Australian Love Stories

by Cate Kennedy

  The sun through the windscreen is warm and Enzo presses his hands to the heat on his cheeks and grins. ‘I will close my eyes in this beautiful sun,’ he says. ‘I rest my eyes now and later I will smell the basilica in the garden.’

  Enzo dreams of the cockatoos on the front lawn digging their hard beaks into the earth searching for things. He dreams of them digging around for morsels that satisfy, that allow them to be as they are and to do the things they do, to be cockatoos. In sleep he is on the lawn with them, feeling them earthed there, grounded before flight, fuelling up for distance, for soaring.

  The car is still when Enzo’s eyes open. His head is thick with a molasses sleep. It is busy where they are. There are more women now. They are young—two in white and the bunny-nosed girl. One of them opens the car door and offers her hand to him. She wears a serious face, the kind Enzo has seen before. He knows this face.

  ‘I have two hands, I have two legs.’ He undoes his seat belt and gestures with his hands for the Whities to move out of his way. Bunny Nose is standing, her freckled face is scrunched a little and she is not smiling now.

  ‘Are we on Nicholson Street?’ Enzo says.

  The Whities are gentle but firm; they take his hands like the new girls at the place he stays. Like the girls who don’t know him and don’t know about life. Wet behind the ears, Nev would say. Wet and thick as two planks.

  Enzo pulls his hands away from the Whities. The one with thick hips wraps her hand back around his wrist, her fleshy palm is firm and tight. Again he wrestles himself free, yanking his fingers from her chubby grip. Untangled from the girl, he pulls his arms back and shoves her with a strength that is foreign to him. The girl falls, the solid-boned lot of her in a pile. Enzo rummages in his pocket for a hankie. There is none. He looks at Bunny Nose, ‘You didn’t tell me your name.’

  The corridor is fluorescent lit and the walk from the nurses’ station to the elevator is draining. The lift doors open and Nev leans into the chill of the metal behind him. His stomach lurches as the lift plunges and he closes his eyes, breathes in, and out. The suffocating feeling starts to drain away. Enzo is here, right here, safe on the next floor. They told him that. They said he was okay. The silence is still, thick and full; his ears feel like they are ringing. The doors open and Nev wanders down the hall, follows it round but ends up where he started, back by the lift. He can’t find the room number. The hall is void of any defining features. The walls are a pale shade of nothing and a crucifix intermittently appears like a Post-it note, a reminder for the wavering of faith.

  Nev backtracks, making another loop past rooms, past the nurses’ station that is devoid of nurses. The staff in these places always seem to be around to put in their two cents worth where it’s not wanted but no one is around to ask a question when you really need them. He takes a right. Again it all looks the same, smells identical…but that changes. Here there is something else in the air. Right here in this part of the floor there is the most familiar fragrance that dominates. Nev stops, breathes deeply. His heart palpitates. He knows this smell. So well. He knows the brand, knows the potent fullness of the scent, heavy. The scent that’s caught on cotton pillowslips for all these years.

  Nev nears the door to the room and then there he is. He catches a breath and relief settles into his bones. Enzo lies on the bed, a rumpled sheet and cotton blanket pushed aside. His eyes are closed. He looks worn, his body deflated, but the essence of him fills the space somehow like the echo of laughter in a room. Nev stops and takes him in; the olive skin, the curve of his cheek, not as fleshy as usual but still there. Nev is motionless in the lowlit room, there is the sound of the fluorescent light above the bed and nothing else. He watches Enzo’s breath rise and fall, his body heavy on the bed and then sees the damp patch that begins to spread across the sheet. With a hand on Enzo’s cheek, Nev leans in and kisses him on the lips that return the motion.

  ‘You causing trouble, Cockatoo?’ Nev says.

  Enzo smiles, the corners of his eyes creasing with the grin. ‘I wanted to make a surprise for you. I was coming home!’

  ‘Come on Houdini. Let’s get you in the shower so you feel better.’

  ‘And then we go home?’

  Nev undoes the ties on the gown they’ve put Enzo in, takes his hands and raises him up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Enzo says, ‘for the mess I make. I am so happy to see you I pee myself.’

