The Feel of Steel (20 page)

Charlie's Match

W
hen we got out of the car at Keysborough ovals, the clouds were low and inky, the cold turf very green. A woman clutching a swaddled infant to her chest ran past us, shouting hoarsely at a herd of smallish boys who thundered by at an angle. A ball shot out from among their legs and they flung themselves after it. A bell clanged in a stand of dark pines and a groan went up: ‘Draw!'

This was of no interest to us. My brother's eldest boy was playing centre half forward in the Under-Twelves' Grand Final: all we wanted to see was him. He was sequestered in the rooms. My father was coming, escorted by one of my ex-husbands. My brother's ex-wife would also be present. His new partner removed herself to a discreet spot near the scoreboard. Rain began to sprinkle.

My nephew's team ran on. He was number one, dark hair, tight shorts. The bell rang but the play was so far away that I couldn't pick him out. My brother confidently roared out names and encouragements. My ex-husband wandered up. My father, coatless, stood with his back pressed against the trunk of a spindly eucalypt. I was losing concentration.

A woman called out my name. It was my brother's ex-wife. We kissed; our glasses clashed. She pointed out her son, my nephew, near the goal: ‘See him? Standing despondently?' We uttered nervous laughs, and admired his classic footballer's thighs: long and smooth but sort of chunky.

A surge on the field brought the play close to our spot on the unfenced boundary. We jumped aside – and there was my nephew, bursting out of the pack, right in front of me. I could practically hear him breathing. He snatched the ball and, running in a smooth inward curve, sank his boot into it and sent it sailing over the mess of scrambling boys. I saw his face as he kicked: still, dark and focused. At that moment I forgot about family history and entered football. By half-time our boy had kicked two goals. Our team was ahead.

I ran with the crowd to the rooms. Rain hammered briefly on the roof. This close I could see the freshness of the boys' faces, how frighteningly young they were. My nephew was crouched on the end of the bench, his legs smeared with mud, his forearms across his knees. At home he was a quiet, thoughtful boy. Now, glistening with liniment, he was unreachable, heroic, a different being.

‘Forget the first half,' said the coach. ‘That's over. Forget the score. Pretend you're just starting. You've got to be in front! And I can't hear you talking out there! You got to talk and help! Talk and help!'

The boys' eyes went hard and bright. They leapt to their feet and clattered out of the rooms.

The sun came through and the trees sparkled. But something was slipping. The other team was finding its strength. Even from our distant boundary we could see their long kicks, their marks. By the final quarter our boys had begun to flail and strain. Near us one went down. He lay on his side, stunned, one hand against his temple, unnoticed as the pack trampled away. Far off in the goal square I saw my nephew drop, stagger up and slog on. ‘It's all over, Red Rover,' said a woman with a video camera, and laughed as she turned away.

The bell clanged and everyone dashed on to the ground. While the victors yelled a tuneless anthem, our team milled mutely round their coach. The air was thick with gasping. Parents forced water bottles into the hands of their distracted sons. Several boys were crying.

‘Now,' shouted the coach, ‘we're gonna
shake hands
with these guys.' The circle opened out and became a line. With a formal, manly decency the two panting teams mingled.

But one very small, very slight boy stood still, hands on thighs, bowed over in a curve, and sobbed. His teammates spoke his nickname and touched his heaving shoulders as they passed. Even a boy from the winning team laid an arm across his back and bent down to him
in concern. The child wept on and on, exhausted, overwrought, grief-stricken. At last he straightened up, tears still streaking his face, and limped after the others to the presentation.

Behind the pines shimmered a blurry pastel rainbow that no one saw. A man made speeches. The winners punched the air. Their captain raised his medal and kissed it. The losers clapped bravely. I am a bookworm, brought up among girls. I am not used to this.

Tess Bows Out

T
he blue heeler at my daughter and son-in-law's place is sick.

Last week she had a couple of what they think were strokes, where her legs slid out from under her and she lost control of her bowels and bladder. Since then she's rallied somewhat but my son-in-law is dark round the eyes and very quiet. The old dog lies on her side on the floor, eyes open, breathing fast and shallow. They know she's probably dying, but the thing she dreads most in the world is going to the vet. If she can't cross over on her own, they're going to call a roving vet to bring the lethal hit to the house, rather than drag her against her will to her final moment.

