by Debra Oswald
After Sandor died, Roza had one consoling idea in her head: now, apart from Josef of course, she just had herself to worry about. She could suit herself. She could eat sardines followed by chocolate mousse every night if she fancied. But the truth was she did not eat a lot of mousse. She drank vodka. Because the consoling idea was not so consoling. The vodka was much more effective.
It was a couple of years after Sandor died when Celia said, ‘Roza, I need help with packing the fruit.’ Roza knew this was a plan that Celia and Josef had cooked up to get her out of the house and busy. But it turned out she was bloody good at the job.
After that, for the next ten years, it went like this: summer and autumn, Roza would be up at five to work for Celia. Sober. Winter, she could retreat to her little underworld, with vodka and silly television shows to keep her company. Celia would stroll down to check on her sometimes but she eventually gave up inviting Roza for meals in the winter. She let her be, accepting that a sozzled hibernation was the choice her neighbour had made.
This winter was different. Any person observing Roza walk into the yard of the packing shed in her red alpaca sweater would see she was completely sober. She had to keep herself clear-headed because there were people who might need her help.
In the first days after Zoe had disappeared, Celia had stayed mostly in the house – making phone calls, contacting the girl’s friends, waiting for messages that might come, hoping her daughter would simply return home.
During this time, the remaining peaches and nectarines were left to rot on the trees, or fall to the ground and rot there. In the heat, thousands of dollars’ worth of fruit cooked down into a worthless, nasty jam, spread across the mulch. The smell was potent, a sticky–sweet substance clinging to the nostrils and the lining of the lungs.
Apart from money being lost in the pulpy mess, Roza worried that the putrefying fruit might cause problems with fungus and crawling beasts. But Celia would not listen to anyone who suggested she bring in some help. She couldn’t give her mind to such matters. The only thing she cared about was her daughter. Of course.
Celia stayed close to home for two weeks after Zoe left, until one morning she abruptly left the property without telling anyone. That was over four months ago now.
Roza had tried to keep the vegetable plot going, tramping up the slope every day to water and weed and flick off any bugs eating the foliage. But it proved too much to manage. Eventually, Joe dug the remnants of the vegetable plants back into the soil, so they could at least be of use as compost in the garden beds.
Since then, Roza had persisted with a daily walk up to the farm, taking the longer route, via the front gate, to check Celia’s mailbox. She would then make a slow circuit around the packing shed and the house. This way she could check if there had been any damage done by wind or robbers or creatures overnight, and it was also a way to keep her ancient limbs awake and mobile.
Roza had always had a key to Celia’s place, but these days she used it for a special task. With Celia gone away on her search, there was no one to hear a phone ring in the empty house or the idle packing shed, and so Josef had connected a telephone answering machine to Celia’s home line. He had originally bought this machine for his office in town, but his secretary would not touch the thing for fear she might break it or the device would leap up off the desk to tear out her throat.
Roza was not afraid of the machine, installed on Celia’s kitchen counter in its fake-wood laminate casing. In appearance and operation it was much like a cassette player, so not an object any sensible person would regard as monstrous. In fact, Roza respected and admired the contraption – it had the power to capture messages that could otherwise be lost. Of course there was a risk it was storing distressing messages in its metal and plastic innards, but that was not the machine’s fault. And it was always better to know.
Every morning, Roza let herself in through Celia’s kitchen door and checked the tiny red bulb on the front of the device. If the light was flashing, she set out notepaper and pencil before hitting the playback tab, ready to write down messages from the police or anyone with information she must relay to Celia. Before hitting the button, Roza also readied her own body, taking a big breath and bracing her rib cage, in case a voice coming out of the machine were to deliver bad news about Zoe.
The first weeks, the tape was filled with confused voices stammering their way out of the little holes in the speaker. ‘Sorry – uh – have I got the right number? Is this – oh . . .’ People were flummoxed, unused to speaking to an answering machine. ‘Celia? You there? Is this thing recording me or am I supposed to – oh, I’ll ring back later.’
Sometimes there would just be the fragile sound of a person breathing, barely audible through the swish of the tape between the tiny rollers. Roza fancied she could hear the person’s brain clunking around as they tried to work out what to say.
There was also the hope that the flashing bulb heralded good news or even the voice of the girl herself, saying she was okay, saying she was coming home. Maybe some of the breathing noises on the tape had been Zoe, but Roza doubted that. She believed she would somehow divine if it had been Zoe breathing, hesitating, letting the tape hiss on.
There had been almost no useful dispatches on the machine – a few possible sightings of the girl, but all proved to be dead ends. Some friends and neighbours had recorded their concern for Celia, words tight in their throats, tight with worry or the inadequacy of the words. In some cases, there was a tinge of unspoken smugness (‘My child has not run off’). Roza was happy to filter these messages for Celia. People’s best wishes were so often bound up with their own fears or vanities or self-absorbed notions about the way things went in the world. It was better if Roza was simply able to say to Celia ‘Mrs So-and-So is thinking of you’, ‘Santino sends his love’, and ‘The lady from the P and C offers any help she can give’.
