Crossing Paths

by Dianne Blacklock

  Just then the car parked next to them reversed out of its spot, giving Jo room to open the front passenger door wide and get to her bag, where she managed to find a few stray tissues. She turned Cascey around again and attempted to wipe her face, while she squirmed and grizzled and generally made hard work of it.

  ‘For Chrissakes, C, would you just give me one small break!’ Jo cried.

  But Cascey could cry louder, and she did. They were getting looks, smug ‘bad mother’ looks. Well, they could look all they wanted. She wasn’t a bad mother, she was a childless aunt, so she wasn’t even part of their stupid club anyway. Nor did she want any part of it.

  She started jiggling Cascey on her hip. ‘You have to help me out here, C,’ she tried to reason. ‘Us girls have got to stick together, you know. I’m telling you, you’re definitely going to want me on your side when you hit your teens.’ Cascey sniffed, gazing up at her with what could only be described as big blue eyes. When she wasn’t screaming, she was actually very cute. ‘You’re going to be a stunner, yes you are,’ Jo continued in the saccharine sing-songy voice that even normally intelligent, unsentimental people seemed to revert to automatically when talking to infants. ‘And I’m going to be the cool aunt who talks your mum into letting you wear low cut or high cut or whatever the hell cut is in fashion in another decade, oh yes I am!’

  A small curly giggle escaped from Cascey’s lips, followed by a big tremulous sigh. She leaned into Jo and dropped her head on her shoulder. Well, what do you know . . . Jo started to rock slowly back and forth, just like she’d seen mothers do. This wasn’t so bad, there was even something a little Zen about it. Jo peered up into the back seat and both boys were quiet, Carsyn actually looked like he was dozing off. Everything was back under control. Now Jo felt smug. Then she got a whiff of something . . . something really foul. Jo walked around to the rear of the car to escape it, but it seemed to be coming with her. Oh no. She lifted Cascey’s top to check her pants but she didn’t need to, there was poo oozing up her back. Jo gasped, jerking her in her arms. Cascey shot upright, looking at Jo through bleary eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jo soothed her, patting her back down with one hand while she kept the other arm firmly lodged behind her knees, so her offending bottom was arched out right away from Jo. She felt queasy. Where the frick was Belle?

  Finally she spotted her coming towards them. Jo hurried to meet her, thrusting Cascey at her. ‘Your daughter is leaking from every orifice,’ she grimaced, swapping her for the Liquorbarn bag. She felt like breaking open one of these bottles right now.

  ‘Well, that’ll be a nice surprise for Daddy when we get home, won’t it!’ declared Belle.

  ‘Have you ever been claustrophobic?’ Jo asked Belle.

  They were sitting alone outside at the barbecue setting, far from the madding crowd, nursing a chilled G&T each and crunching on chips from a wooden bowl. For all Belle’s complaining, Darren wasn’t so bad. He’d never exactly impressed Jo with his towering intellect, in fact he was a bit of a goof. He used the same line every time they met – ‘How’s life in the fast lane?’ And Jo would answer, ‘Fast and furious’, and he’d get a kick out that. Every, single, time. On the other hand, he seemed to do whatever Belle told him to do, that had to be a bonus. Currently he was inside, under strict orders to keep Caelen out of their hair, while tending to the disgusting nappies and putting the twins down for a nap, after which he was to serve lunch. And that meant they didn’t have to budge off their backsides for the next couple of hours.

  ‘What do you mean, claustrophobic?’ asked Belle.

  ‘You know, anxious in small spaces.’

  ‘I know that . . . I mean, what makes you ask?’

  Jo put down her drink. ‘I got stuck in an elevator the other day.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t think that could happen any more.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but trust me, it can.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s all computerised, right? They just press a button in a central control room and you’re on your way again?’

  ‘Not even close. Not in our crappy old building anyway.’

  Belle frowned. ‘How long were you stuck?’

  ‘Over an hour.’

  Now her eyes were taking on a faraway look. ‘Wow, a whole hour to yourself. What must that be like . . .?’

  ‘Ahh . . . vaguely terrifying,’ Jo suggested.

