Take It Easy

by Pat Rosier

  ‘Oh. Good. They never said. But then we never talked about you …. I nearly, you know, rang or wrote or something around then. The whole coming out thing, I wanted to compare notes – or something. Neil didn’t like it, at first anyway, and Mum cried …. Hey, are you still there?’

  Isobel was still there. Trying to believe it had never occurred to her when she first heard that Andrew was gay that she might have something to offer him. That he would have known, then, that she was lesbian, that her parents, or his, had told him that. When? She had been totally incurious about them, had wiped out any need — right? — to know. She knew they knew that she wasn’t really an aunt, that she was their birth mother - was that the language they’d used, or something more bland? She had no idea, and she didn’t know the family story about all that, either. Later, she could think about that later. Now here was Andrew on the other end of the phone telling her she had not delivered something he wanted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed, ‘sorry I wasn’t any help to you then.’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t matter for long,’ he said, ‘Grandma and Pops were great and Dad was good too. Mum stopped crying after a while and said, ‘as long as you’re happy, dear,’ and has been saying it ever since. I guess she’s disappointed about grandchildren but she’s being a granny to an immigrant family, Ethiopian I think.' Good on you, Joyce, Isobel thought.

  Then Andrew was asking how long she and Iris had been together and when she had known she was gay and did she think it was genetic? It wasn’t the time to get semantic about her preference for calling herself lesbian rather than gay, so she said that she thought maybe a tendency to ask questions was genetic and he laughed. She told him how for her it was very much linked with her inability to do the wife thing, and didn’t bother that he probably thought that meant sex, and then to the understandings of, well, the women’s movement.

  ‘Is that — the women’s movement thing — why you left?’

  ‘That’s complicated.' No, it wasn’t really. ‘But not that complicated. I just didn’t seem to be able to do what was needed and trying to do it made me, well, depressed probably, and certainly feeling like I had to get out before I went mad.' She wanted to explain that she wouldn’t have left him and Neil if she hadn’t known they’d be well looked after but couldn’t find the words. Should she pretend to a guilt she’d never felt? That Iris wanted her to feel?

  ‘Are you still there?’ Again. ‘You keep going silent.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘hard questions.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have the guilts you know, Mum and Dad were great. Still are in their own settled way.’

  ‘No, I don’t have the guilts. It would be good to see you.’

  ‘Yeah,me too. Unfortunately my job doesn’t fly me around the country. Does yours?’

  ‘Not very often. But I could come up for a weekend. Not to stay,’ she added hastily, ‘so we could have dinner or something. But with what’s happening just now I can’t be sure when. I might have to go to Melbourne.' That’s a lie she told herself, I have to stay home so Iris won’t think I’m — whatever. She knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere that involved her boys and not Iris’s son, not right now.

  ‘We’ll have to get by with phone chats then. Do you email?’ He took her email address and they promised to make contact again soon. Isobel put down the phone and collapsed on an armchair, exhausted. ‘It’s been quite a day,’ she said to Ginger, who was kneading her lap. She managed to stretch and reach the television remote without disturbing him and flicked through the channels for a while then turned it off. It was only eight-thirty. It felt like midnight. She could ring Rhonda or Miriama, or Rei, or Donna, but what would she say? She didn’t usually bother about what she might say to her friends, but she couldn’t talk about the boys yet, all that was too new. She’d feel disloyal talking about what had happened with her and Iris.

  Restless, she wandered around their house, remembering when they had bought various bits of furniture, how they had created a home together. When she sat down at the dining table her hand went down automatically to scratch Barney’s ears. The dog’s ecstatic wriggles knocked over her brief-case and she reached down and swung it onto the table, opened it and took out the diary. She ran her hand over the cover without opening it, then put it on the shelf, the bottom shelf of the bookcase by the door to the hallway, next to the other, older, notebook.

  There were kittens, dozens of kittens, caught up in seaweed and they had to be disentangled before the tide came in. As fast as she got one free and passed it on there were others. Then she saw the grave — it could only be a grave — square sides, crisp right angle corners cut in the dirt — and a kitten being dropped into it by someone she couldn’t see.

