“I’ve wrapped your sandwich in alfoil,” said Charis, “Eat it on the way.”
Hunger was gone. I felt sick.
“Good luck,” called Benny as we closed the door.
“Now why didn’t we think of that before?” I said, slamming the door a bit too hard.
“Don’t take it to heart, he’s just offered you everything he believes in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I wanted the lights and the traffic to slow us down, but somehow they didn’t. We seemed to be in one of those clear runs that opens up magically every now and then when you get all the lights and you have a fifty metre strip of asphalt to yourself. I didn’t want to arrive at the hospital; I didn’t want to park the car and pay for a ticket, I didn’t want to walk through the foyer; I didn’t want to get into the lift; and most of all I didn’t want to go into Bevan’s room and see Mum and Vicki and everyone standing around his bed. But I did them all, with Charis holding my hand in one hand, and my uneaten alfoiled sandwich in the other.
Dad was there.
“Hello son,” he said in his by-now-familiar shaky voice. He’d been crying. Mum and Vicki didn’t turn around. They were seated at Bevan’s bed. I could hear his breathing and his pain, which was a whimper trying to be a groan.
“Where’s Chris?” He should have been here.
“We’re trying to get hold of him, his mobile’s switched off.”
Mum turned to me, and I gave her teary, flushed face a kiss. Charis hugged her, and she gave a loud sob. Dad just didn’t know where to look. Twelve years of guilt had compressed his face into strata of lines, as if they very top of his balding head was going to implode. I put my hand on Vicki’s shoulder and she put her hand on mine, her new wedding ring still all shiny with false optimism.
“Stuart’s in the air.” Mum’s voice cracked it out from somewhere inside her. “He’ll be here by the morning we hope.”
I hadn’t looked at Bevan yet. I didn’t want to, but as with all of the other things I hadn’t wanted to do, I had to. I was surprised and shocked at how much he’d gone down in the two days since I’d last been in.
“Oh mate.” My eyes were stinging and I got all breathy, air generally giving up before it got to my lungs.
“He’s just started self medicating his morphine,” said Mum stroking his arm. “He’s coming in and out all the time.”
Dad was still hanging back – the last kid being picked at school soccer. Charis went over and hugged him. She stayed that way a while, and he held her stiffly and slightly away from him.
“We’ll get coffees,” said Charis. Dad nodded, relief relaxing his grip and his face.
“Who told Dad?” I asked when they’d left.
“I did,” said Mum in a tone too sharp for the occasion.
“You phoned him?”
“We’ve been talking on the phone a lot these last two weeks.”
It must have been when Gracie was shopping. Mum must have seen the surprise on my face, or picked up what I was thinking.
“I phoned him.”
“You phoned him?”
“You’re not the only one who can keep a secret in this family, you know.”
“And that was okay?”
“I don’t need to sneak around and phone him when Gracie’s out. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
Bevan saved us from any further fiddling while Rome burned, yelling out loud and alert as the morphine fell behind allowing the pain to get up a head of steam.
“Stop!” he cried out, to no-one and everything at the same time.
“Oh babe, babe, babe,” moaned Vicki echoing his cry. She pressed the buzzer. Two nurses I didn’t know came in. In a move perfected by practice and rote-learning one went to check the machine administering the drugs, while the other went to Bevan.
“How are the pain levels Bevan?” asked the one next to him in a loud clear voice. She had a loud clear look about her too, with no nonsense pulled-back hair; the right kind of person to work with palliative patients. Death may respect no man, but he’d have to mind his “Ps” and “Qs” around this one.
“Nine,” he gasped. “Hi Rob,” he said, an eye opening from his sunken face, which looked like an orange with all the juice drained out. “I’m dying now you know.”
“I know,” I whispered. Two big fat tears, sitting there like milky cataracts and blurring my vision. I see men like trees walking. I could tell by their voices that it was Charis and Dad coming back in. They stopped talking like they’d been caught out in class. I felt her arm around me. Her muttering. Praying or singing I couldn’t tell. The smell of cheap coffee.
