A to Z of You and Me (18 page)

_____

When I picked up the phone, it was still light outside. And still deep in the comedown from last night at the fetish club, I was so pleased to hear your voice. Like coming home. I can shut this down; I can shut it all down and bask in the comfort of your voice.

I've since slithered down to sitting on the stone kitchen floor with the big old phone cradle on my outstretched legs, and I'm clutching the receiver firmly by the mouthpiece like a cricket ball. My ear's getting hot, but I won't swap. Not yet. I press the earpiece against my ear until the plastic creaks in protest.

This silence has been going on surreally long. More silent than silence, because you can hear the electrostatic crackle poised and ready to catch any sound. I draw in a great breath, exhale through my nose, and the digital noise fills my head. And yours too, no doubt.

“This is nice,” I murmur. “Spending time with you. Even when you're two hundred miles away.”

“Yeah,” you say. “It is.”

I run my finger in between the numbers on the keypad of the phone cradle.

“I really miss spending time with you,” you say. “Even more than I thought I would.”

Silence. I can feel my brow furrowing. Are you trying to say something?

“So…I'm wondering if…”

You sigh, the bits and bytes flowing into my head, into my brain, making me close my eyes to tolerate it.

“Oh… What are you
saying
?” I groan.

“I don't know what I'm saying. What am I saying? I'm saying I look at us, and I ask, why can't they sort it out? And the only person I want to ask is you. I want to step back from it and talk with you about how you think it's going to turn out for them.”

Short crackle. I risk a switch of ears with the receiver.

“You're not like the rest of them,” you say. “But I have to be careful, Ivo. With a background like mine, you've got to understand, I have to be careful.”

“I want you to be careful,” I say. “I really, really want you to be careful. I mean, to the point that, if I'm going to bring you trouble, then…then I don't want it to be me.”

Doot!

“What was that?”

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “I had my finger on the five, and I accidentally pressed it.”

There's an added crackle on the line, and I know exactly the breathy chuckle you've just made.

The heat rises from my relieved lobe. Imagine it now, glowing in the gloom.

Doot!

“What was that?” I say.

“That was a one out of ten for not saying anything positive. Say something positive.”

“It feels lovely to laugh with you again.”

“Yeah.”

“I don't laugh anywhere near as much with anyone else.”

“No, nor me.”

Pause there.

That feels right.

That feels like what I mean.

You sigh, and another flood of static washes through my brain.

“What are we going to do?” you say.

“I'm not sure.”

“Nor me.”

Long, long pause.

“I can't be rushed,” you say, finally. “I can only take it one day at a time. One
hour
at a time.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“And I suppose we have to trust that it's going to take us somewhere—somewhere better than this.”

“Yeah.”

“Let's work toward what makes sense.”

There's another great long pause, and I have an ocean of relief dammed up and waiting to cascade all over me, but I don't want to let it. No, no. Let it drip.

“How do you think it turns out for them?” you say.

“I don't know. I really, really want it to turn out well.”

“Me too.”

“I love a happy ending.”

“Me too.”

“I'd better go,” I say. “My mum's car just pulled into the driveway.”

I start to climb to my feet to sound busy. No car. I just want to stop this now. Quit while we're ahead.

“I'll call again tomorrow. Is that OK?”

“OK. Yeah.”

“I'd better go.”

“Yeah.”

You pause once more, and we both must realize this at the same time.

“I want to say I love you,” you say. “That's what I used to say at this point.”

“Mmm.”

“Bluh blah bloo.”

“Yeah. Bluh blah bloo too.”

• • •

Shocked awake now, think—I'm fucking drowning.

Push the button, push, push… I—

Sheila in, with urgency. “Are you all right?”

“Drowning… I'm—”

“OK, OK, now…”

Mask pressed to my nose and mouth. Pressed firmly.

I don't know where.

Ask questions, ask—

What's the day—? It's—?

I have no idea. I don't even know where to start to find something like that out.

What was the day yesterday?

I—?

Sheila spiders out her hands and threads the elastic of the mask back over my head. It snaps tight above my ears.

“OK, lovey. Now breathing, yes? You know the drill.”

“Breathing, breathing.”

“And it looks like it's time for a little more of the morphine solution, OK?”

“OK, yeah.”

Yeah, yeah.

She starts to move around in the now familiar morphine routine. Methodically get the bottle. Strange, formal little movements. She doesn't want to get anything wrong. Top responsibility, the drugs.

“Down the hatch.”

• • •

“Here we are, at last,” I say, arriving finally on the crest of the hill.

