Finding Grace (5 page)

It was at this point that I had my first encounter with my new neighbor. When she spoke I thought that she was speaking a different language, and she was, after a fashion. I come from a long line of suits who articulate with masterly precision (except, of course, for Nanna, who refers to young men “taking their ferret for a run” and hoots at men on construction sites—usually at the same time; Nanna has no shame).

I hear a voice off to my left.

“Looks like ya gotcherands full, mate.”

I look up. Through the shrubbery I can see the nextdoor neighbor's back veranda. It's about a meter off the
ground. There's a woman standing in front of an aluminum screen door with one hand on her hip, smoking a cigarette.

“Beg yours?” I say, frowning.

She's wearing one of those flattering flannel nighties in lime with what looks like a rosebud pattern, and so I immediately don't like her.

I have never been a big fan of the nightie. The main issue that I have yet to resolve is this: how do you get into bed without the nightie sliding up and bunching around the waist? I have tried countless methods, including pulling the bedclothes to one side and rolling onto the bed sideways, but the rolling action has a sort of wringing effect, so you end up uncomfortable longways instead of sideways. It is not possible, in my experience, to get into bed with the fulllength nightie on without such strenuous exercise that it will leave you puffed and wide awake.

Now, I will concede that in the confines of one's own property one should be entitled to wear whatever one pleases without judgment or discrimination. However, the lady next door must have
purchased
said nightie at some stage and one can assume that the purchasing occurred beyond the boundary of the property. Who buys a lime nightie? Not the sort of person with whom I'm likely to get along, that's who!

“I was just saying you got your hands full, mate.”

“Yes. I do.”

“I'm not talking about the washing, mate.” She takes a drag of her cigarette between sentences and talks through a cloud of smoke. The original dragon lady—boom, boom.

I look over the vast piles of washing in my arms. “Oh?”

“Eyemeaner.”

“Eyemeaner?”

“Er!” She points back toward the house with her cigarette. “Er, arya deaf?”

“Oh, you mean her.”

“Yeah, mate, her. She givingyardtimeyet?”

I'm doing the translation in my head as we go along,
giving you a hard time yet.
This means there's a couple of seconds delay before I am able to respond.

“No, not really.”

She takes a long drag on the cigarette. “Well, I don't reckon yoolafta wait long, yoonowdameen?”

“Pardon? Oh! You-know-what-I-mean.”

“What?”

“You said “you know what I mean.' ”

“Yeah?” She cocks her head on the side and takes another drag. “You a nuffytooarya?”

“A nuffytooarya?”

“Christ! Two of yous! Just as bad as echutha.”

“No, I'm the carer.”

“What?”

Ccrck, are you receiving, lime nightie woman? Over, ccrck.
“Carer, you know. I look after her.” “How old arya? Twelve? Pretty poor fuckin' choice if you ask me, mate.”

And with that she flicks her cigarette into the garden, spits, and walks back into her house, slamming the screen door behind her.

Well, I understood that!

Charming.

I carry the baskets to the washing line and hang out the clothes and the linen. I'm humming to myself. Something is nagging at the back of my mind. I must be hungry.

So now it's lunchtime and I make myself a sandwich. I'm looking for your plain ordinary condiment in the fridge. There are mustards: tarragon mustard, honey mustard, red peppercorn mustard. There are jellies: rosemary jelly, thyme jelly, red currant jelly. There is something called
nasi goreng
. I have a quick sniff and decide that it is probably not suitable for a sandwich.

There is a series of sun-dried vegetables: sun-dried tomatoes, sun-dried capsicum, sun-dried aubergine. Then there are several jars of tapenade. What in heaven's name is a tapenade? Where's the Vegemite?

I drag out a jar of nutmeg honey. What's wrong with ordinary squeezable honey? I spread the nutmeg honey on the bread and cut it into little triangles—force of habit.

I'm sitting out on the back step eating my sandwich. Something's nagging at me. What is it?

After lunch I sit on the couch and I'm exhausted. I pick up a magazine on the table and read that for a little while. I've done two loads of washing and I'm exhausted. Then it's time to bring it all back in again. Quickly, in case I run into that lime nightie woman next door again.

I'm standing at the washing line singing a little song.

The Grace woman! I've left her in the bath!

I run back to the house and into the bathroom. She is lying there in the bath. The bubbles have all disappeared. Most of the water has drained out of the bath. She lies there with her hands folded neatly over her belly. Her lips are blue and the skin on her hands and feet is puckered.

I can see her blue veins, like tiny vines, under the white skin of her chest and breasts. Her wet hair is wrapped in thin tendrils around her neck and across her cheek. She looks dead.

I've killed her. It's my first day and I've killed her.

I felt that cold paralyzed feeling, exactly like you get when you're watching a horror movie and you know something really scary is about to happen, but you can't look away. Except it wasn't deliciously scary, it was the real thing.

I've killed her. I'm a murderer. What do you do when you've killed someone? Do you call the police first, or the ambulance?

Then her eyes slid toward me, not blinking, cold and dry, like lizard's eyes. She held my gaze for just a moment, her lizard's eyes looking right through me, accusing.

My God, she's
in
there.

She's looking at me like a real person, but not. Her eyes are on mine but there's nothing. Is there? I'm
frightened
of her.

I'm holding my breath. Fright steals through my veins and it's cold. I'm frozen. My heart
ka-thump, ka-thump
's in my ears. Then her eyes slide away again.

My breath comes out in a big whoosh and I jolt into action, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her out of the bath. I dry her off as quickly as possible, by wrapping the towel around her and patting at it.

She shivers in the towel.

“I'm sorry,” I say to her, rubbing her shoulders under the towel. “I forgot. I won't do it again.”

