.’ Felicity’s hug is as huge as the hugs we used to give each other as children, snuggled up in her bed together at night whenever I dreamed too much about things I didn’t understand. She is wiping her eyes behind my head, trying to mop herself up before the embrace ends.
‘How’s my niece?’ I ask as I pull away and touch her stomach, which is a ball rounded over the body of her growing baby.
‘Perfect,’ she says.
I don’t mean to say it but the words come out unwanted. ‘I hope she is.’
Paul comes in then so my terrible thought is lost in a fresh round of greetings. Felicity scoops Addie up off the couch and tucks her onto her lap, helping her to take the wrapping paper off her present.
‘Look Mummy,’ Addie says, moving her finger towards the Tinkerbell nightie complete with green wings that is nestled in the tissue paper.
‘Shall we put it on you now?’ I ask and Addie nods as a little smile touches her face.
How I would like to pluck the crescent moon from the night sky and hang it on my daughter’s face so she wouldn’t need to use up precious energy just to smile. How I would like to see her stand and show us all just how much she looks like a tiny paper fairy in her new nightgown.
‘You’re beautiful,’ I say as I kiss her and pass her a looking glass so she can see too.
A short time later Felicity takes Addie upstairs and tucks her into bed while I serve up dinner. We sit down around the table, Rosie on her Auntie Fliss’s lap, Louisa beside me and Paul opposite. I notice Richard stroke the back of his hand over Felicity’s tummy when he sits, and they smile at each other.
‘Stay in love,’ I say suddenly.
Felicity doesn’t seem to think my remark is in any way odd, she just nods and says, ‘We will.’
This time I manage to stop myself before I say, ‘I hope so.’
‘What have you been up to?’ Richard asks Paul as I pass the plates.
‘Legal hassles. The paper’s being sued because of something I wrote. It’s just a nuisance suit though. Won’t get anywhere.’
I stare at Paul; of all the things he has been ‘up to’, how could that be at the top of his mind?
I barely hear Felicity when she asks, ‘What about you Camille?’ because I am still waiting for Paul to come up with something else, some other thing that has been taking up his time. But he is forking roast lamb into his mouth, chewing, swallowing wine.
So I turn to Felicity and say, ‘I went out for a drink last night.’
Before she has a chance to reply Paul puts down his fork and cuts in with, ‘How about you guys?’ and both Felicity and Richard say, in unison, ‘Getting ready for the baby.’
Felicity and Richard are the first to say goodnight. I go upstairs with them to make sure they have everything they need. I linger, talking to them for as long as I can, until I see Richard smothering a yawn. Then I go to my room. But I cannot sleep.
Paul comes up to bed some time after I do, having stayed downstairs to clean up. I pretend to be asleep. He leaves the room an hour later, to watch TV, I presume.
I get out of bed too. My stomach tightens. I gasp. Go to the toilet. There are spots of blood on my underwear. ‘Not you too,’ I whisper.
I walk down to the spare room where Felicity and Richard are staying the night. My hand rests on the door but I do not knock.
It opens anyway and Felicity smiles and whispers, ‘I thought you’d come. He’s asleep.’ She gestures to her husband tucked into the bed and continues, ‘He won’t hear us.’
We sit on the couch and as Felicity tucks a blanket over her legs, I am reminded of Louisa. I smile. ‘You and your mum are just the same.’
She grins. ‘There are worse people to be like.’
‘There
are.’ Me, for instance. Or Paul.
There are so many things to tell her about: the baby bleeding inside me, Addie, Jack Darcy, my mother, Nick, Paul. My mind struggles with where to begin in a way it never has before. At Louisa’s house, when Felicity and I lay in bed together, the angst of fights with friends or too many pimples or unrequited love would surge forth and be resolved by morning. But now there is neither angst nor resolution. Just the chaos of destiny whose outcomes require no input from me.
‘I met Jack Darcy,’ I finally say and Felicity nods. Of course Louisa has told her.
‘He told me something about Alix.’ I am staring at my wedding ring as I talk; I haven’t yet taken it off even though I have asked for a divorce because the ring no longer seems to be a part of my marriage to Paul. It has become a piece of jewellery as easily as his days have become legal hassles.
‘If Jack told her he had cancer then maybe that means...’ But I can’t say it. I can ask my husband for a divorce, I can kiss another man, I can contemplate giving my child an overdose but I can’t say this.
Richard rolls over in bed and mumbles, ‘Felicity.’
I jump up. ‘You should go back to bed. I’m fine.’
‘Stay Camille. I’m not tired,’ Felicity says but I am out the door before she can stop me.
I go down to the studio. The light is on and when I open the door I find Paul in there, surrounded by bits of wood, holding a saw, hammer and nails by his side.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making something.’
‘What? You don’t make things.’
Paul doesn’t look at me, he stares at the wood in his hands and at pieces of paper that I can now see are drawings, a plan to follow. ‘A trike.’
‘Who’s it for?’ The disbelief in my voice is strident and I think if it was me on the receiving end of my voice I would choose not to answer; I would walk away.
If I Should Lose You Page 17