“We go out, somewhere simple, the park, McDonald’s, a cafe where I can pull the car up close so I don’t have to carry her far. She really hates people seeing that.”
“Mace, I’m so sorry.”
“Why? You asked. That’s what happens on Saturdays. On Sundays I bring her home. She sits in the garden and listens to music too loud if it’s warm, or watches TV if it’s not. The rest of the time she lives in one room of a nursing home that’s the best I can afford. She can’t read any more. Her body is untrustworthy. She hates it, but she never complains. She was worried about me when I finally got hold of her. I’m worried about the nursing agency sending someone decent to do what I can’t.”
Jacinta could have a carer with the highest degree of training and the personal qualities of a professional saint with a security escort at Mace’s disposal in five minutes and never notice the cost. “I can help you with that.”
He unmuted the TV, the midday news headlines, and focused on the blonde newsreader. “What could you possibly do about that?”
“It would be no trouble to organise a—”
“It’s not about the nurse.”
She sighed, there was no point him being proud, this was an exceptional circumstance and surely he’d see that. “It’s no—”
“She finds it difficult to talk now. The Parkinson’s is advanced. I have no trouble understanding her, but others don’t take the time. It’s not about finding someone to hold a spoon to her mouth so she can try to swallow. It’s about giving her time to be more than the fucking disease, giving her sunlight and home comforts. Showing her she still matters.”
He put the remote on the coffee table and stood, his expression like stone; bleak, unbreakable. “I hate that I can’t be there because she was the only one who was ever there for me.”
He went back down the hall to the office and the rigid line of his shoulders and the lack of care he paid to his hurt foot made her accumulation of money, privilege and power seem like a pointless waste of time.
Jacinta was fearless, had taught herself to be that way, but her fearlessness came from having control, knowing she could argue, buy or rationalise any circumstance she faced. She didn’t have the switch that flicked that could make a person run towards an explosion, but he did. Mace ran towards the fire and the pain of being alive every weekend.
7: Detente
Jacinta stood in the open fridge door and felt inadequate. Her fridge was full of girl food: salad and fruit, yoghurt and cold cuts. She had crispbread and cream cheese; things the housekeeper stocked for her to pick at when she was home. Any cooking was mostly reheating. She didn’t know what to put together for Mace’s lunch, but one BLT and a bottle of water would hardly be enough to keep his hangover from eating his brain if it was anything like hers.
He startled her with a brusque, “Sorry.” She turned to find him sitting on a kitchen stool at the counter. She’d figured he’d probably hide out in the office for the rest of the day, which might have been the best thing for both of them.
She closed the fridge door. “It’s okay. I deserved that.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have to lay it on so thick.” He rubbed a knuckle into his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’m a dickhead.”
“And I was being all master of the universe. I wasn’t thinking. My offer to help stands, but I get that it only provides for the more mercenary needs.”
She leant on the opposite side of the counter, facing him across its width. She wanted to tell him how affected she’d been by his words, how touched she was that he looked like action man but spent his weekends caring for someone who could no longer care for him. He wasn’t an oyster shell, he was an onion with unexpected layers to his life that might make you cry if he let you peel them back.
He dropped his hand from his face. “If I had an ounce of grace I’d have recognised that’s where you were coming from.”
“I can’t do anything for your state of grace, but you must be hungry.”
“I’ll gracefully accept your offer of food.”
“You don’t happen to gracefully master catering type things do you?”
The eyebrow jumped.
“I don’t do kitchens.”
It jumped again.
“I can slap salad on a plate, make toast and fry an egg and I’m an ace at microwave reheating, but that’s where the talents run out.”
“Jay made the BLT.”
She grimaced and nodded.
He got off the stool and came around her side of the counter. “If you have mayo I could eat the countertop.”