The Healing Party (22 page)

Three of my old workmates spotted me at reception and came out of their offices to say hello. Their concerned looks made me aware that my eyes were probably still bloodshot and I looked terrible.
Welcome back, how's your mother, it's been full-on here, Sam left to work for the Aboriginal Health Service, let's do lunch
… They had a busy air while we chatted, and quickly returned to their work. Despite their friendliness, I wondered if I sensed a wariness in them, as though Katrina had told them I wasn't a team player.

Katrina and I had worked on a project together before I left. We had found the ideal house to set up a group home for people with mental illnesses who were reintegrating into society after hospitalisation. Katrina instigated a doorknocking and consultation campaign to gain the support of neighbours for the home. Even though she had around eight years in the sector and I had only two, I was convinced that Katrina's approach was wrong. ‘These people have the right to live in the community,' I said. ‘Your consultation strategy will just give a voice to prejudice, and prejudice is not a valid reason for a proposal to be knocked back.' Half our management committee supported me, but in the end the chair decided in favour of Katrina's approach. We went ahead and the objections to having people with mental illness as neighbours were so vociferous and well publicised that the application for the house had to be withdrawn. I was furious, but she was adamant she had done the right thing. If we hadn't gone down that path, she said, things would have been worse in the long run.

Katrina called me into her office. Once we would have hugged, but now she just enquired politely after my mother before getting down to business.

‘As you know, the first group house was abandoned,' she said. ‘But we've found another house and are going to have a consultation campaign similar to last time. You wouldn't be a project manager this time, but we can give you a job doing the doorknocking and consultations. It's a lower level than you were on.'

She looked at me searchingly. ‘Obviously you need to be onside with it. I'm not offering you this job to bring up old issues. That's water under the bridge. But if you are going to take this job' – her eyes became flinty and her voice flared – ‘you need to be fully committed. You need to be a team player. I won't have you running your own show.'

I didn't say anything for a while.

‘I will understand if you don't want to take it on,' she said.

‘I'll do it,' I said.

*

In the next week, I doorknocked about forty households. The proposed group home was on a respectable middle-class street, with many households of young families with new four-wheel drives in their garages.

I wore my badge and gave them my spiel. Four men and women at a time will live in the house with a supervisor until they are ready to shift into their own homes. They need to live in a neighbourhood setting to help them regain family, work and social networks before they move out on their own again.

The neighbours were keen to have their say. The home shouldn't be located in a residential area, they said. It will pose a danger to families and children. Our children will not be able to play in the street. The sense of community will be destroyed. Our properties will be devalued. These were the usual responses. Only five households in the street supported or were neutral about the home. I found I couldn't pick who was going to be in favour. I would go into a house with people who seemed open, kind and intelligent, who had Aboriginal paintings on the wall and community-service jobs, and they would give the stock negative responses.

For the first couple of days, I corrected residents who used the words ‘schizos' or ‘psychos', and responded with an appalled silence to those who told me that people with mental illnesses were dangerous, or sex offenders. To the neighbours I felt could be reasoned with, I talked about de-institutionalisation, the right to housing and a community, and told them to put themselves in the shoes of that person or their family. The drive in me to scourge and to scold and be the truth-sayer was strong. But when I spoke like this, I could see faces harden and the walls go up further. One young mother said, ‘Don't look down your nose at me,' and I felt ashamed at how self-righteous I was.
I'm like my father
, I thought,
only without the charm and the charisma.

*

By now I'd seen Jason three times. The first time I had glimpsed him in the distance, cycling with a woman in an aerobics outfit. I expected the stomach-churning insecurity to start, but it didn't.

The second time was at the opening of his exhibition. It was a group show titled
Strange Fruit
. For years, Jason had made drawings of weird and macabre deep-sea creatures. Grabbing any blue biro close to hand, he would scratch vigorously onto paper until the marks became a powerful mass. The scribbles were an antidote, he said, to the constraints of his work as a graphic designer. Seeing them on the wall, I could see they were much more than that. His creatures exuded a deep aloneness and an alien quality.

