Ash Mountain

by Helen FitzGerald

  And hers.

  His, just his.

  ‘Hey Mum!’ Dante – proof of the failure of the Avian contraceptive device – was waiting on the veranda.

  Fran had Dante when she was fifteen, so they never looked right together, not at any stage. Add Vonny and the family unit was even harder to work out.

  Vonny had said last visit that the three of them looked like they’d met in the dole queue: ‘You’ve got one underachieving, exhausted, peri-menopausal mother,’ (‘I am not peri-menopausal,’ Fran had said) ‘one dope-smoking, arty-farty, foody, tattooed, hipster bogan bastard,’ (Dante: ‘Are you calling me tattooed?’) and one pissed-off teenager with different-coloured skin.’

  Currently, this perfect teenager was too pissed off to get out of the car.

  ‘Hey baby boy,’ Fran said to Dante. Everyone in the family had asked her not to call her twenty-nine-year-old son ‘baby boy’, but she couldn’t help it. That’s what he was. A great hugger, too. The best teen mistake she ever made.

  A moment later, Dante knocked on the car door. ‘It’s illegal to leave toddlers in the car,’ he said to Vonny. ‘Get the fuck out and give your big brother a hug.’

  She was suddenly in a circle with the rest of her family, everyone silent and staring at Nurse Jen, who was on item number nine now: The Catheter.

  ‘Empty the bag before it’s three-quarters full. Valves should be used to drain urine at regular intervals throughout the day to prevent urine building up in the bladder.’

  Nurse Jen was even less pleasant than the information she imparted, and Fran found herself exchanging naughty looks with Gramps. When she was alone with him, she called him Dad. But otherwise he was Gramps in her mind, had been ever since Dante first said the name. She noticed that a line of mucous had exited Gramps’ nose. It was now glistening on his cheek.

  ‘Before and after handling the catheter equipment, wash your hands with warm water and soap,’ Nurse Jen said, having obviously decided to ignore the matter on her patient’s cheek, despite the fact that almost all her agenda items thus far had related to the wiping of things away.

  Fran crossed the circle and sorted her dad with a tissue. ‘Grotty bugger,’ she whispered. He almost laughed, but he probably wouldn’t risk doing that again in public.

  Vincent was sitting yoga-perfect, eyes wide and alert. You’d never know he wasn’t listening to a word; that he had tuned into an altered state Fran called ‘ArseholeLand’ once, but never again, after it was pointed out that it was racist. Fran had learned an awful lot since meeting Vincent, even more since having Vonny, and was always up for confronting her isms. Right now, though, all she wanted to do was confront Vincent’s shin with her boot. She was terrified. She needed his help. But Vincent wasn’t her partner anymore, which was fine. Fine. It was amazing that he’d driven her here today, that he was bringing Vonny back next weekend. She had no right to expect Vincent’s help. Or her grumpy, mother-hating teenage daughter’s help. She was alone.

  ‘Any questions?’

  Fran had two million, but would rather find the answers herself than spend another minute in the company of Nurse Jen.

  Dante had made vegan penne for Vonny, and Nonna’s lasagne for everyone else, the latter unfortunately reminding Fran of her mother’s death, which had ended just like lasagne: all minced flesh and bechamel. She’d been struck by a truck a week before the new highway opened; just seven days before the town was bypassed, trucks and travelling customers rarely seen on North Road again.

  The tomatoes were apparently tastier because Dante had tweaked something or other, but she could not taste the difference. The beef came from happy cows, Dante said as he forked some into his gramps’ drooped mouth, catching it again when it fell out and giving it to his three-year-old mutt, Garibaldi, who – as usual – was sitting at his feet.

  Gramps’ eyes were half open, but he was asleep and drooling. His silver head of hair, always so immaculately groomed with comb and Brylcreem, had become thin and scruffy, along with the rest of him.

  ‘Little gems are doing great this year.’ Dante was putting the leaves on her plate; damn, she’d never clear it now without hurling or crying or yelling or any combination of the above. She shovelled too much into her dry mouth and wondered if she would ever taste anything ever again.

  Dante put music on after dinner, a rule he made at the toothless age of six, which is when Fran decided he was old enough to help with the dishes.

