My Life and Other Massive Mistakes (7 page)

He looks at the batteries, then at me and Jack, then back at the batteries.

‘You idiot!' Jack spits.

Mr D lets go of his ear and pockets the lavender. His eye stops twitching. The reactor cools rapidly. Within seconds he looks almost like a regular human. He calmly takes the batteries from my hand.

‘Thank you, Tom. I owe you one. Now,
you boys don't seem to be doing much. Would you mind going and cleaning those bickies and birds off the ute? Shouldn't take you long. You'll be finished by the time the game's over.'

‘But I want to watch it!' Jack complains. ‘Well, that's a bit of bad luck … Grandma.' Mr D pushes past us and heads inside.

Jack smacks me on the back of the head.

Cleaning up 320 biscuit halves is more difficult than you might think. First we have to battle the magpies. Twenty-five minutes, 13 swoops and a couple of flesh wounds later, we start working on the biscuits. They have gone soggy in the pouring rain and they squish between my fingers as I scrape them off the bonnet and chuck them into the wheelie bin.

Jack eats most of the biscuits he peels, licking the jammy cream off his fingertips and
trying to dodge the ones with bird poo on them. I tell him he'll end up with bird flu but he doesn't seem to care.

Halfway through the job, out of nowhere, there's an animal roar from inside the house and the magpies – who have been snickering at us while we work – flee the gum tree overhanging the ute.

‘Jack! Did you shave off half my moustache? JACK!'

Pop finishes putting on his lipstick and takes a step back from the bathroom mirror.

‘How do I look?' he asks.

‘Well…' I say, trying to think of the nicest way to tell him that he is the ugliest man-dressed-as-a-woman I've ever seen. I glance down at his hairy feet, bursting from the black, thick-soled nurse's shoes. His light blue dress is crushed and crumpled. The badge reads ‘Miriam Gooch – Head Nurse'. And his face? The smeared red lipstick, electric blue
eye shadow and bright red circles on his cheeks make me think ‘demented clown'.

‘You look great,' I say. ‘Very convincing.' Although it's totally weird seeing Pop not wearing yellow undies – that's been his uniform for as far back as I can remember. ‘
Now
can you tell me why you're dressed as the head nurse?'

He looks over his shoulder at the bathroom door, then back to me. His eyes are wild and blue with a storm brewing behind them. He snaps on the old radio that sits on the vanity next to the cold tap. There's a horse race on and he cranks up the volume.

‘The place is bugged!' he says loudly. ‘Can't be too careful.'

‘Aren't they more likely to hear us if we're shouting?' I reach to turn the radio down but he slaps my hand away.

‘I need you to help me,' he says, pulling me close.

‘With what?'

He glances at the door again. ‘I have a plan to break out of here.'

My eyes roll. Pop has told me this at least a thousand times over the past year since he's been in the nursing home. Once he tried to get me to hide a drill in a pavlova so that he could escape through the air-conditioning vent. Another time he attempted to hijack the minibus on an excursion to Tropical Fruit World. And the worst was when he made me sing ‘Jingle Bells' at Christmas Eve karaoke while he snuck down the fire escape.

‘I heard that, Cliff!' says a voice from outside the bathroom door. It sounds like Debbie, the unnaturally happy nurse.

‘Told you the place is bugged!' Pop screams. ‘How long'd it take 'em to send one of their operatives? Two seconds? Can't a man have some privacy without the enemy stickin' their big beaks into it?'

‘We're not the enemy, Cliff,' Debbie calls sweetly.

‘Ha!' he shouts. ‘That's what the enemy always says.'

I snap off the radio.

‘Stay here,' I whisper. I take a breath, unlock the bathroom door and slip out into Pop's room through the thinnest gap possible, closing the door behind me.

‘Hello-o!' says Debbie, red-faced, straw-haired and jolly. ‘What are you doing in there? Is Cliff coming out?'

‘He's … um … trying to do a poo,' I tell her. It's the first thing that comes to me.

Debbie turns up her nose.

‘I mean … using the bathroom.'

‘Were you helping him?' she asks.

I don't want to say ‘yes'. I try to think of a good reason why I was in the bathroom while my pop was doing a number two, but I'm taking too long.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I was helping him.'

‘He's usually okay,' she says. ‘Must be the haemorrhoids again. How about I leave you some cream and you can help him put it on when he's finished. It's quite straightforward. You just have to –'

‘It's okay. I know how to do it.' There's no way I'm going to listen to a graphic description of how to apply haemorrhoid cream to my grandfather's bottom.

‘Oh … okay,' she says. ‘Just make sure he wipes properly.'

I taste a small amount of vomit in my throat as she fishes the cream out of her deep pocket and hands me the tube.

‘Byeee,' she sings.

‘Seeeya,' I sing back.

