A Lifetime of Impossible Days

by Tabitha Bird

  ‘Did I tell you about my Frog Dog?’ Silver Willa asks Eden.

  ‘Seriously? You called your puppy Frog?’ Eden snickers. Silver Willa blinks. ‘What else do you call a dog that snorts like a bullfrog after drinking or running about?’

  Frog Dog squiggles out of my arm and races over to Silver Willa, her tail going bananas. It might wag right off.

  ‘My goodness, look at Frog, would you?’ Silver Willa’s voice wobbles.

  I pick up Frog Dog and hold her out. ‘Want to pat her?’

  Silver Willa reaches out. ‘Oh, she’s better than jam drops.’

  Froggie licks her fingers, her hand, her arms. Silver Willa gasps, almost falling.

  ‘Careful.’ Eden grabs her arm.

  I put Frog on the ground and give Silver Willa a hug. Then stop because I am touching her and she is real! Frog Dog bounces around and we are all staring at each other. Grammy is right. Impossible is real if it’s real to me.

  As Silver Willa hobbles out of the garden she says to Eden, ‘What do you mean you can’t see the little girl? You don’t look so well, dear. Let’s go inside and all have dinner.’

  Eden stops for a moment and then says, ‘Great idea. Let’s do that.’ Frog Dog snuffles and follows us.

  ‘Um, who is Eden?’ I ask at last, when we all walk into the living room.

  ‘Eden is my … tea-maker, sharer of ovens and … um …’

  Eden helps Silver Willa into her chair. ‘I’m your daughter!’

  ‘I have a daughter when I grow up? Amaze-a-loo!’ Then I stare at all the packed boxes. ‘Are you going somewhere?’

  ‘Not if I can help it. Eden is also the box-packer,’ Silver Willa says close to my ear. Her hand touches my cheek. Soft, with lovely crinkles on them. I’m glad those will be my hands when I’m old.

  ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to be so gentle with me. I don’t bruise that easy,’ I say.

  Then she does a funny thing. Silver Willa pulls me to her. She holds me until I think perhaps I want to stay there forever. She leans over. ‘We all bruise easy. And it’s okay.’

  ‘Are you hugging the air?’ Eden asks.

  ‘Oh, it’s okay. I was simply giving myself a bit of love.’

  Eden touches her hand. ‘I love you too, Mum. Don’t forget that.’ I wouldn’t want my mummy to forget I loved her either.

  ‘Can I have a look around?’ I don’t wait for the answer, ’cause it’s nice seeing them hug. I wish Mummy would hold me like that.

  I skip off down the hallway and I peek into Lottie’s and my room; I guess it’s our old room now. The walls are still yellow, but the sunshine isn’t so shiny. In some places you can see the wood. The beds are gone, and the other furniture is under sheets. It’s the same in every room. The house is old like Silver Willa. It’s peeled and wrinkled and dinted.

  Back in the kitchen, the table is set. There’s a plate piled high with jam drops.

  Silver Willa is saying something and I catch the last of it.

  ‘– not homemade. Sorry. These are bought ones from the bakery in town. There’s no oven here anymore. But the baker has my old recipe now and they sell like hot cakes. Well, they sell like jam drops!’

  ‘My house has an oven,’ I say, sitting at the table, where three milkshakes have been poured into fancy glasses.

  ‘Yes. But one day it won’t.’ Silver Willa puts jam drops on three plates.

  ‘Here’s to us,’ she says, ‘finding each other after all this while. And agreeing to go on a hunt.’ Silver Willa raises her milkshake and chinks glasses with me and Eden.

  ‘Wait. Hunting for what?’ I put my glass on the table.

  ‘Who are we looking for again, Eden?’

  ‘Middle Willa, apparently.’ Eden rolls her eyes. ‘She’s all you talked about while we were away.’

  Silver Willa claps her hands. ‘Yes, her!’

  I hang my head. ‘She prolly hates me.’

  ‘Now, dear. Never you mind. There are many things she’s forgotten she loves.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She wouldn’t help me.’ I think about how I have Middle Willa’s note to me with the word Love crossed out at the bottom. ‘Then she’s all, “Sorry I forgot about drawing. Meet me in the garden.”’