  ‘If I gotta wash cups,’ wee Dante had said, ‘then I do it with “Candle in the Wind”.’

  They had shaken on it. Her boy had come out of her happy and stayed that way. It surprised her, because she had to work at being happy. She often thought she’d never manage without Dante’s regular suggestions. For example, Abba, which they sang along to till the place was spotless. Perhaps Dante’s father had passed on some positivity and kindness genes. If so, he had kept them well hidden.

  It was time to complete the task she dreaded: emptying her belongings into this house. Dante, Vonny and Vincent did most of it. Three trips later and the dining area was filled with suitcases, boxes and one large desk.

  Dante was doing a shift at the Old Mill, the only restaurant of the four in the area that did not serve chicken parmigiana. He said three shifts a week was as much of a commitment to anything that he ever wanted to make.

  ‘I’ll bring plums tomorrow, we’ll make jam,’ he said, giving her a hug.

  She watched him walk down the driveway, then shut the door behind her. There was crap everywhere. Where to start?

  She zig-zagged the huge desk with shoulders and hips till it was under the window. She unpacked and flattened the boxes, leaving one intact and labelling it Op Shop. She unplugged the electric can opener on the kitchen bench and put it in the box. Taking its place beside one of the very few power-points on the lino bench would now be her NutriBullet. She switched it on, got a bit of a shock that it worked. She would use it, every day, in this new/old life.

  She placed her treasured books on the shelves, realising that each had an inscription:

  Happy Birthday Baby Girl, Tiamo! Mama xxx (The Magic Faraway Tree)

  To My Daughter Francesca on the Occasion of her Birthday, From Dad xxx (Harry Potter)

  Thought this would look good on your mantlepiece. Ta for the cool name! (Dante’s Inferno)

  Love you, Vincent and Vonny xxx (Wuthering Heights, Hardback)

  Bless them. All the people she loved – except Dante – believed in Reading Fran. Fran sometimes believed in Reading Fran too. She probably talked way too much about her and should stop.

  She grabbed the suitcases and headed to the northern end of the skinny house. Her teenage bedroom – posters and stickers mostly intact – had been nabbed by Vonny, who was asleep.

  Vincent was in Dante’s old room, which he had abandoned at the age of sixteen.

  ‘I’ve found myself,’ Dante had said to Fran back then, ‘it’s Italy I’m looking for now.’

  He didn’t return for ten years, so his room had been redecorated a couple of times. It was now duck-egg, tranquil, which is probably why Vincent was in it, engrossed on his laptop.

  ‘Night Vin.’

  ‘Night F Face.’

  The only room left was the smallest, which froze in winter and boiled in summer. Somehow, Fran had ended up in this container from the age of fifteen, must have had something to do with becoming a mother. One of the walls had been unchanged since the room began life as a studio for the lady of the house; the Florentine floral wallpaper yellowed and peeling, black handprints of various sizes littered over it. Dante had made the first by accident, after Fran sent him out to help paint the door of The Shed of the Dead, one of Gramps’ morbid anniversary rituals. Instead of helping, five-year-old Dante had kept trying to open the door, which was forbidden, and then he’d put his hand in the pot of black paint. A small argument, a game of unrequited chasey, a tiny hand print and a large argument had ensued.

  Gramps wa
s sick and tired … ‘Sick and tired.’

  They all were. It was a relief when Dante went off to the local state school, and when Fran found a commutable job.

  But the three of them missed each other like crazy. The following year, on the anniversary of Sofia’s death, Gramps didn’t paint the door to The Shed of the Dead. Instead, he dipped his grandson’s hand in the pot of sticky black gloss, then pressed it against his beloved wife’s Florentine floral wallpaper. Tiny little hands, Dante had.

  Till he was twelve, then they expanded werewolf-like all the way to sixteen.

  There was a ten-year gap after that, an empty time Fran didn’t like to think about, when she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  But he came home … he came home, and resumed the pawprint ritual with gigantic hands. The wall was fair filling up: Fran would probably need to have a chat with her baby boy soon.