This particular day, the red light was not flashing. No messages. In fact, there had been no messages for over a week now.
Roza had finished her checklist – letterbox, garden, house, answering machine – and was coming back towards the packing shed when Joe drove into the yard. He climbed out of the vehicle and gave his mother a kiss.
‘Thought you might be prowling around up here, Mum. I just dropped off some bags on your front verandah.’
‘What bags? Bags of what?’ Roza asked.
‘We’re sorting through stuff at our place. There were some things Heather thought you might be able to use.’
Roza snorted. ‘Are these “things” items of overpriced foolish junk Heather bought and now throws out so she can buy new?’
‘Basically, yes.’
‘Will they be useful to me?’
‘No. Except as a physical reminder of your contempt for Heather,’ said Joe with a small smile. Even though he was always patient with his mother, there were times Roza could hear the scrape of irritation in his voice. But other times – right now being an example – he appeared to enjoy the game, at least a little.
‘Well, so, please drop the bags at the Salvation Army in town,’ said Roza, then without warning, she grabbed his head with her hands in order to examine his eyeballs. ‘Josef. What’s going on?’
‘About what?’
‘You tell me about what.’
Joe shrugged. ‘Heather asked me to move out.’
‘Ah. Is this for permanent?’
‘Yes, it’s permanent.’
‘You didn’t have to confess to the sex,’ Roza pointed out. ‘It’s only that one intercourse, months ago, we’re talking about. Isn’t it?’
He nodded.
‘The woman, Sheena – she wouldn’t have told. Celia has gone away. I would never tell. So, why?’
‘I felt I had no choice.’
Her son the honourable man. Josef had admitted the infidelity to his wife the very next day after the act. But it took him some weeks to summon the courage to confess to his mother that he had confessed to his wife.
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Roza waggled her head. ‘So, Heather has been marching you to the marriage counselling for months. Now suddenly she decides to throw you out like the garbage?’
‘The decision was mutual in many ways,’ said Joe, in the calm voice he used sometimes, as if his mother were a crazy woman to be handled.
‘I always knew this is what she will do in the end.’
‘As you made very clear.’
Roza was relieved to hear that miserable marriage was over, but even so, it annoyed her to see Heather tormenting Josef without a tiny shred of goodwill in her heart. ‘Before she kicked you out, she wanted her months of watching you writhe with the guilt first.’
Joe closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Mum. Please. Don’t.’
‘I keep my mouth shut.’
And indeed Roza’s mouth did stay shut for several seconds before a question snuck its way out. ‘You’re not still having some kind of relations with Sheena, are you?’
‘What? No. I’m not.’
Zoe and Kieran had run away together using the sister’s car, leaving Sheena stranded on the farm. Desperate to transport herself far away as rapidly as possible, she arranged a lift into Narralong with a neighbour. Before she left, the sister gave Celia a piece of paper with phone numbers that might help in the search for the girl.
She also insisted on handing back the envelope of cash. She was not a charming person, that Sheena, but she was a person of honour.
Roza was convinced Josef’s intercourse with the sister had been an unplanned business – foolish or selfish or a blessing, depending on a person’s point of view. And she didn’t believe it made any difference to the outcome of that night. The young couple would have run off together whether Josef and Sheena had kept on their underwear or not. That hour of sexual activity had other consequences, of course – precipitating the end of his marriage and brewing up a painful awkwardness between Celia and Joe.
Roza watched her beautiful son wander around the bare, chilly yard. He looked so reduced by the last months, she would have donated him some of her energy if that were possible. At the very least, she wanted to coddle and restore him, to shower him with affection and food and admiration and her boundless love. But seeing no means to do that right now, instead she said, ‘Well, Josef, since you’ve been sufficiently tormented by your wife that she now decides to dismiss you, where will you live?’
‘I’ve got a room at the motel near the office. Just until I find somewhere long term.’
‘You are always welcome to live with me. Or you could go off on a trip somewhere in the world, now that you’re a single man again. Have some fun.’
Josef looked at her pointedly.
‘Of course,’ said Roza. ‘You don’t want to be far from the children.’
‘Of course I don’t.’
There were men who could spend time away from their children with no great suffering but Josef was not one of them. It was strange for Roza to find herself half-wishing her son was a less deep-feeling man, more petty and selfish. But of course she was glad he was a devoted father. Even so, it was hard to see things tearing at his insides.
Joe looked out from the yard towards the rows of bare fruit trees, with their straggly unpruned branches and the ground invaded by weeds. ‘The orchard’s a mess.’
Roza flicked her hands in the air. ‘More than four months abandoned.’
‘It’s a problem if the trees are left like this too long, isn’t it?’
‘This is why the ginger boy and his cousin should come and do the urgent work.’
‘I could organise that for Celia.’
Roza shrugged. ‘I suggested this.’
Joe had done his best for Celia, calling on contacts who might help in the search for Zoe and taking care of any farm business it was possible for him to do. Roza knew he fretted about whether he should telephone Celia. She might not appreciate a call from him, on account of the intercourse with the boy’s sister. So he didn’t call her. Instead he relied on Roza for news about Celia’s wellbeing.
