After Cleo

Heroes in Wheelchairs

Cats don’t understand the meaning of self-pity

I’d hoped Rob’s wedding might have proved a turning point for Lydia. Like any beautiful young woman, she’d basked in the admiring looks and flattering comments she’d received that night. But to my disappointment she was soon back in her white pants and pale tops, complete with shoulder-hugging shawl.

Three days after the wedding I could stand it no longer and asked if she was returning to Sri Lanka. To my relief, she announced she’d decided to stay in Australia for a while and change her study course to Psychology.

Seizing the chance to update her looks, I dragged her around some shops. But my attempts to interest her in hairdressers and clothes nearly always failed. Whenever I tried to bully her into letting me buy a dress that showed off her figure, Lydia would examine herself in the shop mirror and put her head to one side. It’s lovely, she’d say, but she really didn’t want me spending money on her.

Shop assistants would shake their heads as we left empty-handed. Some said they’d never seen a mother begging her daughter to let her buy her things, and not the other way around.

She often went out to meditation sessions or Buddhist society meetings at night, never to anything requiring lipstick and heels. The absence of men, suitable or otherwise, was noticeable at first but then we grew used to it. When I asked what’d happened to Ned, Lydia said he’d fallen in love with an actress. I scanned her face for signs of emotion, but could find none.

Sometimes I peeked through her door to see her sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, in front of her homemade altar, Jonah looking at her quizzically under the gaze of the laughing monk.

Desperate for a hint of what was going on inside her head, I took the sneak’s option and interrogated her sister. Katharine’s response wasn’t entirely satisfactory. She said Lydia was still thinking about becoming a nun. Or writing a book, or opening a retreat centre. While I’d always encouraged Lydia to dream, her ideas seemed as floaty as a Chagall painting.

As well as going back to university, Lydia resumed her work with disabled people, graduating to a wider range of clients. The bus she drove turned up regularly outside the house. One day she called me out to meet a group of teenage boys. Preparing for some masculine banter, I followed her out to the vehicle where she slid the door open. Three wasted figures swayed like plants on the seats, their mouths open, their hands locked into claws.

‘Say hello to my mum,’ she said so naturally she could’ve been talking to friends. One boy responded by rocking violently backwards and forwards. Another rolled his eyes back in his skull. I felt proud of her.

When I asked how she was able to do the work, she said her clients reminded her how to live. They hardly ever felt sorry for themselves, and they existed totally in the now. Unshackled by the burdens of keeping up appearances and worrying about the future, they were free to be authentic. Being in their presence made her happy – though lifting them sometimes hurt her back. While she didn’t mind drool or feeding people through tubes, she wasn’t always so keen on changing adult nappies.

The more saintly my vegetarian, meditating, caring daughter became, the more tainted and self-centred I felt by comparison. Sometimes when she sat with us at dinner, carefully skirting the bolognaise sauce (traces of meat), for the salad and spaghetti, spikes of tension radiated from both sides of the table.

Philip and I felt judged for not selling our house and donating the funds to an African village. He shifted uncomfortably when Lydia suggested he might have a more rewarding career working for a non-profit organisation. I felt equally awkward when it was hinted I could do more charity work.

She wasn’t the only one doing the judging, of course. Sometimes we thought she’d set herself apart on a throne of untouchable purity. On other occasions Lydia and I seemed engaged in a game of chess – with her three moves ahead. Her selfless behaviour made her invulnerable to criticism. Her ideals were impeccable. The work she did was invaluable, underpaid and hardly recognised by society.

And yet in my darker moments – and this puts me in such unflattering light I hesitate to commit it to print – watching her with the wheelchair-ridden, wiping and wheeling, carrying and cajoling, I couldn’t help wondering if looking after the weak gave her a power kick.

‘Where shall we go today?’ she’d ask brightly, aware most of the unfortunate souls in her care had no hope of answering. ‘I know a place where they sell the best custard tarts in the state. It’s just a two hour drive away. Let’s go!’

