The Memory Tree (41 page)

4

S
EALIE HAS FELT NIGGLING PAINS
for some time now, but tonight she is woken by severe cramps. She draws her knees up and tries to breathe her way through the pain but is overcome by a black nausea.

‘Zav,’ her voice sounds so faint that he can’t possibly hear her. ‘Zav . . .’ She tries to get out of bed but gasps as the pain bites viciously at her lower back and abdomen. All she can do now is groan.

Fortunately, Zav is a light sleeper and he’s already at the door, whispering loudly. ‘What’s up? Can I come in?’ He rattles the door handle and grinds his teeth with frustration as he realises the door is locked from the inside. ‘Sealie. Open up.’ He hears movement from inside as Sealie drags herself towards the door.

‘I’m coming,’ she says, between painful breaths.

‘What’s happening?’ Hearing another voice, Zav swings around to see his father coming down the hall in his pyjamas.

‘It’s Sealie. There’s something wrong.’

‘Open the door then.’

‘It’s locked.’

Hal, the door locker, doesn’t see anything unusual in this. ‘We’ll have to break it down then.’

Zav looks on in astonishment as the skinny old man puts his shoulder to the solid oak door. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I can’t do this by myself.’

Sealie reaches the door and turns the key in time to save her father a broken collarbone. Zav is appalled to see her white face, drenched with sweat. ‘I might need an aspirin,’ she says, before collapsing at his feet.

‘Call an ambulance.’

Zav does his father’s bidding then returns to his sister’s side. Hal has put a pillow under her head and is stroking her hair with a clumsy tenderness. ‘Come on, little princess. Daddy’s here. It’s alright. Daddy’s here.’ Zav feels his heart lurch and experiences a flash of memory. He struggles with it briefly but its substance eludes him. He needs to deal with the problem at hand.

Sealie is all scrunched up and she’s moaning softly. Zav feels a rising panic. What’s wrong with her? What would he do without her? He runs down the stairs and looks and listens for the ambulance. No siren. No lights. Maybe he should take her to hospital in his car. He rushes to his room and throws on a tracksuit. By that time the paramedics are at the door.

Sealie is put on a stretcher. ‘Is one of you coming with her?’

‘I am,’ say Hal and Zav.

‘My father’s not well,’ says Zav suddenly taking charge. ‘I’ll ring someone to come and take care of him.’

‘Godown,’ Sealie manages to say. ‘Call Godown.’

Hal is stubborn. ‘She’s my daughter. I want to go.’

‘We can’t waste time,’ says one of the paramedics, as they strap her in. ‘Make up your minds.’

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Zav tells his father. ‘You’ll only be in the way.’

Hal shrinks before Zav’s cruelty and sits at the top of the stairs while they take his daughter to the waiting ambulance. When Godown arrives, Hal is crying quietly. ‘Zav’s right, isn’t he? I’m her father but I’d just be in the way. Useless. Useless.’

Godown makes soothing noises. What can he possibly say? ‘Come on, Hal.’ He helps his old friend down to the kitchen and makes a strong pot of coffee. ‘Zav said he’ll ring soon as he knows anything.’

Sealie is taken straight into emergency and Zav waits outside, pacing the short corridor. He’s in the way of hurrying staff, but doesn’t notice. An exasperated nurse finally ushers him into a small room.

‘Wait here,’ she says. ‘The doctor’s seeing her next.’ Zav sits on the couch, then stands and examines the painting on the wall. It’s an abstract in calming shades of green. He finds it irritating and sits down again only to stand up a few minutes later.
Why the hell is it taking so long?
He’s heard of people dying on trolleys in emergency rooms. He’d better go and see what’s happening.

The door opens and Scottie rushes in. He grabs Zav’s arm. ‘How is she? Has the doctor seen her?’

The two men sit and pace and talk. Zav wonders how Scottie got to know.

‘Mrs Mac rang me,’ his friend explains. Zav wonders briefly why Mrs Mac would have chosen to ring Scottie and then decides just to be grateful. He needs a mate right now.

What in God’s name are the doctors doing?
Zav imagines Sealie already in an operating theatre.
Peritonitis
, he hears the surgeon say.
Too late, I’m afraid
.

He wills it to be different.
We were almost too late
, the surgeon says this time. He takes off his mask.
That was a close call.

Scottie sits miserably at his friend’s side, wanting to howl out his fears.
She can’t die. I’ve waited all this time and she’s going to die. It’s not fair,
he screams silently.
It’s not fair
.

The two men stand as a white-coated doctor appears. She’s young, but her face is tired and strained. She looks from one to the other. It’s obvious who the brother is.

‘Mr Rodriguez. Your sister is alright. She has an ovarian cyst. We’ve made her comfortable for now, but she’ll need surgery. We’ll be admitting her tonight and operating tomorrow afternoon. Keyhole surgery. She’ll be home in a couple of days. Would you like to see her?’

The doctor leads them to a cubicle where Sealie smiles tremulously from her trolley bed. Her face is wan and her eyes large and luminous.

‘Sorry to be such a bother.’

Uttering protestations, the two men take a hand each.

‘I thought I’d lost you.’ Scottie kisses her hand, then her lips.

Zav looks at Scottie in surprise.
What did he say? What is he doing?

Sealie reaches up and pushes back Scottie’s hair. ‘You need a haircut,’ she says. The gesture is so intimate that there is no mistaking its meaning. Zav sits silently until an orderly comes to take Sealie to the ward.

