“What?” I nearly drop my cup.
“That’s what I mean. You don’t expect, do you? She says there’s pamphlets in the house on this HIV thing — sticky beaking, she’s always had a good nose, Sharon. But a pamphlet doesn’t mean it’s you who’s got it, does it? I mean, does it?”
I want to shake her now. Both of them! I want to run out to the kitchen and lift Sharon by her red hair and demand that she tell me everything, every little last thing. But I’m busy trying to get my tongue around a question and I’m too slow, the woman goes right on talking.
“She’s got this idea it’s the little one, she won’t say why. I suppose it’s possible. Poor wee soul. Her Daddy could be a homosexual, he lives in America and they’ve got AIDS all over America. Well, I’ve told Sharon to wash her hands plenty, just in case.”
“Mum!” Sharon has come into the room. “You shouldn’t gossip to people!”
“That’s not very nice, Sharon. Mr Rawleigh isn’t people, and what else do I have to do, stuck here? I only said you thought —”
“I wasn’t serious.”
“If you weren’t serious you shouldn’t say.”
Sharon’s bigger than her Mum and she stands over her like a meter maid with a parking ticket. Then they notice I haven’t said anything for quite a stretch and they both turn round and look at me, waiting for me to get my tongue into gear. I’m shaken, I didn’t want to hear anything like this, truth or fiction. I get busy collecting up my sample case then I turn round and smile as wide as I can so they won’t think they’ve shocked me; I thank her for the tea and take myself off. My legs feel loose like they might come off at the knees.
I don’t know what to make of it, not really. Sharon isn’t too silly, she’s brighter than her mum if you ask me, I wonder what she really knows. She shouldn’t have told her mum if she’d wanted it kept secret that she noses about. I can’t bear to think of Jania’s father tainting her, if that’s what’s happened. Vile. Ugh. Or Mummy, perhaps that’s what carried her mother off, a drug user, maybe that’s it, a filthy junkie poisoning my Jania with her filthy milk. No!
I sit in the car trying to fit the damned key into the lock like I’ve been guzzling gin not tea. I hold on to the steering wheel and suddenly I’m just so mad I grip it in my two hands and twist it — aargh! — till it’s all out of shape. I don’t know how I did that, I didn’t know I was so strong. It’s harder when I try to straighten the wheel so that I can drive off. It’s still a bit buckled but who cares. I put my head down on the wheel and my nose is running as if I’m crying.
WHEN THE GUILLOTINE fell, slicing lives like bacon during the French Revolution, the old women of Paris sat with their knitting needles, gossiping. Where is Esther when the guillotine falls on Jania? That depends when it can be said to have fallen — when the note was entered on her medical chart? — when the doctor lifted the telephone and asked Esther to come in for a chat? Or when she sat quietly in the orange vinyl chair, receiving the news she has prepared herself for but is nevertheless unprepared to hear. She might sit quietly but her ears ring like warring gunfire, a curious reaction that leads her to miss a good deal of what the doctor is explaining to her. She has to ask to have it all repeated, which the doctor fortunately seems patient enough to do. He must be a busy doctor but today he is kind and careful, so much so that Esther feels tears of gratitude edging their way upwards. Supposing it were Esther who was going to die — could it feel worse than this? She wonders at herself, the reluctant grandmother, and then remembers she has yet to tell Rex and Rex is so bad at illness. And then there is Martin, who telephoned last night.
“Oh, God. Sorry!”
“That’s all right, take your time. You’ll have questions and you won’t think of them all right away. I’ll put you in touch with a support group who’ll be a lot of help to you. Do contact them. What you have to remember is that Jania isn’t sick at all. This isn’t an infection as such, merely a positive reaction indicating antibodies. She may never get sick at all, certainly she could have years of health ahead of her. And who knows —”
“Research,” Esther says in a voice like a cracked bell. “They haven’t got far in ten years have they?”
“On the contrary, we might not have found a cure but we’ve come a long way. There’ve been some very useful breakthroughs. I’m putting Jania on medication straight away. It’s standard procedure now. This is the syrup form.” He writes.