  ‘I dunno, it sounds kind of appealing to me. Being stuck in an elevator, not with the kids of course,’ she added, rather unnecessarily. ‘But it’d be so quiet, was it quiet? I bet it was,’ she nodded, answering her own question. ‘No one could get to you, there’d be nothing to do but sit and stare at the walls . . . God, do you realise how rarely I get to be completely alone? I mean, they come in to bed if I stay too long, they come in the shower, they come in the toilet, for godsakes. They hunt me out wherever I am. Sometimes I hide, it’s true, I hide from my own children when they’re looking for me. Behind a door, in the pantry . . . not for long, not if they’re crying or anything, just for a minute, when I realise they don’t know where I am, I just take that minute to be alone . . . Oh, Darren makes a grand gesture some Friday nights, “Have a bath, love,” he says. “Relax, I’ll handle everything.” And not five minutes passes before he’s walking in the door, one of them on his hip, asking where this or that is. I’ve thought about locking the door, seriously, but what if something was to happen? I mean, I could quite conceivably slip getting out the bath, hit my head, cut myself, even twist an ankle or something. Then could you imagine the to-do – Darren trying to break the door down with all three under his feet? One of them would get hurt, for sure. So I don’t lock the door. I don’t reckon I’m going to be able to lock the door for another ten years. It’s like a prison sentence, only the other way around.’

  Was she finished? Jo wondered. She had to be finished. There couldn’t anything more to say on the topic, surely?

  ‘So anyway,’ Jo ventured tentatively, ‘I guess you don’t get claustrophobic then?’

  Belle roused out of her reverie. ‘Oh yeah, what happened? Was it bad?’

  ‘Pretty bad. I had a full-blown panic attack.’

  ‘Wow,’ Belle seemed thoughtful. ‘What exactly happens in a full-blown panic attack anyway?’

  ‘Oh, you know, gasping for breath, heart palpitations, breaking out into a sweat . . . panicking. That’s why it’s called a panic attack.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had panic attacks.’

  ‘I don’t. But I’ve never been stuck in an elevator before,’ said Jo. ‘I have felt . . . uncomfortable, I guess, in confined spaces. But I’ve never been trapped, so it hasn’t got out of hand.’

  Belle propped her chin on her hand. ‘I suppose it could be scary if you were on your own.’

  ‘I wasn’t on my own.’

  ‘Oh, well, it’d be even worse if you were feeling claustrophobic and you were surrounded by people.’

  ‘There was just one other person,’ said Jo.

  ‘Someone you knew?’

  ‘I’d never met him before.’

  ‘Him?’ Belle’s eyes lit up. Jo rolled hers. ‘What was he like, was he cute?’

  Why was that always the first question? ‘No, he was definitely not cute.’

  ‘Oh, so you got stuck in a lift with a fugly guy?’ Belle pulled a face. ‘No wonder you had a panic attack.’

  ‘He’s not ugly, he’s just not cute, okay?’ said Jo. ‘He’s very tall, and big, you know . . .’

  ‘Ooh, a big bear of a man, eh?’ Just like their mother used to say. ‘Okay, so I see where you’re coming from now. He’s not cute, but was he handsome?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, Belle,’ Jo groaned. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters!’ she cried. ‘You got stuck in a lift with a big bear of a man and I want details. What was he like?’

  Jo shrugged. ‘He was all right, I suppose. A little scruffy for my tastes.’

  Belle lifted an eyebrow,
grinning wickedly. ‘Ooh, so he was a bit edgy, eh? More Viggo than Orlando.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know, Orlando Bloom was the pretty one in Lord of the Rings, whereas Viggo Mortensen . . .’ she sighed ‘. . . all unshaven and unwashed. That hair . . .’

  God, she was as bad as Angie. Jo had never done the fantasising thing, not even as a teenager. She’d always felt it was a pointless exercise. Why waste your time hankering after someone who didn’t even know you were alive, and would not be interested if he did. She supposed it explained why she’d ended up a journalist instead of a novelist. She wrote from facts, not from her imagination.

