This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  He smiled. She was all right.

  * * *

  Over tea, Naomi gave Patrick a potted history of her family. He heard about her mum and dad, the musicians, and their friend Brian, who was the third wheel until he slept his way up the ranks. She told him that her brother and his family had come to visit from Germany, and she and her daughter had come down from Byron Bay for the funeral. They’d decided to stay on for a few weeks, despite the overcrowding now her sister and brother-in-law, who were soon to have a baby, had joined the party.

  ‘Because what’s Christmas for, if not seeing how long people with fundamentally opposing views on pretty much everything can stand to remain in close quarters?’ she mused. ‘It’s like a breath-holding competition. What are you and your dad going to do for Christmas?’

  Patrick looked down into his tea. ‘I’m not sure it will still be me and Dad by then.’

  Naomi looked shocked. ‘Shit, really? That quick? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. He’s not in much pain. Apparently he might not be, even at the end. But I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone die.’

  ‘You’re the right person to be with him.’ She gestured to the area around his head. ‘Dark red. You’re a survivor, and you’re grounded.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I can see auras,’ she said simply. ‘I know it sounds weird, but I can see colours around people, the quality of their energy. Yours, right now, is a really strong, dark red colour. You’re strong. It’s a little cloudy, which is normal when there’s fear and sadness, or something unresolved, but you’re good.’

  Patrick didn’t know what to say. ‘Thanks, I guess?’

  Apparently she read his discomfort; she changed the subject. ‘Have you got a partner? Where do you live?’

  ‘No partner. I travel most of the time for work. I have a flat in London, and my mate Dipesh shares it with me, but I’m never there. I work on nature documentaries.’

  ‘Like David Attenborough stuff? What a brilliant job.’

  ‘It is. I love it. But occasions like this make you realise your job has become your life. Well, it has for me anyway.’

  ‘What about your mum, is she still around?’

  Patrick snorted. ‘My mum. Who knows? Last I heard she was in Canada. She’s a bit of a one for a commune, my mother. Even the odd cult. The latest one was outside Vancouver. They wear all white.’

  ‘I’d be kicked out of an all-white cult in five seconds,’ Naomi said. ‘Can’t keep anything white with a kid in your life.’ She sipped her tea. ‘Have you told her about your dad?’

  ‘When he first told me, I emailed her. I thought she should know. I think she’s still legally married to him. But I don’t know if she even got it. It was an old Hotmail address. She doesn’t really stay in touch.’

  Naomi didn’t say anything, but she kept looking at him. She had a gentle gaze, Patrick thought. Normally people who just stared unnerved him, but she made him feel like he had more to say.

  ‘She raised me in some of the communes. After she left Dad. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’

  ‘I like to hear people’s stories. You can probably sense that. That’s why you’re telling me yours.’

  Mostly people weren’t listening the way they pretended to be, but Naomi seemed different — he felt safe, sitting there with her, cradling their cups of tea. He took a deep breath. ‘All right then: so she left Dad when I was about one. She wasn’t happy. She’s not a happy person, though, so that probably wasn’t Dad’s fault. She took me to a place in the Blue Mountains, and we stayed there for a couple of years. I don’t remember any of it.

  ‘After that she joined some people who were leaving that community for one in Spain. We were there until I was seven, when some of them broke off and went to England — Mum and me included. Can you imagine? I hadn’t worn shoes until we got to England, I don’t think. We lived in a big farmhouse in the country, miles from anywhere. People were naked a lot, but with shoes. I remember that so clearly. All these boobs and penises everywhere, all the time, covered with goose bumps because it was fucking freezing, but then socks and wellington boots. I think they stayed stoned so they wouldn’t notice the cold as much.’

  ‘Naturism definitely has its limits,’ said Naomi. ‘Did you stay in England?’

  ‘Until I was eighteen, then I was out of there. By then ecstasy was a thing, and raves, and Mum was right into all that, dealing and importing and whatever. One of her boyfriends got her started. At least they were back wearing clothes by that stage. That’s been her pattern. Meet a bloke, get into whatever he’s into, follow him, get bored, meet a new bloke, get into whatever he’s into, ditch the first one. And repeat.’

