Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
W aiting for the taxi was like waiting for my hair to dry; it took forever. Unable to stand still, I paced back and forth like a junkie desperate for a fix.
The drive to the hospital took way too long. But it was time I needed to simmer my rage and get a plan together. If I came on too aggressive, Mother would clam up like a vault.
No. I needed to play at her game. She was the smiling assassin. I needed to emulate her.
Mother was sleeping when I arrived, and it took all my resolve not to grab her shoulders and shake the shit out of her. Instead, I slipped into the chair at her side, and as I stared at her frail body, I wondered how someone so innocent-looking could be so fucked up.
Unable to sit there any longer, I strolled along the corridor between the patients’ rooms. Except for the incessant mechanical beeping and buzzing, and cloying disinfectant odor, it was mostly peaceful. But when I did hear voices, they were usually jovial and always loving.
When people were coming to the end of their life, that was the way conversations should be .
Mother’s motivation for wanting me here was obvious. . . she didn’t want to die alone. She wanted to die happy and loved. Based on what I’d discovered this morning, I doubted she’d get either. Because if what I was planning to ask her went the way I thought it would, with her refusing to talk, then I was going to walk out and never return.
Relationships were a two-way street, and it was about time Mother took her foot off the accelerator and cruised along with me for a change.
My return to her room coincided with the nurse escorting Mother to the restroom. The scowl on her face transitioned to a smile when she saw me. “Oh, Daisy, how lovely to see you, darling. Take a seat, and I’ll be out in a moment.”
Darling. I cringed at the falseness of it.
The woman was a fraud. A sneaky, smiling fraud.
It would serve me well to remember that.
I sat with my backpack at my side, and unzipping it, I plucked out her underwear and the change of clothes and folded them onto her tray table. Then I positioned the photo of the two girls within easy grasp in my bag, but out of sight. For now.
The nurse and Mother returned, and with a series of prolonged moans that I was sure were for my benefit, Mother wrestled her frail body back into bed. A couple of times the nurse glanced at me, maybe wondering why I wasn’t helping. But as much as her gaze embarrassed me, I just couldn’t do it. I’d rather strap Mother into an electric chair than tuck her neatly into bed.
Mother smoothed the sheet over her legs, and when she saw the stack of clothes I’d brought, her eyes lit up. “Oh, you remembered to bring me a change of clothes. Thank you.”
I nodded. “No problem.”
“Did you sleep okay in my bed? ”
“I didn’t stay there. I went to the motel up the road.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to do that. I don’t mind.” She curled her brittle hair over her shoulder.
“It’s fine, Mother. The motel was just easier.”
She frowned at me, maybe sensing the agitation in my voice. The nurse silently slinked away; maybe she’d also detected my hostility.
“It’s so lovely to have you here, Daisy. I was telling Nurse Dawn how well I’d slept last night. It’s from seeing you. I’m certain.”
“Hmm.” I too had slept well but it was more likely from the food coma I’d been in from eating all that pizza. Or it could have been from all the wonderful images of Roman swirling through my dreams.
Mother reached out, silently pleading for me to grip her hand in mine. I regarded it for a moment, and while tempted, I just couldn’t do it. I was supposed to be acting, but there would be no Oscar nomination coming my way because it was impossible to push through my seething anger to hold her hand.
Smacking her lips together, she reached for her water and sipped through the straw. I silently watched her, keeping my distance. My hopes were that she’d fill the silence with stories. After all, that was what she was good at—making stuff up.
She cleared her throat. “We got a bit sidetracked yesterday and you never got around to telling me all about your fabulous job. I’ve told all the nurses about you traveling the world, doing what you love.” She winked at me like we were the best of friends.
Clearing my throat, I reached into the backpack and plucked out the photo. “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me about this?”
I placed the photo on her belly .
A tiny gasp left her lips as she collected it with trembling fingers. “You went through my things?”
“I was looking for your underwear. That photo was at the top of the drawer. Who’s in the photo, Mom? Is that you?” I forced my voice to sound sweet, and loaded it with just the right amount of pleading.
“Yes. That’s me.” She ran her finger over the girl on the left in the photo, the taller child of the two.
Rather than ask the obvious question of who the other girl was, I deviated. “How old are you there? You look so pretty.”
