Finding Grace Page 4

  My breath comes out in a big whoosh and I jolt into action, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her out of the bath. I dry her off as quickly as possible, by wrapping the towel around her and patting at it.

  She shivers in the towel.

  “I'm sorry,” I say to her, rubbing her shoulders under the towel. “I forgot. I won't do it again.”

  She just stands there with her teeth chattering, holding the towel up to her chin with one puckered hand.

  The nurse came in the afternoon for the Grace woman's physiotherapy. She's one of those no-nonsense Aussie women. She arrives and she's smoking! Can you believe it? I mean, how many little blackened gooey pieces of lung have you got to see coughed up when you're a nurse?

  The nurse is lean and tall with long stick legs. Her name is Jan. She has thin lips and short curly hair. She calls me “darl.”

  I'm going to go to uni. I have four days left until first semester starts.

  Uni is a nice stroll through the park and then a short bus trip. As I walk onto the grounds I am completely disoriented. There are tall buildings and squat buildings between the trees. It's so big. People are wandering about looking comfortable and relaxed. I walk quickly so that I look as if I know where I am going.

  I find the library and some of my lecture theaters. “Theater” is what they look like—rows and rows and rows of chairs.

  I sit in one of the chairs in the empty lecture theater. This is what I do now. I come here. No more school. No more coming home to newspaper ponchos.

  My life is different now. I've made some big decisions and carried them all through with very little discomfort. It seems too simple.

  Then what happens after that? I'll get a job, I suppose. Another opportunity will fall in my lap and I'll take it. Then before long I'll be thirty. The sun will continue to rise and set. Christmas will hurtle around again and again, and then I'll be dead.

  I look around at the empty chairs in the lecture theater and all of a sudden this whole living business seems a bit pointless.

  I think I might be having a quarter-life crisis.

  … … …

  Mr. Preston was at the house when I arrived home, and Jan the nurse had gone. I asked him what sort of changes I'm supposed to be observing in Grace.

  What if, say, I leave her in a cold bath for the best part of a day and then find her staring at me like a zombie?

  “I don't know what to look for,” I told him.

  “Well, let's not kid ourselves thinking that Grace is just going to wake up one morning and be back to her old self. We are talking about some pretty serious damage here.”

  Is that relief I feel?

  “The capacity of the human body to heal is an amazing thing. I mean, even the doctors can't tell us how much she thinks or hears. She could still be in there. I'm certain that Grace is fighting to get out. If there's a way out, Grace will find it. She can be very persistent, believe me.”

  Mr. Preston smiled. He cocked his head, looking contemplative. “You know, sometimes I've been here with her talking and I think she's listening to me. She may turn her head or move her hand just a little bit. Then I think maybe it's just because I so much want her to be listening to me.”

  Does she stare at you? Does she give you the heebies?

  He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I came here to bring you this.” Mr. Preston put an answering machine on the table. “I tried to ring this morning, but there was no answer.”

  I smiled weakly.

  “Also, I wanted to tell you about her likes and dislikes. She hates the next-door neighbors but she likes their dog. She loves her cat. She likes freshly brewed coffee, not instant. She likes real butter, not margarine. She likes tomatoes, but not cucumber. She likes soup, fresh, not tinned. She doesn't like tuna, but she does like salmon. Fresh, not tinned.”

  I'm thinking to myself, what is this? What's going on here? I mean, salmon? I'm not slaving over a hot stove for this woman! I don't slave over a hot stove for myself! What's next? Softly poached quail eggs?

  “I won't be cooking her any salmon.”

  “That's a great pity,” said Mr. Preston. “She is a very big fan of salmon.”

  “Look, can't she just eat what I eat?”

  “That depends on what you eat.”

  So I find myself writing down a list of what the Grace woman likes and doesn't like. I tell you, poached quail eggs weren't far wrong. This is a woman with very discerning taste. Nothing tinned—especially asparagus. What a shame.