  Nev leads him to the ensuite with Enzo’s hands in his, walking backward holding Enzo’s eyes. He lays down the bath mat and Enzo steps onto it then jiggles about a bit, doing the twist. Then he is still again, the grin remains and he places his arms on Nev’s shoulders. Nev removes the hospital gown and Enzo’s underpants and they stand there on the foot mat, their island, the clothes in a pile beside them. Enzo begins to unbutton Nev’s shirt, unclasps the belt and Nev lets himself be undressed they way they used to.

  Nev starts the water, adjusting the taps. ‘Uno momento,’ he says and leans back to door, locking it.

  ‘Welcome to my palace,’ Enzo says, gesturing with his arms to the small space. ‘Our hotel room, like we are on holiday.’

  They stand under the water and hold each other still, firm as anchors, wet as fishes.

  Once Around the Block

  ALEXIS DREVIKOVSKY

  I’ve just had a promising job interview and we sit licking celebratory hamburger grease from between our fingers when he tells me.

  I feel good, and I feel special, because he chooses to tell me first. He shares this with me alone. I will fight this with him. This; this is what it means to be a wife. Other wives are living on borrowed time, with their mixed netball teams and mutual friends and dirty weekends away. It’s easy for them. They haven’t been tested yet. I rise up.

  The weekend is a checklist of lasts. We go out for steak. We go for a run. We make love. He has man cave time. Because after Monday, who knows what he’ll be able to do, see, feel? Not us.

  On Monday morning, I make a shopping list and pop in to an empty city supermarket before the work day kicks off. Disinfectant wipes for surfaces, two kinds. Disposable latex gloves to clean up chemo-poisoned vomit and faecal matter. Pump packs of antibacterial gel for kitchen, bathroom, bedside and couch-side. Condoms to prevent conception of chemodeformed babies. Paracetamol. And to the medical clinic for a flu shot. I don’t believe in flu shots. I tell the nurse everything, including this. She is sympathetic, but jabs me anyway.

  Suburbs away, he goes alone. He always has. He does what he wants. He walks to the hospital, to fight the fatigue to come, and afterward he walks home. I meet him halfway, crossing an eight-lane road, and I am relieved to recognise his gait at that distance. The next day I go with him, to be able to imagine where he is, what it’s like. He is already a favourite of the nurses. He says, I don’t know why I didn’t ask you to come with me yesterday. It’s because we were pretending. Pretending that he is Superman, and I am Wonder Woman, and cancer is just a glitch in our otherwise near-perfect life.

  What can we do? ask the well-meaning. And at first it seems like nothing. It creeps in slowly, poison gently seeping into him, swirling around inside. Apart from hiccups so violent they rock the bed, nothing. Then one day after a shower, he calls me into the bathroom excitedly and rips out a handful of hair and I cry at the violence of it. I hear the tearing of Velcro roar through the air as I replay the scene but in fact it slips out smoothly, roots and all. He is fascinated by it. In thinking that can only have been inspired by Anne of Green Gables, I insist on a curl as a keepsake. Just in case.

  We see our counsellor, one last time, and I shrug and remark that these are things that happen and, man, they seem to happen to us. I am reprimanded. It’s the wrong attitude. It’s the wrong way of thinking. We need to work on our ways of thinking.

  A friend pays for cleaners. I receive a phone call while I am at work. The flat is too grimy, the manager says. Her cleaners can’t possibly get through all that they intended to. They put in an ex
tra hour. I am mortified and become more vigorous with the disinfectant wipes.

  And then chemo-brain sets in and I start to lose him. He is numb, detached. Confused. We stick a laminated guide on the fridge, reminding us that chemo-brain is normal and can be combatted, so I buy him a book of Sudoku from the chemist. He lies in bed, book on chest, scratching in numbers, erasing them away. He can’t finish them and he despairs. He can’t remember our conversation and he despairs. He can’t sleep but when he does nightmares tease and torture him.

  And all along, we have the perfect excuse for everything. Unwanted invitations, commitments and obligations: Sorry, you might have heard, he has cancer? Drunks on the street begging some change: Mate, I have cancer. The Wilderness Society removes him from their donations list: Cancer. My interest in my work wanes, half days here and there: My husband has cancer. Life was never simpler. Just me, him and cancer. We wake up, we fight it, we rest. For the first time, I don’t feel guilty about letting people down. For the first time, I don’t really care what people think.