  She left her suitcases in the pawprint bedroom and headed back to the living area. The old teak sideboard was still filled with bottles: sambuca, whisky … Ah, there it is. Sweet sherry. One of the few memories Fran had of her mum was with this very sherry.

  She was stirring something on the kitchen bench, smelling it. She had large curly shiny hair that didn’t budge no matter what, even when she sneezed, which she always did three times and so loudly that it made Fran jump. She blessed herself as she went along: ‘Wah Choo! Bless you.’ She had a small crystal glass, a fairy glass. She squeaked the cork from the brown bottle and it clinked when it touched the fairy crystal. When she took a sip, her face was overcome, bit by bit, forehead to chin, with happiness.

  Five-year-olds weren’t allowed to be as happy as that.

  Fran wiped the dust from the bottle, wrenched off the sticky lid and took a swig.

  It wasn’t so nice. But she was ready to head to the other end of the house – the master, with its en suite; and with her new reason for living.

  Her dad was off his head on Oxies, couldn’t move his moving parts, and it took more stamina than a 10k for her to get his jeans off. She would never dress him this way again: she could do something with Velcro, zips maybe. When she finally fell back, denim in hand, she copped a devastating first-ever visual of his penis. She and her dad caught eyes, he saw she saw, and they both shrugged as if agreeing: What are you gonna do?

  Once he fell asleep, she set herself up at the desk, researching online, and making many lists of things to do, using different coloured pens and highlighters and a ruler. She had spent the afternoon in Office Works, and created a logbook to keep the various day carers updated. She laminated important phone numbers and stuck them on the fridge, including Vincent, her ex-partner, and Vonny, who was about to become an even stranger stranger.

  By midnight, one wall of the dining-kitchen was covered in lists, and a workbench had been set up on one half of the desk under the window. She had ordered a great deal of equipment over the last few weeks and, as planned, had just completed her first project, which she would call Gramps Smokes a Cigarette. She’d given up trying to get him to quit smoking. What was the point, when he was dying, and when it was the only thing he enjoyed? He didn’t enjoy that he couldn’t get the fag from his hand to his mouth, though. Two feet off, he was. And he really didn’t enjoy someone holding it for him; he said to Fran, ‘So close up, and with all the power. No-one’s going to dictate the regularity and duration of my drags!’ As a potential solution, she’d bought three grabbing implements, one of which – she was pleased to discover – held a Marlboro Light firmly within its claws and had a hinge in the middle. It was just like an arm. She tested it with an unlit cigarette. Perfect. Her dad could manoeuvre this with his hand, and dictate his own drags. Under strict supervision.

  She couldn’t sleep, and did not understand how anyone could. There was a disabled man in the house. There were horny, geriatric birds in the garden. There were neighbours – nuns, priests, boarders – there were exes and teenage daughters.

  Fran bounced out of bed to check on Vonny. For years now, Veronica had been at her best asleep. She removed her girl’s earphones and kissed her forehead. But Vonny was not the one who needed to be checked on now. Having just completed twenty-nine years as Mother, Fran would now undertake an indefinite number of years as Carer. Fran peeked through the crack in her dad’s bedroom, now cluttered with hospital rails and hoist and wheelchair and bottles and bottles of medications. There was nothing joy-sparking in this room; everything was quite the opposite, but Fran would sort that tomorrow.

  She heard nothing, and was relieved.

  ‘Franny?’

  Bugger. She took a breath and headed in.

  ‘Sit here.’ He had sobered up, and wriggled the fingers on his working hand till she took it in hers.

  ‘You’re due an Oxy,’ she said.

  ‘Let me make sense for a minute first.’

  They looked at his tiny legs at the same time, and it made them both sad.

  He always had mountain thighs, her dad – a genetic miracle, as he rarely exercised. ‘Hit this!’ he used to say to ten-year-old Fran, flexing his muscle, and without hesitation she would punch it really hard. ‘You done it yet?’ he’d say, no sign of a wince. ‘Punch it again.’ And Fran would make a better plan and a stronger fist and – wallop! – no man could hide the pain from this blow, and yet: ‘C’mon hurry up,’ he’d say, not even biting his lip.

  She could take a really good whack at it now, but having no feeling would take all the fun out of it.

