The Saffron Gate (11 page)

^{'There's only me,' I interrupted, my voice hoarse. 'Only me,' I repeated.}

^{'The medication,' he said then. 'It has helped?'"}

^{I looked at my father. 'I don't know.'}

^{'No,' he said. 'Your face. It pains a great deal?'}

^{I reached up to touch the dressing as I had a few moments earlier. 'No. I . . . I don't remember . . .'}

^{'It's the deep cut, Miss O'Shea. There were many small pieces of glass; I took them out and stitch it for you.'}

^{I suddenly heard his accent, and his slightly incorrect grammar, and understood what had created this familiarity; his English was similar to my mother's. I had a recollection: the stinging smell of disinfectant, this man's face close to mine, a tugging at my flesh which was cold, and unfeeling. 'No,' I said. 'It doesn't hurt.'}

^{Why was he talking about my insignificant injury? It was my father he should be attending to. 'Can't you do something? Is there some surgery you can perform, something . . . something to help him?'}

^{The doctor shook his head. His face reflected something — was it sorrow? 'I'm sorry,' he said, and it was clear that he meant it. 'Now it is only the time we wait.' He glanced at a round watch he pulled from his waistcoat pocket. 'I must go now, but I return in a few hours.'}

^{I nodded. His expression was, in spite of his professionalism, concerned. Perhaps even kind. And his voice . . . Again I thought of my mother, and felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life. I didn't want this man to leave; at that moment even a stranger would have been a comfort.}

^{'Miss O'Shea. It is better for you that you sleep. It's been many hours you sit like this. And the medication for the pain — for your face — it make you tired.'}

^{I thought of the doctor who had tended to me when I had polio, of the doctor who had come to see my mother in her last days. Those men were surely at the ends of their careers; they had appeared so old, so worn, as if they had had a lifetime of passing on sorrowful news. 'It's my fault,' I said, not sure why I felt the need to confess to this doctor. His forehead was high and intelligent, his cheeks ruddy. He couldn't have been a doctor too many years; he was surely only a little older than I. 'He told me not to drive.'}

^{He didn't reply, but kept looking at me, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, as if waiting for me to continue.}

^{Again I lifted my father's hand, this time pressing it against my forehead.}

^{'I am Dr Duverger,' the man said. 'If you wish to speak to me about your father, or your face, you ask the nurse for me. Dr Duverger,' he repeated, looking at me intently.}

^{But I was suddenly so weary, so overcome, that I simply nodded, and turned back to my father.}

^{My father died just before sunrise, without regaining consciousness, without forgiving me. I was there, in the room with him, but at the moment of his death I was asleep.}

^{It was a nurse who came in and discovered he was no longer breathing. She roused me with a hand on my shoulder.}

^{'I'm sorry, Miss O'Shea,' she said, when I stared at my father, and then at her. 'There's nothing more to be done.'}

^{I kept looking at her, as if she spoke a foreign language.}

^{'He's gone, dear,' she said, her hand still on my shoulder. 'Come now. Come and we'll get you a cup of tea.'}

^{I wasn't able to understand how it could have happened this way. So quietly, and so unnoticed. Didn't my father deserve more than this, from life, and from me?}

^{'Come now,' she said again, and I rose and followed her, glancing back at my father's body.}

^{I remember sitting in a small room with a cup of tea in my hands, and the young doctor — what had he said his name was? — speaking to me. But I couldn't understand him. I walked from the room, but the doctor followed me, putting something — a small container — into my hand. Then he draped my coat over my shoulders. I smelted my father, the scent of his tobacco, and swayed for a moment. The doctor put his hand on my wrist to steady me.}

^{'You must put the ointment on your cheek,' he said. 'The ointment — there, in your hand. Put it on every day. And a clean bandage. Come to see me in one week. How will you go home?' he asked, and I looked from his hand on my wrist to his face. 'Who will take you to your home, Miss O'Shea?' he said. 'There is someone to take you, and to be with you now, so you are not alone?'}

^{I wasn't thinking clearly. 'Home? I . . . I don't know. The car . . . my car . . . is it . . . where is it?' I asked, as if he would know.}

^{'I don't know about your automobile, but I think it is better if you do not drive. We will find someone . . . It's very early . . . Where do you live, Miss O'Shea?' he asked then.}

^{'Juniper Road,' I said.}

^{'I will try to find someone to drive you,' he said. 'You may have to wait.'}

^{I stood there, trying to process his words. He
was
kind. 'No,' I said, my senses returning. 'My neighbour, Mr Barlow. Mike Barlow. He'll come and get me. He'll take me home.'}

^{'He has a telephone?'}

^{I nodded. All I wanted to do was leave this place, with my father's lifeless body. 'Yes,’ I said. Suddenly I was very cold. Shivering. 'But . . . I can't remember the number. I can't remember it,' I said, putting my hand to my mouth. 'I know it,' I said, through my shaking fingers. 'I know it, but I can’t . . .'}

^{The doctor nodded, moving his hand from my wrist to my shoulder. 'It's the shock, Miss O'Shea. Please. Sit here. Mike Barlow on Juniper? I will find this number,' he said.}

