Rain May and Captain Daniel

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘Well, you’d only be in at the Royal Children’s,’ Dad said. ‘Wouldn’t that be nearly as available as here at the flat?’

  ‘Hardly. I can’t access work from the hospital.’

  ‘But if they rang, we could just leave, couldn’t we?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so. It’s not terribly convenient.’

  In the end she took me in to the hospital, but we left much later than we were supposed to because her work did need her and she was on the computer for ages trying to sort something out. So when we finally got in, the visiting hours were over. The nurse was sorry but all she could do, she said, was let me write a note which she absolutely promised to give Daniel.

  I didn’t say anything, but when we got back to the flat I packed my bag and waited for Dad to come home. I knew it wasn’t all Julia’s fault. I knew it wasn’t all Dad’s fault. But I was sick of them both.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I told him when he walked in, ‘and I want to go now. Neither of you really want me here. And I don’t want to be here.’

  ‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’

  ‘We got to the hospital after visiting hours,’ I said, ‘and I hate her and I hate you, too. I’m going home to Maggie.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Rain. I’m sure Julia didn’t mean to be late.’

  ‘Just like you didn’t mean to work. But you always do. I’m only here every other weekend but you still have to work. Mum would never do that. Mum cares about people. You and Julia just care about things. And work.’ I was nearly crying but I kept my voice cold and hard.

  ‘Rain, you don’t understand, you’re just a kid. Adult things are complicated.’

  ‘Daniel’s just a kid, too. And he’s my friend and he might not even know why I haven’t come to see him.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I just want to go home to Maggie.’ I could feel my voice rising into a shriek and I didn’t care. I could feel anger and sadness bubbling through me like gas in a bottle. ‘You don’t care about me. You don’t care about anyone. You and Julia are a good match. I hate you both and I want to go home.’ I was shouting now, so all the trendy neighbours in Julia’s trendy apartment block would hear me. ‘You’re a selfish, selfish pig and you don’t deserve Mum and me.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I want to go home and I’m going to scream until you take me.’

  ‘I think you’d better take her home straightaway,’ Julia said. ‘She’s hysterical.’

  ‘I hate you,’ I screamed. ‘I hate you.’

  ‘I think you’d better take her home now, Brian, and we’d all better have some breathing space. Brian?’

  All I said to Dad on the whole drive home was that I would never forgive him, ever, for as long as I lived.

  Maggie met us at the door, hugged me and told me to go to my room. She and Dad had to talk, she said. This was the first time Dad had seen our dream home, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to live with him ever again. I put a CD in my player and lay down on my bed with my hot eyes closed and let the music beat through my body until I stopped thinking about anything but the rhythm of the music. When I woke up, the music had stopped, Dad had gone home and Mum was in her dressing gown drinking a mug of Sleepy Time tea.

  ‘You were asleep,’ she said. ‘Dad said goodbye, but you were asleep.’

  ‘I hate him,’ I said, ‘and I hate Julia.’

  ‘I think your father needs to reorganise his priorities,’ Maggie agreed, ‘but he loves you, Rain, and he really did think Julia would be able to take you to see Daniel. It’s just unfortunate the way it turned out.’

  ‘I’m glad he left us for that … that bimbo,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we don’t live with him anymore.’

  Maggie sighed and drew me close to her. She smelled of sandalwood incense and the little tendrils of her hair were damp from the bath. ‘It’s an adjustment period,’ she said, stroking my forehead. ‘In a way, it’s sort of good that it happened. I think Dad’s realised that he has to fit into your life, too. It’s not just a matter of you fitting into his. That’s a hard lesson, sweetie. Give him a chance.’

  ‘I’m not going back,’ I said. ‘I’m never staying there again. I’m never seeing them again. Ever.’

  ‘You’re seeing them tomorrow,’ Maggie said. ‘Your father is driving back, all this way, to pick you up and you are all going to visit Daniel tomorrow. And you are going to be on your best behaviour, Rain, because you said some hurtful things to both of them.’

