The Last Time We Spoke

by Fiona Sussman

  Carla turned and followed Geoff robotically to the coffin. Blake, her pimply nephew, stood next to the casket with a bunch of irises in the crook of his arm. Jack and Blake had never got on, so why was he standing right beside Jack’s coffin, handing out the flowers? This was the funeral of her child. Blake was alive; Jack was dead. It should have been the other—She stopped herself mid thought. That she could think such a thing.

  Carla took a single stem and laid it on the simple blonde box. Geoff had suggested a more ornate coffin; Carla had remained firm on this at least.

  ‘Jack,’ she mouthed, her throat too tight to release any more than a soft distortion of his name. Then, flanked by Allan and Geoff, she stepped to one side, and friends and family filed forwards to pay their final respects. Soon iris stems were scattered over the coffin in purple chaos.

  Russell, Jack’s best friend, lingered at the coffin, his eyes red and his face puffy. He had his hand around the waist of a young woman with long auburn hair and eyes that were a catch-your-breath blue. She looked down quickly to avoid Carla’s gaze. Russell broke away and came over to Carla, crushing her in a clumsy embrace. ‘Mrs R, I’m …’

  As the last of the mourners filed out of the church, Geoff’s family and Carla were left alone for the final blessing. Then she was being ushered out into the startling white light of day.

  Two sallow undertakers dressed in death-black suits stood like sentries beside the hearse. They nodded solemnly, then made their way past Carla into the church. She felt a flash of panic. She couldn’t leave Jack alone with them. She wanted to shout, ‘Stop!’ She wanted to cradle her boy for one last time, feel his warm skin against hers, smooth his wild eyebrows and ruffle his hair. She wanted to cry and sob and scream. She wanted Kevin. Needed him to hold her close and chase away these horrible people. She hated them all.

  She looked back into the church. The casket stood beneath the stained-glass window, bathed in ecclesiastical sunlight.

  Her mind drifted to familiar scenes on television of women in war-torn lands weeping over disfigured corpses – faceless foreigners wailing and cursing and giving vent to their pain. How she longed for that freedom, to anonymously abandon herself in the full embrace of grief. But as Geoff helped her into the Jaguar and the door closed with an expensive thud, her pain was tidily contained.

  You realise you’ve just dashed your father’s dreams. Her last words to Jack had been in anger. Now regret was tattooed onto her heart.

  They gave her a sedative before the wake at Geoff and Mildred’s house, the two tiny white pills drying up any residue of emotion and cloaking everything in an even fog. At the house, she escaped to the bathroom and hid there for a while until someone outside pretended to cough, making their presence known.

  As she made her way back to the living room, Carla bumped into a couple who’d just arrived. She didn’t recognise them, but directed them towards the refreshments. Five minutes later, the couple realised, much to their embarrassment, that they were at the wrong function; they were meant to be at a birthday luncheon two doors down. For Carla, this bizarre incident was entirely in synchrony with the day. Nothing made sense. The funeral of her son was some crazy mistake.

  She floated through an afternoon of hushed voices and strained expressions, while people from some other life sipped lukewarm tea, scoffed club sandwiches, and spoke in carefully modulated tones as they complimented Geoff and Mildred on their spectacular view.

  Later, she persuaded Geoff to drop her at the hospital. ‘I’ll be fine. Really. I just need some time alone with Kevin. I hope you understand.’

  Since that awful night, her every moment had been filled, her every emotion moved on before it had had time to develop depth or meaning. Left to catch mere glimpses of her new reality, Carla now craved the solitude that would permit the particles to separate out and settle. She needed to take an inventory of her life, identify and more fully comprehend what had been taken from her and what left behind.

  Kevin lay similarly robbed of self by drugs that conspired to blanket his consciousness. His chest rose and fell with punctuated regularity as air was forced into his lungs and then squeezed out, each beep willing the next to follow. His wounds were healing, already mellowing the brutality and closing over the horror. Dried blood was less frightening than the glistening red stuff. The skin on Kevin’s temple had knitted together and his black bruises were dissipating to a lemony hue.

