The night was hot, and Stan had moved the swag into the lounge room to keep cool under the air conditioning when he slept. He’d move Orion in to join him later, when he was ready to turn off the lights. For now, he’d sprawled himself on the swag and welcomed Digger into his arms. ‘Too hot for this, boy,’ but he couldn’t stop himself from petting and rubbing and feeling the warmth of his dog. Digger was getting old. He could never leave Digger now, either. He only had a handful of months left in him, if he was lucky. There was a chance Stan would have to put him down before the dog died on his own. Digger gave a dog-purr, as Orion called it. It was a satisfied low-pitched sound in a high-pitched octave from the back of his throat.
‘Love you too, Digger.’
He opened up the atlas of America, turned to the page that showed Missouri. The last time he’d looked at it was the afternoon before Jean’s accident, when they’d been talking about their family bike ride. ‘What do you think about this, huh? You think Orion and I should go there one day when he’s old enough?’ But what was ‘old enough’ when bicycling accidents plagued his dreams and, even worse, his consciousness?
Digger dog-purred again.
‘You do? Fly into St Louis, travel down to Lesterville, see Grandma Pearl?’ They could even cycle over to Illinois, where Orion’s Uncle John lived. Coraleen lived somewhere in Illinois too. They could make a summer of it. Hell, they could make a year of it. It would take a lot of planning, a lot of patient planning, but they could do it. ‘What do you think, boy?’
Digger’s dog-purr was longer than usual, just a smidgen lower in tone as well, as if he was saying, ‘Go. Go as soon as you can. Life doesn’t always wait.’
To Jean Harley
Neddy felt she could not rise to the winter sun, sensed she might put her five-month-old son in his cot for another hour until he fell back asleep, try to wring more rest out of her worn-out body. He’d been fed. He’d been changed. There was a mobile to look at in the cot. An activity toy clipped to the side bars. He’d be fine. She couldn’t be expected to hold it together every day.
Rodd was dressing, the curls of his hair still dripping onto his shirt. He never fully dried himself. He was either impatient or ambivalent, either way, at that moment, nearly shitting her to tears.
‘You getting up?’
‘No.’
He bent over to kiss her forehead. ‘Try to have a good day, Ned. Do something fun with Leo.’
As if it was easy. As if showering was simple. As if going somewhere fun wouldn’t be complicated by filling up the car with petrol. As if babies Leo’s age didn’t need at least two naps a day. As if she didn’t need at least two naps a day. ‘I’m just tired, Rodd.’
Juniper ran in to give kisses goodbye and left singing a pop song: a tween at nearly eleven years old. Willow was more tentative, waiting by the door until her mum patted the bed. She hugged longer. She kissed her baby brother too.
‘Bye-bye, sweetie,’ Neddy said to her. ‘Have fun at school.’
Rodd picked up his baby boy and hugged him as if there were music playing on the radio, something slower than what Juniper had been singing, then placed him next to Neddy on the bed. Leo squirmed into his mother’s arms and breasts in a tussle of mirth, only causing the slightest upturn of one side of Neddy’s mouth. Her aim was not to get caught up in playing. She discarded the cot idea, decided to let Leo fall back asleep in her arms. He was, after all, a lovely baby.
No, Rodd and Neddy hadn’t planned on falling pregnant so soon after Willow. In fact, she and Rodd had been talking about vasectomies when Neddy felt the first ache in her breasts and the initial cravings for milk straight from the carton. The verdict was out for the first few days on whether or not it had been good news, but the idea of another baby grew on them as it grew in Neddy’s belly, and before they’d even realised, they were preparing for a third child: web searches for a bigger car, measuring the office to make way for baby furniture. She’d felt the first flutters in her stomach very early, though Rodd could never feel them, and she compared them to those of her other children. Maybe this one would be a boy. Then she stopped feeling them. Neddy had told Rodd as she held the dead 25-week-old baby girl in her hands that she had wanted to give her the middle name of Jean. And now, on the four-year anniversary of that little baby’s birth and death, Neddy couldn’t mourn for her without mourning for Jean too.
