‘Lela,’ she calls out in a relieved tone. ‘She hasn’t been conscious since I arrived this morning, and her pulse is barely detectable and getting weaker. I thought it might be time — that you’d want to be here. Father Davey’s been and gone. He said that if you want him back, for anything, just say the word.’
I hurry up the path towards her, past stunted citrus trees, a yellowing, scrubby lawn and exhausted hedge borders that need just a little more tending, a little more love — things every one of us could use. When I reach the veranda, Georgia goes to put an arm around my bare shoulders, but I step back.
‘It’s never easy, dear,’ she says softly, misreading my ingrained watchfulness as a gesture of denial. ‘But it’s been a long process, and she’s given it her best. She’s so very tired.’
She shuts the front door behind us and we walk down the sun-dappled, dust-plagued hall, Georgia leading the way. I wonder how to properly mourn a woman I barely know. We’ve only been acquainted for a few hours, not even a full day. I never had a mother myself; no soft, kindly background presence in my life. It might have done me good if I’d had.
Georgia stops outside the door to Mrs Neill’s bedroom. ‘She’s had her usual dosages,’ she says gently. ‘Nothing more, nothing less. Just hold her hand. Talk to her. Tell her all the things you’d want her to know. She won’t be able to answer you, but she might hear and understand, and it might make it . . . easier. I’ll just be out in the sitting room if you need me, if anything changes . . .’
I nod my head to show Georgia that I’ve understood, and walk into the bedroom scented by that peculiar combination of incense, aromatic oil, medication and disease. Mid-afternoon sunshine streams in through an open curtain at the foot of the bed, and in it, a world of dust motes, sun devils, microscopic life. Before I draw up the sagging armchair next to the bed, I study the woman for a long moment. She’s outlined in gold, and the skin of her face, her eyelids, seems papery and translucent. If it weren’t for the faintest rise and fall of her chest, she might be an effigy.
I have no last words for her and I wish I did. If Lela were here now, what would she say? What would she do?
I don’t know what comes over me — regret? grief? — but I place my left hand on Mrs Neill’s forehead; a gesture almost as old as mankind itself. Of benediction, of farewell.
The instant I touch her, my left hand begins to burn with a strange phantom pain. There’s a building pressure behind my eyes as I flame into contact with the woman’s very . . . soul.
And I see, I see —
— Lela as a squalling newborn; vicious arguments between a younger Mrs Neill and the man beside her in the dusty wedding photo I spied on the hallway table behind bundles of correspondence secured by rubber bands; Mrs Neill and a toddler-sized Lela in the backyard of a tiny blond-brick house by a railway line, the noise of the passing trains causing Lela to cover her ears and howl; Lela and her mother living in an apartment by the sea with peeling wallpaper and water stains on the ceiling; the two of them walking hand in hand to Lela’s elementary school; Mrs Neill and a teenaged Lela on a houseboat somewhere warm, arm in arm and truly happy for a passing instant; Mrs Neill in a string of dead-end jobs — receptionist, postal worker, cleaner, call-centre operator; Mrs Neill welcoming Lela home from high school, then university, all the pride of those days still fierce in her now, like a fire, only banked; Mrs Neill collapsing on the hallway carpet in grief the day the family doctor called to let her know that the stage one cancer they thought they’d stopped in its tracks had metastasised in multiple locations and there was not a lot more they could do except to make her comfortable.
It could be seconds, it could be hours, later that I snatch my hand away from the dying woman’s skin; and the second I do, she takes a great choking breath and opens her eyes. There’s fear and wonder in them. And she’s once more present and herself in this room. In the world of the living.
‘Georgia!’ I call out. Panic in my voice.
I hear footsteps running down the hall.
‘Lel,’ Mrs Neill breathes, her eyes searching mine. ‘You’re early.’
‘Karen?’ Georgia exclaims, brushing past me to grasp Mrs Neill’s thin wrist in one hand, turning it over quickly to check the pulse. ‘You’ve come back to us.’
