Sydney's Song (31 page)

Many staff and students are curious about me and Australia—
asking me direct questions. Not nosily or rudely, but in a very open and friendly way, showing interest and sympathy. So Pete, where are the bozos? I won't believe in any stereotyping now.

“How's the prince today?” Rowe, a Harvard resident with pretty grey eyes who loves to chat with me, asks every morning. Rowe studied medicine after her failed CPR attempt to revive her dying little brother.

“Looks fine, thank you. But you better make sure.”

“Isn't he gorgeous,” she always says. “I fall in love with him more and more each day. Imagine if he could talk!”

This morning my love, after all her teasing talk while checking on you, she looked into my eyes for a very long time.

“Imagine if he could talk… I think I understand… I think I can see just how it was between you two.” And she patted my arm as tears brimmed up my eyes.

Come back Pete. Oh come back my love…

Nobody would honour me except the honourable, I told myself.During the time when my love needed me, I was there for him.

Yet being in the same room with Pete's condescending family was heartbreaking. One evening I could not bear it and silently left. I walked on the hospital streets, around massive hospital buildings, hugging my pain to myself.

God how I love Pete!

I walked and walked. Spending most of my time in Pete's sick room, I did not get to know Boston much. The
feel
of Boston was oddly different from the feel of Sydney. Vegetation—different trees.People—different racial composition. Same layout, though. It sprawled from the water's edge on the east to the lands beyond. They had this Charles River with several bridges just as we had the Parramatta River. Sometimes I sat by the water's edge, endlessly drawing. I took pictures of lots of things too. I always had my camera with me.

Their parks were much like ours, except we had more. Their historic parts had elegant colonial-style buildings much like early Sydney, except they had more. The modern parts of the city were like ours, complete with ugly peak-hour traffic just like ours. They whinged about politicians and local issues just as we did.

Their public transport was much better though. Their subways, trains, and endless buses were very reliable, frequent and way cheaper. Except ours were cleaner.

A car stopped nearby. Pete's tall sister came out, still wearing her smart business suit from work. Her big, luxurious brown hair shone in the street light. And how the shape of her eyes resembled Pete's!Except the expression. Pete had never ever looked at me with disdain.

“Go back home,” she ordered without preamble. “You're wastin'your time.”

I stood where I was on the
footpath
, shaking my head in silence.

“Pete doesn't need you. It isn't even Pete. That body there is only a shell!”

It hurt like hell when people gave up on my beloved. (
“Don't tell
me it's not worth fighting for…
”) What if
you
were the one who became disabled? How would you like it if your love turned their back on you? How would you feel? Think it will never happen to you? You have a guarantee? My love had been a perfectly strong man before all this.

“Pete will return.”

“The doctors say he's
not
gonna come back.
They
should know.

They've dealt with hundreds of cases. They're very familiar with the outcome.” She spoke in exasperation. “What're you gonna do with your life? You're young. Get over it. Get over him. Go home where you've come from. Don't waste your life.”

Get over him? Instead of going downhill, my affection for Pete had grown heaps stronger. In fact, earlier I had not even known that a love this profound could exist. That anyone
could
love so deeply. Or that I had it in me. But now I knew.

Love was not only a feeling. It was also an intense drive to act!When I cared for someone a great deal, I could not just claim that I felt so while I did nothing. There was no way I could just stand watching, let alone watch from far, far away.

“Pete was always there for me when I needed him. I'm not about to abandon him now.”

“You don't get it,” she declared snidely. “He doesn't need you.What has your visit done for him? See any improvement?”

I looked down at my shoes. My shoe laces were fascinating indeed.

“Your stay is pointless! For over two months you've wasted your time and money. Isn't that enough? He doesn't know what's going on. And it's not about to improve! Sooner or later.” She desperately tried to drum her point home. “It's true his wounds will heal. But that's all. You aren't gonna spend your days minding someone who doesn't even recognize you, are you?”

“But he does! He looked at me once. He'll do it again.”

“Do you know how pathetic that sounds?” she asked pityingly.“No? Go back home. Get over it! You're too young to cope with all this mess. Frankly, you look so wrung-out and miserable. Because you
are
. Go do somethin' for yourself for once.”

But the thought of going home was absolutely horrendous. To someday look back, haunted. Remembering Pete as my doomed love.No!
Nooo!

Pete was my life. Without him I would never be whole.

Eve stomped back to her car shaking her head. At the last moment she whirled around and opened the door,

“Get in. I'll give you a lift home.”

“No, thank you. I mean to return to the hospital. Pete needs a massage before his sleep.”

“He's not gonna die missing one massage. You look awful. Go home and rest. I'll take you. Do you know Boston isn't safe to walk alone at night? No? The way you walk, you aren't tuned in to what's going on. You were oblivious of those kids up there catcalling you.Did you even hear them?”

I blinked.

“Do you even follow the local news?” she insisted. “Get in.”

I had taken a bus instead of riding my bike in the rain this morning.I thought of how Pete used to worry about my safety even when he agreed that Sydney was a very safe city. Apparently I was not supposed to feel safe here. Reluctantly, I complied.

“How long have you known Pete?” she asked, turning to face me.

Her husband was driving. On the
wrong
side of the road, like everyone else.

“Since November.”

