The smell of the ward instantly reminds me of the last time I was here—for Mum. It’s clean, antiseptic, almost fresh, but it’s only a cover. A nurse directs me to room 302, and I enter to find Kate half asleep. Her once always alert eyes now languidly rise to meet me. I sit next to the bed and take her hand in mine. It’s light as a feather.
‘I brought you something, Aunty Kate.’
I unzip my backpack and take out the aged purple box, its edges mended with packing tape. On the cover, barely legible in faded gold writing, is that word that became such an important part of our lives: Scrabble.
Kate smiles and, for a moment, she is as she once was.
I was fourteen when Mum died, and Aunt Kate took me in. I’d barely known her before that—Mum and Kate hadn’t got along—but with Dad out of the picture, there was no one else. Kate and I were ‘stuck with each other’ as she put it. She tried hard to help me and to talk about how I was doing, but to me she was almost a stranger, and I treated her as such. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to be alone, so I kept the door closed.
But Kate persisted in her own way. She wouldn’t let me eat in my room, and would always set a table for meals, especially dinner. I protested, but Kate was adamant, so together we’d sit and eat, the silence broken only by the occasional unanswered question and the scraping of cutlery on plates. As soon as I was done, I’d disappear back to my room.
For weeks, Kate and I merely existed together, ships passing at dinner time. It was uncomfortable, but routine. Then, one night, I came for dinner to find a Scrabble board set up between the plates.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked.
‘For us. Didn’t you ever play with Mum?’
‘No, she used to with Dad, but after he left …’
‘Well, I’ll teach you as we go, and I’ll make you a deal—beat me and I’ll let you eat dinner in your room.’
My teenage ego kicked in, and I accepted the challenge. Aunt Kate duly flogged me.
The next night she had the board set up again. I scoffed, but Kate re-issued the challenge and motioned me to sit. This time she added an hourglass to keep turns to three minutes.
‘You’ll think better under pressure,’ she said, ‘and we don’t want to be all night.’
We played again, and she beat me again. Each night she’d have the board placed alongside dinner, and though I learned more with each game, she’d beat me every time. She never went easy on me. The defeats frustrated me so much that, on one lucky draw, I defiantly played the word FUCK for my turn. I figured she’d scold me, or at least make me change it, but she merely pointed to another open U on the board and said,
‘If you’d put it there, you’d have got a double word score.’
A nurse comes in to check on Kate as I set up the board on the over-bed table. She smiles at the sight and wishes Kate luck. The letter bag rattles as I plonk it on the table and offer for Kate to select first. She sets her letters in the rack, caresses the row of small tiles, and then starts shifting their position, searching for her opening word.
‘Oh, I almost forgot!’ I say. From my backpack, I retrieve Kate’s old hourglass and place it beside the board. ‘Don’t want to be all night.’
We laugh, and the game begins.
Our nightly Scrabble became the new routine, and despite constant defeat, I began to look forward to it. Often we played in silence, but it was no longer awkward. It grew comfortable. It was different to life with Mum, and I appreciated that distance, but thoughts of her were hard to escape.
‘Did you and Mum use to play?’ I asked once.
Kate was in the middle of placing a word, and she bumped the board, shifting some of the played letters out of position. She began moving the letters back into their correct place.
‘Yes, we used to do a lot together,’ she said, finally, ‘but we fell apart as we got older. Being sisters wasn’t enough, I suppose.’
‘Was it something she said?’
Kate fiddled with an S tile, flipping it in her fingers, before returning it to the board.
‘Like Scrabble, I guess, some words have greater value than others, but they are, after all, only words. What are they without the action to back them up?’
The board now restored, the words upon it seemed to suggest a multitude of questions. I only asked one.
‘Do you ever miss her?’
Kate did not look at me, but her response was clear.
‘Every day.’
In her hospital bed, Kate starts coughing and I fetch her a glass of water.
‘You sure you’re up for this?’ I ask.
She sips the water and raises an eyebrow.
‘Maybe it’s you that wants to back out?’
A glint of that old fire is in her eyes and we continue. Kate’s dinner is brought in, and we pick at the dreary hospital food as words fill the board, just as they had so many times in years past. Kate tires towards the end. She still wins, but I don’t register the loss.
‘Thank you, Aunty Kate,’ I say. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
She is already asleep.
I did eventually beat Kate back after we first started playing. It took many attempts, and I was so shocked when it happened that I asked her to recheck the scores. She didn’t bother and simply nodded in approval.
‘Well played, and as promised, I’ll honour the deal. From now on you can eat dinner in your room.’
I never did.