by Emily Brewin
After that, the kisses her father bestowed on her mother’s face or neck, when he didn’t think his children were looking, made Isobel blush. And her mother began to feel, for the first time, like she was just beyond Isobel’s reach.
She tries to calculate how long ago that day at the bathroom door was, to take her mind off the near-naked form of her mother in front of her.
Her father asks for the face washer. She averts her eyes as she passes it because she doesn’t know how to look at her mother’s shrunken breasts and baggy stomach. It fascinates and frightens her in equal measures to think this is the same body that birthed Lachie and her, fed them, protected them and pleasured their father.
Somehow, amongst all that need, she managed to keep something for herself. It was in the way she tossed her head when she laughed and swayed her hips when she walked. She got the balance right, which is more than Isobel’s managed to do.
A metal bowl full of warm soapy water sits on a fold-out table next to the bed. Her father plunges his hand in and fishes out the soap as Isobel refolds a clean cloth. Her mother is between them, stripped to the waist, eyes closed as if she’s disappeared inside herself again. Her father takes the towel he’s been warming in front of the heater and places it across her chest while he runs the face washer across her belly. Her mother’s breastbone pokes out the top in a ridge, sharper than she remembers.
She examines her mother as her father wipes, the pucker at her armpits and her yellowing skin. Below the towel, near the top of her underpants on her hip, is an angry sore, which her father skirts around carefully, tut-tutting.
It’s difficult to watch. Her mother’s mouth twitches and for a moment Isobel thinks she might speak but it relaxes again, sinking back into her cheeks. Her father’s face is full of tenderness and he whispers as he works, ‘Just under your arm, pet. There you go.’
There’s no flesh on her arms or padding at her waist anymore. This is what it looks like when death creeps in. Isobel puts the cloth away and intertwines her hands tightly in her lap, focusing on her mother’s breathing. She emits a sickly sweet scent with each exhale that infuses the room.
It’s difficult to believe she can get any worse, but with each ‘turn’ another essential part of her is lost. This time it was her speech. The realisation she won’t hear her mother’s throaty voice again is devastating and she focuses on her father’s gentle strokes as a distraction.
She hasn’t brought up the hospice again. Lachlan went back to Sydney for work and her father upped Kate’s visits to two times a day. There are small traces of the nurse all over the room: a vase of irises on the dresser and an oil burner on the windowsill that smells faintly of mandarin.
Mostly Kate bathes her mother, but sometimes her father insists on doing it. Isobel thought he felt duty-bound, but sitting here watching him trace tender circles over her mother’s shoulders the way Kate showed him, she realises the bathing is an extension of their life together. The same way he rubbed her feet after a tough day on the factory floor or brought her a cup of tea in bed on Sunday mornings. He was just looking after her, like he always had.
Her mother begins to snore softly, floating perhaps on the morphine cloud that’s keeping the pain in her abdomen at bay. Her mouth is still shapely but her lips are thinner than before.
As a child, Isobel loved watching her apply lipstick in the mornings. She put it on religiously no matter where she was going. Seeing it appear, slick and red on her mouth, kept the world in check. The unusual paleness of her lips now is unnerving.
Isobel presses her folded hands into her stomach where the baby should be and wishes desperately to tell her mother she lost it. She wants to feel her strong sure arms around her and the oily press of her lips against her cheek.
Her father dips the cloth into the bowl again then holds it lightly to her mother’s neck. Her lashes flutter briefly in reaction to it. The body has a memory, apparently, that’s separate from the brain. Isobel read it somewhere. Adults abused as children experience pain more acutely because of it. Maybe her mother’s body is recalling a tender touch from her past, her own mother’s hand or her husband’s embrace. Her closed lids are paper-thin and she sighs.
Marcus hardly touches Isobel anymore. They were never a couple that held hands on the street or kissed in public places, but they made up for it in the bedroom.
At night they reached for each other, skin tingling with anticipation so she could hardly bear the rows of tiny kisses he pressed up her thighs. She wanted him then, impatiently, desperate to know she belonged.
