Being Here

by Barry Jonsberg

  I BELIEVE LUCY VISITS ME in the night.

  She is insubstantial as a thought. I wake. Or perhaps I don’t. The darkness is grainy. My eyes feel coated. Something peels when I open them.

  I feel a pressure on my bed, nothing more. A shadow brushes my arm. It could be an affectionate hand. There is a slow exhalation somewhere. It sounds like ‘Leah’. For a moment, fear is there as well. But then it clears. I experience a movement in the air, a gathering of something that stirs the hairs on my forearm. A shift in the darkness. The bed moves beneath me.

  Then she is gone. Somewhere a clock ticks. Night sounds settle. I am alone, but something, something remains. It coats the air. It settles on the room, like dust.

  It could be happiness.

  Jane takes me outside after breakfast. I avoid the lounge now. It is too empty.

  The day is clear and blue again. It used to be that the everlasting skies of summer were restricted to memory only, a fiction penned to make the past more vibrant and the present less so. Yet I cannot remember a summer like this. It is perfection born over, again and again.

  Jane wheels me down towards the ornamental pond in the centre of the grounds. There used to be a fountain that played at its centre, but it has long since been turned off. I worry about the future. It has no green promise. Jane applies the brakes next to a bench and sits on it, to my left. The bench was a donation from a past guest. There is a plaque that notes the details. I suppose it is a nice gesture, but it’s not something I have put into my will. The idea is that the plaque ought to be a testimonial, a physical reminder of a life spent. For some reason, it feels the opposite to me. It is just a plaque. It is just a bench.

  ‘Do you think about Lucy?’ says Jane.

  She means do I mope about her, have I lost the will to carry on. But she deserves credit in refusing to avoid the subject.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply.

  ‘And how are you coping?’

  ‘As we all must.’

  ‘It’s the part of the job I really, really hate.’

  I study the surface of the pond. Lily pads ride the gentle swells, bright green and polished to an impossible shine. The breeze hints of the sea, far to the south. This is a good place to be.

  ‘You’d be slightly strange if it was a part you enjoyed, don’t you think?’

  Jane laughs. She holds my hand.

  ‘And what about you?’ I continue. ‘How’s that baby you are carrying?’

  She places a hand upon her belly. It is instinctive. It must be hard-wired into the maternal psyche.

  ‘The baby’s good. That’s what my doctor tells me. But I’m not. Morning sickness, Leah. Actually, that’s not right. For me, it’s morning, afternoon and night sickness.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I understand that some women manage to avoid it completely.’

  ‘Yeah. Apparently, I’m not some women.’

  ‘And do you have any pica? I knew someone who virtually lived on vegemite and strawberry jam. Together.’

  ‘Pica?’ She wags a finger at me. ‘Is there any word you don’t know the meaning of? But no. No cravings. Well, apart from any kind of food. I’m starving all the time, Leah. It’s crazy. Sometimes I just want to stick my face into my meal and inhale it. Alan calls me a pig.’

  He would, I think. His wife is changing and it won’t please him. He is the type of person who must effect all changes himself. He is the sun and everything revolves around him. Now there is a new centre for Jane. That small clump of tissue, nestled snug within her depths, is growing, growing and calling, calling. Beyond his reach and power. He watches the changes and feels small. He would call her a pig. And worse as time moves on and the gravity of the new life swells, deepens and becomes a tug more impossible to resist with each passing second.

  ‘What do they say? Eating for two?’ I reply.

  ‘Two? I’m eating for ten. Oh God, Leah. What will become of my figure? I’m already a dress size up. At this rate I’ll need a hammock for my boobs. And what if I don’t lose it afterwards? Some women take a long time to recover from childbirth. I don’t want to waddle around like a walrus for years.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ I say, without conviction.

  ‘Alan is working late a lot recently,’ she says after a long silence. I wonder how her mind has moved to this new topic, though the pathway is perhaps not difficult to plot.

  ‘Is he?’

