by Nick Earls
She nods. I’m not looking at you like you’re an alien, not really.
I’m still not telling you every detail.
I wouldn’t expect you to.
Just the highlights then. The drug taking, the nudity, the ridiculous passion.
No. Keep it all to yourself.
Thank you. Now, what do you want to do tomorrow? I thought we might do something tomorrow.
She stops moving, with the spoon at her mouth. She looks at me, as though I’ve now said something really insane, as though she’s left me for a week and I’ve lost it completely. She draws away from the spoon, looks at me quizzically. I can feel myself smiling, another one of those involuntary smiles that indicate only discomfort. I can feel that I am expected to say something, something that clarifies my previous unexpected remark.
This is great pumpkin soup, isn’t it? is all I manage.
Yes, she says after a while, and goes on eating.
UNCLE PAUL’S PUMPKIN SOUP
½ butternut pumpkin
2 large potatoes
1 large onion
2 chicken stock cubes
4 cups of water
1 small carton of cream
pinch of salt
1 small carton of sour cream (garnish)
passionfruit or chives (garnish)
freshly ground black pepper
Bring water to boil, add stock cubes and pinch of salt. Peel and chop pumpkin, potatoes and onion. Add to broth, return to boil and reduce to very low heat (cover). Simmer until all vegetables are mushy.
Strain mixture and then put mixture through blender/food processor (gradually adding cream) and strain mixture again.
Return to saucepan and re-heat at low temperature.
When serving add a teaspoon of sour cream to the soup and garnish with passionfruit or chopped chives. Add freshly ground black pepper to taste.
thirty-five
So what does my mother want to do? She wants to go to Noosa. And I know that if I tell her I’ve just been to Noosa she’ll say, Let’s do something else then, and that’s not the point of this.
I’m eating breakfast when she wakes in the morning.
Where’s the paper? she says, still some sleep left in her voice.
I haven’t got it yet.
But you’re eating breakfast. She looks at me, at the toast on my plate, perhaps even at the Courier-Mail that should be on the table, but isn’t. I suppose you can eat breakfast without the paper. I suppose I can eat it without a library book in bed.
She makes toast and a cup of coffee and sits opposite me, still looking at me. Studying me almost, as though I am breakfasting oddly, as though she’s never seen me eat toast before.
We take the toll road to Noosa, a series of long straight lines through the bush, running behind things, behind the beach towns and Mount Coolum. We stop three times to pay.
So how was your week? I ask her, though I think I’ve asked her before.
Okay, nothing special, just the usual. You go to work, you come home. I played touch on Monday night, between attempts to phone you, of course. The season’s just started again, so we were all pretty hopeless. So a couple of us went for a run Wednesday, just around Uni. Well, we didn’t do a lot of running really. But you have to ease back into these things.
I probably knew her week would be like this, work, home, touch football, unanswered phone calls. But I’m listening to it now as someone’s week, not just disregarding it because it’s only what my mother’s doing. I don’t know how it rates as a week for her, if it was lonely or average, or a week she was quite happy with. I can’t say to her is this the week you want? Are you happy with week after week just like this?
I’ll be back soon, I think, I tell her. I’ll probably have uni to get ready for. Are there any good movies coming on at the Schonell?
I don’t know. I haven’t looked.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything so it would be good to go. Maybe we could go if there’s anything good on when I get back.
Before the uni orientation extravaganza takes over?
On the toll road it seems to take about as much time to reach Noosa as yesterday. There’s a limit to what I can try in conversation without my mother wondering about me, so there are long silences when I sit back and look out the window. Over the years we have become comfortable with such silences on the drive to and from the coast, I suppose since we live together and see each other all the time. We have comfortable silences at home too. Today I feel more need to talk. I would like to know what my mother wants from life, for herself, and if I’m stopping her getting it. For months now, and much longer really, we’ve both been trying to work out what I want from life, but she’s been static in all this, unchanging, as though I’ve expected her to be. Now I realise I haven’t thought about it at all. She’s my mother, and I think it never occurred to me she could be anything else.
I knew she was a doctor. When I was very young and I knew she worked to heal sick people I assumed every mother was a doctor because that made sense. I assumed being a mother meant you’d gone to uni and that you healed the sick, played touch football, held strong opinions which you would defend to the death, and that occasionally, after a long, loud, happy night, you might be sick yourself, and you would treat that too.
Later I realised this was unreasonable, and that I was making assumptions on the basis of gender. Perhaps, then, it can be either parent who has this useful qualification.
In Noosa with my mother we don’t stand out from the crowd. We take Hastings Street at a browsing pace and stop for coffee at Aromas. We sit under an umbrella in the heat of midday and nothing’s moving quickly. We both drink more water than coffee.
This is great, my mother says. Like being back on holiday. But this time I’m not sitting here talking about Gina’s crisis. You’re being very nice to me, coming up here with me today when I’m sure you’d rather be spending time with Fortuna.
I can still do other things as well.
She sips her cappuccino.