  ‘Good that your dad’s always been here then, someone for you to come back to.’

  Patrick paused. He drank the cold dregs of his tea. ‘I should check on him. He might be awake.’

  ‘And I should go stop those kids wasting water. Thank you for the tea. Can I come again?’

  She was so open he could only say yes.

  At the door she turned to him. ‘I think our mothers were friends, back when they were living here. My mum’s called Annie.’

  Yeah. His mother used to talk about Annie. Usually when she was off her face. He could remember lying with his head in her lap, listening to her tell stories to help him fall asleep. Always stories about a girl called Annie. Long rambling stories of mountains and angels and dragons: drug-fuelled fairy tales, he knew now. Always about Annie. ‘I think she might have mentioned her.’

  Naomi stood on the verandah and looked out at the garden. ‘You’ll need help,’ she said, ‘with your dad.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘I can help. I’m right next door. I’m good at looking after people.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not necessary,’ Patrick said. ‘I can look after him, and there’s a hospice nurse who comes.’

  ‘Then I’ll help look after you.’ She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, then dropped it just as quickly and jumped down the front steps to the path. ‘See you.’

  * * *

  Jack was parking his car when Naomi came out of Ray’s house. It was the hatchback that came with his job, with the words Dr Paws painted on it and lots of blue animal silhouettes. She waved to him and waited while he unpacked the boot.

  ‘Grab this would you, Nomes?’

  Naomi liked Jack. He was predictable, steady and easy to be around. He was the anti-Molly. She took the bag of dried cat food he held out.

  ‘Metabolic diet,’ she read. ‘Is this for Richard?’

  ‘He’s seriously overweight. I reckon your mum’s been trying to feed him to death.’ Jack loaded himself up with shopping bags and they walked inside. ‘Did you have a good day?’ he asked.

  ‘I did, yeah, thanks. I’ve just had a cup of tea with Right-of-Way Ray’s son, Patrick. He’s back staying with his dad for a bit.’

  ‘Did you? What’s he like?’

  ‘Nice. We had a good chat.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Jack was very good at minding his own business. Naomi approved of that.

  She thought about telling Jack that Ray was dying, and about Patrick’s unusual upbringing. He hadn’t asked her to keep it to herself, but it wasn’t her story to tell. She felt a connection with Patrick. She didn’t know quite what it was, but sitting with something was the way to figure it out.

  Chapter 12

  Molly was on her bed, thinking about her grandfather’s love child and practising her pelvic floor exercises. There were some similarities, really. She hadn’t known about either until very recently and would have preferred to remain ignorant of both.

  What was she meant to do with the knowledge that her mother might have a half-sibling somewhere, and that there was apparently a whole set of muscles she was supposed to be working out so she might remain continent after childbirth? Kegels, the pelvic floor exercises were called. Kegels sounded like something Diana would make involving poppy seeds, but really it was just a
fancy name for clenching your undercarriage.

  Since learning about Kegels from a pamphlet the midwife gave her, Molly constantly felt guilty for not doing them more. The repercussions could be catastrophic. From what she’d read, her whole person could fall out through her vagina after she gave birth if the pelvic ‘sling’ of tiny muscles wasn’t strong enough to hold everything above it in. It was like filling a sleeping bag cover with rocks and turning it upside down to see if the drawstring would hold. It was deeply unfeminist of nature to do this to her. How were women meant to contend with the glass ceiling when they had to keep thinking about their pelvic floors?

  Secret keeping was a different sort of muscle, and hers was very weak. It always had been something of a family joke: they’d called her the Town Crier when she was little because of how frequently she revealed what people were getting for birthday presents, and spoiled the endings of books and movies. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep Pa’s secret to herself, or even if she should.

  It was probably too little, too late, anyway, for the Kegels. The baby was so low it felt like with every squeeze of her pelvic muscles she might be giving it brain damage.

