Leather Wings (7 page)

Esther thinks of this irritating high piping and there is something so poignant in the sound of it a tear rolls over and out of her eye where she wasn’t even aware of tears gathering. It’s all right, she still has Donald’s tissue.

I’
M GETTING CLOSER
.

I’m getting to know all the people she knows, that way I can know her better. Something wrong with that? You see, you can’t tell me there’s anything wrong with that. The grandparents first — well, you couldn’t exactly say I was getting to know
him,
he’s such a superior bastard, I’ve met his type before, but Esther — she talks to me like a normal person, not nosy wanting to know my business, not too stuck up to tell me some of hers. She warned me Jania might be going away in the new year, to Canada, didn’t she? If she hadn’t told me that I wouldn’t have been prepared. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s walked out on me, but you can cope better if you’re prepared. I’m grateful to Esther for that. Although Jania would have told me herself later on, but I didn’t know then I’d be seeing her, or not so soon, not in the play area near my flat. And now I’ve met Sharon, the babysitter. I know where she lives. I drove past the house to remind myself of which one, although I did most of that street not two weeks back and I had business waiting for me over the other side. When I saw the house I remembered Sharon’s mum, a sick lady, I think it’s the big C, but she’s not in bed or anything. She likes people calling, you can tell, she wouldn’t be put out if I called back early and had a chat. Sharon might have told her something about what goes on in that house, with Jania.

Something’s going on. Rex picked her up from school the other day. He never does that. Neither does Grandma. No one picks her up, she walks to the bus-stop with the other bigger kids, that’s all. What I do is go to one of the shops over the road from the school — there are several shops so I don’t have to use the same one every day (of course, I don’t go
every
day but often enough). The fruit shop, the chemist, the dairy, the grog shop. There’s always other people, specially in the dairy, all the schoolkids go in there to spend their pocket money on lollies, so I’m not conspicuous.

I was browsing at the magazines this day, reading
Metro
(pretending), and I saw him turn up, walking, and go inside the school gate. It gave me a nasty feeling. Why was he doing that? I thought for a moment he was on to me, suspected me that is, of hanging about. It made me feel quite angry. I dropped the magazine and went and sat in my car with yesterday’s newspaper and hoped they’d walk past me. It was the obvious way to walk. But they didn’t. Instead they only got as far as the first lamp-post when
she
arrives, driving past me in a green Datsun. I watch her in the mirror, opening the car door for them to get in. I can’t hear what they’re saying but she doesn’t sound happy, I thought they must have had a quarrel.

I drove back quick sharp towards Kumara Street, going the short way to get there first, I’m not sure what I had in mind exactly, it makes no sense some of the stuff I do. But, like I say, it’s the devil in me that can’t do things right. I certainly got this wrong. They weren’t there and they didn’t arrive either; she’d left the garage door up, she must have been in some sort of state, there’s a good rimu wardrobe and other stuff in there, it could get nicked. I had to believe they’d gone off somewhere else and mightn’t be back till much later. Perhaps they’d gone for the weekend — it was Friday. I felt hollowed out, whacked in the gut. Something had happened, I thought, and I was afraid it was something would take her away from me. Daddy want her back in Canada pronto? Something like that? I’m psychic sometimes, I get a whiff of what’s going down before your average person. I’d been sitting there long enough, too long for my own health. And this wasn’t doing my business a bundle of good either, I’ve wasted too many hours this week. I’ll have to pull myself together. I can hear my father laughing down his nose and Claude giggling away. Cut it out!

E
STHER AND
R
EX
take Jania after school to the private medical centre. They will have to pay for these tests but it seems less sordid in a carpeted clinic with a hotel-style foyer than in the echoing spaces of the public hospital. Jania is bemused but curiously trusting. She has had needles before and treats them as just another necessary mystery adults impose on the young to make them strong. Ironic. Another needle is responsible for why she is here. Adults are not to be trusted after all, they make mistakes, but Esther and Rex are still protecting her from this truth.

“No need for us all to go in.” Rex sits outside in the car reading the newspaper. As Esther and Jania perch themselves among other patients in the carpeted waiting area, the woman behind the executive counter calls them, waving the slip of paper Rex had obtained from their doctor.

“Barton! Barton! Can you tell me what this is? Janie’s here for what? It doesn’t say.”

Esther moves rapidly and inclines her head, pointing at the doctor’s hieroglyphics on the form.

