by Ros Baxter
Gage rolled his shoulders and made a noncommittal grunt. Lou felt a pang of guilt as Mary finally released them from her interrogation and they turned away from the reception desk, all doubtless feeling equally battered by the interaction. Gage was unlucky as hell that as well as having his own burden to shoulder, he now seemed to have adopted Lou’s as well. Clearly Mary didn’t know about the latest episode in her mother’s chaotic life, because Lou was sure she would have been more excited and none too subtle about asking about it.
She couldn’t think of a sensible thing to say to Gage as they emerged into the sunlight and he headed for the surprisingly high-end ute parked in the lot. So she went with, ‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t ask her what she was sorry for. ‘I like your ma,’ he grunted, opening the passenger door before throwing the suitcases in the back. ‘She reminds me of you.’
Lou only managed some strangled noise of shock and disbelief as she pushed Sharni into the ute first. No way could she straddle the gearstick and squish up next to Gage with his big hands and broad shoulders.
Gage laughed as he settled behind the wheel, and the sound was low and sweet, but not without bitterness. ‘She does,’ he repeated. ‘When she’s sober.’
Lou wondered who she had reminded Gage of last night, then, liquored and hot and pressed up against him. Surely that was more her mother’s style? She closed her eyes and thought about how it had felt – the tree, the kiss, his touch on her face. How had that even happened? How had she let it happen? And how the hell had it ended?
She had been meaning to check in with Sharni on that one, once the drugs wore off; once they had woken and started to make their way back to civilisation. But then the call had come, and such ponderings had no place. And now she wouldn’t ask. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t look over at those brown arms as they worked the stick shift, wrestled the wheel to do a completely illegal U-turn on the main street, and flicked the sun visor down. She wouldn’t ask any more about her mother either. It would feel like breaking some kind of code. It wasn’t fair to him. He’d obviously cleaned the latest mess up to some degree; and was taking some responsibility for getting her to her mother so she could do the rest. She wouldn’t ask him to rehash the whole ugly thing as well, whatever it was. She’d know soon enough.
So instead she concentrated on reading the surprising array of stickers decorating the side window of Gage’s ute. Lock the Gate. Clean Gas is Dirty. And something about Greenpeace. Lou had never pegged Gage as an environmentalist.
They didn’t talk much on the way to the hospital. All she could think about was what she might find when she got there. The last time she had made the journey to a hospital on her mother’s behalf had been twenty years earlier, and after that, she had sworn she would never see the woman again. Pay for her, sure. Make certain she had what she needed. But the rest? Skye Samuels could forget it. Forget Lou, forget she even had a daughter. She sure as hell didn’t deserve one.
And the only reason Lou was coming along today was to check out what she needed to do to make things right for everyone concerned before she could make her escape again. She just hoped it would be uncomplicated.
As uncomplicated as an OD got, anyway.
She almost laughed aloud at that thought, even though it wasn’t funny.
Skye Samuels looked old and small lying in the bed, even though she was only fifty-eight. She had managed to score the bed by the window, so a sly stream of sunshine filtered in, picking at the scab of Lou’s almost-migraine, and forcing her to slide her prescription sunglasses onto her nose to combat it.
The hair that Lou was so used to seeing long and blonde seemed to have been cut in a page-boy bob, and the chin-grazing style emphasised the elfin delicacy of her features. But that was the only child-like thing about her. In repose, her face looked lined and tired. Her skin was brown from too many hours tanning, and her big breasts were like some kind of defiant statement in the sexless green hospital gown. An angry red mark outlined one cheek – it looked sore and puffy and Lou tried to decide if it was from an assault or a burn. She was unused to seeing her mother without make-up, and, combined with the tubes that were taped to her nose and mouth, and the others attached to the veins in her arms, she seemed fragile.
Sharni squeezed Lou’s arm from behind, and Lou could feel the love and compassion her best friend was trying to load into the gesture. ‘Maybe I should grab us coffee?’
Lou nodded and looked at Gage.
‘I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘If that’s okay? The doc’s going to be by in a bit, and I told Dad I’d keep him posted.’
