The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  Kathy’s garden had apple trees and a pond with bright orange fish in it. Kathy’s mum collected gnomes, and put them around the pond with little fishing rods. I didn’t like them, but Kathy had named them all and took a towel out to dry them if it’d been raining.

  We practised our skipping that day, then tried to make a swing out of the skipping rope, a tree branch and a cushion. It wasn’t very comfortable, but I sat on it anyway. When Kathy went inside to get a jumper, I stayed out, thinking about Aunt Vivienne at my mother’s birthday party. Before leaving with my parents, I’d run across her in the hallway, tugging on Malkie’s sleeve. She was asking about Uncle Jack.

  “You really don’t know where he’s gone?”

  “Nope.”

  “I thought he might come today.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “I can’t believe he just left – he’d tell me where he was going, I know he would.”

  “I came home one night and his stuff was all gone, just a bunch of cash to help with bills.”

  “Couldn’t he stay for me?” She slumped against the wall. “I’d die for him, you know.”

  “No one’s asking you to, Viv.”

  I thought about that especially. I didn’t think I’d ever want to die for anyone, except maybe Mr Tickles.

  Kathy stuck her head out of an upstairs window and called to me. “Mum says it’s getting cold and you should have a jumper, too.”

  I climbed the stairs to her room. Kathy was very neat and all her jumpers were arranged by colour. I stood in front of them, trying to choose.

  “Why don’t you have the yellow? That’s a summery colour.” Kathy knew I was no good at choosing clothes.

  “Okay, yellow.” I pulled it on over my head and looked at myself in the mirror. It made me look pale, I thought, and it was baggy everywhere, like I was Kathy’s younger sister.

  “You don’t have any boobies at all,” Kathy said. “Have you got your period yet?”

  “No,” I said, embarrassed.

  “I have,” Kathy said. “I must be nearly ready to have a baby, you know.”

  I looked back at my reflection. Last week, I’d stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom, trying to look grown up. I’d put my hands on my hips, like I’d seen Aunt Vivienne do, and pushed one hip out, making a kissing shape with my mouth, and playing with my hair. I looked pretty good, I thought, until my father caught me. Now I felt like more of a child than ever.

  “Are you okay?” Kathy asked. “You look weird.”

  I heard footsteps, then Kathy’s mum was in the room, looking flustered. “Your mum’s been gone a while, hasn’t she?” she said. “Let me just give her a quick call, see what’s happening. I’ve only just seen the time and we’ve got to get to a clarinet lesson soon.”

  I wandered into the garden with Kathy while she called my mother to come and pick me up. The clouds seemed to be moving too quickly, like someone had them on fast-forward. I lay face-down in the grass for a while; Kathy sat next to me, making a daisy chain. Her mum came out and spoke to me but she sounded muffled. I turned my head to look at her, and her face was creased up with worry.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said I can’t get through to your house, love. It’s been ringing for about ten minutes now.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think I’d better walk you home.”

  “Okay.”

  Kathy stood in the hallway with us while her mum decided on shoes and fingered things in her handbag. “Kathy, stay inside,” she said. “I’ll be five minutes at most.”

  “Okay,” Kathy said, calmly. “See you later, Tallie.”

  I leaned my head against the wall. The patch inside the doorway was cool where it had been in the shade all day. Kathy’s mum patted my back and I tore myself away from my little spot and followed her down the path.

  The sounds are what I remember most when I think of that day – the shuffle of our feet as Kathy’s mother walked me home, her gasp when we turned the corner and reached my street and my father came running towards us, his face white and his hands stained a pinkish colour. At the time, I just wondered what he was doing home so early. He kept saying something over and over again, but it wasn’t until he shook me by the shoulders, making my brain rattle around inside my head, that I realised what it was he was trying to tell me. “Go inside. Go inside, Tallulah. Go inside and shut the door.”

  Mr Tickles scratching to be let out, and, as if from far away, someone screaming.

