smiling face, her coarse woollen skirt was torn and her hair greasy. She had died in the winter, sharing her deathbed with their lone cow; her two surviving sons and a husband worrying about taxes. They were small memories, indistinct, yet recently their importance had grown.
The corridor leading to her mother’s room was long and beige. There were photographs of the Queensland coast between each white doorway and at the end was a soft pink couch currently providing comfort to two young children, who, although having been left with books and soft toys, sat staring straight ahead. Sarah checked the numbers above each door, mentally counting down both the number of rooms left and the months that divided their last reunion. Leaving her luggage at the door, she knocked once before entering.
‘Sarah, it’s good to see you.’ Sarah glanced towards the hospital bed as her father bustled her in, sitting her in one of two comfy armchairs. He looked reasonably well, although tired. His bulky frame was only just beginning to stoop and he filled the room with the unmistakeable genetics of a Gordon male: tenacious, craggily handsome in the later stages of his life with an aura that made people stare on passing. Newspapers were scattered on the wide window ledge and table next to her mother’s bed. Sue Gordon sat upright, a cream bed jacket about her shoulders and a vacant stare boring into the blank wall opposite. Immediately Sarah questioned her presence. She could have waited at her father’s apartment or gone for a walk along the beach or invested in some retail therapy; although with everything occurring at the moment, shopping didn’t hold any interest for her.
‘She’s comfortable,’ her father stated. ‘Of course she doesn’t know where she is, or who I am.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure the reading helps. You know, otherwise she just lies there, in silence.’
Sarah settled herself in the armchair. ‘You read aloud to her?’
‘Of course, mainly the news, although sometimes I skip to the entertainment page. She always did love the cinema when she lived in Sydney.’
‘Dad,’ Sarah touched his arm gently, ‘you do recall two years ago the doctors said that her mind had basically shut down, so why –’
‘Why bother?’ Ronald snapped. He began tidying the papers, heaping them into a neat pile at his feet. ‘Maybe it makes me feel better.’
There was a bald patch, round and smooth on the crown of his head. The brown of the skin contrasted sharply with the grey-streaked brown hair, yet he still looked younger than his wife. Sarah looked across the small space to where her mother lay. Her father was wasting his life through some strange aberration of guilt. It wasn’t as if he’d been driving a car that led to her mother’s condition, nor could her mother claim a morally unblemished record.
‘Jim Macken has arrived in Australia. He wants to meet you and is claiming his inheritance.’ Having planned on a more subtle revelation, Sarah found herself delivering the news like a corner shop spruiker.
Ronald rearranged the pile of papers. ‘So you didn’t come to visit your mother?’
‘Dad, you know we never had a normal relationship when I was young. There’s no point pretending now.’
He walked over to Sue and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
‘You did hear what I said, Dad?’
‘The doctor gives her a week. She’s stopped eating and, well, I can’t see the point of putting her on a drip.’ He turned to her. ‘Can you? Anyway some of her organs are beginning to shut down, something to do with all the medication she’s been on over the years. Did you know that she used to down painkillers with her martinis, like they were a side plate of olives? Well, anyway, she doesn’t exactly rate for the transplant list.’ He pulled the bed jacket a little more snugly about Sue’s shoulders. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me for over a year, although the night nurses say that sometimes she’s quite lucid.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Well, you two never did get on.’
Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘That’s unfair. I have had to live with the repercussions of your extra-marital affairs: both yours and Mum’s. Both of you playing favourites with Cameron was one thing, but being relegated to the role of second-class citizen, being the recipient of all Mum’s angst, was truly unfair. You’re my father, you should have supported me.’
Her father’s shoulders slumped just a little. ‘I tried to, but no one gave me a manual,