The eulogy, p.9
The Eulogy, page 9
Once a week, on Thursdays, a warden wheels you down to radiation. While your tumour is being blasted, Mum and I walk to the hospital cafe because they have a nice lunch special, savoury mince and peas. Occasionally, for a change, we go across the street to the take-away and buy Aussie burgers which are so big that Mum brings a loaf of bread and divides one of them between her, Dad and me. We eat in the corridor outside the ward when you are classified nil-by-mouth, preparing for your draining.
Each operation keeps you alive for a few more months until the next operation, and maybe I should just be grateful for that. But there should be more, I think. There could be more, if we just tried harder somehow.
The night after your Confirmation I wait until you are asleep before I sneak to the toilet. I lean a school exercise book on my knees and write in my best handwriting, Dear Make-A-Wish Foundation, my sister has a malignant brain tumour called an astrocytoma. I am pretty sure of the spelling: I saw it on one of the doctor’s letters that Dad keeps in the bill drawer. Her wish is to pray for world peace at the grotto of Our Lady in Lourdes. Then I slip into the living room and steal a stamp from Mum’s purse.
A month passes. It’s getting hot enough to run under the sprinkler, giggling and wincing from the bindies. But I don’t even suggest it, knowing your leg couldn’t stand the effort and I couldn’t stand your attempts to keep your tears secret from me. Another month passes. In between his three jobs, Dad starts preparing for summer like a man getting ready for a siege, clearing the gutters, burning the leaves in the incinerator, checking the garden hose for kinks and leaks. All the Logan men are doing the same: summer in the suburbs on the floodplains of the Logan River means bushfires in December, followed by floods in January. One summer a tree went up in flames across the road from our house at the same time as the creek broke its banks, gushing muddy water down our street.
I am preparing for a different battle. You and I used to kneel to say our nightly prayers, but since you got sick we have recited them lying down. Now I return to my knees, folding my hands and keeping my back straight, not leaning on the bed. I won’t have this fail because I didn’t follow procedure.
My strategy pays off. It’s November, three months since I posted my letter, when Mum answers the phone. ‘Oh, wait, I get my daughter,’ she says and hands the phone to me: although she is happy to yell at the top of her lungs at her family, Mum doesn’t like to talk to strangers on the phone, afraid they won’t understand her accent.
It’s a woman from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, telling me that my prayers have been answered. Millions of Catholics travel to Lourdes each year to drink from and bathe in the miraculous waters. This year the Bradleys are going to join them.
Our whole family comes to see us off at the airport, Trish ceremoniously fastening a gold chain with a crucifix around your neck. We travel for thirty-six hours non-stop to get from Loganlea, Australia, to Lourdes, France. We collapse into the beds of our hotel room and the next day you, who have been in good spirits for the whole trip, laugh and tell me, ‘You sleepwalked last night!’
‘Did not!’
‘You did! She did, didn’t she Dad?’
Dad confirms it: apparently I got up and scrabbled at the door, trying to get out. Before I can protest further, Mum returns: she has ventured into the outside world and comes back with rock-hard bread rolls, which is apparently what they eat here in France. I gnaw at mine, imagining a race of people with teeth as sharp as dinosaur incisors, baring them at foreigners with ulterior motives.
After ‘breakfast’, we leave the hotel and, unsure which direction to go, follow the small groups of people who appear to know the way. No one looks at us: the white dad, the Asian mum, the cancer girl and the sleepwalker. In this land of pilgrims, we fit right in.
I have to force myself to walk as slowly as the rest of the growing crowd. My mind is an abacus, and I count off the reasons that my sister should be up for a miracle. Based on my reading of the lives of saints, I have deduced that answered prayers are about being the right person, at the right place, at the right time.
Right place: that’s easy. Here we are, at Lourdes, where Our Lady turned ordinary water into a balm of healing for thousands of believers.