  ‘They were all true,’ I said.

  ‘The truth can be hurtful, sweetheart. More hurtful, often, than when someone tells you lies. Because you know it’s true. I think you’ve shaken them both a bit. But Rain, you must also be big enough to forgive them and give them a second chance. That’s the real test, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘The real test of how brave and loving you can be is when you allow someone to make a mistake and you keep loving them, despite that mistake. Now, I’m not going to ask you to apologise for anything you said. But I am going to ask you to be the best person you can be.’

  ‘Why? He left us, Mum. He didn’t care enough about us to stay. Why should I be the best person for him?’

  ‘Sweetie, marriages are messy things. Who knows when something starts to go wrong? No one person is to blame. Under different circumstances it could have been someone new coming into my life, not Dad’s. I could have been the one who left.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have left without me.’

  ‘Of course not, but I might have made you live with the someone I’d met.’

  I thought about this. I tried to see Maggie with a mysterious Mr X by her side. I tried to imagine them in Julia’s spa bath together. I tried to imagine them kissing, the way I had seen Dad and Julia kissing. It didn’t work. I could only see Dad’s shadow by her side.

  ‘Do you think you could still meet someone?’

  ‘I’m not completely over the hill yet.’ Maggie laughed. ‘And I’ve still got all my hair. You never know.’

  ‘It’s not that I think you’re over the hill,’ I said. ‘It’s just that you seem, I don’t know, somehow complete, just by yourself.’

  ‘Oh Rain.’ Maggie hugged me. ‘That’s just about the best thing you could have said to me!’

  I didn’t understand why she seemed to be nearly crying, but I decided that Dad and she were right — adults are complicated messy people with complicated messy lives. Then and there I vowed I’d never be like that. My life would be organised. It would be more like Diana’s, colour-coordinated, neatly folded and prepared for any emergency.

  Poem

  I miss the star boy

  worry

  for him

  and his broken heart.

  Daughter

  life is hard

  cloud girl

  & sacred

  devour it ferociously

  the green & the blue

  the kiss & the salt

  trust good angels

  to surround you two

  always

  & god to bring every child

  home

  The Captain’s Log, Supplemental, Stardate 301001

  Sick bay.

  Turns out my ankles were getting bigger. They were getting bigger because they were swelling because my heart wasn’t working properly. Water retention. Proper name: oedema. A sign of cardiac failure.

  Now I’m on medication but they’re still going to operate even though my ankles are normal again.

  The Counsellor has been here every day from breakfast time, practically, until lights out. The Doctor made her go home early tonight. He said she’d break down if she didn’t have one good night’s sleep. I’m lonely. I was talking to Phil, one of the nurses, but a new kid just came in, so it’s all systems go.

  The hospital doesn’t sleep, ever. Last night a police helicopter landed — must have picked someone up from a country hospital. We all went to the window and watched them land it, guys
with long laser torches. At night the lights go down, but kids whimper and moan, and nurses come around and check you. I woke up the other morning at six and this little toddler was being prepped for an operation.

  I’ll have to have an operation, but only when my surgeon comes back from overseas.

  I’ll have to have an operation.

  The Doctor says that the statistics are well in my favour. The Counsellor tells me I have the constitution of an ox. They both tell me I am brave and strong. They both tell me I will come through this with flying colours. They both tell me how much they love me. They both look scared.

  I’m scared.

  I try not to be. I went on the Intensive Care Unit tour and asked careful questions and nodded at everything that was said, but all I could see were sick children with tubes coming out of them. That’s all I could see and that was all the Counsellor could see, I know, because she held my hand very tightly the whole time and I couldn’t pull away from her.

  It’s not so bad when Mum’s here. She brought in the Enterprise model and we’re making it on a little table that’s set up near the window. The nurses come and help sometimes. When we’re bored we take a break and go down to the canteen and outside to the playground.

  The Doctor says we’ve made my bit of the ward look like home. But even though it is all very interesting being here and I do feel I have learnt a lot, I long to go home, back to my own bed and my own room.

