suiting her. It smoothed her skin out and put pretty freckles on her nose. I counted them, twenty tiny freckles, the morning after the egg discovery. She lay beside me, eyelids closed, eyeballs fidgeting beneath them half awake. She looked too healthy for that egg to be of any significance. I should just put it out of my thoughts. Which I did. I had the great drain robbery to go to. I had to shave, shower, help Tilda load the van with paintings without getting marks on my good clothes.
Chapter 34
Her phone call came the day after next. ‘I have a huge lump. A huge fucking lump.’ She hiccupped with tears, her voice blocked with terror-phlegm. ‘There’s a smaller lump near it. And under my arms, where the glands are, more lumps.’ She said her doctor’s face was furrowed when he found them. She’d swear he looked concerned and tried conceal it with ‘Don’t worry’ but Tilda wasn’t blind, she was no fool, she could tell his thinking.
She was phoning from her parents’. She desperately needed to curl up in her childhood bed. She wanted her childness back because there is only living in childhood, there are no lumps or tears too terrible. There are no tests and specialists who will do a biopsy on her in three days’ time. ‘Three days. They think they need to hurry, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t say.’
‘They think it must be serious, too serious to wait, don’t they? I can’t wait three days. Why do I have to wait three days? Why can’t they do it now?’
‘I don’t know.’
These were not real questions from Tilda, it was the terror talking, for which all answers are stunned I don’t knows .
‘Something bad is in my body. I can feel it.’ She spat the words with such revulsion she might have been spitting at her body. ‘How can I go three days with badness living in me?’
‘I don’t know.’
She could not stand to glimpse any part of herself. She vowed to keep her clothes on for three days and have no shower so she didn’t see or touch her gone-bad body. Her body had turned on her, she wept. Her body was the enemy within.
She instructed me to pack her blue nightie, the one she had never used but saved as if for special sleeping. Bring white knickers too. If none were in the clean pile then buy some. I was to use my initiative and pack anything else I thought she might need. Manners were obsolete to her now. There was no point in please or thank you. They belonged to the past, a kinder place than this new hell of worry. She wanted me to catch the train to Melbourne immediately. She wanted me to hold her through the night. Hold her and be gentle. She wanted to hold me and be mad and have the right to be mad. I’d have to sleep in her parents’ study on a foldout cot because they were old-fashioned and we were not a married couple. But they would have to turn a blind eye and allow me to sneak in to her at night.
Chapter 35
Just as screens are drawn around a patient’s bed, so too a screen is pulled around that time for me.
Inside the screen there are only Tilda and myself. She is waking after whatever they do in biopsies. Her lips are dry and pale. Her eyes are dragged left and right slowly by the drugs. I sit on the bed edge and hold her hand, such a cold hand, from the pretend death of anaesthetic. ‘It’s over,’ I say, smiling. I force myself to kiss her forehead—I should at least kiss her forehead until the medical smells have gone from her mouth. We will be back in Scintilla in a few days, I tell her to cheer her. The results will be negative and we can get out of this sterilised ward and go home; me to write another Gazette masterpiece, her to her canvas equivalents.
Outside the screen is Tilda’s family: a brother, two sisters, her mother, Raewyn, with pearls twisted anxiously through her knuckles below her throat line. Her father, Eric, jiggles change in his pocket and reassures Raewyn that Tilda has pluck and fortitude. They mutter their own I
Chapter 34
Her phone call came the day after next. ‘I have a huge lump. A huge fucking lump.’ She hiccupped with tears, her voice blocked with terror-phlegm. ‘There’s a smaller lump near it. And under my arms, where the glands are, more lumps.’ She said her doctor’s face was furrowed when he found them. She’d swear he looked concerned and tried conceal it with ‘Don’t worry’ but Tilda wasn’t blind, she was no fool, she could tell his thinking.
She was phoning from her parents’. She desperately needed to curl up in her childhood bed. She wanted her childness back because there is only living in childhood, there are no lumps or tears too terrible. There are no tests and specialists who will do a biopsy on her in three days’ time. ‘Three days. They think they need to hurry, don’t they?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t say.’
‘They think it must be serious, too serious to wait, don’t they? I can’t wait three days. Why do I have to wait three days? Why can’t they do it now?’
‘I don’t know.’
These were not real questions from Tilda, it was the terror talking, for which all answers are stunned I don’t knows .
‘Something bad is in my body. I can feel it.’ She spat the words with such revulsion she might have been spitting at her body. ‘How can I go three days with badness living in me?’
‘I don’t know.’
She could not stand to glimpse any part of herself. She vowed to keep her clothes on for three days and have no shower so she didn’t see or touch her gone-bad body. Her body had turned on her, she wept. Her body was the enemy within.
She instructed me to pack her blue nightie, the one she had never used but saved as if for special sleeping. Bring white knickers too. If none were in the clean pile then buy some. I was to use my initiative and pack anything else I thought she might need. Manners were obsolete to her now. There was no point in please or thank you. They belonged to the past, a kinder place than this new hell of worry. She wanted me to catch the train to Melbourne immediately. She wanted me to hold her through the night. Hold her and be gentle. She wanted to hold me and be mad and have the right to be mad. I’d have to sleep in her parents’ study on a foldout cot because they were old-fashioned and we were not a married couple. But they would have to turn a blind eye and allow me to sneak in to her at night.
Chapter 35
Just as screens are drawn around a patient’s bed, so too a screen is pulled around that time for me.
Inside the screen there are only Tilda and myself. She is waking after whatever they do in biopsies. Her lips are dry and pale. Her eyes are dragged left and right slowly by the drugs. I sit on the bed edge and hold her hand, such a cold hand, from the pretend death of anaesthetic. ‘It’s over,’ I say, smiling. I force myself to kiss her forehead—I should at least kiss her forehead until the medical smells have gone from her mouth. We will be back in Scintilla in a few days, I tell her to cheer her. The results will be negative and we can get out of this sterilised ward and go home; me to write another Gazette masterpiece, her to her canvas equivalents.
Outside the screen is Tilda’s family: a brother, two sisters, her mother, Raewyn, with pearls twisted anxiously through her knuckles below her throat line. Her father, Eric, jiggles change in his pocket and reassures Raewyn that Tilda has pluck and fortitude. They mutter their own I
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