In Falling Snow (7 page)

Grace laughed bitterly. “What next? I bet the researchers are all blokes.”

“I don't know.”

“How about if insemination meant we crushed a guy's testicles between two panes of glass.”

“Youch, how did you think of that?”

“I just mean that if men had to go through the kind of pain women go through to have babies there wouldn't be studies in the Netherlands about the usefulness of pain. It would be a given. It's the curse of Eve by another name, that study. And at any rate, if you're arguing that Clive Markwell was denying a sixteen-year-old girl pain relief because he's read a study, I'd have to take issue. I don't think Clive reads studies.”

“Touché,” David said. “But you did the right thing.”

“I can't abide that generation of docs. They're just so . . .”

Grace heard a noise inside the house. She turned and saw Henry standing at the bottom of the stairs. His hair, curly like David's but dark red, flopped into his eyes. He was holding up his pyjama pants, a pair of plaids they'd bought for Mia, Grace thought now, that were well past their time. Henry refused to give them up. At three, he was already a hoarder. “Did you wake up, sweetie?”

“My legs hurt.”

“Same place?” He nodded.

“Did you get that referral?” David said.

“No, I didn't,” Grace said, flashing him a look. “It's probably just those growing pains,” she said to Henry.

She put down her coffee and went inside and scooped up her small son. “Who are you today, Spider-Man?”

“No, I'm Superman.” He rubbed his eyes, looked as if he might cry. “I've been Superman for ages.” He pulled open his pyjama shirt, revealing the red S on his chest. Grace remembered now that Spider-Man had been retired some months before when the suit split in the crotch. When Grace had suggested it be replaced, Henry told her no because he was now the man of steel. David had put the kids to bed the night before. The suit had obviously been non-negotiable.

“'Course you are. I'm so sorry. How could I forget that?” Grace sat Henry on the bench while she filled up a hot water bottle from the kettle. Then she took him upstairs, put him back in bed, wrapped the hot water bottle in a pillowcase, and put it under his little legs. “Better?” she said. He shook his head, looked again as if he might cry. “I'll rub your legs. You try to go back to sleep.”

“But I'm not tired,” he said.

“Yes, you are. You just don't know it,” she said in a soft singsong voice.

“You always say that.”

She smiled. “And I'm always right.” She pushed his hair back from his face and then sat down on the bed and massaged his calves, stiff as boards. She watched him drowse back off, then curled in beside him, taking his tiny thin body into her arms, careful to make sure the heat of the hot water bottle stayed on his legs. She stretched out around him. Within minutes, she joined him in sleep.

She heard voices downstairs, David making breakfast.

“Not pancakes.” It was Mia, home from across the road, complaining as usual. Grace realised she was in Henry's bed not her own and remembered the sore legs. She'd fallen asleep. Henry himself had gone now. Grace pulled herself out of the bed, still tired but knowing she had to get on with the day.

“I slept,” she said when she got downstairs. “What time is it?”

David was wearing a pink floral apron over his work shirt and slacks. “Eight. I can take the girls and Henry today. I'm going over to the Mater for ten.”

“Okay,” Grace said. “I'll pop in to see Iris. You look ridiculous.”

“That's not something you say to the man you woke at five a.m. who's cooking breakfast for your children.”

“The man who's their father, incidentally,” she said. She went over and kissed him. “Sorry. But you do look ridiculous. Where's Phil?”

“Upstairs getting dressed.”

“Where's my pancakes?” Henry, who'd been sitting patiently at the bench, began chanting as he banged his knife and fork on the bench. He'd poured a pre-emptive load of maple syrup onto his plate, so much it ran over onto the bench.

Grace looked at him. “Henry, is that too much maple syrup?”

He looked down. “No.”

“Good then. Legs still sore?” He shook his head. Grace poured coffee from the pot and sat down beside Henry, his legs dangling from the stool. “Where's my pancakes?” she chanted along with him.