^{I sat where he indicated, my teeth chattering, and watched his back as he left me, going to a nearby desk and speaking to a woman there. She looked at me, nodding, and then he looked back at me as well.}

^{'Put on your coat, Miss O'Shea,' he said, his voice carrying across the small space. 'Keep yourself warm.'}

^SIX

^{W
e drove through the thin early morning light.
The sky had cleared and the rising sun shone tentatively, as if unsure of itself. Mr Barlow rolled down the window, and there was the sweet smell of the promise of spring. Suddenly my cheek throbbed so terribly that I drew in my breath and closed my eyes.}

^{'You all right, Sidonie?' Mr Barlow asked.}

^{I opened my eyes and looked at his stubbled face, suddenly remembering that when I was a child his gingery eyebrows had reminded me of caterpillars. They were threaded with white now, although still as thick and bristly. 'You all right?' he asked again, and I nodded, looking away from him to stare through the windshield.}

^{And then I saw it. The beautiful Silver Ghost, overturned. There was an overwhelming sense of sadness about it. It lay as though it were a great hulking white beast, beaten and defeated, in the muddy gravel. The sun caught its side mirror, reflecting so that I was momentarily blinded. I covered my eyes with my hands.}

^{'Your dad was a good man, Sidonie,' Mr Barlow said.}

^{And I killed him. I killed him,
I thought.}

^{It was Mr Barlow who drove me back to the hospital three weeks later. He came to the door, turning his cap in his hands.}

^{'Nora says you got a phone call. You're supposed to go back to the hospital. They say you missed your appointment.'}

^{'My appointment? For what?' I asked, holding Cinnabar against my chest.}

^{Mr Barlow cleared his throat. 'Most likely about your face, Sidonie,' he said, touching his own cheek.}

^{Mr and Mrs Barlow had been good to me for the last few weeks. They had helped with the funeral arrangements and Mrs Barlow had brought me something to eat every day. Sometimes I ate it, sometimes I didn't, and sometimes I didn't remember if I'd eaten or not.}

^{Mr Barlow had taken me to the lawyer's office in Albany, and sat with me while the lawyer explained that my father had left a simple will. He had managed to put away a small amount of money, left to me. I looked at Mr Barlow as we left. 'Is it enough for the rent?' I asked, not able, at that time, to understand what the sum meant.}

^{'Don't worry about that, Sidonie,' he said. 'It will keep you for a little while. But . . .' He stopped. 'Don't worry about paying any rent,' he said, and I nodded. 'You'll have to open your own account, at the bank,' he added, and again, I simply nodded. Nothing made sense, those first weeks.}

^{Occasionally I attempted to read, but couldn't concentrate; I tried to paint, but the colours were flat, my brushstrokes lifeless. I would decide to make tea, put the kettle on to boil, and then forget about it until the piercing scream made me jump, and I realised I didn't want tea after all. I would take up a pen to write down what I needed to buy when I next went to the grocery store, then stop, the pen halfway to the paper, forgetting what I had planned to write. I even wondered why Cinnabar followed me about the house for an hour one day, until I saw, with a guilty start, that her food and water dishes were empty.}

^{The house, without my father, was so still.}

^{When my mother died, I had mourned. The mourning was passive, and took the form of thinking of her, and weeping for her. When my mother died I still had my father. But with his absence I couldn't mourn, couldn't sit and weep. It was a different sensation; as opposed to mourning, I was grieving, and it was active. I had too much energy, but it was misplaced. I needed to keep moving, to find things to keep my hands busy.}

^{I missed our weekend searches for hood ornaments and radiator caps. I missed hearing his whistle as he shaved each morning. I missed ironing his shirts, and seeing the pleasure on his face when he slid his arms into the fresh-smelling and lightly starched sleeves.}

^{I went out to the shed and scrubbed the winter dust off the old Model T. I took all the hood ornaments and radiator caps from the pine cabinet and polished them oyer and over. I pulled my father's cleaned, pressed shirts from his wardrobe and rewashed them. When they were dry, I unpinned them from the clothes line and ironed them, the iron thudding, the steam rising to dampen my face.}

^{But more than anything I missed talking to my father; he had been the object for my thoughts. So at any time during every day for those first weeks, that first month, I would spontaneously open my mouth to call out to him, something as insignificant as that I'd heard a mouse gnawing between the walls during the night. And then I'd remember he was gone, gone for ever, and we would never again share anything, as small as a mouse in the walls or as large as a crisis in the world.}

^{Still, through all of this I couldn't cry. It was guilt. I couldn't let myself forget what I had done to my father. If I cried, it would be for myself, to soothe and comfort myself. I did not think I deserved any comfort.}

^{I experienced a small epiphany one dark night, sitting on the front step and looking up at the constellations.}

^{Beyond the faint outlines of the bare treetops across the street the cloudless ribbon of night sky was familiar. Predictable. There was only a tiny sliver of moon, a scattering of stars. I found Orion and Cassiopeia, the North Star, Ursa Major. They were always there, old friends, when the night was clear. I had studied the constellations, learning their shape and design from the pages of books over that long-ago polio year of first hopefulness, then bitterness and resentment, and finally resignation. That year there was no view of the night sky from my bedroom window, and the stars were only paper constellations then.}