After the stillbirth, the decision to have a third child had made itself. Of course they wanted a baby and of course they wanted it before it was too late. Neddy had been forty-one at the time of the stillbirth and she didn’t know how many more years she had left in her. Turned out she had at least three more.
He was a needy baby, cried a lot, but he seemed to like to cuddle the most of all of her children. ‘This one feels the love,’ she’d said on their first day back home after his birth.
Now he wouldn’t fall asleep in Neddy’s arms. He was cranky and confused by the scent of her milk at odds with his full tummy. Neddy gave up and carried him to the kitchen, where she strapped him into a reclining chair that sat on the table. It had squeaky soft bugs that dangled into his eyes, which mesmerised him until he finally fell asleep. Neddy, now over the idea of resting her own body, got to work.
With the dishes done and then veggies chopped well ahead of dinner, and somewhere in between these chores a few more pages of a book she’d borrowed so long ago from Jean, before the accident, which, now that she’d finally started reading it, felt like something of an addictive and guilty obligation, she’d somehow managed a shower too, so even if it was a sad day for Neddy, once it got started it had promise. Not the kind that makes you happy for birds and love and the miracle of life, but the kind that moves towards night, bit by bit, and does so without any disasters. She then attempted the garden.
In retaliation to the unseasonable rain in the middle of the December when Jean’s bike went down, that February had brought with it the worst heatwave in Neddy’s memory. A quick one, but harsh – three days over forty-three degrees. Neddy’s idea had been to get them all out of the house and into a cool environment every day. The first afternoon she’d taken the girls to the shopping centre for things they needed but hadn’t needed. They’d enjoyed an extended lunch of Hokkien noodles, which they all shared, however sloppily, with two pairs of wooden chopsticks. Four hours had melted away; a marvellous outing sprung from a shitty situation.
Another day they’d gone swimming. The place had been packed with children and mothers. Loud. Humid. Neddy had sweated into the water that buoyed her body as she walked Willow in big circles, singing to her to kick, paddle, paddle, kick, the baby squealing every so often.
The day at the museum had not been so good. Neddy had been tired from the heat and still grieving over Jean; she’d been tired of all the action, of all the trying to stay out of their hot tin house with the inefficient air-conditioning unit over the front door. They’d all become tired, got cranky. In the corridor to the toilet, where people had passed them and stared, they ended up crying and cuddling for their lives.
That night Rodd and Neddy had lit candles, sat outside and finished off a bottle of sav blanc, breast milk be stuffed. They’d talked about Jean and the family she’d left behind, Stan and their little boy Orion. They’d talked about death and how they lived life. They’d laid out a blanket and touched one another while looking at the stars. Their legs bent into one another. Things became frantic, flawless, like falling in love and the early days, before children. Neddy knew that it was partly the wine, partly the heat, but more so a reaction to the still painful loss of Jean mixed with the fact that she loved her husband very much. Mourning, releasing, magically conceiving. Neddy just knew that that had been the night they’d made their third baby girl.
When the heatwave had broken the next morning the wind blew passionately, opening the heavens and releasing a short burst of intensive rain. Neddy had stood outside in the
garden, her body, the ground, the plants, everything cleansed. It’d seemed so unfair to be happy when Jean was gone, even the rain a reminder of the day Jean had been hit by the van, yet how could she not have been thankful? This was still life. She was still living. Time kept moving and plants kept growing, their sole watermelon big as Juniper’s head.
Now, more than four years later, with her focus on a different baby, a little boy, it was a different garden.
Ned heard the postie and knew it would wake Leo. It always did. She walked around to the letterbox, knowing this would be the end of her own quiet time. She was reluctant to begin hands-on parenting again but knew, too, that she needed Leo to lift her out of her melancholic reverie.
Having a sign up on their letterbox that read No Junk Mail, Please was the right thing to do by the environment but it sometimes led Neddy to feelings of despondency. What was there to look forward to but bills? Where was the colour in bills? Where were the surprises? This post, however, was different in that it brought a yellow envelope, handwritten to the five of them by none other than Stan. Welcoming Day … long time coming … our backyard … welcome ‘Very Viv’ and ‘Funtastic Phil’ to the family.