“Her father will sue the hospital.”
“Yes, well that’s not our business, fortunately. But in every other way we’re here to do all we can for the family. Now, is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”
“Do I have to tell them at her school?”
“You don’t have to tell anyone at all, that’s up to you. You might feel it’s fairer to let them know, you might feel it’s not fair to Jania if you do. People can still be very cruel where their own health feels threatened. Where does the father fit in? Will he want her over there?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. She has no idea at all how Martin will react; he said something over the phone yesterday that leads her to suspect he is planning to remarry and nervous of how this will upset his plans. Humans are so selfish, she is selfish, but surely dogs and cats can be selfish too, stealing each other’s jellimeat? Her mind veers and swoops, at one moment practical, making lists of what she must do, the next moment wobbling off into philosophical meanderings, riding thoughts as clumsy as pennyfarthing bicycles. How, how will she behave to Jania with this knowledge in her head? How will she comfort a bad dream? When Prue was a child, sickening from some childhood illness, Esther had tortured herself with the possibility of a terminal condition, and every time she had been gratefully wrong. Until the accident. At least that was a clean death, as hunters say of their kill, and in this way easier to accept. “She never knew”, “Instantaneous” — comforting phrases. Nothing clean about the way Jania might leave the world. A dirty trick.
It wasn’t so long ago that she was watching that child, Eve, the little AIDS heroine, on their TV set, filled with admiration for her courage. Television viewers around the country went into mourning when little Eve lost her battle and died. That’s all very well but Esther doesn’t want her own grandchild to be a media heroine, to need courage. Moreover, she doesn’t want to need that sort of courage herself, she doesn’t want to be the public guardian of a doomed child; she will fail, Esther is a despicable coward. Rex will feel the same.
The guillotine has overshadowed Donald. Esther has scarcely noticed his departure to Auckland for the interview and has more or less forgotten he is due back this afternoon, probably with the map of his new future tucked in his wallet. Her distraction won’t have escaped Donald, he has already remarked on it aggrievedly, which is unfair considering the support he has been to her over Jania’s tests, almost no support at all. HIV isn’t something you can joke about and Donald’s support in the past has usually taken the form of jokes, teasing her out of depression, holding up her own cartoon version of her life for her to laugh at. Perhaps his jokes will sustain a new mistress in Auckland. What sort of jokes does he erect to support his wife? She has no idea. His marriage is not her business. Donald keeps his life in usefully separated compartments, a habit that Esther understands and shares. Work, home, play: each one a separate file on a separate computer disk, there is no crossover. That’s what they used to say about government departments, but look what’s happened now — Inland Revenue can shop you to Social Welfare can shop you to the Immigration Department; it’s all got mixed up. Messy. She shouldn’t complain when Donald refuses to play the husband role, that wasn’t written into their private contract. But how about friend? He is mostly friend, best friend she had believed. Are they right about the necessary deficiencies in a friendship between a man and a woman? She has been singularly unfriendly about his planned career move, and he has conveniently switched off from her news bulletins about Jania. They are letting each other down
as friend. Is there anyone Esther hasn’t let down?
Esther drives home through the city, noticing the skyline is coming apart much as her own life seems to be doing. Great gaps have appeared where once there were solid buildings, richly stocked with sale goods, brightly lit after sun down. The one-way system leads her past a parking lot like a derelict bomb site and this is what she feels — derelict.
At the dairy on the corner she picks up today’s news, two litres of milk and a packet of pastel-coloured jellybabies for Jania — then worries that they will end up each with a name and personality, sticky, doomed citizens of the metropolis on the bedroom floor.
WALLACE
SOME PEOPLE COUNT sheep to get off to sleep, bloody silly if you ask me. What I do is go over my product list — vanilla essence, lemon essence, rum essence — chanting like in primary school. I don’t sleep now, haven’t been able to get off for more than five minutes for weeks and yet it feels like I’m sleeping. When I walk down the street for my newspaper and chocolate, I’m dreaming on my feet. I just lift up a supply of Bounty Bars, Kango, Picnic, not really choosing just filling my hands up, and shove them at the girl by the till.
