Page 102 of We All Live Here
“Hello,” she says. “Would it be possible for me to talk to someone about Bill McKenzie? Heart attack in Room C3. He was admitted this evening.” She pauses, then says firmly: “I’m his daughter.”
•••
Lila spends severalhours at the hospital, long enough to ensure that Bill is stable, to learn that he has suffered a myocardial infarction, that the length of time he waited for treatment has possibly been offset by the fact that he had had the presence of mind to take aspirin when he first started having chest pains, that they are waiting on the results of a battery of tests, including one for brain hemorrhage, and that they will let Lila know if anything changes. Only one person is allowed to stay in the room overnight, and it feels wrong to evict Penelope, especially as Lila has to get back to the girls, so she finally leaves, with Penelope promising to stay in touch.
Lila arrives back shortly before one a.m., numb and drained of all feeling. She cannot think beyond each step of her journey: the front desk at the hospital has a hotline to a taxi company and she thanks thempolitely for ordering one for her, and sits silently in the back of the car when it comes, staring at nothing out of the window. The storm has abated, just the odd gust of wind gently causing the bushes to sway, and piles of leaves to scatter in skittish bursts across the pavements. It is only as she approaches her street that she remembers the tree, but it feels like a ridiculous cosmic joke on top of everything that has happened. She tells herself that it, like so much else, can wait until tomorrow. Because Bill, the man who has been a father to her for nearly her whole life, Bill, the kindest, most consistent, the best of men, is lying in a hospital bed with no guarantee of recovery, and she doesn’t know what to say to her children, and that is all that matters.
“Just here, please,” she says, when they reach her part of the street, and rummages in her bag for money to pay the driver. When she hands it to him and tells him to keep the change he swivels to her, gives her a sympathetic smile, and says: “I hope they’re all right. Whoever it is.”
She looks up at him.
“No one wants picking up from the hospital at a quarter to one in the morning unless it’s bad news,” he says. “Good luck to you, mate.” A lump rises in her throat at the unexpected humanity. She manages to mutter a thank-you, and climbs out of the taxi. And it is then that she stops in confusion. The tree has gone. Her front door is in plain sight, as is her car. The enormous fallen tree has vanished so comprehensively that for a moment she wonders if she had imagined the whole thing. But, no, over to the right-hand side of her house, obscuring the garage doors, an enormous pile of logs bears the scars of a chainsaw. To the left a giant wigwam of branches. As she glances at the Mercedes, she can just detect a dent in the roof, visible in the glare of the sodium light from the lamppost on the pavement. Lila stares at the three things, not quite able to take them all in, then lets herself in through the front door.
Truant is the first to greet her, racing down the stairs, his tongue lolling, leaping up at her in delight that she has, against all odds, returned.She holds his soft face to hers for a moment, shushing him, but grateful for his presence in the too-still house. He follows her, bouncing with joy, as she goes to the kitchen, where she will make herself a cup of tea. It is the knee-jerk response to everything, she thinks distantly. Hot water and old leaves. Strange, really. But it’s all she wants right now, and with a big teaspoon of sugar in it.
She jumps when Jensen scrambles up from the kitchen chair. “Sorry,” he says, rubbing his face. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I must have nodded off.”
She’s so shocked to see him there that she cannot speak. His expression is briefly unguarded.
“I—I didn’t think the girls should be on their own. So I went home to pick up my chainsaw and just told Celie I’d be outside for the evening clearing the tree. Just, you know, so she had an adult around. And then when I finished she asked would I wait. I think she felt a little anxious, you know, with…everything.”
“You did that. The tree.”
He shrugs. “Well. It wasn’t really the time for you not to be able to get in and out of your house. How is he?”
It is then that tears rise. She swallows hard, trying to contain them. “Um. Hard to say just now. But they’re doing everything they can.” She looks up at the ceiling, willing herself to keep it together. “Heart attack, it turns out. Big one. Penelope’s still there with him.”
She cannot look at him. She keeps staring at the ceiling, blinking, trying to hold back the tears.
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, mutely, compressing her lips.
There is a short silence.
“I—I’ll get off, then,” he says. He stands, and reaches for his jacket. “Just…didn’t know how long you’d be and I didn’t want…” She hears his voice and closes her eyes, suddenly too overwhelmed by his decency.It is too much, the thing that has finally broken her. And she presses her hands against her face and starts to cry, the tears that have somehow been dammed for this whole wretched evening, perhaps this whole awful, awful month. She rams her knuckles into her eye sockets and lets out a long, low howl. She cannot hold it in, she cannot bear it all, because it is too much, always too much, all the bloody time.