“But what does it mean? Your doctor’s supposed to put…”

“It’s a code.” Quietly.

“A code?” Not quiet at all. “But…”

“It’s supposed to be anonymous,” Esther hisses, snaky with fury and embarrassment.

“Oh, yes. Oh, I see. Sorry. Thank you.” The nurse doesn’t look up again from the form. Esther sits down and glares at a nervous-looking man next to her as if the incompetence of the staff is his fault. He drops his gaze obediently, then moves it wonderingly on to Jania. Esther blushes for the child before she can recover herself. She studies the other patients surreptitiously. What sort of tests are they here for? What is that man here for? Flatulence? Anaemia? It could be either of these by the look of him. Or herpes? Genital warts? A new strain of gonorrhoea? You could never tell. She has avoided all of these while living a not entirely blameless life. She thinks of the new
STDs as diseases of the young, not of her generation, but what is there to say Donald has not succumbed to young flesh, dipped back from a main course into an appetising entrée, a soup of venereal richness. Rex too — why not? She certainly never expected herself to be connected so closely to the most fatal of love’s poisons. She is grateful that Rex has accompanied her here, even if he does sit outside in the car. He will be there to listen sympathetically while she vents her wrath at the stupidness of the nurse mannequin behind the counter. What is the point of the discretion of a code if that bitch questions it at the top of her voice?

Jania swings her legs and turns the pages of an
Australian Women’s Weekly,
too fast.

“Would you stop flicking that,” Esther instructs in a low irritated tone. She has a special strangled voice that she uses instead of a whisper.

It takes so little time once Jania’s name is called, Esther feels nearly cheated. That thin tube of blood, casually drawn, contains the whole of Jania’s future. They emerge into the parking area and into a blast of sunshine, with the feeling they have been attending something as unreal as a matinée film.

In the evening Rex and Esther study again the pamphlets the doctor had given Rex. HIV seropositive, AIDS related illness (ARC) and AIDS full blown. Rules of hygiene. Mental attitude. The spectre of illness hangs about the kitchen, affecting Rex’s cooking (he has bought a recipe book titled EATING HEALTH) and Esther’s appetite. Her stomach has flattened gratifyingly, but she doesn’t feel well. Jania eats as robustly as ever, but of course she is worryingly thin. Never a worry before, but now —

And then, before the test results are back she catches a cold. “Let me see inside your mouth,” Esther orders. “Open up.”

Jania stands on one leg and says “Aah”, sticking her tongue out.

“You don’t have any sore bits on your gums? Or tongue?”

“Throat’s sore,” Jania says and coughs.

“I think we’ll keep you home from school.”

“Okay.”

Rex looks anxious. Lately he has taken to changing the towels and teatowels after very little use. The wash load has doubled. He spends more time in the bathroom and gargles with a blue mouthwash. Esther teases him, but he tells her it isn’t what she thinks, it’s to keep plaque off his remaining teeth.

“You can cope, can’t you?” she asks him. “With Jania home?”

“Mmm, I suppose.”

“I don’t want to take any more time off work, it’s chaos at the moment. I’ll pick up some videos.”

“How are we off for tissues?” He turns to Jania. “I’ll give you a special bag to put your used ones in — okay? I’ll pin it to you so you know where it is.”

“Okay.” The little girl has never had so much attention paid to a head cold. Normally she is sent to school with a supply of hankies in her schoolbag and sneezes like everyone else.

Rex asks Esther later, “Why are we keeping her home? She’s only got a cold. Who are we protecting. Them or her?”

“Both of course. I’m sorry — is she difficult? Anyway you shouldn’t spread cold germs, people are thoughtless.”

“You go to work with a cold. To get away from me, I expect.”

“We’ll get the results after the weekend.”

“She sneezes at me. She wants me to play with her doll’s city and she sneezes all over them.”

“She’s only six. Where is she anyway?” It is four o’clock in the afternoon now and a stiff breeze is pushing the leathery leaves of the gum tree against the window glass.

“I sent her outside for some air. It’s sunny.”

“It’s cold. Jania!”

The child dominates the house, even more than before, dominates the conversation. The date of the test result approaches like a train, growing larger, noisier, directed down fixed tracks by a signalman whose name might be God and might be the Devil.

