Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  Harry says goodbye, doesn’t promise anything, and wishes him luck. Adam doesn’t ask or expect anything. He shakes Harry’s hand, and tries to give him his coat back. Harry tells him to keep it for now – he can get it back later.

  One the way home Harry and Louisa are lost in their own thoughts. Louisa shivers suddenly, and Harry turns up the heater.

  ‘I’m so proud of you, Harry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even see him there.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Harry is in the backyard when the phone rings, playing with the dog. He just makes it to the phone before the answering machine cuts in.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Harry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My son asked me to call, from the hospital. Adam.’ It is the mother of the boy from the bridge. She sounds exuberant.

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, how is he?’

  ‘He’s doing so much better. They’re keeping him in to monitor his medication, so that’s a good thing. He said you took him to the hospital and you and your wife sat with him until he was seen. Four or five hours.’

  ‘That long? Yes, it must have been about that.’

  ‘We were away in Sydney you know or we would have come. We love our son. We love him so very much.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’s had a long battle with a depressive illness.’

  ‘Yes, I thought it might be something like that.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say it enough, but thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to us. To him. Thank God for people like you.’

  Harry is feeling embarrassed by her effusion and the obvious emotion in her voice. He is surprisingly moved. He clears his throat and mumbles something.

  ‘No worries.’

  She is talking on, telling him the story of her son’s life. Apparently Adam has been feeling down for a while and his psychiatrist had just put him on some sort of new tablets. Now he is back on his old medication which seems safer than the other stuff he was on. She blames the new stuff for this latest incident.

  ‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ she says. It’s the second time she’s mentioned God. Oh well, each to her own. ‘Of all people, you were the right one to be there for him. He liked talking with you, talking about his music. It was very good of you. He said he felt a real sort of connection. His father hasn’t been supportive of him doing anything artistic, but I think he’s realising now. It’s important to Adam. He doesn’t have many friends.’ Her voice is trailing away.

  Harry wonders if he should offer to visit. His instinct is to back off, but where has that ever got him? What the hell? Besides the boy still has his jacket.

  ‘I might pop in on him,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, would you?’ she says, and the relief in her voice clinches the deal. ‘That would mean so much, so much to him. He’s getting moved to Alma Street at Fremantle Hospital, so if you ask at the front they’ll tell you where to go. He’ll be there for at least two more weeks. Oh, and we’ve had your coat dry-cleaned. I’ll bring it to the hospital, or I could bring it round to your home if you’d prefer. I’ll need your address.’

  ‘Bring it to the hospital. I’ll probably go the day after tomorrow then.’

  ‘I won’t let him know,’ she says, leaving Harry an escape clause. Harry makes up his mind that he will go for sure.

  ‘You can surprise him,’ she says. ‘God bless you Harry.’ And she hangs up.

  After Harry puts down the phone he returns to the backyard to find Buster stretched out in the long grass, soaking up the sun, a broken tennis ball lying discarded next to him. He rolls on his back for a tummy scratch. For the first time in a long time Harry realises that he is almost happy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Louisa is ready to embrace the possibility of the illness, almost to the point of looking forward to it. She has thought it through, imagined it and observed its effects in others. She has known people who have had the diagnosis and coped well, many recovering and being stronger for the experience. She’s heard of people claiming to have found meaning in illness and saying they have taken something positive from it, a joy of living that has changed their lives. Louisa tells herself, and whoever else is listening, that she is prepared to change her life regardless. She is unconvincing. She tries too hard. What if this is her time to see Tom again? This might be her time to see Tom again.

  Imagining illness in the abstract is easier than going through with it. Some have died, bravely she supposes, more bravely than she would. She thinks of a friend. Barbara. Louisa took her a mango from the garden and later her husband found it on the hospice bedside table and fed it to her. At the funeral he said she ate with gusto. Would Harry feed her like that or would he abandon her? Some do. His instinct for beauty, or to protect himself from hurt, might be greater than his concern for her. Or he perhaps he doesn’t care for himself. Why should he care for her then? Her mind is bouncing around.

  Harry should have stayed a musician. He should have grabbed his chance with both hands. He should have seen where the music would take him. His saxophone is still sitting there and Louisa has never seen him pick it up. She doesn’t know that part of him at all. She would have liked to have known him as a musician. One night when they had gone out for dinner together, they met Ziggy from the old line-up. ‘The guy’s a genius,’ Ziggy said to Louisa. Then, ‘Do you still have a blow? We should catch up,’ to Harry. ‘We’re going through a bit of a revival. We’ve got a few gigs lined up and we could do with you. It would be great to have you back.’ He gave Harry his card. Harry was thinking about it, Louisa could see that. But he didn’t act. They never did catch up.

  This musician side is a part of himself that he won’t share with her. If he really is that good, that could be the meaning of her illness – to get him to play again. He could give her that gift. He could play for her. She could leave him with that. That could be the pay-off. His life could be changed for the better and he could start to be the person he really is. If he could cope with losing her he could benefit from her death, but would he cope? He probably thinks he would, but really?