I wanted to tell him that, but he was surrounded by people. He was fit, fair and clean-cut, dressed neatly, without any hint of the bohemian artist. His glazed eyes and deadpan look might have led others to assume he was bored, but I knew that was the mask he wore at social occasions he found terrifying, and that he probably would have been vomiting before the show. I had to smile to see him trapped there, hating being the focus of attention. Our eyes met across the room. I waved and started to leave. But when I got to the door, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

‘Hi, thanks for coming,' he said.

My stomach flipped. ‘Of course, I had to.'

‘What do you think?'

‘They're everything I imagined you would do and more. They're totally otherworldly.'

‘I'm really glad you came,' he said. There was no mask now. His eyes were tender and troubled. ‘How's your mum?'

‘She seems okay. She's still in hospital, but should be out soon.'

He nodded, and looked as if he wanted to say something else.

I felt like hugging him. ‘Are you okay?'

‘I'd better get back,' he said.

The third time I saw him, all my housemates were at a party and I was at home by myself. Candles, stuck in old beer bottles, were the only light on the verandah. The mosquitoes were bad that night. I had lit half a dozen mozzie coils and retreated to the dark back corner, where there was a mattress and net. I must have dozed off. Then Jason was on the verandah. I got to my feet, startling him, and softly said his name.

‘Shelley said you haven't been well,' he said. He was looking over to my corner, his face troubled. I realised he couldn't see me. I was happy to stay there in the shadows. Grabbing a candle from the table, he walked over and held it out. Now his face was hidden and all I could see was a dark, hulking figure before me. For a long time, it seemed, he looked me over. He stood so close that I could hear him breathe and feel an intensity coming off him. If I took one step forward, we would be touching. I yearned to do that.

We heard voices and footsteps coming up the verandah stairs. He put the candle down and walked away, passing Pip and Ruby on the steps.

*

I waited for the nurse to hand the phone to Mum. I had rung her every morning for a week, but she felt more distant than ever. When I asked when she was going home, she replied, ‘Maybe soon.' To find out what was going on, I spoke to my sisters. Patsy said that Mum was on antibiotics as a precaution against infection, and that she would stay in hospital for two more weeks, until the course was completed.

In the time before Mum's cancer, I had rung her once a fortnight from Darwin. Our chats floated on the surface. We always talked about the same things: what we'd been eating, news about the Charismatic community, church, and so forth. I didn't go into detail about anything, not because I didn't want to, but because her mind would wander, and I'd realise after a while that she wasn't listening. It was different, though, if I said I was ill or tired. Then she would scold, ‘Aiya! See, I told you – you work too hard, you need to rest more, don't worry about things so much, pray to Jesus. You eat too many heaty foods. What time did you go to sleep last night? What? Too late – no wonder you get sick, going to sleep so late. Tell your boss not to give you so much work. Don't be frightened to tell him. Go to church.' The tirade would go on and on. When she scolded, she was animated and present, and it made me feel cared for.

Now the nurse put Mum on. I didn't ask her how she was feeling about the antibiotics, as I knew she wouldn't want to talk about it. As usual, I asked who had stayed the night, how many people were at prayers, what she had eaten for dinner last night and breakfast this morning, how Dad's projects were going, and who was visiting today.

I felt like telling her,
I haven't been sleeping since I returned to Darwin. I feel so depressed all the time. I don't know what's happening anymore. I want to bring you cheer, but I can't.

‘I haven't been feeling well,' I said.

I waited, but the scolding didn't come. ‘Never mind,' she said in a faraway voice. ‘Give it to Jesus.' She was interrupted by someone. ‘What were you saying?' she said, when she came back to the phone.

‘Never mind, Mum. I'll ring again tomorrow. I'd better leave for work,' I said.

*

Ten days after returning to Darwin, I received the phone call. It came in the small hours of the morning, when the bats cried like babies and the sun had not started its ascent, or the birds commenced their calls.

Maria's voice was low and stern when I picked up the phone. ‘Natasha, say goodbye to Mum,' she said.

‘What?' I said.

I heard voices in the background, then thuds and crackling as if the phone had been dropped. I started to sob.

‘I'm putting the phone next to Mum's ear. She can't talk. You can say goodbye now.'

