by Anna Funder
CHAPTER SEVEN
After landing Tess turns her phone on as soon as the overhead announcement says they may. A message from Dan on the screen: Everything is fine, but we're all at your Dad's. Come straight here?
At reception a wrinkly, suntanned woman she hasn't seen before, wearing half-glasses with a tortoiseshell-coloured plastic chain attached to them tells her Howard has been 'upgraded.' Tess raises her eyebrows.
'He's wandered on down to the pub on the corner,' the woman says.
'That's all right, isn't it?'
'It was eleven o'clock in the morning.'
'Was it shut?' Tess asks. She feels defensive about her father in general, and about wandering in particular. She's so tired she can still feel the movement of the plane.
'Nah, but he asked the publican to call him a taxi. To take him back to his house.'
Wanting to go home is a crime here apparently. But Tess doesn't want to think about the possibility of Howard seeing the 'For Sale' sign out the front of the place, like a plaque on a memorial site. The woman seems to be waiting for something, maybe her punchline.
'Driver was a local bloke,' she smiles. 'Brought him back. I'm new, but it happens a bit, apparently.'
Tess sees that she's not cruel, she's just not yet skilled in delivering delicate news to relatives, the tricky two-step of comfort and truth. The woman directs Tess to Howard's new, more secure room.
From the end of the long carpeted corridor Tess hears the singing, a vaguely familiar tune. When she reaches the doorway there they all are—even Charlotte (in red 1950s bandana and full makeup)—singing and swaying with the music from the iPad on Howard's lap. The twins rush up from the floor and grab her around the hips. The others smile but keep belting out the song, something poppy about 'I know you want me back.' Tom turns his head up.
'It's Beyoncé Mum,' he says.
The carer, Ella, conducts with her hands from the chair next to Howard, who, in this motley, raucous company looks as sane as anyone. Dan and Charlotte are standing behind. Dan catches her eye.
Ella keeps conducting till they get to the start of the chorus, when she moves her hands wildly and everyone gets louder, finishing with a rousing cry of 'Oh, you turned out to be the best thing I never had.'
Tess snorts and starts laughing, shaking her head. She lets go of Tom and Lorna to wipe her eyes.
'We're not that good, are we?' Charlotte is watching her mother warily.
'Yes we are!' Lorna cries. 'We are so!'
Tess can't stop laughing or she'll cry. What a fool she was to think her father meant those words for her. It feels like trickery, like sleight-of-heart.
'What is it, Mum?' Charlotte's voice is worried now, or annoyed, or both. Ella and Dan watch.
'No—you're great,' Tess wipes her eyes, 'You're all really great. It's just... I thought...' she fumbles in her bag for a tissue. 'I thought someone,' she flicks her eyes to Howard, who is tapping the screen again, 'said those words to me the other day.'
Even though her mother keeps sort of laughing, Charlotte can see that her eyes are full. She sees it's no protection to be old like her.
'I'll leave you guys to it then,' Ella says. As she passes Tess in the doorway she pauses.
'You know,' Ella says quietly, 'sometimes you might just need someone else's words. That's what a song's for, right?' Then she turns back to the old man. 'See you tomorrow, Howard.'
Howard keeps smiling at the spot where Ella was. Tess would like to think the girl was right. She looks at his fine, vacant face.
Howard clears his throat.
'How was Paris?'
'The conference was in London, Dad,' Tess says gently.
'Come on, Mum,' Charlotte scoffs, taking her phone out of her pocket.
Tess can't register properly what is happening.
'What about your little shopping expedition?' Her daughter holds up the phone, tapping the 'Life360' icon. The screen turns into a map with five quick pins, impaling all of them at this spot on the planet—one!-two!-three!-four!-five!—right here in Assisted Living.
'Anything for us?' Charlotte is saying. 'Macaroons? Make-up?'
'Yay, presents! Presents!' The twins jump up and down.
She looks at Dan, whose face is unreadable.
'Wait till we get home,' she says.
On the way out of the hospital the twins run down the long curving ramp for the disabled, and Charlotte dashes to catch them before they reach the drive-in entrance. Dan walks slightly ahead of Tess. She can see the swirls of dark hair on his crown.
'Did you bring me any art?' he says to the space next to him, where she isn't. 'I saw his gallery opening on your computer.'
She catches up.
'Why didn't you say anything?'
'Say what?' They are still walking. 'I didn't know what you were going to do.'
The children are gathered at the carpark pay machine. The twins are checking for lost change in the slot.
'Is that all you're going to say?' she asks.
Dan stops, to stay out of the children's earshot. He puts one hand to the back of his neck.
'I knew where you were.' He speaks slowly, not angry but in a tight voice. 'And I think I know why.'
She sees what these days have cost him.
'I'm back,' Tess says, and it is the beginning of the kind of conversation she never used to have. But that she is back is truer than it has been for as long as she can remember.
In the car the twins fall asleep, their necks crooked on the booster seats. Even Charlotte dozes off. Tess has never seen anything as beautiful as her sleeping children. She thinks of Chekhov's famous closing lines in 'The Lady with the Dog.' Of course she can only remember the start of them: 'And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and splendid life would begin' and then there was something about the most complicated and difficult part of it also just beginning. But that isn't it. She watches the white lines on the road flicking past them. It is something from the middle of that story that best suits where she is, in the middle of her life. It's hard to remember exactly, but as she looks at Dan her heart contracts and she understands clearly that for her there is in the whole world no creature so near, so precious, and so important and that she no longer, secretly or otherwise, wants anything else. She'll look it up when she gets home.
•
After her father was buried under a plaque with his name and dates on it ('Well at least you know where he is,' Tom said, by way of both comfort and truth) Tess thought often about what she took to be his last words before, as Charlotte put it, he 'started speaking only in Beyoncé.' Howard had held Tess's hand to raise his himself off the pillow and said: 'It was so much better than I'd thought.' They were his own words and she couldn't get her mind around them. Their combination of celebration and regret seemed to her the greatest gift he could have given.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Funder is one of Australia's most acclaimed and awarded writers. In 2012 her novel All That I Am won the Miles Franklin Prize, along with seven other literary prizes. Anna's Stasiland, hailed as 'a classic', won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize. Both books have been international bestsellers and are published in 20 countries.
Anna lives with her husband and three children in New York City.