by Peggy Frew
You see—as she collects the keys for her hire car—my mother has summoned me, Gerald, because it suits her right now. She is afraid, and she’s decided it’s me who should comfort her. But what about the times I’ve been afraid? When I’ve needed her? Well, then she’s been too busy. She’s always been too busy. Lately she’s been busy doing yoga with bored rich people. Meditating. Drinking chia juice.
And as she drives up the highway: I haven’t seen my mother for eight years, Gerald. My mother hasn’t met my youngest child. She’s only met my partner twice. She calls me sometimes on the phone, but you know what? I almost never answer.
In Noosa she doesn’t drive to Helen’s house. She finds a backstreet parking space, near a supermarket. There’s a cafe, in which she orders coffee and a sandwich.
Why am I here, Gerald? Good question.
December last year had been the twentieth anniversary of Anna’s disappearance. Helen had asked June then if she would visit. This, after numerous attempts at phone calls, was done via email.
I thought we could have a little ceremony, of sorts, wrote Helen. Look through photos. Talk.
I can’t, wrote June. Sorry, too busy.
She wasn’t too busy, even with Christmas coming. She could have managed it.
The day—December the ninth, the last day Anna was seen, sleeping in her bed—passed, marked only by two ignored calls from Helen. It was a Thursday, but at dinner June drank three glasses of wine to Paul’s one. This was only a few weeks before Shelly Beach, before Paul’s declaration of uncertainty. Once the kids were in bed she had a bath, alone, and later wandered the house, alone—everyone else asleep—in her pyjamas, drinking gin and orange juice from a mug.
She took out a notebook that she’d pinched at some stage, early on, from the boxes labelled anna, which Helen kept in the spare room of the townhouse she moved into after Avoca Street. She read, in Anna’s fanciful cursive, Tonight I got up on the roof and watched the sun going down and it’s like the most massive high you could possibly get, and I was straight sober. It comes from sadness, isn’t that funny.
She should have done something. She would have—would she have?—if bloody Helen hadn’t barged in, tainting the occasion, putting her paw prints all over it, wanting to look at photos, to talk. Wanting to share.
She would have liked to have gone to Red Rocks, to the beach, alone, to sit in the shelter of one of the low dunes and half-close her eyes so all she saw was a blurred glitter of blue and red and gold. Dig her toes down to where the sand turns cool. Breathe in the ti-tree, the salt, the silty earth of the scrub behind her. Maybe swim, launching flat into the shallows, floating on her back, water in her eyelashes making tiny sunlit explosions. She would have liked to have been dazzled into thoughtlessness.
If she could be empty enough in her mind then something might happen, some trick of memory: the sense of a body alongside hers, the lightest underwater graze of a fingertip, a bony knee. Images flaring in the fizzing light—blue bathers straps, the wing of a shoulderblade, a bird-like dive. Perhaps even a voice, burring faint through the water: Junie! Junie, come on!
Outside the window of the cafe cars turn in and out of the supermarket. Touristy-looking people move along the footpaths—hats, sunglasses, toddlers in pushers. Glossy-leaved branches dip in the breeze. Then she sees Dev. Unmistakable—tall, bald, tanned, dressed in immaculate linen and Birkenstocks, carrying a shopping bag made of something woven; hemp, perhaps. Before she can do anything—like hide under the table—he passes, not glancing in.
Relieved, guilty, she bolts the rest of the sandwich. She really must go to Helen’s, where she is supposed to be. She can’t skulk around the town like a fugitive.
Some time ago she’d had coffee with an acquaintance, another painter. Lisa, the woman is called. For some reason—they were on the topic of mothers, perhaps—June showed Lisa Helen’s website.
Wow, Lisa said, she looks about forty.
Then June showed Lisa Dev’s website, the home page of which has a photo of Dev, shaven-headed, shirtless and slick-skinned against darkness, grinning in the glow of an outdoor fire.
Spiritual manhood, Lisa read aloud. Claim your natural masculinity. She glanced up at June. No way. What do they do?