  Still, she lay there on the bed, staring up at the mattress-ticking ceiling and squeezing and holding. This was just one of many aspects of pregnancy that had been kept secret from her until it was too late. The dark line down the middle of her abdomen — that was another one. That freaked her out. It looked like the ‘cut here’ line on an individual box of Coco Pops. It made her feel like her body was nothing more than packaging, like the baby would crawl out and she’d just be discarded like the tomato sauce dispensers that come with a meat pie.

  Except of course she wouldn’t because the baby would need her. She was to become food. She’d tried to avoid looking at her breasts in the final weeks of pregnancy. They no longer felt like hers. They certainly didn’t look like hers any more. They were not the same pert B-cups she’d proudly stripped to reveal when she and her best friend, Lou, used to go skinny-dipping. They’d moved on and left her behind.

  With a pang, she thought of the last summer before Lou moved to New York, when they were twenty. Molly, between university courses, had still been living at home with her mum, working shifts in the homewares department of David Jones and going to the pub every night, but Lou changed that year. She became obsessed with becoming a writer and was saving all her money to move to New York. Whenever she wasn’t working as an usher down at the Opera House, she was writing. It was only when Molly suggested night swims that Lou would agree to do something with her.

  Lou was back in Sydney for Christmas. Molly had texted her several times, suggesting they grab dinner, but each time she’d received a variation on the same non-committal Sorry, so much family stuff, see you at my drinks? text, adorned with several emojis of stressed-out facial expressions.

  Molly reached for her phone, opened Facebook, and clicked onto the Events page. There was Lou, pictured at the top of an event called Back For a Limited Time Only. She considered switching her ‘going’ reply to a ‘maybe’, but that was probably unnecessarily bitchy.

  ‘Molly?’ Her father stuck his head around the door.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Mind if Brian and I come in and relieve you of that piano?’

  She put down the phone, propped herself up on her elbows and looked at the piano he was pointing at. It had always been in the sunroom. At the moment it was acting as her dressing table, its top covered in tubes of expensive ointments that were collectively failing to prevent stretch marks on her belly. ‘Where’s it going?’

  ‘Your mum wants to use it so we’re moving it to the living room.’

  ‘Who’s moving it?’

  ‘Brian and me.’

  ‘It’s a piano, Dad. It’s going to take more than you and Brian.’

  ‘No, it’ll be fine.’ Paul pushed up one sleeve of his T-shirt and flexed the muscles of his pale bicep at her. ‘See? We’ll just walk it out.’

  ‘It’s not like a table. It doesn’t have legs. You’ll need a dolly or something.’

  ‘A dolly?’ Paul raised one eyebrow at his daughter and took a deep breath. Not this, she thought. ‘Brian?’ he called. ‘Apparently we need a dolly.’

  ‘Dad. Don’t. Please do not do it. I’m not in the mood.’

  But it was too late. Brian dashed in and they launched into a note-perfect a capella version of ‘Islands in the Stream’, complete with dance moves. Molly should have known better. It was one of their party pieces, and went on for four minutes, including mouth trumpet impressions during the brass interludes. Brian took Kenny Rogers’s part and Paul cracked out a stunning falsetto for Dolly Parton’s half.

  Delighted with themselves, when they finished they grinned at her, awaiting her applause. Her father was fuelled by approval.

  ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Are you done? As I was saying, you need a dolly — with wheels — to move a piano.’

  ‘That was good, though, wasn’t it?’ He wasn’t going to let it go.

  ‘It was very impressive. You’re very clever. But you’re still not strong enough to move a piano.’

  ‘You’re probably right. I’ll see if Jack and Simon can help.’ They left and she wondered whether her mother really did want the piano moved or if it was all just an elaborate set-up to allow them to perform a duet for her. She breathed out and as she relaxed she realised she had been holding her pelvic floor muscles taut the whole way through the song, in reaction to the excruciating embarrassment. That was a plus.

  The baby, possibly also reacting to the performance inflicted on it, started to wriggle. Molly could actually see parts of it pushing through her skin. ‘Jack!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Come look.’