  Most of all I miss hearing them talk at night. The darkness and stillness of our country nights. Here there is always noise and bustle, right through the night.

  And I miss Rain. She was going to come and see me today but didn’t. She sent me a note instead. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t make it. It was Julia’s fault, the note said.

  By the time I get back to school, they’ll have taken her. Becky and she are already friends. I watched her the other day. I knew she would rather have been playing basketball with the girls than sitting talking to me.

  By the time I get out of here, I’ll have lost the one friend I’ve had in years.

  I don’t want to write any more. I’m not feeling well.

  Aliens Everywhere

  Maggie got up early and made her date and chocolate surprise muffins for morning tea. When Julia and Dad arrived, the breakfast dishes were all washed, incense was burning in the lounge room and everything else smelt of muffins. She insisted on taking Julia right through the house, showing her the renovations we had done. Julia admired the paint work and the old dresser the Counsellor and Maggie were stripping and even ate two muffins. If it had been up to me those muffins would have been date and poison, not date and chocolate, surprises.

  Dad apologised to me. ‘I’m sorry, Rain. Work’s been unbelievable lately with this upgrade we’re doing, but I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.’

  I thought he was going to kiss me and I wasn’t ready for that yet, so I scooted backwards and held out my hand instead.

  ‘Peace?’ Dad asked taking it.

  ‘Peace,’ I said and we shook on it. And Maggie gave me the biggest muffin with my hot chocolate.

  Hospitals smell. And everyone whispers, except for the nurses who talk more loudly and cheerfully than they should. Even though Daniel’s ward had a big colourful wall mural and the kids had their own things hanging above the beds and on their bedside chests of drawers, it was still a hospital full of sick children.

  When we walked in Daniel and the Counsellor were leaning over a model of something.

  ‘Oh Rain,’ the Counsellor said, ‘how lovely of you!’

  ‘This is my dad, Brian,’ I said, ‘and his girlfriend, Julia. Hi, Daniel.’

  The Counsellor looked tired but Daniel looked pretty much the same as usual. Diana said she might take the opportunity to slip out for a while, make some phone calls and buy some fruit, if that was okay with us.

  ‘She’s here all the time,’ Daniel said.

  ‘What are you making?’ Julia asked. ‘That looks like — it is! It’s a model of the Enterprise.’

  ‘Mum got it for me,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m into Star Trek.

  ‘So am I,’ Julia said, and held up her hand in the Vulcan salute. ‘Live long and Prosper. What’s your favourite, Next Gen or Deep Space Nine??

  After that, we all relaxed and the visiting hour flew by. I kept sneaking looks at Julia, wondering how anyone with such perfect fingernails and hair could be a secret Trekkie, but she wasn’t faking. I remembered Dad saying how he knew someone with every Star Trek video and I wondered why I hadn’t worked it out then, that he had meant Julia. After all, Dad didn’t know all that many people. It had to be her. I had just been too angry with him to really listen.

  ‘What a great kid,’ she said when we got in the car to go home again. ‘I do hope he romps through that surgery and makes a full recovery. So intelligent! You are lucky to have a friend like that, Rain.’

  She insisted that Dad drive to Minotaur Bookshop where she bought three Star Trek lapel pins, one for her, one for Daniel and one for me. ‘For good luck,’ she said. ‘You can tell Daniel I’ll wear mine and think of him every time I see it.’

  I stuck mine through the band of my hat so I wouldn’t lose it in the wash, and put Daniel’s away so I could send it with the ‘get well’ card our class was making.

  Or should have been, except that all our time was taken up with listening to and admiring Becky and Tom’s American cousin, Madison, who was now over her jet lag. She was tall with bouncy hair and a perfect smile. And Becky was right, she had an opinion on everything.

  ‘You’re so cute, Rain,’ she said, when Becky introduced me. ‘In the States we’d say you were a real individual, the way you dress.’