  Isobel lay in the dark remembering the dream, decided not to try to make anything of it, and half sat, leaning on one elbow to see the time on the clock beside the bed. 3.10 am. She lay back, alert, tense, anxious and felt around the bed for Ginger. No Ginger. She pulled the blankets close around her neck instead.

  Sleep, however, was elusive; no amount of stillness and regular deep breathing took her over the threshold. Tossing in the bed so the covers were tightly wrapped around her didn’t help either. Eventually — 3.56 said the grim face of the clock — she got out of bed, taking her duvet cocoon with her, sliding into slippers, and shuffling into the kitchen to put on the jug. Barney and Ginger joined her on the sofa with her cup of tea, one on either side.

  The ghost of Sydney was keeping her awake, the Sydney of those months after she had left the boys with Bob, a Sydney she had barely thought of since, even on two subsequent trips to Mardi Gras. She would sit here, drink her tea and remember it as hard as she could, then maybe she would be able to go to sleep.

  The one thing she could recall of the time between walking out the door and being in Sydney was her shock at the cost of the taxi to the Auckland Airport Hotel. The hotel itself, the short trip to the terminal in the morning, the flight across the Tasman, were a blank. Nor could she summon any detail about how she found the bedsit, the basement of an elderly couple’s house, a longish walk through inner city streets from the agency she used to get work as an office temp. Or how she found or chose that agency.

  She couldn’t remember what she had said to Bob as she was leaving either, or his reply. Was his bewildered face a memory? That’s right, she had heard one of the boys stirring, just as she had seen the taxi pull up and made her announcement, seen his panicked look and said — shouted (she thought) — ‘Ring Joyce!’ and run out the door, grabbing the small suitcase from the veranda where she’d put it as soon as Bob was safely settled in front of the television.

  Missing the physical presence of the boys, and waking up on a weekend morning with a long, unstructured day and evening looming ahead came back to her. Ferry trips around the harbour. Finding second-hand bookshops to feed her diet of crime fiction. A series of short-term office jobs that were ideal for avoiding social relationships. She was not miserable, not happy, not even relieved, just there walking through days and nights, disconnected. Writing to her mother with her address, getting a letter, regular as Sunday church bells, every second week. A letter with bits of news about the boys, about how Joyce moved in with Bob — oh yes, a small, triumphant, ‘I knew it!’ at that news — having the boys on Thursday afternoons to give Joyce a break, gratitude for that structured contact showing only between the lines. A note and some photos from Joyce, twice. Some papers to sign for the divorce, a jolt at ‘desertion,’ written in by an unknown hand, some clerk of the court, who no doubt thought her a dreadful person. Isobel had no way of knowing whether she’d had that thought then or was having it now for the first time.

  She couldn’t remember buying clothes, or what she ate, or the name of a single place she worked at. Or a single person. Nor the name of the street where she lived. I didn’t live, she thought, I went through the motions of living. But then, I’d never done anything else. And tears ran down her face.

/>   ‘This is called wallowing in self-pity,’ she said to the animals. Neither of them stirred.

  How long, she wondered, how long would I have lived like that? It was two years later, almost to the day, that she returned to New Zealand, to Wellington. There had been a letter from Daniel. It came on a weekday morning, in an unusual gap between jobs from the agency, she clearly remembered sitting at the table reading about the Americans about to land on the moon. Her landlord brought down the letter, tapping on the window and holding it up for her to see. What about coming to Wellington he wrote. He knew a bloke who worked in State Services, there were jobs, she shouldn’t be put off by news about unemployment. Maybe it would be easier for her to come home he wrote if she was at the other end of the island, and their parents would feel better… Daniel had been asked to write by their mother, that wasn’t hard to pick. She’d go to Wellington.

  There was another option. She could have saved some money and kept going, to Europe or America. She could have got a passport. ‘I’m the one,’ she said to Barney, who was licking her wet hand, ‘who completely missed the sixties my generation is so nostalgic about.' She added, ‘sorry fellas,’ as she was about to disturb them to go back to bed, then dropped back onto the sofa. Another memory. Holding Daniel’s letter in her hand, thinking, ‘I won’t have to spend another Christmas in bed reading for two days to avoid the humiliation of being out and about on my own. I can go to Daniel and Sally’s.’

