The Amateur Science of Love (14 page)

Massaging is best done first with the fingertips. My fingertips had to stroke both sides of Tilda’s fingers. I then pushed my palm over her knuckles, her wrist, forearm, elbow. Heavier stroking the further up the arm I got, forcing the fluid towards her shoulder, and up and over her shoulder to disperse it behind her ribcage. I stood in front of her and she sat elevating her arm for my cradling. Someone observing from a distance might have thought I was planing timber, given my action.

I used my left palm for starters until it tired. Then switched to my right hand and planed in long flourishes—a hundred strokes. A minute’s break. A hundred more. The swelling was not always easy to shift. It was a stubborn liquid, thick and treacly. I could feel it squash and ripple under my touch. In between strokes it flooded back in and flattened out under Tilda’s skin as if attempting to avoid me. Liquid can’t think but it can harden into pea-sized lumps, form a row of lump peas that grow up overnight and refuse to leave the next day. Sometimes it took two weeks of stroking—once in the morning, once at night—until I hit the sweet spot of weakness and the peas burst like inner blisters.

In between my stroking Tilda performed her own massages, her right arm aloft over her head, left palm sweeping along it. Roff said the more massaging, the better. She took that as an instruction to do it always. He prescribed she wear a special medical sleeve, elasticised and matched to tone with her skin pinks. It came with a gauntlet to keep pressure tight around her fingers. ‘A gauntlet,’ she grinned. She liked the soldier sound of gauntlet, the warrior implications: what could be more suitable for her elephant war!

Before and after stroking I always touched wood that all her fingers had so far remained fingers, had not turned to toes on her. She added bandages to the ritual for extra pressure after massaging: small bandages for her fingers, bigger hand ones, large crepe rolls for her arm. She practised binding herself without needing my help. A mummy look was preferable to an elephant, she said. She never wore the look outside. The sleeve, yes. But not the mummy. Only I bore witness to it in the privacy of our home.

Bandaging through the night became essential when Tilda measured that her arm was 4 centimetres wider one morning. ‘You don’t mind sleeping next to this, do you?’ she asked.

I said I didn’t mind at all. She said we could swap sides in bed if the mummy was an obstacle. She meant an obstacle to my comfort in sleeping, but an obstacle to congressing was also implied.

I said, ‘So what if it is an obstacle? Your arm is more important.’ It astounded me that she could think I’d want to congress with the mummy present. Couldn’t she look in the mirror and judge objectively herself? The wad of that arm was an ugly impediment. I never let on, of course. I was blank-faced discreet. Not even the advice of vodka, too much of it of an evening, got me cruel enough to make elephant jibes. I kept them under my breath.

What a relief when the wad—it must have weighed 10 kilos fully trussed—whacked me one night and made my nose bleed as Tilda stretched out in her dreams. ‘It was an accident, sweetheart. Sorry.’ She petted my forehead and gave her hankie for my blood. I overacted the extent of the pain to make her apologise more and admit that the arm was a hideous and dangerous weapon. I then said, ‘No, it’s not hideous,’ but that was just to have her contradict me and curse the wad.

‘You shouldn’t be in the same bed as me,’ she said.

‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s not. I’ve just hurt you. People will think I did it deliberately.’

‘It’s nothing.’

Tilda suggested that from now on I sleep in the futon room, for my own safety. To think of it as a practical measure until her swelling issue was resolved.

Okay, I relented, not so fast as to seem pleased. I blew my nose to string out another trickle of bleeding snot.

It was quite something to get into a bed alone after such a long time. A true sanctuary, as a bed should be. Not just the extra space but the solitude. No expectation to kiss or have to caress or worse. Between the elephant and the massaging, the hair-counting and weedkiller, I had lost desire for Tilda’s body. That’s natural, isn’t it? I did not want intimate contact. Even a servicing did not tempt me.

My massage duty has continued from that time till now—two sessions a day. There are no oils involved: oils dull the friction. There must be heat from the contact of skin on skin; it helps the elephant juices flow more freely; the veins and muscles yield like reeds in a current. I must have a knack for it, massaging, so Tilda always reckoned. I’ve done the arm a power of good. Since my first goes at it the swelling has mostly been contained. Just 1 centimetre refuses to budge at the wrist; and where the gauntlet stops mitten-like above the fingernails there is a tendency for inflammation, especially in hot weather. It has stabilised, she says. Not elephant anymore, just hefty human.

To be honest, if I didn’t massage I doubt there’d be much difference. I do it anyway. Tilda calls it ‘precautionary’. I think of it as habit. It’s the most physical contact we have. It has often crossed my mind as being a form of substitute congressing for her: she closes her eyes as if in ecstasy.

For me it’s the opposite. I tend to bow my head and swallow a lot to keep down nausea. Massaging the dry way we do creates a noise like static as our chafing skins warm up. I’ve worn earplugs in the past—bits of cottonwool pushed in deep so Tilda wouldn’t see them—but they make the static switch to a deeper register, a distorted humming. I hear it in my insides; my stomach squirms like a bout of motion sickness. I stroke quicker these days to get the session finished.

