by Irma Gold
‘Well, why she did it. The mother.’
Geoffrey takes another sip of port, closes his eyes for a moment.
‘I’d lay bets it’s a teen from one of them God squads. Maybe they didn’t even know she was up the duff. Girl hadta disappear it.’
‘We don’t know anything,’ Geoffrey says, rubbing a palm across his forehead. ‘It could be anything.’
Marj shrugs, knocks back the last of her port.
Geoffrey is regretting coming back to her place. He should have just gone home. Had a beer and a couple of benzos to calm his nerves.
‘Jesus,’ Marj says suddenly. ‘Lookit that.’
She points the remote at the television and pumps the volume higher. It’s the reporter with the pink lipstick. She is standing in the same spot where they were earlier. Behind her flaps the blue tent, the police tape.
‘A very small infant child was discovered earlier this morning,’ the reporter is saying. ‘The age and sex of the child are yet to be determined, but it was wrapped in what appeared to be a hospital-issue blanket. Behind me police have set up a tent over the site of the infant’s shallow grave.’
Her The reporter’s white-blonde hair is tied back but strands are ripping free. She forges on.
‘Police hold grave concerns for the welfare of the mother and urge her to come forward. We will keep you updated as more information comes to hand.’
Marj turns off the television and neither of them say anything for some time.
‘Knew this guy once who just disappeared,’ Marj says eventually. ‘Clean off the face of the planet.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’d just had a baby, not five months before. His wife was a real sweetheart. Yoga teacher, I think. Or Pilates, maybe. They seemed real happy. He left for work one morning—on foot—and never showed up. Didn’t take his wallet or nothin.’
‘Did he have depression? Was it suicide?’
She shook her head. ‘Like I said, he seemed real happy. Cops never found anythin. His littlun must be about seven now. Total mystery.’
Geoffrey thinks of the time Esther disappeared, when she was just five. It was a Sunday morning; they were sleeping in. It was Verushka who was woken by the absence of noise. The front door was unlocked, nothing appeared to be missing.
They searched the house, the garden, knocked on the door of Esther’s friend who lived further down the street. Geoffrey imagined a man entering their house, pressing a pad of ether to Esther’s nose and mouth, and leaving with her, while he lay making popping noises through his nose.
They found her an hour later, wandering the school grounds. She’d discovered a fifty-cent piece on the kitchen counter and wanted to spend it at the canteen. She’d never crossed a road by herself before, been anywhere alone. Anything could have happened. Anything.
Geoffrey grabbed Esther too hard and wept into her hair. He hadn’t known it was possible to cry like that. When he drew back he saw that he’d frightened her. That she’d been fine until she’d realised she was supposed to be frightened.
Remembering this he says to Marj, ‘Think I’ll head home now. Have a nap.’
‘I’ll make you dinner,’ she says. ‘Bring it round later.’
‘No need,’ he says. ‘I’ve some leftovers I need to use up. Lasagne.’
She shrugs. ‘Suit yaself.’
He doesn’t bother to remove his shoes, lies on the bed and dials Esther.
‘Hi Dad,’ she says. ‘I’m kinda busy.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Right.’
He hears giggling in the background, the sound of swishing cars. Is it recess, or is she wagging?
‘Was there something you wanted?’
‘Just checking in,’ he says. ‘Seeing how you are. Whether you need a lift later?’
‘Nah. I’ll get a cab with the others. All good.’
‘Right then.’
He wonders if he should tell her about the baby. But what would it achieve?
‘Gotta go, Dad. Just heading to fourth period. Chem. Bleurgh.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Well, have a fun night. Remember, if you need a lift—’
‘Yep, no worries.’
‘Anytime. No matter how late it is. I don’t mind. Really.’
‘See ya.’
The phone bleeps at him. He stares at it for a moment. She has no idea how these casual conversations break his heart.