  Would she? She has been avoiding details, but now she fills them in. How would she deal with pain, loss of a breast, loss of her hair? She imagines herself in the shower, hair on the floor, a scarred hole where her breast used to be, her arm heavy, red and swollen. She tries to imagine the nausea, the light-headedness. She begins to feel ill. She stops.

  No, she decides. I don’t want it. I certainly don’t want that.

  On the day of her tests Harry is called in to work, so Louisa drives to the hospital by herself. When she arrives she is glad, because no one else has brought a friend. How would it look if she’d brought Harry? It would look as if she were expecting bad news. Bad news might inevitably follow.

  The women are mostly around Louisa’s age. One or two look younger, by quite a bit. That would be hard. At least she’s had a good run. In some parts of the world, she would be considered a very old woman.

  The breast clinic at the hospital is, appropriately enough, undergoing renovation. There is banging and drilling, and the walls are a patchwork of old and new. She has brought some old scans with her, and leaves them with a nurse. Later, over a tube of cold jelly, the doctor congratulates Louisa for her initiative.

  ‘That’s a very intelligent thing to do,’ she says. ‘That will save us some work.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Louisa. She had just been following instructions after all. Maybe people aren’t always as compliant as she is.

  After the form-filling, the nurse takes her into a curtained cubicle and asks her to change.

  ‘Remove your bra and your top and put this on,’ she says, handing Louisa a floral one-size-fits-all. ‘Then pop all your things in the basket.’

  It is a small red shopping basket, the kind you pick up at the supermarket for ten items or fewer. Or is it twelve? Ten or twelve? The people behind you get annoyed and resort to shopper rage. Ten or t
welve? She should remember. Different stores, different rules. Sometimes it’s as few as three. Does a number of the same article count as one or many?

  ‘Nice and cheerful,’ the nurse says, referring to the top, and not to Louisa. ‘When you are finished you can come out and sit on one of the chairs just outside. Bring your basket along with you.’

  ‘Like Little Red Riding Hood,’ says Louisa, and the nurse laughs.

  ‘Yes, all you need is a red cape. Now, are you okay?’ she says. ‘Do you have everything you need?’

  ‘Sure do,’ says Louisa.

  She changes and finds a seat near a woman older than her. The woman nodded at her on the way in. Louisa picks up a magazine and flicks through. She can feel that the other woman is nervous and wants to talk, so she puts the magazine down to make herself available.

  ‘Hello,’ says the woman. She has some sort of accent.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is this your first time here?’ says the woman.

  ‘Yes,’ says Louisa. ‘I did have to go somewhere else once before though. It was fine. What about you?’

  ‘No, my first time,’ says the woman.

  Louisa has the feeling that they are both going to be all right, but she says nothing. What if they’re not? She smiles at the woman in what she hopes is a reassuring manner.

  ‘Ah well,’ says the woman and she sighs. ‘Nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ says Louisa. ‘But it is usually all right. I looked up the website, and apparently in most cases it turns out not to be cancer.’

  She’s prattling on without thinking. She shouldn’t have said cancer. It sounds like a swearword here.

  A woman emerges from a curtained cubicle, dressed in her own clothes. She has been crying. They wait for her to pass by and disappear into one of the other rooms, before speaking again.

  ‘They said I could bring someone,’ said the woman, ‘but I thought I’d come on my own.’

  ‘Do you have any children?’ Louisa asks.

  ‘Two,’ says the woman, and she tells Louisa their ages.

  ‘That’s quite a gap,’ says Louisa, thinking aloud, and then wishes she hadn’t.

  ‘Two of my children died,’ the woman says.

  She doesn’t elaborate. She could be a refugee from one of those countries where they disappear people. Families have to carry on.

  ‘Oh,’ says Louisa. ‘That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’

  The woman smiles and shakes her head. ‘What can you do?’ she says.

  Sometimes it’s better to say nothing. She could mention Tom, but it is so public, lined up on straight-backed chairs with hammering and drilling going on in the background and people pretending to read magazines.

  Louisa wonders if the woman is half hoping that her result will be positive. Is she the only one here with mixed feelings? The woman is called into the privacy of the treatment room shortly afterwards.

  ‘Here we go,’ she says.

  The woman emerges after a while. She is full of smiles and gives the thumbs up.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘I’m going home now. Good luck!’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Louisa.

  A volunteer worker is taking orders for tea and coffee. The women order their cups of tea and mind each other’s as one by one they are called in and come out, some to sit again and wait, and some to get dressed and go home. There is a connection by virtue of their potential situation, their gender, and the colour-coded pink and green floral uniform that they have been given on arrival. Everyone is looking casually cheerful and the atmosphere is one of waiting at the hairdressers, rather than at a clinic where the outcome could be years of difficult treatment, surgery and perhaps even death.

  The woman opposite Louisa now is texting. A pretty young woman, who looks like she could be in her twenties, is devouring copies of women’s magazines. A very large woman of about fifty, with socks rolled down around her ankles, shows off the novelty ring tone on her mobile phone. Everyone joins in the joke, until she is taken away.