‘Mum, I love you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' I cried.

‘Are you okay, Natasha?' It was Maria again.

‘Yes,' was all I could say.

‘I have to hang up now,' she said. ‘You can pray with us from over there.'

‘Yes.'

The phone clicked.

S
PRING HAD COME TO
M
ELBOURNE IN THE TWO
weeks that I'd been gone. Outside, the wind blew warm and unsettling. Particles of dust, yellow pollen and dried-up blossoms swirled past my window.

There was much to be done before the funeral the following day. I sat on the bed in my old room.
Just two more minutes
, I told myself,
before I face the others again.

The funeral program was shiny and gold like a Chinese New Year card. On the front was a photo of a young woman with sparkling eyes and alluring lips, posing in a silk cheongsam. Bust out and shoulders back, she held a long-stemmed rose in one graceful hand. Her rich black hair was gathered up in a bun, a few tendrils falling loose around her face.

Of all the photos we had of Mum, Dad's choice was this glamour shot taken when they were courting in Hong Kong almost forty years ago. My sisters agreed with Dad's choice. The photo I would have chosen for the program was taken at Mum's last outing to St Kilda beach. When they rejected this photo, I blurted out that choosing an image of her as a 23-year-old instead of the person she was before she died was like saying she was no longer beautiful. Dad looked away, hurt. Anita told me to shut my mouth, that I never had anything constructive to say.

I liked Mum's hair in the St Kilda photo. It was before she got the wig. Sea winds had tousled the thin tufts, giving her a messy, boyish charm. Her face was beautiful and determined, though age and illness had sucked the vigour away and left her skin worn and pale. Only her eyes remained bright. ‘You should always make your eyes look big for photos,' she had said. Exaggerating, she had widened her eyes as Maria clicked the camera. I picked up the photo and held it to my face. I couldn't stop crying.

Dad was to give the eulogy. He would tell the congregation that when he married Mum, she had been the belle of Hong Kong. He would say that her life was a testament to faith, a faith as strong as rock, and she was truly a saint. He was going to have me read out a passage from 1 Corinthians 13 that he said embodied her saintliness: ‘Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.' I scribbled notes in an exercise book. There was something I needed to say. But my notes were incoherent. I flung down the pen.

I placed side by side in front of me the program photo of Mum at twenty-three and the photo of her taken at St Kilda beach. Both photos captured her beautiful lopsided smile. But now I could see the essential difference. When she was young, the tilt in her smile was born of uncertainty. When she was older, it had deepened into a quality of eternal endurance and hope.

She smiled most at prayer meetings, but her eyes were glazed, her shoulders stiff and raised. There was an overwrought quality to it. That was her public smile. I never trusted it. When she caught my eye, I would demonstrate this to her with a withering, resentful expression. I regretted that now.

I tried to think of the times I had seen Mum happy. I could recall her joy when Dad gave his life to Jesus, and when Anita gave birth to Will. I remembered how in our early teens, when Dad was in his studio and we thought Mum was watching TV, Maria, Patsy and I would closet ourselves away in my bedroom. On went the radio, tuned into one of the stations Dad disapproved of. Maria would start thrashing around like a lunatic to the music. When Patsy and I weren't on the floor convulsed with laughter, we were trying to follow Maria's moves. On two or three of these occasions, I saw Mum standing outside in the dark night, peeping through my window at us, thinking she couldn't be seen. How happy and at ease she had looked, watching us!

I had dreamt of her last night. She was sitting shyly by the altar in our large rectangular church. Wearing a shawl over her patient's gown, she looked just as she had the last time I saw her in hospital. This time, however, her face and body were relaxed, without the stiffening that pain forced on her. The line to greet her travelled down the centre aisle, all the way back to the doors of the church.

I stood in the line as well, not too far back, my eyes always on her. I was content to wait and admire the poise and the sweetness with which she greeted each parishioner. When I reached her, she smiled and gently raised her hand to my face. With the back of her hand, she brushed my cheek. I could feel her touch. Immersed in my dream, I felt joy that she was still alive, that we had another chance to put things right. But then I saw the sadness in her face and I became aware that she was dead. I woke up, my face wet with tears.

