6. Purifier

Sylvia lay on the bed she’d slept in as a teenager, the wobbly ceiling fan above her offering little respite from the heat, as she tried to recuperate from the nightmarish last leg of her long journey. This was Greywood, the Perth inner suburb where her parents had lived for decades. Once it had been relatively upmarket, but these days it was in sharp decline.

Earlier, she’d allowed her mother to lead her like a child from the airport terminal in search of her rickety, banged-up Daihatsu. The car’s inner workings were known to be in a dire state, thus the likelihood of a safe journey home was left to providence. Sylvia had never been the panicky type, but the thought of breaking down on the tarry, car-choked, smog-filled, sun-blasted freeway was more than she could bear. Her mother had seemed inured to the terror, casually switching lanes and swearing at other drivers, all while keeping an eye on the car’s steadily climbing heat gauge. Perhaps she’d been pampered by her life at Yellowcake Springs and indeed her prison experience, but Sylvia could not recall the sun ever shining as harshly as it had shone this afternoon. She couldn’t remember a time when the air had been drier, the roads as jammed, other human beings as alien and unyielding as they had been today. It was after 06:30 and the temperature must still be well over thirty degrees. And it was only November; summer still lingered on her mental horizon.

Her mother came into the stuffy room and looked down at her. “Your father’s awake and he wants to see you,” she said.

Sylvia got to her feet and trudged out of the room. My room, she thought with reluctance. The lounge room was piled high with junk that her mother was too busy to re-organise between working and caring for her ailing husband. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and the bench was covered in crumbs and something sticky, maybe jam. Sylvia picked up a glass from the rack and filled it with water from the purifier. The water tasted bad and she screwed up her face. She went to pour it out but her mother grabbed her hand with surprising vigour and wrenched the glass away.

“Don’t,” her mother said.

“What’s wrong with the purifier? It’s got sediment floating in it.”

“It’s broken. Give it to your father if it isn’t good enough for you.”

“Then get it fixed. Dad can’t drink that.”

“Have you got the money? Come on, he’s waiting.”

The master bedroom was, if anything, even hotter than the rest of the house, and a terrible smell emanated from the bed. Her father’s skin was waxy, his eyes glazed, and he couldn’t sit up. She went to his side.

“Sylvia,” he croaked, looking up at her. “You made it back. I’m so glad.” Each word seemed to be spoken with great difficulty.

“Dad!” she said. “What’s happened? You should be in hospital.”

“Sylvia,” her mother said. “Your father’s very ill. Please don’t upset him.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She grabbed his limp hand and pressed it to her face. “Dad!”

“Hush,” he said. “We’ve no money and the hospitals are no good now. It’s all right. We can discuss it. In the morning.” His eyes fluttered and closed.

“He needs to rest again,” her mother said. “He’s so weak.”

They withdrew and her mother shut the bedroom door. “I know it’s a shock. Come and sit down,” she said.

Sylvia sat on the edge of the couch in what had once been the formal dining room. Tears and sweat streamed down her face.

“Here,” her mother said, handing her a bottle of mineral water from the fridge.

Sylvia drank from it and would have kept drinking until it was gone except that she saw her mother’s pained expression. She only drank half and handed it back. Her mother took a small sip and recapped the bottle.

“How much did that cost you?” Sylvia asked.

“Too much, but I wanted you to have it.” She sighed. “I didn’t want you to worry about your father.”

“How long has he been like that?”

“Months. He would have gone already, but he wanted to see his daughter again. It gave him a second wind when we heard you were coming home.”

“He would have gone,” Sylvia repeated dully. “He needs to be in hospital.”

“Things have gotten so bad here,” her mother said, her hands balled into fists. “You get used to it. Every day when I come home from work I expect to find him dead. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”

Sylvia put her arm around her mother’s scrawny shoulders. “I’ll get a job,” she said. “And then we can put Dad in hospital and fix the purifier. Okay?”

She left her mother on the couch and went into the bathroom. She peered at herself in the grimy mirror that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. “You want me to contact Misanthropos?” she said to the mirror. “You do something for my family or the deal’s off.”

“Sylvia, who are you talking to?” her mother called from the other room.

“No one, Mum. I just need a minute.” She shut herself in the bathroom and the face in the mirror scowled.

Later, as she lay sleepless for hours and hours, Sylvia’s thoughts turned in circles and she was returned endlessly to herself. Defeated, she got up again and was surprised to find that her feet still knew their way around this place in the dark after all the intervening years. She moved quietly and found herself hovering near the front door, near her parents’ bedroom, dying to escape from this restless place. She wondered whether she could turn the front door handle without waking her mother, and finally decided that she couldn’t. It would have to be the sliding door at the back.