  I personally think tins are the greatest, next to anything “cook in the bag.” You can always just pile it up in the middle of a big plate and call it contemporary Australian cuisine.

  “How does she feel about peanut butter on toast?” I inquire.

  “I have never had her opinion either way regarding peanut butter on toast. But on the whole, I think I can safely say that she would prefer pâté if there were a choice.”

  Great. This is all I need.

  “You seem to know a lot about your client's tastes.” I was a bit sharp—but then “chef” wasn't in the job description.

  I have mental images of myself trying to prepare finnan haddie and weeping and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and looking down at Prickles saying, “This is all too much, Toto.”

  Mr. Preston smiles at me, looking sad again. “Grace is more than a client. She is also a dear, dear friend.”

  … … …

  That's all very well, but in bed at night, alone, I have to remind myself that she is a dear, dear friend and not a monster.

  When I was younger I used to share a bedroom with my little brother, Brody. We had double bunks. He used to laugh in his sleep. I think back now and I'm guessing that he was just a happy child who had happy dreams, but then it was the creepiest thing. He used to make this eerie gurgling noise. It was freaky.

  I would lie in bed frozen in fear, with my eyes wide open looking at the slats above me, absolutely certain that my brother had been replaced by an evil goblin who was up there just waiting and laughing about evil goblin things.

  At night, now, I lie rigid in bed, straining my ears, like I used to when I shared a room with Brody. I hear a thump from the lounge room and my muscles seize. It's just the cat, of course, jumping down from the windowsill. I can hear the very tips of his claws ticking across the wooden floor.

  I keep seeing her lizard's eyes in my mind. They slide toward me over and over. In my imagination her dead eyes turn toward me and I can hear her speak.

  You left me here to drown.

  At night, alone, she is a zombie—alive but dead inside.

  The floor in this old house creaks. A branch scrapes slowly back and forth across the roof of the veranda. The house is old and I wonder if anybody has ever died in this room.

  Why worry about old ghosts when there is one still very much alive in the next room?

  This room is not completely dark. Streetlights screened by moving foliage make indecipherable shapes and shadows of the furniture. I can imagine her standing in the doorway to my room—dull eyes in a white face, moist lips drooping loosely.

  I get up and move the distressed dressing table across the doorway.

  I wake up and see the dressing table pressed up against the doorway and feel like a complete dill. There are scratches on the floor where I have dragged it.

  The Grace woman is lying in her bed looking about as malevolent as your average lop-eared bunny.

  I am a nutbag.

  I manage to get her to the toilet early on, avoiding the linenand clothes-washing cycle of yesterday. I need to shop, so I dress her and we shuffle down the street.

  I have hold of the Grace woman by the sleeve of her shirt. She walks very slowly and I have to keep dragging at her arm to make her keep up.

  It's hot for late February—hot and humid. The sun is beaming down like a spotlight through the hole in the ozone layer. I can almost feel my skin being gently grilled.

  I'm picking out the rented h
ouses as I'm walking along the street. I think if the grass on the front lawn is more than knee height the property is rented. Across the road I spy a nanna with a big spade vigorously attacking a long weedy tentacle that has crept through her side fence.

  There are cats on almost every second veranda. This is a very pro-cat neighborhood. They lie with their paws tucked primly under their chests. Gangs of mynah birds are screaming at them from nearby trees. You can see the pupils of the cats' eyes expanding and contracting like a missile sight.

  Mynah birds are the homeys of the bird world. You can hear them in the trees, saying in bird, “Yo! Yo! Wha's up wit you, man! You wanna piece of me, man? Don't go dissin' my posse, or we gonna kick some ass, you know what I'm sayin'?” There are no native birds around here, they have all been driven away by the mynah birds and their gang violence.

  I have to go to the greengrocer and the deli to purchase all the “must-have” gourmet items for the Grace woman's daily cuisine. It's all too much, Toto.