Her mother sighs again.
‘That’s it, pet,’ her father coos. ‘Just relax.’
The intimacy in his voice makes Isobel turn away.
By the time she met Marcus, physical touch had shifted from love to neediness; the boy at Boo’s Nightclub with his overeager tongue in her mouth and her classmate from consumer law who was like a jackrabbit in bed. One tipsy night she even went home with a much older man who just wanted to stroke her face.
She’d stopped letting her parents near her as the sneers and slights at Nottingham grew worse. When Alexis left at the end of year eight, Isobel realised that making new friends was futile. Jennifer treated her like a fish on the end of a line, casting her out before drawing her back in again, until none of the other girls were game to go near her.
At home, her mother was too busy working or too tired to investigate why she began refusing kisses at bedtime and hugs before school. Isobel built a barrier to punish her and refashioned herself behind it. Her father just thought it was part of growing up.
Her father runs the washer slowly down her mother’s arm. ‘How’s that, my love?’
Since losing the baby there’s a deep yawning need to be touched. But now Marcus isn’t interested. She’d tested the waters the other night, placing her hand firmly on his thigh. He dozed on, or pretended to, until she snatched it away again.
Her parents’ room is quiet, apart from the soft spill of water squeezed from the washer. Then the phone rings in the hallway. Her father hands her the cloth and says, ‘Arms, love,’ as he hurries out the door.
The washer dangles wetly from her hand, her mother exposed on the bed by her side. Isobel’s stomach presses the bedrail as she leans over, leaving her hollow until she takes the weight of her mother’s arm in her hand. As she moves the cloth, a slow sad joy seeps in at her edges. She would have been a good mother. She wipes downwards, over the simple gold wedding ring and along her mother’s wrecked fingers. They curl a little around the washer, touching Isobel’s wrist.
‘Mum?’ she says softly.
Her mother’s eyes open slightly. Isobel wants to tell her everything, wants to feel her grip so she knows things will work out in the end.
‘I …’
Her father bursts back into the room. ‘That was Kate. She’s running a bit late.’
He takes her mother’s other hand in his and kisses her palm.
The kiss dislodges something in Isobel’s chest. Suddenly the light at the curtains is too bright and the soft scrape of her mother’s breath is deafening. Her baby is gone and the world is raw again.
‘I’ve got to go, Dad,’ she manages before passing him the washer and grabbing her handbag off the floor.
‘Righto,’ he answers without looking up.
She kisses her mother’s smooth forehead before leaving.
In the car, she drives without thinking to the park. The playground is vacant and the lake at the bottom of the hill holds the sky.
Rosie
THERE’S A KNOCK on the door the morning of the press conference. Rosie gets up from the couch, where she spent the night, and answers it.
Vera is standing on the front step. At first glance, Rosie’s not even sure if she’s real or another figment of her imagination. She looks Vera up and down, taking in the smudgy black eyeliner and catching a whiff of her breath when she says hello, tangy from a night on the turps.
It takes a mo
ment for her brain to adjust. For the past couple of days she’s lived in a twilight zone, halfway between horror and hope. Petey’s disappearance keeps creeping up on her when she finds the energy to make a cup of tea or remembers to eat. The task will occupy her mind for a moment then bam—out of nowhere, reality crashes down on her like a ton of bricks.
She opens the door wider—at least Vera’s not pissed—and reluctantly lets her in. Even though Rosie’s not thrilled about a visit, she’s more grateful than she’d like to admit. The last time they saw each other barely enters her mind. It’s small fry compared to what she’s dealing with now.
Vera traipses down the hall, tut-tutting at the mess. There’s a huge pile of dirty washing Rosie meant to do spilling out the bathroom door and newspapers litter the lounge room floor. Anything she starts ends up half done.
Vera stops abruptly and picks up the front page of The Gazette to examine Petey’s smiling face. It’s last year’s school photo, the one he’d been so excited about. He’s gazing past the camera, teeth crooked, the spray of dark freckles across his nose. The neck of his skivvy is whiter than his skin. Rosie bought it new the day before.