  Carla propped up a photograph on the monitor at the head of his bed – a picture of Kevin taken a few months earlier at a friend’s barbecue. His wry grin. His sturdiness. His glow. She wanted those tending to him to see the man, not simply the broken body. How could they possibly visualise his stature and command, his intellect and kindness, from just those skin-draped hollows? He looked so small and feeble lying there, connected to a power point.

  She drew the curtain around him, shutting out the misery of his Intensive Care bedfellows. His lips were dry and cracked, his mouth fetid. She leant down and kissed his forehead. He smelt of stale sweat. Then her tears were running down his cheeks, and it looked like he was the one crying.

  Lifting the cool white sheet covering him, she saw that he was still naked, his grey skin punctured and patched and interrupted by plastic. Even his limp penis was a shrivelled conduit for a tube. She grasped his left hand – the only part of him apparently spared in the beating – and held it up to her nose. But it no longer smelt of him, just of hospital.

  The doctors had encouraged her to speak to him. Read to him. But he couldn’t hear her, could he? And what would she say? She’d not tell him about Jack; it would finish him off. She couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps she’d never even get the chance. She bit her lip.

  ‘Mrs Reid.’ It was the young, already balding, registrar. ‘How are you?’

  She wiped her face on her sleeve.

  ‘Nice photo,’ he said, looking at the picture propped above the bed. ‘Gosh, he’s got different coloured eyes.’ Kevin’s eyes had been closed all week.

  The doctor turned to her. ‘So how are things?’

  She shot a glance back at her husband, at his small face stuck onto the front of his bandaged head. ‘We had the –’ then she mouthed, ‘– funeral today.’

  ‘That would have been hard.’

  Carla looked away. She didn’t want compassion. Couldn’t cope with it. It pulled up feelings that owned themselves. Anarchy lay in wait if she succumbed.

  ‘It was time,’ she said briskly. ‘The delays were the hardest. Waiting for the post-mortem and all.’

  He nodded.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked quickly.

  They both turned to Kevin. It was easier focusing on him.

  ‘He’s made some real progress these past twenty-four hours,’ the young man said, resting a hand on her arm.

  She stepped away.

  ‘We removed his chest drain this morning, as the tear in his lung appears to have sealed itself. Also,’ he said, picking up one of the charts hanging at the foot of the bed, ‘his kidney function is improving. The next couple of days will be critical. If he continues along this trend,’ his finger traced the upward turn on the graph, ‘we’ll attempt to remove his breathing tube and wake him up. Hopefully he’ll then start to breathe on his own. Of course, the biggest uncertainty remains his level of brain functioning. But one step at a time, right?’

  She nodded.

  A bit later they came to do a portable chest X-ray. Carla was in the way, so she slipped out unnoticed. There were still forty minutes left before Geoff was due to pick her up.

  Once on the ground floor, she headed for the main entrance. As she stepped out into the weak afternoon sunlight, she tripped over the drip stand of a woman in a hot-pink dressing gown, sucking on a cigarette.

  ‘Jesus, lady! Watch where you goin’,’ the woman yelled, her lips curling back to reveal a mouthful of stained, yellow teeth. ‘You nearly fuckin’ ripped this out of my arm!’

  ‘Oh, go to hell, w
hy don’t you!’ Carla said, regaining her balance and heading down the ramp, the residue of the expletive strange and foreign in her mouth.

  Chapter Eight

  BEN

  It was three in the morning when Ben looked at his watch. His mind swam through the half-realities nurtured by paint and several joints. It had been a good night. They’d tagged the GDBs’ turf. The next day promised war. His gang, the DOAs, was ready.

  He leapt over a knee-high wall and wove through the carcasses of cars, derelict couches, and empty bottles that littered the front lawn. The lights were on and the door ajar. Music pounded.

  ‘Hi, Ben.’ His sister Brooke, her nappy sliding down her chubby legs and snot sliding down her chin, stood in the hallway smiling.

  ‘Hey, Brookie. What you doing up? It’s fuckin’ late.’