Lou should have told Gage he didn’t need to stay; should have said she’d catch him up later. But she didn’t want to. While he was there, she wasn’t alone with Skye. ‘He’s …?’
‘In another room,’ Gage confirmed, his lips tight.
Sweet lord, what had those two been up to last night?
Lou marshalled her senses. A middle-aged woman in a blue uniform was fussing with the tubes and machines connected to Skye. She looked up as they entered and gave them the kind of smile usually reserved for weddings and debutante balls. ‘Louise Samuels,’ she said. ‘Look at you, so pretty.’
Lou searched her memory desperately, smiling hard at the other woman. Luckily, the nurse wasn’t the type to take offence.
‘Well, it’s been twenty years,’ she said jovially. ‘And while you haven’t changed that much, I sure as hell have.’ She gestured at her generous body, filling out the uniform. ‘Wish I could have made it last night, but I had a shift.’ She waved her hands at the little room. ‘Good job, can’t afford to be too choosy in this town, you know. Specially in the drought.’
Lou kept smiling, hoping she’d get a clue soon. Something about the woman’s voice and sweet, lively manner was starting to ring a bell in her subconscious.
‘Oh sorry, Lou,’ the nurse said, finishing her ministrations at the machines and turning straight-on. Lou saw she was hugely pregnant. ‘Does this help?’ The nurse struck a pose, and affected a perfect Cockney accent as she sang, ‘Just you wait, ’Enry ’Iggins, just you wait.’
Lou had to stop herself squealing. ‘Edie!’
The nurse wrapped Lou in as tight a hug as her huge belly would allow. ‘Yep, I was the best Eliza Doolittle Stone Mountain High ever saw,’ she said. ‘Welcome back, darl.’ She stood back and considered Lou carefully. ‘You okay?’
‘I dunno,’ Lou said dully. She gestured at the bed. ‘How bad is she?’
Edie pursed her lips and flicked a stray corner of bedsheet efficiently. ‘Not great,’ she said briskly. ‘The doctor’ll be along soon enough.’ She paused, and looked at Gage. ‘What do you know, Lou?’
Lou shrugged. ‘Not much.’
‘Mmm,’ Edie said shortly, gesturing at Gage. ‘Mr Strong Silent Type didn’t fill you in?’
Lou shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to know, honestly.’
‘Prescription meds,’ she said shortly. ‘Lots.’
‘Was it …?’ For some reason, the thought seemed too awful. All the rest of it, sure. But not that. Not a cop-out. Why should Skye get a cop-out, when Lou never could?
Edie seemed to read her mind. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We don’t think so. An accident. She uses them, the pills, to keep her balance.’ Edie made a gesture. ‘Up, down; not too up, not too down.’ She patted Lou’s arm. ‘She just got the cocktail wrong this time.’
Lou breathed out slowly.
‘But you need to know, darl, it’s serious. She royally fucked herself this time.’
Lou didn’t want to know. She wanted to stick her fingers in her ears and sing la la la la. Gage stepped forwards and stood close to her. He didn’t embrace her, didn’t reach out for her, just stood so close behind her that his tummy pressed lightly against her back. If she fell, or even sagged, he’d catch her.
‘This time?’
Edie was standing pursing her lips and then she clucked her tongue like she’d decided
something. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘There’s been other times. But it’s worse this time, and of course with the fire –’
Gage tensed behind her and Lou searched Edie’s face. ‘Fire?’
This time Gage did touch her. He reached out and turned her around by her shoulders. His hands burned into her skin like he was trying to send her some kind of unspoken message, but Lou was buggered if she could decode it.
‘I didn’t want to say,’ he said, his voice deep and even. She had heard him use that voice before, working with animals. Was that what she looked like, a frightened, confused animal? ‘Not right away.’ He looked across to Edie, and Lou was sure she saw a plea in his eyes. ‘One step at a time.’
Edie nodded, as though this was the most natural approach in the world. ‘Yep,’ she agreed, ‘plenty of time for all that. Cops’ll be along later.’
