Under My Skin (23 page)

‘You will need to leave here at seven,’ the nurse says. ‘The traffic will be bad.’

‘Will I be able to wear my own clothes?’ she asks again. Juna is like a child who had left her coat at school.

‘The traffic will be terrible,’ the nurse says, ‘and your clothes won’t make any difference to that.’ And here she smiles and it is the smile of an angel with crooked teeth, but an angel. We both look up at her. We stare her out of it. Needing answers. Needing hope.

‘Well, thank you,’ Juna says and now she is smiling up at her. ‘Thank you for bringing some humour to the situation.’

And the nurse is lit up then. She likes my grandmother’s weathered face and her nice old-fashioned charm.

Juna tells me about being on the ward with three other old women.

‘Those inhalers – you might as well have a lawnmower in the room with you,’ she says. ‘And there was a woman in the bed opposite… never took her eyes off me… not once… even when she had the oxygen mask on… it was very provocative.’

‘Will I be able to go home?’ she asks when the nurse comes back again. And the nurse sighs, but in a good-natured way.

‘I’m in the wrong job,’ she says kindly. ‘I can’t give you definite answers to anything. But I know you want to go home. I’m aware of your desires – and everyone’s are the
same. Everyone wants to go home,’ she says and with this she leaves, probably going to say the same kind words to the elderly lady in the room across the hall.

For a minute or two Juna has hope and today her mind is very clear. She gets up to walk around and she is almost light on her feet.

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘At least there is something happening. I’ll be ready to leave at seven and I’ll able to put my own skirt back on again.’

Her clothes – the cardigan I bought her at Christmas – her cream pleated skirt – her blue blouse – her shoes – have become armour. Cotton and wool that in the brief seconds after she puts them on, make her believe she can be well again.

When the nurse comes back it is dark and I am curled up beside Juna on her bed. I don’t want to leave her on her own tonight and so I stay and know she will wake up with something to look at other than the wooden crucifix on the wall.

I do not know how to tell her that I love her and the air is thick with it. I would like to say ‘Thank you’ to her, for everything, and yet I can’t. I wish I could just say it to her now or at least open the window and let it out. When someone is eighty-four and not feeling brilliant, it’s time to stop kidding around.

Email to Hope Swann 22 June 3.02 p.m.

From Matilda Vaughan

Re: Men.

Hope,

I know it feels like you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s
my whole point. None of us know what we’re doing. Love is irrational. It’s a yearning. An ache.

That’s what love is like, Hope… it’s a runaway train… and we’re on it.
Matilda.

We drink wine from paper cups. We do not talk after the deed is done. There is nothing to say. We are not like normal lovers and we do not need to hear each other’s stories now. He does not need to tell me about his old girlfriends and how and why they broke his heart. And I do not need to tell him about my last boyfriend and besides there was only ever one. We are quiet. We are discreet. After this I will go home to the flat in Bray. And Jonathan will call Nina and go back to the office and work late.

Her breath becomes weaker and I am at her side. Even a small signal of weakness is frightening and the great white tornado is losing strength. It is as if the house and all the trees around it are bending and, one by one, they begin to crack and break. The doctors come in. The nurses smile kindly. They say things like ‘She’s more comfortable now’. In the middle of the night she sits bolt upright and her eyes are bright and clear. She was young once like me. She fell in love and probably made a fool of herself over some stupid guy. Why can’t things stay the way they are and where do dead people go? She knows me in that last hour. Just when she sat up in bed. I lie on the bed beside her, her hand in mine. Her blue veins laced underneath her skin. Her breath rattling, like a great old train.

The sun begins to come up at 4.15 and it fills the hospital room with a pale orange and pink glow. It moves upwards on
the white wall, up and up until it sits like a coloured cloud over the bed. ‘It is the start of another perfect June day,’ I tell her and I want her to wake up and look at the light.