  Jack appeared, a half-chopped cucumber in one hand and a knife in the other. ‘What? Are you all right?’

  ‘The baby. Look.’ She pointed at her stomach, which immediately became perfectly still, like a rabbit in the headlights. ‘Oh. It was going crazy before. You could see, like, heels and elbows poking out.’

  Jack kissed her belly. ‘Baby, you are the worst ever at hide and seek. I know you’re in there. Stop punching my wife.’ Molly admired how easily he talked to the baby. She felt odd when she did it, like the foetus was a prospective client she had to impress.

  Jack pressed his ear to her belly and they sat quietly. Molly thought about the letters from Heather and tried to imagine Jack walking away from her and from their child. How could Pa have ignored someone who was having his baby? If she’d stayed with Ray and passed that pregnancy off as his, Heather would have been next door all that time. Pa must’ve watched his own kid grow, at least for a few months, and never been involved. He mightn’t have ever put his hand on Heather’s belly or felt the baby kick.

  And Heather. Did she ever tell Ray? Did Ray still now think the child was his? Did Heather ever come back? Molly wanted to ask her mother, but surely that would raise suspicion. Which would be the worse situation: to raise a child thinking they were yours, or to know they weren’t yours and live with that knowledge, trying not to let it affect how you treated them? It probably didn’t matter either way, because Heather ran away with her baby in the end, so neither Pa nor Ray got to see it grow up.

  * * *

  They had dinner in the garden again that night. Simon arrived home just as the meat was coming off the barbecue. From where, Molly didn’t know. He was going out on his own a lot. Felix had been home all afternoon, roaring about the place with Sunny, and presumably Diana had been there as well, though Molly had managed to avoid her.

  Diana waited until they were eating before she cleared her throat. ‘Ah, I was wanting to talk to you all about something.’

  ‘What’s that, Di?’ asked Jack.

  ‘What will we eat for Christmas?’ she asked. ‘This is my first Australian Christmas, and I was thinking maybe we could incorporate some German foods and traditions? I would be very happy to cook some of
the dishes my family always eats, and I would love to see what your family serves.’

  Annie and Paul exchanged guilty glances. Molly thought she knew why. As current family elders they should have been able to present their family’s Christmas traditions, but, truthfully, neither had ever engaged in the planning of Christmas to any great extent. While Granny was alive, and Paul had still been welcome, they’d always left it to her. It was Granny who would buy a tree from the local Scout troop, decorate it, plan a meal — but even the meal was a movable feast. She liked to watch cooking shows on television, so rarely did they see any dish on the Christmas table twice. Christmases could be remembered not by the calendar year but by the celebrity chef whose latest book the menu was cribbed from.

  There was the Naked Chef year, when Jamie Oliver was the New Big Thing and they had roasted poussins wrapped in bacon. There was a Nigella year with a venison pie. Way back there was the Keith Floyd year with the potted shrimp followed by a standing rib roast, and since she was little Molly had heard tell of the last year before the band moved to London when they’d celebrated the Bernard King Christmas, for which Jean had dipped eighty strawberries in chocolate and skewered them to a foam cone in a festive homage to the already festive croquembouche. There had been a Rick Stein, Iain Hewitson, Christine Manfield and Donna Hay Christmas — and the infamous Tetsuya Christmas, where everyone went hungry.

  There was the odd year when no one caught Jean’s fancy. Then she would default to Margaret Fulton’s Guinness-glazed baked ham.

  After Paul had left, and they had to celebrate Christmas twice, the Boxing Day meal was sometimes at a fancy hotel buffet in the city, or it was a cold lunch at Brian’s mum’s house, or a picnic at the beach.

  ‘Maybe we could have a meatless Christmas this year,’ ventured Naomi. ‘I’ll bet there are some wonderful German meatless . . . Christmas foods.’

  The idea fell as flat as the cheese soufflé at the Two Fat Ladies Christmas.

  ‘Or just lots of veggie side dishes,’ Naomi said lamely. ‘Sides are great. Should we invite Ray and his son?’