  Louisa is called in for another mammogram to compare with the one that has brought her here, and is sent out to sit again. She orders coffee. It arrives. She drinks it. People come and go. She waits. She takes a toilet break, comes back, flicks through a magazine, waits some more. Finally she is called in for an ultrasound. They have to examine both breasts, because they both show some sort of abnormality that needs further investigation. One looks like a cyst, but the other one is more suspicious.

  ‘I’m not liking the look of that,’ says the doctor. ‘That looks like flecks of calcium. It’s probably just a fibro adenoma, but we’ll need to get a closer look.’

  ‘I had a fibro adenoma before,’ said Louisa. ‘It could be the same one. I’ve got my previous scans there.’

  This is when the doctor compliments her on her foresight. After that, things move quickly.

  If I’d told them that in the first place I could have avoided all of this, Louisa thinks. I thought they already knew.

  So they check and measure and decide that the fibro adenoma has stayed the same, and that the cyst is bigger, but that won’t kill her.

  ‘You’re in the clear,’ they tell her.

  It is all something of an anti-climax, but, then again, anticlimaxes are underrated.

  When Louisa walks from the hospital she is greeted by winter sunshine. Her day is free. She can do as she likes. She drives to a shopping centre, orders lunch at a coffee shop, and sits for a full hour reading yet another women’s magazine before heading home to an empty house.

  Louisa walks from room to room wanting something, but unsure as to what it is. She decides to ring Meredith, although she will be at work. It doesn’t matter, she thinks, I’ll leave a message that I rang.

  The phone has barely engaged when Meredith picks it up, her voice heavy with flu.

  ‘Mum?’ She sounds surprised, even pleased, her defences down. ‘Is there anything wrong?’

  ‘No, darling. I just felt like giving you a call. Are you sick?’

  ‘A bit of a cold, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh. Look after yourself. Go to the doctor.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Can’t I just ring?’

  ‘Of course you can. Was there anything else?’

  Louisa tells her about the tests and the all-clear. There is silence at the other end of the phone. Meri says, ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘I am your daughter, you know.’

  This touches Louisa deeply and she finds it difficult to respond immediately.

  ‘Actually, Mum,’ says Meredith, ‘I’m glad you rang today.’ She hesitates and then she says, ‘I’ve been thinking, we never really talk enough when you ring. I should ring you more. It would be nice to be able to just ring up and talk sometimes.’

  ‘Really?’ says Louisa, amazed. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about Tom,’ Meredith says. ‘I don’t know.’

  Louisa waits but she doesn’t elaborate. She realises that the ball is in her court. Her heart is beating erratically, warning her, but she plunges in anyway.

  ‘I’ve been thinking too,’ she says. ‘I’ve been thinking of all the things I did wrong, not just what happened to Tom, to all of us, but how I should have been a better mum for you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All the terrible things I put you through.’

  ‘All the things you put us through? You didn’t put us through anything. Well no more than most parents I guess; I don’t know. Dad – he’s another story. I’m not a kid any more. What things?’

  ‘Leaving your father. What happened to Tom. I made so many mistakes. I could have done, should have done much better.’

  ‘No, Mum.’ Her voice sounds some frustration. ‘No. You know I loved him too. He was my baby brother. But he made his own choices. There were lots – plenty – of times when h
e could have made better decisions. He even talked about it. He knew the risks. But he didn’t want to. We ... we all have to live our own lives. We all have to make our own decisions, otherwise what is the point of anything?’

  She pauses here to give Louisa an opportunity to speak, but Louisa can’t think for a moment. Finally she says, ‘He was only a baby.’

  Meredith almost scoffs. ‘He was eighteen, Mum. Yes, he was young, but he grew up fast, just like me. He was old enough to be responsible for his decisions. He could have thought about what it would do to us, to his family. I could have my brother now. I’m sorry, but after what he did. Anyway, it’s too late now. And as for Dad, leaving him was the best thing you ever did. What would our lives have been if you’d stayed? There’s no way you could have stopped him. Neither could I. No one can make an alcoholic stop drinking. He has to choose that for himself. He would have just got worse. Actually he was getting worse. I thought if I was good enough he’d stop.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. I always thought it was my fault.’

  ‘But you were a child.’

  ‘I suppose so. It didn’t feel like that back then. Then I used to pray you would leave him, and I felt so bad for wanting it. We’ve both got to stop this. Blaming ourselves, Tommy, even Dad. It’s not healthy. It’s not doing us any good.’

  ‘No. You’re right. I know you’re right,’ Louisa says. ‘I haven’t been thinking clearly.’ She is speaking automatically.

  There is a long silence at the other end of the phone. She knew it was too good to last.

  ‘I should–’

  ‘No, look Mum. I’m a grown woman now. I’m thirty. It’s funny, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are, it’s hard to think of your parents as just ordinary people.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I feel proud of how strong you are.’

  ‘Really?’ Louisa is barely able to respond. Her eyes fill.