by Peggy Frew
And the thing is, nobody tells you that once you’ve swum across until you’re out of the rip, the swim in might still be hard. He was so exhausted, and he was out so far. It took a long time to get back in. He didn’t think he was going to make it.
The beach wedding had been beautiful, but at the reception afterwards Junie drank too much and when Paul tried to get her to leave she wouldn’t go. At first she laughed and tried to make him dance with her. Five more minutes, she said. Come on, Paulie. And when he said, No, really, let’s go, she said, You’re no fun. And then, when he said, We need to leave, she said, in a loud voice, Why? Am I embarrassing you? And then she realised she was going to be sick, and ran off behind some trees.
He found her and they left, and back at the house he helped her have a shower and get into bed, where she cried and said, I don’t know how to be happy, I don’t think I can be.
And now it’s the next morning, early, and they’re awake and Paul is talking in the dark.
Do you see what I’m saying? says Paul. Something happened to her, but it was just bad luck. Something might have happened to you, or to me—something nearly did, more than once.
But what about the cutting? says Junie. What about the drugs?
People do that stuff, says Paul, and get over it. People do all kinds of dark things and end up okay. Maybe you don’t know how strong she was, underneath.
At this time, the time of the beach wedding, the time before children, the time of sleeping naked, Paul speaks like this often. Sensibly, lovingly, he clears a place and sets down in it the possibility of an Anna—and so also a Junie—who is sturdy and whole, as sturdy and whole as he is.
It’s a lovely thing to do for someone. And there is a sense, at this time, that things can be squared away, that Junie’s hangups are not only approachable, but solvable. And perhaps they were, then. Perhaps they would have been, if Junie and Paul had stopped there. If they hadn’t had the children. If they’d both let Junie go on being the child. But it’s unlikely.
And anyway, life got busy, and they had the kids, and Junie became June, and because June didn’t get drunk at parties and cry and say that she didn’t know how to be happy, they both thought she’d grown up and got over things, and that there was no longer anything to be fixed. And when it became clear that all was not well in the marriage, what also became clear was that Paul being logical, Paul being kind, Paul being the grownup, wasn’t going to help this time. And, in any case, he’d gone on being those things all along.
The fact was that June couldn’t go back to being the child, to having him look after her. Which was sad, because it had been a beautiful thing, his looking-after, and it had, at the time, worked. Their beginners’ idealism, the simplicity and sweetness of their good intentions—June would have to mourn these. And she would have to find other ways through the mess.
NOOSA
A missed call every now and then, perhaps once a month, is quite usual. They are not, technically speaking, always missed calls—most often they are in fact ignored calls, when she switches the ringer to silent and puts the phone, still haplessly vibrating, back in her bag, or face down on a bench. This is done with a kind of hasty, squeamish efficiency, the way one might shoo a fly out through a window. If messages are left, she deletes them without listening.
So she ignores the first call. But then when she sees, at five-thirty pm, that there have been another three—genuinely missed, during school pick-up and swimming lessons and grocery shopping—she thinks, Shit.
She goes to Paul, who is sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on his running shoes.
‘Uh-oh,’ he says, when he sees the screen with its trail of red caller IDs. He bends once more to his laces. ‘You’d better ring her back.’
She looks at his thighs, their long muscles, his fingers tying their precise knots. ‘Of course I will,’ she says. ‘What kind of a person do you think I am?’
He stands.
‘Actually, don’t answer that,’ she says.
They laugh.
‘Do you want me to wait?’ he says, indicating the phone. ‘In case it’s something—bad?’
‘No. Thanks. It’s all right.’
He goes, and from the window she watches him half-walk, half-jog down the path and onto the street.
Some sort of equilibrium has been recovered. Paul has agreed to give it another six months, and they are on a waiting list for counselling. There is a general sense of reprieve, a lightness almost; there has been more laughter, and also more sex. Mostly June feels grateful, and pleased by him, his body, his mind—like a death row prisoner with a last meal, she’s savouring every moment. And she is being more honest with him—almost recklessly so—and it’s not as terrifying as she might have imagined. He receives her attempts at honesty square on, with delicacy, and with just enough humour. They are both trying. But there are times, too, when she feels as if she is on probation.
