Well-behaved Women

by Emily Paull

  I don’t read a word of my book, but having it in front of me helps. The even, shallow breathing from the bed beside me is soothing, like the ticking of a clock. I drift into a waking sleep, though the book stays upright in my hands.

  What feels like minutes later, I wake to find my mother sitting next to me in the wheelchair she uses to take Josie out for walks in the hospital garden. There’s a lake with a small rock waterfall and ducks swimming about in it, and Mum and Josie like to sit out there and chat. On her good days, Josie can stay out there for an hour or more. On her not-so-good days, she gets cold in minutes, or falls asleep in the lift. The time outside does Mum as much good as it does Josie.

  ‘Do you remember when she used to choreograph dances and then bring us all into the family room to watch her perform?’ Mum whispers to me.

  ‘Remember? I was the back-up dancer.’

  ‘What was that song she always used? The slow one, the Savage Garden one?’

  I smile. ‘“Truly Madly Deeply.” The girls next door helped her with that one, the two older ones. They were pretty good.’ Mum laughs into her styrofoam cup. From where I’m sitting, it smells like a warm and strangely heavenly mix of coffee and bleach. I excuse myself and duck down the hall to get my own.

  He is there again. He is always in the visitors’ lounge when I go to get coffee, always coming off the night shift. Today his hair is messed up on the left-hand side from where he has been leaning his head in his hands. I watch as he puts three sugar sachets into his cup. There was a time when I would have said, ‘That stuff will give you cancer’, but that joke doesn’t seem funny anymore.

  Jason, his name is, or, as Mum and I call him, Nurse Jason— because that’s who he is: the oncology nurse from Josie’s ward. I wouldn’t flirt with him even if I had the energy to, because he’s been assigned to Josie and that would be strange.

  Nurse Jason sees me and smiles like he has been waiting for me all morning. He does not look twice at my bald head.

  ‘Hey, Candace. Josie had a good night last night. Did your mum tell you?’

  I shake my head and reach for a styrofoam cup. ‘I haven’t seen her properly yet. She’s just got back to the room, and I need caffeine.’

  He keeps smiling at me, waiting as the coffee machine gurgles water into my cup.

  We could be a couple, making breakfast together, if only we were anywhere else. It is a stray, unwelcome thought, and it makes me blush.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks.

  ‘As fine as can be expected.’

  ‘Do you have to go back to work soon?’

  I shrug. ‘I can’t really imagine it happening. I might resign … find something part-time until—’

  I cannot finish the sentence. Tears flood my eyes, and I put the coffee cup down. My tears are controlled, measured, but all the same I am crying. Nurse Jason scrunches up a handful of tissues from a box on a nearby table and passes them to me. He puts his hand on my shoulder. That iodine smell is all over his skin.

  ‘Do you want to get a coffee with me sometime, some place that isn’t a hospital lounge?’

  I have been hoping he would ask this for so long, but I’ve also dreaded it. I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. Nurse Jason is part of my hospital life. In my hospital life, Josie is the only important thing. If I allow myself to go on a date with him, I will be mixing my worlds, which is something I said I would never do.

  ‘No,’ I say, finally. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. No thanks.’

  I excuse myself before he can try to change my mind, or before I can start crying all over again.

  Josie is sitting up in her bed when I get back. She is flicking through a magazine that someone has left for her. It’s old. Brad and Angelina are on the cover, clearly still together.

  ‘Mum had to go,’ she says. ‘She needed to get some things. She’ll be back.’

  I slide back into the visitor’s seat and lean back.

  ‘God,’ I exhale. ‘Why does everything have to be so fucking complicated?’

  She raises her eyebrows at me without looking up. ‘Did Jason finally ask you out?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And you said no because you’re martyring yourself because I have cancer?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  She closes the magazine and puts it on her tray table next to the remains of a breakfast she’s barely touched. Her eyes are bright today, something that seems more obvious now that her hair is gone and her skin is the palest it’s ever been. Today she looks like she would glow in the dark.

