12
Coffee Beans
“Maureen? What happened?”
Kate was calling Maureen’s name even as she lowered her foot out of the driver’s door and bundled down from the truck. Her granddaughter Maple was in the passenger seat, sitting on her mother’s lap. They had parked right up close to Maureen at the garage.
“I can’t move.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“I don’t know. My neck. Everywhere.”
“Will you let me help?”
Maureen felt Kate’s hands reaching toward her and asking, “Okay? Okay?” as she began lifting her gently out of the car. What was happening did not feel right but she let Kate help her while she also wondered where she should put her hands. She didn’t want to push her away but neither could she hold her arms around Kate so she just left them dangling in mid-air. Kate was smiling but Maureen had no idea if it was for her and she still had no idea what to say. She noticed Kate’s hands were warm and very strong. She guided Maureen carefully toward the truck and flung open the rear door, while still holding Maureen, and supported her as she took the steps, one at a time, all the while saying, “Okay? Okay?” From there she shuffled Maureen right to the back of the truck, where the bed was already pulled out. In the passenger seat, Maple turned to watch, her eyes very dark and round over her mother’s shoulder, as Kate guided Maureen’s body on top of the eiderdown and lifted her feet. It was so good to be lying down. Maureen kept herself rigid. She closed her eyes. I could die now, she thought. Truly, I am done.
“Is that lady going to hospital?” she heard Maple ask.
“We’re going to look after her,” said her mother. “We have to be quiet.”
Kate’s face was so close, Maureen could feel her breath. It smelled of something like toothpaste and earth. Maureen kept her eyes shut as she heard Kate’s voice saying, “Okay, darlin’. This is what we’re going to do. Sarah is going to drive your car back to the camp before she goes to work. I’m going to take you to the hospital and get you checked out and after that you can rest with me. You don’t have to say anything.”
She was speaking to Maureen slowly, and even though she was so close, her voice sounded as if it were a long way off. Maureen kept her eyes closed. She gave the softest of murmurs to show she had understood but she didn’t move and neither was she ready to reply. She wanted to stay very still like this, being spoken to kindly as if she were a child, while deep down the waves of pain pushed through her.
Maureen felt something firm on her head and realized it must be Kate’s hand, touching her short white hair. “You’ve had a hard time, but it’s okay now. You don’t have to go anywhere until you’re ready. You’re going to be fine.”
Her neck was not broken, but the muscles were sprained, her back was badly bruised and her blood pressure was too low. Maureen needed to rest for a few days and limit her movement. She certainly wasn’t fit to drive. Kate had waited with her at the hospital. She held Maple on her lap and read stories, over and over again, while Maureen sat ramrod-straight beside her, wishing someone would stuff a baking tray against her spine, not daring to move unless she shifted her entire body, not even daring to speak. She had forgotten how children could listen to the same story and find something endlessly comforting in the repetition of it.
“Are you in pain?” the nurse asked.
“I can manage,” she said.
He smiled as if he knew better and gave her the first of a course of strong painkillers. He showed her some exercises to ease her neck and shoulders.
“You were lucky, Mrs. Fry,” he said. She did not ask what he meant by that because she knew he was right.
Kate said she had rung Harold to explain that Maureen had taken a fall but was going to be okay if she rested for a few days. She had reassured him Maureen was not seriously hurt and there was no need for him to come because Kate would look after her. “He wants to say hello,” she said, and she rang his number again and held the phone against Maureen’s ear.
“Oh, Maw,” she heard him say. All that love in his voice. “Oh, sweetheart.”
And she nodded, and said, “Uh, uh, uh,” because that was the only thing she could do without hurting.
“Are you okay? Will you be okay?”
She said, “Uh uh uh,” again.
“Shall I come?”
“No,” she said. “It okay. Kate here.” The drugs were kicking in.
Afterward she allowed Kate to guide her back into the truck and already she felt she knew a little more of the way Kate held her, so she trusted her to take her weight. Kate drove them slowly to the camp, then heated a pan of soup that they ate at the table. Maureen was so exhausted she could barely lift the spoon to her mouth. Kate fetched the eiderdown and helped her get underneath it. The bed no longer felt lumpy or alien. Kate pulled the eiderdown right up to Maureen’s chin and said, “There, there, darlin’,” until Maureen’s eyelids drooped. Sleep came suddenly. Maybe it was the painkillers. She was aware she was thinking of Harold and wanting to speak to him again but couldn’t summon the energy to open her eyes.
When Maureen woke, she felt she was coming up from somewhere like a black hole. She wasn’t sure why she was there, or even where “there” was. And then she made out Kate in the wing-back chair reading a library book under a lamp and wearing a pair of big glasses. Briefly Maureen was alarmed, as if she had been absent for some time, during which things might have happened that she didn’t know, and she tried to sit up, but the pain was too much and she stayed lying down.
“Rest,” said Kate, glancing up once from her book. “I’ve spoken to Harold again. He sends you all his love. He’s with Rex.”
“Did he say what they were doing?” said Maureen. She closed her eyes before Kate answered.
When she next woke, Maple was curled in Kate’s lap and Kate was reading her another story, but her voice was low, more like a chant, and Maureen couldn’t make out the words. She didn’t need to: it was a comfort just hearing them, and not being alone. She pulled Kate’s eiderdown over her head and fell asleep once more. The next time she woke it was morning and the sky was a band of silver beneath purple cloud. The truck was empty.
