New Australian Stories 2 (22 page)

‘I knew them both once, neither of them very well. Two acquaintances, really, and yet I keep running into them. Thirty years of our paths crossing, again and again. What do you make of that?'

He seemed to think about it for a moment. ‘Coincidence, I'd say. You might all live near one another.'

‘Yes, although I've moved around a bit since my student days. But perhaps the three of us are always moving in the same direction.' She poured a glass of water from the jug on the side table and sipped at it slowly. Two men from her past. One could say, at fifty, that one had a past, a history on which to dwell or forget. More past than future at fifty, cancer or no cancer: that was the plain truth of it. ‘I met them both through different part-time jobs. The first worked as a dishwasher at the restaurant I waitressed at when I was eighteen. My first year at uni. Sometimes we'd sneak outside for a few minutes during the dinner service, and I'd have a cigarette with him. Not that I was ever much of a smoker.'

‘You have to say that in here.'

‘No, it's true. Neither a smoker nor much of a drinker. Not that it's helped.'

He tapped her lightly on the arm, and she knew what he meant. No self-pity allowed. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘keep talking.'

‘After that I used to see him around; mainly pubs in St Kilda or Fitzroy, wherever there was a band playing. We'd nod to each other in an offhand way; sometimes we'd exchange a few words, if we could hear one another over the music. Then there came a time, in my early thirties, I think, when he walked right past me and didn't seem to know me. I probably hadn't seen him for a year or two before that, but I knew exactly who he was. After that he never recognised me again.'

‘Do you still see him now?'

‘Yes, more than ever. Outside a pub that I ride past on my way home from work.' That winter she'd seen him every Tuesday and Thursday, around five p.m., standing under the eaves of the Builders Arms Hotel, his black coat buttoned against the cold. She would ride past, thinking,
Today he won't
be there
, but then she'd see him, dragging on his cigarette, a stubby in his other hand.

‘And earlier this year, just before my diagnosis, he came past my house. I was outside, at the letterbox, the exact moment he walked past. Don't you think that's weird?'

‘Coincidence, again. He might often walk down your street. That just happened to be the first time you saw him.'

‘I guess you're right.' It was comforting to put it all down to chance.

‘It's possible he's thinking the same thing about you. Who is this woman that I keep passing in the street? Why does she seem so familiar?'

She laughed. ‘Somehow I don't think so.'

‘Why don't you say hello next time? You could tell him you've been stalking him for thirty years. He'd be flattered.'

‘Believe me, I've thought about it. But no: too much water under the bridge, and all that.'

When she'd seen him at the letterbox, in his black winter coat, she'd been surprised by how much he'd aged. Up close she could see his face was speckled with red and purple capillaries, and he had the watery pale-blue irises of an old man. She heard the clank of bottles in the plastic bag he carried, and wondered how well he was.

‘And what about your other man?' the professor asked. ‘Where does he fit in?'

There was an edge to his voice. Teresa thought he sounded tired. ‘I'm boring you,' she said.

‘If you were boring me, I'd leave.' He looked at her the way he might look down his microscope, Theresa thought: steady and serious and, behind the steadiness, a slow-burning curiosity. ‘I've never been one for small talk. So, go on. Please.'

She began again. ‘I worked with him during the university summer break, at a home for disabled children. Not that you call them that, these days. But they
were
disabled: kids with cerebral palsy so bad they couldn't sit straight, let alone walk. A boy of thirteen, as big as a man, with the mind of a two-year-old. We used to pour custard on his roast lamb and tomato sauce on his dessert, then feed it to him with a teaspoon. It seemed wrong to me, disrespectful, but the full-timers told us it was how he liked it. And he ate it, too, every mouthful.' She smiled, remembering more. ‘Another girl, Karen, used to play the piano for the kids, and Dominic — that was his name — would play his guitar. We'd sing silly songs and get those kids who could to stand up and dance, until the full-timers told us to stop.'

‘Why did they tell you to stop?'

‘Because there was work to be done. Nappies to be changed and mouths to be wiped. Singing and dancing wasn't seen as good use of our time.'

‘You were the young radicals, upsetting the status quo.'

‘Yes, that's it. We felt so righteous, so enlightened.' She sighed. ‘Anyway, Dominic went overseas soon after that, and I lost contact with him. Then, just this year, between my third and fourth cycles, I saw him again, at the National Gallery — the Dali exhibition. He was with a young woman: his daughter, I think.'

For no particular reason she'd followed them around the gallery, just for a few minutes. Once, he'd turned and looked at her, and she'd held his gaze for a second, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did. Of course she hadn't expected him to recognise her. She was wearing her black velvet cloche hat and drawn-on eyebrows, and lots of foundation to cover the rash that had spread, like a butterfly's wings, over her nose and cheeks. So much time since she'd last laid eyes on him. He'd grown stouter and his eyelids drooped a little, but he was still the Dominic she remembered. When she'd worked with him, his thick, dark hair had been long enough to tie back in a ponytail: at the matron's request he had done exactly that. Now his hair was cut short, and sat against his scalp in smooth, old-fashioned waves. He looked, she'd thought, just as his father would have looked when she and he were nursemaids together, all those years ago. He had probably vowed to himself, back then, that he would never resemble his father, yet there he was, fatherly enough, strolling through the gallery with this straight-backed, pretty girl who, despite her nose ring and the blonde streaks in her dark hair, looked every inch her father's daughter.

‘You're crying,' said the professor. He reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out a handful of tissues. ‘All clean,' he assured her, pressing them into her hand. ‘Just crushed.'

‘Thank you,' she said, and dried her eyes. ‘I don't know what came over me.'