  ‘He’s nice. He’s been really kind to Mum and me. What’s wrong with having a cup of coffee with him?’

  I wrinkle my nose. ‘He’s not the kind of guy I usually date.’

  ‘Because he’s not a total loser? I agree.’

  I try not to laugh, but she’s right. There’s a reason I never go on more than three dates with anyone—it’s because the kinds of guys I usually meet don’t have enough substance to them. By date number three, we’ve usually run out of things to talk about.

  Josie folds her hands in her lap. Her hands are shaking, but I know better than to ask her if she’s in pain.

  ‘Don’t you want to find someone more permanent, Candace? Jason’s not a three-date max kind of guy. He’s a spend-your-whole-life-together type.’

  ‘Says the girl who dated the same guy she went to the Year Twelve Ball with for six years.’

  It’s a throwaway comment, the kind of thing I might have said to her before, but I know I’ve gone too far when I look up and she’s turned her face away from me. I have brought up Anthony, the one topic that is now off limits.

  ‘Oh, Josie, I’m sorry, I—’

  She holds her hand up to shush me. There are tubes and wires running out of the back of her hand and a heart monitor plugged to her finger.

  ‘It’s fine. I broke up with him.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  This is news to me. Josie and Anthony had broken up right after she got diagnosed. She’d never spoken about it, never told me why. My only involvement was in helping her move from his place back to Mum and Dad’s. Mum had stopped short of phoning him and giving him a piece of her mind for breaking up with a woman who’d just found out she had cancer, but we’d unplugged the phone and hidden it and her iPhone from her until she calmed down.

  ‘Come on, Candace, he wanted to get married some day and have kids, and all I could offer him was a chance to watch me die. It was easier this way. Kinder.’

  ‘I disagree! He loves you. So, he has to know you’re sick, but he doesn’t get to see you at all?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know.’

  I can’t sit down any longer. I get up and stalk to the window, throwing the curtains open. I look out over the tops of the houses surrounding us, thrusting my knuckle between my teeth to keep from yelling at her.

  ‘So, what, he thinks you don’t love him anymore?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Are you never going to speak to him again?’

  Josie sniffs deeply, and when I look back, tear tracks line the sides of her nose.

  ‘Never again isn’t really a lot of time for me now, I think I can manage it. Shit, I dunno, maybe he’ll find out I was sick when he reads my obituary or something. You can invite him to my funeral, I don’t care. I don’t want him wasting time with me when he could be finding someone else, someone who could spend the rest of their life with him.’

  A sob shakes her, and she struggles to regain her breath. I’m at her side in a few steps, and I sit on the bed with my arms around her, rocking her back and forth, and kissing the soft dandelion fluff on her scalp.

  She cries noisily into my chest. ‘Oh God, I miss him. But how can I put him through this? He’s only twenty-five.’

  ‘You’re only twenty-five.’ I’m crying too. It seems like I am always crying.

  ‘I want to ruin as few lives as possible. Will you please have a stupid cup of coffee with Jason?’ />
  I say nothing. I just rock her as she cries.

  * * *

  I do not have coffee with Nurse Jason. For two more months, I do pretty much nothing but visit the hospital and go to work. I quit my full-time job and take casual work cleaning houses.

  Josie gets worse and worse, and I start bringing a thermos of tea with me to the hospital so that I don’t have to go to the visitors’ lounge at all.

  Soon it’s summer and Christmas music starts playing in the hallways. Nurses’ stations are festooned with tinsel, and there are jars of candy canes on every counter. Most of my clients go on holiday as soon as the school term is over, and so I sit by Josie’s bed while Mum is at work. I don’t bring a book anymore.

  Most days I just sit and hold her hand.

  * * *

  As I’m coming to visit Josie one night, I walk right into Jason in the hall. His hands grip my shoulders to stop me from falling backwards. It’s completely my fault—I had been too immersed in checking my phone to pay attention to where I was going. My skin is on fire under his hands.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, his face breaking into a smile. ‘How are you?’

