Like a House on Fire (2 page)

That's Frank all over. Can't hold a fork, but can still find a way to smack her out of the way.

It's easier to nod and agree, to pretend to take his advice about what she should be doing about the farm work. Nearly two months pass and she expects any day that one of these rehabilitation workers is going to read him the riot act and tell him he's mad to think he's going to return to the farm, and this anticipation, this certainty, fills her with suppressed, patient hope.

Maybe he'll survive, maybe he's not going to be in a hospital the rest of his life, but the argument's over; they'll have to move now, in any case, into town. A little unit or bungalow. Something new, with no steps anywhere because of the wheelchair. She'll be able to walk into town every day to shop for whatever she needs, and there'll probably have to be home help, which would give her breaks; it would be taken as read that she'd need breaks — they even give her the pamphlets explaining what she'll be entitled to.

She might even get a carer's pension, on top of the insurance and what they get for the farm. A new car, maybe, with one of those hoists.

This daydreaming is halted the day Frank claws himself up onto the machinery at the physiotherapy unit, growling like an animal and swearing a blue streak, his eyes popping with the strain, and as she watches in incredulous despair his left leg jerks itself out and wavers hesitantly above the rubber flooring, like someone learning to dance.

And while the physio shakes her head in admiration, the doctors confer over his X-rays, making up new explanations for her, saying, ‘He's recovered a great deal more function than we first anticipated, it's excellent news,' and all the time she's standing there nodding like a doll, hating him so much she can't trust herself to open her mouth.

That afternoon when she goes home the plumber is there, the same plumber who'd quoted her something impossible last year when she'd asked how much it would cost to bring the toilet inside. Only now he and his assistant are installing a brand-new modular shower unit and sink with chrome railings, telling her it's no trouble, anything for old Frank, we'll have this finished in no time and get out of your way, Mrs Slovak.

‘You tell him hello from Pete and Hardo,' the plumber says as he leaves, ‘and tell him Bob Wilkes says he'll get his hay baled for him and into the shed no trouble this week, so don't worry about a thing.'

And once again, trying to show brightness and gratitude while inside her, choking rage burns like a grassfire, like gasoline.

Because now any fool can see how it's going to be. Frank unable to sit at the desk, standing over her telling her how to do the books, ordering her round and snapping at her. In the ute beside her as she drives, sighing with contempt every time she crunches the gears, unable even to get out and open the gates for her, Frank hovering over her entire working day, badgering her and criticising her and depending on her for everything. And her, running the gauntlet outside church and in town, having to dutifully tell everyone how lucky they'd been.

Limited mobility is actually going to suit Frank, she thinks; he's been minimising all his movements for years, barely turning his head to her when she speaks, sitting there stonily in the kitchen, immoveable as a mountain. Unbending. So now, with his back fused like he's got a poker rammed down it, on one or two sticks or a walking frame, the doctors say, depending on how well his pelvis adapts, it will be Frank needing her to pull his legs sideways out of the bed and haul him into a sitting position and run for cushions and there won't need to be home help for that; they won't qualify. The community worker will come to assess them and see how well she can cope, and Frank will tell them he doesn't need help, thanks all the same, he's got all the help he needs. It's marvellous, people will say to her after church, the way God works.

‘This your doing?' is all he says when he sees the bathroom. ‘Couldn't wait to go behind my back?'

‘Nothing to do with me. Pete Nichol did it.'

He shoots her a look. ‘What — just turned up and did it? That'll be the day.'

Heaves himself forward on his frame to get a better look at the fitting around the sink, grunts dismissively when he can't find anything wrong with it.

‘Better get ready to remortgage the place, then, for when his bill comes. Common knowledge the man charges like a wounded bull.'

‘He said not to worry about it.' She tries not to make her voice sound too enthused, to give him less ammunition. It's a skill, doing that.

‘What's through there?' He can't jerk his head now, she notices. Just his eyes.

‘The new toilet.'

‘You're bloody joking.' He shoulders past her and inches over there, crablike. He looks around the door suspiciously then grunts again.

‘Well, he's left me in the shit now with council, that's all I can say. They'll be straight onto me about having to pay for an easement. They don't miss a trick, those bastards.'

‘Frank, he said he sorted the easement. Left me the permit and papers and everything. They're in on the desk.'

He pivots again, swearing as the wheels on the frame bang into the bath, to find her standing in front of him, waiting for his reaction. It would kill him, she thinks, to show pleasure or relief or excitement. Her loathing is such a pure thing she experiences a secret visceral pleasure to watch him cornered like this, tormented by something as incomprehensible and enraging as kindness.

‘So who came and dug the trench?' he snaps accusingly.

‘That contractor he uses, Ian Harding, is it?'

‘How much did he charge?'

‘I'm telling you, they said not to worry about it.'

He actually grimaces with discomfort, muttering at her to get out of his way as he shuffles past. Bangs out the back door and down the brand-new ramp that someone from Rotary came and fitted last week, replacing the back step that had been broken for almost eleven years. At the end of the backyard, in sight of the hay shed, he stops short and stares at his neatly slashed paddocks and stacked bales. It's then she sees what his limited mobility is costing him now; how his neck and head are forced to stay erect while his shoulders sag at a stiff helpless angle, hands clinging to the brakes of his walking frame, the whole of him fighting against the suppressed tremors that threaten to shake him free of it.

‘Bob Wilkes did it,' she calls, but he doesn't turn or respond. She imagines him giving up and toppling, curled there on the ground. She's never seen him curled up, not even when she sat there with him in the dirt, waiting for the ambulance. He'd stayed in control then too, sprawled there licking his lips every now and again, his eyes losing focus with something like bewilderment as he stared up into the blue, something almost innocent.