At some point he falls asleep, is woken by the phone. For one sleep-addled moment he thinks it is Esther, asking him to collect her from some club. But it is Marj. The freshly minted name right there on the screen. He sighs. What a foolish mistake it was to phone her. To invite her to invade the carefully constructed parameters of their relationship. She’s not the kind of woman he goes for—too blunt, too rough around the edges, too old. Well okay, she’s four years his junior, but that’s older than he’s used to. And she works in a nursing home. A noble job, he supposes, but Geoffrey can’t stand the woolly smell of her after a shift. It’s what he imagines rotting sheepskin smells like. The smell of the elderly. If she has a shift on a Sunday they won’t fuck. He can’t bring himself to, even if she’s showered.
He heaves himself off the bed and into the kitchen. Opens the fridge and stares at its desultory contents. Nothing for dinner. The lasagne Esther made at the weekend long gone. Since Verushka had left, cooking had become the most tedious of chores. Perhaps he would order pizza. But only one place delivered, and their pitiful imitation of Neapolitan pizza would just make him bitter. Besides, Marj would see the delivery guy and know he’d lied.
He eats toast, washes it down with a Corona. Dinner done, he creeps out to the local shops. Actually crawls through the side hedge in the dark so that Marj doesn’t see him walking down his driveway. He buys a packet of Camels. Smokes two on the way home. Lies on his bed and works his way through half the pack, punctuating drags with slugs of beer.
Verushka hated him smoking, said it was like kissing an ashtray. Said their house smelled like one giant ashtray, even though in the last year she’d banned him from smoking inside.
And now here he is. In his house. Doing whatever the fuck he wants.
Three Coronas later he finds himself trawling the net. Attempting (unsuccessfully as it turns out) to find Verushka’s villa on Google Earth, then scrolling through images of Pompeii, a snow-covered Vesuvius, ash-slick bodies.
You would think after all those years of marriage he’d know everything there was to know about Verushka. But it is Google that now tells him the meaning of her name: faith. Also, truth. He could almost laugh.
But the irony doesn’t stop there. Aldo means old one or elder, when of course it is Geoffrey himself who is old and dispensable. When he’d first met Verushka he was already forty-four, she just twenty-five. It didn’t seem to matter then, despite Verushka’s parents. Apparently times change.
But the real pièce de résistance, as it turns out, is Geoffrey’s own name. Divine peace, it means. Peace! How did anyone achieve ordinary peace, let alone divine peace, even in circumstances more conducive than his own.
He gives Google the flick, returns to the bedroom to pass the night drinking, smoking, waiting for Esther.
Esther shakes him awake at two.
‘Thought you were dead,’ she says. ‘Lol.’
She lets go of his shoulders and steps back quickly, but Geoffrey has seen straight into her eyes. The painted-on flippancy doesn’t fool him.
‘No chance,’ he says. ‘You’re stuck with me for eternity.’
She forces out a laugh.
‘You should take off your shoes,’ she says.
‘Yes, Mum,’ he says, before thinking.
Esther looks at the floor. She is still in her going-out clobber. Red lips, eyes circled in various shades of black and grey. Dressed like a woman. But she is only a girl. She knows things he wishes she doesn’t, and yet doesn’t know enough by half.
‘Sorry,’ he says gently.
In the morning he wakes
with a kind of determination. To forget the whole baby business. Stop thinking about Verushka every damn day (she surely isn’t thinking of him). Look after Esther better. Get back on track with his health. Move forward.
A haircut will be just the thing, he decides. Symbolic, practical. He phones his hairdresser and, as luck would have it, she has a cancellation.
That sorted, he ferrets around for the cigarettes, drops the packet in the bin. His lungs are wrecked. He places his tablets in a line on the kitchen counter and throws back one after the other like a row of shots. Wrings his way through four oranges to produce a half glass of juice. Knocks that back, too.
When Verushka was still around, Saturday mornings began with at least two cups of coffee and a mound of bacon and eggs and slabs of buttery sourdough toast. But his new regime is gluten-free (his naturopath thinks he might be intolerant) with only enough milk to just wet the muesli grains (she also thinks he might be dairy intolerant but he draws the line at soy milk). He eats without enjoyment.
