A Proposal Worth Waiting For

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘Oh, absolutely!’ Susie said. ‘We’re very good at keeping the doctors we want and nudging out the ones who don’t fit in or pull their weight.’

  ‘Is Jack on his own in the boys’ dorm?’

  ‘No, one of the volunteer carers is with him. Jenny someone.’

  ‘Oh, I know Jenny.’

  ‘She’s been an asset this week. You don’t have to rush over this minute, just some time during the afternoon.’

  She left, and a few minutes later Miranda said to Grace, ‘I’m out of here for the moment.’

  ‘Pager turned on?’

  ‘Reluctantly, I have to admit.’

  Beach or Nick? The question nagged at her again, without an answer.

  ‘Hang on, who’s this?’ Grace murmured, looking over Miranda’s shoulder towards the entrance. ‘She’s got a suitcase…’

  Miranda turned just as the door opened, and there was Anna Devlin. The resort buggy she’d arrived in was turning to go back down the service road. She must have come straight from the airport on the south side of the island and she looked as if she wasn’t yet convinced that she was really here. As usual, she took it for granted that her needs and feelings would command Miranda’s attention at once.

  Which they did, of course…

  Because my involvement is way too personal, now.

  ‘Where is he, Miranda?’ She seemed jittery, and unused to the bright tropical light, which was making her blink, her sunglasses pushed onto the top of her dark head and forgotten.

  ‘Anna, does Nick know you’re here?’

  ‘Not yet. I managed to get on an earlier flight. This place hardly qualifies as a hospital, does it?’ Her glance took in the brand-new but compact facilities and Grace’s cheerful presence.

  ‘On the basis of size, maybe not,’ Miranda said. ‘But it’s very well equipped.’

  ‘Please, is he through here?’ Anna began walking towards the swing door that led to the hospital beds and treatment rooms.

  ‘No, Anna,’ Miranda said quickly. ‘He’s at the cabin, with Nick.’

  ‘You’ve discharged him?’ She was horrified. ‘But Nick said it was a major attack!’ She eyed Grace suspiciously. ‘Look, is there somewhere we can talk privately, Dr Carlisle?’

  Grace made a covert gesture that said she was happy to stay on hand for moral support, but Miranda shook her head. She had a few issues, too. She and Anna did need to talk.

  ‘Take the office,’ Grace said, but Anna shook her head.

  ‘I need fresh air.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  There was a wooden bench in the shade of a huge fig tree just to the side of the medical centre. Miranda led the way there, not quite knowing what to expect. She had the impression that Anna didn’t fully know either. She wasn’t quite as hostile or emotional as she could have been. They sat on the bench for several moments in silence. As Josh’s doctor, should she take the initiative? She didn’t know.

  Anna closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun that twinkled through the canopy of the fig tree. She remembered her sunglasses at last, and lowered them into place. ‘My sisters staged an intervention yesterday,’ she finally began, giving the phrase—deliberately borrowed from drug and alcohol-dependency counselling, Miranda understood—a light, almost self-mocking drawl. ‘This week has been so strange and different.’

  ‘It’s the first time you’ve ever been away from Josh,’ Miranda guessed aloud.

  ‘The very first. So I tried to put Mum in his place and mother her instead. The nurses looked at me strangely when I asked if they had a fold-down bed so I could stay beside her overnight. They don’t. That’s for parents with sick kids, or hospice patients, not for a reasonably robust sixty-seven-year-old with a broken leg.’

  ‘Robust?’ That wasn’t the impression Anna had given about her mother last Sunday.

  ‘After the first shock was over, she did very well. I—I was…really impressed. She did need me for the practical things, but she—’Anna broke off and shook her head. ‘She’s not frail and, boy, did she serve me one when I tried to treat her that way! She wouldn’t let me stay overnight at the hospital. She sent me out shopping. When Lou and Bron arrived—Mum was home by then—she made us go out to dinner!’

  ‘Did you have a good time?’

  ‘We had a blast!’

  ‘Sounds like your mum staged a bit of an intervention, too.’

