Cactus Arms

Rachelle Atalla

I stared at Paul’s arm, the ball-like stump bandaged in cream, amputated from the elbow down. It looked like an illusion, and I kept expecting to see red seeping through, imagined the nerve ending and tendons hanging loose. Along with the morphine and antibiotics, a bag of saline solution dripped into his body. The bag always started full, but within hours it would be thin and bubbled in the light.

My dad arrived around lunchtime, hesitating before resting his hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. ‘Has he stirred?’

I shook my head.

‘Ava misses you,’ he said. ‘You should stretch your legs. Get something to eat. Call her maybe. Let her hear your voice.’

‘Is she okay?’ I asked.

He tried to smile. ‘Eating us out of lamb chops if you want the truth. She’s got expensive taste for a six-year-old.’

‘Did you tell her?’

He hesitated again. ‘No. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to say…’

In the toilets someone entered the cubicle next to me and I listened to their urine hitting the pan. There was a poster for the hospital café on the back of the door, a coffee and cake promotion, and I focused on it with a familiar weight in my chest – something that couldn’t be swallowed down. I had this urge to write a message on the poster, but I didn’t have a pen. What would I have said? That I’d planned to leave him; that his timing was impeccable. I was told he’d been lucky to only lose the arm – that they’d seen much worse when it came to forklift injuries. I suspected there would be some sort of an insurance pay-out, and instinctively I found myself wondering then if it might pay for a kitchen extension.

Paul’s eyelashes flickered. He had a face I was still drawn to – a good nose, the stubble on his cheeks a lovely mix of dark brown and silver. I practised phrases, letting the words roll around my mouth: Everything’s going to be okay. You’re here. You’re lucky. But I couldn’t stop visualising the missing arm. On signing the paperwork I’d asked the doctor what would happen to it. He looked at me; I couldn’t have been the first to ask. ‘Incinerated,’ he said. And I couldn’t decide if the arm would be destroyed on its own or with other peoples’ body parts. I was struck by the notion of his fingernails – five of them that would never grow again.

As Paul began to stir I hovered over him. His lips were cracked, and I bit down on my own. He opened his eyes slowly, blinked, the light seeming too strong.

‘Paul … They’ve cut off your arm,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped.’

He tried to sit up, wanted to grip the arm that was no longer there, and that’s when he caught sight of it in its elevated position. He began to panic, and I could only stand and watch. He was shouting but his voice was so weak. I pressed the help button clipped to the side of his bed and took a step back.

A nurse tried to calm him down, stopped him from pulling at the lines hooked up to his cannula. He swayed from side to side, attempting to knock his severed arm out of its sling, like he had to inspect it for himself before it could be true.

‘Hannah,’ he whispered. ‘Help me.’

‘He’ll need sedated,’ the nurse said, but I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or not.

*

Ava didn’t want to go near him in the hospital. He’d once brought a witches’ broomstick home for Halloween as a surprise, but it had terrified her. She only relaxed once I’d removed it from the house and I could tell she was trying to figure out a way of asking me to do the same now. I resorted to bribery, agreeing to buy her toys only if she promised to speak to her father, to show him affection.

Returning home, he settled into an armchair by the window and asked Ava to sit with him, patting at his knee. She did as he requested, climbing up beside him but her eyes darted around the room, locking on me for reassurance. I don’t think she’d ever really been comfortable in his presence – he always took things too personally – a jovial mood quickly turning sour by the slightest action or turn of phrase.

‘You can ask me about it,’ he said to her. ‘If you have any questions…’

‘Does it hurt?’ she said, tentative.  

‘Sometimes.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Did you miss me?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, quickly, but there was little conviction to her voice.

For dinner I made chilli con carne, trying my best to get into the habit of cooking meals that only required a fork. I thought about the times I’d had to eat one handed when Ava was a baby, but I couldn’t remember any of those meals.

I placed a bowl down in front of Paul and he stared at it.

‘Is it okay?’ I said, sitting down next to him at the table.

He began to mix the rice into the chilli. He brought a forkful to his mouth but his hand shook. Grains of chilli-stained rice fell, and he thrust the fork across the table.

No one spoke. Ava’s eyes stayed fixed on her plate.

‘I can make you something else…’

He pushed back from the table, walked away.

Ava reached for me, and I took her in my arms, lifting her as though she were still a toddler, her limbs wrapping around my body.

In the darkness of our bedroom, he pulled at the elastic of my pants, tugging me towards him. He found my lips. His breathing grew heavy, and I climbed on top. Gripping his shoulders, I centred my balance, thought I was beginning to see him more clearly in the dark. A wave washed over me, and I buckled down, unconsciously grabbing for his arms. My fingers brushed his bandage, acknowledged the solidness of the stump; it was brief, only seconds but it was long enough.

He flinched.

I tried to keep him in the moment but the tension in his body was already changing.

‘Should I carry on?’ I whispered.

He pushed me off, it wasn’t forceful, and I curled into the mattress. Watched him heave himself up onto his feet and away, the bathroom light shining out into the hall before he closed the door. He was in there for a long time, and I lay awake unable to sleep. The tap ran, disguising whatever it was he was doing. Maybe he was trying to masturbate. Would he have used his left hand before? I felt childish then, all these things that I should have considered but had been too naive to ask. I wanted to know what it felt like to lose an arm. Was phantom pain a real thing? To still feel something that was no longer physically there – would he ever describe that for me?

