Melbourne was loud, and it rang in Willa’s ears in a way that both unnerved and fascinated her. The neighbours’ houses pressed strangely close, and at the end of the street, trams cranked by. Willa liked to stand on the front footpath, one hand on the gate, and watch them pass. The weather was confusing too. She missed the tropical consistency of where they lived, the way the air always pushed against you, thick and warm like a blanket. She missed bare arms and legs against the air all year round.
She doesn’t remember what her father did in those first days, except smoke and stare and do odd jobs with hammers and drills while he listened to Nan’s chat. But she remembers him coming to their room that last night to say goodnight. He leaned against the railings of the bunk beds he’d put together the day after they arrived. “I have to go to work,” he whispered to her as Riley snored below. “You kids cost money.” He pulled the doona to her chin and grinned. “But I’ll come see you, okay?”
She’d nodded, round-eyed, wondering what job he had found here. What did people do to make money at night, she wondered as he kissed her forehead, his whiskers grating her skin. She was that small and stupid that she didn’t take his promise to visit for what it was: a goodbye.
It took Willa a week to work up the courage to ask where he was. She stood by Nan’s side as she hosed the vegetable patch, because she liked watching how the slide of the sun made rainbows of the spray. And she also just liked being near Nan.
“When’s Dad coming?” she asked.
“Probably in a few months.” Nan turned the hose at the eggplants. Drops of water gathered at the southern corners of the leaves, clinging a moment before plunging to the soil. “Or maybe Easter.”
Willa gasped, taut with confusion.
Nan looked down at her and clicked her tongue. “God’s bloody gift to communication, that boy. I wonder how he even managed to find the words to propose to your mother.” Then she took Willa’s hand and held it firmly in hers. “He’s gone back to Queensland, because that’s where his job is. You’ll stay with me here. You like it here, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Willa said, because she did like it, and she never lied. But that night, the weatherboard house, the fiery poincianas, and even the spiders danced by her eyes as she willed her way to sleep. They never came again, though.
CHAPTER 22
Willa
Hard hospital chairs again. Not the same ones, but the same, in that way that the floors and passageways always look identical in places like this. If they removed the signage, you could be anywhere and everywhere.
They sit in a line, first her dad and then Jack, bent over his tablet. Then there’s Riley, slowly threading her hair into a cluster of small plaits while she chomps on some gum. Then Willa, stuck in time, back here in a hospital hallway, her stomach as rudely knotted as last time.
Even in the fluorescent clarity of this place, everything feels slightly smudged, like the lenses of last summer’s sunglasses. In Willa’s bags are books waiting to be read and a script for her Japanese assignment ready to be memorised. But there’s no room in her brain for knowing new things. For now, she can’t do anything but sit here and be stillness itself, as if Nan’s getting through this surgery depends on her ability to stop time with her inertia. It makes no sense, and Willa doesn’t even try.
The doctor was all confidence as she talked them through the process earlier. But the whole time she talked, Willa’s mind cagily circled around ifs and buts, as if her mind is programmed only to look for the ways in which things could go wrong.
Even though the doctor said it could be up to four hours until Nan is awake again, they stayed, on the long watch. Because what else are you supposed to do while someone you love—someone who holds the key to your existence—is being sliced open and rearranged? You can’t do anything but sit and wait and watch fate take over. Sit and let the question that has ruled the roost in Willa’s mind for days completely dominate: what will happen if any of the other possible variables occur?
Willa looks at her brother and sister, slouched in their seats. They’re so chilled they could be on the couch at home, just hanging out. She supposes it’s good they aren’t scared, that they don’t even know they could or should be. Because they only know the soothing things that older, sager people tell them.
Maybe Willa’s even a bit jealous of their innocence. What if she got to coexist in that kind of assurance with them? That would be blissful.