  ‘Oh, it was a total conspiracy! I—I couldn’t believe, when I got home, that I’d forgotten to phone Nick to tell him when I was coming up.’ She did the little head shake that Miranda was starting to recognise. It was the movement of someone waking up from a long, unexpected sleep and trying to clear their mind. ‘And then, of course, I got his voicemail and got scared.’

  ‘The intervention was about you and Josh…’

  ‘I couldn’t see it. I was too close. You tried to tell me, but I couldn’t listen. You were—oh, hell, it’s so hard to admit it!—right when you said I didn’t want Josh to have a good time here because he was having it with Nick. I hated hearing that, but I couldn’t forget it. Because it was true. I confessed that to my sisters, geared myself up to betray the darkness of my own heart, and they laughed at me for taking myself so seriously.’ She laughed herself. ‘They’re such witches. Heaven help me, it’s good for me! I’m going to make some changes. I have to be honest enough with myself and admit that it might take some time. Show me where the cabin is now, will you? I just want to see him…’

  They walked over there together. Knowing where to look, Miranda saw Nick and Josh first, when their brightly coloured holiday clothing was still half-hidden behind a jungle of foliage. They were sitting on the veranda of their cabin, playing a board game and drinking iced juice.

  Josh said, ‘Your turn…Seven! Hey! That’s my hotel!’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘You’ve landed on it!’

  ‘I know I have! And I have no money!’ Nick was convincingly stricken by the prospect of his imminent financial ruin.

  ‘And it costs about a million dollars’ rent!’ Josh clapped his hands together in glee, while Anna pricked up her ears and stopped in her tracks.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ she whispered.

  Nick and Josh hadn’t seen Anna or Miranda yet. As Miranda went to move forward beyond the concealing screen of foliage, Anna held her back. ‘Can we watch? I want to see…I—I don’t trust this.’

  ‘Do you want to trust it, Anna?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, of course I do! Maybe it’s me I don’t trust. He hasn’t grown, has he?’

  ‘Not in five days, no.’

  ‘But he looks as if he has some good colour. Not burned. Lightly toasted. He must have been outside a lot.’

  ‘Always with sunscreen.’

  ‘It’s great. And Nick looks so relaxed. How long since I’ve seen him grin like that?’ She had tears in her eyes. ‘This is hard. Maybe Josh won’t even want to see me…’

  ‘Stop. You know that’s unreasonable. You’re his mother, and he loves you.’

  ‘Oh, hell, I’m scared.’

  She stepped out into the open and called her son’s name. He looked up, saw her, stood and smiled. ‘Mummee-ee!’ He came clattering down the veranda steps with his arms held wide, moving faster and more surely than any kid should who’d had such trouble breathing last night.

  ‘Oh, darling, oh, sweetheart…’

  They hugged a big, warm exuberant hug.

  ‘Are you having a good time?’

  ‘The best! ’Cept last night. But I’m better today.’

  He wriggled out of her arms and Anna let him go. She looked a little helpless for a moment, visibly daunted by her son’s increased level of independence in such a short time. But then she mastered the emotional tunnel vision she no longer wanted to feel and managed a smile. ‘You look better. You look as if Dad’s been taking care of you really well.’

  ‘Come and see our cabin, Mummy.’

  ‘Let me talk to Dad for a bit first
, hey? Can you tidy up the game?’

  Nick had seen Miranda. Waiting on the veranda, he met her eye and she didn’t know what to do. Again, this wasn’t professional, it was personal. As Josh’s doctor, she could stay discreetly on hand in case Anna had any more questions about last night. As the woman who loved Nick and who didn’t know whether it was going to end in happiness or tears, she should probably leave.

  His face gave nothing away, gave her no answers. It looked wooden and cautious and she thought he must be far more concerned, right now, with the volcanic shift that had begun in the complex triangular relationship between himself, his ex-wife and Josh.

  She would be very much in fourth place, wouldn’t she? The fourth kid, the only child latching onto a family of three siblings, playing on the beach. Carefully, she gave a finger wave in his direction and turned to go. He didn’t try to stop her.

