Casey could hear the emotion choke his words. She knew it would make their hearts soar if she came back home, and she knew it would make her own heart sing to be back home with the cows, and the paddocks and the tractors.
‘I decided to I wanted to come home before I was hit by Ken Worth.’ Then, the small family of three gathered for a hug and Casey felt herself wrapped in the bigness and softness of her parents’ love. The magic moment was broken when in breezed the doctor. But then, Casey felt another magic moment begin.
‘Ah, she’s come round then,’ he sang in a divine Irish accent. ‘Feeling better now you’ve done the up-chuck? I could hear you ten wards away.’
Casey blushed and tried to plump her hair self-consciously.
‘Now let me take a look at you,’ he said, reaching for the stethoscope that hung about his neck. ‘It’s nice that you could join us, Casey. You had your ma and da a tad worried.’
He shone a light in her eyes and as he did, Casey’s vision came in and out of focus on his patterned tie.
‘Are they cows?’
The doctor held up his tie.
‘Hem, yes. Indeed they are cows.’
‘Am I dreaming?’
Her parents laughed.
‘No, sweet,’ her mother soothed. ‘Your good doctor here grew up on a dairy farm.’
‘Correct!’ the doctor said. ‘I’m from a wee farm in Killarney in County Kerry. Da’s still there, milking morning and night. Cows, cows, cows. Ma sent me the tie so I wouldn’t miss the girls too much.’
Casey’s eyes roamed over the doctor’s face. He had reddish-blond hair and lively light-blue eyes that creased at the corners. His skin was pale and freckled and he was a little on the podgy side, but Casey thought he looked almost edible. Gorgeous, in fact. Like a marshmallow biscuit.
‘You know you’ve been out cold for three days,’ he went on cheerfully as he inspected her charts. He said ‘three’ as if it were ‘tree’, and Casey felt a smile grow deep inside her despite her pounding head.
Much to her amazement, the doctor then hitched one of his buttocks up onto the hospital bed and sat there as if he were Suzie lobbing into her bedroom for a chat. Beneath his blue jeans Casey noticed Holstein-print socks.
‘Now excuse me, Casey, but I’ve got one for your da. It’s my turn.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A joke. We’ve been going round for round since you first came in here, haven’t we, David?’
She looked over to her parents, who were beaming at the doctor.
‘Now you just ignore us and rest up,’ he said as he lay his hand on Casey’s arm. Casey could feel a gentle healing energy pass from his palm to her skin. She wanted him to keep touching her, but instead he removed his hand and turned to face her father.
‘Now, David, have you heard the one about the tractor fanatic who one day decided to sell his superb collection of vintage tractors so that he could fulfill his lifelong dream of joining the fire brigade?’
‘No,’ Casey’s father said, shuffling his chair closer, ‘I haven’t heard that one.’
‘On his first fireman job,’ the doctor said in his Irish accent, ‘there was a huge building on fire. It was massive! People inside screaming, flames shooting from the windows. A terrible, terrible fire. At last, when they broke down the doors, the tractor fanatic told his fellow firemen to step aside. And to their amazement, with one gigantic inhalation the tractor fanatic sucked all the smoke and air from the building. Yes! He breathed in all the air so the fire could no longer burn, thereby saving the people trapped within. He was hailed as a hero. And when the media clustered around to ask him how he did it he said, “Well, it was easy … I’m an ex-tractor fan.” ’
Casey’s jaw dropped as she watched her father and mother screech with laughter. His joke was just as bad as her father’s but there was something about the accent that made it uproariously funny.
She couldn’t help it. She snorted. She wheezed. She laughed until she cried. Despite the pain in her skull.
‘Ex-tractor fan! Ha! Ouch, it hurts to laugh. My head!’ It wasn’t until she stopped laughing that she saw the doctor standing by her bed looking incredulously at her, with sincerity in his eyes.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ he said quietly. ‘There is a God! You’re the very first young woman to ever laugh at my tractor jokes! Incredible. Mr Brown, I think your daughter is amazing! Beautiful too.’ He looked at her with genuine warmth as he handed her some painkillers and a glass of water. ‘All the nurses round here call me Doctor Dag. They just don’t get me. But you, Casey, you get me. As do your lovely ma and da.’ He beamed at them.
‘Why, thank you, Doctor Deere,’ Casey’s father said proudly.
Casey propped herself up in bed.
‘Excuse me. Did you say Doctor Dear, Dad?’
Her father nodded and her mother looked as if she was about to tell Casey she’d won Lotto.
‘Doctor Dear as in “Oh dear”?’ Casey asked.
‘No, dear,’ her mother said, moving over to the bed. ‘It’s Doctor Deere as in Doctor Jon Deere. As in the tried and true green and yellow tractor.’
