The Good Parents

by Joan London

  ‘Dunno. Maybe eight.’

  ‘But it’s dark outside.’ She’d left the curtains undrawn. ‘Usually the birds wake me.’

  ‘It’s been pissing down. There’s going to be a storm.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wait till it was over?’

  ‘I always come home first thing when I sleep at someone’s place. I’m gonna have a shower.’

  He lost track of time under the hot water. He especially didn’t want to hang around the Lesters’ this morning because he didn’t want to see Brooke. Last night an amazing thing had happened and he had to get his head around it. Brooke came home a little high from a party and as she went past him in the kitchen doorway she kissed him hard on the lips, her body right up against his, and ran off laughing to bed. He hadn’t slept all night. He couldn’t bear to see her now in case she patronised him.

  An iron-gray luminescence filled the house. Kitty came into the kitchen wrapped in Toni’s old blue kimono, looking like his mother did sometimes, private, distant, pale and young. She stood looking out the big window in silence. Old Jacob and Carlos were pitching back and forward as if gearing up for a fight. The wind-chimes were going frantic. Somewhere a tinnie was rolling on gravel. Winnie whimpered at his ankles.

  Carlos suddenly rushed past the window. In he burst with the cold air, full of words about battening down, turning off appliances, keeping away from windows. Bring in some wood, mate, he said to Magnus. Heavy drops started up like a spray of pebbles on the roof, thunder growled. Carlos’s eyes flashed warmth at both of them. ‘I gotta check the horses.’ He ran off, as fast as a man in solid middle-age can run.

  Rain crashed on the roof and doused the windows like ocean waves. Lightning turned on and off. Winnie cowered in the bathroom. The music from Magnus’s room cut out. The clocks jammed. It was too dark even to read. They roamed separately from room to room, staring out the windows.

  Late that night, in the post-storm quiet, Magnus, in bed, thought he heard footsteps on the verandah. Winnie’s ears twitched but she didn’t bark. He could swear there was a soft knock on the window of the front bedroom, the discreet scrape of a sash. Then the quiet thud of footsteps retreating.

  The phone rang. Magnus ran out to answer it and carried the phone back to bed.

  ‘Were you asleep?’

  ‘No. What’s the time where you are?’

  ‘Never mind. I have to phone when I can. How’s it going with Kitty?’

  A conviction suddenly broke over him. ‘I think Kitty and Carlos are fucking.’

  ‘What! Now?’

  ‘No, last night when I was at Ben’s.’

  ‘How do you feel about it?’

  ‘Weird. Like it’s incest or something.’

  ‘Except it isn’t.’

  ‘I guess it’s the shock. That people can …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Move on.’

  Maya was silent.

  ‘Anyway it kind of leaves me free. They can look after each other.’

  ‘Free for what?’

  After a moment Magnus said hoarsely: ‘Would you kiss someone you thought was repellent?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether or not you have to.’

  ‘They better be careful,’ she said, before she hung up. ‘Or the whole of fuckin’ Warton’ll know.’

  Kitty walked and walked, further than ever before. She walked to the far corners of the town, to every point of the compass. To the silos, the hospital, the flat scrubby outlands where the Brethren had built their windowless meeting hall and their bare ranch-style houses. To the swampy parts near the river with the few desolate Aboriginal cottages, the underclass that nobody talked about. She was aware of layers and layers here that would take years to fathom.

  She walked out of restlessness when she couldn’t be with Carlos. To keep her passion in check, her expectations from blooming. Sometimes Winnie was too tired to go with her. Her whole body felt toned, every cell aerated.

  Willy-wagtails whizzed past her at calf level. The breeze embraced her face. ‘Hi, how’re you going?’ a woman said as she passed. Everybody said hello. She smiled at little kids playing on the wide gravel kerbs and they smiled back, unafraid.

  It broke upon her, the magic of the place, spreading itself around her, its spaciousness and slowness. The sky met the paddocks behind a delicate line of windblown trees. There was an edge of sadness to every vista, like the landscapes in great paintings.

