Chapter 101

The same day we got Mum’s diagnosis, David called from Perth. He was very upset. There had been a terrible accident at the previous Friday night’s rooftop party.

Two people, a man and a woman, had been sitting on the edge of the balcony, laughing and smoking and waving their arms about, when, just like that—it happened so fast, it was the strangest, most terrifying thing to witness—they fell. Together. Backward. Into the night.

The man was already dead by the time they got downstairs. They stabilized the woman—all those medical professionals together in one place, she got the best possible care—but she died later that night.

We didn’t know the couple. They were friends of the trainee anesthetist in the apartment below ours. Visiting from Melbourne. The anesthetist was a mess.

“It was just like you described,” said David. He sounded like he’d been drinking. I had not drunk any alcohol since I’d been home with Mum and Auntie Pat. I was sleeping and eating better. I knew I would still drink to the point of oblivion at my next Friday-night party. I could not imagine attending one of those parties sober. It was like I was a situational alcoholic. (This is not a recognized term.)

David said, “The man wore a white T-shirt and she was trying to grab at his shirt. Everyone says that’s exactly how you described it.”

I didn’t remember saying anything about a white T-shirt, but I guess I could have said that when I was drunk. White is a common color for a T-shirt.

“So I guess you’ve got the family gift, Cherry,” he said slowly. He had always been respectful about my mother’s fortune-telling, as if it were an unusual religion she practiced, but up until now he had certainly not been a believer.

“It was dangerous,” I said. I felt as if it were somehow my fault, as if I’d made it happen. “Drunk people sitting on the edge of a rooftop balcony. I wasn’t telling the future. I was trying to warn people to be careful.”

And as I have already mentioned, I had also wondered if it was a symbolic image. If the couple represented me and him.

“But you kept saying you could see it happening,” said David.

“I meant I could imagine it happening.”

I told David about Mum and he said he was so sorry, and I know he meant it because he was fond of my mother, but he was too shaken by the accident to focus properly.

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

It took me a moment.

I very nearly said, “What do you mean? I am home.”

—

It’s a very particular time in your life, when someone you love is dying.

The world doesn’t stop for you. We know this, but in our hearts we are shocked. We are like famous people who say: But don’t you know who I am? Except we want to say, But don’t you know what I am going through? How can you speak to me like that when my mother is dying?

There are still red lights and rude people, long lines and lost keys. You can still stub your toe, and it will still hurt like the devil. The difference is that your reaction may be gargantuan. You may react with a rage-filled stream of profanity, the likes of which your aunt hasn’t heard since the war. You may scream in your car at a red light and scare small children.

The dying person will not, by the way, always behave like a lovely dying person in a movie. She will not necessarily want to sit on the beach with a blanket wrapped around her thin body, looking wan and beautiful, her eyes wise and sad, a gentle breeze in her hair, while she makes profound remarks and looks at the sea. (I believe I may be describing a scene from the excellent, extremely sentimental movie Beaches. ) She may in fact say, “Of course I don’t want to go to the beach, Cherry, I feel so sick, why would you suggest such an idiotic thing?”

Your feelings can still be hurt by a dying person.

A dying person can still be vain. Stupidly vain. A dying person can take pride in her thinness, point at her hipbones, and say, “Look how skinny I am!” as if it’s a nice bonus, and you can’t shout, “You’re skinny because you’re DYING, you silly woman!”

You can still feel infuriated by a dying person, especially if the doctors make it clear an earlier diagnosis would have saved them. You can want them to feel remorseful for the catastrophic consequences of their foolish actions, even though they are paying the ultimate price, because it feels like you’re the one paying it. Not them. They’re getting off scot-free—back to stardust, or resting in peace with their heavenly Father, or rerouted to another body, whatever it is you believe—they’re the ones leaving, and you will be the one left behind.

Macabre but necessary calculations are required. If your loved one is dying in a matter of weeks you’ll want to spend as much time as possible with them. But how many hours a day is appropriate? (Can you have a day off?) If your loved one is expected to live for another year the calculations become trickier, especially if your home and job are on the other side of the country.

I wasn’t required to be a carer for my mother. Auntie Pat was adamant that this was to be her job, but what respite care did I owe my aunt? I say this as if I struggled with the question at the time, but I fear it never crossed my mind. Auntie Pat was so capable.

Anyhow, Mum and Auntie Pat answered all these questions for me. They told me to go back to Western Australia for now at least, and I did as they said.