Her disabled charges were in no position to argue. They had to comply with being wheeled into the bus and carted off. But who was I to have an opinion? If the only alternative was to be shut away in front of television all day, a custard tart odyssey would’ve been fantastic.

Some of Lydia’s clients unnerved me, but their courage and, in many cases, intense love of life were inspirational. Compared to them I felt pathetic worrying about shortness of breath and whether cancer cells were still lurking inside my late middle aged body. They were superheroes on wheels. Meeting her younger clients, I felt heartache for their parents.

That said, I sometimes begrudged the way I’d get lassoed into Lydia’s good works. On a searing hot Saturday two weekends after Rob’s wedding, she asked if she could bring a group of elderly clients around for morning tea.

‘How many?’ I asked.

‘Five or six. We’ll bring our own food and drink, so don’t go to any trouble,’ she said brightly. ‘We can go to a park and have a picnic there if you’re busy,’ she added, tuning into my reluctance.

They couldn’t possibly eat outside when the temperature was predicted to reach 40 plus degrees.

Katharine rolled her eyes. Visits from Lydia’s clients could be very draining.

I made a pancake mix. The pancakes curled in the pan, transforming into something previously unknown to mankind. The doorbell rattled. I opened the door. Heat exfoliated my face.

When I saw the broken humanity huddled on the front porch my chest lurched. I hurried them inside where the air-conditioning laboured ineffectually. Lydia introduced them one by one. Lawrence’s body was so stiff and shrunken he could barely walk. Agatha’s matronly form was mobile, but her eyes were devoid of life. Ellie, white-haired in a wheelchair, was eerily talkative. Sofia didn’t talk, but nodded and smiled too much for comfort. Bert introduced himself erroneously as the boss.

Jonah bolted upstairs.

I was relieved Lydia had an assistant, Emma. Together with Katharine, they helped the visitors hobble down the hall, where cake and sandwiches were set out on plates. The pancakes were surprisingly successful. Aware that some of the women would’ve been consummate homemakers in their day, I apologised about forgetting the baking powder, but nobody seemed to mind.

Conversation didn’t exactly crackle. Ellie chattered away but her subject matter scattered like torn-up pieces of paper. She changed mid-sentence from knitting to tram timetables.

I nudged Katharine and told her to fetch her violin. She reluctantly complied.

Lawrence touched his hearing aid when he saw the violin. Music hurt his ears. Katharine moved her music stand to the other end of the hall.

‘Music! ’ cried Sofia, hurrying to join her. Patting the music stand, she pointed at Katharine and said, ‘Play “Silent Night”.’

It was two months since Christmas, but nobody was counting.

As the first notes floated down the hall, ancient voices warbled tentatively around the melody they’d known since birth.

The ghosts of close to 500 years of Christmas memories hovered around the table. Promises of Christmases to come were severely limited. I reached for a paper towel to dab the tears.

After they’d sung more carols and stayed on for lunch (because it was in the picnic basket anyway) our visitors became restless. Bert wanted Katharine to improvise some jazz on her violin. He jiggled with irritation when she explained her training was classical. Lydia and Emma escorted the others one by one to the bathroom.

‘Do we have a bucket and mop?’ Lydia whispered. ‘Agatha’s had an accident.’

When it was time to leave, Lydia assembled her clients inside the front door. They needed to get down the path and into the van as quickly as possible. The wind had come up and it was unbearable outside. There was an ominous tang of smoke on the breeze.

Lydia assured me she’d be dropping her clients home to shelter from the heat straight away. Before opening the front door, she conducted a swift search of Agatha’s handbag to discover one of our candlesticks and a tube of my Lancôme face wash. Lydia laughed and said we’d got off lightly. Whenever they went to town, Agatha had a habit of snatching food off people’s plates.

Waving our visitors goodbye, I clutched the paper towel. Lydia’s clients always gave more than they took.