Right person: unfortunately we only have me, and I am pretty far from being the right person for the job. The history of the saints suggests that skinny sick children are at the top of the pyramid, closest to God; then skinny sick grown-ups; then fat sick children; then fat sick grown-ups; and then the rest of us. I can’t tell you why skinny and fat matters, but if you read the stories of the saints, which I have done, assiduously making notes, it is obvious that it does. Bernadette: skinny child; Angela and Francisco of Fatima: skinny children; Thérèse ‘The Little Flower’, Teresa of Seville: skinny girls; Maximilian Kolbe (by the time he died): skinny adult.
Anyway, despite being fat from the steroid treatments, you are much closer to the top of the pyramid than me. Which makes the fact that you won’t pray for yourself infuriating: I have never once heard you do so. Whenever it’s your turn to lead our nightly prayers, you always ask God, in the same sing-song voice the priest uses, for ‘peace in our world, peace in our family, peace in our hearts’. But I am hoping that being in the right place will give my prayers the boost that they need to be heard. I am also hoping that God will ignore my recent dabbling with the idea that He might not actually exist. I don’t want Him to think I am asking for this miracle as proof. That always backfires.
Right time: this is the hardest part because I cannot know when the right time is. Jesus said that he will come like a thief in the night so all I can do is be ready. After the sleepwalking debacle, I decide to set my alarm to wake every hour and say a prayer for you throughout the hours of slumber so He won’t catch me unprepared. During the day I have a prayer for you on repeat in the back of my mind: Please God, may your will be done. It’s important to put it in the hands of God: see, for example, Teresa of Ávila. Occasionally I add a little hint: Please God, may your will be to heal my sister now.
There are thousands of people in the cathedral and piazza, but the grotto itself is far less busy than I thought it would be. After a wait of only ten minutes, we proceed through a cave that is big enough for an altar, some flowers and about five people at a time. In one nook there is a statue of the Virgin, and water trickles from a crevice in the dark rock, which is slick with moisture.
Mum takes some photos of us in the grotto. Afterwards, you rest in your hired wheelchair, but I can’t sit down anywhere – too young, too healthy – so I shift my weight from left to right, easing one sore footpad and then the other. Mum normally hates seeing you in a wheelchair, but in Lourdes she quickly recognised its utility: in this place, if a person isn’t in a wheelchair – or better still, a hospital bed – she goes to the back of the line.
The days pass. We meander at the pace of pilgrims, resting in the shade of trees, going to mass, watching for the coming of Christ and praying. Mum buys dozens of plastic bottles with an image of the Virgin printed on the side and gets me to queue at the wall of taps where people can fill up with holy water. The lines are dense and people shove and heave their way forwards. I want to yell, You’re all supposed to be holy! but I am too terrified to open my mouth. At one point the mob lifts me off my feet and I stumble, grasping for a handhold because I know with dreadful certainty that if I fall, I will die. The woman next to me is old and squat, and she does not look at me as I pull myself up by her black skirts.
Then it is our last day, the day that we are scheduled to bathe in the water. The day I have been waiting for.
We head to the women’s rooms which are housed in cold, grey concrete bunkers. You and Mum are directed to the section reserved for the sick and dying. I had not expected to go in alone and I want to run after you, but a small nun in a grey veil holds my elbow and gestures for me to follow. Inside the bunker stand a row of large, grey concrete baths filled with holy water pumped direct from the source.
The nun doesn’t speak English but it is clear what she wants me to do as she points to my dress and then makes a sweeping motion with both her hands. I strip off and shiver, trying to cover my private parts, but the nun is completely indifferent, intent only on grasping my arm and leading me to the tub. This is an industrial-scale operation, shuttling thousands of pilgrims through the icy water every day. I had imagined lying back, letting the water cleanse me. Instead I wade through it as fast as I can, the water so cold that it knocks the breath out of me and I cannot, for love, money or even my sister, actually submerge my body in it. The nun holding my elbow titters, but not unkindly.
I meet you and Mum outside. You are still limping. I try to believe that miracles are not always instantaneous but, in that moment, I feel my faith crumble into motes of dust, because God should be capable of magic in the service of reason.
