In a small, dim hospital room sits a man, his large frame awkward in the vinyl chair provided for visitors. In the bed is a woman. He watches her. His mother. Looks intently, searching for something that will make him believe this is really her. She is changed almost beyond recognition. Her body is shrunken. Sagging skin and bones. Rubble he thinks, just rubble, ready to be gathered up and disposed of. His body which is already big, feels huge. Feels like a monster, bursting out of its clothes. His knees point upwards, his elbows reach out beyond the arms of his chair. For the first time in many years his physicality seems obscene.
Hooked onto the metal bedstead is a sign. The words scrawled casually in black felt pen. Evelyn Macleod. If he is to believe these words, then this is his mother. Evelyn, he thinks, sounding the word out in his head. Even her name is strange. He has never called her that. Mum, or mother, probably even mummy, when he was small enough. But he’s big now, very big, and underneath the blanket his mother’s body is almost absent. Just a skeleton, He imagines coming out of that. Her screams as his head forces it’s way into the world. Merciless, the pain unremitting, breaking her apart. It had been like that when Lily arrived and he’d watched his wife become a stranger with the pain he couldn’t share.
And now there is his mother. He is at once fascinated and repelled by what little is left. A thin line of dribble stretches from the corner of her mouth down to her chin. He reaches over and wipes at it with a tissue. She doesn’t seem to notice, she’s focused inwards, eyes shut, concentrating on every breath. Without her teeth, her face is collapsed. No structure. Nothing to grip onto. When he was small people sometimes said they were alike, and once it had seemed to him that they were. There’d been no father to compare himself with and no siblings, only a few old photographs. “Look Mike”, his mother would say. “See that chin, you’re just like your grandfather.” And back then he was happy to be anchored in that way. But at some point he had changed. Suddenly become all arms and legs, dangerously uncoordinated, with a gruff voice and self conscious stoop. It was about then that his mother first accused him of looking like his father. As if it was his fault that his features were arranged one way and not another. “You’re the image of him”, she said, and turned away quickly, trying to hide her repulsion. But something had been breached. After that they were awkward with each other, too polite. Again and again he caught her staring and he didn’t understand the complexity of the things he read on her face. He remembers looking in the mirror, studying his face, searching for what it was she could see. But there was nothing, only pimples and fluff and the hurt in his eyes.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been sat here. Wonders if it’s been hours or days since the telephone woke him from a deep sleep and called him into this strange sterile nothing space they had been allocated. Why here, he thinks, wishing there were somewhere more appropriate to play out the drama of her death. Somewhere more personal. For his benefit or hers, he wonders, not knowing if she is even aware he is here. Perhaps he could creep out and get a cup of coffee, or ring someone, just to touch down, just to hear his wife’s voice, “Mike, is that you? Are you OK.” “No” he would say, “no I’m not. . . I don’t recognise my mother.” But he is held in his place by her struggling breath.
In this strangely surreal space his senses are all on alert. He listens to the distant clutter of hospital noises. Clinking metal and rubber shoes squelching softly against the plastic floor. Lino, he thinks. We had lino. Great big black and white squares he could hop about on. Not like this grey, green, beige, impossible to name nothingness that stretched from his feet out of the door and down the corridor. He sniffs, smells the disinfectant, but underneath is another smell, faint but pervasive. Piss and shit and vomit and rot. Most of all rot. Like the rot that eats away at the insides of his mother. Or the rot that sits under the headlines of the unread newspaper at his feet. Rot everywhere. He can’t bear it. He’s desperate. For air, movement, anything, to break the disgust he feels.
The cramps in his legs force him to stand and stretch. When he does, his chair makes a rude squeak, intruding on the bubble they have created. Her concentration is broken and she starts, losing the rhythm of her breathing. He wonders that something simple like this could so easily kill her and a small part of him feels tempted to extinguish the remnants of life that remain. Get it over, he thinks, but bats this thought away and paces the room, his long legs covering its width in two steps. Back and forth. Back and forth. He wants to run. Remembers the sea eagle he’d seen recently at the wildlife park he’d taken Lily to. A majestic bird. Trapped. Lily was too young to worry. “Bird”, she’d said and pointed. But he’d counted and worried and felt the waste. Two casual flicks of the wing and it reached the limits of its world. While outside, little sparrows hopped around his feet pecking greedily at his leftover lunch, unaware of the immensity of their freedom. He wants to run. Wants to stretch. His limbs feel constricted. Why, he wonders, is his grief so focused in his legs? Why can’t he cry?