Lou’s knees buckled and she looked longingly at the hard chairs arranged by the window. Gage offered her an arm and she took it gratefully, feeling like an old woman as she leaned hard on him and limped to the window. She sagged into the chair, wondering vaguely whether she should fish in her bag for some more pills, and as she did, the curtain partitioning the little space billowed, and a figure became trapped in it. Edie started to pull the curtain from the new arrival with clucks of disapproval.
‘Good heavens,’ she said, stepping back and revealing the visitor. ‘It’s like Grand Central here this morning.’
Lou studied the man who’d just entered the room in his usual bungling style. Floppy grey hair hung lazily over his eyes, framing a square and interesting face. He was wearing his usual uniform of grey pants and navy blue shirt, arranged neatly on a frame made shorter than it was from habitual stooping to greet the smaller folk of the world. Her father. A wide grin, entirely inappropriate to the circumstances, lit up his face as he saw Lou.
‘Sweetheart,’ he almost yelled, crossing the room in three long strides before plucking her out of her chair and wrapping his arms around her. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you swore to never’ – he made the quote marks with his long fingers – ‘“come back to this degenerate shithole again”.’ He continued to beam and didn’t seem the least bit offended as he dropped Lou back in her chair. But his body stilled as he took in Gage and nodded curtly at him. ‘Gage,’ he said. Then he spied Edie. ‘Well, hello Mrs Macfarlane,’ he boomed, crossing the room to pat her belly in what seemed to Lou to be an overly familiar way. ‘How’s the pudding cooking?’
Lou cringed, the kind of cringe only your parents can inspire.
But Edie seemed unperturbed; in fact she beamed back at him. ‘Almost done,’ she confirmed brightly. ‘Thank Christ.’
The mayor put on a more serious face as he continued to address Edie, gesturing to the bed. His voice took on a gentler tone, the one Lou knew was reserved solely for the bed’s occupant. ‘And how is she now, sweetheart?’
Edie made a so-so gesture with her right hand. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said quietly. ‘But the doctor’ll be along soon enough to talk to you all.’
After Edie bustled efficiently out of the room, it felt strangely crowded, like the nurse had been a buffer, making things okay. Now she was gone, it was as though the space was too intimate for Lou, Gage and the mayor, who, after all these years, seemed practically strangers.
Gage moved first. ‘I might see how Sharni’s doing with those coffees,’ he said, shaking the mayor’s hand as he exited. Lou couldn’t help but notice that neither man met the other’s eye.
Her father loped over and took the seat beside her. ‘You okay, Lou Lou?’ His voice was the same as always – deep and sweet, like the amateur tenor he was. ‘How come you didn’t tell me you were coming to town?’
Lou shrugged. ‘Covert mission,’ she said. ‘In, out. Less witnesses the better.’
Her father studied her, his head on the side. ‘It’s not the town’s fault, you know, honey,’ he said gently, picking up one of her hands. ‘You used to love it here so much.’
But Lou would not do this. Not now. She would not restart this conversation with her father. The sun was streaming into her eyes, and surely that had to be the reason hot salt water was forming in them. Her mother was lying small and strangely mortal on the bed in front of her. There was going to be a whole lot of mess to clean up – fires and hospital bills and well, just stuff. Stone Mountain wasn’t about thinking, and feeling. It was just about doing. Fixing. And she didn’t care, she told herself, a shutter descending. Everyone had responsibilities and these were hers. The cost of absenting herself. She had cared. She had cared very much. She had been loyal to this town and all the pieces of her heart it owned.
And then that night. And it had taken all the carefully arranged understandings of her life and scattered them like ashes.
And now she only thought about this place when she had to clean up. Every time there was a mess. Stone Mountain wasn’t about dancing, or eating beef, or being kissed by wild boys against old trees, imagining a different life. It wasn’t about playing delicious what-ifs and wondering at your choices.
Stone Mountain was about paying your dues. Remembering your obligations. And trying not to go under in the process. It was about closing your eyes against the bitter bite of memories that never stayed away, no matter how long you did. It was a place you only thought about when you had to – to clean up someone else’s mess.
Skye’s mess.