Since Mum died, I'd had a stone in my stomach, weighing me down with the knowledge that I'd let her down.

I could hear Anita in the kitchen. I made myself go in there to speak to her. She was taking baking pans from the oven and counting them. I could tell from looking at her that she was angry. After tomorrow's funeral, the congregation would come back to the house for lunch. ‘Twelve baking pans. That should be enough. We won't need as many as we did for the healing party,' she said.

Traces of the party from six weeks before were still all through the house. No one had taken down Dad's handmade posters. ‘Don't remove them, they're so cute,' he had said. Stuck to the front gate a faded poster with an arrow said
This Way for a Miracle
. We hadn't even returned the crates of glasses borrowed from the parish hall. In the backyard, the ramp to salvation leant against the back fence.

Anita clanged the pans down on the table. ‘Line these pans with alfoil, will you,' she said over her shoulder, her voice sharp. ‘Then mop the floors and make Dad a hot drink and some banana loaf with butter.' I lined the first pan. ‘You're using way too much foil!' she barked. She wouldn't look at me.

Realising there was no right time to talk, I forced myself to begin. ‘I was wondering if something happened at the hospital while I was away that I don't know about,' I said.

Anita gave a dismissive snort.

My voice was shaky. ‘I mean, it sounded from the phone calls that everything was pretty much the same as before I left. Did anything change – her diagnosis, her medication, anything?'

She opened the freezer and started rummaging through its contents. ‘Probably not,' she finally said.

I picked up the pan I was lining and moved closer to her. ‘What about her pain level?'

‘Same, I guess.'

‘She was up early as usual, greeting visitors all day, going to mass, was she?' I was nervous and speaking too fast. ‘You still had the prayer meetings and someone always stayed the night with her?'

‘Yep.' Anita's tone was mocking.

‘Was she eating normally?'

‘Yep.'

‘And what was her mood like?'

Anita slammed the freezer door shut and swung around. ‘Look, what's this about?' she said. The bitterness in her eyes stunned me.

I took a step back. ‘I just wanted to know if Mum was going downhill,' I said. ‘Because if she was, why didn't anyone say anything to me?'

Anita exhaled loudly. ‘Don't think you can just come back and start interrogating us.' She paced back and forth, opening and slamming cupboards. ‘You think we had the time to report back to you? Who do you think you are? If you're so concerned, you shouldn't have left, should you!' Picking up a stack of plates, she stalked out of the kitchen.

I brought Dad his afternoon tea in the family room. He was sitting in the easy chair with Maria behind him, massaging his head, her fingers weaving in and out of his hair. If we felt compelled to protect him like a child when he was happy and rejoicing, the drive to protect him when he was sad was even stronger. None of us could bear to see Dad lowered by grief, that urging voice quietened, the blaze in his eyes dulled. We offered him his favourite foods, said the things he liked to hear, and my sisters, particularly Maria, gave him the treats he craved. Now his hair was dishevelled, his thick lips softly open and his heavy-lidded eyes wet and sensual from the massage. At the sight of his pleasure, even though I knew it was unfair, a jolt of hatred shot through me.

Maria rubbed Dad's scalp with clinical detachment. Her lips were pursed, her jaw was tense and her eyes were on the alert for how she might be useful next. There was something particularly distant and dissociated about her, and I thought about the strength and control she had needed to be alone with Mum while she died, to be the one to tell the rest of the family and wait for them to arrive.

‘Sing it again,' Dad said to Patsy, who was kneeling on the carpet next to the altar, playing her guitar. Patsy looked lost, her voice was thin and eerie. When Patsy wasn't singing, she was eating – bread, cakes, chocolate, all the things Mum had wanted her to enjoy.

The phone rang. Anita spoke to the funeral director. Mum's body had been delivered to the church. ‘I want to see her,' I said. Maria volunteered to go along with me.

*

The coffin was in an annex on one side of the church foyer. We waited for the caretaker to arrive with the keys to the door of the annex. It was cold inside the high brick walls of the church. The light was bleak, but we were hidden from the gaze of passers-by. Outside, the wind blew and we could hear the pop of balls and an occasional exclamation from the tennis court next door.