  ‘Surely not.' Barney nudged her arm for more ear-scrunching. ‘It was July, surely I didn’t think that.' It was so hard to tell what was really a memory and what was a later thought. She wished it was not the middle of the night so she could ring Rhonda. Rhonda, who had been kind and blessedly incurious about her past when Isobel had started work in the Department of Internal Affairs in Wellington in September 1969; men had landed on the moon and Isobel had come home to New Zealand. Rhonda, who described herself as happily medium — medium height and weight, medium brown hair and eyes, conscientious but not ambitious — worked then in the local government branch of the department. Isobel joined the immigration section and they became friends because each noticed the other reading the same P D James novel in the staff tearoom.

  Ginger moved onto her lap and started kneading her thigh. ‘Whoa,’ she nudged him off, ‘don’t settle down there, I’m off back to bed.' She didn’t have the heart to send Barney back to his basket, so the three of them went to sleep in and on the big bed that was empty of Iris.

  ~~~

  Chapter 19

  ‘She shouldn’t have died then you know.’

  ‘Who’?

  ‘Mum. ‘She wouldn’t go to the doctor. Dad said. She’d been having chest pains and wouldn’t go. Insisted she only had indigestion and she’d stop eating tomatoes and oranges. Acid,’ he explained at Isobel’s bewildered look, ‘wrong as it happens, but she thought acid stomach came from acid foods. Then whammy!!’ Isobel jumped at the force of his fist on his chest. That’ll be a bruise, she thought. ‘Just like that,’ Daniel continued, ‘dropped dead in the street. Twelve years ago tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.' Isobel didn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t have remembered. she’d have had to look up the date, and the year. ‘She’d have struggled with being sick.’

  ‘Yes. If she’d woken up in hospital she’d have been embarrassed.’

  ‘Embarrassed?’

  ‘Yes. Knowing she’d fallen down in the street, putting people out, making them fuss, being looked after. She would have hated all of that.’

  ‘Oh. I see.' I was too bound up in the drama of my own life, Isobel thought, to notice any of this. 1988. My mother was 77, had a heart attack, and died. Shirley flew over and organized us all, bossed our father into home help, and took off again.

  ‘What are you thinking.’

  ‘Oh. Nothing much. Just about that time and how Shirley ….’

  ‘Took over. She did it again when Dad went. Oldest sister syndrome.' And he laughed. Kind of.

  Daniel was sitting on the sofa, Ginger on his lap; he said he didn’t care about hairs on his trousers. Isobel had woken up to a lonely Saturday morning with Iris still away and rung and asked him round for coffee. He had sounded surprised, then pleased and come right away.

  ‘I envied her though, still do,’ he continued. And you.' He was looking down at the cat, stroking along Ginger’s back and tail.

  ‘Envied? Me? Come on, I was the baby sister that knew diddly squat and said the wrong thing all the time.' Isobel struggled against a hearty tone.

  ‘Not to mention the questions!’ His face lightened as he smiled with what she hoped was remembered affection.

  ‘Tell me more about envying.’

  ‘You and Shirley got the tough genes,’ he said ‘and I always felt like I was short of a layer of skin. Though I didn’t put it like that ‘til recently. Still am, I suppose. Take things hard, keep them inside.'

  ‘Oh. You’re saying Shirley and I coped and you were — are — thin-skinned?’ This was all new to Isobel.

  ‘Yep. Shirley buggered off and you, well,’ Daniel shrugged, ‘so did you. And I did what was expected of me.’ His look of misery, no, not misery, resignation, deadening resignation, tore at Isobel.

  ‘Oh Daniel!’ was all she could say.

  ‘It’s all right.’ He looked at her, a bit sheepish. ‘None of it’s your fault. Or anybody’s. It’s just how it was.’

  ‘Tell me though, tell me about doing what was expected of you.’

  He shrugged again. ‘You know, being well-behaved, not making a fuss, doing homework, not asking for things …’

  ‘Me too!’ He looked at her, startled. ‘Not asking for things,’ she explained, ‘but go on.’

  Another shrug. ‘My sister the inquisitor.’