  At 3 am the thermometer tells him what he’s been suspecting for hours: a temperature. Immuno-compromised as he is, infection moves in and stays. As he lies in emergency, waiting to be admitted, hairs loosen from his scalp. Hours later, after a bed opens up on the tenth floor, he crawls into a wheelchair and leaves the emergency bed layered with a blanket of hair.

  He insists I go home for the clippers and becomes cold, withdrawn. We had talked about me shaving his head when the time came, a symbolic evening, red wine, tears and kisses. But no, now he wants to do it on his own while I’m at a friend’s for dinner. It’s okay, I say, he’s not a dickhead; he has cancer. He sends me a text and a photo, bald, shiny. I’m relieved that he has a good head.

  I use the quarantine situation to take the week off work. The elasticised mask digs into my nose and my breath becomes a soggy circle in front of my mouth. Every two hours I have to move the car and every two hours I change my mask. I come back in to the room and he is tiny in the bed, no way to distinguish head from neck. Wrapped up like that, he looks like a worm. I think that this is only the beginning.

  I read in the armchair, back twisted, keeping my distance from the chemical waste bin mounted on the wall, wary of the blood and fluids that have splashed against the rim on entry and dribbled down the sides. You don’t have to be here, he says. I’m here because I want to be. Maybe he is a dickhead.

  Then he is home and an infection like that never returns. We watch Breaking Bad and cancer-ridden Walt runs all over town, has empowered bad guy sex with his wife, sports a lusciously thick moustache, thinks clearly on his feet. And I am jealous. His wife is pregnant, and I am jealous.

  Old friends call, and gossip has been less efficient than I thought. I have to start the story from scratch, and it’s so convoluted that I leave bits out, wash over them with wry chuckles and sighs. They do nothing. People do nothing, except Steph, who brings small portions of freeze-able and microwavable meals, and I wish I had more friends who aspire to housewifery. I want someone to make us a meal roster. I want people to tell me how hard everything we’re going through is, and how brave we are. I want gifts and cards and sympathy.

  We’re given a voucher for a couple’s massage, but he doesn’t want to be touched. We’re given an aromatic candle, but the smell irritates him.

  He tries mineral water with lemon slices, oven-baked zucchini, meatballs as the chemo plays havoc with his taste buds. On the first day of a new chemo cycle, he is ravenous and we try to find a pub that can cook us a parma on a Monday at midday. It’s just not possible, and he deflates.

  He has no eyebrows and no eyelashes, and he looks like a mole.

  Then it’s all over, nine weeks over, and he slowly recovers. The bad taste in his mouth disappears, we go for a run and he tears ahead of me and I sulk. His hair comes back, downy soft, and my book club gathers round to stroke it.

  We see the oncologist, rotund and jolly with plump little hands and a reassuring manner, and he tells us the good news but. The good news being that the tumour markers in the blood are down and the cancer is gone. But. Invasive surgery is needed. But. You’ll spend a few months on a waiting list. But. A whole month’s recovery after the fact. But. This just isn’t over.

  So he sits and stews for months. In one of his better moments, he bargains his way up the waiting list and finally it’s his turn. We discuss what’s to be done with his ashes, just in case, and I can’t imagine negotiating these details with my mother-in-law. He is out cold for eight hours, slit open from sternum to lower abdomen. They dig around between organs and take out forty-two lymph nodes, then he’s sewn up, with a swollen belly like a pregnant woman. I watch the highlights of someone else’s surgery on YouTube and flinch as they snip away at the guts. Retroperitoneal lymph node dissection retroperitoneal lymph node dissection retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Few surgeons are skilled in this procedure, because few men are this unlucky. His surgeon’s sidekick visits on rounds. He has a stylish satchel and a melted ear and is quietly confident in a strapping manly way. He still has all his lymph nodes.

  The hospital is so good that he doesn’t want to come home. The surgeon’s sidekick says probably Sunday. He argues back that Monday would be better. He’s not a dickhead, I tell myself, he’s just been through hell.

  And I am grimly satisfied as the doctors send him home on the Sunday. Back to normal. We buy him a walking stick and he eats jelly and cup-a-soups and we watch more Breaking Bad.