Everything had changed when I got back to Perth. There were no more rooftop parties. The entrance to the terrace was blocked off. The residents were all still shocked and somehow ashamed.

The anesthetist whose friends had died moved out and a couple with a very lovely baby moved in, which changed the whole “vibe” of the place. Even I could see that the baby was objectively lovely, and naturally my husband adored the child. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was possible for a family to live there.

David and I applied to adopt a baby from Korea. It was a strange time, waiting for something good to happen, waiting for something awful to happen. I was grieving in anticipation, but Mum was still alive, and we talked every couple of days. Some of those calls felt forced and we got off the phone fast, but sometimes we talked in a way we hadn’t before.

One day I asked her, “Was Madame Mae real, Mum?”

She sighed and said, “I did my best, Cherry.” Which wasn’t an answer. Another day, she said she was sorry for not going to the doctor sooner, and she hoped she could get to hold her grandchild. “You’ll be a good mother, Cherry, I know you think you won’t be, but you will.” I said, “Is that Madame Mae or Mum?” She said it was Mum. Madame Mae had retired.

She didn’t get to hold her grandchild, but she did get to see a copy of the photo we received of an eighteen-month-old baby called Bo-Mi.

It was a black-and-white picture of a beautiful, big-eyed little girl sitting on a bed, looking sideways at something we couldn’t see as she played with the long ears of a toy rabbit, pulling them wide. I don’t know why I loved Bo-Mi, or why I thought she would somehow transform me from a reluctant mother into a mother, but I did. I think I liked that she was serious, as if this one moment captured by the camera conveyed her personality. I thought a serious baby would suit me. I thought I could make a serious baby laugh.

In my accompanying letter with the photo, I said, Look, Mum, it’s the little girl you said would arrive on a plane and you even got her first initial right too.

Auntie Pat called and said Mum cried when she saw the photo and was so pleased her prediction had come true.

“How is she?” I asked, because I was thinking of the other part of Mum’s prediction that the baby would arrive just when I needed her the most.

“Well,” said Auntie Pat, and I heard the pause as she inhaled on her cigarette. “She has good days and not-so-good days. I think you should make plans to come here next month, darling.”

Michelle called and said the baby reminded her of both David and me. Of course the baby looked nothing like me, but Michelle insisted. “She has that serious look of yours.”

David and I spent a lot of time lying in bed, staring at the photo together, handing it back and forth, analyzing it and finding new things to say. “I feel like she’s quite intelligent,” said David. He was besotted. I loved the love he showed this little girl.

I have lovely memories of that time. We were gentle with each other. Kinder than we had been before. Perhaps we were even a little vulnerable with each other.

Sometimes when we had sex, there would be a moment when we would look into each other’s eyes, and it seemed like we were both trying to communicate something urgent and important, but we never said it out loud, whatever it was we were trying to say. Perhaps neither of us had the words.

I thought about my mother saying you could bring a marriage back from the brink and I wondered if that’s what we were doing: carefully tiptoeing our way back from the cliff edge.

—

Then two things happened.

We got a phone call from the adoption agency saying there had been a mix-up. That photo we received should have gone to Mr. and Mrs. David and Cheryl Smith, not Mr. and Mrs. David and Cherry Smith. We were not to worry, though. We weren’t going to miss out! Our baby, a boy, was only six months old, and a younger baby was always preferable, obviously, and this was an absolutely gorgeous little fellow. A new photo was on its way to us. “I just can’t believe how similar your names are,” said the woman on the phone. “What are the chances?”

I hope you now understand why, when I attended a team-building lunch at the Wok n’ Roll Chinese restaurant the very day after we’d got the news about our baby no longer being our baby and a colleague referred to me as “Cheryl,” I felt compelled to throw a spring roll at him. I am not proud of that moment, but I don’t regret it.

My boss suggested I leave work early as I was obviously “not myself.”

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had not thrown that spring roll, if I’d felt the urge in my fingertips but resisted it, and if I therefore had not come home much earlier than expected and seen David and Stella deep in conversation on the stairs outside our apartment.

There was nothing unusual about this. They both worked irregular hours at the same hospital and belonged to the same dive club. They were friends. Men and women can be friends, colleagues, flatmates or dive buddies without feeling the need to have sex! Of course they can.

And yet.

They were only talking. Not touching. Not standing inappropriately close. They were doing nothing wrong.

But I stopped and watched for a while, and I knew.

I can’t tell you exactly how I knew.

Sometimes you just do. Even if you have the intuition of a potato.