Kate brought coffee on a tray and arranged two cups on the table. She helped Maureen sit and gave her cushions and another painkiller. They successfully avoided talking about what had happened during her previous visit and spoke instead about inconsequential things, like coffee. Kate told Maureen she ground her own beans and Maureen said she always bought instant powder and Kate paused and said, with steeled intensity, that no one should drink that crap. It was full of shit, she said, you might as well as drink washing-up water. She served her own coffee from a silver pot that looked like something you would find in a Turkish bazaar and she poured it into two small blue cups, like a ritual. Maureen managed one sip—she couldn’t move her neck enough for more—and found what Kate had said to be true. It was the most delicious coffee. Hot and milky with only a hint of bitterness; a sweetness of chocolate, too. And this way they sidestepped their differences to move forward.
“Shall I lift the cup for you?” said Kate.
“You don’t have to. I can manage.”
“Oh, Maureen, why won’t you let another woman help you for once?”
So she lifted the coffee toward Maureen’s mouth and placed the saucer beneath Maureen’s chin and this time she took a good proper drink.
“I feel I owe you an apology,” Maureen said.
Kate smiled. “You don’t owe me anything. But I’m glad you rang me, Maureen, when you needed help. I’m glad you gave us another chance.”
When their cups were empty, they sat for a while not saying anything until Kate reached for Maureen’s hand and spread her own firmly around it and kept it over Maureen’s so that she could feel its weight and the calluses on her palms. Kate said, without looking at Maureen, but toward the window: “How do we do it? How do we accept the unacceptable?”
After the quiet, her voice filled the room and so did the question. It came over Maureen how tired she was, as if it was evening again instead of morning. Kate closed the curtains. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thank you. You’ve helped me more than enough.”
“I’ll let you rest.”
In the dimmed light, Maureen lay under Kate’s eiderdown and fell into another deep sleep.
Later, Kate knocked on the door of the truck and asked if Maureen was feeling any better. She had a favor to ask. She and her daughter had a women’s meeting to go to—it would only take two hours. She wondered if Maureen would let Maple sit with her. “I don’t know, Maureen. I feel bad about asking. I just wondered if you’d think about it.”
Maureen said, “Yes. I’m glad you asked.”
“Do you think you could manage?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure Maple likes me.”
At this Kate laughed. “Oh, Maureen,” she said. “Listen to yourself for once. She’s a child. If you’re kind to her, she’ll like you.”
Before Kate left, Maple brought her book and coloring pencils into the truck. Kate had put on red lipstick that Maureen wasn’t sure about but she held her tongue and said nothing. Maple hugged her grandmother hard, hanging from her neck like another vast necklace, and Maureen began to think the whole plan would not work, but Kate kissed her and said Maureen was a good woman and then goodbye. To begin with, Maple was wary of Maureen. She sat at the table but kept her arms around her book and her things, as if she feared Maureen might steal them. The best thing was to give her some space.
Maureen made her way to the kitchenette and washed a few plates. These are very good painkillers, she thought. She found a cloth and ran hot soapy water into the plastic sink.
From the table, Maple began to talk. She was still coloring in, but she went on without stopping, speaking about whatever came into her mind, with no need for Maureen to remark on any of it, though she listened to everything Maple said, entranced, because it was so long since she’d been alone with a child like this. She had forgotten how they could talk and talk. She spoke about a girl who was her friend and a black-and-white dog that barked on the farm as well as her bicycle and so many other things, none joined together except in the sweet place that was Maple’s head. Then the little girl slipped down from her stool at the table and carried it to Maureen’s side and asked if she could see what Maureen was doing.
Without moving her neck, Maureen helped Maple stand on her stool and let her swish her hands in the soapy water and wash a few spoons, with Maple still chattering away, until Maureen realized she was no longer listening to the words, only the tune of them, because she was wiping everything in the vicinity. She was wiping the taps, the rim of the plastic sink, and the lip where it met the draining-board, the unit surfaces, the pots of utensils, the kettle, and the splashback behind it. She was even scouring the dirt from the plug and the knobs on the drawers, and the hooks for the tea-towels. She worked on, calmed by the cloth in warm water, the rinse and squeeze, calmed by Maple’s sing-song voice, but most of all calmed by the experience of those surfaces becoming uniformly clean—even though there was no disinfectant spray, and no canister of Pledge or Mr. Sheen, and no rubber gloves either. She tidied the mugs, arranging them with the handles pointing all to the right. Already she felt exhausted. Then Maple got down and lay on the bed and asked Maureen to read her picture book.
It was about rabbits. Rabbits who lived in a house, not even a burrow, and wore hats and coats. Three pages in, Maureen was falling asleep. But Maple called her name and Maureen felt an old crease of pleasure, hearing her name spoken by a child, “Maw-weeeen.” It sounded so sticky and exact. So she went back to the book and managed another page—the rabbits appeared to be making soup—before closing her eyes, until this time she stretched out beside Maple and fell asleep.
When Kate and her daughter returned, the old woman and the child were both lying on top of the bed. Maureen was snoring loudly, her mouth wide, and Maple was also open-mouthed and flush-cheeked, tucked into the crook of Maureen’s arm. Sarah lifted Maple and Kate moved an extra cushion closer to Maureen. She left a packet of painkillers and a glass of water in case Maureen needed them when she woke.
In the morning, Maureen asked if she could take another look at Maple’s picture book. She wanted to know how it ended.
“That was quite a good story,” she said. “I liked it.”
There. The nice words just came out.