It never helped the nausea to have an image repeatedly circulate in my head. An irrational one that I was sure had no firm basis in science, but was awfully convincing: my nausea was the direct result of Tilda’s cancer or lymphoedema exiting her body and, via the massage connection, trying to penetrate mine. The static was the push and pull of my immune system mounting a defence. It was too late for defences, I was certain some days. I felt so unwell I believed a dark quantity must surely have got in.

Before massaging I have touched wood in so many sets of threes I’ve believed calluses might form on my hands doing it, ones so tough it would be impossible for infection to drill through.

My new futon sanctuary got my mind ticking along clearly and helped my swagger return. Being alone in bed can do that for you. You are less reminded that you share your life with someone. It sharpens your resourcefulness, your self-reliance. I would lie in my sanctuary, scheming. I was making plans that did not include Tilda. I had decided to activate my backstop. I had decided it was time to ring my father. It was time to tell him, ‘Norm, I’m coming home.’

I wouldn’t say I was estranged from my parents. I had written three or four letters, all neatly typed to look professional, like I was knuckling down to grasp basic technology. I left out details that might give the wrong impression: my pitiful pay cheque, for instance; that I lived among mouse plagues. Scintilla was a thriving agricultural Eden by my telling. I was
benefiting from observing another culture and other farming methods.

I hardly mentioned Tilda. When I did mention her I used the term
my lady friend
rather than name her. Backstop logic. They wouldn’t worry they were losing a son to some woman in a foreign land. They wouldn’t get it into their heads to fly out and inspect her like marital livestock. I wrote of Tilda’s cancer in a way that big-noted me: I was being a rock to this lady friend until her recovery was certain. The implication was that I wasn’t permanently shackled.

In their replies I could hear Norm dictating his news to my mother: mortality rates for spring lambing had been normal; weekly rainfall for the year had been average; an average number of hay bales was expected in the summer cut; he intended locking up fifty acres to grow winter silage; his Noble Bijou gelding, Stride For Stride, placed third at Otaki, then won at Te Rapa in the wet. The old girl spelt it out in her embroiderly longhand but his serious tone came through predictable and comforting to me. They were letters that kept a polite distance. I wasn’t interrogated, which I took as clever: they didn’t want to push me away with questions and judging.

I rang the morning Tilda popped out to register for Social Security money. Social Security! What other two words make a grown-up feel so fallen? Tilda saw it as her right, given her health. She made it sound like illness had its virtues and rewards. To me welfare money signified failure and indolence. Name me anyone who comes from rural stock who thinks otherwise. Handouts are for bludgers. Tilda was going to take one anyway.

I sat down on the hallway phone stool and composed myself. I had not called them for almost a year and this call would take some swallowing of pride. Yet I convinced myself no swallowing was necessary. It was my Norm I’d be talking to. He’d be so excited I was coming home he’d say, ‘I’m over the moon.’ He’d say, ‘I’ll put champagne on ice.’ I couldn’t wait to hear the emotion in his voice, his manly effort of holding back tears. Me and him and our thousand acres.

‘Son,’ Norm said. It was him doing the swallowing. ‘Son. Colin. How can I put this? Your mother and I have decided to sell up. We’ve come to the conclusion it’s time to retire, take it quiet. Wind down. The worry has been killing us.’

‘Worry? What’s the worry? I want to come home.’ I presumed by
worry
they meant worrying about me. ‘Aren’t you excited?’

‘Son, the last few years have worried us sick and dealt us some blows.’ He swallowed loudly, a choking wet squelch. He said, ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

He swallowed again. Sorry for the ’87 stock-market crash. Sorry for listening to his damned accountant. That’s who he blamed for dangling too tempting a carrot in his face. Borrow big and buy shares instead of land and sheep. Build up strong off-farm assets and enjoy tax breaks and dividends. The market soars and a man gets richer than farmers ever are. Pipedreams! Markets soar all right. And markets also collapse. This one did with an almighty thump and brought Norm down with it. Since then he’d spent three years fighting bankruptcy. If he liquidated everything—property, sheep, cows, tractors, fertiliser spreaders, horses—he could clear his debt to zero and have enough cash for a modest townhouse, a nice porch to rock a chair on.

‘We didn’t want to worry you with it. I thought it could be resolved.’ He swallowed again and said another sorry. Said it pleadingly, as if the word was really his hand and he wanted me to hold it and forgive him his folly. ‘My ticker’s been playing up with all the pressure of juggling the finances. But you yourself are fine? You yourself are okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the main thing. You’re in a good job going by what you’ve written to us. You sound settled, you with your lady friend and all. Is she over her troubles? Seems like you’ve taken on quite a responsibility. I’m proud of you for that, son.’

He was waiting for a response from me. I didn’t give him one.