Debbie leaves. I close the door. Pop emerges from the bathroom, adjusting the oranges he is using as breasts. ‘Thanks, mate,' he says. ‘Now, I'm going to try to walk right out the front door, but if anything goes wrong, I need you to whistle for reinforcement.'

‘I'm not sure about this, Pop.'

‘Bah! Don't be so negative. I've got to get out of this stinking hole. The food's
disgraceful. I haven't tasted such slop since your grandmother mixed cat food into the meatloaf. I've got to swallow 140 tablets a day and have poisoned cream rubbed into my backside. Are you going to help me or what?'

Pop is really close to my face now. I can feel a couple of his wild eyebrow hairs tickling my forehead. I lean back a little. ‘I guess,' I say.

A villainous grimace screams across his lipsticked mouth. ‘Good boy. Now zip me up.'

He turns to the door and I see that the zip on his dress isn't done up at the back. Pop is busting right out of it. I can see a giant ‘V' of hairy Pop back. I try doing it up but his fur gets caught in the zipper.

‘Where did you even get this?' I ask.

‘Stole it when the head nurse was having a shower 15 minutes ago. Now, remember, if anyone breaks my cover, whistle for backup.'

‘But –'

‘Foller me up the hall!' he says. ‘You're my wingman.' He slips out the door and into the hallway. I poke my head out to find that hardly anyone's around. I figure it's a 50-metre walk up the long, straight corridor before he hits the revolving front door and he's free.

Pop strides towards the nurses' station, which is a room on the left, halfway up. I follow, sticking close to the wall. There's a nurse chatting to someone in the hall. I send out a prayer that she doesn't turn and see Pop hobbling along in the head nurse's shoes.

Pop is almost at the station when the nurse turns and walks towards him. Towards us. This is bad. Not only because my grandfather is dressed as a woman in a public place but because I don't know if this is an emergency, so I don't know whether to whistle for backup.

The nurse is walking with her head down,
reading something on a chart. As she passes, she glances up briefly and smiles.

I can't believe it. He seems to have convinced her that he's Head Nurse Gooch. This is impossible. She must be a frightening lady.

Just as the nurse reaches me, she turns back to Pop and says. ‘Oh, Miriam. I meant to ask –' She stops mid-sentence. She sees what I see: Pop's gorilla back.

She screams. Pop looks over his shoulder and starts hobbling up the hall again, double-time. Three nurses emerge from rooms at either side of the hallway: two men and a lady. Pop's outnumbered. They close in on him. I feel so sad. But then I remember my job. I jam my fingers into my mouth and give the loudest whistle I have ever given. This is definitely an emergency.

Eleven Kings Bay Nursing Home inmates – men and women aged 75 to 104 – spring from their rooms and fall into a V formation, surging up the corridor. It's a ready-made army. Reg Hopper, who used to own the toy shop, is up front in a motorised cart. He wears a pacemaker on his chest to keep his heart thumping. Behind him, five foot soldiers walk with canes, three are in wheelchairs, two are pushing oxygen tanks on stands.

They stagger and creak and wheeze their way up the hall, united by one thing: yellow
undies. They are all wearing yellow underpants just like Pop usually does. The ladies have their nighties tucked into them. The men wear the undies and nothing else. It's hideous. It's horrendous. I want to scratch my own eyes out. But it's strangely heartwarming and inspiring, too. They look ferocious, determined.

All are ready for combat.

Each member of Pop's army wields a
weapon of some kind. Betty Brown, who used to work at the post office, has a plate of disgusting nursing-home meatballs in her lap … and a slingshot. Mr Payne, an ex-policeman with ghost-white skin and a black eye patch, carries a bedpan that sloshes up around the edges. A lady at the back, solid as a tree, carries a quiver of sharpened walking sticks.

The three nurses at the station begin to retreat.

Pop starts moving forward again, and so do I. Pop's army is right behind me.

The three nurses look genuinely scared as they continue to back up the hall. One of them smashes the glass covering the emergency button on the wall and raises the alarm.
Bluuuuurp, bluuuuuurp, bluuuuuurp
.

‘Go, Cliff!' someone shouts from behind me.

‘We've got your back, Cliffy!'

‘Send us a postcard from the other side!'

My body zings and thrings with electricity. Pop is going home. It feels important all of a sudden, like we're striking a blow for old people everywhere. We reach the large, bright entrance foyer at the front of the nursing home. There is a cheer from behind. The revolving door is ten metres away, just past the front desk, and the sweet smell of freedom is everywhere.

That's when a tall, skinny woman pops out from behind the desk. Her wet hair drips down her face. She is wrapped in a towel.

Pop stops. So do I.

Bluuuuurp, bluuuuurp, bluuuuurp
. The alarm continues.

‘I've been looking for that,' she shouts, eyeing Pop's dress.

I get the feeling that this might be the head nurse, Miriam Gooch.