See How They Lie Page 7

  In case Mick sees us.

  The waitress says it’s possible, and Mom says nothing. The potato chips are salty, buttery and rough against the inside of my mouth. I love them. I offer one to Mom but she shakes her head once from side to side, as if it’s still hurting, and returns her gaze to her soup.

  I suck them until they dissolve, crunch them like the boy did, lick my finger and glue all the potato chip crumbs to them. I eat until there’s no evidence left, and my stomach hurts from eating too quickly.

  I’ve done one bad thing. And now I’m about to do another. I stand up. “Mom, I’m going to the restroom. Will you be all right for a moment?”

  She’s hardly touched her soup, just stirred it round and round her bowl. I shouldn’t leave her, but I might not get another chance to do this, and desperation pushes aside my guilt.

  “I’m fine, honey,” says Mom in a fuzzy voice. The one that sounds like a drunk person in a movie. I know she has pills that she takes in the morning. Even though the Creek avoids giving out medication, Dad says her balancing pills are OK and she needs them to keep steady. She probably forgot to take them this morning.

  I scrape my chair backwards and almost run, out of Oh My Goodness and along the shiny marble flooring. It won’t take long. If she’s still bad when I get back, I’ll contact Mick via the mall’s public address system. I check around me before I enter the computer store, and then rush inside.

  NINE

  I make straight for the computers at the back. A navy-polo-shirted guy says, “Yo! You need help?”

  “No … just looking … thanks.” He’ll think I’m crazy if I ask how to connect to the internet. I click furiously on icons. Boxes appear, but I can’t see where to type in my keywords. Whole minutes go by. My underarms are damp and prickly. I picture Mom stirring her soup and I bite the inside of my lip, drawing blood.

  “What are you doing?”

  I turn and see a girl around ten years old staring at my screen of boxes. “Is this connected to the internet?” I ask. I take a step backwards and let the unspoken words jump between us. Please help me. A few clicks from her and I’m connected. “Thanks,” I say, and suddenly I have unrestricted access to the world and no one can check what I search. There’s a floating sensation in my body and the blood-taste of rebellion in my mouth.

  I search Vonnie Hill England. There are a few listed but I can’t find out much about them. One has run a marathon and raised over three thousand pounds. Another has a dog-walking business. There’s no indication that any of them has recently died.

  The store is filling up. There’s another customer hovering behind me. I search Frank Hill England and there are heaps, but I don’t know how to contact them. I think I might have to join a website and give an email address. I put Vonnie Frank Louelle Hill UK into the search bar and odd ancestry websites show up which don’t help.

  What was I expecting? I’m not sure, but something more. Perhaps a newspaper article about my grandmother’s death, naming her children, Frank and Louelle. The English side of my family is just as much a mystery as they were to me before.

  I should leave. I clear the screen and weave my way back through the store. When I reach the entrance, I glance across at the security guard and my lungs implode. He’s talking to Mick.

  Mick has his arms out in front of him. “Teenager. Dark brown hair. Tanned. Green top, maybe. Dunno. This height.”

  I turn back and vaguely attach myself to a group of three chatting women. I’m wearing a dark purple top and I’m taller than Mick thinks. I hope he keeps distracting the security guard. Fear fuses with nausea, and I force myself to move. Once outside the store, I speed-walk to the restaurant, my breath uneven and painful.

  Mom is slumped back against the wall of the booth. Her eyes are closed. When I take her arm, she shudders, and then her eyes open. “Mae!” her voice is faint. “Mick went looking for you.”

  “I went to the bathroom, Mom,” I say. “Did you tell him?”

  She nods. “Need to go back. Not feeling well.” She looks towards the purse on the table. “I paid the bill.”

  I’ve made her stressed, by ordering the potato chips and by disappearing for longer than she was expecting. And before that, by telling her about Frank’s phone call. I think the news about her mom’s death has hit her hard. “I’m sorry,” I say softly, but I don’t think she hears.

  I gather up our bags and stand by the table to wait for Mick to return. It’s something Thet taught me: standing makes you braver.