He said, ‘You were never much interested in running the place anyway. Farming wasn’t your go. You had greener pastures. It’s no skin off your nose, then.’

My mother could not come to the phone. Norm said, ‘She likes to bend the elbow in the mornings these days. To be frank, I figure if it makes her happy, why stop her?’

I said, ‘Fair enough.’ I could not bear to hear him anymore. I said, ‘Fair enough. No worries,’ without parting my teeth. I said it with hate and love and anger. I was never one for talking back to him. He deserved talking back to now, I was sure of that. I had in me a savage talking-back, but the pattern was too ingrained. ‘It is skin off my nose. But not a lot of skin,’ was all I said. ‘You’re right, I’m doing well. I’ve landed on my feet. In fact, I have to go. I’m up to my ears in work.’

He hoped I would write to him regularly, and that we’d talk again soon.

‘Sure. No worries.’

He thanked me for taking the bad news so well.

‘Sure. No worries.’

Write regularly? Talk again soon? Write nothing, say nothing was the punishment he deserved. I vowed it with all the fury of unsaid words.

If you bawl and sob when you are alone, no audience of others, then you mean it. It’s not a performance. The tears have welled up in your humid head and need a way out. It’s like looking underwater. A breeze of light brings flies through the window. They want to nest in your hair and drink from your nose, and you let them. Enough alcohol injects a general deadening but it’s only short-term. You are senile with headaches and slow eyesight afterwards.

They say when parents die we are left as orphans. No matter how old we are, that’s our loneliest. When they go broke—I can attest to this—you are loneliest too. The home that founded you is over. You are lost, fixed to nothing. You are frightened and shambling. You cry. I lay in that state in the futon sanctuary.

It could fix anything, this sanctuary, with a solitary sleep and a stretch and a yawn. Not this time. By morning it was as if my body was trying to burst. My legs had turned a puce colour. From the kneecap down, like a burn on my shins, lumps hard as pebbles appeared. Four skin-marbles so sore the slightest air seemed to punch them.

My feet had gone blue-purple. I hadn’t been woken by the usual cranky crows and pigeons in the spouting—it was pain that stabbed me awake. I sat up intending to swing my legs to the floor and stand but my legs had too much extra weight. They were not my legs, they were lead legs with lumps and a bloated surface. My feet were like kitchen gloves when you blow into them. The ankles no longer showed knobby bones but were flesh-balloons in the blue-purple colour, turning kindling-red in patches. My shins too.

I pinched and rubbed my thigh skin. It felt normal and painless. Whatever was happening to me stopped just short of my kneecaps. The skin there had formed a powdery layer—I could lean forward and with a puff make my skin go
puff
. Beneath this powder my flesh was splitting and peeling like sunburn. There were hundreds of splits going longways and crossways between the lumps, some exposing the moist quick.

I slid off the futon and eased myself to the floor. As soon as my legs were no longer horizontal, fire-blood filled them and I lost my breath from the agony. I dragged myself up into the lying position, flat as I could to make the blood subside. ‘Tilda,’ I yelled. ‘Tilda!’ I yelled ‘fuck off’ to flies parking on my sticky pain. ‘Tilda!’

Naturally I diagnosed the massaging as the cause. Never mind good sense, my massaging of Tilda was contagious after all. I wanted to accuse her there and then as she rushed to my calling but I had no breath for forming sentences.

She bent over my lower half and gasped
Jesus
.

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t.’ I waved to her not to breathe so hard. The air she spoke with was too heavy on my skin.

She diagnosed spiders somewhere in the bedding. It had to be a white-tail. If not, bull ants or centipedes. She had bare feet and jigged her dislike of creepy crawlies as if they were mounting her toes. She demanded I allow her to reach over and around me to check in the sheets and blankets, lift the pillow. She picked up one of my sneakers, shook it upside down in case of insect infestation and grasped it as a killing weapon.

It was no more spiders than Tilda’s fluids leaking in me. It was rheumatoid arthritis, and those lumps and flaming skin were a complication called
erythema nodosum
, explained Dr Philpott, kneeling by the futon and
mmming
his fascination at my ailment. ‘Quite a rare condition, and boy have you got a doozy of an outbreak.’

‘I’m only twenty-seven. Arthritis is for old people.’

‘No, no, no,’ he corrected me, pricking my artery for a blood sample. ‘We inherit these things. It’s in our genes. All we need are triggers. Has something happened to trigger this in you?’

‘Maybe,’ I replied, and mumbled ‘family worries’. I left it vague as that. ‘Usual trouble, type of thing.’

I was ashamed I was fathered by a bankrupt. I had no backstop left—my father had made me a bankrupt too.
Estranged
. From then on I used that word to eliminate the subject of parents from my life. I used it with a casual shrug, dropping my chin to signal weariness.
Estranged
and shrugs go well together. People think: Ah yes, the usual family tensions. No further explanation required.

Now I am ashamed to have been ashamed.