‘You just have to do this till I get the hang of it,' he mutters as she helps him manoeuvre into the shower.

She ignores him, just goes on explaining. ‘Now you lower yourself onto the seat using the handrails and back out your walker because you're not supposed to get it wet.'

‘Right. I'll be right now.'

‘Well, I'll just stay and turn on the taps. See, they're low — they put them there specially.'

‘Be easier if I could stand up. Reach the bloody soap myself then.'

‘I'll look out for one of those soap-on-a-rope things.'

God, the flesh is hanging off him. His knuckles are white and waxy as they cling to the handles; he's as scared and frail as an old, old man. Scared to turn his head or take one hand off the rail. One misstep away from a nursing home. His hair needs a cut and she decides she'll do it later at the kitchen table.

‘That's better,' he says as she adjusts the hot tap.

And she can hear that he's about to say thank you, then stops and swallows. Even without the thanks, though, she thinks it's probably the longest conversation they've had for months.

‘Now you need to put the brake locks on this every time you pull up, understand? Don't forget — up with the handrails, step onto the rubber mat, both hands on the walker handles then release the brake.'

‘I'm not stupid,' he mutters, but his eyes are following her every move, the pupils dilated.

She gets him dressed and into the kitchen, cuts his hair and shaves him. One of the casseroles, defrosted, with rice — he can manage that. Then she tears a page off the pad and lays it down in front of him, places the cordless phone handset next to him.

‘What's this?'

‘Phone numbers. You've got some calls to make.' She feels a surge of courage as she says it, there on the other side of the table. She taps the list. ‘People to ring and thank, now you're home.'

‘Don't bloody start that nonsense. I didn't ask for any of those do-gooders to come around.'

‘Frank,' she says. ‘I'm not arguing with you, I'm telling you. If you ever want another favour done, and believe me you're going to be calling in a few, ring and let people know how much you appreciate what they've done for you.'

‘Or what?' He looks strange, fighting to maintain an attitude of derisive scorn as he sits there in pyjamas, his hair neatly combed and the muscles wasted on him after all these months on his back.

‘What do you reckon?' she says, exasperated. ‘We go under. We sell up.'

And when he looks at her with familiar, narrow contempt, she picks up the hand mirror, lying there next to the scissors on the table, and a steady exhilaration pumps through her as she deliberately angles it to face him.

‘Take a good look,' she says, ‘and get on that phone.'

In bed, already planning in her mind the tasks of the next day, she listens to the fan ticking over their heads and feels the forgotten, heavy presence of him lying beside her. She thinks about the physiotherapist at the hospital, lifting Frank's legs and folding them against his body, turning him on his side and gently bending his arms from shoulder to hip. Flexion, she'd called it. Exercises to flex the muscles and keep the memory of limber movement alive in the body, to stop those ligaments and tendons tightening and atrophying away.

‘Just like this, Mr Slovak,' she'd said, that calm and cheerful young woman. ‘You can do these yourself, just keep at it,' and she'd taken Frank's hand and made his arm describe a slow circle, then flexed the elbow to make it touch his chest. Down and back again, over and over; a gesture like a woodenly acted entreaty. ‘Do you want me to leave you this page of instructions on these movements, to jog your memory?'

Frank, submitting hatchet-faced to the procedure, had given his head one slow, stiff shake. ‘If I need a set of instructions to remember that,' he said tightly, ‘you may as well carry me out in a box right now.'

The girl had just laughed indulgently at him, she remembers now. She must send those staff members a card and a present, thank them all for their forbearance.

She hears Frank exhale, then silence before a ragged, hiccuping intake of breath. She glances over and makes out the shape of him in the moony dimness, flat on his back and still as a tree, arms at his sides like a soldier at attention, and crying soundlessly, eyes screwed shut and face contorted into a mask. His mouth is a black hole of terror. Glinting tears leak into the furrows of discontent etched around his eyes and nose, pour down to wet his freshly barbered hair. She's never seen this, and it's mortifying. They'd warned her about acute pain; she wonders about getting up and giving him some tablets, but she's so shocked all she can do is turn her head back to look up at the ceiling and spare him the shame of her scrutiny. They lie rigidly side by side.

‘When you stood up to run home and call the ambulance,' he says, ‘I thought, well, now I've got ten minutes. Now would be the good time to die, while you weren't there. That's what I could give you.'

Lying there, she has a sense of how it is, suddenly: willing your limbs to move but being unable to lift them. The terrible treasonous distance between them that must be traversed, the numbed heaviness of her arm.

But she finally reaches over and takes his hand. It doesn't even feel like his anymore; the working calluses vanished into soft smoothness like a beach after a stormy receding tide. She wouldn't recognise this hand now, especially not the way the fingers grip hers.
Squeeze my hand
,
the physio had said.
That's good, Mr Slovak.

She lies there feeling the pulse in her husband's pitifully thin wrist under her little finger. She understands better than anyone, she thinks, the painful stretch of sinew, the crack of dislocation. Remembers herself running back over the paddocks, flying barefoot over stones and earth, looking down distractedly in the ambulance later to notice the dried blood on her feet. How fast she'd run, and how much faster she'd run back. Now, in the dark bed, she raises her arm with Frank's and gently flexes both their elbows together. She places his hand wordlessly, determinedly, over his heart, and holds it there.

Ashes

By the time they stop at a cafe for the obligatory morning tea, Chris is already feeling his staunch goodwill leaking away. Enervating, to be in her presence like this. Despite all his resolve to stay pleasant and attentive, today of all days, something has nevertheless turned a tap on inside him and his energy is draining away. Later he'll feel the same guilt as ever, but right now, sitting with a coffee listening to his mother complaining about the fake whipped cream on her scones, he feels all that evaporating. Ten-thirty in the morning, and he's already itching with it.