The Last Summer of Ada Bloom

by Martine Murray

  Something had ended for Martha when Tilly left. Her child had gone from her and all that had grown in her to accommodate that child, leaving her empty, like a seashell. She was obsolete in Tilly’s life. Cast off. Her indignation rose. After all that she had given. Martha didn’t even have the satisfaction of feeling that the job was well done. She felt a very secret sense of shame, so secret that, even to her, it had always manifested not as a secret but as an irritation. She was ashamed of the friction there was between her and Tilly—it always rose up, despite promising herself not to let it. She had failed at motherhood, just like she had failed in all those other ways.

  Martha had behaved badly—she knew it. When Tilly’s final-year results arrived, Martha had been out shopping. When she arrived home, Tilly was sitting at one end of the kitchen table. Ada was slouched next to her, but she stood up, grinning and watched Martha dump the shopping on the kitchen bench.

  ‘Guess what?’ Ada said, beaming.

  Martha began to unpack the groceries. No one offered to help of course. ‘What?’ she said, turning her back to put the rice in the cupboard.

  ‘Tilly got her results today—in the post. Guess what she got?’

  Martha tightened. She had forgotten that results were due. The jars of nuts weren’t on the right shelf. No one ever put anything back where it was meant to go. She began to rearrange them.

  ‘All A’s,’ shouted Ada. ‘Straight A’s. She’s going to university.’

  Martha’s heart twisted. She kept at her task in the cupboard. She couldn’t bear to look at Tilly now.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said firmly.

  There was a silence. Then Ada began to move again. Her voice rose up a register. ‘Mum? Tilly got straight A’s,’ Ada repeated it as if Martha hadn’t understood.

  But Martha had understood. All those lingering disappointments surged forward. That old pain. Tilly would get the life that Martha didn’t get. She turned slowly and bent her head over the shopping basket. ‘Is that what you want, Tilly? To go to university?’ Her voice came out with its cool edge. Martha finally raised her eyes to meet Tilly’s.

  Tilly’s face shone. She stared back at Martha inquisitively, and this angered Martha even more. Tilly could never understand what Martha felt.

  ‘Yes, I’m going to move to Melbourne.’ She instantly looked down at the table, as if this declaration had sapped her of all her courage.

  ‘Well, don’t expect your father and me to pay your rent. You’ll have to make your own way.’

  ‘I know, Mum,’ Tilly said, laughing like she didn’t care.

  When Mike came home, Ada rushed up and told him too. Martha watched his reaction. He grinned instantly. He hugged Tilly.

  ‘Well done, poppet,’ he said, calling her that baby name. He was proud. His face showed that plain, unaffected happiness that he was able to feel. Martha was relieved to see it. He had taken Joe Layton’s death so badly. But here he was, grinning.

  ‘Well, let’s get out the champagne,’ he shouted, rubbing his hands together. Tilly leaned like a swan against the table, smiling. Mike did everything a parent was meant to do. It was easy for him. Martha felt the first pricking of shame, but she hurried away from it and found the champagne glasses instead. She wasn’t going to be left out of this. She made sure to give the first glass to Tilly, and as Tilly stood there, suddenly shy, suddenly overwhelmed, tears welling at her eyes, Martha caught a glimpse of the young girl who had been so much easier to love, and she had to turn away and blink back her own tears.

  45

  Ada had seen Raff Cavallo. He was standing outside the theatre with his bike. He came back sometimes to visit his mother. She wasn’t going to even speak to him, but he saw her and said, ‘Hello, Ada.’ It was nice of him to say hello and to use her name too, because lots of the older kids just didn’t bother saying hello. So Ada stopped. She said hello. She couldn’t think what else to say and instead of speaking she pressed her finger into the steel ruts of the gate and wiped the dust. Eventually he asked her if she’d like a dink home.

  Ada shook her head.

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘No.’ (Had he forgotten how she went down the hole already? She’d nearly died, and he didn’t even remember.)

  ‘Okay, then.’