  She remembered her promise to Susie to check on Jack Havens in the boys’ dorm, and grabbed to it like a shipwreck survivor grabbing a life-raft. Something concrete to keep her afloat, at least for a while.

  She walked in the direction of the dorm, where she found the twelve-year-old listless and achy, with flu-like symptoms that she could only ascribe to some kind of virus—the same one that was making Charles’s Lily ill. She prescribed fluids and bed-rest, which was all that Jack felt like anyway, and left him in Jenny’s care.

  ‘He’ll be fine tomorrow, I bet,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s some forty-eight-hour thing. You know what kids are like.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure.’

  There was not much else she was sure of right now.

  Miranda had no idea what to do with herself next. The restlessness and tension crippled her and she ended up ten minutes later in her swimsuit on the beach because it was the only place she could bear to go. One of her favourite places in the whole world—sun and sand and ocean and sky, good memories, at heart—but she doubted its power to give her any answers today.

  Most of the camp kids and parents were still on the rainforest outing, so the beach was quiet. The resort guests tended to stay on the beaches closer to the hotel, unless they were boating or fishing up this way. There were just a couple of boats out towards the horizon.

  She went into the water without much appetite for a vigorous swim, just wanting the cool weight of the water around her body, wanting the air and light and freshness as an antidote to everything she was feeling, wanting the physical sensation to remind herself that life did and would go on.

  How long would Nick and Anna need to talk? They might be pulling apart their whole marriage and divorce, for all she knew. What would it look like when they put it back together? Did he still have feelings for her? She’d been wondering about that since Tuesday night. If it was only Anna’s over-involvement with Josh that had destroyed their relationship, might it not re-kindle?

  Oh, of course.

  A child was always such a powerful bond.

  A night of passion sometimes wasn’t.

  Miranda had no idea if Nick would even come looking for her after he and Anna had finished saying what they needed to say. She had that first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life feeling, and there was nothing joyous or new about it at all. Instead, it was a painful limbo, ambiguous and open ended and unsafe.

  She’d been there before.

  Had been there with Nick himself, ten years ago.

  She hadn’t wanted it then, and didn’t want it now.

  Ducking her whole body beneath the water, she wanted to wash this uncertainty away, but it wouldn’t leave as easily as that. When she surfaced again and let the salt and wetness stream from her face, she saw him on the beach…

  Nick.

  Looking for her.

  Waiting for her, as she swam and waded back to the shore.

  There was an inevitability about it that didn’t, all the same, mean his appearance was good news.

  He picked up her towel and held it out to her. She took it when they were still at arm’s length and the moment wasn’t an intimate one, didn’t answer any questions, didn’t form a connection beyond the brief chain of hand and fabric and hand.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, hugging the towel in front of her body as she dried her face and hair. She let her body drip, knowing the sun would dry up the water from her skin very soon.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ His tan had darkened this week, while there were some strands of dark gold bleached into his hair. He had his sunglasses on and she couldn’t see his eyes.

  ‘Hope you tried here first.’

  ‘Third, after your cabin and the dining room.’

  ‘In future, try the beach first.’ She tried to make it light, but it didn’t work, sounded more like a reproach. ‘It’s one of my favourite places in the world.’

  He stepped closer. ‘See? I don’t know enough about you.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Because my own damned life—my own problems—always seem to take precedence. Ten years ago. All through this week. And now. I’m so sorry, Miranda.’

  Sorry?

  Her heart lurched and sank, and her stomach felt tight and ill.

  ‘That sounds like the start of one of those it’s-not-you-it’s-me speeches, Nick.’ The laugh came out shaky. ‘Don’t, OK? No speeches. And especially not that one. It always rings hollow. Just tell me what happened when you and Anna talked. Are you staying on next week?’

  ‘Yes, down at the resort hotel, I’m moving there today. I checked, and there are rooms available. But, Miranda—’

  ‘So you’re moving out of the cabin?’