  He calls across the restaurant when he sees me, so that most people turn to look at us. “Where’ve you been, Mae? Your mom’s been on her own.”

  I refuse to speak until he’s closer, but that might have been a mistake because his face is contorted with irritation by the time he reaches me. One of my legs is shaking. I don’t know if having curious witnesses here will stop him behaving like he does at the Creek.

  “The restroom,” I say.

  “I looked,” he says. “You weren’t there.”

  Coldness spreads through me. Mick went into the female bathroom to look for me?

  “You must have missed me,” I say. I work really hard on keeping my voice level. All I want is to get Mom home. “We should go. Mom’s not well.”

  Mick stares at me. Is he going to yell and spit at me, boot-camp style? “You know the rules, Mae. You stay with your adult at all times.”

  “My adult wasn’t well enough to come with me,” I say, and that’s it. Mom’s saved me. It doesn’t make me feel any better about myself though, and Mick’s bound to make sure I’m never allowed her as my supervising adult again.

  We help Mom to stand up and she leans against Mick all the way to the car. When he’s helped her on to the back seat, I climb in next to her and fasten her seatbelt. Mick selects his music, and I scooch closer to her and whisper, “We shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.” This time I make sure she hears.

  “I want you to be happy,” she says.

  “We’ll be home soon,” I say, because I want it to be true. We’re still driving circuits of the parking lot on the way to the exit.

  “Your dad will run tests on me,” she says in a flat voice.

  “He’ll make you better.” I think of my conversation with Raoul. We’re lucky to have world-class healthcare.

  “You remember your appendicitis?” Mom murmurs, then sits up straighter. She’s waiting for an answer. “When you had to go to hospital? Do you remember?”

  “Not really,” I say. It was back when we were in the UK. My memories are like snippets of blurry footage, each a few seconds long. Crying because I didn’t want to wear the hospital gown. Mum lying on a bed with me. A Winnie the Pooh toy with a bandage round its stomach.

  “D’you remember the horse?” asks Mom.

  “Sorry?”

  “The horse, Mae. The horse was there.” She sounds distressed. Her face is very pale.

  I nod. This conversation frightens me because I don’t understand it and it seems to be important to her.

  “In the hospital,” says Mom. There are sweat beads on her nose and her body is hot. “It was the last time.” Her eyelids flutter and her mind slides away someplace else.

  Mick lowers the music volume.

  “Mom?” I ask.

  “Keep her awake,” says Mick.

  But I can’t, however much I squeeze her arms and shake her shoulders.

  “We have to take her to the hospital in Pattonville,” I tell Mick.

  He drives faster, towards the highway. “We’re going back to the Creek,” he says.

  “Please,” I say. Pattonville’s hospital must be closer.

  “No,” says Mick. “We’ll do as I say.” He reaches for his cell phone. I listen to him call Creek reception, explaining we’re going to need medical help when we arrive.

  I shift Mom’s body, trying to make her more comfortable, and I hold her hand so she knows I’m close. “Nearly there,” I mutter, over and over as the journey go
es on for ever.

  Finally, I see the sign for the Creek. The gates are open. Raoul is there, and moments later he’s checking Mom’s pulse, then looking at her watch. Dad is running down the drive.

  When Dad reaches us he barks at me, “What are her symptoms?”

  “Muscle pain. Headache, no energy, not making sense,” I say. “And pins and needles in her neck.”

  He nods. “You get out, Mae. Go through security clearance. Mick, I’ll see you later.”

  I take the bags. Dad scoops up Mom as if she’s a child and he’s rescuing her. I watch him carry her up the steps to the main building, Raoul beside him. It’s the quickest way to the medical suite.

  In the security building I place my bags on the scanner, and a female security guard pats me down, then says, “Cleared to go.” I mumble goodbye to Mick who’s signing us back in and handing over his cell phone, and he grunts in reply.