“'S that all? And did you fall into bed straight away?”

“No!”

“Since when have you been together?”

“The new year.”

“And you'll throw your life away for someone you hardly know?”

“I know Pete very well. We know each other
deeply
.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Did you know that he loved his wife? Did you know that he was mad about her? He chased her for three years! He loved her
deeply
,”she mocked me. “Did you know that if
you
had stayed away, chances were they'd get back together? A marriage is sacred, you know. I don't have a problem with you but you upset Mom so much, and I don't like seeing her upset.

“And did you know that Pete had gone out with his wife for three years before they married? And you—you've gone out with him only for a little more than a month and you want to devote your whole life to him? A sick, nonsensical him, at that.

“Get real.

“You're young so you think your love is the world. It'll fade, you know. Especially with the added burden of his medical condition. He
will
be a vegetable for life. Can't you get that?”

“Please… I've heard all that before. But I wouldn't be able to live with myself should I leave him. I'll stay.”

I hated being 18. I hated it that people associated being young with being dumb. Why was I blamed for staunchly looking after the man I loved? Would we have to be married first before people believed that he was important to me? Yeah, I suspected married couples got more respect.

“How do you finance this?” Eve looked up when the car pulled to a stop near my building. “You have this kind of money?”

I sealed my lips tight.

Eve plopped down by my side one evening and taunted, “Pete worshipped his wife, you know.”

I had sauntered to the visitor lounge after my dinner companions, Nurse Bingham and Sister McNeil, returned to duty. Now, Eve liked to antagonise me for no reason and I was so determined not to let her have the upper hand.

“Don't you sound like a broken record,” I dismissed her jibe.Sipping my drink, I leaned back comfortably.

“He was so in love with her. He used to buy her exotic flowers…expensive perfumes… sexy lingerie…” She persisted in trying to rub salt into the wound. “He showered her with gifts
all
the time.”

“This was all in the forgotten past.” The new Pete gave me
heartfelt
and
thoughtful
gifts. I would not trade my jade ring for anything, and not because it was his only non budget-conscious present.
Safety, kindness, eternity…
It was true the jade itself did not have the power to keep me safe, but that he cared was a sentiment I appreciated. “Pete says he's never experienced a connection as deep as ours with anyone before.”

She laughed out loud.

“How naïve you are! Guys would say anything to get into your panties.”

“No. You're so wrong. Pete's never tried to—, to—, well, we haven't—you know. He says he'll wait for me to grow up and be ready into jump to the abyss. He wants me to marry him one day.”

“Really? You haven't slept together?”

“That's right. He doesn't want me to make an important decision until I'm truly comfortable with it.”

“And you an Australian?”

”
So
?” I bristled. “What's being an Australian got to do with this?”

“But your schools give you condoms in your first week in high school. They openly teach tweens on how not to get knocked up.Girls over there are quietly immunized against herpes and other contagious sexual diseases, at school, at 12-years old. I know all of this for a fact, you know.”

“They're just our government's methods to minimise the risks; to lower the health costs for those who choose to be sexually active.‘Cause in Australia the government has the obligation to provide free health care.”

“But it drives very young kids to experience sex early! That means you Aussie girls are worldly!”

“Not worldly. You can have knowledge about things that you aren't involved in.” Man, was she successful in drawing me into a skirmish after all? “But not all kids—or grownups—want to be, well, worldly.Unlike in some other countries, Aussie mums have yet to consider birth-control pills as necessary breakfast items for their tweens. Just like here. People there are the same as the people here.”

I was heaps annoyed. I didn't like anyone bashing my dear countrymen and women. But I came from a land where, according to the prevailing opinion among our young generation, religion was a repulsive word. My friends gave pressies at Christmas, but hardly any were churchie and many were atheists. While many adult atheists were thinkers of impeccable morals, my young friends only wanted freedom. To most of them abstinence was for the uncool and narrow-minded.

So how was I to defend the rampant underage sex at home now?They were facts, for God's sake.

It rankled. I was not overjoyed. Friends with liberated lifestyles at home always demanded acceptance of their unbridled, liberated ways while they themselves were so judgemental. Refusing to be open minded about those who weren't like them, they branded me backward for living my life the way I felt comfortable with. I remembered the snickering. Sydney, the weird, outdated girl who did not drink or smoke or sleep with boys. Or with girls for that matter.

At home I had shrugged it off as a trifling annoyance. Nobody would think badly of me except the low people, right? Why would I lose sleep over this. Whatever floated your boat. No worries.

But here—here was Eve bagging
my
people. Thoroughly irked, I hit back, “You can't generalise that Aussie girls are all easy. Look around. You have more underage pregnancies here because kids aren't taught to be careful.”

“Ouch. I asked for it, didn't I?” she conceded. But she wasn't done goading me. Her active mind promptly thought up another taunt,“Now, what if Pete will never recognize you again? Who'll be there for you?”

“My dog?”

“You're a smart ass.”

“How else do you expect me to answer that?”

“Obstinate!” But she was smiling broadly. “Sydney, I think I like you. I mean it. But I can't get it. What's so special about a sick man who can't even respond to you? Considering your short time with Pete, how come you have this stubborn devotion? You haven't even known that level of intimacy. Was he really that wonderful?”