They go into the ‘bush’, said June, which I think is a semi-cleared block of land not very far from Noosa, and they build a sweat lodge and get naked and sit in it and sweat and tell stories, and cry. And then, when they’ve finished, Dev has to go back and dismantle the sweat lodge and scatter the materials around so the next group can ‘discover’ them and use them to build their own sweat lodge.
Lisa’s laugh was so loud that the people at the next table turned to look.
June actually doesn’t know if it’s true about Dev dismantling the sweat lodge each time, but she assumes it must be—how else would it work? She felt guilty, though, after the conversation with Lisa, for making fun of him. She’s only met Dev a couple of times. She knows nothing about him, really. He seems like a nice enough guy—and sincere, despite the ridiculousness of his occupation. There is a shadow behind this guilt, another layer. Might Helen, with her suggestion of a little ceremony, not also be entitled to earnestness, to genuine motives? June ignores this.
The last time she saw Helen and Dev was after the birth of Maggie. They appeared at the hospital, a surprise visit, but only stayed for an hour or so before they had to go somewhere else—the surprise visit, it seemed, happened to coincide with a life-coaching conference. June, exhausted and hormonal, burst into happy tears at the sight of her mother—something that had never happened before—but then when the conference was mentioned became sullen. Paul and Esther were due to arrive later in the day but Helen was apparently not able to wait long enough to see them.
What a shame, said Helen. You’ll all have to come up and see us some time instead.
At this June’s sullenness hardened into anger. Yeah, she thought, I’ll drag myself out of my hospital bed, shall I, and Paul has to get back to work soon but how about I just tuck my newborn and my toddler one under each arm and jog up the coast to see you, Mum, easy as that.
June’s stitches had been hurting, but not too badly; she could have waited until Helen and Dev had gone. Instead she made a point of ringing for the nurse and asking for painkillers, sitting up with a wince to swallow them and ignoring Maggie, who had begun to cry in her plastic crib. She pretended to be busy refilling her water glass as the crying intensified, and then was ravaged by crisscrossing blasts of righteousness, guilt, satisfaction and self-loathing as Helen picked up the baby and tried to soothe her.
Shh now, shh now, said Helen, holding the bawling Maggie as if she was a tray of drinks. June was about to intervene with a long-suffering sigh when Dev stepped forward, taking the baby into his large hands, where she immediately fell silent.
Hello, said Dev to Maggie, in a hushed voice. A smile softened his big, sharp-boned face. Look at you, he whispered. Look how new you are.
The room stayed very quiet. June experienced a joint-loosening surge of love for her tiny daughter, who was gazing silently up at Dev. Then—shame, thick and unbearable. How could she contaminate this newborn with her resentment, allow such ill-feeling into the same air that was entering her child’s pure and eager lungs?
She had tried, with Helen, in those early years, when the children were very young. She’d called and later Skyped regularly, encouraged the children, once they were old enough, to speak with their grandmother on the phone or computer. She had contemplated a visit, the winter Maggie was one, and again the next year, but by then June was pregnant with Cal, and it all seemed too hard. And she did hold on to the resentment. She made efforts to hide it from the children, but it was there.
She can manage a trip to Indonesia, she said to Paul, after witnessing Facebook photos of Helen and Dev on beaches, under palm trees, but she can’t find time to come to Melbourne and see her grandchildren.
Eventually it came to seem a blessing,
in a way. It’s just easier not having contact with her, she told Paul, and her friends. I don’t like who I am when I’m around her. I don’t want to expose my kids to that.
Dev has reappeared. He stands on the footpath outside the window, only two feet away, shading his eyes with his hand. His brows slide up; his muffled voice says, ‘June?’
Shit. June jumps to her feet. A teaspoon goes flying, skitters under the counter.
She meets him in the doorway. ‘Hi, Dev,’ she stammers. ‘I was just—I just had to …’
Dev’s teeth are brilliant, his skin burnished. When he kisses her cheek there’s a waft of something herbal. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘You are here. Lovely to see you. Do you know, it has been such a long time, I wasn’t sure …’
‘It’s me.’ June wrestles with her bag; the straps are twisted. ‘Only, what, eight years older and more exhausted!’ She is speaking too loudly; her smile feels like a grimace.
‘Do you have a car?’ says Dev.
