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Her house is a single-fronted weatherboard with a struggling, skeletal magnolia tree crowding the courtyard. Number twenty. Snap’s age. I’m still surprised by how easy it was to find her address online. All I did was type in her phone number, and it came up. That just seems wrong. S Gilling.
I rest my hand on her picket gate as I stand shivering. What if she’s horrible? What if she gets upset, or breaks down, and I don’t know what to do? Come on. I need to deal with it, else stand here and freeze. I should have brought a jacket, but it was warm when I left home.
I lift the catch, expecting it to be stiff because everything about today seems hard, including running out of coffee this morning. The gate glides open. The concrete path is neat and, even though I know it’s silly, I’m careful not to step on the dividing cracks – gotta please the good-luck gods today.
There’s no screen, no doorbell, just a hefty-looking wooden door that looks as though it’ll hurt my knuckles. A radio must be on somewhere down the back of the house, and I wonder if Snap’s gran is one of those women who leaves it on as a burglar deterrent when she’s out. I rap on a frosted glass pane to the side of the door. There’s a scrabbling noise inside, the yapping of a small dog, and muffled shushing. A fuzzy pink figure appears behind the glass.
‘Who is it?’
‘Mrs Gilling?’
‘Yes. Who is it?’
‘Hello. I’m a friend of your grandson, Snap ... I mean George. Can I speak to you for a minute?’
The woman falls silent, but the dog still barks. She shushes it again. ‘What do you want?’
‘He’s had ... an accident.’
The door opens a fraction. She’s solid, short, and her face is soft with undefined features like silly putty. Nothing sleek or cat-like about her. Nothing like Snap. Not even in her youth, I suspect.
‘What’s happened? Is George okay?’
The greying muzzle of a fox terrier pokes through the gap in the door. The dog snuffles, and the woman pushes it away with her foot. ‘Get back, Georgie.’
Georgie. Really?
‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but he’s in hospital. He’s had a stroke. We don’t know if he’s going to wake up.’
‘George? Oh, that’s terrible.’ She blinks.
I have no idea what to say next and even less when she suddenly closes the door in my face. What the hell? I’m conscious my hands have formed fists. I want to bash on her bloody door, yell what a disgrace of a grandmother she is, but then there’s the metal-on-metal sliding sound of a door chain, and the door opens again.
‘You better come in.’
She stands back for me to enter, then pushes one of those sausage draft stoppers against the back of the door as she closes it. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Lauren.’
‘You know his mother’s passed on? It’s just me and little Georgie now.’ Georgie gives a yap at the mention of his name. ‘Come on, I’ll put the kettle on. I’m Shirley.’
I follow her shuffling progress, which is aided by a walking stick. The hallway has an elaborately patterned carpet runner, and we pass a couple of bedrooms with floral bedspreads and antique-looking furniture. Her lounge room is at the back of the house, next to the kitchen. She motions me forward. ‘Take a seat.’ Her furniture is covered in those multi-coloured woollen rugs made up of crochet squares, just like I imagine a grandma’s house ought to look. There’s a real fire going in the grate, not one of those fake gas things. I make a beeline for the recliner next to it. For a moment it takes me back to Wineera, Samuel’s house, and something sharp pinches in my chest.
Shirley disappears into the kitchen for a few minutes, then returns with a plate of sliced Swiss roll — the jam variety. She passes it to me. ‘Here you go. Tuck in. Tea won’t be a minute.’
I’d kill for a coffee, but I’m afraid she’ll probably have something thrifty like International Roast. When did I become such a snob? She goes back to the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of Georgie’s paws tapping on the tiles. He whines as Shirley chatters to him over her tea-making. This can’t be the same grandmother Snap mentioned. She’s too sweet.
Shirley returns, carrying a tray with cups and a cosied teapot, her walking stick hooked over one arm. Her hands shake with the effort, and I reach to grab the tray as her foot catches on a rug. She pauses to take a breath, steady herself, and I put the tray on a little table in front of the fire.
‘Thank you,’ she says, collapsing into the armchair opposite me. She looks relieved to be off her feet. ‘Tell me. George is here in Melbourne? Is he in a bad way? Where’s his father?’