Instead, she’s terrified. And she can’t talk to her dad about it. Even if she wasn’t strangled by her own awkwardness, she has no idea how to articulate her fears to him. To tell him that this is about Nan, but it’s also about the next part of their lives. Because she can’t broach this without having to dance around the fact that it is him who has made their life this tenuous thing. Because he left them here and all but disappeared.
It doesn’t help that he acts like a stranger. He spends most of his time out of the house. And when he is there, he sits in the yard, smoking his skinny hand-rolled cigarettes and staring, just like those first days, years ago, when he brought them to Melbourne. The rest of the time he fixes things in the yard or on the roof—mysterious, important tasks that Willa doesn’t understand but which seem to keep him out there for hours, tinkering and hammering.
When their paths cross and they’re trapped in conversation, he fidgets, his eyes on the exits. He’ll roll a cigarette or check the tap for drips as he speaks so he doesn’t have to meet her eye. He tries, though. He asks questions about her day, but it’s like he doesn’t seem to know what to do with her answers, so he just nods, and the moment curdles quickly into silence.
And Willa lets it default to that silence, because it’s so exhausting trying to summon familiarity where it doesn’t exist. She wishes she could be more like Riley. She’s just taken his presence in her stride, acting like he’s some distant family acquaintance she doesn’t need to pay too much attention. Like she can’t remember a time when their dad was their dad and not a stranger, so she doesn’t know it could be any other way.
Jack’s different. He hovers at a ginger distance, fascinated, like he wants to initiate contact but isn’t sure how. Sometimes their dad notices and lets him help with whatever he’s doing, teaching him boy tricks with tools and measurements and logic. Or sometimes she finds them in the living room, watching sport in silence together. Other times, he doesn’t seem to notice Jack at all. But Jack just waits, infinitely patient on the sidelines, until he does.
Willa’s filled her school holidays with visiting Nan and doing housework and shopping and cooking. In the long stretches of afternoon, she takes her brother and sisters for stints in the park. When they’re playing at friends’ houses, she hides out in her room to avoid more awkward encounters than necessary, wishing her friends were around. But Kelly’s working extra shifts, building her quiet stack of savings and her plan to get out, and Maida has gone with her family to their new block out in the bush somewhere.
And to make sure these holidays truly sucked, Finn’s been in Tasmania, wedged into her own family awkwardness. They’ve talked and messaged, but it’s been patchy and frustrating and nothing like it is when they’re together, where Willa can spill dangerous thoughts in the one place they’re safe. Finn will finally be home tonight. Every time Willa thinks about seeing her, her stomach tightens into an urgent little knot.
“I’m hungry,” Riley says loudly. Their dad doesn’t even look up from his paper.
Willa sighs. It’s annoying. He never seems to notice things like dinnertimes and bedtimes and dirty dishes. It’s like he doesn’t know that they are things that need doing at all. Maybe it’s because he lives most of his time on a fishing boat or at a boarding house. Maybe there’s no such thing as housework on a boat.
“I’m going to get them some lunch,” she says, getting up.
He blinks up at her. “Oh, okay. Here.” He pulls a couple of notes out of his pocket.
“I’ve got my own money.” She sounds
sullen, and she knows it.
“Take it.” He holds it out to her.
She takes it. Because she knows it’s the only thing he knows how to do. Every time she mentions going to the shop or taking the kids somewhere, he thrusts money at her. He can’t cook, and he can’t talk to his kids, apparently. But he can provide money. So he does. And she lets him because she doesn’t want to make things any weirder than they already are.
She buys them soggy pies from the teeming cafeteria, and they eat them in the playground, a small square of fenced false cheer at the edge of the car park. Willa sips a can of drink as Jack and Riley eat. Then she watches them play half-heartedly on the swings because they know time must be slowly slaughtered with slides and swings and rope ladders. No one’s heart is in it, though.
Eventually, they congregate on some benches near the entrance to the hospital and watch the twin tides of grief and relief roll in and out the hospital doors. Willa clenches her jaw and wonders if the world is willing to give her what she wants just one more time: for Nan to wake up in an hour or two, awake and alive to the world again.