  I wait all afternoon in the apartment for someone to tell me what’s happening with Mom. I tidy away my new clothes, watch TV, lean over the roof terrace to gaze at people walking around the grounds, and practise calligraphy with my newest pen. I write Louelle Hill in different styles and then block them out with a thick Sharpie before scrunching the paper and burying it in the kitchen trash. I pick up the phone and hover my finger over the zero, but even if reception puts me through to the medical suite, I won’t be told anything because I’m being impatient. I have to be mindful. I have to trust.

  The sun goes in and a breeze starts up. I sit on the terrace and pick a leaf off one of the plants. Tearing off tiny piece after tiny piece, I say in my head: OK, not OK, OK, not OK.

  When the front door opens, I’m on my feet. It’s Raoul with a couple of medical bags. I rush towards him. “How’s Mom?”

  “She’ll be OK.” He sees my face. “You doubted your father?” He holds up his bags. “She’s coming back here soon, and I’m setting up my nursing station. Your mom will have gold-star care. Nothing to worry about, little lady.”

  I hate how he fobs me off. “She’s really ill,” I say.

  “She has me,” says Raoul. He pushes his wide chest outwards. “I’m the best nurse. In fact I’m more than the best nurse, I’m a biochemist.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  Raoul carries on through to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. “It means I understand her illness,” he says. “She’s lucky to have me.”

  About an hour later, Dad brings Mom over in a wheelchair. She’s sleepy with a drip in her arm but her skin is a better colour. Dad and Raoul settle her in bed while I wait in the living room.

  When Dad emerges for dinner he tells me I’m not allowed to see her until tomorrow afternoon. She needs complete rest.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask. It’s strange eating at the table, just the two of us. Mom’s always eaten dinner with me. Always.

  “Not a lot,” he says, as he hands me my vitamin. “She’s run down.”

  No matter what he and Raoul say, I’m worried about Mom’s condition. How can it be nothing serious if she wasn’t making sense and has to be monitored twenty-four hours a day?

  After dinner I go to my room to read one of the books on Ms Ray’s list: Animal Farm by George Orwell. My mind keeps thinking of the bizarre image of a horse in the hospital. Mom was there when I had my appendix out. Dad wasn’t there. He must have been working as usual.

  Wait. There was someone else there before my operation when my stomach hurt so badly. An older woman with a lined face. Drawn-on eyebrows. She gave me sweets, which Mom said I wasn’t allowed to eat, and the plastic horse. The one on my chest of drawers. I get up and go pick it up, and the memory becomes a little stronger. The woman hugged me and told me that soon the pain would be gone. Mom cried when she left.

  We left England soon afterwards. Might that woman have been Mom’s mom, my grandmother, meeting us without Dad knowing? Was that the last time Mom – and I – saw her?

  TEN

  I’m awake before my alarm. Unless it’s an emergency, I’m not allowed out of my room until it goes off. Several times in the night I could hear Dad pacing around the living room. I couldn’t tell whether Raoul was in the apartment too. Or if Mom’s condition had become worse.

  I lie in the dark, trying to forget about the severe ache in my thigh and the prickly sensations that come and go in my neck. Am I getting what Mom has? Although I can’t override the lighting system, I could press the emergency lighting button which illuminates a glow-lamp on the wall. But if Dad was in the living room and saw the light, I’d be in trouble. So I grip my thigh and massage it, and I think about my English family. Mom’s sad when she thinks about them, but she doesn’t seem to hate them like Dad does. I know she wished she could have gone to her mom’s funeral, and I’m pretty sure she was trying to get me to remember seeing my grandmother in the hospital before I had my appendix out.

  Apart from possibly my plastic horse, I wonder if there’s anything here in the apartment that links to Mom’s former life. Where would she keep something she didn’t want Dad to see?

  I stop pressing down on my thigh. The two places she spends most of her time are the roof terrace and the grounds staff office where she has a desk. I should check out her desk when I can.