Believing they'll have to make this call before the day is out, they drive her down to the banks of the Maribyrnong for a last outing. When they get home their faces
are puffy. ‘She couldn't walk,' says my daughter, ‘but she lay on the grass and looked around and sniffed the air. We think she liked being there.'

That evening the Western Bulldogs are playing the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba. I'm invited over to watch, but in my anxiety about the heeler I don't make it till half-time. Two couches plus a row of kitchen chairs are packed with Bulldogs fans. They've eaten pasta and are drinking beer.

On the floor at their feet the dog lies on a folded blanket, with her head on a clean white pillow. They've laid alongside her her favourite toy, a metre-long stuffed caterpillar knitted in many colours. The dog's breathing hasn't changed: a steady panting. Her eyes are open. She doesn't seem to be in pain. She looks at me when I crouch down to greet her, but soon her gaze slides past me and out into the ether of dying.

The third quarter starts and soon the room is roaring and groaning. A fault in the TV distorts the players: they look stumpy and foreshortened, almost dwarfish. Things are going badly for the Bulldogs. The neighbourhood naturopath, a tall curly-haired woman, refuses to lose heart, but most of the men in the room have abandoned hope. Like wounded lovers they begin to console themselves with tart comments and fantasies of violence.

‘He looks like a cassowary and that's the end of it.'

‘He's in pain, which is good.'

‘I want Libber to scratch someone. That's what I really, really want.'

‘Come on! Hurt somebody!'

‘Oh, why doesn't he just give them the ball on a velvet cushion?'

During the first quarter the naturopath has given the heeler a special herbal potion which, she says, can help the spirit of a dying creature to free itself and depart. From time to time someone will get down on the floor to sit by the dog, to stroke her head or squeeze some water into her mouth with an eye-dropper. She rouses herself to drink, then flops again.

At three-quarter time the pudding is served. The Lions are all over the Doggies. The vibe in the room drops steadily. ‘My optimism is leaking away,' says the naturopath. The old dog suddenly tries to scramble to her feet. My son-in-law leaps up and helps her stagger out of the room into the front garden where she casts herself into a refreshing bed of violets. It's a cold night and the foliage is wet with dew.

Inside, the Doggies are getting a bath. There are long moments of despondent silence. People are already collecting the plates when the final siren goes. I put on my coat and scarf.

‘Say goodbye to Tess,' calls my son-in-law. Under the Bulldogs beanie his face is strained.

The heeler is lying in her chosen spot in the dark garden, head up, lungs labouring, neck hair bristling in its soft ruff. She dismisses me with a kind, mature look. Dying is hard work, and the way she's doing it accords with her character: fearless, sweet-tempered, uncomplaining.

Along the street, hazard lights are flashing. Is it the
police, or just a taxi? The level crossing bells strike up their rhythmic clangour. I get into my car and turn on the ignition: the radio bursts into Beethoven's Fifth. Everything around me is seething with meaning, if I can only work out what it is.

Pie Boy at the Fracture Clinic

O
n Thursday I lose one of those shameful power struggles that break out from time to time in the family of a person who has Alzheimer's. This one is about Mum's most recent broken bone, and which of us will wait with her for four hours while she has a checkup at the Alfred Hospital. To add to my troubles, my brother's youngest boy, nine years old, has Curriculum Day and needs a minder. With bad grace I agree to coordinate all this at the Alfred Hospital Fracture Clinic, on the other side of the city.

My taxi skids into the main entrance of the Alfred at 8.29 next morning, one minute before Mum's ambulance is due from the nursing home. She will need me to be there when she comes through the door. But which door?

No one's around at Fractures. I draw a blank at Emergency. Transit Lounge likewise. I'm starting to
panic. I trot inanely back and forth along the polished halls. At nine-thirty I run her to ground: they've already X-rayed her and parked her wheelchair in the Radiology waiting room. She's the only person there. It's five degrees outside. Her swollen feet are bare except for a pair of summer sandals. I rush up to her in dismay.

