The Scent of Apples (4 page)

When I was about four, Poppa told me we were linked by an invisible cord. He pulled up his shirt and showed me his belly button where he said the link started, and then his hands pulled on that invisible cord all the way back to me. I wasn't sure if everyone had a cord linking them to someone, but I always felt special that mine was tied to his. He said that no matter where I went in the world, and especially if I felt frightened or alone, I just needed to think about the link and follow it with my mind. At the end of the cord, he'd be waiting. Cold seeps into me from the laundry floor. I wonder if the cord can stretch as far as heaven.

In a wicker basket by the washing machine is a pair of Poppa's blue overalls. I scramble over and grab them, crushing them to my chest. The unmistakable smell of earth and wool mixed in with something that resembles violets wafts up. I bury my face in the cotton, hoping to plug up the hollow spaces inside me. Instead, my seams split open and all my stuffing oozes out.

The pain and sadness I've held in all week tumbles over a wall. It floods out like a dam bursting through its stop banks, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

‘How could you?' I scream. ‘How could you?' I rip at his overalls, but the fabric won't budge. I know I have to calm down so I can breathe, but I can't control my sobbing. ‘I hate you, Poppa.'

I hear a high-pitched wailing sound. I bang my head on the wall to try and block out the sound, and then I realise that it's coming out of my mouth. The beat of my head against the wall soothes me.

Someone places their hand on my shoulder. I turn and see Dad's frightened eyes staring at me.

‘It's OK baby; it's OK. Let's get you upstairs.' I don't resist as he picks me up. I see blood but I don't know whose it is. My head rests on his chest and I listen to his heart beat as he carries me up the stairs.

He tucks me into bed as Mum rushes in.

‘Oh my God, Elizabeth. What happened? Did you fall on something?'

I don't have any energy to answer.

She starts wiping at the blood on my face with the corner of my sheet. Dad disappears and returns a moment later with a flannel, but after that things are hazy.

The last thing I remember before falling asleep is Dad telling Mum that I was whacking my head on the wall, and Mum saying that we'd better keep that bit to ourselves.

*

Sometimes I notice a light playing on pink walls, and then blackness chases it away. There seems to be a pattern to the light and the dark but I can't work it out. I want to dive into the black that spreads along the wall, but something holds me back. Over and over, I climb the ladder to the springboard so I can dive into the dark. Just when I think I'm brave enough to take the plunge, it's illuminated with light.

The distorted faces come into focus and one of the garbled voices becomes familiar. I smell disinfectant and recognise Doctor Wren. He's the only doctor at the medical centre that you can get a same-day appointment with, and also the only one who has enough time to make house calls. Without so much as a ‘Hi,' or a ‘Welcome back to the world,' he touches me with his cold hands. He flips me around like I'm a piece of dough.

Dad perches on the end of my bed. Worry lines are squiggled across his forehead. I want to reach out and rub them away. I manage a weak smile, and it's enough to erase some of the lines. Mum stands at the head of my bed.

‘You sure know how to add to a crisis, Elizabeth,' Mum says. ‘So, what is it, doctor?'

‘The leg wound caused the problem – the infection spread through her body, which caused the delirium. A few more days of antibiotics and she'll be good as new.'

I brace myself for the slap on the back that must go with that statement.

‘Well, thank goodness. I couldn't cope with any more drama,' Mum says.

As Mum shows the doctor out, I lean back on my pillow and release a sigh I didn't know I was holding onto. As they walk down the stairs, I hear Mum offering him some of the leftover food from the funeral.

‘Gorgeous little puff pastries and sweet bites. They'll have to be thrown out unless they're eaten today.'

Dad moves up to the side of my bed. ‘Do you want anything?' he asks.

My stomach does a flip-flop as the leftover food pops into my mind.

‘No thanks.'

Dad has dark rings under his eyes, and what little hair he has needs a wash. I want to reach out a hand to him and ask if he wants to rest his head on my pillow for a while. But I don't. It just seems wrong to blurt out something so intimate.