The doctor reminded Lou of a woman she had seen on a documentary about saints in Africa; perhaps there was something about her long-suffering smile and her thin, grey bun. She remembered Sharni telling her about Matt’s cosmetic surgeon back in Sydney – all teeth and tan and terrifying bonhomie. This woman was the antithesis of that. She was about the same age as Skye, but her gently lined face looked as though it had never seen an exfoliant, and she wore only a simple navy dress, belted at the waist – no white coat – and Crocs, and smelled of 4711 and mothballs. Lou didn’t know her; she must be new. And by ‘new’, she meant arriving some time in the last twenty years. She gave Lou a smile like a nuclear sunrise.
Lou liked her immediately.
‘So,’ the doctor said, settling herself on a little stool by the blinking machines and beaming at Lou and her father. ‘I’m Dr Martha O’Brien, and you must be the famous Louise. Of course I know the mayor.’ She nodded at Lou’s father and that incandescent smile ramped up another notch. ‘Gary.’
Lou groaned inwardly. In their own ways, both her parents were irresistible to other people – her mother had a sunny, busty, in-your-face charm she could turn on and off at the drop of a hat; her father had a clever, clueless, lovable puppy way that utterly confused him. She wondered what ‘the famous Louise’ meant. Famous because her dad boasted about her all the time? Famous because she left and never came back? So many possible reasons.
The doctor flicked open a chart clipped to the end of the bed. ‘I’m a specialist from Goonabarraga. I’ve been seeing Skye, outside of here.’ She gestured to the little cubicle. ‘They asked me to come and consult, given the circumstances.’ She chewed her lip as she read. ‘Now let’s see. She’s in the ward now, so she’s stable.’
Lou nodded, wondering exactly what had happened, and how bad it had been, and what treatment Skye was getting, and which question to ask first. She took a deep breath, and watched as the doctor settled her face into expectant listening, but the questions all crossed over each other and started a war in her brain, where they got mixed up with all the confusing emotions of this place.
The doctor studied Lou, then reached over and patted her hand. Lou noticed her eyes were a surprising shade of blue – dark and lovely. She wanted to crawl into this woman’s lap and have her pat her head and murmur the things mothers surely murmured when the world became too much. She couldn’t know for sure, but she had to believe some of them did things like that.
‘Okay,’ Dr O’Brien said, chewing her lip. ‘Shall we start at the beginning?’
Lou
nodded, then realised she needed to start saying something, lest this woman think she’d been struck dumb. ‘Yes, please.’ Her voice came out disconcertingly reedy.
‘Good,’ the doctor said efficiently. ‘An excellent idea.’ And she beamed at them again.
‘Excellent,’ Gary repeated, seeming as mesmerised by the doctor’s warmth and efficiency as Lou.
Her father’s words seemed to remind the doctor of his presence. ‘Gary, you might need to step out,’ she said. ‘Lou, you’re down as the emergency contact, authorised to receive updates and discuss treatments.’ She looked up from the pages and studied Lou’s father quickly. ‘That’s unusual,’ she said to both of them. Then she glanced at Lou, frowning. ‘You live in Sydney?’
Lou nodded, well versed in this conversation. ‘Yes, but I tend to …’ She paused, looking for the right words to explain things to this woman. ‘… Manage things from there.’
‘Mmm.’ The doctor’s tone suggested the situation wasn’t entirely satisfactory but that she would have more to say about it later.
Lou’s father stood, giving her a quick and awkward hug as he exited, managing to twist himself again in the curtain as he did.
The doctor barely registered his departure. ‘Right.’ She flipped pages quickly, and then started tapping the chart with a stubby pencil. ‘So I see there have been some other incidents over the years.’
‘Yes.’ Lou told herself not to think about any of them, just to stay in this moment. She was not eight years old anymore. She could take care of herself, even if her mum was high or passed out. She didn’t need to be afraid.
‘Okay, so this time wasn’t so different from the others. No suggestion this was deliberate; just a mishap. Prescription drugs this time though.’ She began to chew on the pencil. ‘That’s different.’ She glanced up. ‘Usually alcohol or recreational drugs?’