Chapter 2 #2
‘There was a leak! All the water pouring into my bathroom! From the ceiling!’ Shirley explained that Michelle’s bath had overflowed because Rolf had left the taps running while he went to fetch his library books, which he’d left in the back bedroom. That was where he’d hurt his knee.
‘I was knocking and knocking. The door was locked. I couldn’t hear him call. I had to phone the police.’
‘It was his knee?’ Michelle asked, slinging her handbag over her shoulder. ‘Not his hip?’
‘No, his knee. He went in the ambulance to Prince of Wales.’ Shirley told her that the strata managers were sending someone to fix Michelle’s front door. ‘The police broke it. You know? To get in.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Hurrying towards the lifts, Michelle was vaguely aware of Nelson the security guard drifting along behind her. She felt like punching him in the stomach; instead she jabbed at the down button. ‘I’m very sorry about your ceiling. Are you insured?’
‘Of course! Yes!’
‘I’m heading to the hospital now. Thanks so much.’
The lift chimed. Doors slid open. Michelle stepped through them and turned to face Nelson, who nodded at the bright blue tote nudging her calf.
‘They let you keep that,’ he said, and Michelle almost laughed.
‘Gee, thanks,’ she replied.
Then the doors clanged shut.
Driving home from the hospital at ten thirty that night, Michelle could sense her father’s embarrassment.
He stewed in the seat beside her, his wispy hair uncombed, his paper gown rustling under his bathrobe every time he moved.
Being rescued by a female neighbour had been bad enough for him.
Being rescued after he’d left the bath running, while he was practically naked and unable to reach the phone .
. . how was he ever going to salvage his self-respect?
He loved reading in the bath – military histories, mostly – but had been told to use a shower chair after his hip replacement.
He didn’t like the shower chair. Hated his walking frame.
Resented losing his daily saunters around the neighbourhood.
There was no lift in Michelle’s strata block and her flat was on the second floor, so getting downstairs was a major undertaking.
As for the local shops, they were a distant dream.
No wonder he’d tried to sneak a bath. Michelle probably would have done the same, if she’d been an eighty-year-old former public servant with entitlement issues.
‘Here we are,’ she said, as they pulled into her designated parking space. It was a miserable little underground slot and even though she was a size eight and drove a compact Toyota Yaris, Michelle found it hard to squeeze out of her car once she’d parked.
‘Dad? Stop,’ she said, because he was trying to push open his door.
Wrestling with his walking frame, Michelle felt like someone in a slapstick comedy. But at last they reached the front entrance, where Rolf paused, sweaty and panting, his skin mottled.
‘Baris must be awake, look, his light’s on.’ Michelle pushed open the building’s front door. ‘I could run over and ask him to—’
‘No!’ Rolf glared at her, fumbling with his bathrobe.
Michelle knew he didn’t want anyone seeing him in the backless hospital gown.
Normally he dressed like an Oxford don, in tweed caps and button-down collars.
He had a whole lord-of-the-manor schtick going on, to cover up the string of failed businesses he’d started after leaving the public service.
Michelle’s mum had once called him the world’s swankiest loser – after he’d called her the world’s sneakiest commandant. They’d both had a point.
‘You’ll have to go upstairs on your bottom.’ Michelle wondered how long it would take him to climb four flights backwards.
‘Shh!’ His eyes flicked anxiously towards flat number one.
God forbid the neighbours should clock his varicose veins.
With a sigh, Michelle took his walking frame and let him do his own thing, watching his face redden as he struggled up the first flight on his arse.
But all his heroic efforts were useless.
Shirley’s door popped open just as they reached her landing.
She was wearing a long-sleeved nightgown and fluffy white slippers, and her wrinkles were gleaming with face cream.
‘Rolf?’ she said. ‘Is that you? Oh, you poor thing. Let me help . . .’
Rolf grimaced. His usual defence was frosty politeness.
Sometimes he resorted to his inner curmudgeon, but neither worked with Shirley.
Michelle wondered if she’d identified Rolf as husband material, since her own husband had died years earlier.
Shirley was a widow and Rolf was a widower; Michelle’s mum, a breast cancer victim, had technically been Rolf’s wife when she died, though they’d been thrashing out the kind of divorce that made lawyers dodge calls and run for cover.
Rolf must have looked like a perfect prospect to Shirley because he was witty and well groomed.
She’d never seen the real Rolf – the chronic deadweight with a General Montgomery fetish and an inflated sense of his own self-worth.