His clothes are all crumpled, and I realise that other than a missing jacket, they're the same ones he had on at the funeral. I close my eyes as a block against the thoughts that come marching in. Dad takes that as a sign to leave my room. He whispers that he'll check on me later, and tip-toes out.

‘Later' turns out to be the next morning.

He comes into my room, freshly shaven, with his business suit on, smelling of Paco Rabanne, and I wonder for a moment if I saw the wrinkled clothes or if I dreamt it.

‘Morning, Libby.'

‘Hi, Dad.'

‘You look better.'

‘A little,' I lie. I shuffle over a fraction and will him to sit down on my bed, but he stays standing.

‘I have to fly down to Wellington, but I'll be home in the weekend. You can text me. Do you want anything brought back?'

I look at my portable DVD player, iPod and laptop sitting open on the desk. I don't think there are any more gadgets he could possibly buy me.

‘No thanks. I don't need anything.'

I see the rejection register on his face. Part of me thinks good job, and another part of me wants to beg him to stay.

‘All right then, I'll see you soon.'

As he leans in to kiss me, I inhale his smell. I'll hold on to whatever little piece of him I can.

Mum brushes past Dad in the doorway and neither of them say a word. The muscles in my stomach tense up.

‘Morning, Elizabeth.' Mum gives me a smile that can only be described as perky. She places a tray of food beside my bed and whips back my curtains. Light from outside floods my room.

‘You need to eat.'

I look at the tray. A bowl of oatmeal porridge rests on it, alongside a plate of wholegrain toast with butter. For a while, after Mum read an article about how bad it was for you, we didn't have any butter in our house. For six months she only bought margarine. Poppa protested the loudest, but unless he wanted to do the shopping, nothing was going to change. Luckily for him, Mum read a new study that said that margarine was way worse for you because of all the chemicals they added, and we all got switched back to butter.

I push myself up in the bed and take the piece of toast. I bite into it but it feels like I'm chewing on sandpaper. I put it back on the plate.

‘You need to eat, Elizabeth.'

‘I'm just not hungry.'

‘You know what?' Mum says, striding over and placing the tray on my lap. ‘Hunger has nothing to do with this. You've had more than your share of attention. As from today, you need to get up and get on with things.' She folds her arms across her chest and does this thing with her jaw that makes the bottom of it jut out.

I force the food into my mouth while she stands beside my bed. When I make noises like it's stuck in my throat she passes me a glass of water.

‘You'll feel better when you start moving. We can tape a plastic bag over your leg while you have a shower this afternoon. You'll be left with a nasty scar along your shin bone, but we'll rub vitamin E on it and hopefully it won't be too obvious.'

‘I don't care about a scar on my leg.'

‘You say that now, but you'll care when you're older.' Mum waits beside my bed until she's satisfied that I've eaten enough.

When she's gone, I get out of bed and scan my bookshelves until I find what I'm looking for. I pull
The Power of One
down from the shelves and climb back in bed. It's a story about a little boy whose mother has a breakdown and sends him away to boarding school. I've read it twice already, and both times it took me away to Northern Transvaal in South Africa, where I met a Zulu nanny who let a white baby suckle her breast and had nothing but love to give him. And to the Barberton mountain range, where I wandered among the volcanic rocks, where bright orange daisies grew wild. I got to meet ‘Euphorbia grandicornis,' a shy little cactus. I'm hoping the book will weave its magical web again and transport me far away from here.

It works for a while. After a force-fed lunch, I shower and put on clean pyjamas. I sit in a chair by the window in my room.

‘Do you really need all these?' Mum picks up one of my heart-shaped rocks as she dusts under it.

‘They're part of a collection Mum; you keep adding to them.'

She looks at me as if about to speak, but gets distracted by the clean sheets sitting on the end of my bed. She shakes the folds out and I smell freesias.

‘I've invited a few of your friends over to cheer you up.' She keeps her back to me as she pulls the bed away from the wall so she can tuck in the sheets.

‘No. I'm tired.'

She turns and glares at me.

‘Elizabeth, I've had enough. The world doesn't just stop because someone died. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.'