  We sit and watch the surface of the pond. I think about the obvious – the cycle of death and birth, Lucy’s death and Jane’s baby, the endless dance of renewal. I do not know what occupies Jane’s thoughts but I suspect it has to do with the warmth of an ember within and the coldness of eyes across a dinner table.

  ‘Hey, Mrs C. Hi! How are you?’

  Carly runs across the grass towards me. She waves a hand above her head and her backpack joggles on her shoulder. I feel light-headed just seeing her. Youth is wasted on the young, they say. They lie. It fits her contours perfectly. Better than a glove. I want to wave back, but by the time my body has obeyed my brain’s instructions, she has collapsed in a heap on the grass at my feet.

  ‘Hey, Leah. Mrs C. Got a proposition for you!’ She is excited and in her excitement forgets her manners. She sees Jane and blushes. ‘Oh, hi. Sorry. Am I interrupting?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ says Jane. ‘In fact, I should probably get along, leave you girls to chat. Do you want me to wheel you back, Leah?’

  ‘Oh, can I?’ says Carly. ‘Please. Please? If that’s okay with you, Leah?’

  ‘Don’t fight over me,’ I say. ‘It’s a burden being so popular.’

  Carly springs to her feet. She is so energetic it makes me tired.

  ‘Let’s stay here for a while,’ I say before she can grab the handles of my wheelchair. ‘It’s such a lovely day and I want to enjoy the sun on my face.’

  ‘I’ll leave the two of you to it,’ says Jane. ‘Not too long, though, Leah. I don’t want you dehydrated.’

  ‘If I shrivel any more, I’ll be indistinguishable from a prune,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry. Carly here will water me.’

  I hear the faint tread of soft shoes on grass. They are quickly swallowed by silence. Carly sits at my feet, cross-legged. She tears up blades of grass and scatters them to the wind. Her face is open. Life has not yet scored it with lines.

  ‘The proposition,’ she says. ‘Wanna hear it?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Do you want to come for dinner tomorrow night? It’s Sunday and Mum always does a big roast dinner. You know, chicken, stuffing and vegies. Roasties. I’ve already asked her and she says it would be great to have you over. Dad’s keen, too. I’ve told them heaps about you, Leah. They really wanna meet you.’

  ‘Dinner? Well, I’m not sure about that Carly, though it’s a lovely offer.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Mrs C.’ She screws her face up in frustration. ‘Live a little. Mum says she’ll pick you up and bring you back. I mean, it is okay for you to leave here for a bit, isn’t it?’

  Gulag Geriatrica. Barbed wire on the perimeter, rott––weilers, armed guards in towers, searchlights picking out the occasional old person in her Zimmer frame tottering towards freedom. I like the image. It makes me smile.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We can leave.’

  ‘Then do it. Please? Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on top.’

  I think. She is too young to consider all the implications. Her mind and her body are synchronised. Everything works as it should. What does she know about the unpredictability of bladders? I decide to spare her the details. Jane could help, anyway. There are … devices. Insurance. Though, as with any type of insurance, there is never any guarantee it’ll pay out when you need it.

  I am unaccustomed to making decisions.

  This is a pity. Decision-making is evidence of life.

  ‘You’re not thinking of adopting me, are you, Carly? A sort of rent-a-great-grandma?’ At least you’d be able to return me when you get bored, I
think. The real thing normally comes with a guilt-tag.

  ‘Tcha!’ She waves the comment away. ‘It’ll be fun. And you need to get out more. When was the last time you went anywhere? When it didn’t have something to do with someone dying?’

  I don’t even want to think about the answer to that.

  ‘Are you sure your parents don’t mind?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Then thank you. I’d be delighted to come.’

  I feel almost dizzy with the notion that I’ve made a decision, that in a few words I’ve broken what appeared to be the unbreakable destiny of routine. Sunday night is hard-boiled potatoes studded with dark eyes, and meat fried to leather. It will be a relief to miss that as well.

  ‘Yay!’ Carly punches the air. For a moment I think she is going to spring to her feet and embrace me. She doesn’t. ‘Fantastic. Mum and I will pick you up at five o’clock. We’ll eat early. I figured you probably wouldn’t want to party most of the night.’