  Ben scooped up his sister. ‘You stink, man,’ he said, peering into the wet folds of her nappy. ‘Let’s get this shit off you.’

  He carried her down the corridor to the bathroom and sat her on the floor while he filled a basin with water. As he tugged at the nappy it broke up in his hands and bits of jellied padding crumbled to the floor. He plonked her into the water and pieces of poo floated off around her. She started to cry.

  ‘C-c-cold,’ she stuttered.

  ‘Shut it. You’re not meant to crap in your pull-ups. Ryan’ll be wild if he finds out.’

  She stopped crying instantly.

  Lifting her out with one hand, Ben grabbed a damp, grimy towel off the floor with the other, patted her dry, folded it around her into a makeshift nappy and carried her down the corridor.

  As he eased open a door with his foot, the musty stench of human living greeted him. One of his siblings, he couldn’t tell which, coughed. He pulled back the blanket and dropped his sister into the closest bed.

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘Shhh or you’ll wake the others. Now go to fuckin’ sleep.’

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘What?’ Then he realised it wasn’t Brooke speaking. It was Lily.

  ‘Did you score tonight?’ Lily asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Nah. Go back to sleep.’ He closed the door and made his way down the corridor.

  The kitchen was empty. Everyone was outside in the yard. He opened the fridge and stared vacantly into the fluorescent box. He was after a feed, not a beer. He slammed the door shut, the loose bottles clanging against each other, and looked around. On the sideboard lay a defrosting packet of sliced bread. He fished out five pieces and began stacking them into a tower, spreading peanut butter between the cold white layers.

  The music pounded. He could see Ryan, passed out on a couch in the backyard, some woman – not Ben’s mum – draped over him.

  ‘Slack-arse,’ Ben muttered, pulling up a chair and sitting down to eat.

  Soon the bread had comforted the angry hollowness inside. He could feel the noose of sleep tighten around him and he headed back to the bedroom. Brooke was already making loud, grunting snores. He flicked off his sneakers and crashed.

  When he surfaced from thick, drooling nothingness, someone was calling his name.

  ‘Go’way,’ he growled, and turned over, pulling a mound of blanket with him. ‘It’s the middle of the fuckin’ night!’

  His eyes were still closed, but suddenly it felt as if a blackout blind had been peeled off his eyelids. Someone had opened the curtains and the room was all glare.

  It must have been about seven o’clock, the only time the room got any sunshine. But it would be all tease; the weak warmth never hung around for long enough to dry up the dampness that trickled down the windows and crept up the walls. The shadows from the house next door would be lying in wait to bully the sunshine away.

  ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill you,’ he cussed to no one in particular.

  ‘Watch your mouth, Benjamin!’

  His eyes flicked open. Only his mother called him Benjamin.

  The morning light seared his eyeballs and he quickly shut them again.

  ‘Sorry, Ma. Thought it was one of the kids.’

  He could smell her – gleaming glass, disinfected toilet bowls, polished elevators. He tried again, opening one eye and squinting at his watch. ‘What’s up?’

  Before she could answer, a reminder of the other night landed with a thud in the pit of his stomach, jump-starting his day. He sat up and leant against the cold wall, his eyes darting past his mother to the door, the windows, the door.

  His mother came into focus, the bruised shadow of night shift still hanging under her eyes, her long black hair scraped back into a ponytail to keep it from dipping into dustbins and buckets of bleach.

  ‘It’s Lily’s birthday. We gonna sing to her.’

  The relief of her words washed over him, followed immediately by the annoyance at being woken up for nothing. It wasn’t that he’d had only four hours sleep; a Red Bull could sort that. It was that sleep was the only place he could hide from the other stuff – the screaming scrape of the shovel, the sweet stench of blood. It was taking over his mind like some rampant weed, tangling his thoughts and choking his freedom, every day worse than the one before. Unexpected noises made him jump. A knock at the door was always the police. People were looking at him strangely – watching him. That whining siren, it was always coming his way.

  He’d washed his jeans, scrubbing them with dishwashing liquid till the water coloured brown and a thick rim of scum clung to the basin. Police could get clues off clothes. Clothes held onto invisible secrets.