  ‘Can you pass some of that stuff Dante brought over? Works a treat before the pill.’ He was pointing at a vegemite jar. Inside were four pre-rolled joints. ‘I’ve decided to spend the rest of my days as a drug addict.’

  She knew Dante smoked weed and it didn’t bother her; but dealing to his Gramps? Hell, Dante was twenty-nine, had a job, and was happier than she’d ever been; Gramps was seventy-five and practically paraplegic. She let it go, and fetched Gramps Smokes a Cigarette, placing the handle in his hand, securing the joint within its claws, and lighting it for him. He manoeuvred it slowly, shaking. Fran had to stop herself intervening several times. She also had to push his head to the side a little so he could take a drag, which he did with gusto.

  He seemed to be blowing smoke forever. ‘This is not happening to you again, Franny,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He took another drag. ‘I’m never leaving this house.’

  Fran grabbed the joint and butted it out. ‘We’ve gone over this.’

  ‘I’m never leaving and I’m not letting you stay here, not again. This is not happening to you again.’

  She put the Oxy in his mouth and shoved some water his way. She already hated being a carer. People told her it’d make her feel good, but it was making her want to slam her caree’s dead leg with a brick. ‘What does that mean?’

  He nodded at the Oxy bottle, and it dawned on her. ‘I’m not leaving your mum,’ he said.

  Fran had always loved the photo her dad was looking at – her mum riding Millie along the old railway track – and did not like that she was now looking at it angrily.

  ‘This is where I want to die,’ he said. ‘I’m not asking for your help, just your blessing.’

  ‘Well, fuck off.’ So many firsts in one night; she’d never spoken to him like this before. ‘You’re not getting my blessing. She gathered up his medicine bottles and put them in a pile on the carpet. ‘Have you hidden any?’

  He shook his head, naughty schoolboy.

  Fran lifted the dusty dust-ruffle and crawled under the bed, retrieving the key she had hooked on a spring when she was too old to do that kind of thing. Twenty-seven, she was. For years she had endured a three-and-a-half-hour-plus daily commute from Ash Mountain to St Kilda Road. Each day involved cars, trains, trams and a whole stack of legs. She’d had enough, and was moving to her own weekday flat to achieve the 5:2 life, which was like the diet in that she would be happy some of the time. Dante, eleven, was about to start at the college, despite
her protestations that he should stay with her in town, or at least go to any other secondary school.

  But he was a country boy, an Ash Mountain boy, and he insisted. He loved living with Gramps: yabbying and shooting boarders with the airgun that Fran had never been allowed to go anywhere near. He and Gramps also enjoyed watching too much television and not doing dishes. And Dante wasn’t at all worried about the college. ‘It’s different now,’ he said to his mum. ‘Properly co-ed. Anyway I can’t be bullied.’

  She asked him why not, and he shrugged. ‘Just can’t.’

  He was right. During his four years, no-one dared bug Dayboy Dante; and only one boarder dared add the word Dago to the above nickname, and only once.

  Dante still left Ash Mountain as soon as he could, headed off to Rome with a one-way ticket and a medium-sized backpack.

  On the day of his flight, Fran made a quiche and a salad and a flask of good coffee. She bought lamingtons and vanilla slices, aka snot blocks, that were nearly as good as the ones from Gallagher’s, and put it all in her beloved picnic basket, heading off with the two Vs to meet Gramps and Dante at Tullamarine airport, which Fran had heard a lot about over the years. They would all eat together before seeing Dante off. They’d watch the planes from inside the terminal, take turns to hold Vonny on their shoulders, take the time to get used to all this.

  There was nowhere to eat the picnic, no seats with views over runways. Every plastic chair was part of a business, and Fran had thought to bring everything except a lot of money.

  She managed to hold it in till Gramps drove off and Vincent started the car. With little Vonny fast asleep in the back, Fran finally cried, tears dropping into the quiche on her lap. No matter what song Vincent found on the radio, her grief intensified to the point that she was convulsing when they turned into Arthurton Road and she accidentally punched the quiche. Window down, she tossed it out, dish and all.

  She didn’t have to ask Vincent to turn around, and she found most of the quiche. It hadn’t shattered like the ceramic.