Half an hour later David was in the car, fiddling with the stereo and calling the kids. Henry was sitting in the lounge, playing with blocks. He hadn't moved on to the girls' Legos yet, couldn't get his hands to make the little pieces fit together. “Time to go, Henry the superhero,” Grace said. She saw he was rubbing his calves. “You can have some paracetamol if your legs are still sore?”

“Not sore.” He looked afraid suddenly. She realised he'd heard the concern in her voice. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No, Hero-man. Of course not. You're doing everything just right. Off you go now. Daddy's waiting. Make sure he's got your bag.”

“Did you put in my suit?”

“What suit?”

“My Superman suit.”

“Where is it?”

“I don't know.”

Grace went upstairs and checked Henry's cupboard. No suit. Dress-up box. Not there either. She checked under the bed, in the toy box, nothing. She went into Phil's room, looked in the cupboard there, no luck, and then saw Superman's deflated boot poking out from under Phil's bed. She grabbed the suit and cape.

At the door, she hugged each of the kids in turn and waved to David down at the car. He leaned his head out the window. “Neil Diamond?”

She smiled. “Yeah, Neil Diamond.” She started singing “Cherry, Cherry” and dancing in the doorway, moving her hips and rolling her arms.

“No wonder you woke me at five.” She smiled and blew him a kiss.

After they drove off, Grace went back into the house to get ready for work. She surveyed the kitchen. It was a mess but she had no time to clean it up now. Her eyes rested on Henry's hot water bottle in the sink where she'd left it earlier.

David was convinced there was something wrong with Henry. He'd been going on about it for weeks. Maybe he was right. But something in Grace resisted. She could just imagine them going down the track of diagnosis, spending years finding some developmental delay that Henry would have outgrown by the time they could name it. Meantime they'd have poked and prodded and tested the poor kid. “And what's the point?” Grace said out loud. “He'll still be Henry at the other end of it.”

The invitation was still sitting on the cane table in the front hall. I'd meant to hide it before Grace arrived. I'd meant to hide my walking stick too, but there it was, hooked on the hat rack where I'd left it. She'd hardly kissed me before her eagle eyes found the invitation. She picked it up and read as she strode into the house. She missed the walking stick though. She missed the little sugar glider too, although she sniffed and registered the smell and made a face. But before I could explain she was off down the hall, turning to me as she read.

“What on earth is . . .” She looked at the invitation again. “Royaumont?” Before I had a chance to answer, she said, “You're not thinking of going,” a statement rather than a question.

“Perhaps I might go, Gracie,” I said, doing my best to keep up with her. She turned and gave me a look; she hates it when I use her baby name. “Perhaps I should go before I die.”

“Oh for goodness' sake, you've been talking about dying for twenty years, and it hasn't happened yet,” she said. “But this really would kill you, Iris. Where is it? Near Paris? Even with a stopover, it's hours and hours in the air. Your heart would never make a flight like that.” She'd charged down the hall and into the kitchen. When it's not clean, she talks about the nursing home at Marycrest and how lovely the staff were the day she visited. She put the invitation on the table and sat down. I took a chair opposite. I could see the gilt script glinting in the sunlight.

Grace is almost as tall as I was at her age—I've shrunk into my bones now—but she's slimmer than I was, verging on skinny. She's more like Tom than me, lean and athletic, but not as relaxed in her body as Tom was. She's sharp-boned in the face too, cheeks and chin. Tom was softer. But she has chestnut hair that looks red in sunlight and the green eyes of my father's family, eyes that make you think a soul has been here before. I'd have to say that Grace doesn't have the nature of a soul who's been here before. She's become a difficult adult in her own way. As a child, she was particularly curious and perhaps more serious than most. I always felt it couldn't have been easy for her as an only child with Al and me so much older than the other parents. I was still running Al's surgery when she was small so most days she'd come down with me and we'd look in the microscope together or set a broken bone if Al happened to be out. She was as naturally drawn to science as any of the pathologists I knew at Royaumont. Obstetrics was the last specialty I expected her to do. To me it seemed to be the area of medicine that needed to tolerate the most ambivalence and Grace had always liked certainty.

