Page 62 of The Mother-in-Law

‘I didn’t want to tell you until I had more information, but . . . after what happened . . . it’s my fault what happened to Harriet. I should never have agreed to hold her.’

My throat is dry. I try to swallow but there’s nothing there. I stare at the side of Tom’s face. His large, craggy face.

‘I’d like you to come with me to my appointment tomorrow.’

‘Of courseI’ll come. I wish I had been there for all your appointments.’

‘I know you do,’ he says and he lets go of the steering wheel and lays one hand, palm up, in my lap. We sit like that in the car for nearly an hour, staring at the windscreen.

The next day Tom and I go to the neurologist’s rooms. We enter the waiting room, announce our arrival and take our seats. In the space beside me, a man sits in a wheelchair, head lolling, his chin supported by a white pad, and a purple travel pillow horseshoeing his neck. He is, at a glance, at least ten years younger than Tom. The woman beside him, his wife presumably, flicks through a magazine, glancing up at him every so often and smiling, or leaning forward with a tissue to wipe the corner of his mouth. Even after the lady sees me looking, I’m unable to look away.

‘Tom Goodwin?’ says the doctor.

‘Yes,’ Tom says.

I keep looking at the woman. She gives me a slight frown but then her gaze slithers to Tom and understanding dawns. She gives me a small, almost indistinct nod.

‘Diana? Are you coming?’

‘Oh . . . yes.’ I break my gaze with the woman and Tom and I walk into the room.

I drive home. It is one of only a handful of times I’ve driven while Tom is in the car. Most times have been when he has had too much to drink, but there have been a couple of other times. Once, when we were newly married and on a road trip to visit Tom’s cousin in Bright in the Victorian countryside. Ollie was in the backseat of the car, just a toddler, and Tom was driving far too fast for my liking so I demanded he slow down. Finally he pulled over onto the dusty side of the road, wrenched up the handbrake and said: ‘Fine. If you never want to get there,youdrive.’ He could be dreadfully hot-headed, Tom. I took the wheel, and despite Tom’s lack of faith, we did make it there and in good time. He muttered and moaned about it for an hour or so, then calmed down like he always does. By the time we arrived we were chuckling about it. I wonder if, soon, the rest of my memories of Tom will be catalogued like this. Memories of him as a father, memories of him as a grandfather. Memories of fights, memories of joy. All of them memories, because he is gone.

‘When we get home I’ll make enquiries about a second opinion,’ I say, my voice full of authority. And I will get a second opinion, a third one too. We’ll go through the process and exhaust all the avenues. But in the end, Tom will die, somehow I know this. He won’t be in his nineties, he won’t even be in his seventies. He will die and I will have to live.

‘When we get home,’ Tom replies, ‘I want to go to bed.’

We pull to a stop at a red traffic light and I turn to look at him properly. His eyes are shiny, the bottom lid heavy, threatening to spill. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’ll go to bed.’

The tears spill as I pull out of the intersection. I leave him to it, his own personal grieving process. He doesn’t need me telling him everything will be okay when we both know it won’t. Instead I give his hand a firm squeeze. My role is clear to me now. I will be the strong one. I’ll be good at this. I am aware of my limitations. I’m not warm, I’m not especially kind. But I can be strong. I can allow Tom to slip away knowing I will be all right. This, I can give him.

At home, Tom goes right upstairs. I do too, but while he heads for the bedroom, I tell him I need a quick shower. In the bathroom I set the shower running and I strip off my clothes and I stand under the stream of water and cry. I cry until I don’t know which is water and which is tears.

I cry until I’m dry.

By the time I get out of the shower, Tom is in bed. At first I think he is asleep, but as soon as I crawl in beside him, his eyes open.

‘How are you going to live without me?’ he says.

We both chuckle, even as a tear slides from the corner of Tom’s eye.

‘I won’t,’ I say.

‘You might have to, Di.’

‘That’s what you think,’ I say, and then he reaches for me and we don’t talk any more.

1971 . . .

When Ollie was four months old, I got a job at the Star Theatre in Yarraville. The Star was unusually opulent for the area and was packed every Saturday night. Unique to the cinema was the pram room, where babies in their prams were lined up and given a number; if a baby started crying, its number was flashed on the screen and its mother would come and collect it. Ollie was one of those babies.

Like Meredith said, I figured out how to get a job and look after Ollie at the same time. I was surprised how good it felt to be able to do that. I wasn’t completely self-sufficient—I didn’t pay rent at Meredith’s and I still slept in her shed—but I started to contribute toward bills and food. I worked Tuesday and Saturday nights to begin with. Tuesdays were busy but Saturdays were nearly always fully booked, all one thousand seats. I roamed between the ticket box and the candy bar as the foyer swelled with people. I’d been to the Star before, as an attendee, but there was a different buzz to working there. I liked it better. I felt like I was behind the scenes of a show, or had a backstage pass to a concert. I saw people I knew from time to time, but they never saw me. I existed in a different world to them. Sometimes they looked directly at me, but they never saw me.

I raced around the busy theatre, directing people in with a flashlight, serving popcorn. Once everyone was seated inside, I’d often go to the pram area and look at the babies, all lined up. Seeing them, it was hard not to think about the babies of the girls at Orchard House. They would have been lined up like this in the hospital nursery before they were taken home by someone else. None of the girls thought they had a choice. I wished I could go back and tell them they did.

During the movie, if I heard a baby cry, I’d try to settle them for a few minutes before I’d run their number up to the screening room to flash over the screen. Nine times out of ten, I did settle them. Ollie always slept, even then my simple, content boy.

I was watching over the babies one night when a young man came out of the cinema twenty minutes after the film started. I made my way to the candy bar where he was headed.