A Place to Hide

by Gayle Beveridge

The druggies from the end room are slumped on the concrete path by their open door. In too much of a drug fug, she supposes, to stay conscious on such a hot afternoon. She first saw them passed out, or so she thought, the day she moved into the motel. She called an ambulance, much to everybody’s annoyance, including the would-be patients. She gives them a wide berth now, avoiding the path for the gravel parking area. It is vacant. None of the residents have a car. She trudges past rooms where people hide behind grubby windows and closed curtains. Her neighbour is already laughing at her reticence. No doubt she is to be Harry’s sport again today.

Outside his room, Harry is sprawled over a ragged and rusty kitchen chair, pressed hard against the wall to catch what little shade the narrow verandah casts. Despite the heat, he’s wearing heavy jeans, torn and dirt-ingrained, and a checkered flannelette shirt. Jean wonders if he ever changes them. An odour snatched by the summer wind and thrown in her face suggests he does not.

“Oi, woman,” he calls — he refuses to use her name. “They might be dead, those two down there. Maybe you should ring the ambos.” He snorts a belly-wiggling laugh. He is his own court jester.

Somebody cracks a curtain open just a slither. Jean feels that hidden gaze as deeply as she does Harry’s scorn. She steels herself. This is her home now, this remnant of a motel as down on its luck as the people it houses. “Hello, Harry,” she says, fumbling in her bag for her key. A little part of her doesn’t think he deserves a courteous ‘hello,’ but she has lost so much of what she once was. If she was to lose her good manners too, what would she become? Another Harry?

He takes a deep drag on his cigarette, blows smoke at her, and smirks at her feeble cough. “You planning on a squeal-fest again tonight? I only ask because I’ll turn the TV up if you are.”

“There was a wasp inside.”

“Well, woman, why didn’t you keep the damn bathroom window shut? You must’ve heard those bastards buzzing around their nest out back there. Are you stone motherless deaf or just stupid?”

Jean sighs, unlocks the door and leans in with her shoulder. It takes a couple of shoves to force it open, and a couple more, once she’s in, to close it again. She slips the sausages she bought for dinner into the bar fridge under the counter and drops into a lounge chair with wooden arms and dodgy springs. She cries in barely audible gasps, sub-silent sobs reserved for her ears only.

Thoughts of Wayne creep into her space, uninvited and unwanted. “You’re a damned coward,” she says, or perhaps she just thinks it. “A damned coward.” She fingers her wedding ring, spins it around.

Jean didn’t know Wayne had sent them broke, not until after. After he hanged himself from the rafters of the garage. After the funeral. After the mourners left. — ‘If there’s anything we can do Jean.’ After she tried to claim on an insurance policy he’d stopped paying. — ‘We’re so sorry Mrs. Franklin.’ After her car and his were repossessed. — ‘I’m just doing my job lady.’ After she went to the bank with the death certificate to get their money and instead got an overdue credit card bill and a mortgage foreclosure notice. — ‘We’d like to help Mrs. Franklin, but our hands are tied.’

While Jean wallows in the misery of those memories, globules of sweat grow sticky on her skin. The stuffy miasma of the hot room weighs on her like a winter blanket. She looks longingly to the front window but is loath to open it. Harry is still outside chain smoking. “Filthy habit,” she says. Last night, after the wasp incursion, she closed the bathroom window, a small square of opaque louvres with rusty metal handles. There is no air-conditioning, so she turns on the overhead fan and allows the regular rattle of it to convince her it does some good.

The weeks pass slowly until there are too many of them and then Jean wonders where the time has gone. It’s a Saturday afternoon when she realises Harry is coughing more than usual. Too much smoking she thinks, that hacking cough. Self-inflicted. She puts on the television looking for a movie to watch — a romcom or an adventure — and flicks through the guide, past the car racing, past the football.

The football?

Why hasn’t Harry got the football on?

Why isn’t he shouting at the umpires? — ‘Open your bloody eyes mate.’

Why isn’t he instructing the players? — ‘Man up. Pass it, you fool. Kick it long.’

Something is wrong.

Maybe she should check.

But he hates her.

Jean pulls hard on her front door, jerks at it until it releases its grip and scrapes open. She peeps out. Harry is nowhere to be seen and there are no cigarette butts on the path in front of her room. He flicks them there every day; she sweeps them up every morning. Something is definitely wrong. She looks the other way along the line of rooms, past the mismatched chairs. The druggies are there, sitting cross-legged and smoking roll-your-owns. They’re taking turns swigging from a bottle. Whisky perhaps. They won’t know anything. They live on a different planet.

A good neighbour would check. Is she a good neighbour? He sure as hell isn’t.

Her first knock is tentative. The type of fast knuckle-tap you’d give to test if something is too hot.

No answer.

