by Imbi Neeme
‘Come in the morning, before the doctors do their rounds and piss her off,’ she’d said. ‘She’s good in the mornings. She makes all the nurses laugh.’
But as the week passed by and Samantha still hadn’t gone to the hospital, the messages grew shorter. And the most recent message was the shortest of all.
‘Please, Samantha.’
But Samantha didn’t go. Couldn’t go.
Instead, she did other things. She did her work. She did the laundry and the shopping and the cleaning. She cooked dinner and washed dishes, she organised and re-organised the books and the CDs and the video games, and then, when everything that could be done was done, she sat down next to Trent to watch TV before retreating to the spare bedroom and her secret stash of vodka.
After three nights in a row of joining him to watch the test cricket highlights, Trent was finally onto her.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I love having you next to me here on the couch, I really do, but I think you need to go and see your mum.’
‘I know,’ she said, putting her head on his shoulder.
‘Nicole rang me at work. She said it was serious, that Tina wasn’t going to last much longer.’
‘I know.’
‘This isn’t like you, avoiding things like this. You’re being like Nicole.’
‘I know.’ She was whispering now.
They watched as the red ball was whacked about on a sea of green and white. The lines began to grow in Samantha’s mind again, one on top of another. Trent put his arm around her and pulled her in tight.
‘I could go with you,’ he said, turning the sound down at the next ad break. ‘If that makes it easier.’
Samantha didn’t say anything. She knew that nothing would make it easier. Not even drinking was making it easier.
That night, as the vodka carried her off into sleep, she felt her body relax into the mattress of the spare bed and it took her back to an early memory. It was late at night, at the end of a long car trip, maybe coming back from Esperance. She and Nicole were lying on the back seat and she could hear her parents talking in low voices in the front, laughing together over some story, and their laughter sounded like music. When she felt the car pull into the driveway, Samantha closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, so she could be carried into bed. She felt Nicole being lifted away from her and then Tina’s arms around her, lifting her up so that her face was nestled in against Tina’s hair, which smelt like exotic flowers and coconut.
As Samantha remembered this, she realised that she would never experience that feeling of being carried by her mother again. Her parents, she realised, were going to die. Tina first, any day now, and then later, Craig. And then Donna-Louise. After that, there would be nobody left to carry her, not even for part of her journey.
When she woke in the morning, she knew it was time. She called in sick at work and headed into the Mount, where Jethro’s millions had transferred Tina. She didn’t tell Trent she was going; she didn’t tell Nicole either. She just went.
In her expensive private room in the palliative care unit, Tina looked like a small, broken puppet on the bed, her wires all tangled up with machines. Her skin was yellow and her breathing was laboured, despite the tubes leading from her nose to a tank of oxygen. Her arms were as thin as fingers, but her stomach, even under the bedding, looked bloated.
‘Mum, it’s me, Sammy. I’m here,’ she said tentatively, as she approached Tina’s bed, but she may as well have been talking to a cloudless sky. Tina’s eyes stayed shut and she remained perfectly still, except for the slow rise and fall of her chest.
She remembered watching Tina asleep on the couch when she was younger, the little pttttht noises the air made as it had escaped her mouth, slack with sleep and booze. Back then, she knew Tina would eventually wake up and ask Samantha to make her coffee; three heaped spoons each of International Roast and sugar with a splash of milk.
Now, there would be no instant coffee. There may not even be any more waking up.
Samantha looked around at the flowers and cards that surrounded Tina’s bed. The biggest bunch – an explosion of red roses – was from Nicole and Jethro. She felt the usual sting of jealousy, imagining Nicole walking into a florist and choosing the largest bunch without having to even look at the price tag. She tucked the small bunch of flowers she’d bought from the hospital florist into the same vase as Nicole’s extravagance and sat down on the chair by the bed.
As she took her mother’s hand in her own, it felt small and fragile, like it was made of tiny bird bones.
‘Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I . . .’
But she didn’t know what to say. There were no clear words for her to grasp on to. She felt that ancient rage rise up inside her, the rage of the Other Samantha. Rage at her mother for not loving her, for not choosing her, for always putting drink ahead of her. Rage at her mother for giving her the same disease and then rage at herself for succumbing to that disease. And then sadness for Tina’s life, spent in the company of the bottle at the exclusion of everyone else, even her daughters. A life pissed away. And then she remembered to breathe.
She breathed in time with Tina, in and out, holding Tina’s hand in hers and listening to the hum of the machines until a nurse came in to usher her out.
‘We’ll be ten minutes,’ the nurse told her kindly. ‘We just need to take some blood and change her sheets. Go get yourself a coffee and by the time you come back, we’ll be gone.’
Samantha headed towards the cafeteria on the ground floor but found it was easier to keep walking out to the carpark, get in the car and drive away without having to say goodbye. A part of her felt that Tina would understand. Another part of her felt like a lost child, separated from her mother in a crowd, wanting to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come, as much as she might have wanted them to.