And after a moment she feels Jensen’s arm around her, at first tentative, and then more firmly, pulling her in, and she lets herself collapse onto the solidity of him, letting him hold her up as she cries, for Bill, for her daughters, for herself, for all of it. She cries and cries, her sobs hoarse in her ears, tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks, no longer even able to care what he might think, because it’s all lost anyway, all broken. And Jensen holds her, until the sobs become shudders, and intermittent tremors, and then, an age later, when she has sat down on the chair, and wiped ineffectually at her face with a handful of tissues, he puts a mug of tea in front of her, nods an acknowledgment of her garbled apologies, says he’ll be in touch about clearing the tree branches, and then quietly, so as not to wake the girls, he lets himself out.
Chapter Thirty-four
For the next few days Lila’s life enters a new realm. She spends as many waking hours at the hospital as she can, and while she is at home she focuses solely on her daughters. She needs to: they have been knocked sideways by the news of Bill’s illness. Celie retreats to her room, spending hours drawing, her face somber when she comes down to eat, but it is Violet who takes it hardest, fearful that she is about to lose the man she thinks of as her grandpa in the same abrupt, violent way she had lost her grandmother. She has night terrors, pads across the hallway in the small hours and climbs into Lila’s bed, has become clingy, and blows up at the slightest excuse. It is as if the robustness she has always displayed has disappeared along with her peace of mind. Lila does her best to reassure them—Bill is awake, the prognosis hopeful—but she cannot give them the certainty they seek: Bill is old, and it turns out his heart is weakened, and nobody knows how well—or for how long—he will recover.
She had called Dan to let him know, relaying the news withoutemotion, wanting him, she supposes, to offer support, maybe to spend more time with his daughters when they need stability. But Marja is still in the maternity hospital. Apparently there is a problem with the placenta and he says, exhaustedly, that he is struggling to look after Hugo and manage his job. She finds herself hoping Marja’s baby will be okay, not because she feels any great love for Marja, but because she just needs Dan to find some emotional energy for his girls. She just needs something to be normal, reliable.
Eleanor, like the best of friends, steps in. She has twice reorganized her work to pick Violet up from school, has walked Truant every morning and stops by in the evenings, bringing a takeaway supper or just her cheerful presence to break the unaccustomed stillness of their house. Jensen has returned on one of the days that Lila was at the hospital and cleared the tree branches so that all that is left is a neatly piled stack of logs. It is as if the tree had never existed. She sends him an effusive thank-you by text, explaining the many ways in which she is grateful for his generosity. He replies,No problem. He doesn’t mention her letter. She would feel worse about it if she had any energy to feel worse about anything.
One afternoon, when she feels particularly low, she grabs her keys and takes the Mercedes out for a drive. She puts the roof down, and turns up her music, waiting for some alchemical change in her emotional state, but instead she feels exposed and stupid and gets as far as the high street before she puts the roof back up, then drives home.
Bill has a stent fitted. He will stay in hospital for a week, and will need to be on a variety of medications when he comes home—aspirin, anti-platelet treatment, beta-blockers, and something to lower his cholesterol. It seems insanely unfair that a man who has spent his whole life pursuing a healthy diet should suffer like this, but the fault may be genetic, the doctors tell her, and bodies are unpredictable, unknowable things. The consultant who tells her this smiles amiably, as if he isdescribing something magical. Bill will stay with her initially when he returns home—as much for his mental state as any physical risk: apparently it is common for those who have had a heart attack to go through a period of anxiety and depression. She accepts a sheaf of leaflets recommending self-help groups he can turn to, though she suspects this is as likely as him taking up heavy-metal guitar.
Lila’s life has become completely binary. It boils down to two things: keeping her girls’ spirits up, and helping keep Bill alive. It is almost a relief, this letting go of everything else. She moves through the requirements of her day with outward calm, taking healthy, home-cooked meals to Bill and Penelope (he is appalled by what they serve at the hospital), and bringing home encouraging reports to her daughters.He complains that everybody on the ward watches daytime television. He thinks their brains will rot before their hearts give up.There are periods of your life in which all that is really required is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Lila wakes at six thirty every morning and does exactly this for sixteen hours before she climbs back into bed at ten thirty and sleeps a deep, exhausted sleep.
•••
“Darling! How blissfulto hear from you! I was worried when you said you’d had a family emergency. Is everything okay?” Anoushka’s voice booms out of the hands-free phone.
Lila is trying to tidy the kitchen before she goes out.