A male voice answers Helen’s phone. ‘Hello, June?’
‘Oh. Dev. Hi.’ She is flustered, and then suddenly fearful—adrenaline saws at her, her knees give, and she plonks onto the bed. ‘Is—is everything okay? With Mum?’ How easily the word slips out, a bleat, a blunt nub of a cry.
‘Yes. Everything is okay, no worries. She just has a little problem with her health.’ Dev’s musical, European voice—wareeze, lee-dle—is very calm. But she’s not sure what it would take to make Dev not calm. Inappropriate jokes skim her panic: A lee-dle problem. She’s had both legs amputated, no war-eeze. She’s on life support, she’s in a coma. No war-eeze.
She shakes her head, pinches herself above the knee. ‘What sort of problem?’
‘Well, she had just a little virus, nothing too bad, but she has lost her hearing now. This can happen, apparently.’ A lee-dle vai-rez.
‘Her hearing?’
‘Yes. That is why I am calling you—because she isn’t able to use the phone. She can’t hear anything.’ He says these last three words slowly and clearly, as if explaining to a child.
‘So her ears are blocked? From the virus?’
‘No. This is not the same as a bit of a cold and your ears go all stuffy, June. This is some kind of damage. It is not very common, but it does happen. And it is much more common for it to be only one ear.’
June blinks at the wall. ‘But for her it’s both?’
‘Yes, both. She may regain the hearing, or some of it, anyway. But also she may not. We must wait and see.’
At dinner she says to the children, ‘I’m going away tomorrow, for a few days.’
‘Okay,’ says Maggie, who is eight, through a mouthful of potato. ‘Have you got an ex-tabition?’
‘No. I’m going to visit my mother. Helen, remember her?’
‘Of course,’ says Esther, who is ten, with so much authority that it must not be true.
‘I don’t,’ says Maggie.
‘Well, you haven’t met her, really. Only once, when you were just born, so you wouldn’t remember.’
‘Why can’t we come?’ says Cal, who is five. ‘Are you going on a plane?’
‘Just Mum, this time,’ says Paul. ‘Helen’s a bit sick, so she can’t have too many visitors.’
‘Who is this person again?’ says Cal.
‘She’s my mum. Your grandma.’
‘But why don’t I know her?’
His beautiful, solemn face. June feels the prick of tears. ‘Well, she and I don’t get along very well.’
The girls swivel, tuning in.
‘Why not?’ says Maggie.
June breathes deeply. Get it right, she thinks. ‘Because she did something, a long time ago, and I’m still angry with her for it.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She … she just wasn’t—I thought she wasn’t a very good mother. And remember Anna, my sister? Well, I felt like it was because our mum wasn’t doing a very good job that Anna went missing. I thought it was our mum’s fault.’
Paul is watching her. She has n
ever said this, she realises, to anyone. She’s not sure she understood it herself.
‘But how?’ says Maggie. ‘How was it her fault? What did she do?’
They don’t speak about Anna much. She comes up in anecdotes, and when June parallels her own childhood with those of her children. My little sister used to annoy me too. And Anna is the other half of the ‘we’ when June says things like, When we were really little the milk still got delivered to the house, in glass bottles with foil lids. But they don’t often talk about her disappearing, mostly because there is so much about it that June and Paul feel the children aren’t ready for, and so when it does come up they—the children—become very reverent, and a bit self-important. June has overheard the girls telling friends, with pride, My mum had a sister and she disappeared.
‘Mum?’ says Maggie. ‘How?’
‘Well, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all her fault. I just thought it was.’
‘I thought it was Felix’s fault our cubby fell down, that we built at kindergarten,’ offers Cal. ‘But it acsherly wasn’t, the cubby acsherly got blowed down in the wind.’