‘Mum!'

But she's just sitting there, unperturbed, looking down at her purple wrist. The empty room is as plain as a Hopper painting. Tall windows let in slanting rectangles of sun. She looks up with a social smile.

‘Fancy seeing you here! Do you live far? Didn't you once live in Kew?'

‘No, Mum. That's Marie. I lived in Fitzroy, don't you –' Just in time I bite off ‘remember', the word that makes her face stiffen and go blank.

I sit beside her and show her a photo of her new great-grand-daughter. She holds it by one corner.

‘Do I just look at it,' she asks, perplexed, ‘or do I have to make a decision?'

Where the hell is my nephew? How will he find us? Mum keeps glancing at her appointment card: she can't figure out what it's doing in her hand. Her X-rays come and I speed her down to join the queue at the Fracture Clinic. Behind her wheelchair sits a normal old lady, knitting with the nonchalant brilliance Mum once had.
What if Mum turns round and sees her? What if she breaks down in despair at everything she's lost?

Then out of the lift steps the nephew in his baggy clothes, hauling a heavy backpack. Sorrow softens at his approach. He kisses each of us, looking into our faces with his squinty-eyed smile. We settle in for the long wait. He pulls out a sheaf of drawing paper. But all his pencils are blunt.

‘Run down to the ground floor shop,' I say, ‘and buy a new pack.'

He bites his lip.

‘OK then – you stay here with Grandma and I'll go.'

He darts his eyes left and right.

‘What?'

He leans in to me and whispers, ‘I don't like blood.'

‘It's only fractures here,' I say, ‘not open wounds.'

He gulps and nods.

When I canter back, bearing a packet of textas and three small KitKats, the boy and his grandmother are sitting side by side, intent on the parade of casts and crutches and wheelchairs. I break out the chocolate bars.

‘What do they call this?' says Mum. ‘KitKat? They used to be very popular, didn't they? I haven't seen one of these in donkey's years. Have I got chocolate round my mouth? Ooh, it's donkey's years since I . . .'

The nephew spreads out his art equipment on a low table and starts work. I examine the set of textas. Something's missing. There's no blue. I explode in irritation. ‘How can they not have a blue texta in a set, for God's sake?'

‘No – it's all right,' explains the nephew gently. ‘You use the purple, and then you put the white on top of it – see?'

‘But that's – brilliant!'

‘I know,' he says. ‘I love these textas.'

The cartoon he is creating concerns an adventurous lad who buys a meat pie and sets out on a long sea voyage. Breathing heavily through his nose, he lays down areas of purple and white in smooth diagonal strokes. I am permitted to sketch and colour-in a palm tree.

A young man with a row of metal spikes poking out of his shin draws up his wheelchair next to Mum's and in a low, dramatic voice begins to confide in her.

‘I come off me motorbike,' he says. ‘A Commodore went through a red light. I was hit –' (he pauses) ‘–
by a tonne and a half of steel
.'

Mum gazes at him without speaking. He seems content with her response.

Hours pass. Pie Boy swims to a tropical isle and meets a hermit. I find an apple in my bag and we hack it into chunks with the paper scissors. Mum devours her share. She has no idea that she's broken her arm, or why we're here.

At last she is called. The doctor glances at her X-rays. ‘Good. Come back in three weeks.'

A whole morning – for
this
?

By noon I've got her back to the nursing home, and installed her at the lunch table. Now – how on earth do I entertain a nine-year-old boy for the rest of the day? On the tram I start gabbling about video games.

The nephew sighs. ‘Look – if you don't mind,' he says, ‘I'd rather finish Pie Boy. Can't we just go back to your place and sit at the kitchen table? We could put on some classical music.'

He rests his head on my shoulder. I take my first deep breath of the day. His chunky arm leans against mine, warming me.

‘Actually,' I say, ‘I had fun at the Fracture Clinic.'

‘Same,' says the nephew.

He is holding Pie Boy carefully on his lap. Our tram goes streaming along St Kilda Road towards the city.