F
RANGIBLE
,
IT’S A
word I’ve picked up from a crossword puzzle. Yes, even the Rawleigh’s man can do a crossword, not a whole one necessarily, and I cheat, I do yesterday’s with today’s solution in one hand. But I make the effort. It educates you. I’m not just an ignorant foot-in-the-door salesman, foot in the mouth sometimes but definitely not simple. Frangible. It’s a word for Jania. Breakable, fragile. You might not think so seeing her swing upside-down on the bars and scramble halfway up the silver slide in her little trainers before letting herself slip back down, legs and knickers everywhere. But I can see it. I see how someone could hurt the little girl so easily. Someone has.

I had my nightmare again last night. It wasn’t Jania being hurt, it was this little cousin of mine and him with his stick, no it was a belt — his snakeskin belt. I think. It’s so clear in the dream but when I try to get it back, try to focus it, the opposite happens and it starts to blur. But the feeling’s there, the feeling of it. This poor wee girl getting punished for something she didn’t even do.
I’d
done it, me. It was my fault but she didn’t tell on me, that was part of what made it so special, she was taking my punishment. I know, that was awful of me, but I couldn’t move or speak, it was like I was hypnotised. He was hitting her really hard, he’d have hit me worse if he’d known it was me, lashed me with his wizard belt. He pushed her backwards against the table then sent her flying forwards over the arm of the chair and belted her again on her panties so that they slipped and I could see her pinkness. We could both see her pinkness. She cried out like a cat. I saw some kids do it once to a cat. I wanted those kids to stop. But I didn’t want
him
to stop. It was my punishment, I could feel every whack on her soft little bum and I didn’t want him to stop — no, that can’t be right. I’m not like that, am I? I’m not cruel, I’m not. I was sorry for her, how it must be cutting into her. But just a bit more, I was saying in my head, it gave me that hot Claude feeling. He turned round and yelled at me, “What are
you gaping at?” It was like when he turned his watchmaker’s eye on me, I felt stabbed.

Someone has hurt Jania. There’s that scar on her throat and I think I saw another one on her leg, when she was on the slide in her little shorts; I don’t like to peer when I’m not supposed to be around anyway.

But that was last week. I’m worried. She hasn’t been going to school, there’s no way I could have missed her. I’m getting cleverer at camouflaging myself and I always choose a different approach. Yesterday I got the old push bike out and pedalled past, looking straight ahead and sideways all at once. I change jerseys regularly; I like my purple but it shows up a bit too much. On Wednesday I took the car to the service station for a check while the mechanic was at lunch, I knew he’d be at lunch, and I hung about looking impatient. I’m a clever sod — you can see right into the playground from there and it’s lunchtime in the playground, isn’t it? She’s not at school.

I think — supposing she’s gone? Back to Daddy, to Canada. I feel quite ill and I have to get in the car and drive over that way to my parking possie, get out and walk back. I even call in to number thirty-nine who I know both go out to work these days, just to make it look good. Then to number fourty-four over the road, who’s deaf and won’t hear me if I don’t use the doorbell — if she did hear me she’d think it was funny, I was there only last week, but it’s all right she lives at the back of the house. When I get no answer I come back down the path and I squint across the road because I can see movement in the garden. I’m pretty sure I hear her little voice, a high note like a microwave ping, saying, “I’m here, I’m ready, take me out.” But next moment I nearly jump out of my sandals because the weedeater is switched on, a nasty blasting interruption, which tells me Grandad is there with his finger on the trigger, damn.

I hightail it out of there, I can’t be spotted by the enemy, but at least I’m fairly sure she’s there, not in Canada. Why at home? Is she sick? I think about it all evening, eating my baked beans out of the can, the place is running down again, the sink bench is covered with crumbs. I’ll have to have a go
at it. The cupboard under the sink isn’t short of cleaning stuff. Thing is I’m depressed. I don’t like the way I’m feeling about all this. If I was an ordinary person you’d say I was in love, but I’m not an ordinary person and I’m quite sure I’m never going to fall in love. I’m chewing away slowly on my dinner — you know the way beans stick to the roof of your mouth, like peanut butter — and I have this good idea. I’ll call again on that Sharon’s mum. If I go at the right time Sharon could be there herself, between them they must know something. She’s been at their place a fair bit lately, it lets the grandparents off the hook — I reckon that’s it — and she’ll need the pocket money. Not a lot of pocket money going spare in Sharon’s house. Just the same her mum always buys something, like it’s a matter of pride, I understand someone like Sharon’s mum.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to take hold of the woman and shake her when I’ve been there for twenty minutes and she’s still rabbiting on about her first marriage. Sick as she is, feet up on the stool, I want to give her a good shake. I don’t like the way I have to stop myself thumping the arm of my chair to get her back on to the subject. Trouble is you can’t hurry these things. Count to a hundred, that’s the way, you don’t have to listen to what she’s talking about. Focus on something, the biscuit tin with a kitten on it, and count to a hundred. Sharon isn’t here.