‘Maureen saw him in the paper.’ She doesn’t take her eyes off the page. ‘Brought it straight over to show me.’
Rosie slumps back onto the couch trying to recall the morning the photo was taken. The details, like the brand of breakfast cereal he’d eaten and which jacket he wore to school. Was it the red one or the bright yellow raincoat she got from the Salvos? She needs to remember it all, each detail a gold coin for the bank.
Vera puts the paper down and fiddles with the zip of her faux leather jacket. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ Her voice prickles in a way Rosie hasn’t heard before.
‘I’ve been busy.’ She leans forward to gaze at a pair of Petey’s socks hanging over the back of the chair opposite. One has a hole in the toe and she’s annoyed at herself for not taking the time to replace it. What if the socks he’s wearing now have holes in them too? His feet’ll freeze.
Vera puts her hands on her hips. ‘Do the cops know anything?’ Her legs are skinny in the purple stretch pants and her bum sags. The question sounds like a command but Rosie knows she’s nervous and it sends a strange pang of pleasure through her.
‘I don’t think so.’ Her eyes start to well up all over again.
Vera tries to run a hand through her hair, forgetting it’s pinned down. Her fingers catch. ‘Jesus, Rosie, I’m his granny. Ya could have told me.’
The entitlement in her voice bites. Rosie wants to be left alone but it’s not going to happen. Detective Khanna will be here soon to take her to the media centre. She’s on her way as they speak. She convinced Rosie to go in for the press conference even though she doesn’t want to be too far away. She needs to be here in case Petey comes home.
‘What are you all dressed up for?’ Vera’s voice softens and she takes a seat on the other end of the sofa. Being motherly isn’t her strong point. It’s unsettling when she tries.
Rosie yanks at the collar on the dress to avoid looking at her. She’d pulled the dress from the back of her wardrobe an hour before and spent the next ten minutes trying to stretch the wrinkles out of it. When Detective Khanna called this morning, she said something about creating a good impression.
‘We need the public onside,’ she’d said matter-of-factly.
Rosie wanted to ask what winning the public over had to do with getting her son back. But she already knew the answer. People would judge. They’d see what they wanted to, a worn-out single mum, scraping by in a council flat. No prospects, no regard for her kid’s welfare, probably spends her dole cheque on booze and ciggies. Why not? That’s what Vera did.
She glances sideways at her mother perched on the edge of the sofa, with her garish red nail polish and flashy gold bracelet.
But she wasn’t Vera.
‘They want me to do a press conference.’ She smooths down the front of the dress, the florally print skewed across her chest. She bought it last summer because Petey liked the flowers.
‘They want me to talk about Petey. In case someone sees him.’
Vera nods then examines her hands.
‘Or Joel.’
The doorbell rings, loud and tinny.
‘Want me to come?’ Vera reaches a hand across the couch, almost but not quite touching Rosie’s leg.
She watches it and inhales. A long-lost need to be comforted by Vera gurgles to the surface, making her stomach flip.
‘Yeah, all right.’
Vera smiles then jumps up and answers the door.
There’s a primary school over the road from the police media centre. Rosie glimpses it through the far window and thinks of Petey bouncing through the gate into the yard each day.
His principal had dropped by yesterday, her face so flushed with sympathy it hurt to look at.
‘He’s such a good boy,’ she’d kept saying until Rosie wished she’d go. ‘The other children have been asking after him,’ she added as she was leaving, unaware how much it made Rosie’s heart soar to hear it. He had friends.
Detective Khanna is in front of the podium Rosie is standing behind, talking to a woman with a microphone while a male copper opens the big double doors. Journalists and camera operators file in, chatting amongst themselves or extracting phones and notebooks from their bags in a businesslike fashion, as if a child going missing is all in a day’s work. The journalists take the seats closest to the podium and examine her while the cameras are set up beside them. There’s not a wrinkled piece of clothing in sight.