Al used to say that Grace felt more like his daughter than Rose had. He didn't mean it unkindly to Rose, whom he loved dearly, but he and Grace had a special closeness. Rose was all passion. She could only learn by doing and seeing how it felt. Grace was much more circumspect but, like Al, she was never one to prevaricate. Al's world was black and white. You diagnosed and then you prescribed or excised or hospitalised. He wasn't without kindness. He just liked a definite world. It was a good quality in a doctor. Grace was the same. As a youngster, she'd been fascinated by any living creature, torn between wanting to love them and wanting to see how they worked, pulling wings off butterflies and then crying when the butterflies were dead. As she grew older, she became less inclined to cry about their deaths. She became tough in a way I wasn't and I must say in a way I didn't truly understand. I used to wonder if it had something to do with losing her mother at birth, that perhaps she could never really feel nurtured by me and therefore had trouble loving other creatures. I read an article that suggested losing a mother could scar a child for life. I thought of Tom, but I thought of Grace too. She'd lost her mother, however much we'd tried to make up for it. Al said it was all nonsense and that Grace was just like any scientist—she cared about the creatures but she was also endlessly curious about their innards.

“But I'll be right one day,” I said to Grace now. “I will die.” I smiled. “Do you know, I think I'd like to see Royaumont again.” I smoothed the tablecloth around the invitation.

She looked at me and frowned. “Iris, when will you start acting your age?”

“You look tired, Grace,” I said, hoping to change the subject. And she did look tired. Grace hadn't even finished her training when she and David were pregnant with Mia. I'd been angry with her when she told me. I'd told her it was too soon. She'd told me to mind my own business. She'd been right. It wasn't my business and afterwards I regretted saying it to her and told her so. But she did look tired, all the time. How did she manage it all?

“I was called in last night,” she said. “Don't try to change the subject.”

“Is that all it is?” She went to answer but held a breath instead and then let it out. “Do you think Henry's all right?”

“He's very cheeky, if that's what you mean. Tom was like that too at his age. Is that what you're worried about?”

“He's slower than the other two on some things. David thinks there might be something not right.” She stood up and wandered over to the kitchen, surveying the sink and benches, looking for evidence of poor housekeeping. “Is Henry cheeky?” she said.

“When you were young and so skinny I thought you had tapeworm. At one stage you wouldn't eat anything but ham sandwiches. Al said I was silly to worry.”

“That's what I think. I think David's overreacting. He wants to see a paediatrician.”

“It can't hurt to check. Give David peace of mind.”

“I don't know. You go looking, you find things you wish you didn't know.”

“Like what?”

“It's medicine. We pull people apart, put them back together but we know so little. I'm still skinny. It's just how I am. It didn't make any difference what doctors you saw.”

“David really is such a sweet man. Tell him not to worry so much. But are you sure you're not worried too?” She looked at me and didn't answer. I spoke again. “It can't hurt to check.”

On the way out, I showed Grace the sugar glider. “I'll drop in after work today with the kids and take it out to uni,” she said. “The vet school will know what the problem is.”

“He's tired and hungry, that's all,” I said, “and lost from his mother. I can keep him here.”

“I find myself constantly amazed by you, Iris. And you managed to change the subject after all.” She smiled. “I do want you to think twice about this trip. It's unwise.”

“There's nothing unwise at my age,” I said.

“By the way,” she said, “exactly what
is
Royaumont?” She was nursing the tiny sugar glider in one hand. “He's so cute,” she said, “reminds me of the prems in Vancouver. You get to the stage where a full-term baby seems obscenely big.”

“It was a hospital I worked in,” I said. “In France, during the war.”

“I didn't even know you'd been to France,” she said, distractedly. “You mean World War I? You've never mentioned it before.” She put the glider back in the box gently and then looked at her watch. “You were a nurse.”

“I was assistant to the hospital's superintendent,” I said. “She was the most marvellous woman.”

“How come I don't know about this?” Grace said.

