Repeat After Me

Chapter 47

But then normal got even further away from us.

One Saturday, mum told us she was going to go and do some grocery shopping for her mum. 'I'm finally going to go inside,' she announced. 'So I might be an hour or two. I'll see if she needs any help with anything. Or we might just have a cup of tea and play Scrabble.'

Mum didn't return for hours. Josh and I were sitting at the kitchen bench, on our phones, when she finally came through the door. When Josh asked 'What's for dinner?' mum's reply was, 'Maybe someone else could think about dinner for once. I'm thinking about how my mother is dying.'

Disbelief and shock restrained our responses.

'Sorry, sorry,' mum said, red eyed, frizzy haired, 'I didn't mean to tell you like that, I just ... I'm tired, and I'm distraught, and I don't even want to think about dinner.' She burst into tears, without placing her handbag down. I stood up and put my arm around her, awkwardly.

'Is this real?' I asked, confused.

'Brain cancer,' she replied.

'I haven't seen her in months,' I said. 'She's been all alone.'

'I know,' mum said, her eyes folding, her mouth freefalling. 'I'm so devasted that she's been going through this all alone. I wish I'd known. It's horrible. So horrible.'

'Sorry mum,' Josh said. 'It's awful.'

Mum pulled her shoulders back, brushed a tear away from her eye. 'I'm sorry. I promised myself I'd keep my shit together. But ... well, you know ... with dad away and ...'

'I'll order dinner,' Josh said. 'What do you feel like? Thai?'

'Sounds lovely,' mum said.

'I'll run you a bath, if you'd like,' I said, recalling all the times mum had done that for me after a bad day.

Later, I heard mum talking to dad on the phone. 'I know, it's typical. She's always been stubborn ... she's known for months. She didn't want to worry us ... So she's been dealing with all of it on her own. There's nothing they can do ... It's too far gone. She has to come and live here. I can't put her in an aged care facility, not now ... not with cases still being out there. It's too risky. It spreads like wildfire in those places.' Dad was talking for a while. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, mum put her foot down. 'There's no way. What if they go into lockdown? If I put her in there, I may never see her again. They die locked up in their room. I'm serious. They're not letting visitors in. She's coming here and that's that.'

Mum set a room up for Grandma at the back of the house and Josh and I were both warned to keep our 1.5 metre distance.

'What? We can't talk to her?' I asked.

'Of course you can talk to her, but you don't need to touch or kiss ... just stand back from her. If she were to catch coronavirus, she'd die,' mum said.

'She's dying anyway,' Josh said.

Mum went into auto-mode, calling specialists, liaising with her sisters who were both interstate, ordering plastic coated sheets and a shower rail and an over toilet aid. She collected my grandmother three days later. When they arrived, it looked like they'd both been crying. I hadn't had a lot to do with my grandma since I was a kid, so it felt weird that she was coming to our house to die. I didn't know what we should talk about, so mostly I avoided her that first night she stayed in our house.

The next morning, when mum was at the supermarket, grandma was sitting at the kitchen table. I sat down opposite her and waited for her to start talking, as I didn't know what to say to a dying person.

'So what's been happening? I heard your dad is staying in a hotel. Are your parents on the rocks?'

A metronome tapped agony beats on my heart. 'I don't think so,' I said. 'It was because of me. I went to that protest in town, the black lives matter one. Dad put himself in quarantine from me. He's worried about the football team.'

'Absurd,' grandma said. 'He should quit. He's only working three days a week now. He should open his own physio practice instead. That's what he always wanted to do. People should look at challenging times as opportunities. Make a change.' She chuckled to herself. 'I think those protests are pointless, but you have to try and stand up for what you believe in.' She scratched at a flake of something on the table. Then she said, 'You know my beach box at Chelsea? I bought it myself. Your grandfather was ropable. I saw it one Saturday when he was at golf and I was visiting a girlfriend in Chelsea. I knew he'd say no. But I was working by then. I'd saved some money. I saw it in the morning and bought it that afternoon. He was furious. Afterwards, he never went there. That silly old man. He was so stubborn that I'd gone off and done something on my own that he refused to enjoy it with me. So it became my place. If he was at golf, then I was at the beach box.

'He hadn't wanted me to work. I'd had three girls, I did everything for them. I was a good mother. I'd spent ten years at home, but then they were all at school. What did he think I was going to do with myself after that? So I got a job in town, working for Guy Wilson at the head office for the Commonwealth Bank. Guy treated me well. You know, he used to let us have holidays in his weekend house at Torquay. We went there for years.

'Your grandfather wanted control over me and the girls. He wanted me to be kept in a little box. I guess what I'm saying is you have to know what you believe in. Sometimes other people will say no, you can't do it, but you know you need to do it. I want you to be the kind of girl who does what you have to do. Remember that.

'I'm rambling, but your father is being controlling. And your mother is always running around after that brother of yours.'

I burst into tears. This woman, this grandmother I'd had so little to do with, she got me. She was on my side. Even though she was dying she was on my side. She had shoulder length grey hair and doughy skin, soft blue eyes, and when she spoke she sounded very much alive. But she was dying. I was crying because she got me and I was crying because she was dying. 'I'm so sorry,' I said. 'So sorry.'

Upstairs I shut my door, turned my music on softly and started to draw a portrait of my grandmother in my sketchbook. As I was drawing, I realised there was beauty in the lines on an old person's face; my grandmother's wrinkles showed the decisions that had agonised her, the bags under her eyes bulged from the things she has seen, the curves around her mouth revealed she was once a happy person. Her face displayed the metaphysics of her life. How come traditional beauty has been reserved for the young? The smooth faces we see on magazine covers; are they not boring? Like a blank canvas? Shouldn't we celebrate, instead, the faces that are full of detail?