  Silver Willa thinks a minute and sips. Milk sits on her lip like a frothy cloud. ‘Drawing you say, dear? Why don’t you go visit Middle Willa again? I think you’ve both forgotten that Daddy doesn’t own all the paint and pencils in the world.’

  But, I think, at my house he does.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  2050

  Willa Waters, aged 93

  Newspapers, clocks and collections of gumboots and high heels are all gone now, except one paper that I saved before I left, now hidden under the cushion of my chair. The packing happened while I was away. Eden says my things have been given to new homes except for my gumboots, which are waiting for me at my new place. I don’t want a new place. Eden says I’m not to worry. Something about a new adventure. All I know is that my hands are shaking more often. It’s time to go for something called an Oreo Visit.

  ‘An orientation visit, Mum. The lovely staff at the nursing home said you could have a look around before you move in.’ Eden seems small today, biting her nails.

  ‘We can’t move in! I have to stay here.’ Then I notice a tall grey-haired man standing beside her in my living room.

  ‘It’s Eli,’ Eden says gently.

  He walks towards me, his eyes with water in them that drips down his face. I wonder why he is sad, why his arms are limp around my shoulders like he has forgotten the anatomy of hugging.

  ‘Hey, Mum.’ He steps back, looking at me.

  ‘Eli. My Eli? Is this the first time we’ve met?’

  He looks sadder than before. ‘No – yes. Well, I haven’t been around much, have I? Not near as much as I should have been, hey?’

  I don’t know the answers to his questions so I ask one of my own. ‘Did you paint the floorboards?’

  Carefully, Eli says, ‘Yes, Mum, a while back you wanted them painted and Eden had a bit of fun with some blue paint. You wanted some waves on the floors.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good. I like oceans. They can change a whole house, you know.’

  Eli’s gaze is soft. ‘Today is a big day. Let’s have tea before we go.’

  ‘Yes, never underestimate the magic of people drinking tea together. Did I tell you that before, Eli?’

  A shadow crosses his face. ‘There’s a lot we haven’t said to each other.’

  There’s so much I want to say, but all that comes out is, ‘What’s the name of that freckle?’

  ‘Tom.’ He rubs his forehead. Underneath the years, I still see my little boy. The one with questions.

  He places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Eden said you were upset, that you thought I might knock the house down?’

  ‘You can’t!’

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. I’ve been thinking about things. There were some good memories here. Grammy and her jam drops. Remember when we made a fort and painted snails?’ But he’s not really asking me. Then he says, ‘Maybe I don’t want to lose what I remember of Seb. Maybe I could fix the place up and put it on the rental market?’

  ‘Seb? No, I don’t think Seb is at the market, dear. I think that’s the problem … Where is my Seb?’

  Eli and Eden talk in hushed tones in front of the peeling paint of my yellow front door. Eli doesn’t think I hear him say, ‘I’ve left it too late to talk about Seb. I didn’t realise she was this unwell.’

  Eli walks back over and takes my hand, easing me up out of my chair. ‘There now. It’s okay. Let’s go for a drive, hey?’

  ‘Only if I can bring a jar of water. Tell me you didn’t pack my jar, Eden?’

  ‘You made it quite clear that I should leave it out.’ Eden helps me fill it in the kitchen. ‘The nursing home has water, you know.’

  ‘Not the kind that comes in this jam jar for watering oceans.’

 
I can see the jacaranda trees in the neighbours’ yard have the beginnings of a purple carpet beneath them as Eli helps me down the back ramp then along the side of the house to the front. I can’t go down the front stairs.

  ‘Got my jar of water?’

  ‘It’s all right now, Mum, I have it. Did you see your birthday trees flowering again? Couldn’t you get lost in how beautiful they are?’ Eden walks beside us.

  I couldn’t disagree more. ‘I don’t want to be lost.’

  Eden holds my elbow as we plod down the driveway with my walker.

  ‘Where are we going, dear?’

  ‘Let go of the walker. I’ve got you now.’ Eli pushes, sweating and grumbling and generally getting nowhere. I think we’re trying to get inside this thing with wheels. What are they called?

  ‘I’m bottom heavy, dear. Comfortable proportions, that’s me. Too much junk in the trunk. Isn’t that what they say?’

  Eli is trying so hard not to laugh that it takes him a while to help me get in.

  ‘Why are we getting in the box on wheels?’