  I’m flicking ash all over myself. A breeze has started ballet-like movements in the trees up and down the street. I’m still sitting on my doorstep, smoking, watching a leaf play aimlessly on the pavement. It’s green and juicy-looking, harder to blow around than the dry brown ones that will join it in a few weeks; it’s a hopeful-looking leaf, I think, then a passing dog pees on it.

  I stretch my legs and wrap my arms around myself; it’s cooler now that the breeze has picked up. The elbows of my cardigan are wearing thin and I can see my skin through the material. If my mother were alive she’d have mended it herself, but she doesn’t seem to have passed on the gene – my flat is full of broken things.

  They buried my mother, killed by a speeding car a few steps from our front door, in a wooden box under six feet of earth. She’ll suffocate, I wanted to say, but then she was in the ground and it didn’t seem to matter anymore. They told me to be brave and carry on, my father especially. ‘We’ll have to learn to just be a two, now, Tallulah.’ I didn’t know how to say that everything had changed. Getting up was different, brushing my teeth, breakfast, playing with Mr Tickles. Only half an hour of the day used up and I was already so angry.

  In the weeks following the hit-and-run, I started to have nightmares. Nightmares full of blood, rivers of it. They told us in the hospital that my mother had lost a lot of blood – they were going to try to give her a transfusion. The bleeding wouldn’t stop, they said, then, eventually, it did.

  The blood that my mother lost was the same blood that had nourished me while I was growing inside her, roughly seven inches below her heart. The blood stopped flowing when the heart stopped beating, and when they buried her all that remained of it was on the road outside our house, a dark purple stain, until a man from the council came and washed it away.

  Thinking of this now makes me feel funny. My stomach hurts and I get a prickling sensation behind my eyes. I pull at a loose thread on my cardigan, twisting it around my finger until the tip of the digit goes white. A sudden wind dives at me when I stand up, whipping my hair back. It may have taken another family tragedy, but I think the cobwebs are finally starting to blow away.

  PART TWO

  Skin

  Eight

  Skin functions as a temperature regulator, insulator, the receptor for ‘sensation’, synthesiser of vitamin D, and protector of vitamin B folates. In humans it is made up of layer upon layer of tissue, and covered with hair follicles.

  Skin is actually an organ – although this is not commonly known – and guards the underlying muscles, bones, ligaments and internal organs. It is, in fact, the largest organ of our integumentary system – namely, the one that protects the body from damage. When severely damaged, skin will attempt to heal by forming scar tissue (the name we give areas of fibrotic tissue that have replaced normal skin after an accident, after surgery, after disease). On a protein level, this new fibrotic tissue is the same as the tissue it has replaced. But on a structural level, there are marked differences. Instead of the ‘basketweave’ formation found in normal skin, you’ll find the new tissue runs in a single direction.

  The scar above my eyebrow will always be lighter than the skin around it. Even if no one else notices it, it’ll always catch my eye, always mark me. Scars are a natural part of the healing process. But sweat glands and hair follicles will not grow back within scar tissue. It is more sensitive to sunlight. Scars are not regeneration. The new tissue is inferior to the old.

  Th
e lift doors swish open; no one looks at me twice as I walk down the corridor, familiar by now. I stop at the doorway, knock, and take a few steps in. Aunt Gillian’s sitting by the bed, knitting. I don’t know whether she’s more surprised or I am; her hair’s down and she’s wearing a frosting of pale, pink lipstick, and sunglasses pushed back into her hairline. She looks relaxed, happy. “Oh Tallulah,” she says. “Come and sit next to me.”

  I come into the room properly and take the chair she’s offering, on the far side of my father’s bed.

  “How are you feeling?” Aunt Gillian whispers, like she’s trying not to let my father hear.

  “Fine,” I say. “How’s everything here?”

  “Much better now.” She puts her knitting away into a wicker bag at her feet. “They say he might even wake up soon.”

  “Good,” I say, lamely.

  “It certainly is,” she says, and smiles at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I mean, I’m sorry that… ”

  “Forget it,” Aunt Gillian says, waving her hand. “You’re entitled to be scared. We all were.” She brushes a lock of hair away from my father’s face. “But we’re over the worst of it, at least.”