  ‘Okay,’ Belle was saying, ‘I have a mental picture now, go on . . .’

  ‘He doesn’t look like Viggo Mortensen, Belle.’

  ‘He does in my head,’ she declared. ‘Which is making this a whole lot more interesting. Now, how did he handle your panic attack? What did he do?’

  Jo shrugged. ‘He was just very kind, calmed me down . . . you know . . .’

  Belle was hanging on her every word. ‘No I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking you. I don’t have a life, remember, Jo? I thought getting stuck in a lift sounded exciting even without a bloke thrown in. Give me something.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Belle, but nothing happened.’ No way was she going to tell her the part about him carrying her through the office, not after what Angie had made of it.

  Belle took a slurp of her drink. ‘All I can say is that for a journalist you sure don’t know how to spin a yarn.’

  ‘Journalists don’t spin yarns.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She rattled the ice in her glass. ‘Well, this is becoming a dry old argument, where’s our drinks waiter? Dar-ren!’

  A moment later the sliding door opened and he stuck his head out. ‘What?’

  ‘We need refills here.’

  ‘What did your last slave die of?’

  ‘Insubordination, as I recall.’

  ‘I’ve got my hands a bit full in here, you know, Belle. You could get it yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, and you could get sex again before you die, but it’s not looking good.’

  He uttered some kind of expletive, but sauntered out a minute or two later with the bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic. He plonked them on the table. ‘Do you think you can manage to pour them yourselves?’

  ‘Thanks Darren,’ Jo called after him as he went back inside.

  Belle was making them another drink. ‘Suppose I’d be pushing it to tell him he forgot the ice?’

  Jo grinned. ‘I think we can manage without it.’

  Belle passed her back her glass.

  ‘So, you’ve never been claustrophobic?’ Jo asked in a last-ditch attempt to get back to the point.

  ‘Nuh,’ Belle said plainly. ‘In fact I like being shut in, blinds down at night, doors closed, sometimes I even put a pillow over my head to block the light. Freaks Darren out,’ she added, with a vaguely malevolent chuckle.

  Jo frowned. ‘You don’t have any negative associations at all?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘It’s just, you know, when we were kids, all those nights we had to spend locked away in our room . . .’

  Belle shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you remember it, but I remember the picnics on the carpet, and that magic stash of treats that seemed to come out of nowhere . . . the games we played . . . you reading to me till I fell asleep. I used to love those nights, Jo.’

  Those nights were when Charlene would pull Jo aside and tell her the two of them were to keep out of sight or else. She was ‘entertaining’ and if they made so much as a peep there would be hell to pay. Jo didn’t want to frighten Belle, so she tried to make it fun. She kept up a hidden stock of party food purchased from her stolen emergency funds. She made up games they could play in silence, variations on charades, or hangman, making a game out of trying to stay as quiet as possible. When the music was turned up, Jo would read aloud to Belle, who then seemed oblivious to all sounds, raised voices, smashing glass, slamming doors and, the worst, the headboard banging against the adjoining wall accompanied by orgasmic cries. Not that Jo knew they were orgasmic at first, she just knew she didn’t want Belle hearing any of it.

  ‘It was our safe place,’ said Belle. ‘The way I remember it, we liked being holed up in our room. And she never locked us in, Jo.’

  ‘Only because the doors usually didn’t have locks.’

  ‘I think you’re being a little dramatic.’

  ‘Belle,’ Jo sighed, ‘our mother hid us out of sight because she didn’t want the blokes she brought home to know she had kids.’

  ‘Well, it was better than when she dragged us out to show us off,’ said Belle. ‘Remember what that was like? There was this one guy I’ll never forget . . . so creepy . . . what was his name? Barry, maybe?’

  There were a lot of Barrys over the years.

  ‘He made us dance for him and Mum, remember? He was missing teeth, and he had gross tattoos all the way up both arms, this was before they were fashionable. He smelled of grog and cigarettes and he kept slobbering on us. Ugh,’ she shuddered. ‘I’d rather stay shut up in the room any day.’