“The sum of things you don't know about me is vast, my dear girl. It all happened such a long time ago. Now, get off to work and let me get on with my day.”

“Milk and sugar in an eyedropper,” she said, looking at the glider again.

“Good idea,” I said.

“And I'll pop by this afternoon and take him out to uni.”

“We'll see how we go.”

When I'd sold Sunnyside, Grace and David helped me buy a house two blocks from theirs in Paddington. Grace asked if I wanted to move in with them but I'd said no, I liked my independence, and I do. Then she suggested I should buy a unit but I couldn't stand the thought of living in a box within a box. I was happy to move, though. All those I knew in the Valley had died or moved away, making way for shops. Even Al's practice had gone, now a café.

Old memories are so clear in my mind now. I see things from the past and it's almost as if they're happening in front of my eyes. They come back so fresh, with a taste and smell, whereas the recent past is simply gone. The day Grace was born, John Henderson coming out of the theatre, his mask down, his cap half-off, knowing something was wrong from his gait, his right leg resisting, him telling us it's a girl, trying to smile, looking down at his leg, me thinking of course it was the baby, something wrong with the baby, only to learn it was Rose, gone in those moments, the smell of his aftershave, the strange metallic taste on my tongue when he said they'd been unable to save her. Al fell back as if the wind had been taken out of him and John had to hold him up. It might have happened just a moment ago. There's that taste now of metal, that smell of aftershave. I remember these things but I forget the children's names. I forget where I put my purse. I said this to David last time he came to mow the lawn. It had been worrying me and I didn't want to talk to Grace, who would have me seeing a brain surgeon quick as look at me. “I don't remember what grade any of the children are in, or even if Henry's at school yet. He is, isn't he?” David shook his head. “See? But I remember a grapevine we grew up a trellis at Risdon, the sour taste of those grapes, Daddy calling the sheep, the strong smell of the rye bread we used to get from the German baker. Those memories are clearer than ever. I talk to people who've been dead for years.”

“I think that's how memory works,” David said. “You remember the important things.”

“Not just important. It's the old things. Last week I was just about to post a letter to a woman I'd known fifty years ago in Stanthorpe when I remembered she'd died. I'd gone to her funeral here in Brisbane three years ago but it completely slipped my mind. It's as if not just memories but the capacity to remember is going. One day I won't know who you are, David.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But if that happens, I'll just tell you who I am again, Iris. You're doing well. I don't think it's your mind that will go first.” He looked at me.

“Heart?” He nodded.

“Good.”

David is like the heart doctor Grace took me to, except David's kinder. “I'll die soon,” I'd said to the heart doctor, after Grace had left the room to take a call at the desk, and he'd nodded yes and raised his blond eyebrows with what I like to think was a tinge of sadness, even if it was contrived. I suppose that's why he gets paid so much, for being able to contrive a tinge of sadness as he nods. With David, there was such genuine sadness in his eyes. It was nice to know he'd mourn my passing.

“I'll call by this afternoon,” Grace said as she backed out of the driveway.

“Only if you've got time,” I said and waved her off. I hoped she wouldn't come back. I love Grace dearly but it always feels like there's too much electricity in the room when she's here, like I need to be careful and behave well. I'm not sure what might happen if I don't, but I don't want to find out either.

I called the surgery to make an appointment with my doctor. The woman who answered made me spell my name twice. In Al's surgery, I knew the name of every patient, their children, their medical histories.

After I got off the phone, I realised I was still holding the invitation in my hand. Water under the bridge, I'd told Violet. What a stupid thing to say.

We worked with three orderlies to unload the mattresses from the truck and carry them up the two flights of stairs to the room in which we would all sleep. Miss Ivens had offered any who wanted it their own room but everyone felt there was safety in numbers. Who knew what ghosts lurked in the dark corners of an old abbey? Violet and I went back down to the kitchen and talked for a while longer with Marjorie Starr and Vera Collum. By the time the other three girls were ready to retire, I could barely keep my eyes open and make it up the stairs to bed.