You follow on behind, pushing down with your hands on your knee to lever yourself up the final incline. You fall in breathlessly beside me and slip your hands around my middle as I drop my arm across your shoulders and squeeze you tight: the anxious clinch of a couple once lost to one another, now reunited. It feels so good to be holding each other after everything we've come through.

A day at a time, then a week, and all's well.

All's well.

“My favorite place in the world,” I say.

Up here we're more in touch with this deep, deep sky than the valley down below. Huge gray-white clouds bloom epically in the blue.

Beneath us, the land drops away and sweeps off down the valley. A tiny cyclist lends perspective, cranking herself east along the dirt track toward town. She's farther away than seems possible.

“This is where my dad's ashes are scattered,” I say. “I remember me and Mum and Laura coming out here and doing that.”

“It's a beautiful spot. Perfect.”

“I think my mum left it a couple of years before we scattered him. She wanted us to be old enough to remember.”

We carefully lay out the blanket on a clean patch of ground—the blanket now happily being used for what you intended—and you sit. I sit down behind you and thread my arms around your middle, rest my chin on your shoulder.

“Whoever first used the word
rolling
about hills knew exactly what they were talking about,” you say. “These hills really roll.”

“They're exactly the right size and roundness.”

“And millions of colors. Really like a picture-book green, and then if you look at it long enough you start to see all the yellows and browns coming through. Purple skirting the bottoms.”

“Could you make a blanket out of those colors?”

“Nature's got that one covered,” you say.

You pull out an apple and bite into it. I lift my head from your shoulder, and you let me take a bite too.

“So,” I say, “I've been invited to join the garden design course.”

“Ah, really? Well done! I think you'll be great at it,” you say. Then: “You're going to be sick through nerves again, aren't you?”

“Can't wait.”

“No, I think you're going to get in there, and you're totally going to blossom.”

You back into me for a tight cuddle and draw my arms tighter around you.

“This feels so good,” you say.

“Yeah.”

“It doesn't feel like living day by day anymore. Not to me. Does it to you?”

No… No, it feels…just right.

You draw in a deep breath and exhale languorously.

“Do you think, when you die—”

“OK… Nice—”

“—that the ash when you get cremated is the same ash people use on their gardens?”

“I don't know.”

“Aren't you supposed to know things like that if you're going to do a garden design course?”

“I don't know. Probably.”

I laugh.

“What?”

“Why do you always take us to the darkest places?”

“Do I? I think nursing might have broken my darkness filter.”

“So, when you're a nurse, do you get immune to people dying?”

You chew thoughtfully for a moment.

“No,” you say, “not immune. If you know you've done the best in your power to help this person, then…well, the alternative is that you weren't there and you didn't help.”

“I suppose.”

“You have a job to do, to help them, and you just have to do your best. Sometimes I almost think it's quite a selfish thing to do—the better job you do, the more self-respect you can have. I tried explaining that to one of the women on my course, and she looked at me like I was gone out.”

You examine the apple to select the next best bite.

“I get that.”

“I always think it's worse when you see the family. You can't do a lot for them. There's no time. And you can't really prescribe to take away people's grief.”

“Not properly, no.”

“And you see little kids, like the doctors and nurses might have looked at you when your dad died, and you think—there's a lot of loving that person needs, right there.”

You fling the apple core down the valley, watch it catch now and nestle in the bracken.

Crickle crackle.

“Well, that's one way of deciding where you want to place your apple tree,” I say.

You grin at me and give me an appley kiss, smack on the lips, and we lie down on the blanket, huddle in close.

“If I were ash,” you say, your voice washed out as you talk into the air, “I'd like to be sprinkled under a fruit tree. Or if it's the wrong kind of ash, I'd like to be buried under a fruit tree. Worm food.”

“Yeah?” My voice bassy and loud in my ears.

“Because then the nutrients from me would go to swelling the fruit. And then maybe the birds would peck at the fruit and get the energy to fly—so the same energy that is making me say these words now would be used to help the bird fly. I'd literally be flying.”

“Yeah…yeah.”

“And that to me is truly comforting. Seeing myself, launching off from this hill and diving down there into the sky, down there in the valley. Deep down, and up around. Everywhere.”

You hold your hands up to the sky, cross them, palms downward, pressing your thumbs together to make a bird. A fluttering bird.

I take my right hand, press it to your left, thumb to thumb.

A bird. A fluttering bird.

Hold our hands against the sky.

Fluttering, fluttering in the blue.