  Jo was casting her mind back . . . remembering . . . Belle was right, but even if they were safe in the room, there was an ever-present feeling of fear, of foreboding, for Jo at least. She was always hypervigilant, anxious that some drunk was going to burst into the room and discover them.

  And that was something she obviously couldn’t shake off. It had become imprinted into her psyche like an instinct, turning her into a claustrophobe, apparently.

  ‘Speaking of Mum,’ said Belle.

  Jo’s brain came hurtling back into the present.

  ‘Why do you always have to get that look as soon as I mention her?’

  ‘I don’t get a look.’

  ‘You so do,’ Belle said flatly. ‘Anyway, she’s coming down next week.’

  Jo tried very hard to set her face in such a way that she couldn’t be accused of having a ‘look’.

  ‘There you go again,’ Belle declared. ‘Don’t look like that!’

  ‘I’m not looking like anything,’ Jo insisted. ‘So Mum’s coming down. What does it have to do with me?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno, I just had this crazy idea that maybe you might want to drop in and say hello to the woman who gave birth to you?’

  ‘You mean the woman who accidentally fell pregnant with me and found out too late to do anything about it?’

  ‘Jo . . .’ Now Belle was the one with the look.

  ‘What? It’s the truth, isn’t it? At least she purposely meant to fall pregnant with you because she was trying to hold onto Dad.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Belle sighed. ‘Okay, Jo, we know Mum made a whole lot of mistakes, but she was really young and it was a long time ago. I still believe she loved us, and that she did the best she could in the circumstances.’

  ‘Well, go ahead and believe what you have to, Belle. Doesn’t make it true.’

  Belle shook her head sadly. ‘I’m sure you’d have a different perspective if you had kids of your own.’

  Jo groaned. ‘That is so patronising, Belle! As if I can’t have any insight into my life, or recognise good parenting, without having kids of my own? How would you like it if I said you don’t have any understanding of the big wide world because you stay home with your kids?’

  ‘Well that’s what you think, isn’t it?’

  ‘No it isn’t!’ Jo insisted. ‘I admire you, Belle, I’m not sure I could do what you’re doing.’

  ‘And when you say it like that, what you’re really saying is that you wouldn’t want to do it.’

  ‘Oh, is that what I’m saying, is it, Belle? When have I ever criticised your life choices? You’re the one sitting there telling me I don’t know which way is up because I haven’t had kids.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she insisted, her voice softening. ‘At least I didn’t mean
that, JoJo. I just wish you could put things in the past and move on with your life, that’s all.’

  ‘I have moved on, Belle, you’re the one who keeps insisting on dragging me back. Why do you care so much about me and Mum getting along?’

  ‘Because I love you, and I want you to be happy.’

  ‘I’m happy, what makes you think I’m not happy?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Jo, come on . . .’

  Jo was perplexed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re having an affair with a married man, and not for the first time.’

  Oh Jesus. It always came back to that.

  ‘How happy can you be, Jo, when you only have relationships with men you have no future with?’

  Jo wanted to say, very happy. That was the whole point. She didn’t want Belle’s suburban dream with all the trappings, emphasis on ‘trap’. But she couldn’t say that, because while it was perfectly fine for Belle, or any married person, to sit there and tell her where she was going wrong in her life, it was a whole other box of dice for a single person to tell a married person that they wouldn’t want their life for quids. That just sounded bitter. Or jealous. Or – a favourite – like you were ‘protesting too much’. Or any number of other perverse and unhealthy emotions that poor partner-deficient people were apparently riddled with.

  Belle leaned in closer. ‘All I’m saying is that you’re kidding yourself if you think you can go through life detached from your own mother. Do you know what Bob Geldof said?’

  ‘That he didn’t like Mondays?’

  She ignored that. ‘He said he had a mother-shaped hole in his heart because his mum died when he was young, and no amount of love or success or anything else can fill that because it’s mother-shaped.’

  Jo was picturing the Charlene-shaped hole in her heart – big hair, tight dress, tottering stilettos.

  ‘Frankly, Jo, I think you’re in denial,’ Belle went on, ‘and until you reconcile this relationship, you won’t really feel . . . complete. And if you do end up having kids . . .’