The door shunted across on its rollers and she stepped out onto the ancient, moonlit patio. The night was not entirely quiet even at this unwanted hour. She heard car engines, dogs barking, even people shouting at each other somewhere in the distance. She sat down on the old two-seater rocker and stretched out as best she could. One moment the moon was shrouded in clouds and the next it emerged again, driving out the darkness.

When she woke it was morning and the sun had already vanquished any semblance of cool. She dragged herself inside and sat guiltily over a breakfast of dry cereal and the rest of the mineral water from the fridge. There was no milk or butter or anything else like that. At first she thought her mother was not yet up but then she realised that she’d have already left for work. The time on the fliptop read 08:21.

The door to the master bedroom lay slightly ajar, and inside the room her father lay supine on top of the bed. She crept over to him, horrified and yet transfixed by his wasted flesh and shallow breathing. One calf lay exposed from where his pyjamas had ridden up, and it was covered with splotchy red blisters. Gingerly, both wanting and not wanting to touch him, she rolled down the pyjama bottoms and straightened the pillow beneath his head.

“Evelyn,” he suddenly called out. “Are you there?” His eyes remained closed.

“It’s Sylvia,” she said. “Mum’s at work now. Can I get you anything, Dad?”

“Some water,” he said, and then mumbled something she didn’t catch. She returned to the kitchen and the first thing she saw was the empty water bottle on the bench where she’d left it. The second thing she saw was the malfunctioning water purifier affixed over the sink, its barrels browned with age and neglect. Drawing out a glass of water for her father, she attempted to scoop out the worst of the sediment with a spoon, but only succeeded in sending it swirling around. To prove to herself that it wouldn’t kill him, she forced herself to take a sip. The water tasted brackish and unpleasant.

Her father had drifted off again and he didn’t respond to her voice. For a terrible moment she thought that the end had come to him already, but no, his chest rose and fell. Taking his hand, she tried to squeeze some life back into his clammy fingers.

His eyes flickered open, and in that split-second she knew that whatever she wanted to say to him, she’d need to say it soon. “Sylvia,” he said. “You’re here.”

It wasn’t clear to her whether he remembered their previous conversation, so she propped up some pillows behind him and helped him to sit up a little. He was so thin she thought she could probably carry him. He reached for the water at the bedside and drank a small amount, then handed the glass back to her. If the taste bothered him, then he gave no sign. “Can you open the blinds?” he asked. She opened them, letting the harsh light into the dust-filled room.

He stared out, his eyes blinking slowly, and she wondered whether he knew she was there. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Would you like to sit outside for a while?”

He started to shake his head. “Evelyn...”

“She isn’t here,” she said. “Some fresh air will do you good. Can I help you up?”

She helped him up. She had no idea how long it’d been since he’d been out of bed, but after a shaky start he seemed to be able to move about with some degree of freedom. He insisted on going into the bathroom alone despite her protests to the contrary. If he fell and injured himself, he’d never recover. While he was in the bathroom, she stripped the sheets and hunted fruitlessly for another set.

He seemed to gather strength as they approached the patio door together, but no sooner than they were outside and sitting on the rocker, he started to flag again. His head lolled to the side and the colour in his face drained away. She tried to get him to drink some more water but the liquid dribbled down his chin. She had wanted to recapitulate some of the things they had done together in earlier times, but now it seemed she’d have to carry him back to bed. “I’m all right,” he slurred. “Thanks for... out.”

Lying there on the rocker, his face wet and his hands curled up into his chest, he looked like nothing if not a sickly, wizened infant. She made sure to bend at the knees before she picked him up with great care, her right hand clasped around his bony knees and her left around his armpits. Despite his frailty, her father still weighed more than she’d normally have attempted to carry. She had never lifted her father before; it had not been physically possible until this moment. But now she did it, depositing him back on his bed. She’d have to worry about the sheets later. She shut the door behind her. She hadn’t had a chance to say the things she’d wanted to say, but she felt a little less miserable for having tried.

The house was getting hotter; she could feel the heat closing in. She was on the couch in a state of daydreaming when a knock came at the door. She sprang to her feet and then found herself reluctant to open the door. What if the knock spelt danger? She peered through the view-hole and saw some kind of tradesman standing there. He knocked again and she relented.

“Mrs Kessick?” the man asked.

“Close enough, I guess,” she said.

“I’m Troy from Macadam Plumbing. I understand that you have a problem with your water purifier?”

“It’s broken, yes.”

“These old units break down all the time. You’re well overdue for a replacement. Can I come in?”