What’s she doing today?
Getting ready for the markets tomorrow, I guess. She’ll probably come down later.
There is a pause. Something is ticking over in her mind while she sits holding her coffee cup halfway between her mouth and the saucer.
You don’t have anything to tell me, do you?
Like what?
Anything important.
Like thanks for everything. Like thanks for bringing me into this world and filling my life with opportunities? What are you getting at?
She looks at me, to see if she can see it without directly asking, to see if this mysterious truth might be visible if she looks hard enough. Look, tell me I’m crazy, but you know the work I do. You know what I come across. Is this all because you have something to tell me? Because you can, you know. You can tell me anything. If there’s anything you’re not sure about I might even be helpful You’re not in any trouble, are you?
Trouble. As in the consequence of being naughty or something? What do you mean?
Okay. I’ll be specific.
Is that possible?
I’m not, she starts and stops and thinks again. I’m not about to become a grandmother or something, am I?
No. Why do you think these things? Why can’t any of these things stay my business? As if it’s even possible anyway. I’ve only just met her. Or do you think she’s some secret I’ve been keeping for weeks, and it’s only out in the open now that she’s carrying my child? You just have no idea.
You were being very nice to me.
And I’m only likely to be nice in the context of unwanted pregnancy? What if I just wanted to be nice? What if I even thought about it and decided to be nice?
You mean it’s an effort
?
That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to do something you wanted to do. I just thought it was about time we did something like that.
Yes. That’s very nice.
Nice? It’s still nice? So clearly Fortuna’s pregnant, right? That’s what it means when I’m nice to you.
No. She laughs now. No. It really is nice. I appreciate it, really, now that I’ve got over my concerns. I just couldn’t work it out.
We finish our coffee and keep wandering. My mother is drawn into shops by some internal process I don’t understand, and she tries things on and seeks some input from me. I think I am a disappointment to her in this. I don’t think I’m equipped to play this game. I assume that she is considering buying anything she tries on, but apparently this is not the case. She turns and shows me all angles of one garment after another and I nod and smile, visibly avoiding meaning anything. Every so often there is a purchase, and I end up carrying another bag.
We go past Galleria da Costa and I point out Cliff’s plates in the window, arranged the way Fortuna had suggested. In the background I can see Lionel talking with a customer near a table of sea-blue glass vases, his hands showing the flowers that might spring from them, a small spray, a single long-stemmed rose. The customer nods, says a few words. They both laugh.
Of course I hear none of this through the glass. The cars move sluggishly past, and the people, families moving by in drifts, manoeuvring among each other along the crowded pavement, through the hot, heavy street air. And all I can hear is engines, and passing conversations.
We stop for lunch in a hot room with a beach view, from our table a beach glimpse. A fan rotates high on the wall above us and whatever air it moves passes over our heads. And they’re slow with the water, slower even with the straightforward lunch.
How long does it take to make a couple of focaccias? my mother says as the sweat starts to bead on her lip.
The staff on the tables don’t seem to care. They take orders and leave them on a peg and stand in the kitchen doorway looking very cool, looking as though there’s no hurry at all. As though they are there for display rather than service, part of some catalogue that sells big black boots and shorts and brown muscles and attitude.
My mother calls one over and asks how long our lunch will be.
Shouldn’t be long, he says, in a way that is far more dismissive than reassuring. We’ve been a bit busy. As though our expectations offend him.
This place has a very good reputation, my mother says to me when he goes back to the doorway and forgets us. I think they’re too well aware of that.
When the food arrives it’s okay, but it’s no better than that.
I’ve had enough of this heat, my mother says when she’s finished. Shall we go home?
In the car heading south on the toll road I wonder what Fortuna is doing. Without her I have been a strange spectator, watching my own day pass me.
thirty-six
She turns up in the late afternoon. I hear the Moke coming down the road, slowing, parking. I’m ready with my towel.
I think this is Fortuna, I tell my mother. We’ll probably go for a swim.
Don’t I get to see her?
Maybe. Maybe I’ll let her come up when we get back. But please, behave. None of that pregnancy stuff, okay?
As if I’d say anything in front of her.
You’ve embarrassed me before in front of other people.
All right, all right. Have a nice swim.
I meet Fortuna in the front garden and turn her round.
Shouldn’t I talk to your mother? Just say hello to her?
Later.
And just seeing her is exciting. Seeing her for the first time after a night and a day of not seeing her. I want to tell her, and I want to stop right here and take hold of her, forget about the swim, my mother, Len hosing his front lawn and giving us a wave with his free hand.
So how was it? she says when we’re in the car.
Fine. It was fine.
I hope you made it nice for her.
I did. You’ll never guess what we did. We went to Noosa. Your father’s plates look good in Lionel’s window.
And your mother, she had a good day?
Yeah, I think she did.
We haven’t talked about where we’re going, but we seem to be on the road to Kings. Fortuna glances at me, as though she expects more detail. What the hell, I decide. I’ll give it to her.