She lays Mrs Neill’s hand gently on the bed moments later. ‘A steady one hundred and twenty beats per minute,’ she says incredulously, reaching for her patient’s bedcovers. ‘How are you feeling? You gave us a scare.’
Lela’s mother waves one hand at the nurse, cutting her off.
‘Your hand felt very warm, darling,’ she says to me tenderly, the words almost lost in the hum of the machine that is sending something into the air to ease her breathing. ‘You’re not taking ill with a summer flu?’
When I shake my head, she murmurs, ‘Do you remember that houseboat we chartered with the O’Connors and the Richardsons? On the Murray?’
I don’t, of course. But I saw it in her mind and I nod.
‘It was like we were there again. Remember how, when we came home, it felt for days afterwards as if our beds had become boats themselves? We’d lie there, and it felt as if the waves were still rocking us to sleep. Our bodies had grown accustomed to the motion. Like we’d brought the river home inside us. We were happy then, weren’t we? Really happy.’
I nod again and she whispers, ‘But it was more beautiful this time, Lel. There was light all around. The grass on the banks was so green, greener than it has any right to be, because it’s never green along the Murray these days, is it? And I didn’t feel any pain. You and I were like we are now, and we were leaning on the rails, looking out at the diamonds on the water, and I didn’t want to leave, darling. I could have stayed that way forever, you and me, on that boat, just travelling. I didn?want to leave.’
I think: You almost didn’t leave; you almost didn’t come back. And I wonder if I did that. If I somehow drew Lela’s mother back to us again.
Georgia reaches for the covered cup of water on the bedside table, lifts it to Mrs Neill’s cracked lips, just to wet them, but Lela’s mother waves her away. She’s all eyes, wild hair, jaundiced skin and bone. I wonder what kind it is, her cancer. But I can’t ask because I should know.
‘Too painful to swallow the last couple of days,’ she murmurs. ‘Won’t be long now, Lel, then I won’t be a burden to you any more . . .’
‘Don’t talk like that, Karen,’ Georgia scolds, then leaves the room to answer the doorbell that’s just sounded.
‘Having you home, Lel, it’s better than any drug,’ Mrs Neill whispers before losing consciousness again.
It’s almost evening and the council carer’s been and gone. She cooked a nutritious meal for Mrs Neill, which I put through the blender and tried to feed to her a spoonful at a time. But she wouldn’t eat, said it hurt too much.
There was no point me turning around and going back to the Green Lantern, so I told Georgia she could go, too, that we wouldn’t need anyone from the palliative care team overnight.
‘You’re sure you can cope?’ she’d replied, searching my face.
I could tell she was still unable to understand how she’d misread the signs. Mrs Neill’s sudden turnaround knocked her for six, as they say in the strange local idiom, making her question her own judgment.
The house is quiet now with just the two of us here. I want to head back out into the teeming, dirty world to find the answers I’m searching for, but if Georgia was right and Karen Neill is indeed at death’s door, I don’t want to be responsible for depriving her of her daughter’s company in her last hours. I’m not that heartless. One more night can’t hurt, can it?
When I come back from the bathroom, Lela’s thick hair still damp, Mrs Neill is asleep again. The sunlight piercing the windows of the old house, warming the floorboards of her bedroom, striking sparks off the mirror, the walking frame, the mobile washstand, is the colour of amber wine.
I sit cross-legged in the armchair beside the bed and watch Lela’s mother sleep. The shadows begin to lengthen, and I am lost in thought when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
Faster than I would have believed possible, I half- pivot in my seat to crush the intruder’s wrist with my burning left hand — but it meets nothing but air.
I turn and look up into his face and my animal fear turns to a kind of rapture. For suddenly he is with me again, in this room, love in his eyes. For me. The one who is so like Luc that he could be his brother, his blood. Save that he is mortal.
‘Ryan,’ I whisper, as he pulls me into his arms. The knowledge of his name is almost reflexive, like