Jean takes a breath, knocks harder. “Harry, are you OK?” She knocks again. “Harry?” His silence is concerning. She moves to his window where the curled edges of the curtains refuse to join and she strains to see through the gap. The television screen is black. Nothing is moving.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Behind Jean, an unexpected voice rasps out the wavering static of the aged, and with the fright of it, she knocks her forehead against the filth-smeared glass of Harry’s window. A woman peers from a doorway, leans forward careful not to step outside. Jean’s other neighbour, revealed for the first time. Her white hair is a flyaway mess and her face, a screwed-up parchment of anger and suspicion.

“I think there might be something wrong with him,” Jean explains. “He’s coughing more than usual and he hasn’t got the football on.”

“You ought to mind your own business. People here like their privacy; it’s about all any of us have left.” Unblinking eyes, time-washed to milky, fix Jean in their gaze.

“I’m Jean,” she says. She forces a smile. Should she walk over and offer a handshake? She doesn’t know; even simple things are difficult in this place.

“No need to exchange names; I’m not making friends with you. I’m just warning you. People here like to be left alone. Especially him. He hates everybody. And he particularly hates women.”

“But what if he’s sick? He might need help.” Jean is desperate for an answer, but all she gets is a silent stare.

One of the druggies has wandered up to see what’s going on. “He’ll stink soon enough if he carks it. Then you can call the cops to take his corpse away.” The girl’s shaved head and black facial tattoos make it impossible to guess her age. Her metal-studded lips curl in a wicked smirk.

“What is wrong with you people!” Jean belts her fist on Harry’s door — one, two, three — hard and determined. “Harry, I know you’re in there. I just want to see if you’re OK.” She pauses; waits for an answer, but all she hears is her neighbour’s door closing and the hyena cackles of the retreating druggie. She’s never known Harry to have a visitor; nobody here does. Is there a family member somewhere, somebody to worry if they have not heard from him? She pounds the door again and shouts. “Harry, if you don’t answer, I’m calling the police to come and do a welfare check.”

“Bugger off, woman.” The coughing fit that cuts Harry’s tirade short is a barking-dog cacophony. Jean waits for the abuse, the smart-arsed commentary, but instead, he swings the door open and explodes onto the path. He’s in his pyjamas, and a dressing gown that might have been her father’s if it had a good washing. “What makes you think you can help me, you useless old cow. You come here, your stuck-up nose in the air, thinking you’re some sort of Florence Nightingale.” He coughs. “You wouldn’t be here if you were good for anything.”

More coughing, a haaaark, haaaark, haaaark, that bends him over and forces him to grip the door jamb for support. His breath comes heavy and slow as he recovers. It carries the stench of vomit with it. “Bugger off,” he says. “Just bugger off.” He returns to his room. Slams the door behind him.

Jean suffers Harry’s words through the morning and into the afternoon. Is she useless? Wayne managed their lives; for more than forty years, he had done it all. He took care of the money. — ‘You shouldn’t have to worry about these things; that’s my job.’ He dealt with the house maintenance. — ‘I’ll negotiate the best price; that’s my forte.’ He chose her cars. — ‘This one is the safest, Jean.’ He wanted, or needed, her to rely on him, and she had. It was easy and it was her undoing. Wayne’s too. What if she had paid attention, kept an eye on the bank account? If she had known how bad things were, could she have helped Wayne? Would he still be alive? “Damn it, Wayne, why the hell didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me help?”

The aged pension seemed so little when Jean first received it, but there is no great need for money in this non-life she is enduring. She has not spent it all, so she goes shopping. Things have to change. She will not be useless. She returns heavily laden, the handles of three grocery bags cutting into her palm, and she struggles with a box tucked under her arm.

The female druggie is alone as Jean approaches. “What’s in the box?” the girl asks.

Jean slows, loses her grip on the box. As she scrambles for it, she drops the bags and her groceries roll onto the gravel. She drops to her knees beside them, stares at them. “You’d think it would be raining,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because it’s an affront for the sun to shine on such a lousy day.” Jean slumps, feels herself getting smaller, diminishing. It takes a moment to notice the druggie is putting her things back in the bags. “I bought some electric hotplates and a soup pot,” she tells her. “I just can’t get the hang of cooking in the microwave.”

“You having visitors? There’s a mountain of stuff here?” She sits next to Jean, crosses her legs as only the young and supple can.

“I thought I’d make vegetable soup; take some to Harry.”

“Why? He doesn’t want your help, and he’s been a total bastard to you. And everybody else.”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because I’m not useless.” Jean looks up, studies her unlikely companion, the first person she has truly chatted with since she arrived here. “I’m Jean. What’s your name?”

“Madeline, but my mates call me Maddy. You can too if you like.”

“Where’s your friend, Maddy?”

“I sent him packing. He was no good for me, you know. I’m no good for me either, but I can hardly send myself away, can I? Anyway, we better get this stuff out of the sun, or it’ll go off.” Maddy stands, extends a hand and helps Jean to her feet.