  She’d had affairs in London, Paris, on the trans-Siberian train, the Greek islands. Even in Birmingham once. But Warton! City of Love?

  One day she came upon a little wooden house out near the silos and stood staring at it for several minutes. She read the hand-painted sign swinging over the verandah: Isolation. It was all she could do not to open the gate and make her way up the path. It drew her in, like a gate at the end of the world. A stooped, white-haired man shuffled out to a line and pegged up a pair of underpants. His hands shook, the underpants were baggy from perished elastic. This was prying: she made herself walk on. The wind was sharp out there, a barren wasteland with scrappy trees.

  Sometimes with a trick of her eye that she’d learnt in Europe, she had a flash of the streets as they were, a hundred or more years ago. The past wasn’t far away. She saw herself in a bonnet, rolling into town on the back of a bullock dray. With a brood of kids, a semi-arranged marriage and years of hard drudge ahead of her. A happier life than the one she’d had.

  If she taught at the school, she would focus on Warton, make every element of it come alive. The narrative of a town, history, ecology, sociology: she’d treat it as a microcosm of Australia. The students would never forget what it meant to come from here.

  There’d been classes that she had turned around. Energy spreads through a school … she might introduce herself to the Warton headmaster.

  No, Kitty! she told herself. No plans! Visions, plans had been her undoing.

  Last night she’d said to Carlos: ‘Most of these internet romances come unstuck.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t know Chris when she makes up her mind.’

  Twenty happy years and two kids. Jordan. Jordie can speak, Carlos told her, he just can’t see the point. After Jordan had some experience at the meatworks, Carlos was going to take him into the workshop, train him up so he could be independent.

  Asperger’s, she’d bet, there was a programme … leave it, Kitty!

  If Chris came back, she thought, I wouldn’t have a chance. It wouldn’t be the first marriage she’d helped.

  The town at night! The brilliant stars, the scattering moon, the cold fragrant air … She set off each night after dinner. People went to bed early here. Already some houses were in darkness, the town seemed to disappear. It was easy to misjudge the length of the roads and she took note of landmarks so she could find her way home. The air was full of the static of crickets, the croak of frogs, now and then the distant rumble of road trains. She walked towards the few lights on Cannon Street. The Lucky was still open, one light high above the counter in the vast darkness of its interior. A man was leaning over the counter talking to a waitress as she wrapped his hamburger. Pure Hopper.

  Most of her life with Carlos was in the daytime. Sometimes Carlos stayed at home until she returned from driving Magnus to school. They drank coffee outside if there was sun. Or he came back for lunch, something light and spicy she had dreamt up for him, which always turned out to be exactly what he felt like. Saturday nights were theirs, when the three boys went out. Always, any time they were alone, they ended up in the de Jongs’ big shadowy parental bed.

  Why did they feel they had to be secret? Carlos was a little ashamed at how quickly he’d found love again. It would upset the boys. He still couldn’t believe this had happened to him. And what would Jacob and Toni think? Their boy’s appointed guardian gets off with the man next door. Who knew what twinge of jealousy Jacob might feel. He had discovered Carlos first! Ye
ars ago he understood how unique, how simpatico Carlos was. Once more, she was following in his steps.

  If Carlos hadn’t seen her since morning he’d knock late on the bedroom window to squeeze her breasts and kiss her goodnight.

  One night he didn’t come and she went out to find him. He was there, under the pine trees, waiting for her. They pressed together against one of the great rough trunks, Carlos’s army coat opened around them. There was a thrill to it, the secret life.

  Daily she gave up a bit more of the need to be a performer. It got in the way, it prevented them from going further. She had to be naked and braver. She started to tell Carlos this but he wouldn’t hear a word against her, not even from herself.

  13

  Balcony

  Jacob woke to see Toni fully dressed, placing folded underwear into a carry bag.

  ‘Are you going to tell me where you’re going?’

  ‘To a Buddhist retreat. In the country.’ She put a brochure on his chest. ‘It’s for two weeks, but I’ll take the phone with me. I can always come back if I’m needed.’ Her voice was a calm, deliberate monotone. She sounded Buddhist already.