  While I am in the deli the Italian lady, all smiles, says, “Good morning, chicken. Can I kkhelp you?” in a really strong accent. I say in return, “No thanks, I'm just grazing.” I meant browsing but she was kind enough not to pick me up on it.

  Looking around, I see that blueberries are on special. They're selling a whole box of punnets for nine dollars. It occurs to me that if I had a family to feed and I didn't have much money I could buy a whole box of whatever was on special and pretend that it was a party. I've never thought of us as poor. Maybe we are? I smiled as I thought about it. Mother has never made us feel poor.

  The main street is great. There are all these ancient Italian men grouped on street corners waving their arms about vigorously. This suburb is like a Mafia retirement village.

  There are funky twenty-somethings in crisp white shirts and dark glasses, sipping lattes in street cafés, talking on mobile phones. There are herbals wandering about in tie-dyed cheesecloth nibbling at uncomfortable-looking lip rings. There are Goths sweating. It's too hot for Goths to be out and about, but even Goths have to do their grocery shopping sometime.

  Everybody here is wearing a costume. It's a parade. This is very different from home, where everyone is dressed in “drab”—whether suits or overalls. At home they are all struggling desperately to conform.

  I come from a small place where everybody wants to be the same. Everybody tries to think the same. They band together in ferocious solidarity. Through similarity they bond. Now, here I am where the people unite in their difference—“We are all different from each other,” they cry collectively.

  Or maybe they are all pro-cat? “We come from across the globe, we are different ages and have different beliefs, BUT we all choose to spend our lives with cats. We are as one on the whole cat issue!”

  My friend Amanda is coming out of a real estate agent's office as the Grace woman and I shuffle past. We were quite good friends at school, but I haven't seen her for a few months. We are proximity friends. All of our conversations have been location-based. Besides, Amanda is a rosella, and being a sparrow, I don't even comprehend her world.

  She leans forward to hug me, but I'm not the hugging type so I step back. She catches me by the upper arms, squeezing and shaking and smiling. We are experiencing that uncomfortable moment when there's physical contact. This is why I am not a hugger.

  Amanda's getting married. While she's talking she's darting her eyes at the Grace woman as if she were trying to include her in the conversation.

  Amanda is getting married to Bozza, the Neanderthal tiler. She sounds so smug, but I can't think what she has to be smug about. She's waggling her left hand in front of my face, showing me her engagement ring and looking coy.

  “Haven't you got a boyfriend yet?” she says, with such pity. I'm just waiting for her to say Oh well, there are plenty of fish in the sea or some other appalling cliché. She thinks that getting married is the ultimate goal, and assumes that I do as well.

  I choose not to be irritated. Actually, I feel sorry for Amanda marrying Bozza. His real name is Rick, but everyone calls him Bozza. Bozza's the name of a man with a bright future. History is absolutely littered with great Bozzas—Sir Bozza, General Bozza, King Bozza the Magnificent.

  Amanda has always been a really pretty girl. She has long blond hair and olive skin, and she blushes a charming, soft, peachy glow across the cheeks (not like the big, bright red, iridescent, lighthouse-strength beam that my moon face emits).

  She's also really smart. I always thought she'd get over Bozza and have some kind of career. I thought she'd be sitting at the street cafés sipping lattes with some brooding dark man in a suit.

  I could never understand why she liked “Bozza” anyway. I mean, he was good-looking in Year 9, but now that he's getting older he's put on a bit of weight, and the sullen, cool look doesn't really fit with bulgy jowls. And he's still not very smart.

  I think it's that thing that women do where they try to “fix” a man. They find some rowdy dropkick and say, “But he's really sweet on the inside.” They try to fix a man a bit like renovating a house. They find a handyman's dream (ideally with “ocean glimpses”) and try to renovate.

  I'm eighteen and know everything—well, not everything, but I do know, for example, that leopards rarely change their spots on command. They may sport a nice tartan shawl, if pressed, but earnest spot-changing requires some considerable desire and willpower on the part of the leopard in question.