Dad emerges from the men’s bathing rooms. The church bells toll, and a choir singing ‘Ave, ave, ave, Maria’ disperses the clouds above our heads, blowing our petty selves away like so much unnecessary debris.
‘This is my favourite hymn,’ Dad says.
We all listen, even Mum, who is not a baptised Catholic, who is typically incapable of sitting still without a pen and a racing guide in her hands. The music washes all the fears and dislikes out of me. Mum doles out pieces of ham and baguette for lunch. Dad stands before us, looking somehow taller and lighter than normal. You sit in the rented wheelchair, accept the proffered sandwich with your good hand, and eat.
By the time we get back to Australia I am an atheist. You smile at everyone like nothing is wrong, but how can you not know that this was our last chance? I want to scream at you for not praying for the right things. Then I remember it is not your fault: it is God’s. Then I remember that God doesn’t exist. I start to look for someone else to blame, and there I am, waiting for myself.
Brian is trying to get my attention. ‘Kathy? Are we good to go?’
‘Oh, sorry yes, thanks Call-M— sorry, Kevin.’ I stand.
‘No worries,’ Call-Me-Kevin shakes my and Brian’s hands again. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday.’
Back out in the sunshine I feel momentarily faint. Brian is saying something. I try to attend. ‘Wanna get something to eat before you head off?’
My stomach growls in response and we both giggle like two kids relieved to be on the other side of the principal’s office door.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he says.
Brian’s Nissan still has the new-car smell even though he explains that he bought it second-hand from the dealership. ‘They have that smell in a can,’ he says as he reverses, left arm behind the head of my seat as Dad taught us.
‘Really?’ I had never considered this. I relax back into the woolly seat cover, enjoying not being the one behind the wheel for the first time in days.
‘Yep,’ he nods. ‘They spray it all over everything. Works, doesn’t it? Had you fooled.’
‘Yep,’ I murmur. I feel drowsy: the gentle warmth of the sun through the tinted window, the softness of the fluffy chair, the fact that I have not slept well in ages. I wonder if the developers had that scent-in-a-can, if they sprayed it around generously in the ex-display house that our parents bought after our return from Lourdes. Fooling us into believing in new beginnings.
7 Elliot Road, Slacks Creek, was low-set, three-bedroom brick veneer, and, importantly for you, no stairs. I remember being excited that we could hook up a stereo in the hallway closet and listen to it play through speakers in the living room. Presumably this was a display home thing, allowing the developers to pipe subliminal messages into the ears of prospective buyers. I imagined our family listening to soothing music, maybe even something classical, definitely something classy to match the downlights and cork tiles of our new lives, our new, more refined selves. The same day we moved in, Mum plugged in her radio so she could hear the races wherever she went.
There is no more media attention for you after our trip. No one wants to hear about a sick girl who went to Lourdes and came back sick.
In the new house you and I share a bedroom but now we have our own beds. Barb has her own room, and Mum and Dad are in the other. Brian gets the carport, which Dad turns into a room for him, and which almost immediately stinks of boy. Bev has moved into a rental in Loganlea with her new husband, expecting her first baby. There wasn’t really a wedding, just a barbecue in the backyard. None of us like the bloke, but Dad says that at least he did the right thing.
Over the years since we’ve got back from Lourdes, I may have given up on miracles, but I still believe that you can have a life of meaning. I arrange all manner of activities for you, so I don’t have to think about you sitting at home, waiting for me to come back from the high school you could not attend. I organise for Dad to drop you off as a volunteer at a local childcare centre on Tuesdays, and take you for volunteer hospital visits once a month. I also arrange for you to volunteer at my school library. The librarian has a son with Down Syndrome who comes in once or twice a week, and she is happy for you to come in and sort books, laminating their corners to protect them from the grubby hands of my peers.
I visit you there each Wednesday, but I can’t spend all lunch time with you because then you would know I have nowhere else to go. Every other day of the week, I roam the school, walking the paths, concentrating on a sensation of freedom that comes with feeling the air currents on my face from my own movement.