‘Shh, Cal!’ Esther flaps a hand. ‘Mum’s trying to talk.’
‘It’s all right,’ says June. ‘I’ve finished.’
‘Well,’ says Maggie, ‘now you know it wasn’t her fault you can stop being angry and everything will be all right again.’
‘Can I please leave the table?’ says Esther. ‘I want to practise my handstands.’
‘Have you had some salad?’ says June automatically.
Esther sighs and places one or two shreds of lettuce on her plate.
‘Essie,’ says Paul. ‘Come on.’
Cal says, ‘Felix said sorry to me anyway. Even though it wasn’t his fault. I think he did it just to make me stop crying. I can be very annoying when I cry.’
She books a flight for the next morning. Packing seems a difficult task. She takes down a small case and opens it on the bedroom floor but does nothing further until late, almost midnight. Paul is already in bed. June dithers, makes a pile of clothes on a chair, adds things, takes them away, puts them back again.
She sinks to her knees. ‘I don’t think I want to go.’
‘She’s asked for you to come. She wants to see you.’
‘Yes, she’s sent for me.’ June makes imperial, open-palmed gestures.
‘She’s gone deaf. She must be freaking out, the poor woman.’
‘It’s probably the least of what she deserves,’ mutters June.
Paul puts his book down. ‘This could be a good thing. A chance to sort some stuff out.’
She gives a surly laugh. ‘I could cry annoyingly until she’s forced to apologise for something she didn’t do.’
‘You could,’ says Paul. ‘Although that might not work, since she won’t be able to hear the crying.’
June grinds her teeth and folds a t-shirt. ‘I am angry,’ she bursts out. ‘I do blame her, for so much. I mean, does she really think that what she’s offered, over the years, could possibly be enough? I don’t think there’s any way to stitch things up. I just don’t know where to put all this anger.’
‘You’re never going to get what you want from her. But isn’t some kind of relationship better than none at all?’
‘So it has to be on her terms?’
‘Well, wouldn’t that be better than nothing?’
The injustice of it—that she, June, must be better, do a better job, be a better person than Helen. For herself. For the kids. For Paul. Bloody Paul, with his standards, his constancy, his rigour.
‘Look. I’m going!’ June puts her elbows on the bed and lays her hands flat, palms up. ‘Okay? I’m going.’
Behind her the pile of clothes slides off the chair and onto the floor.
She dreams about the visit. Her mother has a guru, an enormously fat man, fair and pink like a baby, with a round, serious face. He is dressed in ballooning silken robes, soft green and crimson—he sinks onto a cushion, like a collapsing, loose-petalled rose.
‘The treatment will begin,’ says the guru, waving plump fingers, and in comes Helen wearing an old flowered dress that June had forgotten. Helen is young again, she is younger than June. It’s the old Helen, from before.
‘Anna,’ says the old Helen, and holds out her arms.
June is Anna. She looks down at herself. She is Anna wearing her bathing suit, the one-piece with the blue-and-red pattern that did up with a clip at the back of the neck. Her legs are Anna’s—there’s the scar on her shin. Also, somehow she can see her own face, which is Anna’s face, Anna the girl, perhaps eight years old.
Helen’s arms go around her, and she is shaken by Helen’s crying. ‘It’s so sad,’ says Helen. ‘Isn’t it sad?’
‘What is?’ says June, who is also Anna. But it doesn’t matter what it is—she is crying too, she cries and cries, lavish, voluptuous crying, she never wants it to stop.
At the airport she looks up Helen’s website. Helen gazes out from the screen, bright-faced and white-smiled. June doesn’t know if this is the work of Photoshop or cosmetic surgery, but she imagines that she will find out soon enough. Against a leafy backdrop Helen’s hair tumbles; one gently tanned shoulder shows. There are pale streaks at her temples that, highlights or grey, have an artful, intended look. Classy is the word that comes to mind.
