Dettie had a present for him in her handbag. It was his last night in hospital and she’d been promising him a special surprise for the past two days. He knew where she was hiding it, whatever it was, because she kept fiddling with her handbag, rubbing the leather and clutching the shoulder strap. Finally, when visiting hours were almost over, and Katie had asked her mother to take her to the toilets, Dettie eased down onto the chair beside Sam’s bed and undid the clasp.
‘You are a very lucky boy,’ she said, her fingers picking through the contents of the bag, fixing on something. She held her hand poised there.
‘Do you want to guess what it is?’ she said. ‘I bet you can guess.’
Sam stared at the back of her wrist. It couldn’t just be another stitched square. He shrugged.
‘What would you love more than anything else?’ she asked.
She was smiling larger than Sam could ever remember seeing. It deepened the wrinkles around her eyes and made her cheeks pull, pale and thin. He turned his head slightly, looking past her at the newly made bed sitting empty beside them.
‘How about your daddy being here?’ she said.
He jerked upright. She’d said it, and she was still smiling. Nodding. His eyes, now wide, flashed from the hallway door to the nurses’ station and back. He felt a fluttering in his chest, and couldn’t seem to breathe out. Was that where Katie and his mother were? Were they bringing his father in with them?
Dettie’s grin remained wide, but she closed her lips. It made her face seem pinched and tight. She petted Sam’s knee, humming, and lowered her gaze to her handbag, holding, waiting long enough for Sam to look back down at it too. Slowly, she drew out two rectangular cards and covered them with her palm.
‘Now, you know how much he has wanted to come and see you,’ she said.
He could already hear it in her voice. Sam’s father wasn’t there. But he still couldn’t stop the tingling sensation circling his body, tickling him beneath his arms. He exhaled.
‘And he really tried so hard to be here, Sammy. He was so cross when he couldn’t make it.’
Fine. Not here.
The fluttering settled into a sick, heavy feeling in his belly. Sam already knew what was in Dettie’s hand.
‘He said to me: You make sure my Sammy knows his daddy is thinking of him. That’s what he said.’ Her eyes were watery. ‘You tell him I’m proud of him.’ Her lips stretched white, like linen pinned across a washing line. She kept on nodding.
With her fingers still clinging tight to its edge, she held out one of the rectangles for Sam to see. It was a postcard. It had his father’s name on it, his address in Perth, and the message read:
My darling son, Sam. I miss you and I am thinking of you always. I will see you soon. Love, your father.
It had been a long time since Sam had heard from his father, or read one of his letters out to Katie. He hadn’t even sent something before the operation. The message sounded peculiar. Distant. Even his handwriting looked different now.
Sam’s stare drifted off. His eyes followed the folds of bedsheet crumpled across his lap. The blanket Dettie had straightened at his feet as she sat down. He saw her handbag, which lay tipped over on its side. Saw the tightly creased tissues poking from its mouth. The corner of an unwrapped packet of cigarettes. The neat stitching of her cardigan. Finally, he was looking at her other hand, at the second card she was clutching. This was a photograph. It was a man holding a drink, a glass of beer, smiling. Sam could tell that it wasn’t his father, but he had seen him before. The picture was of Dettie’s dead husband, a photograph she’d always kept with her, old and crinkled and bound at the edges with sticky tape. Sam could almost remember him. Something about him and soup. A smell of soup.
‘Isn’t that good, Sammy?’ Dettie was saying. ‘To know how much your daddy loves you?’ She turned over the postcard and started reading the words to herself.
On the front of the card, which Sam could now see for the first time, the image seemed odd: a kitten in a basket of flowers. It was fluffy and big-eyed, with long silver whiskers. He stared at it, tilting his head to get a better look, but it remained peculiar. There was nothing funny about it. No joke. It wasn’t pulling a face or doing a dance. Whenever his father had sent a postcard before it was usually a cartoon. A sheep wearing sunglasses or a crocodile with knives and forks saying, Wish you were here! This one was pink, with wide, watery eyes, embossed and glistening.
Perhaps his father had been really worried about him when he picked out the card. Maybe he was too scared Sam was in danger to try to be funny. Maybe he’d just lost his sense of humour altogether. It had been over a year now. Being in Perth might have changed him. Like the way Sam didn’t think about soccer all the time anymore.
When his mother and Katie returned, the postcard was propped against the wall behind the lamp. Dettie didn’t point it out, leaving it a surprise. But when his mother finally did notice, straightening his table as they prepared to leave for the night, she stared at it strangely, mouthing the words of the message to herself. As she finished, miming the words, Your father, she glared.
Obviously, no one had told her about it, and probably Sam’s father had decided not to send the card to her in case she got upset. She never said anything out loud about it, though. She just smiled tightly, leaned over Sam’s pillow and kissed him goodnight. On their way out into the hallway Sam could see her giving Dettie a long, curious look, but it didn’t seem to be angry.
Only later, months later, would it occur to Sam that the card wasn’t stamped. That it wasn’t his father’s handwriting at all.