  He definitely looks healthier – golden, almost, then I realise it’s probably the sunlight slanting across his face. He’s breathing deeply; a ripple of air comes out of his mouth and tickles the moustache hairs closest by, so they lift a little as in a breeze. He’s got a new mole on his neck. I didn’t notice that the other day. I feel a knot inside my chest. If he were to open his eyes, he’d see a stranger, just like he’s a stranger to me. But I guess nothing’s changed, then.

  I pour us some water, and we settle in for the wait. Malkie’s right, even though I’m still uncomfortable here, still angry, I’d feel worse if I never came back.

  Maybe you don’t want to be alone forever then, I tell myself. Except for a few visits from Starr, from time to time. And I can’t cherry-pick the family members I stay in touch with. It would be nice to see Georgia again, and Michael and James. But they’d never keep visits a secret from Aunt Gillian; even Starr’s been nagging me for months to get in touch with my father. So it’s nothing to do with Dad – it’s the rest of the family I’m here for.

  Aunt Vivienne arrives, carrying a bunch of grapes. They’re purple and delicious-looking, nearly bursting out of their skins. “One must keep up the traditions of the sickbed, darling,” she says to me. She’s wearing a navy cape, with a fur collar, and a pillbox hat with netting. I try not to laugh. I suppose with Aunt Gillian becoming more casual, more unfussy, Aunt Vivienne is just readdressing the balance. I wonder whether these are clothes from her own wardrobe, or a favourite role. She looks fantastic either way.

  Aunt Gillian gives a world-weary sigh and takes out the knitting again.

  Aunt Vivienne strips off her outer layers and sits opposite me. From time to time I catch her looking in my direction; she’s probably gloating over her little coup. I balance my elbow on the arm of my chair, and rest my head in my hand. I look at my father; when the nurse comes around, I look at her, at her quick, efficient hands. She repeats what they told Aunt Gillian this morning – he’ll probably wake up soon. “He’ll be nice and rested,” she says. “But he might be a bit disorientated, nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  I wonder whether my father will remember what happened between us. It might be easier if he doesn’t. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold my tongue, though. The nurse leaves, and I close my eyes. I’m vaguely aware of Aunt Gillian and Aunt Vivienne talking, then I drift off.

  I dream about Toby, it doesn’t look like Toby, but it’s him. We’re up a mountain, or maybe we’re in a shopping mall, it keeps changing. He’s angry with me, and I feel guilty because I know I did something wrong, I wasn’t a very good friend to him, and I buy him a cookie from an old woman, and Toby throws it on the floor and says, ‘That’s all you think it takes?’, and then Aunt Vivienne’s shaking my shoulder. “Tallulah,” she’s saying. “Wake up. Afternoon hours are over – we have to clear out until this evening.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Look,” Aunt Vivienne says, sitting down again. “Just come and keep us company.” She looks me over. “You look like you could do with some food though.”

  This is rich, coming from her. Aunt Vivienne has never been more than a size eight.

  “Where’s Gillian?”

  “Bathroom.”

  I look down at my father; his face looks even rosier than earlier. It’s probably the most peaceful I’ve ever seen him.

  Aunt Gillian appears too. “He’s still asleep,” she says, unnecessarily. She looks at me with a pained expression on her face. “You must be exhausted, poor thing,” she says.

  “Poor thing,” Aunt Vivienne mutters mockingly.

  “Where’s Georgia?” I ask. “Wasn’t she going to come down today?”

  “She’s not here, darling,” Aunt Gillian says, again unnecessarily. Aunt Vivienne snorts. Aunt Gillian gives her a dirty look. “She couldn’t make it down today, but hopefully tomorrow… ” She looks away.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Aunt Vivienne asks.

  “Oh, you know. Nothing. I’ll let her tell you.” She’s practically beaming.

  “Gillian, has the good husband got Georgia pregnant already?” Vivienne arches her eyebrow.

  “Well, it’s not really my place to say.” Aunt Gillian says. She’s radiating happiness now.

