Fiction
Animals
by Charlotte Grimshaw
A short story by Charlotte Grimshaw
There were red swirls. I fought my way out of them. A metal object was eased out of my throat. They were asking a question.
“Nine,” I said.
They conferred. “Mr James? What is your level of pain on a scale of one to ten?”
“Fifteen.” I groaned. Above me shapes loomed, split off from one another. The pain came again. I twisted and sighed. Then the red swirls. I dreamed I was walking towards my wife, through a tunnel of red light. She laughed and asked, “How much did you love me, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Zero,” I shouted. “Zero you cow!”
I woke up. Everything looked liquid. A plastic bag above me reflected sunlight. There was sparkling dust in the air. When I turned my head I felt a tug – a tube had been inserted in my nose. How disgusting I thought, in a light, tired, teary way. The red swirls had gone. Everything was too bright.
I lay thinking. I remembered my wife, the way she’d skipped and danced through the loops of my pain. She hadn’t really been there. My sister Claudia had volunteered to help me, now I was separated and, as Claudia put it, “all alone”.
Claudia filled my water jug. She chattered about her family. Then she said, “It’ll take you a long time to get over this.”
“How long?”
“You’ll be exhausted for months.”
“I’ve got to go back to work.”
Claudia looked secretive. She said, “Did they tell you? The operation destroys the stomach muscles. You’ll have a pot belly for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll have to wear a corset,” I said, wearily.
There was a short silence.
“Of course, in Auckland it’s too hot for a corset.”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“I’ll be back soon,” she promised.
I said goodbye, without smiling. She would tell you I’ve always been like that. Rude. Male. Ungrateful. She stood above me, in the liquidy light. She’s still a very beautiful women. Blue eyes, blonde hair. She has the face of an angel, people used to say. And she’s so good. She goes to church, runs tirelessly after her family. And still finds time to take care of her elder brother …
The surgeon came round. He complained about petrol prices. Finally he remembered to say, “Everything went well. You’ll just need some check-ups after this.”
Something in me subsided. I realised I’d been afraid.
There was a small TV on a metal bracket. I watched reruns of old shows far into the night. Out my window I could see the city lights.
In the morning two nurses took me, tubes and all, into a bathroom and washed me with a shower nozzle. I slept after, and woke to a terrible wall of sound. I struggled up, and saw a choir in the corridor, singing hymns. When the song ended I shouted “Shut up!” There was a shocked silence. Someone quietly closed my door. I laughed. I almost felt myself again. A nurse took out some of my tubes and I feasted on a cup of soup. I threw it all up again, but pressed on with half a cup of tea. It was Sunday. Soon Claudia would come, fresh from church. I want to get out of here, I thought.
Our mother, Claudia’s and mine, was a big, powerful woman. She taught Sunday school. She was stern and took no nonsense. I was a sickly child. I must have taken up a lot of her time. Was Claudia parked in front of the TV, while everyone fussed around me? Did something wither in her, grow disappointed and hard? I see a little girl, picking the scabs on her knees, her blue eyes glazed with Good Times, with Happy Days. I think my mother was a power monger, who made us yearn to please her. And my sister could please her with goodness but not with her talk, because, unlike me, Claudia didn’t have our mother’s brains. So my little sister grew gooder and gooder, and badder and badder, until she was the beautiful Christian fiend appearing at the door, with flowers and cards, with messages of sibling love.
“People get secondaries,” she said. “It starts with one thing and then …”
“It just gets worse,” I chimed in. I smiled at her. She didn’t understand that I’d always loved her. I patronised her when we were young, but I was proud of her. Or maybe she did understand, and it made her angry. There was a lot of the power monger in her, too. She used to dislike my wife Gina. Gina said Claudia was sinister.
She sniffed. Our father used to sniff like that when he talked about “Asians” and “bloody politicians”.
I went for a walk, dragging my tubes, like a ghost – robed, wavering, clanking. I limped past photos of nuns, one of the Pope wearing a Maori cloak. My insides groaned, something laboriously rearranging itself, then there was a loud report that made my ears go crimson. Laughter came to me, a wave of weakness.
Claudia said, “I hear you’ve been shouting at people.”
“Only at the Christians.”
In the middle of the night a nurse inserted a painkiller up my arse. “You’re in the paper,” she said.
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