I mean, what can I do about it? Find out it’s true, what use is that? Find out it’s not true … if only. I think it is true. They’ve damaged my little pixie. All those nice nice people who are supposed to keep her safe, her family, what have they been doing? Letting her get scars on her neck and God knows what else? And now this! She might never grow up — well, that’s no bad thing, I can’t bear to think of her swelling up into one of those tarts like the girl behind the counter who won’t smile at me, like Mother whose job has always been to spoil my fun. I can’t bear to think of that soft white skin turning to rubber, her little pink ears sagging like an old pig’s. But I can’t bear either to think of her sick, not breathing right, her eyes — those big eyes.
I don’t trust them. They’ll put her away in a hospital bed somewhere, out of sight out of mind, like when I had my penicillin reaction. They didn’t need to shove me into hospital that time just because my skin hurt, but I looked like a Red Skin, they said, ugly as well as clumsy; stick him out of sight with his funny skin and his funny tongue. I wouldn’t let that happen to her. I don’t know what to do. Yet. I’m thinking.
I think about that sparrow in the coffee shop and I think about my dream. I think hard and bring back the yellow canary like a light bulb dazzling her little face, and I nearly get the feeling back as well, the special feeling swimming in and out of me, leaving me washed out and weak.
I can’t go to the mall and buy a coffee and catch a sparrow in my hat, if I had a hat, which I don’t. But there’s a pet shop near the supermarket. Pet shops sell birds. I don’t even think about it any more, the next thing I know I’m there, in the shop, as if a magic genie wished me there. I can’t find a canary! It’s ridiculous but there isn’t one canary in the shop Never mind, I don’t make a fuss, I choose a budgie, a little yellow budgerigar, nearly yellow, as bright as I can find, and I pay for it with my Visa card, the bird and the cage, not a big cage, all I can afford. I don’t know why I’m doing this, I just have to have a bird, not for Jania, for me, for the dream. And I go to the coffeeshop with my cage and sit there, at the table where they were sitting that time, on Jania’s chair, I hope. Why would they change the chairs around? I sit on her chair and I can feel the warmth of her little bottom heating me up. Nosy people pass by and make remarks about the budgie: “Does it talk?” Of course, it doesn’t talk, you silly old fart. It isn’t a parrot. But perhaps it will talk to me, perhaps I’ve bought myself a mate?
I’m feeling pretty good, nearly wide awake, when I see them come in, Jania’s grandma and — no, not him, wait for it — another man! No Jania — well, there wouldn’t be, would there, not if that woman’s up to no good, and the way they carry on with each other they look like something more than just good friends. Slut. And I really thought she was a good woman, even if she’s no good for Jania. I sit up straight and wait for them to look at me, I want to give her a fright, she deserves it — I could cook her goose, couldn’t I? I’m the Rawleigh’s man, I suppose she thinks that’s no one, not a real person, like the bus driver, not really there, but I am! What am I saying, I don’t like that Rex, he’s a creep, serve him right if she’s cheating. I blink my eyes at her, waiting, then I get up, leaving my fudge cake behind and half a cup of coffee, and walk right by them swinging my budgie — and they don’t even look up! They can’t see anything except each other, they’re talking flat stick. I go back for my fudge cake, wrapping it up in a serviette, and try again but no result. They just won’t turn their stupid heads, I might as well be invisible. This time they’ve raised their voices, it’s an argument, this is interesting, my budgie could learn some bad language from this. And I thought they were two lovebirds! She bangs her chair back, looking like a tantrum, face all squeezed, and wags her bum getting out of the coffee shop in a hurry.
Then the man looks at me, too late, and makes a staring face at me as if I’m some sort of pervert eavesdropper. I don’t care, I go after Esther and I catch her up by the escalator, she nearly knocks into me. I find I’m touching her sleeve and I mutter some sort of greeting.