Though perhaps now she had some inkling . . .
‘Hi, Shirley. Sorry about your bathroom,’ Michelle said. ‘If insurance doesn’t cover it, I’ll pay any excess.’
‘My ceiling’s not so bad,’ Shirley replied. ‘Your door is worse.’
‘Oh.’ Michelle was keeping an eye on her dad as he heaved himself up the next flight.
‘The strata manager sent a man to fix your lock, but Baris fixed the hole in your door. With wood.’ Shirley slapped one palm against the other. ‘You going to need a new door. Those police are very strong!’
‘Thanks so much. We owe you. I’m sorry this happened.’
‘Everyone gets emergencies.’ After glancing up at Rolf, who had reached the fourth flight and was bum-shuffling around a corner, Shirley leaned towards Michelle and hissed, ‘He needs more help. Maybe a nursing home?’
Michelle nodded, her heart sinking. Ever since Rolf’s hip replacement, she’d been researching nursing homes.
Her skint father qualified as a ‘low means resident’, so his refundable accommodation deposit (averaging $500,000) should be covered by the government.
But he still had to pay a basic daily care fee, as well as an extra service fee for ‘luxury’ items: phone and internet, entertainment, newspapers, a choice of meals.
And that would be in the kind of place where chemical restraints and pureed food were the norm.
All the really good nursing homes cost money.
Lots of money. What the hell was she going to do?
‘When my husband went to Cloncurry Care, we had to sell our house. That’s why I came here. He was happy, though. Good place. Your dad could go there.’ Shirley touched Michelle’s arm. ‘Home help is expensive. I know. Too much money.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ll look into it.’ Not yet, though.
All day, Michelle had been doggedly dealing with one thing after another – emergency room, CT scan, vending machines, blood tests, accessible toilets, discharge papers, after-hours chemist. She hadn’t had time to worry about losing her job, let alone the nursing-home dilemma.
‘This is not safe,’ Shirley added, wrinkling her nose. ‘Not for Rolf. Not for us. Next time maybe the police won’t come.’ She dropped a key into Michelle’s hand, then bustled back into her flat.
‘Michelle?’ Rolf called from the next landing. ‘I can’t reach the door!’
‘Coming.’ Michelle smothered a sigh and joined her father, handing him the walking frame so he could pull himself up onto it. Her doormat was covered in splinters. A big plywood panel had been stapled across her cracked front door.
The new key opened the new deadlock, which was shiny and a little stiff. Inside, when Michelle flicked on the light, she spotted dirty boot prints all over her floating floorboards.
She dropped her bags onto the kitchen counter as Rolf shuffled past, jaw clenched.
‘Do you need some help there, Dad? With the toilet? I think your shower can wait till tomorrow . . .’
Instead of answering, Rolf slammed into his room. Michelle went to check the bathroom and found it a shambles: floor filthy, grouting damp, chipboard vanity already swollen and cracking at its base. Everything smelled of her father’s aggressively masculine thistle-and-black-pepper bath salts.
‘Dad?’ she called. ‘Do you need anything?’
No response. She was so tired, she just wanted to fall into bed. But there was always something else: Rolf’s laundry, dinner, medications, hurt feelings. How had her mother endured it?
She hadn’t, of course. She’d kicked Rolf out several times, allowing him back only at moments of absolute desperation because he was ‘so useless, a big baby, good for nothing, someone we can’t trust’.
When he wasn’t around, Michelle had borne the full brunt of her mother’s abrasive demands and curdling disappointment, so Rolf had always been her favourite parent.
He still was, but Michelle admitted to herself that she couldn’t cope with him anymore.
He was a black hole, sucking her dry. Sometimes people wondered why Michelle didn’t have a husband or de facto.
They were usually people who hadn’t met her parents – who’d never seen the way Michelle’s mother monitored everything she did, carping and criticising, searching her room, dictating her friendships.
Rolf had been the exact opposite. Instead of perpetually making her feel about three years old, he’d leaned on her for emotional, financial and physical support.
The last thing she wanted now was another man to look after.
Her one shot at domestic bliss had ended when she’d booted the guy out.
And now it was time to boot her father out, before she went under. She had to get him into a nice nursing home. An expensive nursing home. If he didn’t leave, she would lose her mind – and most of her fixtures and fittings.
‘Dad?’ she yelled. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I’m fine!’ he barked.
But he wasn’t fine. He was rapidly going downhill.
She needed a new job, and she needed it fast.