‘Yes! Yes,’ she gabbles. ‘Hire car, I picked it up. At the airport.’
The stiller he is, the more frantic she seems to become, as if some mysterious transference is taking place. How will I keep this up? she thinks. I’ll die in a minute, explode with tension, and I haven’t even seen you-know-who yet.
‘Where is your car?’ says Dev.
‘Just, um … Oh, there it is, right there.’ She stabs a triumphant finger at the far side of the road.
‘Well, mine is just up there.’ His pointing is elegant, clear, assured. It’s like semaphore. ‘So you can follow me, and you don’t need to worry about the maps or anything. Okay?’
The house is modern, an assemblage of blindingly white box shapes, hemmed with cringing shrubbery. June glances in the front windows as she wheels her case up the path. One shows a wall of built-in wardrobes and a huge bed with expensive-looking linen; the other bookshelves, a fit ball, a desk.
Inside the door Dev indicates a shoe rack. ‘Please,’ he says.
June kneels and undoes her sandals. She is aware of how rumpled she is, the stickiness of her skin. As she rises, she rakes her fingers through her hair.
Dev takes her case and deposits it in a doorway. ‘This is your room,’ he says, then goes on, down the hall.
June follows him into a hangar-like kitchen-living area. More white—walls, rug, couches. A huge, wall-mounted television. Large, framed, black-and-white photographs of beaches. An immense dining table, completely bare. At the far end of the room, folding glass doors look out onto a courtyard: bamboo, wind chimes, a stone Buddha, another oversized table.
On one of the couches, with her back to them, sits Helen. She does not turn around.
‘Ah,’ says Dev, ‘you see? This is weird, isn’t it? She doesn’t even know we are here.’ He moves around the room in a curve, taking slow, sideways steps, bringing himself with almost comical caution into Helen’s line of sight. ‘Hello,’ he murmurs, mouthing exaggeratedly and circling one large palm like a mime cleaning an imaginary window.
Helen’s head turns, sharply, and then she speaks. In a strange, stilted, very loud voice, she says, ‘Oh, you’re here.’
Dev continues his mime. ‘June,’ he murmurs, sweeping both hands in a gesture of presentation.
Helen shifts around on the couch. She sees June, and a smile comes over her face.
‘Hi,’ says June.
‘Junie,’ honks Helen in that odd voice. ‘Junie, you came.’
‘Hi,’ says June again, helplessly. She takes a step towards the couch, over the back of which Helen has extended her arms.
This is not the Helen from the website, polished and casually glam. Nor is it the busy, well-groomed Helen who breezed into the hospital room and held the crying Maggie with stiff arms, as if about to put her away in a drawer. It is not the smiling Helen from the Facebook photos, a flower in her hair, skin aglow with light from a postcard sunset. This is an old woman, crumpled, sag-faced, hair in a snarl at the back of her neck, her bare eyes small and underscored with wrinkles.
June takes all this in very quickly, with shock, as she approaches the couch. She briefly touches one of Helen’s hands, leans to peck the soft cheek. Helen smells like the old Helen—her moisturiser, an apple smell—but also musty, slightly sour, the smell of a sick person, of someone who has dispensed with regular washing, who spends her time under blankets, who has removed herself, or been removed, from life.
‘Hi, Mum,’ says June, moving around the end of the couch to sit.
Dev has gone away, into another room. June wishes he hadn’t. She doesn’t want to be alone with this person, who is Helen. Because now this person is doing something unexpected. This person is crying, but it’s not in the way June remembers Helen crying—which was weeping, really, loud and wet. Nor is this an instance of the Happy Tears, which coursed freely from shining, joyful eyes and down over trembling, softly smiling lips, and which were usually accompanied by insistently reaching arms. This is shameful crying, tight with fear. This crying is not a performance, or a release, or a comfort. Nobody would feel better after crying like this.
‘Sorry,’ says Helen in her megaphone voice, taking a tissue from her sleeve. ‘I just—I feel terrible. I can’t hear anything except for this God-awful buzzing, it’s so loud, and it never stops. I can’t sleep. I can hardly walk; I feel like my balance has gone. I can’t even speak properly—my voice inside my head gets lost under the buzz, but then Dev tells me I’m shouting all the time.’ Her lips pull back; she shreds at the tissue. ‘It’s all so awful. What am I going to do?’
