A Stringed Instrument Ch. 11

I walked over to her desk and tapped to get her attention. "Susan, have you been working on the holiday? Like you keep telling me I'm not allowed to do?"

"I know, I'm setting a bad example. You know how it is, there's so much to do and it's easier to get through it when there's nobody around to pester me." Although Susan had been put in charge of the day-to-day work of marketing the apartments and all that went with it, Peter had final responsibility and a bad tendency to micro-manage.

"Thought you were going to the coast with Zara and Danny for the long weekend?"

"Yeah, she didn't want to go. Said she had an assignment to work on, spent most of the weekend in her room. Now, while you're here, let's talk about the website. First payment date in the contract is May 7 and we want to be able to go live immediately that comes through. Are we still on target for that?"

"I think so. There are a couple of things that we need to work out, though..."

Soon after our meeting, my phone buzzed:

Got date for audition. Friday June 25 - P.

Nifty. Can I come watch?

'fraid not, love, but will take your best wishes in with me... still panicking about this.

You'll be fine. You're awesome.

Thanks sweetie! Don't know if I believe it but thanks anyway.

A few hours later, it buzzed again:

Yaya's surgery booked next Tuesday. That was April 17th, just seven days away.

Crossing my fingers for you all.

We didn't talk about it much over the next week. Phoebe seemed eager to chat about other things, and I did my best to supply her with cheerful topics of conversation. But she often got distracted and would forget what we'd been talking about five minutes before, and it was obvious that it was weighing heavily on her.

We'd settled into a sort of routine: she'd practise until nine-thirty and then call, before continuing her practice afterwards. But on Friday night, she missed our regular time. I waited until ten, and when I didn't hear from her, I tried calling her instead, to find her phone had been disconnected. I was beginning to worry until I thought to check my email and found a message from her:

Sorry love, forgot to pay the phone bill. Will fix it up tomorrow. Love you. And true to her word, she called me the next night. Perhaps it had just been her forgetfulness. On the other hand, I knew her finances weren't at all good just then, and I suspected she might have been waiting on money from teaching before she could pay her bill.

On the Sunday night, she said to me out of the blue:

"Can I tell you something bad?"

"You know I'm on your side, love. What's up?"

"Okay." She was halting as she spoke. "I love my grandma, she's been so good to me. But last weekend when we took her to hospital... I realised a tiny part of me was wishing she'd die then, or in surgery." Those last few words came out in a rush. "It sounds horrible. I don't want her dead. I'd do anything to prevent that. It's just the uncertainty I can't deal with. I don't know whether her heart's going to cope with the surgery, I don't know if they're going to get it all. Always wondering, sometimes it feels like it'd be less stressful if I knew the end. Even if it's a bad end. But that sounds horribly selfish, doesn't it?"

I could hear her sniffling, suspected she was crying. "Oh, honey. If it helps, I felt that way when Granny Ponting had her last illness. I think a lot of people get that. It doesn't make you a bad person, it's just human. Doesn't mean you don't love them. If you went and acted on it, now, that would make you a bad person."

"I still feel bad about it."

"I did too. But it's not like you acted on it. You've been there to help your grandma and let her know you love her, right?"

"I guess so." She didn't sound entirely persuaded, but at least she seemed relieved to have gotten it off her chest, and by the time we said our good-nights she was in better spirits.

The 17th was just another day at work for me. Phoebe didn't come back down to Melbourne — she couldn't afford the time or the ticket for another trip so soon — but she'd called Yaya that morning to wish her well. It was hard to focus on my work, and I found myself checking my messages every few minutes. At two-thirty I heard from her:

Dad says Y out of surgery. Docs thinks it went well. Pin in her arm.

Updates followed: Yaya was awake, although spaced out on morphine. The surgeon had been able to remove what remained of the tumour without too much damage to the surrounding bone, and he was optimistic that he'd got it all. After three days they let her go, to stay at RJ's house under Hamish's watchful eye.

"She'll still have to do a lot of rehab for the arm, but at least she can get started," Phoebe told me. "Such a relief. She's still on chemo but they've dropped the dose so they're not expecting the heart side-effects to come back."

"Oh, that's great. You and I should get together and celebrate some time. Maybe I could come up some time next month, if it's not going to interfere too much with your music?"

"I think we could manage something. We're hoping to get Nero together some time and test out some ideas, it's been ages since we rehearsed. I might drag you along to that if you're not careful? I could do with a short break from the audition stuff. Maybe get out to Rockwall again. God, it'll be nice to see you without this hanging over our heads."

"Likewise."

***

On a Thursday morning, nine days after Yaya's surgery, I was woken by the phone. "Hello? Phoebe?" I tried to focus on the clock. Why was she ringing me at six in the morning?

"Yvonne, Dad called me. Mum's dead, she died last night."

I was still half-asleep and fuzzy-headed. "What, but I thought she was doing well, they let her go home..."

"No, not Yaya. Mum's dead. Helen."

That can't be right. I have her phone number. But even as my heart went into denial, my head started to respond. "What? Oh, Jesus. How?"

"Dad said she had an accident. Ran into a tree. I don't know anything else. He's driving to Ballarat now. He has to — to identify her." She sounded dazed.

"Are you..." No, of course she's not okay. "What do you need, love? I can come up today if you need me. This morning."

"I don't know. I think I'm flying down today. Not sure about tickets. Dad will buy them I guess." A faint beep-beep. "He's calling now. I'll have to take that. Call you later."