At that moment, I hear the signature squiggles of birdsong in the distance and a brief flutter of wings, and a look of childlike delight crosses your face.

Rib

Mal holds up a sticky sparerib and turns it about, before greedily stripping off the meat with his teeth.

“Mal,” says Laura in a warning tone.

“What?”

“That's probably not very nice for a vegetarian to have to put up with.”

Mal looks up at you and grins, dropping the bone on his plate and licking his fingers noisily. “You don't mind, do you?”

You shrug and continue with your risotto.

I knew this was a bad idea. All I've done is sit here and hope that Mal behaves himself. But he's in one of his petulant, contrary moods. Careful piloting required.

The look you gave me when he blatantly whipped the reserved sign off the table pretty much set the tone for the evening. You're only here reluctantly anyway, and so now I have half an eye on you and whether you're having an OK time. Now we're all just tense that we're about to be found out. All of us except Mal.

“Have you taken your shot?” you ask me suddenly.

“Mmm? Yeah,” I say and show you my insulin pouch as proof.

“That's probably enough potassium for a while, though, isn't it?” you say, pointing at the amount of tomato in my bouillabaisse.

Mal can't help but give me a look. An under-the-thumb kind of look.

“Are you sure you don't want a sparerib, fella?”

“Probably not a good idea. Not too good for me.”

“Ah, whoever ate anything because it was good for them, eh?”

I hear you sigh beside me, and I pray that you keep it all in. Your head's down now, and I can tell you're concentrating on getting through this.

“Do ribs freak you out then?” asks Mal.

You pause and contemplate awhile, and I try to catch your eye to remind you of why we're here.
Building bridges, remember? For a sustainable and friendly future?
But you won't look at me.

“Not particularly.”

“How's the chicken?” I ask Laura.

“Bit dry,” she says graphically.

Makes me feel faintly queasy, so I get on with what I'm eating. We can make it through to coffee if no one says anything too—

“Did Ivo tell you our news?” you say.

“No…” says Laura, looking up all interested.

“It's not
that
,” I say.

“No, we're looking at getting a place together,” you say. “My contract's up in three months, and you're technically at your mum's still, aren't you?”

Mal drops a rib to his plate and looks at me, frowning deeply.

“Well… What about
our
apartment, man?”

“What apartment?”

“I've got a place lined up for us. We said we'd… Ah, Jesus.”

“Sorry, I didn't…I didn't know you were going to go ahead and do anything.”

“I've put two hundred down on that, man. Two hundred you've lost me.”

“Anyway,” I say. “I didn't think…that was going anywhere.”

“Yeah, well.”

We fall into an awkward silence, save the percussion of cutlery on crockery. Even the people at other tables don't seem to have much noise to make.

“So…where are you thinking of staying?” asks Laura.

“Somewhere up close by the hospital,” you say. “At first, anyway. We can always try a few short contracts, see what's best.”

We eat on, subdued, with Mal sitting back on his chair legs, pointedly chewing.

“So, how does it feel, as a woman then?” says Mal. “Being made out of the rib of a man?”

Laura frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“Adam and Eve,” I say, a little warily. “Eve's made out of Adam's rib.”

“Oh,” she says, squinting to somehow summon up the memory. “I'd forgotten about that. Old Cecil Alexander taught us that at Sunday School.” She turns to you. “He was the vicar at Mum's church before Mal's dad took over.”

“Oh,” you say.

“Is it true, then, that men have one less rib?”

“Yep,” says Mal.

“No,” you say. “Men and women both have twelve pairs.”

Mal draws in a breath and raises amused eyebrows at me.

“So how does that make you feel,” he says, “being a tasty offcut?”

I think you're not going to answer. I'm hoping you're not going to answer. “Well, it's not the best story, is it?” you say.

“No? You don't like this bloke being ripped open, and one of his ribs being snapped off, with all the jelly bits hanging off and dripping on the ground?” He takes another rib and starts stripping the tacky marinated meat down with his fingertips. “And that's what a woman is.”

“Well, not only that,” you say, “but then she goes on to ruin the whole of human existence. Let's hear it for the girls!”

“We do get it a bit hard in that myth, don't we?” says Laura.

“But it's not a myth, though, is it?” says Mal. “It did really happen.”

“No, it didn't,” Laura says girlishly.

He tears a strip off another rib and forces us all to await his explanation.

“The story had to come from somewhere, didn't it?” he says, pointing at you with his stripped rib. “So it came from women's bodies and all their weaknesses. And if it didn't have any truth to it, it would have died out centuries ago. Here's a man, and here's a woman, and the other is the servant of the one. That's what people feel. That's biologically true.”