I heard him pulling the cord on the bathroom light and closed my eyes. He shuffled around the bedroom, bumping into something before climbing back in beside me. I edged further away, desperate for him not to touch me even though I knew he wouldn’t.

In the morning he was gone from the bed. I got Ava up and headed downstairs to find him talking to someone on the phone, turning his back to us as we entered the kitchen.

‘Okay, five minutes,’ he said down the receiver before ending his call.

‘I can make coffee,’ I said.

He ignored me, coming round to place his hand on the top of Ava’s head. ‘You sleep okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Daddy’.

He nodded, grabbing his coat and we watched him awkwardly try to place it over his shoulders. A taxi pulled up outside and the driver got out to open the passenger door for him, which only seemed to irritate him further.

He left without a wave or a backwards glance.

‘Where is he going?’ Ava asked.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

She looked up at me, a smile ever so slightly surfacing. ‘Will he be gone all day?’

‘I suspect so,’ I said, my shoulders already relaxing. Previous experience had taught me that the day was indeed ours. ‘I’ve croissants in the freezer,’ I said. ‘Would you like that? Would you like a pastry?’

‘Can I have chocolate spread on mine?’

‘I’ll have that too,’ I said.

*

Ava peered through the shop’s window, pointing to a white porcelain monkey hanging from a shelf, a banana in its hand glowing bright yellow.

‘Look at that lamp,’ she said, tugging me towards the door.

The monkey’s price tag was £92. ‘Too much, honey,’ I said, guiding her by the shoulders towards the clearance corner. It was mostly junk: little hand torches, and squidgy balls that glowed-in-the-dark when you squeezed them. But then right at the bottom in a battered box was a cactus table lamp marked down to £18. It was bright green, made of plastic and battery operated. And when I turned it on it glowed with little LED lights shining through the green.

‘You like this one?’ I said, balancing the base in the palm of my hand.

She nodded. ‘It’s kind of funny looking.’

When we stopped at the restaurant for lunch, Ava wanted to look at the lamp again. She placed it on the table, turning it on, and gripped it by the arms, a warm green glow illuminating her face. There was the comforting noise of life going on around us and I liked that to observers, we would have been seen as happy. Our pepperoni pizza arrived, and I watched Ava force a slice into her mouth, her lips stained with grease. As I cut into my slice I wondered about Paul and where he might be, how he might be fairing with his jacket resting over his shoulders. Once, on another of his disappearing acts, he finally came home with pieces of popcorn stuck to his jumper and I stupidly asked if he had enjoyed the film, the words and their slyness leaving my mouth before I could stop them.

Later, I saw the taxi pull up outside the driveway. I listened to him fumble with his key, before finally making his way towards us in the living room, a familiar tension pitted in my stomach. The cactus lamp shone from the hearth of the fireplace and Ava was smiling this nervous little tick of a smile. He settled in the armchair by the window, away from us on the sofa. The TV was on low, some terrible American kids’ programme on repeat.

He shifted, irritable and I knew he was fishing for something to comment on. ‘Do you think it’s sensible to be letting her watch a load of shite?’

‘She likes it,’ I replied, keeping my eyes on the screen.

‘There’s nothing worth learning…’

And then he spotted the lamp, shining like a little green beacon. He tilted his head forward, really seemed to consider it. ‘What is that?’             

‘Do you like it, Daddy?’ Ava said.

He breathed in through his nostrils. ‘Ava, it’s past your bedtime.’

She knew not to object, had been balancing that tone her whole little life, an expert in treading on eggshells.

‘I’ll be through in a minute,’ I said, watching her leave.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he finally said, pointing to the cactus.

I shrugged. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The lamp, Hannah…’

‘And?’

He manoeuvred himself out of the chair and got to his feet. ‘You think you’re funny?’ he spat.

I straightened. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘A cactus … With its two fucking arms, practically waving at me.’

‘You’re reading too much into this,’ I said. ‘It’s just a lamp. Ava liked it.’

He was standing over me now. ‘Of course she does,’ he said. ‘Likes everything you tell her to like.’

‘You need to calm down,’ I said, an unexpected boldness to my voice.

He raised his arm then, momentarily forgetting that the hand he used for warning was no longer there. He faltered, storming towards the lamp and picking it up by one of its arms. He paused for a moment before launching it right at me. But his aim was all wrong, his body off balance. It hit the wall behind the sofa and tumbled onto a cushion. He stared at it as though he was expecting it to smash, wanting little shards to scatter everywhere.

I picked up the lamp and brought it close to me. ‘It’s plastic, Paul.’

He slumped into his seat, hid his face behind his hand. ‘Hannah… I’m sorry,’ he said, and I thought he was at risk of crying. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘For what?’ I said, getting to my feet.

He looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot. ‘I’m don’t know why I can’t just… You and Ava…’

I pushed past his knee and returned the lamp to its previous position. Behind me, I could hear him whimpering. I took a step back and inspected the cactus, nodded like I was marvelling at a piece of art, like it was the most interesting thing I’d ever seen.

First published in Issue #31  

 Rachelle Atalla is an author and screenwriter. Her most recent novel is Thirsty Animals.