She’s angry. “What do you want?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you looked upset — that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“I am upset.” She calms down, I’ve made her feel guilty, after all what have I done? I’m innocent. “It’s all right, I’m sorry.”
Both of us sorry.
“Perhaps you need a drink? I thought I might go and have a whisky in the wine bar.”
She laughs at me, “They don’t sell whisky in wine bars, at least, I don’t think so.”
“Wine then. A glass of wine?”
“Is that a budgie?”
“This? I just bought him for my little girl’s birthday.”
A sigh, that sound a woman makes before she gives in. “Oh, all right then. A drink could be what I need. Let’s do it. Just one, okay? Wallace, isn’t it?”
As if I’m no one special in her life, someone whose name she barely remembers. Doesn’t she know? It seems incredible that she doesn’t know.
REX HAS BEEN waiting at home for Esther, too long again. When he turns around to greet her there is no warmth in his face apart from that which rises from the oven grill.
She has to say something. “You’ll never guess what I’ve just been doing.” Brightly. She makes a great show of unpacking the bread and the cartons of milk. She is a stage-set wife, delivering rehearsed lines.
“Oh, yes?”
“Having a drink with the Rawleigh’s man.”
“You what? Why?”
“Because he asked me. I’d had this shitty day and we bumped into each other …”
“I told you he fancied you.”
“No you didn’t, you said that’s what I thought. Anyway, it wasn’t like that. He’d just bought this bird for his little girl and we got talking.”
“You and the bird,” Rex says, making a joke, but so heavily she nearly misses it.
“His little girl’s going to be nine.” As soon as she says this she knows why the information has stuck to her tongue. Jania. Jania is barely six and nine is a huge question mark. The question mark hovers between them and Rex can see it too. They stare at each other while the chops sizzle.
“What little girl?” Jania is suddenly in the room with them, a physical presence, which is so real it has a way of wiping out the new ghost that haunts them; that other Jania, ailing and sentenced, just doesn’t seem possible. “Whose girl?”
“Wallace — you know, the Rawleigh’s man. He’s got his little girl a budgie.”
Rex frowns at Esther — too late. He has an aversion to feathered things and is clearly nervous the child will put in an order. She does.
“I want a budgie. Can I have a budgie, Esther?”
“It isn’t really kind to shut them up,” Esther says diplomatically, know
ing how Rex feels. “How would you like to live in a cage?”
“But that’s where birds live.”
“No they don’t, they live in trees — should live in trees,” Rex growls.
“Is he cruel then?”
“Who?”
“That Wallace.”
“It’s all right for budgies, they’re bred in cages so they’re used to it,” Esther has to explain. “No, he’s not cruel, I expect he’s being kind, giving his little girl a present. Your grandad doesn’t like birds.”
“I want a budgie,” Jania says with a dangerous note in her voice. “I want a budgie.”
“I told you …”
“I want a budgie! Budgie! Budgie!” Jania yells.
“Don’t shout. We’ll see,” Esther says weakly.
“We won’t see,” Rex mutters, burns himself on the grill and curses.
“If you don’t get me a budgie I’ll …” Jania rummages in her repertoire of suitable threats. “I’ll wet the bed!”
“That’ll do, young lady. Go and wash your hands. Now!” Esther flings knives and forks on to the table, angry because Rex has contradicted her, because he had a right to contradict her, she has been weak. But it’s that much harder now to be firm, to deny the child. They mustn’t spoil her.
“I thought she’d been better lately,” she says to Rex. “Easier.”
“That’s because we give in.”
“She thinks Martin’s coming next week. Have you told her?”
Martin had telephoned on Friday and in the course of this told Jania he would be arriving in Auckland and renting a car to drive straight down to Wellington. Meanwhile he has contacted Rex again and postponed the trip until after Christmas, over a month away.
“People shouldn’t make promises to kids.”
“No. You mean like birds?”
“I said we’d see.”
Jania arrives back and watches warily, she can see they are still arguing. She hugs her shiny cushion against her chest, and while she watches her grumpy grandparents she buries her nose in it, eyes peering over the top.
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