  He swung his leg over his bike. She might never see him again. And there were things she didn’t know that she wanted to know.

  ‘Is your father a gypsy?’ she said.

  ‘Apparently my great grandmother was a gypsy.’

  ‘Do you like Tilly?’

  He grinned as if he thought it was a funny question. ‘Did she tell you to ask me that?’

  ‘No. I just asked by myself, because she likes you.’

  ‘Does she? She didn’t act like it.’ He didn’t look at Ada when he said that.

  Ada realised she shouldn’t have told, and Tilly would kill her if she ever found out. She turned red and gave the smallest of nods. But then she stepped forward and frowned. ‘I hope you won’t give her heartbreak.’

  ‘Your sister gives out heartbreak too, you know.’

  Ada shook her head. She wasn’t sure why.

  ‘Here, you have this,’ he fumbled about in his jean pocket and pulled out a stone that looked like honey gone hard and gave it to her. He rode off before Ada could ask him why she should have the honey stone. As far as she knew, Raff didn’t even know she collected stones.

  That night she put it under her pillow along with her other special gifts from nature—the green feather, the dead Christmas beetle and the river stone. But she still couldn’t sleep. The window was open and bare. The curtain had fallen down and no one had bothered to put it back up because it always fell down again when you tried to pull it across. Ada was afraid that something bad was in the garden. The trees creaked. The night swam through the window and came into the room like a river. She got up and pulled the curtain off the floor and climbed on the desk and balanced it precariously across the top of the window. Then she rummaged in the drawer and found her diary and the torch and read:

  After the fire I collected seeds for new trees in the bush. I have to wait for them to sprout and then I will plant them and make a new forest.

  This is a promise to Ada, herself and to William Blake, who is a tree.

  She added: I am awake in the night. The night is in the garden. Ada read it over. Even though she didn’t say everything, like Tilly did, all that was written was true and real and hers. When she read it, it made her feel that the things that happened couldn’t be forgotten now. If everything was forgotten, then what were you? Weren’t you all that had happened before? And if you didn’t remember it, then you lost part of you too. And instead you would only be patchwork pieces of you. Everything else behind her had blurred into floating impressions already. It was falling out of her, like stuffing falls out of an old pillow. She remembered when Tilly went to high school and stopped catching the bus with her, she had been so proud to get on the bus on her own. But now she didn’t feel like that.

  Ada put her hands over her eyes. She was so tired but she couldn’t sleep.

  46

  Ada was sick. Doctor Maise said it was a virus. But the virus never showed itself, not beyond lethargy, lack of appetite, pains. The vagueness of it frustrated Mike. Ada had rarely been sick and always had a healthy appetite, so it was disturbing to see her so limp and disinterested. She only got up to watch Ivan’s Midday Movie and lay silently on the beanbag, eyes fixed zombie-like on the television. Ada was no zombie. Ada was a sprite, a kid who sang songs while wandering barefoot in the garden.

  Martha allowed her anything now. Her anxiety had brought on a flurry of maternal devotion. She was cooking soups. She hovered about Ada’s bedside and bought alternative remedies from the health-food shop. If Martha hadn’t been so on edge he would have told her it was a waste of money. But there was no point starting an argument.

  The banishment of Tilly hung coldly over everything and, Mike suspected, over
Ada especially. But what could Mike do against Martha’s inflammable impulses. If he tried to reason with her, there would definitely be an argument. And he did still have to tread carefully. He was a criminal who had, until now at least, got away with his crime. But the noose still hung there, waiting should he trip up. His crime couldn’t be erased and the tragedy it had provoked was still fresh. There wasn’t a person who hadn’t heard about it, who hadn’t thought of it in one way or another. Even if they hadn’t known Joe Layton, they knew a man had fallen in the mineshaft and it would be talked about long into the future. But Mike was the story’s secret villain—he might have been able to push clear of this if his treachery hadn’t been witnessed and held deeply yet perilously within his own family. It was reflected back at him daily out of the now-distant eyes of Ada. For some time he had lived in fear of Susie returning, and it was an enormous relief to him to see the For Sale sign go up on the Layton house. Even though she, as much as he, wouldn’t want their affair exposed, women talk. They tell each other everything. Things Martha revealed to him that had come to her through the river-mouths of other women made him uncomfortable. Once gossip about other people’s private worlds had been vaguely titillating or sometimes intriguing; now it just reminded him of how thin the veneer of his own life was.