CHAPTER 23
Willa
The doctor blinks at Nan, her pen stopped in mid-flight. “You’re hungry?”
“I’m hungry.” Nan punctuates her declaration with a single nod of her head.
“Well, that’s lovely news.” The doctor shuts the clipboard with a snap and turns on her heels. “I’ll ask the nurses to bring you a sandwich.” She gives Willa a reassuring wink as she strides out.
Riley swings her legs on the end of the bed. “Lefah said her mum threw up for three hours after her operation.”
“Well, I feel completely fine. A bit tired and a bit peckish, but perfectly chipper.” Nan tugs at Jack’s sleeve, drawing him closer so she can inspect him. “You’re shooting up again. He’s going to be as tall as you,” she says to their dad.
He appraises Jack. “Yep, he is.”
Jack folds his arms, smiling self-consciously at the attention.
Willa stands at the end of the bed, arms folded too, and watches them all. At Nan, pale but alert, her blue eyes shining as she prods Jack into a smile. At Riley staring at the TV, already camped at end of the bed. Her dad by the window, keeping watch.
Instead of feeling relief, something sickly and electric rushes through Willa. She swallows hard. Suddenly, the room is too full and too hot, so she backs out quietly.
In the hall, she pushes her back against the coolness of the wall and pulls in a deep breath, but it only makes her hyperaware of how hard her heart is hammering, like when she’s finished a sprint in PE. Like there’s not enough breath and too much breath at the same time. Her vision fuzzes a little at the edges, and for a moment she wonders if she’s going to pass out.
Pacing down the hallway, Willa forces air to move in and out of her lungs, slow and controlled. Hands clenched, she focuses on putting one foot slowly in front of the other, fighting back at the panic storming her perimeter. And she doesn’t stop until she is certain that whatever this wave is that’s threatening to break over her has passed. It takes a few minutes of pacing and breathing, but traces of calm return. Still, her insides feel hollowed and quaking.
What was that about? She paces, eyes downwards, avoiding eye contact with anyone passing. And why did she freak out now, when she knows everything going to be okay? When Nan is awake and theirs again? It makes no sense.
As soon as she can finally call her breath and her body her own again, Willa returns to the room. Riley’s still staring at the TV, eating a pear from a fruit basket sent by some of Nan’s garden-club cronies. Jack’s standing next to her, devouring grapes. Her dad’s not there. Willa’s blood stills. Did he see her in the hall, freaking out?
Nan beckons from the bed. “Come here, my girl. You look peaky.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.” Willa lets herself be enfolded in a deep, matter-of-fact Nan squeeze. It’s almost embarrassing how much comfort can still be found in Nan hugs.
Nan rocks her a little from side-to-side. “My good girl. Is everything okay with you?”
“Everything’s fine.”
Nan kisses her cheek and pushes her away in that way she always does after she’s shown affection. “I don’t suppose you’ve had very fun school holidays, have you?”
“It’s been fine.”
“No, it hasn’t.” She pulls the blanket up and peers at her. “How’s it been with your dad?”
“Okay.” Willa folds her arms and eyes her siblings. They’re brain-sucked into TV Land. “A bit weird.”
“It’s strange for him too, you know. He’s not that comfortable around people.”
“You don’t say.”
Nan smiles and peers out the door. “Where do you think that sandwich is?”
“Want me to ask?”
“Oh, that’s okay. I suppose we’re not at the Hilton. The poor nurses probably have a hundred more important things to do than find an old lady something to eat.”
“Want me to get you something from the cafeteria?” Willa asks.
“I can wait. I’ll tell you what you can do for me next time you’re in, though. Bring me some biscuits and some peppermint teabags, would you?” Her eyes are suddenly bright. “That organic stuff from the pantry. And bring that Finn along to see me too, if she’s got a minute.”
Willa smiles. Finn’s going to laugh about being lumped in with the groceries. “Okay.”
