Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam by Peter Goldsworthy Read Free Book Online Page B

into a lull in a conversation about household finances.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just that. We shouldn’t let her go … alone.’
    ‘You mean … we should go
with
her?’
    Linda’s tone was surprisingly calm; he peered at her through the half-dark, trying to read her face.
    ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ he murmured.
    ‘It crossed my mind too. I’ve thought of it several times. I’ve tried
not
to think it — it seemed too crazy.’
    She shivered in his arms: a convulsion that was more a shudder of disgust. He shivered himself, contagiously.
    ‘It
is
crazy,’ he said. ‘It’s crazy even to talk about it.’
    She rolled away from him, but he followed, pressing against her from behind: ‘There’s Ben to think of, if nothing else,’ she murmured. ‘What right would we have to take him with us?’
    Even now, the idea was only half speakable, couched in the euphemisms of travel and journeys. Of family holidays.
    ‘He would hate to be left out,’ Rick said, and they both suddenly laughed, briefly, too-loudly, then lay together for some minutes in silence, their bodies stilled, their hearts pounding, not quite believing that such thoughts had crept out into the open.
    The subject of Ben had opened another door, the worry-programme had thrown up another weird solution, only slightly less unspeakable. This time it was Linda who found the words:
    ‘Maybe only one of us should go with her. Maybe I should go with her.’
    Rick rolled apart from her: ‘You want me to lose
both
of you?
    ‘Is your grief going to be worse?’ she said. ‘Could it
be
any worse?’
    ‘Of course it would be worse.’
    She could hear the doubt in his voice; she knew that he was already there, ahead, or at least abreast of her.
    More long, slow minutes, then she spoke, as of old, for them both: ‘Are two griefs worse than one? How much worse can it be? Can things be worse than
worst?’
    Their hearts pounded on as they lay there at rest, in bed. Sweat broke out across Rick’s face, his hands shook, the sheets were damp and clammy against his skin. The darkness, crowding and claustrophobic, surrounded him; it seemed a viscous element, heavy on his senses, preventing clear thought.
    ‘This is absurd,’ he said. ‘We’ll have other children. We can have another baby straight away.’
    ‘It’s not us we’re talking about,’ Linda said.
    He lay in silence, rebuked.
    ‘It’s Wol,’ she continued. ‘I can’t bear to think of her going away — alone. It’s as though we’ve cast her out into the woods. Abandoned her, like something in a fairy-tale. And we won’t go with her.’
    She paused; the idea was growing, taking more definite shape: ‘I
want
to go with her,’ she announced, more definitely.
    ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ Rick said.
    ‘It’s late — we’re both exhausted. In the clear light of day you’ll realise how crazy this is.’
    ‘Just think about it,’ she urged. ‘That’s all I ask.’
    He rolled away from her, to the far side of the bed, out of contact.
    ‘No,’ he said, angrily. ‘I won’t. Not ever. I don’t want to hear about it again.’

10
    As the child’s immune system failed, she was fed an exotic daily salad of antibiotics to prevent infection; these in turn suppressed her appetite, she lost weight steadily. She rapidly came to resemble the snapshots of her forgotten foster siblings in Bangladesh and Ecuador: all skin and bones, her eyes sunk deeply into their dark sockets. Her period of self-isolation had passed, she now preferred to sleep in her parents’ bed each night, between them, facing her father — which meant that they slept even less themselves, anxious not to squash her frail bird-bones, or bruise her paper-thin skin. Often Linda would leave father and daughter together, sneaking off into Emma’s room, or into Ben’s room, spending the night squeezed even more uncomfortably into the narrow bed of a boy who was as unwilling as ever to be left