‘Can you wait while I ring home?’ Zav pauses as he and Scottie prepare to leave. ‘Then how about some breakfast? The coffee shop should be open by now.’

Zav has forgotten his wallet, so Scottie pays for bacon and eggs and coffee. They sit at a corner table, overcome by mind-numbing fatigue.

‘How long?’ Zav finally asks.

‘A long time now. Probably since that first dinner at your house.’

‘I warned you off that night.’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t do much good.’

‘No.’

‘You’ve been married.’

‘But I always come back.’

‘Why didn’t you ask her to marry you?’

Scottie hesitates. ‘I did. She wouldn’t have me.’

The other man observes him closely. He has dropped his eyes. Honest, straightforward Scottie is not telling the whole story. ‘Why? Why wouldn’t she have you?’

Scottie looks up. He’s protected Zav ever since Vietnam, but it’s time for the truth. ‘She’ll never leave you,’ he says bitterly. ‘If it were another lover, I’d be able to fight for her—but I can’t fight you.’

Zav is suddenly aware that he has known, oh, for a very long time—that Sealie and Scottie are lovers. He has refused to acknowledge this, content with it all so long as Sealie stayed with him.
I’m her brother. I need her
. He mentally shakes out his head the way you’d shake out a duster.
What if his worst imaginings of last night had actually happened?
He would not have had her to care for him then. And he would have managed. He would have to have managed. And his loyal little sister would have died never having fully lived her life.

There’s a challenge in Scottie’s usually mild expression. ‘I love her,’ he says. ‘And that’s a fact.’

‘Give me a couple of weeks,’ Zav says. ‘I won’t stand in your way.’

In the car park, the two men shake hands awkwardly. ‘I couldn’t have done without you, either,’ Zav says. ‘You and Will.’

‘Yeah . . . well. You look after yourself, mate.’

‘You too.’

Zav waits for Scottie to drive off, then doubles back to the main building. When Sealie is settled in a ward, he asks her about their father’s medication.

‘It’s locked in my desk drawer with the dosage instructions. Key’s in the wooden box in my bedside table drawer.’

Zav kisses her thoughtfully. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ he says. ‘Just concentrate on getting better.’

Hal snatches up the phone. ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . Thank God . . . Only a couple of days?’ He turns to Godown who’s uncharacteristically jittery. ‘Ovarian cyst. She’ll need surgery, but it’s all okay.’ His face is tinged with yellow and his eyelids are heavy with fatigue. ‘Zav says no visitors until after the operation.’

‘You done good, Hal.’ Godown takes his arm. ‘What about we get you back to bed.’

Hal’s weariness ensures compliance and he suffers Godown to take off his slippers and dressing-gown before climbing into bed. ‘You’ll wake me up if there’s any—’

‘Course I will.’

Hal lies in his narrow bed and watches the sun-stripes on the wall opposite the window. The venetian blinds are not quite shut and he can see the dust-motes surfing along the breaks. It’s the first week of spring and he can sense the busyness of the garden under the pale sunshine outside. All the trees, shrubs, flowers, insects, birds—the whole of creation renewing itself
. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself . . . and God saw that it was good . . . And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight . . . the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis has always been Hal’s favourite story.

It’s good that Sealie’s drama happens in spring. My grandfather always does well in spring, as we know. He is able to react like a real father. He was even collected enough to push the panicky Zav to call an ambulance. He’s able to think things through.

Meanwhile, Godown rings his wife. ‘She’s alright,’ he assures her. ‘You get some rest and I’ll stay here with Hal.’

When Godown rings, Mrs Mac is holding her rosary beads, not so much praying as hoping. When she puts down the receiver, all she can say is,
Thank you Jesus. Thank you, Mary
. Her hands begin to move along the beads.
Holy Mary Mother of God
. . . she’s praying the old, familiar formula now.
Mother of God. Mother
. . . She had no children of her own but she feels like a mother. Worries like a mother. Loves like a mother. And here she is, sitting on her own sofa, while her beloved daughter is lying in hospital. She can’t drive. Anyway, Godown has the car. She twists the cross at the end of her beads.
I should’ve got a taxi.

Her first thought had been to go to the hospital. Then she remembered Scottie.
That poor fellow. Everyone knows how he feels about Sealie. I’ll ring him
, she decided,
and we can drive in together.
She reckoned without the force of Scottie’s feelings. She had no sooner told him than he hung up. ‘Got to go,’ he said and was gone before she could say anything else.

So where Sealie’s husband and children might have been, where her mother and father might have been, are her brother, and a lover whose position is tenuous at best.

My poor little Sealie
, Eileen McLennon mourns as the beads slip through her fingers. She remembers a little girl crying,
Mummy’s gone
. . . remembers the scraped knees, the bruises and bumps, the tears following her failed dream of the ballet. She had held her at those times, kissed her and comforted her. And now, when her little girl could have died, she is left to sit on her sofa and pray.

It’s mid-morning and Mrs Mac has hardly slept all night. She makes herself a coffee, showers and dresses and catches the bus to the hospital. She buys some wilting flowers from the hospital florist and takes the lift to the third floor. The nurse at the desk is brisk.

‘Are you a close relative?’

‘No. Well . . . yes.’

‘Are you a relative at all? Only close relatives until after her operation.’

Lying has never been an option for dear Mrs Mac. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not a relative. I’m a—good friend.’

The nurse is adamant. ‘She’s quite comfortable at the moment,’ she says with grudging kindness. ‘I’ll give her the flowers if you like. Tell her you came.’