  The pamphlet was blue with a white lotus on the cover. There was a misty photograph of an old ivy-covered house. ‘Thirty kilometres from Melbourne, tranquil, secluded, with fantastic birdlife and radiant sunsets,’ he read out. ‘Beautiful vegetarian food.’ Purification came at a price, he noted, but when he looked up at Toni he decided not to mention it. If I’m needed … as once she always was. It was worse for her, he thought suddenly. When had he last seen her smile?

  ‘Spiritual tourism.’ He spoke lightly. ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if we’ll be doing any other sort of travelling.’

  ‘The truth is, Jacob, I can’t stand another day waiting in this house. I never stop thinking about Maya.’ Last night beside him she spoke into the dark. Should they have gone, years ago, to live in the city? Maya was an outsider in Warton, as in truth, they were. Was their life a sort of lie? Warton had provided an idyllic childhood, he’d said firmly. This was always their way. When one went down, the other rallied, became strong.

  Toni picked up her bag. She hesitated. ‘It might be good for us to be apart for a while.’

  ‘D’you think so?’ A little squirm of what – excitement? apprehension? – started up deep in his guts.

  ‘Cecile will look after you,’ Toni said, without irony as far as he could see. She bent down to kiss him, her lips warm on his. Her thick hair brushed across his face, as it always did.

  ‘I think Maya is with her boss, Jacob,’ she said from the door. ‘See if you can find any leads.’

  He felt as if he’d been cut free from a twin, a shadow, a mother he had to report to. He could sense the space around him, hear the silence. He stood under the shower and wondered if this was how he used to feel, before Toni.

  Cecile was in the kitchen when he came downstairs. He stopped mid-step, hardly believing his eyes. Since the night of the massage he’d only spotted her at odd times, rushing in or out, like a delicate bat in her dark, strangely chic proletarian clothes. Sometimes it was just the bang of the front door closing that told them she’d been home, that she must have returned very late and slept a few hours in her bed. But here she was in a beam of morning light, standing at the kitchen bench reading yesterday’s Age and eating rice porridge.

  ‘Classic executive eating habits,’ Jacob called out. How many years ago did he adopt that jocular tone? The tone of a teacher, a father.

  ‘Hi, Jacob.’ Her glasses glinted up at him as she smiled. Why was the sight of her always so reassuring? ‘Hey, your foot’s better!’

  ‘Almost better,’ he agreed. He stood at the end of the bench. ‘What’s keeping you so busy?’

  She was doing a lot of overtime, she said, so she could have a couple of weeks off to get on with her own project. Every spare moment was spent working on the script.

  ‘The Prodigal?’

  ‘You remember!’

  He reached over and poured himself a cup of tea from the little fat iron pot in front of her. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Slowly.’ She sighed. ‘It’s about being Chinese in Australia. Dieter wants to turn it into a road movie documenting every Chinese restaurant around the continent. He thinks he could probably get funding.’

  ‘And you?’ He realised he smiled when he looked at her. What was the expression? She was light on the eye.

  ‘Whenever I think of it, for some reason an immense weariness comes over me.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  But already she’d taken her glasses off and was folding the newspaper. ‘I must go, Jacob. We’ll talk some more another time.’

  ‘Toni’s off at some Buddhist outfit for a couple of weeks,’ he called after her as she rushed to the door. ‘So I’m holding the fort.’ She kept on tugging at her boots.

  ‘If that’s OK with you,’ he added, suddenly apprehensive.

  ‘Of course it is.’ She grabbed her backpack, smiled at him and left.

  Her smile always surprised him, so warm and sudden, in someone so self-possessed.

  He poured himself another cup of tea. We’ll talk some more. Was this out of kindness? Or was it an acknowledgement that they had things to say? Some conversations that didn’t bore him to death, he found himself thinking.

  Part of him had died in Warton, or gone into a sleep so deep that he’d forgotten what it was to be energised. Moods of restlessness or despondency could always be traced back to ego, lust, the greed that was the source of Western discontent. According to Hindu philosophy, he was living out his Householder stage and must submit to its responsibilities.