Roza could see her son’s pudgy belly had been whittled away in the last months. This was a welcome outcome in itself, much like the end of his marriage, but, like the end of his marriage, it was sad to see the unhappiness that went along it.
‘You’re not eating,’ Roza said. ‘Stay for lunch.’
‘I can’t. I have to go to Hamish’s athletics carnival.’
‘Ah. Yes. Well, let me parcel up some food to take back to your sad little motel room of shame.’
Josef automatically responded, ‘No, thanks.’ But a second later, he flashed her that small smile. ‘You know what, that’d be lovely, Mum. Thanks.’
Roza allowed her son to drive her back to her house and together they sorted through the bags of Heather’s cast-offs on the verandah. They salvaged a few items, including expensive double-bed sheets still in their packaging. Heather had no use for them since she had recently purchased a queen-sized bed. Maybe the larger bed was more convenient for avoiding sex. Well, now she was discarding her husband, so that unnecessarily huge bed would be even more wasted.
While Joe stowed the rest of the bags back in the boot of his car, Roza ducked inside to spoon a big serving of food into a plastic container for her son to take back to town.
That evening, Roza ate the portion left over. She had just settled down to watch one of her television shows – this one featured a man with bionic body parts – when Celia phoned.
The conversation went the way it always did.
‘Hello, Roza. It’s me. Any news?’
She meant news about Zoe, nothing else. Soaked into every word Celia spoke was the question: Has Zoe come home? But she couldn’t risk asking that question out loud for fear the hope for a Yes and the disappointment of the No would be more than her body could stand.
So Celia asked practical questions about mail and phone messages. Every time she rang, every time, it broke Roza’s heart. ‘No,’ she would have to say to Celia. ‘No messages or letters.’
‘Oh,’ Celia replied, as she always did. Then the poor woman would gather herself up again and read out the phone number of the motel where she would be staying for the next few days, so Roza could write it down. ‘You can contact me here until at least Wednesday.’
The phone calls always ended this way.
‘Are you okay, Roza?’
‘I’m okay. And you?’
‘The same. Stay well,’ Celia would say and then quickly hang up.
When Roza put down the phone, and hours later lying in bed, Celia would still be in her thoughts, whether Roza liked it or not. It was easy for the mind to tune into the waves of suffering going on around the world at any moment in time. It was like owning a stupid malfunctioning radio that could only pick up wretched frequencies and then would somehow record and gather up all the miseries of the past, the cries of every childless mother, every anguished individual Roza had ever known, and transmit them into her head.
An old lady lying in her bed stewing on such things – what good would that do Celia or Josef or anyone? None. To fight off this tendency in her brain, Roza had always tried very hard to tune in to the joyful things that must surely be going on at this instant somewhere in the world. But these days such mental discipline was more difficult, so she was at the mercy of the waves of sorrowful thoughts. This was where the vodka would have come in handy.
Celia opened her eyes and for a few seconds was disoriented, needing to hook her gaze onto the position of the window, the light fitting and the furniture around her to locate herself on the earth’s surface. Here she was in another budget motel room, with her suitcase flipped open on the luggage stand and her truck parked just outside the door.
Every morning, the shock of it hit her fresh. Her daughter was missing. It was the same when Marcus was killed, this waking up to be clobbered by the hard fact of it again, followed by the surprise of finding that her body was, unbelievably, continuing to function, blood and nerves and complex cellular
physiology humming along as if nothing had changed. The daily shock of losing Marcus had been superseded by a more benign mechanism when Zoe was born, which had allowed her to persevere and then to settle and then to live with some joy.
Now, with Zoe lost, the first thing Celia did every morning, wherever she found herself, was reach for the telephone handset beside the bed, checking for a dial tone. She worried that during the three or four hours of sleep she had managed through the night, she may have accidentally knocked the receiver out of its cradle and so missed an important message. But this morning there was the strong purr of a dial tone, as there always was.
The room was much like every other motel room she’d been in. There was a television set bolted near the top of the bare brick wall, raspy carpet tiles pocked with cigarette burns, and a dark timber cupboard so battered it looked as if someone had kicked it around the bitumen car park. The bedspread was mustard-coloured quilted nylon with crusty patches, each one the dried remnant of the tears or snot or semen of a previous guest. Cigarette smoke had saturated every surface, even the brickwork, and Celia’s hair stank of fags just from sleeping in the room.
Dispiriting as the joint was, Celia worried about the expense of motels, even the rank ones. She considered staying in cheap pubs (if you hunted around you could find a single for fifteen dollars a night) but pub accommodation didn’t have telephones in the rooms. Celia knew she would never get any sleep at all if there wasn’t a phone on the bedside table, a means for Roza or the police to reach her.
She opted for the cheapest motels she could find, but after so many nights it was adding up to a lot of cash. If that meant chewing through money, sucking up more and more through the line of credit on the property, then that was how it had to be.
Celia launched out of bed and into the shower to blast herself more usefully awake. Over the past few months, she had conducted each searching day as if she held a job with an urgent deadline. It made no sense, but it was one of the ways to funnel the anxiety and keep going.