A tiny smile curled at her lips and vanished in an instant. “It was two days before my ninth birthday. I was dressed for the party I was having later that day.”
“Is the other girl one of your friends?”
Mother shook her head ever so slightly. Her mouth opened, then closed. She was on the verge of telling me something. And, by her hesitation it was something huge. She stared at the photo and I waited. And waited. Finally, Mother cleared her throat. “Her name was Lily. She was my little sister.” Mother’s voice oozed sorrow.
“You have a sister?”
She squirmed in her bed and placed the photo face down on her chest like she was haunted by it.
When she didn’t respond, I asked, “Why does it say sorry on the back?”
Frowning, she picked up the photo again. Her chin quivered, and forcing myself to react accordingly, I reached forward and clutched my hand around hers. “Tell me, Mom. Tell me about your sister.”
She turned to me with a thin smile on her lips. “I named you after her, you know?”
“No. How would I know that? I didn’t even know you had a sister. ”
Clenching her jaw, she snapped her gaze away. “Well, I did.”
Mother closed her eyes and swallowed. It sounded like she was swallowing jagged rocks. Her lips drew to a thin line and tears welled in her eyes. “Her name was Lily. A flower name. Just like yours.” She looked at me defiantly.
It was too little. Way too fucking late. “Where is your sister? How come I’ve never met her?”
“Because she died about two hours after this photo was taken.”
I gasped. That was the last thing I’d expected her to say. “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry.”
A tear squeezed out and trickled down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it away. “It was my fault.”
Frowning, I squeezed her hand, urging her to continue. She swallowed again and I offered her a drink. I was prepared for her to take as long as she needed to tell this story.
Mother sipped the water, then with her hands wrapped around the cup, she said, “She drowned in the dam, and it was my fault.”
“How could it have been your fault?”
Mother shrugged her bony shoulders. “I was supposed to be looking after her.”
“But you were nine?”
“Yes, Daisy, I was nine.” Her eyes darkened, showing me some of that fire I’d seen over the years.
“Okay, so what happened?”
She lowered her gaze to the photo and flipped it back over. “Mom and Dad went to the shop to pick up my birthday cake for my party. I was allowed to have six friends over. It was a big deal. My first ever party. And my last.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “But while they were out, Lily begged me to take her swimming. We had a dam down in the back paddock, and we weren’t allowed to go there without Mom or Dad around. But we did. We stripped down to our underpants and jumped in.” Her chin wobbled. “But Lily never came back up.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “I swam around, desperate to find her, screaming her name. I was still in the water, screaming and crying when Mom and Dad returned.”
Her shoulders heaved as she held back a sob. “They found Lily standing upright, right where she’d jumped in. Her little feet were stuck in the thick mud.” Mom burst into tears. These were not the crocodile tears I’d seen from her many times over. These were so real they hurt.
“Oh, Mom.” I stood and wrapped my arms around her. She was so frail in my embrace. As Mother’s shoulders heaved back and forth, I too cried.
For a brief, utterly piercing moment I felt the closest to my mother that I ever had. For the first time, we were family.
It was ironic that our embrace was ruined by something as trivial as the tea lady, and her carb-loaded trolley, offering us a hot drink and a treat. Every poignant moment in my life seemed to be wrecked by something fleeting.
Mother and I came apart wiping our eyes, and as I eased back on my chair. I reached for her hand, squishing our palms together in a way I’d never done before. It was special and touched me so deep inside, it smothered my heart.
But this new trust was fragile and dangerous.
Mother was the master of manipulation, and if I wasn’t careful, she’d take the conversation in a direction that would be the opposite to the one I wanted. Inhaling a shaky breath, I formulated the next question in my mind, determined to make the first move as soon as we were alone again.
Well, as alone as we could be with two dying women sharing the room with us.
Neither of us spoke while the tea lady offered refreshments to the two other patients. Their answers were in croaky whispers that were impossible to decipher, but at least it confirmed they were still alive and healthy enough to eat something. Once again, I wondered if they were listening to us, but at the same time I didn’t really care. Mother’s answers were more important than our privacy.
The second the tinkling tray disappeared out the door, I leaned forward and collected the photo. “What happened next, Mom?”