‘Really.’ It wasn’t a question but a statement. Not only a statement but a recrimination. This was a godparent-thing. Neddy was well versed in Baptisms, Naming Days and Welcoming Days and they all amounted to the same thing: an elder is chosen to help mould a child. Why the hell was Stan doing this when Orion was nine years old? And why the hell had he chosen Viv?
The emptiness Neddy felt did not ache nor smart from the adjoining pain of memory; it just sank, and sank endlessly, and still it endlessly sank, forcing Neddy to put down the invitation and make her way back to the kitchen, where Leo was beginning to stir. She made noise now, wanting the baby to waken, desperately needing him. What was happening here? Since when was Viv fit for playing a semi-maternal role? As far as Neddy knew, Viv didn’t even like children. Neddy wiped something uncomfortable from her thigh: Weet-Bix. She’d yet to clean up Juni’s and Willow’s breakfasts, and now she had to sit on what was left of them.
Neddy’s lungs were huge and her thigh muscles felt each long stride. Wasn’t it good to don the Going-Out Boots? Wasn’t she feeling sexy in the purple dress? It was her first night out since Leo was born and she was on a mission.
She thought every pub experience should be fun. There should be flashes of uncontrollable laughter, laughter that’s sly, nervous laughter, laughter from outlandish confessionals, giggles, snorts, harrumphs. Such was the case before Jean’s accident when Neddy and Viv were in the same room, but things had changed.
After the funeral Neddy couldn’t get her head around the inappropriateness of Viv sleeping with Professor Sleazeman. Had it been Viv’s slutty way of holding onto Jean? An if-I-can’t-have-you-I’ll-take-some-man-you-fucked thing? Neddy held onto that anger for months, avoiding the issue with Viv, so afraid she might explode. She avoided Viv too because it was the easiest way of ensuring that she didn’t explode. And avoiding Viv had been so simple. Since Neddy had been the assumed organiser of all luncheons, dinners and drinks with Viv and Jean before the accident, after the accident she had a reason to stop organising. As unfair as she knew it sounded, Jean was that reason. And when she’d stopped organising, Viv hadn’t taken over.
‘She takes me for granted!’ she’d yelled to Rodd. ‘She always has.’
‘You think that about everyone who loves you, Ned.’
Trite emails had been exchanged saying, ‘We should catch up,’ but they didn’t. Neddy had found herself stalking Viv’s Facebook page, enraged all over again to find happy photos of Viv and Professor Sleazeman. But when Ned had lost the baby, she wanted to see Viv. She’d needed a woman to talk to. A woman’s ear. A woman’s touch. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten that Viv had never been that woman, and when it had taken Viv three days to surprise her with flowers after she’d let her know through a short email, Neddy hadn’t been impressed. Jean had taken three hours to book a plane ticket to America after she’d been told about her sister-in-law’s depression. She’d gotten on that plane and flown halfway around the world to help in any way she could, while Viv couldn’t even listen to Neddy for more than a few hours, saying she needed to go back to work. Fucking work!
What Ned had resented most about Viv visiting with lavender and daisies was that it had not been Jean visiting with soup.
After she’d given herself time to grieve, Neddy had come to the decision that Viv was not to blame and the whole issue was to be chalked up to people moving on. There would never be any hard feelings, there would never be any animosity. What Neddy had told Rodd was: ‘We have great memories, though, and that will never go away.’ Now, walking towards the Crown & Sceptre (because the Cellar was certainly out of the question), Neddy hoped it would be enough.
She saw her first at the crossing. Actually she saw Viv’s Going-Out Boots in their bright lime vinyl glory first, suddenly feeling hers were incomparable. She stood back for a moment, taking in her old friend, who seemed to have aged far less than Neddy had in the last couple of years. But, as far as she knew, Viv wasn’t dealing with a new baby in her mid-forties. She wasn’t sleepless and frantic with two other children, a husband and a dog. What could possibly age her but the sweet passage of time?