  ‘Jesus, Ma. Couldn’t you have let me sleep?’

  His legs were itchy under the denim. He scratched his thigh and adjusted himself. His mother threaded her fingers through his knotted hair.

  ‘Poor you.’ Her hand slid over his head, warm and soft. As a kid he’d been fascinated by her long fingers. How they moved through the air, gripped a spoon, handled a paintbrush. It was as if they danced to a beat different from the rest of her body – swift, magical, measured. He used to imagine her playing the saxophone or keyboard, something like that, where fingers were everything.

  Now her touch, the weight and warmth of her palm on his head, her closeness, nearly tricked him into telling her … He ducked away.

  ‘So you gonna wake him too?’ he asked, his lip curling around the thought of Ryan lying passed out on the sofa, sweat, old booze, and some random woman seeping from his pores.

  His mother gave him one of her stares, which hollowed him out like an apple corer. He felt bad for even reminding her of the loser she lived with. She had that effect on him. She could tick him off without saying a single word.

  He got up, took a long piss, then sloped down the corridor after her.

  It sounded like there were fifty people in the kitchen, every giggle and scream cracking his head open wider. But it was just the usual crazies – Anika, Lily, Brooke, and Cody.

  Cody leapt up and ran over to tackle him at the knees. ‘It’s Lily’s birthday! Lily’s birthday!’ he cried, panting with excitement, his lips pulled back in a silly Cody grin, showing off his puffy pink folds of gum. Poor Cody. It looked like pink batting had been packed around his tiny grey teeth.

  Lily was sitting upright at the table, her Kim Basinger eyes taking in all the fuss. Ben didn’t know how old his sister was, but she had two small spuds sprouting under her T-shirt. George in the gang had been the first to point them out.

  ‘Happy birthday, Sis,’ he said, slumping down at the table and massaging the pain from his temples.

  ‘Whatever,’ Lily said with a half-smile.

  Their mother put down a plate in front of her. On it was a square of white bread with the crusts ripped off and hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top. A candle had been poked in the middle of it, but the bread wasn’t thick enough to hold the thing upright and the candle kept listing to one side.

  ‘You light it,’ his mother said to Ben, passing over the match she’d just used to light a cigarette.

  Ben cupped his hand around the dy
ing flame and leant over the candle. The match died. His mother threw him the box and he tried again.

  ‘Candle must be wet or the string is too short,’ he said, giving up.

  Lily’s face fell.

  Their mother rested her cigarette across the top of her coffee cup and tried again. No luck.

  She was just about to pull out another match when she turned, grabbed Cody by his shirt, and slapped him across the backs of his legs. ‘Put that down!’ she shrieked, snatching her cigarette off him.

  Cody, caught between a cough from inhaling the smoke, and crying, made a weird barking howl.

  ‘Smokes are not for kids,’ she yelled. ‘I’ve told you a hundred times! They’ll turn your lungs into black jelly.’

  ‘And your dick’ll fall off,’ Anika whispered.

  ‘But … but … you …’ Cody said, sobbing.

  Their mother turned back to Lily. ‘Just pretend it’s lit.’

  Lily sat back and folded her arms. ‘I’m not gonna pretend to blow out some candle when it’s not lit. That’s just stupid.’

  Their mother gave one of her I’m-too-tired-to-fight sighs. ‘Suit yourself. Let’s sing, then.’ She started them off and everyone, except Cody, joined in. Lily tried to keep her sulky expression firm, but soon it was cracking at the edges, and by the end of the song, she was grinning.

  ‘Make a wish! Make a wish!’ Cody cried, forgetting about the hiding.

  Lily carefully folded in the corners of her slice of bread, as if sealing an envelope. But when she picked it up, the balls of sugar started falling onto the Formica table like coloured hail. Their mother hadn’t used enough margarine to stick them down.

  She took a slow, deliberate bite of her now almost naked bread and pondered her wish.

  ‘I want some,’ Brooke whined, pointing to the disappearing Fairy Bread.

  Their mother put a plate with three triangles in front of them. ‘Here we go.’