‘Blame it on the drugs.' He waited a while, then asked, ‘Did you see this Dominic again, or is that the end of the story?'

‘No, I saw him again. I've been going to a yoga class on Wednesday nights, for six months now, and two weeks ago I saw him there. He was there again last week.'

In the short meditation at the end of last Wednesday's class, she'd opened her eyes to see Lucia speaking softly to Dominic, her hands on his temples. The next time she'd glanced at him, he was crying.

‘Of all the yoga classes in the world …' the professor said.

‘Exactly.'

‘Well, I don't know what to make of it. Of course it could still be explained by chance, but I understand that it might feel like something else.' He stretched out his legs. He was so achingly thin, and his bare knees so bony.

She touched his arm. ‘I'm not asking you to explain it. Really, I'm not. It's enough that you listened, so thank you.'

When the IV bag was empty, Joanne removed the drip with a little flourish and bandaged her up. ‘That's it,' she said brightly. She looked at them both. ‘I didn't know you two were friends.'

‘Oh yes,' Teresa said. ‘Old friends.'

Down in the hospital lobby he asked her, ‘How are you getting home?'

‘I usually get a taxi.'

‘I have my car here. Will you let me drive you?'

She hadn't told him everything. She hadn't told him that on the night before her nineteenth birthday, after the restaurant had closed for the night, she'd gone with the dishwasher to a bar to have a drink. As they left the bar in the early hours, he'd pushed her against a wall and tried to kiss her. She hadn't told the professor, either, that for one entire summer she'd been in love with the ponytailed Dominic, but that he'd passed her over for another. So many details, half remembered; so many threads, unravelled, left hanging. She hadn't told him everything, but perhaps he'd already guessed.

The day after the surgery to remove the cancer — and, along with the cancer, her uterus and ovaries — the surgeon had sat on the end of her bed and told her he'd taken as much of it out as he could. Now it was up to the oncologist. ‘Six cycles of chemotherapy,' the surgeon had said, ‘and then we'll see. But I should tell you now there's a good chance that the cancer will come back.'

‘And what happens then?' She'd been dopey from the painkillers.

‘More chemotherapy. And maybe more surgery.'

‘And then?'

‘Then we wait and see, again.'

Outside the hospital the day had grown hot and the north wind had sprung up. ‘The car's on the other side of the park,' the professor told her. ‘Do you think you're up to walking? We can stay in the shade.'

‘Yes, I'm up to it,' she said, taking the arm he offered. While they walked he could tell her about the elm trees that lined their path.

Inseparable

MELISSA BEIT

There was a big kafuffle when we were born; cameras and magazine reporters camped all over the front lawn, just like we were the kids of singers or royalty or something. Dad was still reeling from the shock of our birth, but pulled his nose out of his schooner when he saw all those flashbulbs. There's some footage of him on the old video camera, standing awkward and frowny in front of the hibiscus bush, all but hiding Mum holding Meg and me in our tiny grow suits, special-made. He doesn't say much, just nods or shakes his head earnestly whenever the invisible interviewer asks him something, but for years he'd get the bloody thing out whenever someone new came to visit, and make them watch his thirty-four seconds of fame.

Poppy doesn't appear in any of the reels or photos, and Gretel says our grandfather holed up in his shed until the whole racket was over, muttering and weeping and throwing up his hands and lunch both. Gretel was five when we were born, so she remembers everything. Even Danny swears he remembers us being born, but he wasn't quite two at the time, and probably he just wants in on the excitement too.

We were good babies, considering, and Mum said it was enough that we didn't lay ourselves out with the colic or fevers, although Meg fussed a bit to begin with, trying to get that right hand free all the time.

It's my earliest memory: Meg and I, two years old, going for the same red cup, and me getting it first, because it was up high, and with her dominant hand tied up, she had to make do with snatching clumsily with her left. I remember Meg tossing a paddy on the kitchen floor and taking me with her, all spilled over with apple juice.

Possibly I remember it because things were usually the other way round, with me yelling and frothing and striking out at everyone and anyone, while Meg stroked my hair, the closest thing she could reach, and made that tuneless noise like the fridge starting up, until I calmed down.

Our house was far from peaceful. There was always someone around: Danny or Gretel; or Poppy, sad-mouthed and weepy; or Mum, of course, lifting and rearranging and wiping us clean; or Dad, clumping around in his dirty boots and getting on everyone's goat with his grousing and language. There were others too: that med student with the red hair who turned up every few months and cleared his throat so often it gave us the nervous giggles. And the seamstress, old Mrs Bogg, who clucked around us like a hen and managed to fashion double-necked garments out of purple terry cloth and pink stretch cotton. And doctors, of course, by the dozen.

Doctor Jack was the head honcho, and the biggest, with those shoes like boats, that great blob of a nose that Meg liked to pull, at first. There was Doctor Roseleaf too, and you hardly even noticed him to start with, all silent and dry and watchful. They were the two big guns, the movers, but there were dozens more, some around for a gawk who you'd see just the once.

‘You have a responsibility to the future of medicine,' Doctor Jack told our parents, and Mum just shook her head, but Dad drew himself up to dizzying heights like he was totally responsible and reliable and not just some old boozer blowing his dole cheque on the nags.

Only at night was it just the two of us, Meg and I; even though Danny shared with us from the word go. From our cot we'd hear him snoring away in his bed and talking too, and Meg'd wriggle right around so our shoulders fit across the pillow and our legs went up the wall. In the dark room we could hear all the other comforting sounds: Gretel's violin wailing like a pulled tooth; Poppy hawking and spitting in the outside shower; all the neighbourhood dogs winding down for the night; and Mum, clunking away with the iron while she watched the television, getting teary and thanking her stars that nothing really bad ever happened to our family.