That helps.
‘Now talk.’
‘Nothin’ to say.’ My voice sounds like powdered sand.
‘Oh, I think there’s plenty.’ She pushes my hair back. ‘You just don’t want to dredge it up, do you?’
I close my eyes.
‘Oh, no no no,’ Amie says. She squeezes my hand. ‘No you don’t. Speak to me, Harris. Tell me something real. You talk a good game, but you never say anything I don’t already know. Gimme something honest.’
I just look at her.
‘You don’t want to, do you? How can I…?’ She scans the room. Her face gets this desperate searching expression before her eyes come back to mine. ‘Okay. This is how we’re gonna do it. I’ll tell you something, then you’ll tell me something. All right?’
She sits for a moment with her hands in her lap. Her eyes lose focus, like she’s seeing inside herself. She’s not in uniform, I suddenly notice: she’s wearing jeans, and a pale pink shirt. Her eyes are brown, liquid. Her hair is so dark, the colour of charcoal, and the room is quiet in the dusk.
‘I went to the beach when I was thirteen,’ Amie says suddenly. ‘With Mum and Dad. It was gorgeous. We stayed for a week. I loved the…the vastness of it. The ocean, the swell. It made me feel invincible and insignificant all at the same time. D’you know what I mean?’
I don’t know. I’ve never been to the sea.
‘There was this shop near the beach,’ Amie goes on, ‘I guess it must’ve been a souvenir shop. They sold milk and bread and stuff, but they also sold second-hand novels, and postcards…oh my god, these terrible postcards. Old-style sexist ones, with naked women and some jaunty message.Wish you were here, it’s hot and wet– that sort of thing. You can imagine the pictures.’
She smiles faintly. She’s sitting forward now, her hands on the sheet. Her fingers pick together, sparring like small restless animals as she looks at something else, something within.
‘There was a shelf with all these little shell sculptures, y’know? Shells glued together. I thought they were adorable. They were really tacky, of course – little shell people waving, drinking beers, smoking pipes. But the most glamorous things in the shop were these bottles of coloured sand. The sand was in layers, like a piece of marble cake. I wanted one of those sand bottlessobadly. It was like an itch. I had to have one…’
She swallows. ‘The day before we left, Mum took me to the shop and bought me one. Just a small one, a little bottle with a cork stopper. I was so happy to have it, I crooned over it all the way home. And, y’know, I think it was just a wonderful distraction. Because all the way home, my Mum and Dad were talking about Mum’s treatment, and how long it would take, and when she’d be in hospital, and how the recovery process would go…which didn’t happen, of course, cos she never made it out of surgery. So all the time they’re talking, I’m sitting in the back seat of the car looking at my little bottle of marbled sand –’
She stops. Examines her hands.
‘That was the last holiday I had with both my parents. Before my mum passed. And I still have the little bottle. It’s on my dresser, at home, with the cork stopper…’ She peters out, shrugs. Makes this brave almost-smile. ‘Anyway, that’s me. Now it’s your turn.’
I don’t know what to say after that, or where to look except straight at her. The pause stretches, pulls taut, then she lowers her head to meet my eyes. Her breath is warm on my face.
‘Your dad can’t come to the ward, Harris,’ she says softly. ‘He tried to come after visiting hours last night, and he was bombed. He abused the staff, so Barb banned him from the hospital. If he tries to get in again, security will turn him back.’
Suddenly it’s like something clicks inside me – tumblers turn, and the lock breaks. And I tell her.
‘I can’t live there anymore,’ I whisper.
‘At your dad’s?’ Amie asks.
‘He’s sick. Cancer. He wants me to stay. But I think he…’ I shudder, close my eyes. ‘I think we might kill each other if I stay.’
Amie doesn’t say anything. She squeezes my hand gently, strokes my knuckles with her thumb until I open my eyes. It’s the first time anyone has touched me with gentleness since…since the last time I was here at the hospital, I guess. I get a sudden flash of the way Amie slipped her arm under me when she changed my sheets that time.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers. She touches my bruised cheek. ‘We’ll work it out, Harris. We’ll figure it out.’
It’s such a relief to say it to someone, to hear any kind of reassurance, I can’t even be embarrassed. My body is filled with this trembling energy that takes whole heartbeats to settle.
Amie stays with me until the nausea subsides, until I’ve managed to take in some fluids, until I fall asleep. I don’t know what happens after that.
