Free Animal People by Charlotte Wood Page A

making any noise at all. The girl—called Skye—now stood impossibly straight, her broken arm hanging almost naturally, and she called to the woman, ‘I’m fine, Pam, I just need me dose.’ Her grizzling and panting gone, her voice deliberately low, the only sign of her earlier agony a tense frown, her mouth held open, tongue running across her lower lip over and over in a rhythmic distraction from her pain.
    Stephen began to yelp and babble. ‘But she got hit by a car. My car. I hit her! She needs a doctor.’
    Pam looked on doubtfully. She said to Stephen, ‘Was she hurt?’
    He shouted, ‘She landed on her head ,’ but at the same time Skye’s voice descended, calm and steely, over his: ‘I’m fine, Pam, I just need me dose, please.’
    â€˜It’s okay,’ Pam said to Stephen. ‘You can go.’
    â€˜But she needs a doctor. ’ He sounded hysterical.
    Skye spoke in a fierce, threatening murmur: ‘I’m fine, Pam, please. Me dose, please .’ She didn’t look at Stephen. He was of no use to her.
    He wheeled round to Pam, begging. ‘Please, she’s got a smashed head. ’
    But Pam was already pushing a small paper cup across the counter to Skye. She looked up at Stephen and said, more kindly now, ‘It’s okay. You can go.’
    Defeated, he found himself scribbling his phone number on the back of a supermarket docket. ‘I have to go to work. But if you need to get in touch with me,’ he said, his voice small. He held it out to Skye, who ignored him, reaching for the cup. The buzzer sounded again. Pam looked at him expectantly. He understood the buzzer was for the door. He put the paper with his number on the counter in front of Skye, and turned to go back out the way he came. The two women chorused, ‘Other way,’ and Pam pointed toward a new glass door across the room. The buzzing swelled and filled the space. He took one last look at Skye, now small in the big room, tipping the cup back as she drank. She did not look at him. And in an instant he was through the door and it fell heavily shut behind him and he was bumped outside again, onto Queen Street and the gritty summer humidity of Norton. He turned to look behind him but the methadone clinic was sealed off, hidden by thick mirrored glass, and all he could see was himself: stricken, sweaty, middle aged, gaunt in the face with thinning hair. He saw the stretched red t-shirt, the sludge of flesh hanging over the waistband of the stupid chequered black-and-white pants. The dirty sneakers.
    He stood, wondering what to do. Here on Norton’s main street the only sounds were the weekday traffic, an ascending plane, and the clumsy three-chord strumming and off-key Elvis crooning of a homeless man busking outside the 7-Eleven.
    Stephen’s phone rang.
    He looked at the thing in his hand. Here, from the distant universe of her Longley Point life, was Fiona. His whole body was swamped with relief. He wanted the capable nearness of her, his ally. He wanted to tell her everything: about the accident, his mother, about his dread of hurting her this afternoon. His feet burned in his sneakers.
    â€˜Hi,’ he said tenderly into the phone. He clutched it in both hands, as if it might fly away, or fall.
    But Fiona’s voice was tense. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Listen, what’s wrong with your mother?’
    He heard Larry in the background, yelling, Pissoff! Pissoff ! ‘Larry!’ Fiona shouted away from the phone.
    â€˜What do you mean what’s wrong with her?’ Stephen asked, the tremor in his guts growing stronger. The white pavement was smudged with small grey discs of old grease and chewing gum. He wanted to lie down upon it, right now, and sleep.
    â€˜She just called me,’ Fiona said irritably. ‘She asked whether we were coming up next weekend and I said as far as I knew, yes. She sounded weird. Why is