A to Z of You and Me Read Free Page A

cannot believe how perfect the whole thing was, and I cannot believe how out of order I was.
    What would I have been, about twelve? So she’d have been seventeen. I think I said to her—did I?—yes, I told her that her boyfriend at the time—what was his name?—I told her her boyfriend at the time had told me that he thought she had a fat arse.
    He never did. He never said anything like it. Why did I ever even think to say something so cruel? I didn’t feel the cruelty at the time. It was only a joke.
    Her boyfriend must have delivered a persuasive explanation of not knowing anything about it, because she came storming back to me later in the day, absolutely spitting venom, and calling me a little shit.
    Mum took my side, again. She told Laura I would never do something like that on purpose, and that it must have been some sort of misunderstanding. And she said—poor Laura—Mum said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone did say you had a fat backside, the kind of skimpy shorts you waltz around in.”
    Of course Laura rushed upstairs in floods of tears. And the irony, the beautiful irony of it was that Laura must have dumped herself down on her bed with such a leaden sulk that she fractured her ankle between the bed frame and her arse.
    There’s not a year goes by that I don’t think what utter humiliation she must have felt, shuffling on her backside down the narrow staircase to tell us, wailing, that she needed to go to the ER.
    It’s no wonder she ended up going the way she did.
    â€¢ • •
    â€œLet me get that.” Sheila lifts my abandoned plate away. I’ve managed a few bites. “All right, you’ve done well there, haven’t you? How are you doing now? Have you been able to lie back at all?”
    I shake my head.
    â€œStarts you coughing, does it? Did you sit up all night too?”
    Minimal nod.
    Shaking your head means no. Nodding it means yes. Why would that be? I’ll save that for H in my A to Z.
    â€œIt’s a problem, that, isn’t it? You try to get a moment’s respite because you’re cold, and then your lungs start filling up because you’re lying down. It hardly seems fair, does it?”
    She stands with her weight on one hip, as if she’s never encountered anyone with such a problem before.
    â€œI’m all right,” I say.
    Sheila rearranges the knife and fork less precariously on the plate and considers me for a while. “Give me a shout, anyway, if you want any blankets or anything. Or a nice cup of something warm. Although we’ve run out of mugs again.” She lowers her voice. “I don’t know why people can’t read the sign and bring their mugs back to the coffee machine. It says it right there. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”
    She takes the plate away and puts it on a cart in the corridor.
    â€œI mean, I don’t mind washing all the dregs out if they just leave the mugs there, but I haven’t got time to go around doing a collection every twenty minutes. Have you filled in your lunch card yet?”
    â€œNo. Will he make me some chicken soup? My mum always used to make me chicken soup when I was sick.”
    She smiles. It’s a sweet smile.
    She understands and leaves to make inquiries.
    Stay lifted. Self-sufficient. I can do this thing.
    What thing?
    Look out of the window. Look at the wall. Look at the bedsheets. Look at my arms.
    God, look at them against the bedsheets. Like great big useless horses’ forelegs. What are they? A connecting piece between chest and hand. Between neck and hand. Between heart and hand. Well, what? They’re arms, aren’t they?
    Look at them. The superhighway of the body. They’re history. A hopeless historical map, plotting clots and craters of short-lived attempts to spark me into being. They have evolved into someone else’s arms. An old man’s arms, not the arms of a forty-year-old.