Her words are like a slap in the face. I try to absorb them but they're too big and cruel. My brain struggles to work out how to break them down into smaller pieces so I can digest them.

‘They're not coming until tomorrow morning, so get a good night's sleep and then you won't be tired.'

Mum has a special gift for being able to deliver blows that you don't see coming. I pick up my book as a way to block her out, but my vision blurs and the words won't come into focus.

I wake up twice in the night from the same dream. I'm in a dark pine forest. The smell from the pine needles accompanies me as I walk along a narrow path towards a small glow of light. The full moon shines down from high above me. All of a sudden the forest goes silent. The frogs stop their shrill mating call, and the warm breeze on my face turns cold. The trees shake off their leaves, and as soon as they hit the ground they start rotting. Up above me the moon goes behind a cloud, sinking everything into darkness. I run towards the glow of light but just before I reach it, it disappears.

I wake up sweating, and even with my eyes wide open I'm still trapped in the forest. I turn on my side lamp and the trees disappear, but the feeling of being alone and in a dangerous place stays with me. I sit up in bed and wait for morning.

I'm grateful when it comes. Mum pokes her head around the door.

‘Come on, Elizabeth. Your guests will be here at ten.'

In all my years on this planet, I have never known Mum to change her mind, and I know that no amount of moaning will get her to start now. I reluctantly slide my feet out of the bed and sit on the edge of my mattress.

Mum shoots me a sharp look. She knows what I'm up to. ‘Elizabeth,' she says, with a warning note in her voice, ‘I'm doing this for your own good.'

Yeah right.

I trudge to the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I can't be bothered taking a shower. I turn the taps on and sit on the side of the bathtub. The water rains down on the shower curtain and the steam fogs up the mirror above the basin. My murky reflection symbolises the way I feel.

‘Where are you?' I ask the steamed-up mirror. ‘I know you're in there somewhere.' I put my hand up to wipe the fog away but stop myself. I don't want to see my face. I don't want to see false friends, and I really don't care if I don't see tomorrow.

The knock on the door reminds me that what I want has nothing to do with Mum's plans for me today.

She comes into my bedroom as I'm pulling the last of my clothes on.

‘Turquoise is a good colour for you.'

‘Thanks.'

‘It's a pity you didn't wash your hair, but I should be able to brush most of the knots out.' She goes to my tallboy and takes my hairbrush and ties from the top.

There is something about the way that she grabs my shoulders and turns me away from her that makes me snap. Like there's a rubber band inside of me that can't take any more tension.

‘I'm thirteen. I can brush my own hair.'

Her head bobs for a moment and her eyebrows dive down her nose, but she recovers from the shock quickly.

‘I'm not in the mood for arguments. I'll see you downstairs in thirty minutes.'

She throws the hairbrush on my bed. I feel like I've won a small victory, but it's short-lived. After she's gone I just feel lonely.

I recognise the voices in the kitchen before I see them. If you had asked me to write down the names of people it would most torture me to be with, I would write the names of the people sitting in the kitchen right now. Lucy's high-pitched tone is unmistakable, and Ebony's laughter too false to belong to anyone else.

My heart bangs in my chest. I'd rather jump in a lake with piranhas than push the door open. As luck would have it, Mum chooses this second to come and find me.

‘There you are, dear! I was just coming to get you.' Her sickly sweet tone is so different to the voice she used in the bedroom that I wonder if I still might be a bit delirious.

The whiteness of the kitchen is like a blow, and I have to keep blinking my eyes until they get used to it. Around the table sit Lucy, her mother, Ebony and Jaime, who's not too bad, just stupid.

Lucy props herself up on a barstool and runs her fingers through her long straight hair. I'm sure she checks her reflection in the stainless steel door of the fridge. I'm tempted to give her the heads up that her ridiculous padded yellow jacket, with black fur around the sleeves and the hood, makes her look like a festering sore.

I steady myself by putting my hand on the back of a chair, but my knees won't stop wobbling. I'm forced to sit. Lady Mayor swoops in and plants herself right in front of me.