  Eden is inside the box across from me. She puts my jam jar between us and says, ‘It’s called a car.’

  ‘Yes, that, dear. Why do we need one today?’

  As Eli gets in the back, Eden says, ‘Please, we’ve been through this a thousand times.’

  ‘Make it a thousand and one, then.’

  Eden starts the box-on-wheels, says it’s my old one and that she won’t get rid of it.

  There’s a question I want to ask Eli, but I can’t think what it is now. ‘We should take the lid off the jam jar. Maybe the ocean can’t breathe.’

  Eden pats my arm. ‘We don’t want water spilling everywhere, do we?’

  That makes me gasp. ‘No, it might change the car into a house!’

  Eden slaps her thigh. ‘My thoughts exactly. Best we keep the lid on then, hey?’

  But I’m too busy wondering if I have to take a dog for a walk. I check the notebook in my pocket, but it falls onto the floor as the car reverses. I fumble the doorhandle. Shiny silver. My reflection stares back.

  ‘Leave the handle, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, I’m –’ What was I doing? ‘Look at the trees, Eden. That’s where the purple flower rugs come from. What special thing happens while the purple trees bloom?’

  ‘Your birthday in November.’

  ‘A birthday? No, I don’t want to go to a birthday party, dear. Is that where we’re going? I was never good at musical chairs. Too much moving.’

  Eden drives past rows of houses. Where are all the old ones?

  She glances sideways. ‘This is going to be good. You’ll see. There’s a lady called Martha across the hall from your new room. She likes clocks, too. Never know, you might be best friends,’ says the man in the back seat of my car, who looks very sad. Maybe he hates parties, too.

  ‘Oh, I know – we’re going on one of those drives. Remember the getting-lost drives? Sometimes we’d take a handful of hours and turn left and right at random intersections. Seb was so little, travelling in his booster seat, tapping his feet to the radio.’

  Everyone is silent, but I can’t think what I’ve said wrong.

  ‘We’d stop on the back roads near Mount French and wind the windows down. Remember that farmer? What was his name? Seb liked his cattle dog, the one named Flood because she was born in the floods. And the cows. Eli, didn’t you give them names? Nelly Nocking Knees and Egbert Furry Butt. Oh, let’s do that again. Can we?’

  Eli says quietly, ‘Those were the days when Seb was alive.’

  ‘Well of course he was alive, dear! What else would he be?’

  Eden pulls the car over and rests her head against the steering wheel.

  I tut-tut. ‘Now, now, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Let’s go driving. You kids always liked that.’

  Eden draws me into a fierce hug. ‘Call the nursing home, Eli. Tell them we’ll be a bit late. Let’s go on one last getting-lost drive.’

  I clap. ‘Oh, good idea. Whatever made you think of it? Can we bring Frog Dog?’

  Eli steps out of the car to make a call, but Eden just blinks at me.

  ‘Is something lost?’ I look about.

  ‘Maybe, Mum. Maybe that’s it.’

  ‘No wonder you’re upset. Let’s take Frog Dog and go find it.’ Raking through my handbag, I take out a hankie and hand it to her.

  She blows her nose and then says, ‘Bring Frog Dog and your jam jar. Bring any ole thing you want.’

  Eli gets back in the car. The road goes on and on. Up and down. Mountains. Water things. What are they called?

  ‘Look. A … water nest.’ I point out the window.

  Eli laughs. ‘It’s a dam. But I like your name for it better.’

  I pretend I understand what he’s talking about. The grasses are brown tides against the barbed-wire fences. No rains yet, but Boonah often floods. First good falls and the land will be tight-lipped, absorbing none of it.

  ‘We’ll need moonboots soon,’ I say.

  ‘Gumboots?’ Eden glances over.

  ‘What, dear?’

  ‘Never mind. Moonboots are fine.’

  The sky has fat clouds building. Promises, promises. Cows raise their happy heads as we go by, and I wind down my window.

  ‘Hello, Bessie! Hello, Bob! Whatcha doing, Butter Chop?’

  Eden laughs. The man in the back laughs, too. It’s good to hear them laughing. ‘Butter Chop? Really, Mum?’ he says.

  ‘Who are you?’ Nice man. Maybe a bit older than Eden.

  ‘I’m Eli,’ he says quietly.

  Ah, yes. Eli loves the moos same as I do.