She always knew how he was feeling and even now at the edges of death, she reaches out her hand towards him. Her compassion fills him with shame. So she does know I am here, he thinks and reluctantly takes her hand. He is appalled at how claw like it is, but controls himself, pushing away the revulsion. Wrapped loosely around her wrist is a white plastic bracelet. He looks closely and deciphers her name. The writing is neat and round like a child’s, confirming her identity. This and the sign above her head is all that distinguishes his mother from the anonymity of death. He wants to love her. He really does. And he wonders what love is as his grief surges from his legs into his heart.
He is hungry for contact with something. Anything but this, he thinks, looking at her bony fingers still tightly gripping his. When a nurse comes, bringing him coffee and biscuits, his gratitude almost overwhelms him. He unpeels her fingers and gently places her hand on the blanket. The sound of his teeth crunching at a biscuit fills the silence and he thinks that it’s too basic, that he can’t eat biscuits when his mother is dying. So he gives up, leaving them until more nurses arrive to do their check ups and his crunching is camouflaged by chatter. Their cheeriness, he thinks, is inappropriate in the face of death. He watches them fussing around his mother, plumping up her pillows, checking her drips, her temperature, the little machine she’s attached to. Maintenance work, he thinks, turning away red faced when they change something down there. She is limp and loose in their hands, but the grimace on her face must mean she is in pain. He wants to shout at them to be more respectful. This is my mother he wants to say, not some rag doll to toss about. Instead he asks if they can give her something more to help the pain. They shake their heads. More, they say, might kill her. He almost laughs at this. Kill her, he thinks. Kill her! His thoughts are shrill. They settle her back down on her pillows and leave. After their cheerful chatter the silence is heavy and exaggerated, filled only by her breathing which has become louder and even more infrequent, so that between each of her breaths he finds himself holding his own.
When the tension becomes unbearable he reaches for the window and tugs angrily at the venetians. Suddenly the room is bathed in brightness. He shuts his eyes against the light, opens them, then looks back at her and sees that she hasn’t even noticed. She is puffing, her eyes shut, her face red with the effort of drawing breath and he is eight again maybe nine and he is running. The sun is hot, but the air is still wet, fresh from a storm. As he soars over the puddles he sees that they contain the clouds and the sky and he thinks probably space and the thought of their depth and their breadth make him dizzy with delight, not vertigo. Now it would be vertigo he thinks as he remembers swinging with Lily and feeling the rush of air turn his stomach. But it was different then. He is eight, maybe nine, everything is new and his limbs work perfectly so that he runs without effort, almost flies. There are birds. Probably seagulls because behind his speed and the rush of air around him is the regular sound of waves. Their cries punctuate his own flight. The souls of dead sailors, his Nana had told him, and for awhile he had been afraid of them. But not anymore, he isn’t afraid of anything, not even his mum.
He runs on, jumping, leaping, splashing mud, filled with joy. But it’s not a game. His mother is behind him, chasing and angry and filled with the need to punish. He is half afraid, and looks back often. She’s struggling. Her face is red, her breath is coming in painful puffs. He’s faster than her and this shocks him. He keeps running, reveling in his speed, in the ease of movement. She can’t catch him. But when he glances back again he knows that her anger is building into fury. The joy goes from his flight and soon he slows down. Her fury builds. She thinks he’s taunting her now. But he’s not. He’s just undecided, torn between getting it over and holding onto the joy of the chase and the new knowledge of his own power. He climbs the gate into the neighbours yard, leaping easily from the top, across a puddle and onto the fresh damp grass. She follows him, climbing laboriously onto the gate, her breath forced and painful, her face dripping. Then she slips, falling heavily into the puddle and when she stands up again she’s covered with mud and water and sweat and cold hard fury. He sees all this and feels a surge of pity. It’s over now. He must allow her to win. He stops and waits and then stands stoically, arms by his sides, while she pummels at him with her fists. Beating, beating . . .beating. He can feel bruises coming, but on the other side of the pain there is no resentment. There’s something else though, something new, a huge responsibility which makes him heavy.
What had he done? Broken something? Answered back? Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. Even then it didn’t matter. The crime had been lost forever and so had his childhood. He wants to talk to his wife, wants to hear her ask, “Are you OK Mike?” And he would say, “No, I’m not. . . I don’t think I like my mother.” His face is wet with tears. But they are not for her. They are for him, for the boy he was, for the man he is, for all this unfinished business, for his useless love and for the crushing responsibility he feels for her. He is helpless against all these things. Big and useless. A giant simpleton, he thinks. He could reach out and crush her just like that. But he can’t fix her. He can’t draw her back from the brink. He wishes that he could offer up his body again. A gift for her to beat her fists against. Maybe she could pummel out the rotting that is inside her. But he can’t. And she can’t. They are both impotent against this thing that will not be turned back.
He pulls the blind, dimming the room once again and lowers himself back into the small vinyl hospital chair to wait with her. It won’t be long now, he thinks. Won’t be long.