Like a House on Fire Read Free Page A

procedure, had given his head one slow, stiff shake. ‘If I need a set of instructions to remember that,’ he said tightly, ‘you may as well carry me out in a box right now.’
    The girl had just laughed indulgently at him, she remembers now. She must send those staff members a card and a present, thank them all for their forbearance.
    She hears Frank exhale, then silence before a ragged, hiccuping intake of breath. She glances over and makes out the shape of him in the moony dimness, flat on his back and still as a tree, arms at his sides like a soldier at attention, and crying soundlessly, eyes screwed shut and face contorted into a mask. His mouth is a black hole of terror. Glinting tears leak into the furrows of discontent etched around his eyes and nose, pour down to wet his freshly barbered hair. She’s never seen this, and it’s mortifying. They’d warned her about acute pain; she wonders about getting up and giving him some tablets, but she’s so shocked all she can do is turn her head back to look up at the ceiling and spare him the shame of her scrutiny. They lie rigidly side by side.
    â€˜When you stood up to run home and call the ambulance,’ he says, ‘I thought, well, now I’ve got ten minutes. Now would be the good time to die, while you weren’t there. That’s what I could give you.’
    Lying there, she has a sense of how it is, suddenly: willing your limbs to move but being unable to lift them. The terrible treasonous distance between them that must be traversed, the numbed heaviness of her arm.
    But she finally reaches over and takes his hand. It doesn’t even feel like his anymore; the working calluses vanished into soft smoothness like a beach after a stormy receding tide. She wouldn’t recognise this hand now, especially not the way the fingers grip hers. Squeeze my hand ,the physio had said. That’s good, Mr Slovak.
    She lies there feeling the pulse in her husband’s pitifully thin wrist under her little finger. She understands better than anyone, she thinks, the painful stretch of sinew, the crack of dislocation. Remembers herself running back over the paddocks, flying barefoot over stones and earth, looking down distractedly in the ambulance later to notice the dried blood on her feet. How fast she’d run, and how much faster she’d run back. Now, in the dark bed, she raises her arm with Frank’s and gently flexes both their elbows together. She places his hand wordlessly, determinedly, over his heart, and holds it there.

Ashes
    By the time they stop at a cafe for the obligatory morning tea, Chris is already feeling his staunch goodwill leaking away. Enervating, to be in her presence like this. Despite all his resolve to stay pleasant and attentive, today of all days, something has nevertheless turned a tap on inside him and his energy is draining away. Later he’ll feel the same guilt as ever, but right now, sitting with a coffee listening to his mother complaining about the fake whipped cream on her scones, he feels all that evaporating. Ten-thirty in the morning, and he’s already itching with it.
    He just has to keep his mood on the good side of surliness. And surely even his mother would forgive him a touch of melancholia today, considering the occasion. He sees her fastidiously scrape the cream off the scones, making sure the waitress is watching, and pile it distastefully on the side of her plate. She’s dressed up today, hair done, lipstick matching the red blazer. Black shoes with heels. He’d told her to dress in something easy to walk in, because he remembered there was some walking involved, but it was like talking to a brick wall. She’d be able to stop now on the walk, grimace and suffer. Talk about her blisters for weeks afterwards with her book club women.
    He thinks of them in formidable capitals: the Book Club Women. Women perennially sitting around modular lounge suites,