This is it. The moment, or at least a moment—the kind of thing Paul was alluding to. An opening, an opportunity. For what? Forgiveness? Compassion? June delves inside herself, but nothing is there. Not the right things, anyway. What she feels is excruciated, horrified, awkward. With a mixture of repulsion and fascination she takes quick glances at the stretched-thin lips, the whitened teeth with their unfortunate dark fillings, the exposed, greyish gums, at the naked-seeming, reddened eyes, at the moles and freckles that have over eight years asserted themselves in various ways—darkened, risen, spread—at the crepe-y skin between the chin and the throat, at the wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles. In between these glances she stares down at her own hands, which are clamped between her thighs. She can’t stand to behold this suffering, but also she can’t bring herself to touch this creature, to give comfort.
Side by side they sit, one snivelling and dabbing with the tissue, the other rigidly, almost broodingly, enduring.
Dev returns. ‘I think it is time for some tea,’ he says, from between the spotlessly white kitchen benches.
Helen’s tears have stopped. She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, tucks her tissue away. She turns to June. ‘Now,’ she blares, ‘how are you?’
‘Fine,’ says June, not thinking to move her lips clearly.
Helen picks up a small notepad and a pencil from the table, puts them in June’s hands.
Fine, writes June, and shows Helen.
As if mute as well as deaf, Helen gives a thumbs-up, grinning, eyes still red, sniffing a bit through pink-rimmed nostrils. Here is the old Helen—the bravado, the jauntiness, the rallying smile.
And here is June’s anger, a vast, hot flood of it. She springs to her feet as if electrocuted. ‘Toi-let,’ she barks, pointing, and walks quickly from the room.
‘First door on your left,’ says Dev as she passes.
She sits on the edge of the bath with her face in her hands. ‘What is this about?’ she says aloud. ‘What is wrong with me?’
When she returns, Dev is still making the tea. The kettle and toaster have their own cupboard, with its own little bench inside; the other benches gleam emptily, as if for display purposes only.
She stops at the entrance to the room. ‘Um,’ she says, ‘Dev, I’m not feeling very well. I’ve got a bit of a headache. I think if I lie down for a while I’ll probably feel better. Is that—okay?’
Dev turn
s to her. ‘Yes, of course,’ he says in his formal manner. She almost expects him to click his heels. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea first?’
‘Oh, no thanks, I think I’ll just …’ She begins to retreat, glancing at the couches, at the oblivious back of Helen’s head. ‘Could you please tell Mum?’ Then she goes, before he can answer.
The spare bedroom is small—a double bed, a straight-backed chair, a tall chest of drawers made of dark wood, something Asian in its design. She lies down. The bedding isn’t as luxurious as what was glimpsed through the window of the master bedroom, but it’s good quality, and smells fresh. It hadn’t been true about the headache, but she doesn’t feel good. She feels pretty bad, in fact.
She wakes up, remembers where she is, stays lying there for a long time, then at last rises and troops wearily back out.
The enormous room is empty. The bamboo in the courtyard has darkened, merged with the fence; the sky above is a very deep blue, paling at its lower reaches. A light has come on at the base of the stone Buddha, illuminating the undersides of his belly and chin. The table between the couches has been cleared. The couch cushions have been plumped.
‘Hello?’ ventures June.
‘Hello,’ comes Dev’s voice, and in a few moments he emerges from the hallway. ‘Ah,’ he says, stretching his arms over his head as if he is the one who has been sleeping. ‘Feeling better?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Helen has also been resting. Here she comes.’
They settle again on the couches. Take two, thinks June. This time Dev brings wine, which she is profoundly grateful for, and a small bowl containing some kind of dip, a plate of crispbread studded with seeds.
‘Feeling better?’ says Helen.
June nods. The wine is certainly helping. It soothes, it ameliorates. She sips, and sips some more.
‘You look tired,’ Helen’s voice lurches. ‘Doesn’t she look tired, Dev?’