“The more pain relief we give you the less you’ll be able to talk with your family.” The tears broke free, the room cleared in a taste of salt. The nurse at the drug feeder closed it and pushed the beeping buttons, microwaving his last meal.
“Where is Chris?” I asked between clenched teeth.
“Where is that brother of yours.” Mum said. That was another of Mum’s lines. If one of us had ever done something wrong the rest of us were reminded of our sibling status. “That brother of yours.” Dad had not been immune, especially these last twelve years “That father of yours.” Mum would never say: “This mother of yours”, but occasionally you could see it peeking around the corner of her eye, or hear it in the tremor of her voice.
“Dad,” said Bevan, more like an announcement, “Dad.”
“Son?”
But that was it. Bevan was off again into the languid, liquid land of pain relief. His breathing settled. Dad had a sick, worried look on his face.
“He had a bad moment,” said Vicki blankly. She looked like she needed to smoke. She used to smoke, but gave up because it had started to stain her well-maintained teeth.
“Where is Chris?” Mum this time. Vicki handed over her mobile; her arm a car factory automaton welding the same joint for the thousandth time. Chris’s voice mail-box - again.
“We’re going to look for him.” I said it in a voice that I hope was firm enough to hide my mixed motives. I needed to get out. I was desperate for Chris to be there. And Stuart? He was in the air. Stuart was always in the air. Stuart lived in the air. And Stuart being here was not going to resolve anything. If anything he was the family prodigal now, only he was living well in the distant land having invested his inheritance instead of squandering it. There’d be no running home with his tail between his legs. Besides he’d have to confront Dad at what would not be, to put it mildly, an optimum time for either of them. Such a pity that the whole family was going to get together just as it was about to be eclipsed.
* * *
By the time we found Chris Day Fifteen was dying faster than Bevan. I’d driven like a mad-man to his house, Charis closing her eyes most of the time and still doing the praying thing. The Hilux was there, but the place was dark. I found the spare key under the pot-plant I’d bought him for his housewarming six months back. The plant was dead: a row of empties giving it a guard of honour. Chris wasn’t there. Not much was there. Six months and his new brick villa still had the blank-slate look, waiting for the owner’s touch. Maybe “blank-slate” was his touch. Some people do “shabby-chic”, some “modern country”, while others, single men mostly, do “blank-slate.”
“He’s going for the minimalist look,” I said, as one hundred harsh watts bounced unhindered off the smoke grey walls. A faded blue vinyl lounge slumped against the wall. A standard Kmart-issue TV. Two boxes filled with odds and ends in the corner.
“Minimalism takes effort and imagination.” Charis picked up a pizza box and a coke can with a hole in the side of it. “Smell that smell?”
“Hello?” No answer.
“Maybe he’s asleep.”
“More like sleeping it off.”
I walked through to his room. A crumpled double bed. Two pillows passed out on the floor. A damp looking towel. The linger of spray-on deodorant. Same grey walls, same harsh light.
“At least he�
�s got some art-work,” said Charis, pointing to the laminated blonde on the motorbike who pointed back with all she had. “Wouldn’t want to come off at eighty only wearing that!”
“Where else?” I asked myself out loud.
“Pub? He’d need the car. Besides if he’s there he’s going to be drunk.”
“And Chris would never drink and drive.”
“You mean he does?”
“All the time. Where else?”
“Girlfriend?” “Mate’s? What about your Mum’s?”
For all Chris’s desires for freedom, when it came to moving out of home, he’d bought a place four blocks from Mum’s.
“I like the area,” he’d bristled defensively when we’d all laughed about it. Mum had laughed about it too, she wasn’t going to be falling for that. It was because it was close to her place, right?