“Finn’s Willa’s girlfriend,” Riley says.
Willa shoots her a look, but Riley just grins at her.
“And what’s that to you, Riley Jane Brookes?” Nan asks in her sternest voice.
“Nothing.” Riley pouts. Not the effect she was going for, clearly.
“Jack, you be sure to mouth off on all your sister’s personal business when she gets older, won’t you?” Nan tells him.
Jack swings his legs from the bed and grins. “Okay.”
“You better not.” Riley fires him her best death stare.
“That’s what you get for being a tell-tale,” Nan says. Riley gives her a wide-eyed, innocent look, but Nan just laughs. “You don’t fool me, child.”
A small crawl of happiness makes its way through Willa. Because this feels like normal again.
A nurse breezes in on her shiny white sneakers. “Rumour has it that someone’s hungry.” She waves a Glad-wrapped parcel. “I’ve got you a nice chicken sandwich here.” She makes a show of unwrapping it and setting it on a plastic plate. “Enjoy!” She bustles out.
For a minute, they can only stare. It’s a thin, white bread thing with a sog of mayonnaise oozing at the edges and some sort of green hanging from the seam. Nan peels back the bread, peers inside, and looks up at Willa. Her expression is disgust itself.
Willa laughs and heads for the door. “I’ll go get you something edible.”
CHAPTER 24
Willa
“You’re back?”
“I’m back.”
“You’re back.” Willa sinks onto the wooden bench, letting the hose spray hit whatever it hits. Because Finn’s voice is finally speaking to her from the same state. This is sit-down material.
“But Mum won’t let me come over and see you because it’s a school night and it’s getting dark, blah blah. She says I can wait until after school tomorrow,” she grumbles. “I’m tempted to turn brat and tantrum.”
“Don’t do that.” Willa smiles because she’s never heard Finn do sulky before. It’s a little bit cute. “Will she let you see me if I come to yours?”
“Of course. She won’t let me wander the city streets in the dark alone, but it’s perfectly fine if other people do. Come over. Please.”
“It’ll probably only be for a minute, though. I have to make sure Riley and Jack get to bed, and finish my maths.”
“A minute’s enough. Hurry up.”
Willa finds her dad watching some current affairs show from Nan’s armchair “Are you going to be here for a bit?” she asks. “Fo
r like, half an hour?”
“Yep. Why?”
“I just need to run over to a friend’s house quickly.”
He frowns at the screen. “Are you allowed out at night?”
“I’m just running there and back. I’ll be thirty minutes, tops,” she says, totally avoiding the question. Because if he gets to start parenting all of a sudden, she gets to start teenager-ing. “You’ll be here for Jack and Riles?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Okay, I’ll be back soon.” She runs upstairs and yanks on a cardigan and her runners, ignoring Riley’s questions. “See you in half an hour. Get ready for bed,” she calls over her shoulder as she sprints down the stairs and takes off into the night.
As Willa turns down the street, she can see Finn perched on the brick post out the front, her feet dangling over the letterbox.
Banjo and Patter tear towards Willa. She leans down to pat them as they sniff and lick at her hands frantically, their small paws scrabbling at her legs.
“Leave her alone, guys. She’s mine.”
“Ha, cute.” Willa hurries the last few steps to Finn and doesn’t stop until she’s standing between her knees and wrapping her arms around her neck. “Hi.”
Finn’s arms slide around her waist, pulling her close, her smile miles wide. “I’m so happy to see you. And not just because you’re the only person I know who had crappier holidays than me.”
“They were pretty sucky.”
“But Nan’s okay?”
“She is. She asked if you’d visit.”
“Good, I’ve got a souvenir for her.” Finn digs around in a little bag next to her and plucks out a jar, holding it up proudly. “One hundred per cent organic, biodynamic Tasmanian honey. No cancer here.”
“Oh, she’s going to love you.” She tells Finn about the sad hospital sandwich. “She’ll take anything edible right now.”
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