She ended up driving around for hours, visiting the landmarks of her childhood, places that she regularly drove past but never stopped and thought about. She drove up to Kings Park and walked around the clock made of flowers. She looked out over the river and the Narrows Bridge and the windmill in South Perth that she had once thought to be so exotic. She got back in the car and she drove over to Rokeby Road, past the old Subi markets, where Tina would sometimes take them to have stuffed baked potatoes for lunch if she wasn’t too hungover, and then she cut across towards the coast, to City Beach.
When she reached the Indian Ocean, she paused for a moment and considered turning left, towards Cottesloe and back to the Ocean Beach Hotel. But instead, she turned right and drove all the way up the coast, past the monstrous blue units that had once been the Jetson house that Tina had always said she would buy when she won the Lotto.
At Observation City, she cut inland and started heading down Scarborough Beach Road and, before she really knew it, she was in Dog Swamp, where that semi-boyfriend of Nicole’s had once worked at the video store. Finally, she headed east towards Bassendean, to the little townhouse she had lived in with Tina and Nicole all those years ago. And she knew that this was where she had been heading all along.
She parked outside and looked at its curtained windows and thought of the many nights she had slept there: Tina drinking and doing jigsaws in front of the television in the small lounge room; Nicole reading her books under the covers with a torch; and Samantha lying in her bed, dreaming of a better life, with a valance and clean sheets. Of course, she’d eventually found that better life, living with Craig and Donna-Louise. But a little part of her had always remained in Bassendean, yearning for something else.
Her phone rang and broke her thoughts. It was Nicole. This time, she took the call.
‘Hello?’
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone and Samantha knew what Nicole was going to say. But she let her say it anyway.
‘Mum’s gone.’
She said more but Samantha didn’t really process any of it. She thought of Tina in that hospital room, fin
ally still, her chest no longer rising and falling with the effort of living, with the effort of staying sober and the effort of getting drunk.
And she found herself yearning for that same relief, whatever shape it took.
Nicole
We flew along the State 40 highway, stirring up the red dirt and all our secrets. It was much easier to talk to each other honestly while we drove, our eyes forward and Perth fading behind us. I told Samantha my secrets and she told me hers, our conversation underlined by an ’80s compilation CD on the car stereo: ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, ‘We Built This City’, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. The soundtrack of our youth.
‘And all that time I gave you shit about the frozen ham, you never thought to tell me about your miscarriage?’ Samantha asked. She sounded hurt, but not in the petulant way she used to as a kid. I recognised it as the kind of hurt you feel when you realise how much pain you’ve caused someone you love. I knew that feeling well.
‘I wish you’d told me you went to see Mum,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been so furious with you. If I’d known you went, maybe I might have been kinder to you instead of behaving like I was the only person entitled to grieve.’
‘Well, I should have seen her earlier. I should have told you how I was feeling, I should have . . .’
I shot a glance at her but her face was turned towards the passenger window.
‘You should have what?’ I asked.
‘I should have done a lot of things,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘But the point is, I can’t do anything about all that. It’s what I do now that matters. At least that’s what Dad told me. And look at us both: I’m here talking to you and you are here talking to me. We got there in the end.’
‘Amen to that,’ I said, cranking up ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ on the stereo. Perhaps our secrets could ultimately cancel each other out, leaving us both feeling as clear as the road ahead.
As we hit the first bend in the road outside Narembeen on the way up towards Bruce Rock, Samantha turned to me.
‘Is this it?’
‘No. Maybe. I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I feel like we’d driven around a few bends before we crashed.’
I took the corners slowly, a lot more carefully than I guessed Tina would have taken them. At the fourth bend in the road, I pulled over.
‘This is it,’ I said. ‘I remember the gravel road here, off to the side.’
We slowly climbed out of the car. The air was heavy with flies and memories.
‘Or maybe I’m wrong.’ I was doubting my memory now. ‘I remember a tree. There’s no tree here.’
‘It’s been thirty-six years. Maybe the tree got chopped down?’
We took in the expanse of the wide, brown land around us while the flies tried to crawl up our noses and into our mouths.
‘I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t flipped the car here,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ Samantha asked, swatting a fly away.
‘With the divorce and everything.’
Samantha squinted at the sky for a moment. ‘I think things would have turned out the same,’ she eventually said, looking back down at me. ‘Especially now we know why Mum was driving this way.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I replied. ‘But maybe they would have separated under different terms where it didn’t look and feel like it was all Mum’s fault.’
Samantha shrugged. ‘It’s hard to know.’
We stood for a while longer. I remembered the couple who had stopped and pulled blankets out of their station wagon. I remembered the nurse’s kind face when she offered me that lollipop. I remembered the dogs who sat at our feet while we waited for Dad. It was funny how people tended to remember the aftermath more than the disaster itself.
At the Bruce Rock pub, we walked into the same front bar where Mum had sat and drank with the locals so many years ago.
I ordered two lemonades and a packet of salt and vinegar chips.
‘For old times’ sake,’ I said to Samantha.
‘You can get a beer, you know,’ Samantha told me. ‘I won’t mind.’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Samantha went to pull her purse out.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got this.’