‘Yes, George is here. We’re not sure how he his. He’s still unconscious. His dad is back home.’
‘Ah, so you’re from Wineera too?’
I nod, tell her everything I know, watching her carefully. She’s hard to read, saying nothing until I mention the hospital has tried to call. Then she looks embarrassed.
‘It’s a new answering machine. I have no idea how to use it, so I ended up turning the sound off. It’s always telemarketers anyway.’
She smiles, and I notice how her pink lipstick looks a little lopsided. I guess she can’t see well enough to apply it evenly.
A thought seems to suddenly occur to her. ‘You’re not his girlfriend?’
I hesitate. Snap made it clear early on she never accepted him being gay. I should probably shut up, but I’ve come this far without him knowing, I may as well go the whole hog. ‘No. Just a good friend.’
‘Oh, he’s still a poof then?’ She chuckles, making a little snuffling noise, and I’m reminded of that saying – how owners often reflect their pets.
I want to laugh – the word ‘poof’ coming out of her lady-like mouth like that. ‘Um. Yes. That’s not likely to change. I mean, it’s who he is, no choice really. Is there?’
I wait to see how she responds to my challenge. She leans forward to pat Georgie, then pours the tea.
I fill the awkward silence.
‘So, George lived here when he was little?’ I ask.
She nods as she busies herself with milk and sugar. ‘Yes. After his mother got sick.’
She hands me a cup, then gets up and moves to the fireplace. There’s a trinket box on the mantelpiece, which looks like redwood. She takes it down and strokes the lid. ‘Melissa. Well, what’s left of her. I scattered the rest under the rose bushes in the back garden.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I struggle for what else to say.
She replaces the box and sits again. Georgie jumps up and rests his wiry head on her lap. Her hand automatically rubs his back.
‘George’s dad wouldn’t let him come to the funeral. Said he was too young. I think it’s a shame. It was a beautiful service. We had a big row over it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Demitrius hasn’t come?’
I assume she means Snap’s dad. ‘No, like I said, he’s back in Wineera. He’s in a wheelchair, Snap ... George says. Some sort of accident.’
‘Good riddance to that fucker, I say.’
I nearly choke. Shirley smirks and taps her head. Grey roots show beneath her brown curls. ‘Something wrong upstairs with that one. Joined a religious cult after he married my Mel. He wanted to move Mel and Georgie to America. Then Mel got sick.’
‘So, she moved in here, with you?’
She nods. ‘Watching your own child die is the worst thing a parent can endure.’
‘It must have been awful.’
‘Yes, it was. That mongrel didn’t even want her to have pain relief. Some religious mumbo jumbo. I couldn’t let her suffer like that. Not for months on end. No mother could.’ Her face sags with the memory. ‘I had to help her.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask what happened, but if I do, it’ll break the spell. Instead, I squish a piece of cake into my mouth, and listen. Georgie’s eyes follow my motion, and I have this insane picture of a thought bubble over his head: Are you going to eat all of that?
Shirley is staring into the fire, oblivious, her mouth pursed. ‘Death is a strange animal. It makes you do things you never thought you could.’
I’m too frightened to ask what she means, and I wonder if she even realises what she’s saying, to me, a stranger. Then I think of Mum wasting away in the hospice. Would someone ‘help’ her eventually? Would I be brave enough to?
‘Demitrius went off his rocker after Mel died. Took George. Broke my heart when he won custody.’
‘So, you wanted to keep George?’
Shirley looks at me as though I’m crazy. ‘Of course. I loved that little tyke. But Demitrius wouldn’t let me see him. When they moved away, I started sending money. He didn’t refuse it. I only hope George got some benefit from it.’
‘And ... it doesn’t bother you that George is gay?’
Shirley stares at me for the longest time. ‘He’s blood.’
Later, as I’m standing on her porch, saying an awkward goodbye, I notice the magnolia tree’s twiggy branches are budding. Strange for this time of year. I read once that sometimes, old trees can suddenly, and madly, blossom in their dying throes.