She was very funny, I tell her. You know she works in the Uni clinic and sees all the student medical problems?
Yeah.
Well, I was being so nice to her she thought I was in some kind of trouble. She got really tense. She even asked if you were pregnant. I’ve obviously never been nice to her before in my life.
Pregnant? She almost shouts this, and laughs. Pregnant? So what are we going to call the baby? Jesus?
I can’t believe Fortuna can be so cool about this, but then, she’s cool about most things. This doesn’t bother her. It only makes her laugh and come out with a line I wish I’d thought of this morning. I like her even more.
We catch a few waves, but this continues to be a summer of unimpressive surf. Perhaps when I was younger the waves were the same size and I was smaller. I can remember summer after summer of great surf. It was probably never like that, just a few good waves here and there across all the summer weeks, but I remember it as something better than this.
Do I get to come in when we get back to your place? Fortuna says when we’re driving home.
I suppose so. I suppose we can handle it. My mother does get a bit excitable though.
At a stop sign she gathers her hair into a bunch behind her head and winds a scrunchie onto it. The radio station departs slightly from its usual format and plays Linda and Vika Bull, doing ‘When Will You Fall for Me?’. I suppose it sounds country enough to be not too out of place. Fortuna sings along quite unselfconsciously. I’m not even sure that she knows she’s doing it. It’s one of those things cool people aren’t supposed to do, but everybody does. Like talking to yourself, or singing in the shower, or making any bowel gas whatsoever. But maybe this is a measure of how cool she is, that she’ll sing when she wants to, and if other people can’t, it’s not her problem.
I sing in the shower. I talk to myself often when I’m home alone, in a normal conversational voice. Sometimes I even interview myself, as though I’ve become famous for something. This, I realise, is the sort of thing that only a complete loser could do. I did quite a few interviews after the Juliet story, on account of both the story and the fame it gave me. I was interviewed by several magazines. One of them even ran a Win a Hot Date with Alex Delaney competition, and the 1900 number rang wild with the readers’ responses. I think I did some radio and TV too. Creatures of the Spotlight on Triple J for a start, and I can remember at least planning to do breakfast with Helen and Mikey. I think I had some expectation that Angie Hart was going to be there as well. I would have been very cool in how I’d handled that, of course, and worked out just the right way to make my high regard for Frente! plain, a way that would have encouraged her to feel some lasting respect for me. I would be funny and clever and the whole thing would go very well. Later she’d call me to ask if I’d ever thought of writing songs, to suggest that we might write together, the two of us and Simon Austin. I even had conversations with someone about doing a novel.
And all of this in my room, by myself, in those protracted moments when it seemed quite hard to study for my last school exams. My desk lamp shining across the same page of the chemistry textbook, while I told the chapter on entropy about how I was handling being in the public eye. Sure it takes away some of your privacy, I told it, but that’s a price you have to expect to pay. That’s part of the choice you’re making.
We park outside the house. Fortuna takes my
hand as we walk to the front steps.
Please, I say to her, my mother’s here.
This would offend your mother? She holds up our holding hands. Your mother who thinks I’m pregnant will be upset by this? Waving our two hands as though the notion is ridiculous. Which maybe it is.
Look, I can’t explain my mother. This will not offend her. She’ll think it’s great. She’ll think she can touch me all the time. I’d just be a lot less tense if we didn’t, you know?
Oh, so it’s your problem, she says, and laughs at me, dropping my hand. What a boy.
Inside we talk pleasantly, the three of us. My mother has boiled water for tea in the expectation that Fortuna would come in. She has arranged a tray with a plate of biscuits, a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk. I knew she would do this. I knew she would do something to imply some importance. I don’t know if she does it intending to embarrass me, or if she thinks it’s reasonable to make it look as though she’s having afternoon tea catered. But it could be worse. Another fifteen minutes and she probably would have whipped up a batch of pikelets.
Sit down, sit down, she says, and Fortuna deliberately sits quite close to me on the sofa.
My mother then makes a series of unnecessary remarks that I intend to take up with her later. So, has my boy been behaving himself then? Things like that. Fortuna, of course, does not deflect these remarks and will not be unsettled by my mother. She turns most of this into a series of unkind jokes, all of which are directed at me. They seem to encourage each other, and they both seem to quite like my discomfort.
Fortuna turns down a second cup of tea and says she should go to finish preparations for the market tomorrow.
And I think I’ll have an early night, she says. I’m really quite tired. She looks at me, puts her hand gently on my thigh, turns back to my mother. It must be the baby. Said with an unflinching smile.
I think I’m going to die. My mother looks horrified. She laughs, an awful laugh, hoping it’s a joke at her expense, looking at Fortuna for pregnancy signs that she knows couldn’t possibly be there this early anyway. She laughs again, but again it’s more like the sound of a parrot being treated cruelly than anything to do with amusement. And she’s staring at Fortuna’s loose-fitting T-shirt, as though she’s waiting for her uterus to enlarge right now.