Even in the dawn of this new era between us, I sensed that she wanted to give her usual answer: You mean, Jethro’s got this. But she put her purse away, nonetheless.
Still, I decided not to let it go this time. As we waited for our drinks, I asked her, ‘Why does Jethro’s money bother you so much?’
‘Ha,’ Samantha replied. ‘My therapist asked me the very same question the other day.’
‘And what did you tell her?’
Samantha started straightening the stack of coasters on the bar. ‘Even though I know you’ve worked in shitty jobs most of your life, it kills me that you now never have to worry about work or money or where to live. It’s like you’ve been drifting along out at sea for years and yet have somehow managed to wash up on the shore in exactly the right spot. Meanwhile, I’ve felt like I’ve been slogging away, never getting anywhere. I certainly haven’t landed in the same beautiful spot as you.’
‘But then, you’re a much richer person than I’ll ever be,’ I replied. ‘You have Rosemary. All I have is that awful Cookie Monster jar to remind me of my incompetent cervix.’
‘We should have some kind of ceremony where we smash it together,’ Samantha suggested. ‘To remind you that you are much more than your cervix.’
I smiled. It wasn’t a bad idea.
We took our drinks to a table in the corner. Samantha watched me as I took a sip of my lemonade.
‘I’ve always envied you for that, you know,’ she said instead.
‘For what?’
‘Just now you didn’t order a beer because you didn’t feel like it. You can have one drink or a hundred drinks or none at all. It never seems to bother you or hold you captive the way it does for me. You even spent a whole year stoned and then one day, you just stopped. Just like that.’
‘I’ve never really thought about it that way.’
‘Because you’ve never had to think about it. Every day is a struggle for me not to drink. Every hour, every minute. Every second. Even now that I’ve decided I don’t want to drink anymore, I still think about it all the time.’
‘Oh, Sam,’ I said. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Of course, you didn’t. Because I never told you. I never told you a lot of things.’
‘Like why you didn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid at your wedding?’ The words surprised me by falling out of my mouth. Sure, it had bothered me at the time, but I honestly hadn’t thought of it for years.
‘Oh, yes. That.’ Samantha shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Since we’re spilling all our secrets, I may as well tell you the real, horrible truth. I know I pretended at the time it was because Trent wanted to matchmake you with Darren—’
‘But wasn’t it you?’
‘Wasn’t it me what?’
‘That wanted to matchmake me with Darren? That’s how I remember it,’ I said.
Samantha looked surprised. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘I don’t remember ever liking Darren enough to wish him upon my beloved sister. But if I did, I’m truly sorry. Anyway, the truth is even worse. The real reason I didn’t make you a bridesmaid was because you were too tall.’
I felt my jaw drop. ‘What?’
‘Trent’s groomsmen were all so short and I just didn’t want the wedding photos ruined with you towering over everyone,’ Samantha admitted sheepishly.
‘Really?’ I started laughing. ‘I knew you went a bit bridezilla, but I had no idea about the extent of it.’
‘I know, right? I was even worse to Mum. I basically told her not to come to the reception. Or rather, I told her she could only come if she didn’t drink.’
‘Oh.’ I stopped laughing. I remembered Mum at the church, making her flimsy excuses and disappeari
ng.
‘For years, I told myself she chose alcohol over me by not coming,’ Samantha continued. ‘But the truth was, I didn’t want her to come. And I’m ashamed of that. She probably told you all about it.’
I shook my head. ‘No, she just said she had a headache.’
Samantha looked legitimately surprised. ‘God, she was even better at keeping secrets than we were.’
I looked down at the carpet, faded with age and spilled beer, and I thought of Mum and the things she never told us, all now buried with her in Karrakatta Cemetery. They were like the missing pieces of a puzzle.
And then I remembered the present I had for Samantha. ‘I was going to give this to you when we got back to Perth,’ I said, reaching into my bag. ‘But it feels the right time to give it to you now.’
I handed her a gift box. Samantha looked surprised.
‘Jethro and I found these when we were tidying up Mum’s flat,’ I explained. ‘And I got them framed.’
Samantha opened the gift box to find a glass frame holding a photo of us both, nestled in between layers of pink tissue paper. The photo had been taken when we were eleven and nine. In the corner of the photo was the piece of puzzle I’d found wedged in the skirting board.
‘Oh god,’ Samantha laughed when she saw the piece of puzzle. ‘One of Tina’s missing pieces. You’ve put that there to taunt me.’
‘No, no,’ I assured her. ‘It’s there as a reminder that we don’t need all the pieces to get an idea of the larger picture.’
‘Except in the case of this one, where we’ll never know what the larger picture is,’ Samantha joked. ‘I expect the rest of the pieces are in the bin.’
‘That’s where the photo comes in.’
Samantha took a closer look at the photo. The two of us were wearing matching sundresses, arms around each other, arms, legs and faces bronzed by summer.
‘The photo is from that summer in Esperance. Just before the accident,’ I told her.