Before leaving he slides Esther’s door open a couple of inches to check on her. A warm stink rushes at him, of sour breath and body odour. She is a sprawled star, head tipped to one side, mouth gaping. Her doona an enormous cowpat on the floor. Satisfied, he hushes the door closed, in just the same way he did when she was small.
‘The usual, then?’
‘Actually, no,’ he says. ‘Shorter. Not that stubbly look, but really short.’
‘Easy,’ she says, leading him to the wash basin, wrapping a towel around his shoulders. ‘They say a change is as good as a holiday, don’t they?’
She jets the water onto his head, starts lathering him up.
‘Though having just been on holiday, I can’t say I completely agree,’ she adds.
This is the bit he really pays for. Those fingers kneading his scalp. He wishes she wouldn’t talk through it but he feels obliged to reply.
‘Go somewhere nice?’
‘Mexico.’
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘My wife—ex-wife—wrote a paper on the pyramids there. Apparently they’re pretty significant, architecturally speaking.’
‘Yeah, climbed the Pyramid of the Sun and all that. It was pretty cool, but to be honest the best thing we saw was this 4D movie.’
‘Four D?’
‘I know, right? It was Planet of the Apes and you sat on these kind of moving chairs and when the humans went into the forest they sprayed out this pine scent.’
‘Into the theatre?’
‘Smelled like Pine O Cleen if you ask me, but whatever. Then when it rained, water sprayed—mist stuff, we didn’t get really wet or anything.’
She’s towelling his hair now, wriggling her fingers into his earholes.
‘The best bit was the bullets,’ she says.
‘Bullets?’
‘Just come over to this chair here,’ she says.
She flaps a purple cape over him and snaps it around his neck.
‘The bullets?’ he says again, interested now in spite of himself.
‘Well, it sounds kind of silly but it was actually pretty freaky. They shot these intense jets of air into your neck, timed with the gun shots. My boyfriend was like, What the fuck?! He jumped right out of his chair. It was brilliant!’
‘Cripes.’
‘And when the apes were fighting, the back of the chairs kind of punched you.’
She must see scepticism on his face because she says, ‘You think I’m shitting you but it’s for real. Someone should get the whole 4D thing going here. It’s intense.’
Watching her talk and snap the scissors about he thinks of Esther. She’s not quite as young as Esther, but still a baby nevertheless. And she has the same yellow-flecked hazel eyes. Perhaps that is why he keeps coming here. Though in every other respect she is nothing like Esther. Black skin, multiple rings on every finger, and a tattoo stamped across the back of her neck: D R E A M. Plus she talks to him. Really talks. In whole paragraphs.
‘So what about you?’ she says, plugging in the clippers. ‘What’s been happening with you?’
‘The usual,’ he lies. ‘Nothing as exciting as 4D movies in exotic climes.’
She grins crookedly and he takes refuge in the clippers’ buzz, drinks water from the scuffed glass provided.
The years have eroded Geoffrey’s hairline but he still has a decent head of hair. There is a balding patch on the crown where the hair has thinned but he can’t see it in the mirror so he likes to pretend it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately his hairdresser seems to think it part of her job to disillusion him by holding up a mirror to the back of his head at the end of every session.
Geoffrey looks away from the mirror now, up at the massive wall-mounted screen. A mistake, as it turns out, because the news is on. There’s no sound but captions jerk across the screen, giving the words peculiar emphases.
Northern Beaches Inspector Andrew McKay says the infant’s gender has now been identified as female. The police are continuing to urge anyone with information to come forward.
The hairdresser follows Geoffrey’s gaze.
Michael Innes from the Association of Children’s Welfare says this incident is just one of many that demonstrates the need for baby hatches, where mothers can safely leave unwanted babies.
‘Did you hear about this?’ she says to him. ‘Apparently some old guy found the baby. Can you even imagine? You see this sort of stuff on the news all the time but it’s weird when it’s in your own backyard. Makes it more real, don’t you think?’
Mercifully, Geoffrey’s phone rings.