That’s when it comes out, when Sharon arrives home, raising her eyebrows at me above those fat blue glasses that make her eyes piggy small.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Sharon. Just in time. I’ve got something for you. We were talking about milkshakes in your park, weren’t we — these are free samples, something I’m thinking of carrying. Tell me if it’s any good. You can give one to your little friend, the one you babysit. I hope they pay you a decent wage for that, it’s proper work minding kids.”

“Yeah.” The girl takes a hand out of her pocket and opens it up — a pool of golden coins. “I just came from there, he only had small change. Are you all right, Mum?”

“Yes, dear, I’m all right, we’re just having a cup of tea. Sit down.”

Sharon shakes her head and says she’ll get on to peeling the spuds. She goes past us into the little kitchen, she looks a bit queer, not friendly. Her mother pulls a face at me and mutters something about the girl doing too much.

“She’s had a shock, but I think she’s got it wrong. She must have. People like that …”

I can’t believe it, am I about to hear something about Jania’s family? I hardly dare prompt her, I just wait.

“You don’t expect people like that to get mixed up with homosexuals, do you? He was in the bank until he retired, I know for a fact — Sharon sits for a friend of hers, the daughter that is. Bank managers don’t get AIDS.”

“What?” I nearly drop my cup.

“That’s what I mean. You don’t expect, do you? She says there’s pamphlets in the house on this HIV thing — sticky beaking, she’s always had a good nose, Sharon. But a pamphlet doesn’t mean it’s you who’s got it, does it? I mean, does it?”

I want to shake her now. Both of them! I want to run out to the kitchen and lift Sharon by her red hair and demand that she tell me everything, every little last thing. But I’m busy trying to get my tongue around a question and I’m too slow, the woman goes right on talking.

“She’s got this idea it’s the little one, she won’t say why. I suppose it’s possible. Poor wee soul. Her Daddy could be a homosexual, he lives in America and they’ve got AIDS all over America. Well, I’ve told Sharon to wash her hands plenty, just in case.”

“Mum!” Sharon has come into the room. “You shouldn’t gossip to people!”

“That’s not very nice, Sharon. Mr Rawleigh isn’t people, and what else do I have to do, stuck here? I only said you
thought
—”

“I wasn’t serious.”

“If you weren’t serious you shouldn’t say.”

Sharon’s bigger than her Mum and she stands over her like a meter maid with a parking ticket. Then they notice I haven’t said anything for quite a stretch and they both turn round and look at me, waiting for me to get my tongue into gear. I’m
shaken, I didn’t want to hear anything like this, truth or fiction. I get busy collecting up my sample case then I turn round and smile as wide as I can so they won’t think they’ve shocked me; I thank her for the tea and take myself off. My legs feel loose like they might come off at the knees.

I don’t know what to make of it, not really. Sharon isn’t too silly, she’s brighter than her mum if you ask me, I wonder what she really knows. She shouldn’t have told her mum if she’d wanted it kept secret that she noses about. I can’t bear to think of Jania’s father tainting her, if that’s what’s happened. Vile. Ugh. Or Mummy, perhaps that’s what carried her mother off, a drug user, maybe that’s it, a filthy junkie poisoning my Jania with her filthy milk. No!

I sit in the car trying to fit the damned key into the lock like I’ve been guzzling gin not tea. I hold on to the steering wheel and suddenly I’m just so mad I grip it in my two hands and twist it — aargh! — till it’s all out of shape. I don’t know how I did that, I didn’t know I was so strong. It’s harder when I try to straighten the wheel so that I can drive off. It’s still a bit buckled but who cares. I put my head down on the wheel and my nose is running as if I’m crying.