One by one the big kids move on with their lives. They don’t really go to church anymore, once they leave the Bradley home. Trish gets married on a boat. We have to wear disgusting apricot silk dresses with puff sleeves and a drop waist. Flowers in our hair. Wreaths. A year later, Barb marries a businessman who gives her lots of presents. I don’t know how he can stand her. We have to wear blue satin to her wedding. More puff sleeves. Val, who makes all the dresses, just grins and adds rosettes to the waistline despite my protests. Then it is Val’s turn. Mum is in one of her rages when we meet Val’s fiancé for the first time, and does her best to derail the engagement, storming around and threatening that she could tell him a thing or two about Val’s past. But he just looks Mum in the eye and says, ‘You can tell me whatever you want Madge, I’m still marrying your daughter.’ Mum huffs and puffs while Val gazes lovingly at this very average man, and soon enough we are clothed in aquamarine silk with the works: puff sleeves, rosettes, even sashes.
At Brian’s wedding we are not required as bridesmaids. I am not a huge fan of the bride – she brings back bad memories of the self-satisfied white girls I used to avoid at high school – but she seems to take care of Brian, which is maybe what he needs. I am in university by this time and we now know about your dementia, but the wedding triggers a wave of greater-than-normal confusion for you. You keep getting the bride’s name wrong, and talk to yourself loudly, making rude gestures while I grab at your hands and whisper, ‘Shh, shh.’ Thankfully, the act of walking up to the pulpit snaps you back into the ritual mode of church, and you stay focused all through the reading our brother has asked us to deliver.
I worry what you will be like by the time I get married, and then laugh a little myself, causing our mother to cast a sharp look in my direction. But I wasn’t laughing at you, Annie, just at the idea that I would ever find someone who would want to marry me.
Evan and I agree to meet for an extra walk on the weekend to make up for the one we missed because of his sore leg. Evan needs to vent, he says. The department executives will not agree to his anti-bullying strategy.
‘At the moment, the message is this,’ he explains. We are leaning against a railing, having just climbed the stairs that rise up the sheer cliff face from Woolloomooloo to Potts Point. Below us sits HMAS Anzac at anchor. It’s easy to forget that Sydney’s harbour is still a working naval base, fortified for defence.
‘One: bullying is not OK. Two: if you are bullied, confront the bully with your words. Three: if that doesn’t work, tell your teacher. All good, all fine, I totally agree. But there needs to be a fourth step.’
‘And what’s that?’ I ask.
‘Four,’ he counts on his fingers, ‘fight back. You cannot let bullies win. They will not stop. That is the nature of a bully. And you have to decide,’ Evan says, looking me in the eye. ‘Are you going to run, or are you going to fight?’
‘That makes sense. Sometimes you have to take a stand.’
‘Exactly.’ Then Evan leans down and kisses me on the lips. I brace myself to be repulsed by garlicky Asian desperation, but all I feel is his arms around me. All I feel is safe.
We go back to his apartment and awkwardly undress each other, Evan laughing each time I struggle with a zip or a button. Every foible and fumble is all just part of the hilarious sweetness of the human condition to him. He manages to get the second condom he rips opens to stay on, until he is not laughing but panting, pushing and moaning my name. I try to pant along, but all I can feel is tightness and something pressing against it. From this vantage point he looks how they all look: completely contained, using me as an empty place to chafe his need. Once he is done he will roll off and that will be the end of that.
It only takes about two minutes. ‘Sorry!’ he laughs. ‘It’s been a while.’
Instead of conveniently falling asleep while I slip my clothes on and get a taxi home, he looks at me. He kisses me slowly, eyes open. Then he takes my hand and puts it on my clitoris, and he puts his fingers inside me and begins to rub.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmurs in my ear, and I can’t stop myself; my back bucks and my legs twitch. It’s the first time I have ever orgasmed in the company of another human being. I don’t know what this means but I know it means something.
I tell Evan about you over dinner. ‘One day I plan to move back to Queensland,’ I say. ‘To look after her.’ I watch him closely.