  ‘Remember the calves? What did we call them?’

  ‘Pirate and Sir Wally and Captain Fluffy Butt,’ Eli says.

  Clapping my hands together I say, ‘Yes, good boy! Keep remembering, especially for me. That way we won’t get lost.’

  Eden slows at the first roundabout. She takes my hand and kisses the top of it. ‘Which way? Left or right?’

  ‘Which way is the breeze blowing? Go that way.’

  The road winds up the hills. Skies are open and clear, and below them are squares of farms in mottled greens and browns.

  ‘Tell me the tomato names, Eden.’

  ‘Eli told you them all just before.’

  ‘Again, then.’

  Eli reaches from the back and rubs my arm. ‘No worries, Mum. Green Zebra, Beams Yellow Pear Tomato, The Black Krim … I can’t think of any more.’

  ‘Heirlooms.’ I let the wind blow my hair to billy-o.

  ‘Yes, heirloom tomatoes. Why?’

  ‘Because they are like me. A bit outdated, but delicious inside.’

  Eli snorts.

  ‘Can we buy some carrots?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s spring, a bit late for carrots out here. A few months ago you could buy them by the truckload,’ Eden says.

  ‘Only a bag, dear. I want to feed the cows.’

  She stifles a laugh. ‘Next farm over, maybe.’

  Suddenly, the car lurches forwards and stops.

  ‘Gosh, sorry, Mum. Are you okay? Look what’s on the road. Heavens. Silly thing.’

  She gets out and I watch in the rear-view mirror as she escorts a turtle to the other side of the road.

  ‘You make a lovely … um … animal doctor. Do you enjoy it?’ I say when she gets in the car again.

  She puts her seatbelt on. ‘I’m a vet. And yes, in the end I liked kissing pugs better than dudes and decided I didn’t want to get married. I was a vet for, gosh, thirty-odd years before I retired. Well, I still go in from time to time.’

  ‘Pugs give kisses? Well, there you go. Never too old to learn something.’

  She starts the car again. ‘You know, I like it out here. It’s growing on me.’

  I’m not sure what’s growing on her, or if that’s a good thing. ‘I’m proud of you, Eden. Did I remember to tell you that?’

  She pats my hand. We’re about to drive off
because she says we really do have to get going now when I look about and notice that this stretch of the road looks familiar. There’s an old memory. I have driven this way many times. I can see a park further down the road. Somehow I know it has a bench that I used to sit on for hours after visiting some place. I rattle my head. I was a much younger woman in the memory and I’d stop in the park after visiting …

  ‘Are we far from Seb?’ I clutch my seatbelt.

  They both stare at me.

  ‘I know I’ve come this way before. Where was I visiting? Please, tell me!’

  ‘She wants to know,’ Eli says after a moment. ‘You’re right,’ he says to me. ‘Seb’s not far from here.’

  ‘Oh, I miss him. Take me to him, dear.’ I pat Eden’s leg. She is unsure, but Eli says, ‘I think it’s time. And she won’t understand if she can’t see it.’

  It’s not long before I spy headstones out my window. There’s a heaviness in me, a throbbing. I try my doorhandle.

  ‘Wait till we stop!’ Eden reaches over for my hand.

  We drive by a row of pointy trees and park at the back of a graveyard. A place that almost seems to welcome me back. ‘Oh, there you are. Where have you been?’ the wind seems to say, as it whistles through the leaves.

  ‘If this is too emotional for Mum, we leave,’ Eden says as I shuffle on my walker.

  Eli and I both ignore Eden because we’re looking. For what I’m unsure, but I know it’s here. Feel it in my creaking bones. Eli seems to be looking for something, too. His steps are secure as he helps me down the stone path between the graves. The headstones are crumbling and hunched together, names faded.

  What happens to a person when there is no one on earth to remember them?

  In loving memory of Tilly, forever with the Lord. I stop beside that one.

  ‘I hope you are with someone,’ I whisper to a woman who was Tilly.

  Eden rubs her arms. ‘This place is creepy.’

  ‘Creeping? What’s creeping, dear? It’s a –’ I can’t think of the word for it now. ‘You know, it’s a … a dead place. These people’s creeping days are behind them.’

  A few steps later I ask Eden to pick a wildflower.

  ‘Put it on Tilly’s grave, would you, dear?’