  ‘Daniel! Please!’ Iris would do this so much better than she was. ‘I really want to hear about you Daniel, what happened?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I finished school, learnt accounting, got a job, got married had kids, did Mum and Dad proud.’

  ‘But what about your dreams? You said once …’

  ‘That I wanted to build a boat and sail around the world? Huh! I’d never have done that, not ever. What did I know about boats? I’d never even been sailing. And I couldn’t make things. Not to mention having no gumption. Never did, never will.’ He straightened his shoulders, careful not to disturb the cat. ‘I’m not supposed to feel sorry for myself,’ he said, ‘there’s plenty of people much worse off than I am.’ He glanced up, ‘And no, that isn’t what Sally says.’ Neither of them spoke for a few moments, then Daniel said, ‘History’s repeating itself with Sarah and Nathan.’ He went on before Isobel could say anything. ‘Sarah’s got the tough genes. More like Shirley than like you, though, takes charge, it’s got her into all kinds of trouble with her mother. Like Shirley, she took off. I try not to blame Sally.’ Daniel’s face was wet, he wiped it with the back of one hand, digging in his pocket for the handkerchief he eventually found with in other, then blowing his nose loudly. ‘I miss Sarah.’ Apologetically.

  ‘It’s all right to miss your daughter.’ Isobel had had no idea. ‘What about Nathan?’

  ‘He’s his mother’s.’ Daniel didn’t seem to find anything strange in that. ‘Bit like me, he has dreams and doesn’t do much with them, though I can’t say that to his mother.’

  ‘I didn’t know ….’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t, would you, none of it gets talked about. Nothing to say, really. Look, I don’t want you think I haven’t been happy, I have, in my own way. Especially when the kids were kids. I rather lost Nathan when he hit his teens, and Sarah, well she said she had to get away from her mother, and how could I argue with her?’ All Isobel could think of was failure, failure as a family, all of them. Daniel visibly pulled himself together, blew his nose again, sat straighter again and said, ‘That’s enough about me, tell me what’s going on with you. How’s Chris doing?’

  ‘He’s doing all right, though he had to
have an operation for the aneurysm and the doctors don’t understand why his blood pressure is so high. It wasn’t when he came in after the accident apparently.’ And she went on to describe how she talked to Iris every day and Iris told her a huge amount of medical detail and wasn’t interested in anything except how Chris was doing. ‘She’s even asked me to see if I can track down her father’s medical records, she thinks she remembers he had high blood pressure, it contributed to his stroke.’

  ‘Gosh. Is the doctor still around?’

  ‘She doesn’t even know the doctor’s name. Her father died in 1980, young, in his fifties, of a stroke after a car accident.’ Isobel stopped, her hands flying to her mouth. ‘Of course, I should have thought, that’s why she’s so worried.’

  ‘She didn’t say?’

  ‘No.’ I was supposed to remember and guess, Isobel thought.

  ‘Hello – o – o.' Daniel was waving a hand.

  ‘Oops, sorry I just thought of something.' She didn’t want to talk to her brother about Iris and then she was, she was telling him about contacting Neil and Andrew and Iris’s reaction and them arguing and how she was, anyhow, pleased to be in touch with the boys — ‘I must stop thinking of them as boys, they’re grown men,’ — and they had both seemed pleased to hear from her.

  ‘Tell me, honestly,’ she said when she had described the argument with Iris, ‘was that a dreadful thing to do, to go away like that? I knew they’d be all right.’ She couldn’t help the defensiveness she could hear in her voice. ‘And they have been.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Daniel spoke carefully, ‘the thing is, we can never know how what we didn’t do would have turned out, so it’s easy to be romantic about it, to think that it would have worked splendidly. And what we actually do gets the reality check. I think you did what you could do at the time.’ He finally answered her question. ‘And as it did turn out all right, well, it can’t have been dreadful can it?’ Before Isobel could respond, he went on. ‘We were all worried about you, you know. Sally was sure you were depressed, Mum wouldn’t have that.’