"Okay. Love you." It didn't seem like enough.

After she hung up I sat back in bed, trying to absorb what had happened, looking at my phone. I wanted to pull up the number I'd never used and ring Helen. Surely she'd pick up.

But when I searched on the net, there it was. A small piece in a local news site: A Ballarat woman has died overnight after a single-car accident. More to come.

I called Susan's work phone and left a brief message to let her know I might not be in. Then I tried to figure out what to do next. I felt like I ought to be calling Phoebe, but she would have things she needed to handle. Flights to catch, tickets to book.

So I texted her:

Love you. So very sorry. Call me whenever you want.

And since there was nothing more I could do, I sat at my desk and started playing solitaire. Two hours later she replied:

Love you too. Going to airport. Don't know when will call but thanks.

When I was at school, two of my classmates had stolen a teacher's Falcon. Juiced up on cheap booze and teenage delusions of immortality, they'd wiped themselves out when they took a bend too fast and slammed into a big gum tree. I'd seen the wreckage next morning, concertinaed so badly it barely resembled a car, and now I had ghastly mental images of a crushed car and a shattered body. I spent most of the day sitting in my room, watching my phone and waiting for her to call, trying to find the words.

It was ten at night before she called back and told me more. RJ had identified Helen — "the body" — and spoken to the police. It was not as ugly as I'd imagined. The impact had been barely enough to dent the front bumper and trigger the airbags, leaving Helen with a few bruises on her face and arms.

But somewhere in there she'd had a heart attack — perhaps from the shock of the accident, or perhaps the heart attack came first — and by the time the medics got to her, that was that.

I was used to the frustration of being a thousand kilometres away from Phoebe, connected only by the phone. It seemed harder to be in the same city, but the wrong house. With every word she spoke I wanted to rush over there and hold her, rock her in my arms, stroke her hair.

"I can be there in half an hour if you say the word."

"I want you here so much. But I need to be here for Dad. He's pretty shaken up. I know they were separated a long time, but still. And he said there was a scene at the morgue with Scott, too. Mum's boyfriend. He heard about the accident but legally Dad's still next of kin, so they wouldn't let him see her until Dad got there and said it was okay."

"God, that sucks. Poor guy. And you?"

"I don't know. I still can't believe it. Listen, I need to go keep Dad company, he's still sitting up. I'll try to call you tomorrow. Go get some sleep."

"Okay then. Please look after yourself."

"I will," she told me. I wasn't sure I believed her.

She called the next morning: "Are you working today?"

"Yeah, but I can take a day if you need me."

"No, don't. I have to come into town anyway. I could meet you at lunchtime."

I mentioned to Susan that I might be taking a long lunch, and she nodded absent-mindedly without even looking up at me. Phoebe and I had agreed to meet near the fountain in Pennant Gardens; it was quite a walk from my work, but that suited me, since it meant we were unlikely to bump into unexpected workmates. I found a grassy spot under a tree, and it wasn't long before I saw her walking in my direction from the train station.

"Hello, love."

"Hello." She walked into my embrace, and as I folded my arms around her she pressed her face against my shoulder. She wasn't crying, not quite, but the quaver in her breathing told me she wasn't far off it. I held her there with her back to the sun, and we communed in silence as the joggers and cyclists and office workers passed by.

And then after a minute or two she started to tremble, and she began to cry, tears soaking through my T-shirt. "Easy, love, easy. I'm here." I held her tight and patted her back until she ran out of tears. Then I kissed her head and said, "I got us sandwiches. I thought you might need something."

"I don't want to eat anything."

"I know, but eat it anyway. I'll let you off with half a sandwich."

We sat down side-by-side on the grass and I opened up the sandwiches. Phoebe ate her half-sandwich without any great relish, but at least she ate it. When she was done she asked, "So how's your day been?"

I finished my mouthful. "Glad it's Friday. I've been flat out with this website. Every day there's stuff to change, and just when I'm starting to get my head around what I'm doing, someone phones for me to fix their printer."

"Huh." She took my hand in hers.

"So, what happens from here?"

"Well. They have to do a post-mortem to confirm cause of death, that'll probably be on Monday. The funeral's on Thursday, in Ballarat, so we're driving up Wednesday morning. Staying overnight after the reception and then Dad's driving me back to the airport on Friday morning so I can get back to my tutoring."

"Who's arranging things?"

"Dad, mostly. He's talking to Scott and her sisters about it, but none of them have a lot of money. Scott's retired on disability, he and Mum weren't living together so it's not fair to ask him to pay for it. And Dad seems to feel responsible for it."

I wondered what was in RJ's head. Old-fashioned sense of duty? Had he been hoping all those years that one day his marriage would come back together again? Or did he just feel bad about how Scott had been treated at the morgue?

Phoebe went on, "I'm going to play a couple of pieces during the service, so I'm picking up a rental cello and sheet music today. Didn't even think of bringing mine until after I got to the airport."

I put my arm around her waist. "Do you want me there on Thursday?"

"Yes. Very much. I don't quite know how I'm going to explain it to Dad and Yaya, though. Let me think on that."

We snuggled in one another's arms for a few minutes more until I checked the time and coughed. "I should get back to work, still catching up from yesterday. Will you be okay?"

"Yeah, I think so." She kissed me on the cheek. "I don't know if I'll be able to see you this weekend, there's a lot to do. But I'll be in touch."

"Take care. I love you, Phoebe."

"Counting on it. Love you too." We hugged one last time and then went our separate ways.