  With time, he can run and swim. No weights yet, but he gets to a point where he can hoist up his backpack, so he disappears for a while. He comes back and the pencil scratches on the Sudoku pad in the wee small hours, keeping me awake.

  And now we sit, back on the couch, no hamburgers this time. Just protein and raw vegetables, pennies pinched and life ongoing. He has no work, just his thoughts. The future is promising sometimes, ordinary sometimes, mostly bleak. No cancer now. Just me and him.

  Joe Roberts

  TONY BIRCH

  Joe woke lying on his back with his arms resting at his side. The creaseless white bedspread covering him resembled a shroud. He looked up at the ceiling, across to the window and the half-drawn blind. It was pitch-black outside. He turned to the bedside clock. It was just after three in the morning. He got out of bed and hobbled across to the bathroom. The instructions from the hospital ordered him to fast from midnight after drinking two litres of water. Joe took a slow piss, flushed the toilet, washed his hands in the sink and went back to bed. He lay awake for the next hour or so until finally drifting off. At around six in the morning he woke again and sat upright in bed, startled and short of breath, his heart thumping and the bed sheets drenched in sweat.

  He lay in the dark awhile before getting out of bed and studying his face in the bathroom mirror, massaging the bristles on his chin and flattening his unkempt head of silver hair. A woman’s voice drifted from the bathroom window above as she sang in the shower. Joe had just enough time for a quick shave and a shower before leaving the flat for the train station.

  The road was greasy from the night rain and the morning sky was a washed-out grey. Joe buttoned his battered pea jacket, lifted the collar to warm the back of his neck and buried his hands in his pockets, annoyed he’d left his gloves on the kitchen table. He crossed the street to the footbridge over the freeway and walked the ramp to the station. It was deserted. He ran a finger down the timetable and studied his watch. Only a five-minute wait. He paced the length of the platform to keep himself warm. When ten minutes had passed and the train had not arrived he walked to the edge of the platform and searched the line. It was empty.

  Joe heard a barking cough behind him. A girl staggering from the shadows of the unlit waiting room, wearing a denim skirt and black singlet decorated with gold sequins. She dangled a pair of shoes from one hand. As she walked forward Joe saw she had a tattoo above one breast, a pair of dice, a five and a seven. Good luck—supposedly—he thought t
o himself. She had cuts and bruises on her shoulders and upper arms and mud smeared on her clothes. When she held out a begging hand Joe noticed two broken fingernails and a gash sliced across her palm.

  It began to rain.

  ‘You got any cash? Please. I’m chasing a feed.’

  Joe looked from her bleached blonde head of hair to a face smudged with mascara and lipstick. She had to be around sixteen, maybe younger, although Joe couldn’t be sure as the girl had been knocked about. She stepped forward, balanced on the platform edge, spread her bare arms, closed her eyes and stood still as a statue. A cold southerly wind cut through the station. The rain shifted near horizontal. Joe heard a whistle in the distance. The dull yellow eye of the train rounded the bend.

  Worried that the girl might fall onto the tracks Joe rested his hands against her shoulders and gently pushed her away from the edge. She staggered under the force and slipped to the ground. Joe offered her his hand.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  She rested her head back and smiled up at him.

  ‘Help yourself to what you want, old man. But you got to pay.’

  He turned to the open train door and left her.

  It was warm inside the carriage. Joe unbuttoned his jacket and looked out the window at the girl. She turned on her side and tucked her knees into her chest. Her dress was soaking with rain and clung to her slight figure. He took a step toward the door, changed his mind and took a seat. He kept his eyes on the girl until the train rounded the bend up ahead.

  Joe got off at the station for the hospital, took the letter from his pocket and read over the details while walking. At the Admissions entrance two men with a shared deathlike appearance passed a cigarette between themselves, sitting on a stairway in their pyjamas talking to a third man leaning on a pair of crutches and puffing away on a cigarette of his own. They were laughing and throwing their arms around, no different than if they were in the front bar of their favourite pub. Another patient, supporting a mane of grey hair halfway down his back, was attempting an escape in a wheelchair, chased by a security guard with more braid on his jacket than the Police Commissioner.