‘I’m not going,’ she says as he walks in the door.
He says nothing, just sits down at the kitchen table and picks up the newspaper lying there.
‘I told you on the phone I wasn’t going. I don’t know why you bothered coming over.’
She goes on cutting up the vegetables for the casserole. The knife’s frenetic rat-a-tat on the chopping board betraying her outward appearance of calm and resolve.
At fifty, she is fatter that she ever wanted to be and, at five foot five inches tall, now a little stooped after the fashion of her mother. Her thick, red-brown hair is still lustrous, although not the brilliant coppery canopy it used to be. She tweaks out the odd grey strands she finds and forgets them.. Her face is what’s most arresting about her appearance. Her pale blues eyes flash with intelligence, vitality and humour, except when she is very fatigued. And there is a warmth and openness about her face that invites even strangers at the bus stop to smile and speak. Sometimes she wishes it were not so. Sally has offered many times to teach her the ‘don’t bother me’ look she claims to have perfected and patented, especially after yet another lost soul has arrived at their doorstep for a coffee and a chat.
‘You’re just wasting your time. Time you could be spending with her.’
She has the grace to wince at that barb.
He says nothing. He’s said all there was to say on the telephone. He keeps his attention fixed on the newspaper he’d read cover to cover earlier that morning.
He is a tall, now spindly man in his late seventies, bald except for two little unruly Bo-Bo the Clown tufts of grey hair, one above each ear. His brown eyes are misted with tiredness and pain. His shoulders are hunched inward, as if to protect his heart from some further thrust or attack. He would love a cup of tea but doesn’t ask.
‘If you’re determined to sit there all day, I suppose I’d better make you something to eat and a cup of tea.’
Now there is a clatter of teacups, banging cupboard doors and the fizzing of the running water into the electric jug. But not even activity can conceal her growing anxiety.
‘I knew it would come to this. I knew you would ask…’ she says.
Looking up, he says quietly, ‘It’s not me, she’s …’
‘I know, I know,” she interrupts. “But it’s really you asking me isn’t it?’
‘You haven’t even asked how she is,’ he says.
‘She’s dying isn’t she? What more is there to ask?’
The bitterness in her voice is palpable.
He winces visibly but again says nothing. His hand trembles as he brings his cup to his lips. The too hot liquid scalds his tongue.
Now remorseful, she says, ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Where’s Sally?’ he asks hopefully.
‘Wanting to call in the cavalry now, eh, Dad?’
She comes over to the table and gives his bony shoulders a quick hug and nestles her face fleetingly into his neck.
She wishes Sally was there too and not away in Darwin lecturing for a week. Sally who was calm and clear thinking. Sally who would put a reassuring arm around her shoulders, who would … damn it… would expect her to make her own decision.
‘Nothing in twenty years. Not a word. It was if I had died. And now she wants to see me.’ She is thinking out loud now and expects no response from the old man.
‘Is there to be one last plea for my soul? Will the shameful and dissolute gay daughter give it all up at last, renounce her licentious lifestyle and grant her dying mother’s last wish? Not bloody likely, mother, not bloody likely!’
The teapot, meant to top up her father’s cup, is now perilously in mid-air above his head, its spout swaying dangerously from side to side as she speaks, like some viper poised to strike. In some alarm, he strains back in his chair.
His movement catches her eye and stays her arm and her words. She begins to chuckle a little at the image they would offer a camera at this moment: the fat fifty-year-old, the china teapot and the spindly old man.
‘Give me a moment to go to the loo and to get a coat, Dad. I’ll lock up and meet you in the car.’
He mops his wet eyes with a handkerchief as he wearily pulls himself up from the table. Now he allows himself a worried glance at his watch.
She thrusts the car into the passing traffic daring anyone to reproach her. He keeps a nervous eye on the speedometer which threatens excess at any moment but they arrive safely at the hospital twenty minutes later. He gets out but she makes no move to join him.
‘I’m sorry Dad. I just can’t do it. Call me when you’re ready to come home.’
Burnside Writers Group 