She shifts on her feet while nerves churn the muck in her stomach. It feels as if she’s on a sinking ship being stalked by sharks. She begins to doubt she can do this. Then Vera whispers from behind, ‘You’re all right,’ and she holds onto it, trusts Vera in a way she never usually would.
The whole situation is unreal, like being trapped in a bad dream. Is she really standing here, waiting to beg the public for her son’s return?
Vera pats her on the back.
Detective Khanna approaches, clapping her hands together. ‘Right. Just look at the crowd as if you’re talking to a single person. It makes it appear more natural on the television.’
Close by, she overhears a journalist mention Petey’s name as if she knows him. It’s disconcerting.
‘Just be yourself.’ Detective Khanna pauses. ‘They’re here to help.’
Rosie catches the eye of a blonde reporter in the scrum below, flawless and confident. She forgets to smile at her.
Vera clears her smoker’s throat in a way that makes Rosie desperate for space. It’s stifling, despite the ceiling fans pushing air around. The journalists settle in their seats below, ready to start, and the cameras are all-seeing.
Rosie imagines her classmates from TAFE watching this later on TV, and Danny with sad eyes. She won’t be able to look them in the face again. Afraid she’ll see sympathy or satisfaction, as if they expected something like this all along.
She smooths the front of her dress with a sweeping motion and glances at the statement she sat up writing the night before. It’s on a page from Petey’s sketchbook and sits awkwardly on the podium in front of her. Her hands shake when she tries to straighten it, almost knocking it off.
Detective Khanna steadies it, takes a breath and starts talking. Rosie hears the first few words clearly before they drop away, joining all the other sounds in the room in one low hum. She stares across the top of the journalists’ heads and pictures Petey, his hair sticking damply to his face as he sleeps.
She wonders where he slept the last three nights, if he had a mattress to rest on, a blanket and pillow. She imagines him curled into a tight ball or yelling out for her. Terrified. Confused she’s nowhere to be seen, that she doesn’t come for him no matter how loudly he calls. She holds a fist to her nose and squeezes her eyes shut at the thought and worse, because sleeping on a cold floor isn’t as bad as it could get. Her fears get far darker than t
hat. They creep from the corners of her mind, sending her body rigid with dread.
‘Rosie,’ Vera prods her lightly in the side. ‘Go on, love.’
She lowers her hand and glances at Detective Khanna who nods. The words on the page in front of her float then settle so she can read them. The journalists lean forward slightly to listen so that the room feels like it’s on a slight angle. She stumbles over the words, mumbles, grows aware of Vera reading the page over her shoulder. Then she stops, unsure if she can go on.
Detective Khanna steps in with more background. Petey Larson, aged eleven, last seen in the vicinity of the Palmerston Street flats where he lives with his mother, Rosie Larson.
The journalists scribble in their notebooks and adjust their mobiles for a better angle. Details. That’s what they think Petey is, a bunch of meaningless words.
‘Height, around a hundred and forty-four centimetres. Weight, approximately forty-five kilos. Eyes, dark brown. Hair, blond.’
Rosie almost jumps in. There’s blond and then there’s blond. His hair is white, like snow. She wants to make sure they get it right, that they have a sense of who he is if they see him. She wants to tell them about the way he squawks with pleasure in the shower and about the bubbling way he laughs. They should know about the Tasmanian-shaped birthmark at the base of his neck too, but the detective moves on.
‘He has autism but is high-functioning.’
Autism; she winces at the word, still unable to shake the feeling it’s her fault he’s that way. It was the drugs she took and the beatings Joel gave her when she was newly pregnant. She didn’t look after him enough while he was inside her, didn’t fight back.
There’s a collective scribble in the front row.
If he didn’t have autism he wouldn’t be missing. Something crumbles inside her. He’d be sitting in school with the other kids. Her legs go weak as the questions start but she can’t give in. Detective Khanna tells the journalists to keep it to one at a time.