We found him at Mum’s. At least we found him in Mum’s back garden in the tree house he and Bevan had built when they were in their early teens. It was their first building venture together: a sign of things to come. Up till then all of Dad’s tools had stayed in his old framing shed gathering dust and mice poo. Mum occasionally went in for a hammer, but that was it. The rest lay there; first in sharp anticipation, then tarnished anxiety, and finally dusty resignation. That is until one day Mum had come home and Chris and Bevan had plundered the grave-site, and were busy sawing pine off-cuts and scoring direct hits with the odd nail in five. When she’d gotten over the desecration Mum was philosophical.
“Sure it’ll keep them busy for a while,” she’d said to me and Stuart when we complained about the noise, “And it’ll keep them out of trouble too.” Which it did. That is until they learned it could also keep them in trouble and out of Mum’s eyesight, hidden away as it was in the old almond tree next to Mrs Hudson’s fence. First cigarettes, first drinks, and first girls were consumed there, or so Bevan and Chris told me later when I was working with them.
It was a portent for the future: building houses had kept them in all three of those things ever since. Since she never got home till late, Mum said she’d never met Peter Stuyvesant and Johnnie Walker, but she was pleased that the tree-house was so popular with Chris and Bevan’s mates.
I shone the torch on the tree-house. A cat scrambled off the rusted tin roof.
“B C M,” said Charis, reading the peeling letters on the side, “Bevan and Chris McEvoy?”
“Beer. Cigarettes. Magazines.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Let’s see if he’s here, we need to get back.” Just then a mobile phone rang from the tree-house. It rang out after six or so rings.
“He’s up there,” said Charis, “At least his phone is.”
The phone’s light was still shining when I climbed up, glowing green on Chris’s face. Or maybe his face was green. Whatever it was he was passed out. I crawled in and kicked a half-empty Jim Beam bottle across the warped boards, it held itself up against the old Mobil oil crate Bevan had found at the tip one year.
“Up here.”
“Drunk?”
“Passed out.” I put my hand in something. The puke smell hit me.
“Shit, he’s been sick everywhere. I’ve put my hand in it.”
Chris moaned something and rolled over, just missing the puke himself. I had Mum’s spare key and together Charis and I half dragged, half- pushed him down the tree, across the lawn and through the back door into the laundry.
“I’ll put him in the shower.” I stripped him down, his tight taut body slackened by the alcohol. The hot water hit him and he spasmed, moaning and thrashing about. He was saying something.
“What was that Chris?” I yelled over the water. Another moan. “Speak up mate!”
“Houses,” he slurred, “Who’s...gonna...build...houses?” Each word came out like a retch and I was worried he was going to puke in the shower. I didn’t fancy cleaning bits out of the grate. The chill air out of the shower woke him up, making him shiver. I threw towels around him. Charis popped her head in the door.
“I phoned the hospital, they’ve told your Mum and Vicki he’s here.”
Somehow we all got him dressed and into the car. Charis had a bucket just in case. Alcohol chases pain the same way morphine does, only it’s not as quick over the ground. In the absence of morphine alcohol would have to do. We had our own chasing to do and I ran a few dodgy lights on the way back to the hospital. Chris moaned and retched in the back-seat. Charis was sitting next to him, propping him up.
We did the half-drag, half-carry thing to the hospital entrance. The security guy at emergency got it all wrong.
“In here for emergency,” he said helpfully, standing aside.
“We’re fine thanks, just visiting someone.” I was going to add “for the last time”, but that would have made things awkward. Past the infernal, eternal puffers; the smoke of whose torment goes up for ever, through the entrance and up to the lift. Chris was coming round.
“Not the bloody lift,” he moaned, “I’ll puke again.”
“We’re not taking eight flights of stairs,” said Charis, holding the bucket up to his face as we entered the lift. An elderly couple with a Downs Syndrome son went to follow us, thought better of it and stood back.
Mum was standing outside the lift, pacing anxiously. Her face went craggy when she saw Chris.
“Oh love,” she moaned, “I know, I know, I know.”