‘Want to get that?’ she says, holding the clippers back from his scalp.
He leans forward to pick it up but there’s her name again. Marj.
‘It’s all right,’ he says, retracting his hand. ‘It can wait.’
In the car park Geoffrey listens to her message.
‘Hope you’re doin okay,’ she says. ‘Thought you might want to know about this thingy the local church’re organisin. For the bub. A kind of memorial service. On the beach at two. I’ll drive if you want. Well, that’s it. Talk soon, I guess.’
When Geoffrey gets home he heads straight for the bin, retrieves the packet of Camels. It is squashed but inside the cigarettes are still serviceable. He lights up.
Halfway through his second cigarette the phone rings again. Not Marj, Verushka.
‘I’m sorry to call on your phone,’ she says in a rush. ‘I realise the imposition. It’s just that Esther’s screening my calls. At least I assume she is.’
She pauses. Geoffrey can see her as if she is standing before him, head tilted to one side, her bob sculpted around her chin. He bets she’s spinning her ring impatiently, an irritating habit. The thought comes to him then like a jolt—she wouldn’t be wearing it anymore. Would she?
‘Unless her phone isn’t working?’ Verushka adds hopefully.
Geoffrey clasps the phone between his head and shoulder, yanks the ring from his own finger. The skin beneath it is pale, newborn. The flesh is indented, the wound of marriage.
‘No, it’s working,’ he says.
They are both silent for a moment. Geoffrey is surprised at how calm he feels. Perhaps the pills are having an effect after all.
‘So, how are you?’ she asks cautiously. ‘I suppose the leaves have all dropped by now? Has the temperature dropped with them?’
‘Pretty much. Can’t say analysing the weather’s occupying much of my time though.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘No, of course not.’
Geoffrey’s wedding ring is within his eye line, sitting on top of a credit card bill and a list of stationery Esther needs for school. If this were a movie the afternoon light would strike it at just the right angle, but as it is it appears dull and tired.
‘I found a dead baby yesterday,’ Geoffrey says.
There is silence on the other end of the phone.
‘On the beach. Thought it was a shell. Like the ones we used to collect with Esther. But it was a
foot.’
His breath catches, waiting for her response.
‘Oh, Geoffrey,’ is all she says.
He can’t imagine why he told her that, what he wanted her to say. Realises that he no longer wants his name in her mouth.
‘Well then,’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to Esther when she gets up—she’s still asleep. Big night, you know how it is. I’ll get her to call you.’
He hoped she’d hang up now.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Appreciate it. You take care.’
And then she is gone. His wife. And he feels nothing.
Esther shuffles into the kitchen, her hair falling about her face in imitation of the Dulux dog. As she pauses to flick on the coffee machine, she pecks Geoffrey on the cheek, her lips barely glancing his skin. He wants to hug her, wrap her in his arms and hang on. When she was a toddler she would creep into their bed and curl into Geoffrey with a violence that always surprised. She would wedge her head into his neck, pushing against his jaw. Bruise her way into the arc between his ribs and hipbone. Lie over his face, scraping her skull across his so that he could barely breathe. Daddy’s girl. The things that used to drive him mad, he now thinks of with longing. All that is lost.
‘Good night?’ he asks.
She grunts.
‘Your mother called earlier.’
Esther opens the fridge, mutters into it, ‘What does that bitch want now?’
‘Well what do you think?’ Geoffrey says. ‘She cares for you.’
‘Bit late for that.’
‘She’s been trying to get hold of you. I said you’d call.’
‘Well you shouldn’t’ve.’
She turns towards him, folds her arms across her nightie, Katy Perry’s stippled breasts overlaying her own. Her eyes are half-lidded, the death stare. The fridge slaps closed.
‘I promised her you would.’
Geoffrey holds his phone out to her. ‘Come on, love,’ he says gently.
She sighs as if this is the worst possible turn of events.
‘Fine,’ she says, taking the phone. ‘But only for you.’
Their eyes meet and for the briefest of moments something passes between them. He reaches for her hand, squeezes it. ‘Thank you, love.’