“Would you like to stay, Maddy, while I make the soup? We could chat and have dinner together.”

“Thanks, Jean, but not today. There’s something I have to do. Something that can’t wait. You know.”

The motel casts a long shadow by the time Jean stands at Harry’s door with a sealed container of hot soup. She knocks and calls, “Harry.” She waits. Knocks again. “Harry, I’ve brought some vegetable soup for you.” A stronger knock: a thud not a rap. “Harry, you’ve got to eat.”

There’s a heavy whump on the back of the door. Jean flinches. He’s thrown something. Is he too sick to even abuse her today? She draws a deep breath and knocks again. “Harry, I’m just going to leave the soup on the chair out here. OK?”

Monday starts like any other. Almost. Jean lingers at the fridge where she has stored another three serves of vegetable soup in plastic containers—she bought a pack of six yesterday. She is ready to cook again. She is ready for a kitchen and somehow, she will convert this small bench into something workable. She will not worry that the bathroom handbasin is the only place to wash dishes. She will not worry that she only has a bar fridge. She will improvise. She will not be useless. Today her cornflakes and milk taste of normality, the bubbling of her boiling kettle is a melodic tune, and she drinks her coffee slowly, the way holiday makers do.

She jerks hard on her jammed front door, hauls it open, giving it a happy tap with her foot as it scrapes along the floor. For a moment, she isn’t sure what it is on the path, what she is seeing, but the chill of realisation comes as she steps out. It’s the lid of the soup container, and on her windows are the remnants of a soup waterfall. A dice of carrot, a sliver of celery, a splash of tomato. Jean looks to Harry’s door. It is closed, as are his curtains. She leans her head against the wall, because these bricks are the only support she has. Tears well, but she resists them. “I will not be useless.”

“Warned you.” The elderly neighbour with the parchment face and the flyaway hair looks on from her doorway as Jean cleans the window and washes the path. “Should’ve minded your own business.”

“I’ve minded my own business all my life. It did me no good, so what the hell.”

For the second day in a row, Jean stands at Harry’s door with a container of vegetable soup. She knocks. “Harry.” She waits. “Harry, I’ve brought some hot soup. I’m leaving it on the chair and if you don’t eat it today, I’ll call the police to come do a welfare check.”

“Bugger off, woman. I don’t want your bloody soup.” This time there’s no coughing fit.

In the morning, Jean collects the empty container from the chair at Harry’s door. Did he eat it or just tip it out? She’ll never know, but this will do for now. Her elderly neighbour cracks open her door. Like a jack-in-the-box, she is suddenly there, startling Jean. Judging Jean.

“You’re playing with fire. Threatening him is bound to come to no good,” she says. Her hair is brushed back today, and she’s wearing glasses. The markers of extreme old-age or of a life hard-lived have drawn their trails on her face.

Jean steps toward her. “You could tell me your name,” she says. “Just for convenience, since you’re not making friends with me.”

“It’s Margaret, and there’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“Well Margaret, I expect I’ll see you tomorrow morning as well, shall I? I’m off to the shops now to get pumpkin for tonight’s soup.”

When Jean steps up to Harry’s door a little after five that afternoon, Margaret and Maddy are watching, from a safe distance of course. She knocks. “Harry, I’ve got pumpkin soup for you tonight.” She knocks again. “Harry.”

“Bloody hell, woman, you’re a pest. Just leave it on the bloody chair.”

She smiles as she returns to her room. “Not so useless after all,” she says under her breath. Maddy has wandered off to wherever she disappears to every night and Margaret is back behind closed doors.

By lunch time on Thursday, Harry is outside, sprawled on his old chair. The smoke of his cigarette catches in Jean’s throat as she steps out. He stares at her and she at him. “Heading out are you woman?”

“Harry, I don’t know why you can’t just call me Jean. It wouldn’t kill you. And yes, if you must know, I’m heading out to the Salvation Army op shop to get some pots and pans and some other stuff for the house.”

“It’s a poky little room, not a house.” He laughs but checks himself as the coughing starts.

“Well, it’s my poky little room, Harry, and I intend to make it a home.” She strides off. Maddy’s right, she thinks: he is a total bastard.

When she returns, Harry’s at her door and it’s open. “What the hell are you doing?” she demands.

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot, woman. I’ve fixed it so it doesn’t jam anymore. All that bloody thumping and scraping was getting on my nerves.”

“But it was locked.”

“Not much of a lock, though. I’ve put a safety chain on. The last thing a man wants is a stupid woman getting assaulted in the room next to him. A man likes his peace and quiet.” He bends, coughs as he picks up a wooden tool box. He closes her door, then opens it again. Tests it. It moves freely and glides above the floor. Jean looks on, lost for words.

Harry heads to his room, turns as he reaches his door. “And Jean,” he says. “I got rid of the bloody wasps’ nest out back. I was sick of their interminable buzzing.”