  Amanda has definitely turned out to be a renovator, but I haven't seen that much change. The only thing that's different is that Amanda doesn't call him Bozza anymore; she doesn't even call him Rick. Now she calls him Richard. It's just like slapping a coat of paint on a tin shed and calling it a cabana.

  … … …

  It turns out that I'm not the only one who can glow a raspberry-colored glow. The Grace woman got sunburned today. I'll have to remember to put sunscreen on her before we go out. I smear her face in aloe vera and she sits in her wingback chair looking as if she has a shiny red cue ball for a head.

  The red light is flashing on the answering machine and I listen to the message.

  “Gracey, it's Yvonne. I know it's been forever. One puts these things off and before you know it, it's been so long that you can't bring yourself to phone. I know you're cross, because I didn't even get a Christmas card. You're not allowed to be cross because you haven't phoned either. I'm being the brave one. Now it's your turn. Please call me back.”

  I suppose the Yvonne person doesn't know what has happened. I press the Delete button.

  Flicking through the Grace woman's CDs, I put on some cool jazz. Most of the CDs are “jazz to sip lattes by.” I wonder if she used to have breakfast in those street cafés?

  I put on a white shirt and some red lipstick so I fit in with the music. I feel almost funky for a moment.

  I cook some pasta sprinkled with shaved Parmesan. I mush up the woman's with a fork and feed her, squatting down in front of her chair. She chews with her mouth open and looks blankly over my shoulder. I can see pasta mush gathering at the corners of her mouth. I watch the food rolling around her mouth with a nauseated fascination. I give her a drink of water and she holds the glass in two hands, like a child. I take it from her, trying not to touch the Parmesan goo that has accumulated around the rim.

  I serve my dinner piled up on a big white plate and eat it outside (CAC al fresco, darling).

  I sit in the lovely outdoor area out the back that's all paved and has terra-cotta pots filled with herbs and fruit trees. There's a lion-head fountain on the wall by a little pond. I find a tap under some creeping vines and the water starts to trickle out of the lion's mouth.

  It is very pleasant to sit out here while the sun goes down, listening to the jazz and the fountain.

  Well, it's pleasant until the neighbors start fighting. There's a lot of swearing. I walk back inside and watch telly instead.

  Half an hour later I hear a noise outside. I pull
the curtain back just in time to see the bloke from next door lay a boot into their dog's belly. The dog sprawls across the lawn and then scampers yelping down the garden.

  Ah, so they are dog people. They are not with the rest of the neighborhood on the whole cat issue.

  I can see the confusion in the dog's little brown eyes as he peeks out from under the oleander bush. I feel hot anger rising up inside me. I hate people who hurt animals.

  The bloke from next door turns around and sees me watching him. He sticks his middle finger up at me and then stalks back into his house.

  Charming.

  When I go to bed I pull the distressed dressing table across the doorway again. I tell myself that it's to give me some notice if she tries to come into my room, but it's a lie.

  Lying in the dark, I have an image of her dragging herself over the dressing table and toward me with her unblinking lizard's eyes, and that's somehow worse. It's an image of malice and intent that is undeserved. I feel guilty, but not guilty enough to move the dressing table back again.

  Mr. Preston took the Grace woman shopping today so that I could go to the uni to buy books and things.

  My mother rang as I was leaving. “Mum, are we poor?”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Well, I've never really thought about groceries before, but now I have to shop and so I know how expensive things are and I saw blueberries on special,” I replied.

  I could tell she was choosing her words carefully. “We may not be as fiscally robust as others. Certainly, I have been better off in the past, but things change and you roll with it. You have always had a roof over your head and food in your bellies. I have always made sure you were happy and healthy. One does the best that one can, and that's all anyone can ask of you.”

  “Oh,” I said. She was becoming defensive and that wasn't my intent.

  “Besides, riches and success are all to do with your goals. My goal is for both of you to be happy and be able to take advantage of opportunities as they arise and you are and you can. So I am a success. There now.”