W
HEN THE GUILLOTINE
fell, slicing lives like bacon during the French Revolution, the old women of Paris sat with their knitting needles, gossiping. Where is Esther when the guillotine falls on Jania? That depends when it can be said to have fallen — when the note was entered on her medical chart? — when the doctor lifted the telephone and asked Esther to come in for a chat? Or when she sat quietly in the orange vinyl chair, receiving the news she has prepared herself for but is nevertheless unprepared to hear. She might sit quietly but her ears ring like warring gunfire, a curious reaction that leads her to miss a good deal of what the doctor is explaining to her. She has to ask to have it all repeated, which the doctor fortunately seems patient enough to do. He must be a busy doctor but today he is kind and careful, so much so that Esther feels tears of gratitude edging their way upwards. Supposing it were Esther who was going to die — could it feel worse than this? She wonders at herself, the reluctant grandmother, and then remembers she has yet to tell Rex and Rex is so bad at illness. And then there is Martin, who telephoned last night.

“Oh, God. Sorry!”

“That’s all right, take your time. You’ll have questions and you won’t think of them all right away. I’ll put you in touch with a support group who’ll be a lot of help to you. Do contact them. What you have to remember is that Jania isn’t sick at all. This isn’t an infection as such, merely a positive reaction indicating antibodies. She may never get sick at all, certainly she could have years of health ahead of her. And who knows —”

“Research,” Esther says in a voice like a cracked bell. “They haven’t got far in ten years have they?”

“On the contrary, we might not have found a cure but we’ve come a long way. There’ve been some very useful breakthroughs. I’m putting Jania on medication straight away. It’s standard procedure now. This is the syrup form.” He writes.

“Her father will sue the hospital.”

“Yes, well that’s not our business, fortunately. But in every other way we’re here to do all we can for the family. Now, is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

“Do I have to tell them at her school?”

“You don’t have to tell anyone at all, that’s up to you. You might feel it’s fairer to let them know, you might feel it’s not fair to Jania if you do. People can still be very cruel where their own health feels threatened. Where does the father fit in? Will he want her over there?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. She has no idea at all how Martin will react; he said something over the phone yesterday that leads her to suspect he is planning to remarry and nervous of how this will upset his plans. Humans are so selfish,
she
is selfish, but surely dogs and cats can be selfish too, stealing each other’s jellimeat? Her mind veers and swoops, at one moment practical, making lists of what she must do, the next moment wobbling off into philosophical meanderings, riding thoughts as clumsy as pennyfarthing bicycles. How,
how
will she behave to Jania with this knowledge in her head? How will she comfort a bad dream? When Prue was a child, sickening from some childhood illness, Esther had tortured herself with the possibility of a terminal condition, and every time she had been gratefully wrong. Until the accident. At least that was a clean death, as hunters say of their kill, and in this way easier to accept. “She never knew”, “Instantaneous” — comforting phrases. Nothing clean about the way Jania might leave the world. A dirty trick.

It wasn’t so long ago that she was watching that child, Eve, the little AIDS heroine, on their TV set, filled with admiration for her courage. Television viewers around the country went into mourning when little Eve lost her battle and died. That’s all very well but Esther doesn’t want her own grandchild to be a media heroine, to need courage. Moreover, she doesn’t want to need that sort of courage herself, she doesn’t want to be the public guardian of a doomed child; she will fail, Esther is a despicable coward. Rex will feel the same.

The guillotine has overshadowed Donald. Esther has scarcely noticed his departure to Auckland for the interview and has more or less forgotten he is due back this afternoon,
probably with the map of his new future tucked in his wallet. Her distraction won’t have escaped Donald, he has already remarked on it aggrievedly, which is unfair considering the support he has been to her over Jania’s tests, almost no support at all. HIV isn’t something you can joke about and Donald’s support in the past has usually taken the form of jokes, teasing her out of depression, holding up her own cartoon version of her life for her to laugh at. Perhaps his jokes will sustain a new mistress in Auckland. What sort of jokes does he erect to support his wife? She has no idea. His marriage is not her business. Donald keeps his life in usefully separated compartments, a habit that Esther understands and shares. Work, home, play: each one a separate file on a separate computer disk, there is no crossover. That’s what they used to say about government departments, but look what’s happened now — Inland Revenue can shop you to Social Welfare can shop you to the Immigration Department; it’s all got mixed up. Messy. She shouldn’t complain when Donald refuses to play the husband role, that wasn’t written into their private contract. But how about friend? He is mostly friend, best friend she had believed. Are they right about the necessary deficiencies in a friendship between a man and a woman? She has been singularly unfriendly about his planned career move, and he has conveniently switched off from her news bulletins about Jania. They are letting each other down as friend. Is there anyone Esther hasn’t let down?