  It was Glenda who had struck open the problem with Ada. Glenda had come to visit. They were having dinner, all of them except Ada, who was in bed.

  ‘How is Tilly getting on?’ Glenda asked.

  Martha frowned, ‘We haven’t heard from her,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because she’s banished,’ Ben chimed in.

  Glenda looked confused. ‘What? She can’t be banished from her own home.’

  Ben smirked. ‘Yes she can.’

  Martha sighed. ‘She was very rude to me when she was leaving. She’s completely ungrateful for everything we’ve done for her.’

  It embarrassed him when Martha said things like that. They had done for Tilly what any parents were required to do. Mike never knew what Martha was referring to when she paraded this line ‘all they had done for her’. Glenda glanced briefly at Mike. He knew what it meant. She waited for him to explain. He ignored the prompt. Glenda gathered her breath and dived in, leaning her large bosom forward.

  ‘She may have been rude, but she’s young. You didn’t just cut her off, surely?’

  ‘She was rude to me. Dismissive. Since she can’t appreciate us, I told her not to come back.’ Martha was brittle. She seemed to have sucked herself inwards.

  ‘But aren’t you concerned? She’s in the city alone. Don’t you want to know how she is? Does she know anyone there who could help her if she needed help? At least tell her to ring me.’

  Martha coloured. She stopped eating. She looked blankly at Glenda and then dropped her fork on her plate. ‘She can ring you if she likes. I don’t care.’ Her voice was defiant, but her face looked defeated.

  ‘She rang me the other day,’ Mike said casually.

  ‘What did she say?’ Glenda asked.

  ‘She said she was lonely.’

  Martha glared at him. He had shamed her. He didn’t care. He even issued a proud snort. It was a noble act, and in such contrast to how he had been feeling that he couldn’t stop himself. He went even further. ‘Of course, she can come home.’

  Ben was astonished. He leaned back on his chair and grinned. Mike would get a roasting now.

  But Martha had withdrawn. She said nothing.

  Glenda took over. ‘Look, don’t you think that Ada is simply grieving for Tilly. I mean you know how she is. Doesn’t she still climb into Tilly’s bed? It must be a shock to find herself alone.’

  ‘She’s not alone,’ snapped Martha.

  ‘She is a bit, Mum. She doesn’t have anyone to talk to now. She told Tilly everything,’ said Ben. It was odd for him to pipe up. Even he must have been worried about Ada. But what would Ben know? He hadn’t even noticed that Martha was on edge or if he had, it didn’t affect him. Mike began to feel sorry for Martha. Everyone was against her. Even Ada’s illness was against her. And now Ben. But she was so unforgiving. Once she steeled herself against something, her surface was so unflinching, so hard. He knew that she could just as easily crumple as erupt. She was fighting herself.

  Glenda saw it too and quickly steered the attention off Martha. ‘Anyway, isn’t it wonderful Tilly did so well at school. That’s a testament to you both.’

  No one answered her.

  Ben said, ‘Can I leave the table now?’

  47

  Martha had almost drifted into a sort of light sleep, but an image had come to her mind and woken her. The stand of elm trees in the garden where the children played. It flashed in her mind for only an instant. It wasn’t a disturbing image, she saw those trees every day, yet it had disturbed her. What came before it, what led to it, she couldn’t remember. The moon was up, and a pale light fell across the garden. She never slept well on a full moon. Perhaps it was just that. But she sensed a presence in the garden.