Chris collapsed into her arms, sobbing, in big drunk globules. Dad came out of the ward. He stood back wiping his own eyes, patting Chris on the back like he was trying to burp him. He hadn’t earned the physical contact of a hug, so this was the best he could offer.
“Not long to go,” said Mum over Chris’s shoulder to all of us, “Not long to go.” So like Mum; unable to swim to the surface of her despair, but still diving in to save one of her boys from his.
Stuart was sitting next to Vicki when we arrived.
“He got a taxi from the airport,” Mum whispered.
We all did the wordless hug thing, but it felt distant. Stuart hadn’t been there during the regular season, he was the prima donna turning up for the finals.
“How was the flight?”
“Crap. Two stop-overs for repairs. Thought I wouldn’t get here.” There was no chance he wouldn’t get here, just whether he’d get here on time, but that all went without saying.
Vicki was still sitting there, stroking Bevan’s arm. His breathing was even more shallow than when we’d left to get Chris. On top of that it sounded like a blocked drain. So this was it. This was death. Even reading Ivan Ilyich had not prepared me as much for it as I’d thought it had. What was it with that gurgly sound?
Mum could tell what I was thinking.
“The doctor says he’s not in pain. It’s the death rattle.”
“Can’t they do something?” Chris moaned. The deep chesty sound and Bevan’s blank face had blown away the fog of alcohol. “Can’t they give him something? I don’t want him to do that.”
Vicki looked over at Chris. Anger? No. Disdain? Perhaps. Whatever it was she felt for Chris it was bedding in for life. She’d held her poker face with Chris for a long time, and now she’d come up trumps when he’d piked out and thrown in his hand.
A doctor put his head around the door. Not “a” doctor, “the” doctor, Dr Stafford who’d we’d seen right at the start of all of this. Dressed for the high life in the face of death. New glasses again. Rimless this time. A pair for every occasion perhaps?
Are we all here?” he asked, in a loudish voice. No need to whisper now, Death had sprung us anyway.
“Yes,” whispered Mum. And we were all there. Finally. Bevan, Stuart, Chris, me, Mum, Dad. At last we’d all gotten together again. When we were kids mum used to sing the old hymn her grandmother had taught her: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” And here it was, unbroken. We didn’t have to wait for the sweet by-and-by for it to be unbroken: the bitter present would have to do for now. For another hour or two at leas
t, if that’s what Bevan had left. Then we’d all have to figure out a way we could rejoin the circle in heaven, even if that meant Mum having to admit that Dad might possibly get a gig there too.
“It’s going to be very soon now,” he said, walking over to Bevan and putting his hand on his arm. “”We’re all with you mate,” he said, and the softness in his voice made my eyes and nose well up. He kept his hand there for some time, then I realised it was for the last time. Bevan had been his patient for a while, but his role as Bevan’s doctor would cease when Bevan’s breathing ceased some time tonight or during the early morning. He kept his hand there and bowed his head, either praying, or giving us the impression he was praying. Then he walked out of Bevan’s life and away from his death, and presumably into someone else’s.
* * *
John 3:16. That’s how Charis said she was going to remember the time of Bevan’s death.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” murmured Charis, leaning on my shoulder an hour or so later.
“What?”
“For God so loved the world - John 3:16.”
We were still sitting with Bevan; his body caught mid-breath as if he’d been about to say something, but had changed his mind and not bothered. The digital room clock had ticked over to 3:16 am when it happened. The low remnants of the stacatto in his throat died along with him, only to find voice in Mum’s and Vicki’s who both broke into sobs. The nurses had heard it and had come in, a duty doctor right behind them. They stayed until the clock ticked over to 3:21, then left all of us alone with him.
3:16 am was six hours and ten minutes further on from when Charis and I had dragged Chris into the ward. A lot had happened in those six hours and ten minutes.
For a start Charis’s Mum had turned up. They weren’t going to let her in, but they sent a nurse in anyway to let us know that she was there.
“Who?” Vicki had asked, suspicion breaking through the grief.
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