I keep my arms around her and I lie there looking up at this strange coloured cloud. The nurse comes in and lifts her wrist gently. She looks at us without speaking and then she closes the blinds. All the usual blood pressure checks are not necessary and there is no need for food and water now.

Today Juna is free from all of that. She has no need for material things. She does not need baby food and vitamins to keep her alive. Juna is free and it’s time, but I lie here not able to bear it, and know that for the first time, she will not be a part of a clear June day.

The ashes are scattered over the green hill in the lower meadow. I try to see Juna’s face and imagine her smile and her laugh. I wonder where she is. There are things I wanted to ask her before she died but I was afraid. I wanted to ask if she could come back in some little way and tell me what it is like. If there are angels and if there is any God and if my brother Daniel is there and if he is as happy now as he was in his life. I would like her to check in on my pappy too and tell me that he’s happy and smiling there. I want to believe in something. More than anything I want to believe in something other than a man I meet in a square room with four white walls.

Yesterday I asked Doreen if she would measure me because I feel as if I’m getting smaller now.

Most of all I want to ask Juna if she can see Larry anywhere because for the first time ever I really don’t know where he’s gone. I try to talk to her about it and I ask her if she can stand
up on the clouds with a giant white telescope and just try to spot him on Planet Earth. I imagine he would be a bright red spot moving silently like a plane on a long-distance flight. I ask these questions but there is no answer, not from the sky or the clouds or the waving beech trees. When the casket opens the ashes are swept away. A life that was full and plenty. One grey puff and Juna is gone.

Mrs Kirk is standing at the door. She has turned the key and has walked up the two flights of stairs. She turns the handle and taps on the door jamb. Nina is wearing expensive perfume and she is tall and beautiful and polite.

Jonathan is stretched out on the couch. He is not wearing a shirt but he is reading his newspaper and looking very relaxed. I am in the bathroom and I am looking through a crack in the door.

Jonathan looks at her and he is very quiet and calm.

‘Johnny,’ she says, and he says, ‘Hello, darling.’

She is carrying a Burberry clutch and her hair is shiny and black. She looks like she goes to the gym every day and in my mind I see her lifting weights and then lifting me up and throwing me against a wall. She is the kind of woman who could leave a lot of bruises or maybe drown me in a barrel.

‘Who is it this time?’ she asks and she walks into the room and looks around. Jonathan does not speak. Instead he shakes his head and smiles.

The bed is not made. It never is. We do not bother to change the sheets. They are twisted and turned and the pillows have fallen on the floor. There are empty wine bottles in the kitchen and the floor is covered in paper cups and take-out bags. I am wondering if I could step out into the room and
reason with her. Just introduce myself and say ‘Hello’. And then there is the sound of glass breaking and she has picked up an empty wine bottle and flung it across the room.

‘Sweetheart,’ Johnny says, ‘be reasonable…’ and then, ‘She means nothing to me,’ and I step back from the bathroom door and when I turn, I see the sink is full of flowers – tulips, delphiniums and roses – that he brought here for me. The curtain flaps a little in the wind and the tiles are gleaming white.

But Mrs Kirk is screaming at him now and a chair goes flying across the room and then she picks up one of the wooden elephants – the papa elephant, I think – and she aims it at his head.

She is not someone who would welcome a friendly conversation. There is a loud crash, a thud, and Jonathan is behind the couch. I give up the idea of reasoning with her and do what any sensible person would do. I find the open window and begin to climb down the fire escape instead.

Doreen is on the couch in the flat. She is eating a pizza and watching a keep-fit video on the TV. I am soaked from the rain and the heel has broken on my shoe.

‘Let me guess,’ she says after a minute. ‘You were chased by a dog.’

‘Mrs Kirk,’ I tell her, and she opens her mouth and turns and stares.

‘What happened?’

‘I didn’t wait to find out.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Stronger than me.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She threw an elephant at Jonathan.’

‘Wow,’ Doreen says. ‘She
is
strong.’