Vivian was stunning, Neddy had to admit, if slightly discombobulated after searching in her bag for something and coming up empty-handed when the lights changed. And though Neddy thought she might have even flinched when she saw her, there was genuine warmth. So Neddy came up to Viv and linked arms. As Viv looked up, Neddy felt the cold of an Antarctic wind on her cheeks. She squinted and smiled and tried to forget about jealousy and her yearly blues brought on by the raw memory of the stillbirth, but neither is something a person can squelch and, truthfully, Viv irked her. Now, adding kindling to the fire, Viv and her boots had become the perfect catalyst for Neddy’s insecurity. Just let us be able to laugh, she told herself.
They hugged briskly, in that surprised sort of way, commented on the horrid weather, each other’s boots. They huddled into one another as they made their way into the pub.
The Crown & Sceptre was warm with all of the bodies giving off energy and an open fire in the corner. ‘My shout,’ Viv said. ‘Red OK?’
Neddy nodded, becoming lost in a moment of don’t-I-know-you? with a man sitting at the end of the bar. She nudged Viv. ‘Hey, does that guy look familiar to you?’ He was a very large man with a long, pointed beard.
‘Goodness, no, why would he?’ Viv put the change from the bottle of wine in her purse and began scouting the room for a place to sit.
‘Oh my god.’ Neddy grabbed her arm.
‘Shit, Ned, you made me spill! What?’
And then they were off, Neddy pulling Viv towards Charles Cromwell II.
‘Excuse me, but I think I remember you. From the hospital. You were writing and you stared at us a lot. Then I saw you at Jean Harley’s funeral standing all alone, like you didn’t know anyone. Did you know our friend Jean?’ It was him, all right. The beard, bald head, the soft and sad eyes. Neddy wondered if this was the ex-con her old friend Lisa had told her about. What was his name again?
The women stared at him, waiting for him to say something. He stared back, as if trying to say something too. Then he said it: ‘I ran over her.’ Charley looked down at his hands and began picking at skin while Viv gasped and Neddy said, ‘Jesus fuck,’ because the strangest things leave our mouths in moments this intense.
Still looking down, he began mumbling how sorry he was, how sorry he was, and when he looked up, Neddy could see he was holding in more than just tears. There was a lifetime of hurt in this man’s eyes and he couldn’t stop scratching his neck. As she stood there, unsure of how to react to his apology, she remembered hearing about him from her old friend Lisa at Jean’s funeral, who knew this man, and probably had come to the
funeral with him, now that she was putting it together. Lisa had taught him to read in prison and she still received letters from him. She’d said he was a gentle and kind man, and that the accident had torn him apart.
‘Why don’t we all sit down for a drink? There’s a quiet room over there.’ Viv pointed with the bottle of wine to the two empty couches at the back, and though Neddy had momentarily wanted to comfort the man, she now cringed inside her woollen coat, thinking how many times they’d gone to a pub like this with Jean, and thinking, Jean should still be here. Not this man.
The three found space on two couches, where Neddy and Viv sat closely together, touching not because they physically had to but because emotionally they did.
‘What’s your name?’ Viv poured the wine out in equal measure for her and her old friend, cool as always – Charley had a whisky. Neddy was a mess of knots, wondering what they were doing having a drink with this man whose name was on the tip of her tongue.
‘Charley.’
Holding up her glass, Viv solemnly said, ‘Well then, to Jean Harley.’
‘To Jean Harley.’ They clinked. No one was smiling. There was no pub laughter from their small table.
Neddy took a sip and said, ‘I can only have one. Maybe two. I’m breastfeeding.’
‘I’ve seen photos of him. He’s gorgeous, Ned.’
‘I got your flowers at the hospital. Gorgeous, too.’ Neddy inhaled deeply, stiffening all over. She’d have liked her reaction to be an obvious one of sarcastic proportions but Charley’s presence superseded all that. Here was a man who’d not only taken Jean’s life but now took her place at the table. Neddy couldn’t hold her breath forever and when she let it out, she lost her composure. ‘I’m sorry, why did you go to the funeral? Weren’t you in prison for murder or something?’
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