“I got a beating.” She aimed a fierce gaze at me. “Mom and Dad blamed me for Lily’s death.”
“But you were a child. You shouldn’t have been in charge of her in the first place.”
She shrugged. “It was just how it was. Nothing was ever the same again.” Her words wobbled. “Not a week went by where they didn’t remind me of what I’d done. Dad hated me.”
“What about your mother?”
Her fingers trembled as she picked up the picture. “Mother barely spoke after that. She went into her shell and never came out.”
“I can’t imagine—” I shook my head. There were no words that would provide sufficient comfort.
“Mom filled the dam with lily pads and built a shrine overlooking it. She spent most of her days sitting there. I couldn’t stand it. Everywhere I looked I saw Lily. One minute she’d be my happy smiling baby sister—next minute I’d see the tiny, muddy body with the blue lips they’d pulled from the water.”
“Oh, Mom. How awful.”
“Dad’s beatings became a regular occurrence. He’d hit me for any stupid reason. If I spilled the salt. If I sneezed at the breakfast table. If I had a hole in my sock. Mom would always walk away. She despised me.” She huffed a wobbly breath. “I was fourteen when I ran away for the first time.”
It was like the floodgates had been opened, and not wanting to burst that bubble, I didn’t speak. I reached for her hand instead, hoping it would give her the courage to keep talking.
“I was only gone one night when they found me at the mall. Dad beat me with a wooden spoon for that one.”
I squeezed her hand and shook my head. I’d had a tragic childhood, but at least I was never beaten.
“Next time I ran away, I was fifteen. The police found me three days later and dragged me home. My punishment was a whipping with dad’s belt. I couldn’t sit for a week.” She closed her eyes, and running her hand up her thigh, she said, “I had bruises all up my legs.”
Mom picked up the photo and tears flooded her eyes.
I’d fought so hard to hate Mother that I never once stopped to think what she’d been through. I’d always thought she was happy, gleeful, but she wasn’t. She was hurting in unimaginable ways.
Mother lowered the photo. “The next time I planned to run away, I was going to make sure it was for good. I packed a bag.” She huffed. “I had stupid stuff really—a few clothes, my Walkman and a heap of music tapes. And this photo.”
I’d seen that Walkman and some tapes in that top drawer. I made a mental note to bring them to her.
“I was standing at the fridge with my backpack on, deciding whether or not to take the apples that were in there, when Dad found me.”
My hand shot to my chest. “Oh no. What did he do?”
Staring at the photo, she said, “He strode to his wallet and pulled out all the cash he had and shoved the money into my backpack. Then he dragged me to the door and told me to leave. He said if I walked out, I would never be welcome back.”
“Did you go?”
“It wasn’t a hard decision, Daisy. Of course I left.”
“But you were fifteen. Where did you go?”
She shrugged. “Anywhere. Everywhere.”
“But what about aunties? Uncles? Didn’t you have grandparents you could go to?”
“Probably. But they all blamed me for Lily’s death. Everyone hated me.”
A man strode into the room unannounced, and Mother’s eyes lit up like she’d won the lotto. “Doctor Alberts! Come, come. I want you to meet my daughter, Daisy.”
Doctor Alberts paused at the end of her bed and nodded at me. “Good evening, Daisy.”
“Hello.”
He checked her chart.
“Doctor Alberts isn’t married.” She winked at me.
Good God. How embarrassing.
The doctor offered me a smile that was equal parts a pleasantry and sheer exhaustion, and I rolled my eyes at him. I was sure he’d met women like my mother before who drooled over doctors.
Doctor Alberts stood at Mother’s side, and she clutched at his hand and smiled up at him with a look I’d seen from her hundreds of times. If she was healthy, Mother would have tried to jump his bones. Maybe she still would.
He turned his gaze to me. “I hope you’re letting Patricia get plenty of rest.”
I nodded. “I am. We were just doing some catching up. But I’m going to go now.”
Mother snapped her head to me. “No, don’t go.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow.” I stood, and when I reached for my backpack, I saw the box inside .
Yes. I’ll definitely be back.
After zipping it up, I reached for Mother’s hand. “Have a good night’s sleep, Mom. We still have so much to talk about.”
Mother beamed at me, but before I’d even left the room, she was telling Doctor Alberts how lovely it was of him to visit her.