  ‘Want to. Able to. The distinction is a form of tragedy.’

  ‘That is so cool you are coming, Mrs C. After dinner, you could tell me more of your story. It’ll be fun to hear it somewhere different, you know?’

  ‘We are approaching the end. I see it in the distance, looming larger with every sentence.’

  ‘Tell me some now.’

  ‘You are anxious to find out what happens to Adam?’

  She shrugs. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then I have not been a total failure as a story-teller.’

  I, too, am anxious for the end, though I suspect my reasons are different. The sun has ducked among the branches of a tree. It transforms them into a lattice of brilliance. The pond shimmers, reflects flashes of light. The air drones with the language of insects.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE NEXT SUNDAY I put on my best dress and waited for Mamma on the verandah.

  The paint was peeling from the house in great flakes. It was decaying before my eyes. Or shedding its skin. Perhaps beneath the old exterior something new was struggling to emerge. Something bright and shiny.

  Mamma opened the door and stepped outside. She carried her Bible. Everything was as it should be. I took a pace towards the rickety steps that led to bare earth before her voice stopped me.

  ‘We are not going to that church today, Leah.’

  For a moment I wondered if I had got the day wrong. But that was absurd. It was Sunday. On Sunday, at seven-thirty in the morning, we started our walk to church. Always. Not doing so was as unimaginable as the sun not rising or the dark refusing to gather. I turned towards mother. She brushed a hand through my hair and smiled.

  ‘Church is not just a building, my baby,’ she said. ‘I’ve explained this before. It is a state of mind, a willingness to open yourself up to God. And we can do that anywhere. This farm is a church, this verandah. You are a church, Leah, and so am I.’

  I had heard the idea before, but that didn’t make it easier to grasp. If that was so, why had we gone to the church in town in the past? Every Sunday. Never before had mother suggested we worship elsewhere.

  ‘So today, Leah, we will have our own service. Just the three of us in this church of our verandah. You, me and God. How does that sound, my baby? Would you enjoy that?’

  I wouldn’t, but I didn’t dare express the thought. I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Mamma. ‘We will sing and pray and I shall conduct the sermon. It will be just like always. But better. Because we will have God to ourselves. We won’t have to share Him.’

  * * *

  In the afternoon I lay in the orchard with Adam.

  By this time, I had discovered Shakespeare. I’d found a dog-eared copy of the complete works tucked away in a corner of Mrs Hilson’s shop. At first it had been daunting. The histories, in particular, were very difficult to understand. Almost instinctively, I gravitated towards the tragedies, though there were still many parts of those that remained locked outside my comprehension.

  I had no copy of the text with me, but I told Adam the story of Othello. As always he listened intently. When I’d finished, he stared at me.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say it?’ I said when the silence had stretched to breaking point.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’ve seen that place.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  This was the second revelation of the day. I felt there was nothing I could trust any longer.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I haven’t seen it.’

  I wondered for a few moments if he was angry with me. It had happened in the past, particularly when he felt I allowed Mother to dominate me too much. But there was nothing in his eyes except puzzlement. He picked a blade of grass and split it along the spine with a fingernail.

  ‘It’s you, Leah,’ he said. ‘It is you who sees these places.

  In your head. Because of the words you read. And when you read them to me, then I see them. And I can take you there. But this …’ He threw away the shredded blade. ‘This is just what people say to each other. I can see the people. I just can’t see the place.’

  I didn’t read drama to Adam after that. Many years later, when I went to my first theatre and saw Shakespeare on the stage, I was overcome with sadness. The seat next to me was occupied by a stranger. Three-quarters of the way through the production I was assailed by a longing so intense it made me gasp. I needed Adam there, so he could, with me, visit a land the dialogue could not reveal. I wanted him to lean across and whisper to me, ‘Now I’ve seen the place.’

  But Adam was long gone by then. And the man sitting next to me sniffed throughout.

  Mother was on the verandah when I returned. She had the shotgun nestled in her arms. My heart hammered in my chest. It was the first time I’d seen the gun since that stormy night.