June scans the departure lounge. The women awaiting the flight to Maroochydore are mostly young, and dressed as if for exercise—leggings, sneakers; active wear. They have skin browned by sun or chemicals and their hair is mostly long, straight and bleached. One passes in a whoosh of perfume, thongs snapping. Startling purple toenails; heels smooth and pink. June tucks her own dry, unadorned feet further under her chair. The effort these women go to! The waxing and plucking and treating and buffing. And not even for any special event—just for everyday life.
She returns to the screen, and feels a stirring of admiration for her mother’s skill. Helen looks beautiful but real. She looks as if she’s not trying. And she does not look like a woman in her sixties. What discipline, what work, must lie behind this casual-seeming facade. Capture your everyday bliss, it says under Helen’s photo, and June can’t help a snort. She pictures Helen and her clients—who are, presumably, wealthy, dissatisfied retirees—on a beach, wearing white, their tanned arms reaching for the bliss that they believe themselves entitled to, which they will hunt down and capture on a daily basis.
On the plane she is seated next to a man who introduces himself as Gerald. Gerald has a sun-ravaged bald head and a moustache. His eyes are watery blue. Gerald has been visiting his daughter and grandchildren in Melbourne. He shows June photos on a digital camera.
‘I’m on me own now,’ he says. ‘Since Brenda passed—that’s me wife.’
‘Oh,’ says June. ‘I’m sorry.’
Gerald gives a nod. ‘Yes, breast cancer, very sad. Nearly four years ago.’ He settles in his seat. ‘I do intend to move down. Be closer to Deb and the kids and that. But I just can’t seem to get meself sorted out.’
‘Well, it’s a big thing, to move, especially interstate.’
‘It is. And I can’t think what to do with Brenda’s orchids.’
‘Orchids?’
Gerald presses buttons on his camera, then passes it to June.
The screen shows the interior of some kind of shadehouse. Greenish light, benches crammed with pots, strappy curved leaves and spiny stems and fleshy-looking flowers, big, small, pink, red, purple, white, yellow.
‘Wow,’ says June. ‘That’s an impressive collection.’
Gerald smiles. ‘She was proud of it.’
‘And now you take care of them?’
‘Oh, well—’ he tilts his head ‘—I just follow the rules.’
He shuts the camera down, and there’s something in his fumbling fingers, a bravado and a vulnerability, that sends a stab of sadness through June. Her eyes fill. She has a strong and inappropriate urge to touch him, to take one of his hands, to
put her head on his shoulder. ‘You must miss her,’ she says, very quietly.
Gerald either doesn’t hear or pretends not to. He bends to the small backpack lying by his feet, zipping the camera into one of its pockets. When he straightens, he folds his arms and says brightly, ‘And are you heading home today?’
June swallows. He is right to change the tone, to turn the page, to keep them both within appropriate territory. Still—even though it is possible he hadn’t heard what she said—she feels left behind, exposed. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I live in Melbourne. I’m visiting my mother.’
‘That’s nice.’ Gerald takes the in-flight magazine from its pocket and opens it, sinking further into his seat.
June turns to the window, looks down at clouds. The sense of having been dismissed is ridiculously severe. Gone is the feeling of pity, and the wish to comfort. What she would like to do now—the compulsion has come upon her with adolescent intensity, and no warning—is to say something shocking, something petulant.
Actually, she imagines saying, it’s not nice at all. What makes you think it would be nice? Brenda might have been nice, and missing Brenda might be nice in its own pathetic way, but my mother’s not nice, visiting her won’t be nice, and I’m actually not very nice either, so you’re probably right to have stopped talking to me.
After a while she gets up, squeezing clumsily past Gerald’s legs without giving him a chance to stand and let her out. She goes into the toilet and sits down, and under the fluorescent light, in the roar of the air-conditioning, forces out a couple of dry, wrenching sobs.
There is no further communication with Gerald. When she returns to her seat he rises and gives her a smile, and after the plane has landed he does the same again before entering the shuffling line of disembarking passengers. She doesn’t see him at the baggage carousel, or anywhere else. Her imaginary speech, however, continues.