Lilith smirks. “I assume you’ve told Neve that’s not financially viable.”
What does she know about their financial situation? He also doesn’t like the way she always uses Neve’s name in that strangely patronizing way.
“What’s your husband’s name, Lilith?” he asks on impulse. He gestures at the photo. “I’ve never met him, have I?”
Lilith pushes the photo frame so it’s facing her. “John.”
John! Likely story! He wonders if Lilith is an alien, imagines her going home each night and peeling off her face.
(Just one phone call with Rod and he can feel another younger, more lighthearted version of himself coming creakily back to life.)
(It makes him so happy.)
Last night Neve did an impressive presentation to the family about moving to Tasmania and Leo becoming a stay-at-home dad while Neve works at a new job with the Tasmanian Department of Education, a job she hasn’t yet applied for but is bizarrely confident she can get. Where does she get that crazy optimism? The public service regularly places ads for jobs that have already been filled. Everyone knows that! The presentation included music and special effects. There were pictures of possible rental homes and nearby schools. One slide was devoted to “fun activities” the whole family would enjoy in Tasmania, along with spectacular pictures of bushwalks and beaches. (His soft Sydney kids have no idea about the icy temperature of that water.) One slide was called “Nana” with a picture of Leo’s mother looking sad and hopeful. Emotional blackmail. The children didn’t say yes, but they didn’t say no either. Leo suspects his mother’s bribes may have been offered and accepted. Also, and this wasn’t covered in the presentation, but the children are smart: they know Leo “staying home” would avoid the possibility of a workplace accident, which was much worse emotional blackmail they’d probably tell their therapists about one day.
Leo said he would think about it.
“Think about it fast,” said Neve.
She’s been playing an old country song on repeat, called “Take This Job and Shove It.” It’s not exactly a subliminal message. Could he really change his whole life because of a psychic’s prediction? One he doesn’t really believe?
He thinks of his conversation with Rod, who said the prediction was bullshit, but that sometimes you don’t realize how worn down a job can make you until you get out. He said he’d never regretted his decision to move interstate back near his parents and that he’d jump at the chance to be a stay-at-home dad for a year. Rod suggested he and his son, who is a year younger than Oli, could join them on the Bay of Fires walk in Tassie, the thought of which makes Leo drunk with happiness. Delirious.
“Maybe our boys will become friends!” he said to Neve.
More likely they’ll hate each other on sight. Leo isn’t an idiot.
But you never know.
“Right. I think that’s all,” says Lilith.
Leo holds up a finger. “One more thing.”
Chapter 101
The same day we got Mum’s diagnosis, David called from Perth. He was very upset. There had been a terrible accident at the previous Friday night’s rooftop party.
Two people, a man and a woman, had been sitting on the edge of the balcony, laughing and smoking and waving their arms about, when, just like that—it happened so fast, it was the strangest, most terrifying thing to witness—they fell. Together. Backward. Into the night.
The man was already dead by the time they got downstairs. They stabilized the woman—all those medical professionals together in one place, she got the best possible care—but she died later that night.
We didn’t know the couple. They were friends of the trainee anesthetist in the apartment below ours. Visiting from Melbourne. The anesthetist was a mess.
“It was just like you described,” said David. He sounded like he’d been drinking. I had not drunk any alcohol since I’d been home with Mum and Auntie Pat. I was sleeping and eating better. I knew I would still drink to the point of oblivion at my next Friday-night party. I could not imagine attending one of those parties sober. It was like I was a situational alcoholic. (This is not a recognized term.)
David said, “The man wore a white T-shirt and she was trying to grab at his shirt. Everyone says that’s exactly how you described it.”
I didn’t remember saying anything about a white T-shirt, but I guess I could have said that when I was drunk. White is a common color for a T-shirt.
“So I guess you’ve got the family gift, Cherry,” he said slowly. He had always been respectful about my mother’s fortune-telling, as if it were an unusual religion she practiced, but up until now he had certainly not been a believer.
“It was dangerous,” I said. I felt as if it were somehow my fault, as if I’d made it happen. “Drunk people sitting on the edge of a rooftop balcony. I wasn’t telling the future. I was trying to warn people to be careful.”
And as I have already mentioned, I had also wondered if it was a symbolic image. If the couple represented me and him.
“But you kept saying you could see it happening,” said David.
“I meant I could imagine it happening.”
I told David about Mum and he said he was so sorry, and I know he meant it because he was fond of my mother, but he was too shaken by the accident to focus properly.
“When are you coming home?” he asked.
It took me a moment.
I very nearly said, “What do you mean? I am home.”
—
It’s a very particular time in your life, when someone you love is dying.
The world doesn’t stop for you. We know this, but in our hearts we are shocked. We are like famous people who say: But don’t you know who I am? Except we want to say, But don’t you know what I am going through? How can you speak to me like that when my mother is dying?
There are still red lights and rude people, long lines and lost keys. You can still stub your toe, and it will still hurt like the devil. The difference is that your reaction may be gargantuan. You may react with a rage-filled stream of profanity, the likes of which your aunt hasn’t heard since the war. You may scream in your car at a red light and scare small children.
The dying person will not, by the way, always behave like a lovely dying person in a movie. She will not necessarily want to sit on the beach with a blanket wrapped around her thin body, looking wan and beautiful, her eyes wise and sad, a gentle breeze in her hair, while she makes profound remarks and looks at the sea. (I believe I may be describing a scene from the excellent, extremely sentimental movie Beaches.) She may in fact say, “Of course I don’t want to go to the beach, Cherry, I feel so sick, why would you suggest such an idiotic thing?”
Your feelings can still be hurt by a dying person.