  ‘What is it, Mamma?’ I said.

  Mother scanned the ground before our house. She glanced up at my approach, but didn’t reply. Instead, she continued to examine the dusty track, occasionally lifting her eyes to peer towards the horizon.

  ‘Have you seen anyone, Leah?’ she said finally.

  ‘Mamma?’

  ‘A stranger? Someone on our farm.’

  ‘No, Mamma.’

  Adam wasn’t a stranger. I did not lie. But I knew this was about him.

  ‘Someone has been snooping around,’ she said. She gestured at the dirt with the barrel of the gun. ‘Left footprints.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mamma?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure, Leah. We do not have visitors. So who could have left these?’ She crouched by a set of Adam’s prints. They were clear, the outline of his toes distinct in the red dirt. I said nothing.

  Mother stood and squinted against the rays of the dying sun. The barrel of the gun rested comfortably in the crook of her arm, but her finger was curled around the trigger.

  ‘Keep an eye out, my angel,’ she said. ‘We must be vigilant.’

  Adam didn’t stay in my room that night. I felt so alone, I cried myself to sleep.

  Three weeks later, I found myself trailing behind Mother on the track to town. It was seven-thirty on a Sunday morning.

  I had no idea why we were going to church, but I assumed that must be where we were headed. Mother carried her Bible. She walked so briskly I had to scamper to keep within twenty metres of her. Adam flanked us, a considerable distance to my left. I’d wanted him to stay home, but he’d refused. Once again, mother kept her eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. She said nothing to me the entire trip.

  The pastor was at the church door, greeting his congregation. His smile was as broad as I remembered it. Mother attempted to walk straight past him, but he partially blocked the entrance.

  ‘Good morning, Leah,’ he said. ‘And welcome back. How are you this fine day?’

  This time, I was prepared for conversation.

  ‘Good. Thank you, Pastor,’ I said.

  Mother withered me with a glance. I had no idea what I’d do
ne to deserve it.

  ‘Am I right in thinking you brought a companion with you?’ the pastor continued. He glanced over my shoulder and I froze.

  ‘You are not,’ said Mother. Her voice was ice.

  ‘Ah, I must be mistaken.’

  Mother took me by the hand and pulled me into the dark recesses of the church. Her fingers trembled against mine. I could sense something violent rising within her flesh.

  ‘The man is mad,’ she muttered.

  We took our seats in our usual pew. I wanted to ask why we were here, when the verandah had been our church for the last couple of Sundays. But the trembling in my mother’s hand was a warning. I bent my head and prayed, and waited for the storm I knew was coming.

  Throughout the prayers and hymns, Mother was her normal enthusiastic self. Her voice was the loudest while we were all singing, though it was far from the most melodic. She couldn’t carry a tune, but she made up for her musical deficiencies through sheer volume. It used to embarrass me. Now it was simply another patina in the gloss of routine.

  I became tense when Pastor Bauer ascended the pulpit. My tension mirrored my mother’s. I felt her become more rigid, as if she was merging with the hardness of the pew. I wondered if those around us could sense the electricity she was generating.

  The pastor swept his smile around the congregation, like a lighthouse that bestowed its beam on all. He started with a couple of anecdotes about town life. They were warm and affectionate and anchored firmly in the commonplace. Sermons weren’t supposed to be like this. They weren’t sermons unless we felt discomfort and guilt, if we weren’t squirming against the unforgiving wood beneath. I was accustomed to feeling I had offended God in ways I hadn’t understood. Pastor Bauer made me feel like God had a sense of humour. I was confused.

  Mother stood when the pastor moved on to the main point of his sermon, which appeared to be about not judging those whose opinions you do not share. He stopped in mid-sentence as he observed my mother’s figure, a lone upright among the crowd. Mother said nothing. She simply stood there. I felt her hand reach for mine, clasp my fingers and tug. I stood also, my heart thumping. The eyes of the congregation turned towards us. For a few moments there was silence as the world focused on us.