  ‘It seemed like the only solution. This is all so new, we’re both afraid that if I go back to Melbourne tomorrow, the changes we want to make will get lost in old, destructive patterns. This is our chance to cement something fresh, and to do it together. Listen, though…’

  ‘I’m—I’m glad,’ she made herself say, although the words felt like acid burning her mouth. ‘For Josh’s sake. Divorce is never an ideal option for kids, even when it’s the best and only option available. I’m glad Josh will have two parents, united again.’

  ‘Wh-a-at?’ He swore under his breath. ‘Oh, hell, no! No, Miranda! No, and no, and no! Is that what you think? Is that why you think I’m here? To tell you about Anna and me? That we’re starting again? You can’t think that the two of us could ever in a million years get back together!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why? Just pretend I’m not getting any of this and explain. You just said—’

  ‘No, you got it wrong.’ He took an impatient pace on the sand. ‘I didn’t say that at all. And do you want all the reasons?’

  ‘Yes, please…’ Her voice shook.

  He counted them on his fingers. ‘Because it would be much worse for our son than anything he’s experienced so far. Because too much damage has been done. Because Anna is focused on fixing her relationship with Josh—and on fixing mine with him, too—not on anything between her and me. Most of all, because it was never right in the first place. Never! I never loved her the way I needed to. I chose her for exactly that reason—because she was safe, while you were so dangerous.’

  ‘Me? Dangerous? I—I’m not dangerous. I’m nice. Boring, even.’

  ‘Boring? You’re the most dangerous woman I’ve ever bloody met!’ He touched her at last, fingers light on her neck as if he didn’t know how she’d react. Oh, how could he not know? Didn’t she have her heart in her eyes, just as he’d said? ‘Because I love you. I love you. Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Feeling it? Saying it? It felt so terrifying ten years ago that I ran from it, ran into marriage with totally the wrong woman, but my feelings about you never really changed. I love you. If that counts for anything. If it’s enough, Miranda. If it’s anywhere near enough.’

  ‘Oh, Nick! Enough?’

  ‘Come here. I can’t stand not having you in my arms.’ He reached out for her and she went, as inevitably as the sun rising over the sea in the mornings.
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br />   ‘Enough?’ She was laughing, shaking, happy and overwhelmed and still not quite believing what he’d said. His touch began to calm her, began to shift the universe onto the right axis, and then he kissed her hair.

  ‘You can’t possibly have got it so wrong…’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh, I did. I could. Believe me, I could. But if you love me…’

  ‘If I love you? If? Miranda, I love you. I…love…you! And this time around I’m enough of an adult—enough me, instead of being my father—not to be scared.’

  ‘Then that’s way more than enough, it’s everything!’

  ‘Get it right.’ He cupped her face, lifting her chin. ‘Look at me. Kiss me, and promise me you’ll never get it wrong again.’ His mouth brushed hers, clung for a moment then let go so she could speak. ‘Promise…’

  ‘Even this morning, Nick, after you’d talked about your father last night, you pulled away as soon as you’d said it.’

  ‘Oh, hell!’

  ‘I knew you would. I understand why you did. I told myself I wouldn’t let you do it, but it takes two, and I wasn’t sure…I just wasn’t sure.’

  ‘So I’d better kiss you until you are,’ he muttered.

  They stood on the beach with the afternoon sun hot all around them and he kissed her as thoroughly as she’d ever been kissed in her life. He kissed away that morning’s distance, kissed an apology for all the times he’d held back, kissed a hundred promises about talking and connection and passion, kissed a million beautiful, perfect words without speaking one of them out loud, and she kissed the same things back to him until they were both breathless.

  Some minutes later, he told her, ‘I’m the only one moving down to the resort hotel today. Can we get that clear?’

  ‘Good…’

  ‘Anna and Josh will stay in the cabin. Anna and I are going to start dividing up our time with him in a healthier way, and I know now that her sisters and her mother are on side and that she’s ready to listen to them, even if there are times when she can’t listen to me. I even suggested she go straight back to Melbourne tomorrow, but that was a little too overwhelming for her to think about, and I’m sure I’ll still sometimes have to fight her tendency to cling to Josh too tightly, and to shut me out.’