I was grateful that Maria had come along to support me. She walked around the foyer, picking up pamphlets and hymn books that parishioners had scattered on tables and benches on their way out after mass.

‘Can you sit down for a minute and talk, Maria?' I said. I sat on a vinyl padded bench next to the annex door. ‘You were the only one with Mum when she died. Can you tell me what happened?'

‘Why do you ask me? No one else has.' Maria said. Holding a pile of hymn books, she walked over. I slid across the bench so that she could sit down. She remained standing.

‘I wish I had been with her. I need to know,' I said. ‘I spoke to her that morning. It was just our usual conversation. She didn't say anything about feeling worse.'

Maria looked down at the books. We avoided each other's eyes, as we usually did in my family. ‘The nurses that day were not nice. They kept wanting Mum to have more morphine,' she said.

‘Why? Was she in pain?'

‘No. Well, she might have been, but she wouldn't know because they kept giving her more drugs.'

‘What? Do you mean topping up the dose? I was with Mum once when she complained to the nurse about that. The nurse said you had to do it to stop breakthrough pain.'

‘But maybe her pain had gone and she didn't need any morphine,' Maria said.

‘What makes you think her pain would have gone? Obviously the doctors didn't think that.'

Her eyes flickered. ‘You know that's the way they euthanise people in hospital – morphine?'

Euthanasia. That was on the Charismatics' list of pet issues, along with abortion and homosexuality. ‘What are you saying? That they euthanised her?'

‘Maybe …' Maria wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Not really.'

I rubbed my face. I wanted to shake Maria out of her fog. ‘Then why did you bring it up?'

‘Hospitals do it all the time … Never mind.'

‘If you seriously think that the nurses were giving Mum too much morphine, then we should talk to the hospital.'

‘Don't worry about it,' Maria said, and walked to the other side of the foyer. She wandered around, arranging the books on the trolley and the pamphlets on the wall shelves.

When she was done, she walked over to me. ‘What did you want to ask?' she said. Her eyes were more focused, her voice less dreamy.

‘What happened when she died?'

Maria looked down at her hands. ‘Mum woke up coughing blood. I called the nurse.'

‘What time was it?'

‘Around three.'

‘How much blood was Mum coughing up?'

‘I'm not sure. She was coughing into a towel. It was soaked red with her blood.'

I was too shocked to say anything. My heart raced.

Maria did a half-turn and gazed out at the foyer. I worried that she was going to walk away again. ‘Did the nurse come?' I asked.

‘Two of them came. They checked her airways, gave her something to stop the coughing, cleaned her up.'

‘Was she suffering? Was she in pain?' I asked.

‘I don't think so. She started to panic at the coughing and the blood. But I got her to hold my hand and told her that God loved her and everything was all right. She calmed down. She became unconscious.'

‘How long was she awake before that?'

‘I'm not sure. An hour? The nurse told me to ring the family. Dad and the others only arrived after she died. We sat around her. Her mouth was still wide open from trying to breathe. I held her face and forced her mouth closed.' She cupped her hands around an imaginary jaw and pushed it.

I was finding it difficult to breathe. Maria turned around, about to walk away.

‘Wait,' I said. ‘Did Mum say anything before she became unconscious?'

‘We started to pray the rosary together, then she couldn't say anything more.'

‘Do you think she knew she was dying? Was there anything she said that day, before she went to bed?'

Maria hung her head. ‘After evening prayers she asked if Dad could stay the night as well as me. But I said no, Dad needed to be well rested so he could be in good health for her.'

Voices outside startled us – cheery voices. The caretaker was talking with a tennis player.

‘Thank you, Maria. You gave Mum a lot of comfort. I'm so glad you were there when she died. Thank you,' I said.

Emotion filled Maria's eyes for a moment. She sat down. For a while we were silent, seated side by side. Then she coughed, stood up and started searching again for things to tidy.

We heard a quick step and whistling, and the caretaker, old but sprightly, bounded up the entrance steps. He apologised for being late, commented on the warm, windy weather and unlocked the annex.