She just stands there with her teeth chattering, holding the towel up to her chin with one puckered hand.

The nurse
came in the afternoon for the Grace woman's physiotherapy. She's one of those no-nonsense Aussie women. She arrives and she's smoking! Can you believe it? I mean, how many little blackened gooey pieces of lung have you got to see coughed up when you're a nurse?

The nurse is lean and tall with long stick legs. Her name is Jan. She has thin lips and short curly hair. She calls me “darl.”

I'm going to go to uni. I have four days left until first semester starts.

Uni is a nice stroll through the park and then a short bus trip. As I walk onto the grounds I am completely disoriented. There are tall buildings and squat buildings between
the trees. It's so
big
. People are wandering about looking comfortable and relaxed. I walk quickly so that I look as if I know where I am going.

I find the library and some of my lecture theaters. “Theater” is what they look like—rows and rows and rows of chairs.

I sit in one of the chairs in the empty lecture theater. This is what I do now. I come here. No more school. No more coming home to newspaper ponchos.

My life is different now. I've made some big decisions and carried them all through with very little discomfort. It seems too simple.

Then what happens after that? I'll get a job, I suppose. Another opportunity will fall in my lap and I'll take it. Then before long I'll be thirty. The sun will continue to rise and set. Christmas will hurtle around again and again, and then I'll be dead.

I look around at the empty chairs in the lecture theater and all of a sudden this whole living business seems a bit pointless.

I think I might be having a quarter-life crisis.

… … …

Mr. Preston was at the house when I arrived home, and Jan the nurse had gone. I asked him what sort of changes I'm supposed to be observing in Grace.

What if, say, I leave her in a cold bath for the best part of a day and then find her staring at me like a zombie?

“I don't know what to look for,” I told him.

“Well, let's not kid ourselves thinking that Grace is just going to wake up one morning and be back to her old self. We are talking about some pretty serious damage here.”

Is that relief I feel?

“The capacity of the human body to heal is an amazing thing. I mean, even the doctors can't tell us how much she thinks or hears. She could still be in there. I'm certain that Grace is fighting to get out. If there's a way out, Grace will find it. She can be very persistent, believe me.”

Mr. Preston smiled. He cocked his head, looking contemplative. “You know, sometimes I've been here with her talking and I think she's listening to me. She may turn her head or move her hand just a little bit. Then I think maybe it's just because I so much want her to be listening to me.”

Does she stare at you? Does she give you the heebies?

He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I came here to bring you this.” Mr. Preston put an answering machine on the table. “I tried to ring this morning, but there was no answer.”

I smiled weakly.

“Also, I wanted to tell you about her likes and dislikes. She hates the next-door neighbors but she likes their dog. She loves her cat. She likes freshly brewed coffee, not instant. She likes real butter, not margarine. She likes tomatoes, but not cucumber. She likes soup, fresh, not tinned. She doesn't like tuna, but she does like salmon. Fresh, not tinned.”

I'm thinking to myself, what is this? What's going on here? I mean, salmon? I'm not slaving over a hot stove for this woman! I don't slave over a hot stove for myself! What's next? Softly poached quail eggs?

“I won't be cooking her any salmon.”

“That's a great pity,” said Mr. Preston. “She is a very big fan of salmon.”

“Look, can't she just eat what I eat?”

“That depends on what you eat.”

So I find myself writing down a list of what the Grace woman likes and doesn't like. I tell you, poached quail eggs weren't far wrong. This is a woman with very discerning taste. Nothing tinned—especially asparagus. What a shame.

I personally think tins are the greatest, next to anything “cook in the bag.” You can always just pile it up in the middle of a big plate and call it contemporary Australian cuisine.

“How does she feel about peanut butter on toast?” I inquire.

“I have never had her opinion either way regarding peanut butter on toast. But on the whole, I think I can safely say that she would prefer pâté if there were a choice.”

Great. This is all I need.

“You seem to know a lot about your client's tastes.” I was a bit sharp—but then “chef” wasn't in the job description.

I have mental images of myself trying to prepare finnan haddie and weeping and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and looking down at Prickles saying, “This is all too much, Toto.”

Mr. Preston smiles at me, looking sad again. “Grace is more than a client. She is also a dear, dear friend.”

… … …

That's all very well, but in bed at night, alone, I have to remind myself that she is a dear, dear friend and not a monster.

When I was younger I used to share a bedroom with my little brother, Brody. We had double bunks. He used to
laugh in his sleep. I think back now and I'm guessing that he was just a happy child who had happy dreams, but then it was the creepiest thing. He used to make this eerie gurgling noise. It was freaky.

I would lie in bed frozen in fear, with my eyes wide open looking at the slats above me, absolutely certain that my brother had been replaced by an evil goblin who was up there just waiting and laughing about evil goblin things.

At night, now, I lie rigid in bed, straining my ears, like I used to when I shared a room with Brody. I hear a thump from the lounge room and my muscles seize. It's just the cat, of course, jumping down from the windowsill. I can hear the very tips of his claws ticking across the wooden floor.

I keep seeing her lizard's eyes in my mind. They slide toward me over and over. In my imagination her dead eyes turn toward me and I can hear her speak.

You left me here to drown.

At night, alone, she is a zombie—alive but dead inside.

The floor in this old house creaks. A branch scrapes slowly back and forth across the roof of the veranda. The house is old and I wonder if anybody has ever died in this room.

Why worry about old ghosts when there is one still very much alive in the next room?

This room is not completely dark. Streetlights screened by moving foliage make indecipherable shapes and shadows of the furniture. I can imagine her standing in the doorway to my room—dull eyes in a white face, moist lips drooping loosely.