  Beneath the surface of his life lay a substructure of belief, long neglected but never quite forgotten, like the music from adolescence, an ideology made up of bits of Eastern religions and the theories of his youth. A spiritual quest that he still turned to for consolation, but which he no longer believed had the power to change the world. It contained the secret hope that through the simple life you become enlightened. That something numinous was waiting at the end of the road.

  Gradually he’d stopped thinking of himself as a revolutionary in exile. The revolution hadn’t happened, instead there was economic rationalism. The movement he belonged to, so careless and playful and ragged, had barely lasted ten years. Its gurus were discredited. A gear-change in history had swallowed it up.

  One night as he sat at his desk in the shed marking Year 10 essays, he wrote: He was just one of the world’s millions of poets who stay silent.

  A few months ago, Magnus had asked him: ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘You don’t have much time left, do you?’

  ‘Time for what, my boy!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  For all his dreaminess, Magnus could display a surprisingly practical streak.

  How beautiful this house was. Its elegance grew on you. The bareness was soothing, it matched the austerity of his mood. At this hour, the light pouring through the glass wall of the courtyard filled every corner of the room. A house of glass, he thought, an airy leafspace that enclosed him. A house with its sleeves rolled up, its decks cleared, ready for work. As alluring to him as a loft in New York, a studio in Paris.

  Upstairs he shaved and slicked back his hair, searched out a clean black T-shirt to wear under his leather jacket. It seemed like a long time since he had really looked at himself in a mirror. His face was paler than it had been in Warton, and there was a new, sad puffiness under his eyes. He wasn’t fat but he was amazed to see in old photos how much more slender he used to be. Sometime in the past few weeks he’d crossed a line, he thought. He could never again be taken for a man younger than his age.

  He liked being alone. His thoughts were sharper.

  As he opened the front door he felt a pang of sadness, as if, by getting on with their lives, he and Toni were moving further away from Maya.

  Who knows? he
thought, tucking the key under the little Buddha, perhaps she needed us to change.

  He saw the spot of light pulsing like an eye in the shadows as soon as he came in. Cecile’s laptop, left sleeping all day by itself on her desk: he hadn’t noticed it in the light. It was late afternoon, he was about to pour himself a glass of red and read his newspaper, and then, before he thought about it, he was opening the laptop lid.

  An image filled the screen that he recognised, of the sulky young Chinese girl sitting by a grilled window. Cecile’s sister, Clarice, in Kuala Lumpur. He scrolled down. All the images were of Clarice. Some were old photos out of an album, Clarice as toddler with bowl haircut, Clarice as schoolgirl in white socks and sailor collar. Clarice as teenager, her hair crinkly from plaits, talking to a parakeet on her finger. Clarice nearly grownup, in posed shots, legs too thin in high heels, torso too slight in a bikini. He scrolled down to the end. Clarice posing at the top of a set of steps. Wasn’t that the Melbourne Town Hall? Clarice crouched by the fishpond, eye to eye with the Buddha. Model thin, her face blank, watching television in the conversation pit. Clarice had lived here for a while and she hadn’t been happy. She must have gone back to KL.

  Was Cecile compiling this for Clarice, or for herself? Was she in love with her half-sister? She was clearly obsessed by her. He scrolled back, looking for clues. The calculated intensity with which Clarice stared back at the camera began to chill him.

  Suddenly he saw himself bent over, squinting, pressing the keys with large intrusive fingers. An old man peering at a young woman. A modern form of voyeurism, though that wasn’t why he kept on looking. Clarice the girl left him cold. It was because of Cecile, because he wanted to understand her. Did he hope to catch a spark from her creative fire? All at once he was struck with a deep yearning for her. He shut the laptop with a click and turned away.

  A shadow which had followed him all day crept up on him. How old was Maya’s boss?

  He poured himself a glass of wine. This evening he’d start phoning all the Flynns in the book. When people came home for dinner.