“It
must
be,” you say.

Oh, this is all going horribly.

“It's nature,” he says, drawing a circle in the air, using the rib bone as a pointer.

“Tell that to all the women who come into the hospital after a botched late-term abortion because they're expecting a girl.”

I flash you a look.
Do we really need to go there?

Sustainable and friendly future?

Yeah?

Again Mal raises his eyebrows at me, but I won't look at him.

Silence settles once more between us all, filled only by the gingerest of clinks of forks reluctantly hovering over flesh.

Maybe we should skip dessert.

“What are you
doing
?”

I look up to see that Mal has jabbed his rib bone into your risotto.

“What? I wanted to try a bit.”

“Mal, she's vegetarian,” says Laura.

“Oh, so what? It's not got any meat on it, has it?”

“Look,” you say, standing, “I'm going to go, all right? I'm not feeling too good. There's twenty for my share.” You turn to me. “Are you coming?”

• • •

“Here we…here we go,” says Sheila, catching the telephone cart on the door frame and stopping up short. She unhooks it with a wiggle and wheels it into the room. “It's old-school telephony for us, I'm afraid. I'll pop that there. Now, I've given him the number, and he said he was going to leave it about ten minutes and then ring.”

I look up at her and nod in reluctant acknowledgment. All of this, reluctant.

“Then it's up to you, lovey. Pick it up, or don't.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen,” she says. “It's none of my business, but I think it's really good you've agreed to this. I know it might seem a bit silly, accepting a phone call from someone sitting fifty yards away in the parking lot, but…well, if you're willing to even think about being a bit flexible, well, that's real character in my book. That's real strength.”

I smile an administrative smile. I can't do any more.

“I'll leave you be,” she says.

She tidies herself out of the room, pulling the door softly shut behind her, and as soon as the light of her departure has shifted and settled in the frosted glass, the phone begins to ring. Cheap electronic chirrup. Annoying. I look at it for a moment, but the instinct is too strong. I can't let that noise carry on, troubling the other patients.

I let it go on.

Chirrup-chirrup.

I pick up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Hello, mate.”

“Hello, Kelvin.”

“How you doing?”

The habitual first question, not worth answering.

“You wanted to speak.”

“Sorry, mate, it feels a bit weird talking from a parking lot. A bit Cold War spy.”

“They still want me to see Mal.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm not going to, Kelv.”

“No.”

An awkward pause.

“I wanted to tell you the stuff that no one else is saying,” he says.

He pauses again. I know he wants me to say something, help lubricate his way. But he can work for this. I don't need to lift a finger.

“I know this is the last thing you need, people coming up to you with demands when you're feeling so shitty, but I know you'd want to know. Even if you don't change your mind. I know you'd want all the facts.”

More unnatural silence.

“No one wants to upset you, least of all me, but things are pretty bad. For his mum and dad, for Laura. They worry themselves sick about him all day every day. And the times when he does come back, he's usually in a real state. The last time he was shivering and crying because…well, you know, he'd run out of money and he hadn't had his fix.”

My mind darts over this scenario, searches for an emotional response. Comes back blank.

“That's a lot for them to take. He's not the swaggering lad you used to know. He's changed. He's changed a lot. And he's paid heavily for everything that happened.”

“So have I, Kelvin.”

“I know you have, mate, I know. And I'm sorry to come to you like this when you're…you know.”

“Dying?”

He can't bring himself to say it.

“Look, mate, you can't carry on going through life thinking no one's going to notice or care whether you're here or not. When you're gone, you're gone forever. There's a lot of people going to be very upset by that. Damaged by it.”

“Why are you trying to do this, anyway? Why are you trying to make me feel guilty for this?”

“I'm not trying to make you feel guilty.”

“He
killed
her, Kelvin.”

There.

That's stopped him.

That's fucking shut him up.

“I don't see why you're so interested in all this anyway. Is it because you want to get in Laura's knickers? I reckon you want to see him gone.”

Thick silence. Nailed him. I've nailed him there.

“You can take the piss out of me all you like, mate,” he says quietly.

“I'm just saying it as I see it.”

“Is that right?”

“That's right. And I've seen you do this over and over again to these people's lives, and if I can stop you from doing it again, I will.”

“I'm not doing anything.”

“Yeah, that's you all over, isn't it?”

The phone goes dead.

I place the receiver gently back in the cradle and press my buzzer.