  Something had stirred up her anxiety. She felt the uneasy feelings of the passing of time—for what she’d felt as soon as she’d seen the trees was the emptiness of them. Where was the little red swing? And where was the patch of dirt beneath it where no grass grew because of the children’s feet dragging over it? And the slats of wood that made a platform in the branches and all the mess that kids made: the discarded socks, the emptied plates, cups, hats, frisbees, tennis balls, PJ’s gnawed bones? None of these were there, just the dark figures of the branches sweeping up against the pale sky. The children had gone.

  Was it Ada’s illness? Or was it Tilly? She didn’t want to think about Tilly. Martha had failed her. Is this what the empty trees meant? They looked so much like a memory. Had she dreamed herself forward in time so she could see the poignancy of now, the feeling that there was nothing she could hold forever, that even the trees—with their hundred-year-old trunks, their deep roots, their heights, their solidity—had been passed through, no longer to be climbed over, swung from, lain under, nested in.

  Martha suddenly wanted to hold her children close. They were what pulled time forward: their bodies charging ahead, their discovering hands digging through, their voices shouting out, their startled eyes growing accustomed to it all. But she couldn’t hold them. Tilly was already gone from her and Ben was straining at the leash. It was really only Ada who still played in the elms. And when Ada stopped, children would be gone from Martha’s life. That would be the end of something vital and tender. There was nothing growing in her life anymore. Was Ada leaving her now? Was that the dream’s meaning? A family was nothing against the onslaught that life was. A family was too concentrated, too damp, too susceptible to rot.

  She wriggled away from Mike in the bed and curled onto her side. He was sleeping well again. Martha had never known him not to sleep well, not until Joe’s death. Sometimes she suspected she had been attracted to Mike because his lack of emotion would balance her excess. She had been touched by his distress; it had even restored something of her feeling towards him. He wasn’t as mechanical or predictable as she had come to find him. It had been a strange surprise that Joe had meant that much to him. She had been relieved—this show of vulnerability was like a soft bruise that she could tend to. She had wanted to touch that softness, to feel it. And then he had rushed away.

  If he were awake, she would make love to him. Suddenly it seemed important. And she would take the lead, draw in the sweetness, the density of love, and from it, replenish the brittle aspects of their togetherness.

  But she was too tired, too glum, too raw. She rotated as if on a spit, from side to front to other side to back, each time thinking the next position would bring her sleep. Mike’s limbs, heavy with sleep, sought her out in the bed and then rested heavily on her. This irritated her—she couldn’t turn as she liked. No wonder she couldn’t sleep. No wonder those elm trees had made her sad. Life rushed through her, with a buffeting force, while Mik
e’s sleep-weighted body pinned her down. He wasn’t the only weight; it was other people’s opinions, expectations and convictions, and institutions and history and men and all that greatness with its hidden lies and the accumulation of dust on her floors. Even that.

  And then there was the constant, unassailable claustrophobia of family. The airless juncture of the couple. They had flung their feelings at each other till they were battered; they had wrung the life out of the smallest coalescence of their emotion and lost any hope of magnificence.

  The quiet, nagging grief of it all exhausted her. Soon she would be worn away, like those skeletons of leaves that you find at the end of autumn, half rotten in the wet ground. Joe Layton was in the ground, and Martha would die one day too. She would turn into a pale old lady with fluttering hands, the temerity in her blue blinking eyes faded into a slight bewilderment. One day she would be just a memory in her children’s lives. One day she would not even be that.

  48

  Vince poked his head into her room, as if he was a cockatoo looking for a plum. Tilly had never had her very own space before and this room was all hers and it cost her thirty-three bucks a week. She made a forbidding face. Vince said her mother was on the phone.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘My mother?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was sure.

  They all knew about the terrible exile. It had earned her some jungle credibility. She’d had experiences. She wasn’t just a freshly scrubbed country girl. She had told them in a careless fashion, so as to sound tough, even a little rebellious. None of them really knew that it hurt her as much as it did.

  Tilly went down the hall where the phone sat on a stool by the front door. What would have made her mother call? Someone must have died. Maybe PJ.