  When my alarm finally goes off, I get dressed. The apartment is silent. The door to Mom and Dad’s bedroom is closed. I want to creep in and check on Mom but I don’t dare. I stand outside the door for a while, but I can’t be late for my exercise class, so I give up after a few minutes. As I walk past Dad’s study, I see his desk isn’t as tidy as it usually is. There are pieces of paper all over it. Checking the bedroom door is still closed, I take a few steps into the study to see what they are.

  They’re covered with numbers – calculations – and what looks like science symbols, and medical-looking words. But mostly numbers, some with big lines through them, crossing them out. It’s Dad’s handwriting. Perhaps he was distracting himself with something medical while he was up in the night, worried about Mom. Or is this to do with Mom’s illness?

  There’s a noise from the bedroom. I tread lightly and swiftly out of the room, then leave the apartment.

  I’m the last one to arrive at the exercise session, and when Drew says, “How was the mall?” the tears spread across my eyes so fast that he’s a blur. “Not successful?”

  He thinks I didn’t manage to get to the computer store. He probably doesn’t know about Mom, and I don’t have time to tell him because our instructor is here.

  At breakfast I don’t want to say anything in front of the others, and I’m desperate to get back to the apartment, so I eat a couple of mouthfuls of granola and scrape the rest into the waste while the supervisors aren’t looking.

  As I walk past Thet, I see she’s partway through one of her tapping routines, one finger against the top part of her arm, so I don’t stop to say hello or she’ll have to start over.

  I run across the lawn and input the door code in such a hurry that it doesn’t register and I’m forced to do it again more slowly. The elevator takes ages to clank down to the ground floor, but I know the timings. Running up five flights will take longer, even allowing for the slowness of the elevator.

  As I burst through the apartment door, I push it too heavily and it crashes into the wall.

  “What d’you think you’re doing, making so much noise?” Dad strides into view. “Your mother is sleeping.”

  I apologize. He’s expecting me to go straight into my en-suite bathroom for a shower, and he’s surprised when I walk towards him instead. “How is she?”

  “I told you, Mae. There’s nothing to be concerned about,” says Dad, but I’ve reached the living room and I don’t take in what he’s saying because there, sitting on the sofa, is Karl Jesmond. He rarely visits our apartment. My heart flings itself against my ribcage.

  Instead of saying hello, I run towards the bedroom, push at the partially open door, and take a few steps towards the bed, where Mom is lying on
her back, asleep. She looks peaceful but not herself. Her hair is dark with greasiness and her face is free of make-up, revealing sun spots and blemishes.

  Her watch is attached via a wire to a laptop which is on the bedside table, and there’s a very low regular bleeping noise. But there are no other wires. No drips or drains.

  Dad is in the doorway. “Mae. Come away at once.” He’d be more angry if Dr Jesmond wasn’t here.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “A virus.” He grabs my arm, almost encircling it with his large, strong hand. “Now get ready for your lessons. Have you forgotten your manners with Karl?”

  As we walk back into the living room, Dad drops my arm and I mumble hello to Karl.

  Karl nods, a smile hovering on his lips. I expect he heard Dad talking to me. “Hello to you too, Miss Mae. What have you been learning recently in lessons?”

  “Science… Geography…”

  Dad interjects, “What sort of science?”

  I fell easily into that trap, but now my brain is thinking fast. Ms Ray is only supposed to teach us topics that are in the work booklets. I try to remember topics that I’ve seen in the booklets. We used to skip the science questions with our last teacher.

  It’s easier to be vague and disinterested. “Er … you know. Sciencey stuff.”

  Dr Jesmond chuckles.

  Dad lets it pass. He tells me not to come back to the apartment before dinner so that Mom won’t be disturbed. I nod and go to my room, but I don’t click the door completely closed because I want to hear what’s going on.

  Dr Jesmond is telling Dad that he thinks Greta would make a useful teacher. I can’t think of anyone who’d make a worse one.

  I choose my clothes for the day, then before I have a shower I listen some more. Dad and Dr Jesmond are speaking quietly but I can hear snatches of their conversation. Dr Jesmond says, “We’re agreed then, that going forward we reduce dosage?”