  It’s a wonder he still asks. I spend most of my days visiting a sister who is dying—how does he think I am?

  ‘The same.’ ‘I haven’t seen you for a while. Your hair has started to grow back! It’s cute.’

  Blushing, I run my hand along the soft bristles that have started to cover my head. ‘I’ve been here.’

  ‘I know. Josie tells me. Who was that guy who visited her earlier?’

  I glance back at the door of Josie’s room. ‘What guy?’

  ‘Young guy, about her age. He brought flowers.’

  My heart starts pounding. ‘What did he look like?’

  Nurse Jason steps back so we’re no longer standing so close. He moves next to me so that a patient can be wheeled past in a wheelchair.

  ‘I dunno, a regular guy. Sort of dark blonde hair … wearing a polo shirt?’

  I’m already sprinting into her room. ‘I have to go,’ I call over my shoulder. ‘Thank you!’

  Josie is asleep, the briefest hint of a smile on her lips.

  I see the flowers on her dresser. They are the biggest bunch of purple orchids I have ever seen. They seem to be reaching out into every corner of the room. My hand shakes as I reach for the card. Always, Ant.

  ‘I called him,’ Josie says, without opening her eyes. ‘I decided it was up to him whether or not he wanted to come visit.’

  My eyes blur to the point that I can hardly see where I’m going, but I make my way over to the bed and climb in beside her. She snuggles her head onto my chest.

  I think that I may never be able to let her go.

  DORA

  A t the bookstore where I work on the weekends, I have this one regular customer—I call her Dora—who comes in every Sunday and buys books with titles like Sweet Poison and I Quit Sugar. She’s a big girl. Huge, actually, but she has a sweet face and a high prim voice like glass bells. After she buys these books, she takes them over to the café across the street and sits there, flicking through them, holding the books open with her left hand and spooning the top off of a slice of blueberry cheesecake with her right. Her bottom doesn’t fit between the armrests on the wicker chair, so she perches right forward, barely touching the seat. The chair itself is so far away from the table that waiters and other customers struggle to scoot around it. Dora doesn’t even flinch.

  A couple of times when I’ve served her, we’ve got to talking. She shares her smile with me like I’m not just there to take her money and parcel her goods. I know that she’s an accountant, and that she has a sister she doesn’t like very much.

  If you care to look, which most people don’t, she’s really rather beautiful.

  Dora hasn’t lost any weight since she started coming to the shop, but I like to think she’s mastered one of life’s more important lessons: a diet can never make you as happy as a piece of blueberry cheesecake.

  * * *

  I’m thinking about Dora on the train ride home. We keep passing luxury billboards for Kailis pearls, and that girl who used to be on Home and Away is leaning suggestively while wearing a turban. The angles of her cheekbones are so sharp. I think to myself, Somebody buy that girl a cheeseburger. Her eyes are hungry. They’ve got no shine, not like Dora’s. It’s unhealthy, to be so thin. I pinch the skin around my belly button between two fingers, but there’s nothing really to grab.

  The electric wires powering the train race past on either side like stitches. We arrive in the city and exit the train in a black-coated swarm. I rush to catch my connecting train and pause on the overpass by the coffee shop; turning right will take me towards platform two, towards home. But I could just as easily ride the escalator down to platform six and take the train to Alex’s place. I haven’t seen him since Friday.

  There is a panicked longing in my brain. Half of me wants to be with him, to spend a few hours huddled in bed ignoring the cold, until it gets to midnight and I have to drag myself home in the dark so that he doesn’t wake me when he gets up for work at 4 am. The other half of me just wants reassurance that he wants to be with me.

  Turning left takes me out into the city, past the art gallery. I like the uncertainty of this, so I walk. A busker somewhere plays ‘Wonderwall’.

  Outside the performing arts centre, someone calls my name.

  ‘Lola! Hey, Lola!’

  I turn and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. A man jogs towards me, his backpack strung over one shoulder. I think he is someone I know, but his face is generic, and I can’t remember a name to go with it.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asks. ‘I haven’t seen you since the Brentwood game.’

