CHAPTER FOUR
I wake up the day after Jennifer’s funeral with twenty-three missed calls from my brother. I sit upright and scroll down the list. Ten from Vincent. Two from Hugh. Five from Carmen. Something has happened. Something went wrong at the funeral yesterday; I should have stayed to make sure she was presented well. Her lips weren’t sealed properly. One eyelid could have opened. The mother might have complained. I should have checked all the seals before leaving.
I shuffle along the length of the bed and call Simon back.
‘What’s happened?’ I whisper, while dressing quickly.
Simon wails into the receiver, sounding sticky and wet.
‘Tell me!’ I whisper-shout, trying to keep my voice down so Liam doesn’t wake up. I can’t believe I fell asleep here. Unacceptable. I must have been exhausted from several hours of experimental film.
‘Mum’s unconscious. They’re saying she might die. Just come and meet us at the hospital.’
He hangs up and I stare at the screen of my phone. I press redial and he answers, snivelling. There is the loud muffled sound of what might be a tissue being dragged across the receiver and I hear Vincent in the background: ‘Tell her to hurry.’
The noise stops and Simon says, ‘Vincent said you should hurry.’
Vincent again in the background: ‘Tell her it’s an emergency.’
‘It’s an emergency,’ says Simon.
‘I’m coming,’ I say, stabbing at the screen until the call ends.
I stand in the middle of Liam’s room, shaking. My lips feel like they are migrating to the edges of my face. A pain like I have been smiling too much pulls my mouth open, not in a smile, but something the same size.
I rush to pull on my dress, leaving it open, which makes the panels either side of the zipper flap open and hit the back of my arms each time I bend to pick something up. It would be helpful if the curtains were open so I didn’t have to hunt around in the dark for my shoes. I crouch next to the bed and run my hands across the carpet, feeling underneath. My fingers touch some threadbare socks, a tennis ball, a bottle of eye drops. Finally my shoes, but my fingers can’t quite grab them. I keep dropping them like my hands are the claw in one of those arcade games. It’s an emergency; there’s no time for this nonsense. An emergency. I’m in one. When my mum was dying I couldn’t even pick up my shoes. A sock springs away from my fingers. Couldn’t even put on socks, I’ll say. Too distressed. I need to piss but there’s no time to piss!
I run down the steps two at a time and walk into the lounge, where a petite woman is sitting cross-legged on the floor.
‘Morning,’ she says, her cheeks full of cereal and milk.
‘Got to go,’ I say, racing past. ‘Family emergency.’
I jog out of the house and into the lemony haze of the morning.
Three deep belly breaths.
I find my keys at the bottom of my bag among sand and food wrappers.
One big belly breath.
My hands are so numb that I can’t feel them holding the wheel. On the road to the hospital, I keep looking at my fingers to make sure they are holding on and not sliding off into my lap.
The hospital is a wide expanse of cement that looms over a group of young people in scrubs smoking in the car park. I pull over near them and fling the door open, searching for a sign that might orient me to her.
‘Where’s the desk that I go to?’ I ask the group. My voice is higher than normal, and my dress is still undone at the back. Where are their credentials? With whom am I speaking? Where is my mother?
One of the boys points his cigarette towards the entrance, and I scurry in past more young people in scrubs.
I sprint down hospital corridors, stopping to ask for directions from a cleaner, from someone getting out of a lift, from someone in a uniform wheeling a gurney. At last I turn a corner and see Vincent and Simon sitting on a low strip of plastic seats. Simon is resting his head back against the wall and biting his nails, while Vincent is hunched forward, his head in both hands.
‘Where is she?’
Simon points to a door a few metres away. ‘In there. You can see her in a bit.’
‘Now,’ I say, heading for the door.
‘No, no, not yet,’ Vincent says.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
She fell down the stairs at home. Simon was in his room when he heard her cry out, but when he opened his door to the landing, she was already broken at the bottom. No one wants to have their last breath sink into their unclean carpet. No one wants to leave their body in an uncomfortable position. It’s not the way anyone imagines it.
My toes are slippery inside my socks, and when I scrunch them, they squeak, and I stand scrunching and releasing them as I bite the inside of my cheeks, until the pain in my chest gives way to the pain in my mouth. I can tell I’m in the way from how people veer around me, but I can’t bring myself to move. For minutes I just stand there, unable to make a decision. Do I sit next to Vincent or Simon? How can I just sit while my mother is dying on the other side of the wall? I need to remain upright and alert.
A nurse approaches and begins to talk to us calmly but I have no time for this; I need to see my mother.
I interrupt him to say, ‘I’m going in.’
He pauses, then resumes talking.
I try again. ‘I need to go in.’
This time he doesn’t pause.
I want to tell him that I’m her daughter. That I need to tell her that I love her and that she’s mine.
