Profound thought: Time is not an illusion.
I don’t sleep well. I’m a fifty-something woman and if you know one who sleeps well without medication, then congratulate her. It was a novelty for me getting more than three or four hours at a time. Mostly I tried not to fight it. I read a lot through those wee hours, trying to slow the brain. I listened to podcasts. Tried meditation apps. That Sunday night, I’d gone to bed early, trying to settle in to the new time zone but found myself wide awake at 1 am. I considered visiting my dad. I wondered if they’d let me in. Even if he was asleep, it would be good to sit by him, so I walked the few streets to the centre.
‘My dad is Angus Coleman,’ I said to the night nurse who appeared when I buzzed. ‘I know it’s late, but I’m here from New York, I’m really jet-lagged and I thought …’
‘You’re Astrid,’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s not really permitted but he’s often awake now. A bit prone to wandering about at this hour of the night, if we’re not careful. He doesn’t mean any harm. I think he likes the company. Such a lovely man. Says the sweetest things to us. Beauty lives with kindness. Isn’t that lovely? I think he’s told me that most every time I’ve looked after him. Let’s go find him.’
We set off through glass doors down a pale peach corridor with peach patterned carpet.
‘By the way, Astrid, I’m Robyn Lucas. You were in the year ahead of me at school.’
‘Oh, hi, Robyn,’ I said. ‘I thought you looked a bit familiar …’
‘I didn’t expect you to remember me.’
This was Tasmania. Everyone knows everyone.
Making small talk, I said, ‘So did you stay in Tassie after school, or have you come back?’
‘Oh, I went travelling for a few months, like we all did back then, and then I came back, and I’ve hardly left since,’ said Robyn. ‘I married my first boyfriend, actually, and our children are grown up now.’ She smiled. ‘I’m a grandmother six times over. My eldest grandchild is twelve. Your sister has been marvellous for us nurses, you know. You’ve all done so well for yourselves.’
She had a kind, lined face.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And congratulations to you too. Family is quite an achievement, isn’t it. So are they here in Tassie, your kids and grandkids?’
‘Yes, everyone stayed close by. My eldest works for one of the fish farms. My youngest is with the Symphony Orchestra—marketing not musical. And my middle one is a nurse too. There have been divorces, you know, but they’re all good. Does it feel like it’s changed much? Coming back? Must be very quiet after what you’re used to.’
‘It’s definitely got busier,’ I said.
Robyn frowned. ‘Yes, peak hour used to be between five ten and five twenty—when all the public servants knocked off. But now it’s any time. We live at Kingston and it’s a nightmare trying to get in and out of town. Where did all these cars come from? I can’t imagine the bridge is going to help any of that. There’ll just be more visitors than ever.’
‘You had an older sister, too, didn’t you?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Laura. You’ve got a good memory. She died five years ago. Cancer.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Your mum has cancer too, doesn’t she?’ she said.
I nodded. ‘It’s metastasised now.’
Robyn shook her head in sympathy. ‘I often wonder whether they might have been able to do more for Laura if we’d lived in Melbourne or Sydney. It was really awful at the end. And we don’t have the best technology here. No money for new equipment. Or the new drugs. One of my boys broke his leg a few years back, and it was so crowded in the fracture clinic he had to stand up and wait. When he finally got in to see the doctor, the scales were held together with duct tape. I looked at them and I thought, that’s what it’s come to. Our public schools, our public hospitals, barely held together with love and duct tape. My husband has been waiting three years for a hip replacement. So much for two billion dollars on a bridge. It’s health and education we need here. Feels like everything is for the tourists.’
I nodded again. We had come to a halt outside room 29.
‘Still, you’re not here for that,’ she said. ‘This is your dad’s room. Let’s see if he’s awake. You do know what to expect, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ I said.
Dad was sitting in his chair, wrapped in a blanket. He saw me and said, ‘Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.’
Robyn smiled. ‘I’ll leave you both to it. Just let me know when you’re going.’ She closed the door behind her.
‘How are you, Dad?’ I asked, pulling the visitor’s chair up beside him and opening the curtains so we could look out at the lights of Sandy Bay.
‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s just what I was thinking too.’
I miss you, Dad, I wanted to tell him. I mean, I missed being here all these years. Close by. My dad had come every year to New York, faithfully making the day-and-a-half trip from Tasmania. He had loved New York. Loved the Metropolitan, took the children there so often Tavvy had said, at the tender age of six, ‘Please, Grandad, could we go to the Guggenheim instead?’
I thought how the perfect place for my father to die would be there in the Met, in one of the re-created rooms from the mid-nineteenth century, or marvelling at a painting of the French Revolution.
We had not seen this coming. That our father would go this way. Three strokes in quick succession over the last two months, the first two seemingly benign, other than him being found after the second one on the floor of the State Library. The last he had simply put his head on the table at a cafe. When the staff woke him, he hadn’t a clue in the world who he was or how he’d got there. All he would say was, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’