  I had on my blue wig, the one I’d bought at the Royal Show. It was hot and scratched the back of my head but I didn’t care. All the other girls were pulling their hair back like Madison’s, into pony tails that flipped at their shoulders.

  ‘Well thanks, Madison.’

  ‘And your name, too. Fancy naming anyone after the weather.’

  ‘It’s a poem, Madison. I’m named after a poem.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  When she saw my hat, though, she shrieked, ‘Are you a Trekker?’

  ‘Live Long and Prosper,’ I muttered, doing the strange v salute I’d been practising.

  ‘Oh girl, you should have told me! The one thing I’m just sick about is that I’m missing Enterprise, the new series. Back home everyone’s watching it. Scott Bakala is a total stud puppy.’

  I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but I was interested to note that she now considered me her girlfriend. That’s what she said when she hopped into Becky’s mother’s car at the end of school: ‘Bye, girlfriend.’ Becky was right, she was so American.

  ‘I think Americans are actually aliens,’ I told Maggie when I got home. ‘I think they’ve been beamed up from somewhere really strange and far away.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Maggie said. She was kneading bread dough in time to one of her celtic folk cds. Every time the Irish hand drum banged, Maggie thumped the bread. It was soothing.

  ‘Any news?’ I asked.

  ‘Diana has taken Daniel down to Rosebud for a few days,’ Maggie said. ‘They’re waiting for his cardiologist to come back from that conference. And your father sent this up, special delivery.’

  There was a computer sitting on Maggie’s corner desk.

  ‘Dad sent it?’

  ‘Well, apparently it was chucked out at Julia’s work. She scavenged it. Surprised?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It all works,’ Maggie said, ‘and I got us on the Internet straightaway so you can email Daniel anytime you want — they’ve got their notebook with them.’

  I emailed Daniel before dinner about Madison and the new Star Trek series, Enterprise. And just after dinner I checked the email and found a reply from him. Reading it I could hear him talking and I missed him so much I got a pain under
my ribs. I told Maggie and she said I shouldn’t have had two helpings of butterscotch self-saucing pudding, but then she hugged me so my pain hurt worse.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘I know just what you mean.’

  I emailed Emma in Sydney, too, to give her our email address. I had only had a short note from her talking about the boys in her new school and how she didn’t know which one to go out with. As if her parents would let her go out with anyone! Still, I guess I’d fibbed to her, too, about Daniel. Maggie emailed Fran and then we surfed the Internet for a while. Maggie checked out yoga sites and I looked for kids chat rooms, but the problem was that it just went on and on. As soon as you found one good place, there were a dozen links to follow. My head was spinning when I went to bed.

  At school everyone talked about the disco and what they were going to wear. There was a rumour that the first prize for best costume was the new Circus Ponies’ cd and everyone wanted to win it.

  Becky and Madison were going as Lord of the Rings characters.

  ‘Have you read the book?’ I asked, surprised. Lord of the Rings was a big book and I couldn’t somehow see Madison reading it.

  ‘I’ve seen the movie. It was, like, awesome.’

  ‘I’ve read the book,’ Becky said, ‘or at least part of it. Mum’s making us these great long dresses. What are you going to wear?’

  I couldn’t make up my mind. Fancy dress was difficult. I wanted to be beautiful and glamorous. I wanted to be wild. I wanted to be mysterious and spooky. I didn’t want to be anything from Harry Potter. I didn’t want to be anything Halloweeny. I knew half the kids were recycling their Halloween costumes but I couldn’t see the point.

  ‘You’ll have to make up your mind,’ Maggie said, ‘you’re running out of time. But make it easy, will you, Rain? I’m going to start on that downstairs room tomorrow and I don’t want to break off and make a complicated costume for you in the middle of sanding the floor. Can’t you go as Alice in Wonderland, or maybe — hey, I’ve got it. Go retro — go as Dorothy, you know, from The Wizard of Oz.’

  ‘Maggie, puhlease! That is like, so yesterday!’