  “Congratulations,” I say, feeling sick. Georgia’s gone forever, then.

  “Gillian, a grandma,” Aunt Vivienne coos, unkindly.

  “I guess that makes you a great-aunt then,” I say to her, taking some pleasure in her grimace.

  “Well, let’s go and celebrate,” Aunt Gillian says, and stops. “Not celebrate, of course. Not until Edward’s fully recovered. Oh, maybe we should save this… ”

  “No,” I say, taking her by the elbow and steering her out of the room. “Any good news is welcome right now.”

  In the restaurant we order a bottle of wine and three pasta dishes. The waitress who brings the drink sidles away from our table quickly, the air between my aunts is palpably thicker than in the rest of the room.

  “Georgia’s a little young to be having kids, wouldn’t you say?” Aunt Vivienne suggests. “How old is she again?”

  “She’s twenty-two, as you know,” Aunt Gillian says icily.

  Aunt Vivienne swirls the wine around in her glass. “How old is her husband?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “How are the boys?” I ask, hoping to distract the two of them.

  Aunt Gillian lets out an exasperated sigh. “Michael lives in Brazil,” she says. “He’s running a bar out there – he went travelling a few years ago and met some local woman and never came back. James runs a used-car business from home. He buys them, does things to them then sells them on. I would say he’s wasting his time but he’s made quite a bit of money out of it.”

  She looks sad. I wonder whether these were the lives she planned for her children. I wonder whether my father planned for my future. I never told him about my nursing dream – would he have encouraged me in that?

  I’ve started playing with my napkin, tearing it into strips.

  “What does Georgia do now?” Aunt Vivienne asks.

  “What?” Aunt Gillian asks; perhaps she’s thinking about James’ car menagerie. “Well, she was – is – training to be a primary school teacher.” She turns to face me. “She’s wanted to work with children for ages, do you remember?”

  “Not really,” I say. “Maybe that was after we used to see each other.”

  “Yes, maybe,” Aunt Gillian says. She smiles sadly at me. “We mustn’t lose touch again, Tallie. Family’s so important you know.”

  Please don’t cry, I pray. Aunt Vivienne hisses quietly, but Gillian doesn’t hear.

  The
waitress brings us our pasta and we eat absentmindedly. I make myself chew slowly – I’ve suddenly realised how starving I am.

  “Could you pass the pepper, please, Tallulah?” Aunt Vivienne’s looking at me, hand outstretched. I give her the grinder. “Thank you,” she says. She has perfect white teeth, I notice.

  “You have really nice teeth,” I say, and something about this stirs a memory.

  Aunt Gillian’s fork stops halfway to her mouth.

  “Thank you,” Aunt Vivienne says, tapping one. “They’re not all real, you know?”

  “Oh?” I know what I’m remembering now – Malkie telling me that my grandfather wasn’t just violent towards my grandmother. I swallow, I can’t believe that I ever forgot that, but I guess it got buried when I was caught up in my own misery.

  “No,” Aunt Vivienne’s saying, and I feel a surge of pity for her. She butters a bread roll elegantly. I admire the way her wrist makes the little flicking motions. I can never spread butter; half the time the bread comes apart and sticks to my knife.

  “Well anyway, dear. It’s nice to have dinner like this, isn’t it?” Aunt Gillian interrupts.

  “Yeah,” I say. “How’s Paul?”

  “Paul? Enjoying the opera, I hope.”

  “Is he coming here afterwards?”

  “No, dear.” Aunt Gillian shifts uneasily in her chair. “Hospitals aren’t really his scene.”

  “Does he think he’s getting to the age where they might be necessary?”

  “Really, Vivienne. That was horrid.”

  “Please do accept my apologies.”

  Aunt Gillian sniffs, then pushes her chair back. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she says.

  I give Aunt Vivienne a look when Gillian’s gone. “That was pretty mean,” I tell her.

  “Was it?” Vivienne gives a little laugh, like we’re co-conspirators, and I’m back to not feeling sorry for her anymore. “You’ve never lived with her, Tallulah. Not properly, anyway.”