  He is the goalie from Alex’s soccer team, but without his orange skivvy and gloves, he is just another pair of skinny jeans in Northbridge. The last time I saw him, he was smoking weed out of a hollow baseball.

  ‘I’m good.’ I pull my phone out of my pocket and press its little round button. Still nothing. ‘I’m on my way home from work. You?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good. But, hey, how’s Alex now?’

  ‘Didn’t you guys have a game this morning?’

  ‘Yeah—you weren’t there? Man, Lola, he stacked it in the second half. Didn’t he tell you?’

  I shake my head. The truth is, Alex has not replied to a text from me in more than twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  The night before, I’d sat at his parents’ dinner table and made an effort to be polite. He hated it when I got ‘irrational’—that was how he put it—but it always seemed like I was on trial at his place. It was the kind of house where laundry was done as soon as it hit the bottom of the basket and surfaces were Mr Sheened until they showed your reflection.

  Mrs Lowe had made some sort of stew: chicken and carrot floating in hot tomato juice, but with some fancy Italian name. I swirled it around with my fork, pretending to be impressed and avoiding the grey lumps of meat.

  ‘Should I come to your game tomorrow before work?’ I eyed off a cube of carrot.

  Alex shrugged, scooping up the last of his dinner and glancing at mine. ‘Nah. Not this time. You’ll just be bored.’

  I pushed my bowl towards him.

  Mrs Lowe’s eyes flicked between us like she was umpiring a tennis match. ‘Lola, don’t give him your dinner, there’s enough for everyone to have seconds.’ My lip curled.

  Alex got up and walked around the kitchen bench with his bowl. His back to us, he ladled more stew and called over his shoulder, ‘I don’t need you there. Mum’s coming.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen much of you lately. We could go for lunch afterwards.’

  He sat back down, eyes already on his stew. ‘Nah. I know you’d be bored.’

  Mrs Lowe smirked and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. ‘I suppose I’ll have to add this meal to the list of things not to make when you’re here, Lola,’ she said
, indicating my full bowl with an upward jab of her chin.

  I couldn’t meet her gaze. As soon as the meal was over, I bade them goodnight and caught an Uber home.

  * * *

  A guy rides past on a skateboard.

  ‘He’s fine, Paul,’ I say, finally remembering his name. I try to shake Mrs Lowe’s gloating eyes out of my thoughts. The tension in my mouth, it’s giving me away. Hot, panicked adrenaline prickles my fingers and toes.

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

  I ignore him and reach for my phone again, already dialling Alex’s number. It rings twice and then the recorded message plays. I try not to think about those two short rings, a sure sign he has declined the call.

  ‘He’ll call me back later,’ I say, wiping my forehead.

  Paul shrugs. ‘I’m going to get something to eat. Wanna come?’

  We start walking. Paul leads me down James Street to a burger place, where he pulls out a metal stool for me to sit on. He watches me like he thinks I’m going to start ripping up the menu. Unsure, he goes inside for water, and when he comes back, he takes off the lid for me. I try to wish away thoughts of Alex injured, Alex dead, Alex ignoring my calls.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘He slipped. Body went one way, ankle went the other.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Don’t stress.’

  I reach for my bag. ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘Stay. Have something to eat. I think you could use a feed.’

  I hand him a five. It’s all I have. The stool scrapes the pavement as I get up.

  ‘Alex is expecting me.’

  It’s not an outright lie, but Paul’s mouth twists into a bemused grin as he picks up the menu. My shoulders slump, and I sit back down.

  He orders something for himself and pays all in change. The girl at the till gives him a dirty look. When they bring his food, a small parcel of fries is delivered to me. Paul wolfs down a burger, onion rings, coleslaw and a shake. He burps into his fist, then sits back to read old magazines while I pick at my fries.

  ‘How’d you and Alex meet?’ He looks at me intently, like he’s cataloguing me. ‘You’re really different to most of his girlfriends.’