The doctor held up his hospital pass to Casey.
‘My ma insisted we leave the ‘h’ out of Jon so it wasn’t so obvious that I was named after Da’s tractor. I’ve been the pride of my parents but the brunt of jokes all my life. Makes one stronger, I find, having a daft name.’
Casey looked from his face to the name tag.
‘Your name is Jon Deere?’ she said almost breathlessly.
‘Yes. Indeed I have a tractor factor to my life, as you do too, Miss ’78 Casey 885 Brown. And what’s more, my sister Mary back in Ireland sells semen just like you. For the dairy industry. She cops it from the fellas too when she goes to Dublin, just like your ma tells me you do.’
Casey almost choked on the water as she swallowed the tablets. Was she hallucinating? Was it part of the concussion?
Her mother leant over and began to plump Casey’s pillows.
‘It’s true,’ she whispered, stroking Casey’s hair gently. ‘His name is Jon Deere. So, why don’t you ask if you can check out his three-point linkage, after his rounds, if you show him your gear box? He’s very cute!’
‘Mum!’ Casey tried to shout in a whisper. Her mum beamed wickedness, while both Jon Deere and her father pretended not to hear.
Later that night, Casey Brown shut her eyes in her hospital bed but couldn’t sleep for excitement. First there was the scent of red roses from her bedside, soothing her and thrilling her all at once. Doctor Jon Deere had dropped them in after his last round. Then there was the romantic replay she recalled over and over in her mind. A classic Mills & Boon scene, when Doctor Deere had extended an invitation for her to have dinner with him the moment she felt better. The way he’d touched her hand again, looking deep into her eyes, and how the sparks between them had flown. How he’d asked, ‘Is it too soon to ask to kiss you?’ And she had shaken her head, her thick dark hair, freshly but gingerly washed that afternoon by her mother, actually feeling like ‘locks’.
Tonight as she lay back to dream, she could see her life before her, overflowing. A life of milk and honey. Helping Doctor Jon in his newly painted surgery in the heart of her hometown. The two of them walking hand-in-hand along the laneways, bringing the cows in on hot summer afternoons when the sun lit the world golden and slanted shadows of fence posts across the green pastures. Doctor Jon standing with her dad in a field of spuds, both men in overalls, toasting the crop with a beer. Men happy with the soil beneath their gumboots and their women beside them. Jon Deere kissing her in the tractor shed.
Finally, before she drifted off to sleep, Casey saw them pushing prams along the gravel drive, with little mini Deeres nestled inside, wrapped in tractor-print baby blankets. She saw it with such a blissful clarity that she could feel it unfolding already. The tractor-factor dynasty living on. The engine of love sparking, then revving, then gently slowing to a comfortable idle, for
the rest of time.
Mr Foosheng’s Carpet
The carpet is so plush it’s like my toes are sinking into clouds. Mr Foosheng chose it because he said it was whiter than the clouds. But clouds aren’t white in the city. Not outside my window, anyway, where Grollo’s concrete towers rise up and up and teeter over the choppy grey of Port Phillip Bay. My husband Tony is at work with his canvas backpack slumped by his desk. He taps away at his computer, writing of taxi fares spoken in foreign tongues and travellers’ pensions where the rooms are clean and cheap. After work he’s leaving for Nepal. He and his canvas bag, heading above the clouds for his next assignment. He has a deadline to meet. The new edition of the book will be full and fat with the promise of destinations.
‘Of course I’m staying home this time,’ I said to Tony this morning as steel doors slid shut across his face and the lift moved silently down. Perhaps he’s still cross. I know Tony would’ve preferred parquet tiling in natural wood, but Mr Foosheng wouldn’t have it.
‘Acrylics are purer,’ Mr Foosheng had said as he signed the cheque with his Parker Sonnet lacquer pen. He’d touched my hand and Tony had looked away. ‘I want you to have rich carpet so you feel like you are dancing on the clouds.’ Mr Foosheng talks in whispers.
I am dancing now on cloud carpet, over to our DeLonghi four-slice toaster. Mr Foosheng saw it in a glossy weekend magazine and liked how it gleamed. It’s nice to have a nice toaster. When we lived in Hong Kong, me and Tony, we didn’t have a toaster. We grilled thick chunks of white bread over gas and the edges burnt black. We ate our toast lying under the scraping sound of the dusty ceiling fan, spreading crumbs on our damp sheets. The air was so hot it wrapped around our skin like honey. Tiny crumbs stuck to the honey sweat and scratched us when we made love.
We first met Mr Foosheng in Hong Kong. I was doing temp work. It was a Monday when he came into the office. He held my face in his small brown hands and said, ‘I have found you.’ He likes to spend money on art, Mr Foosheng. On beautiful things. All day I would sit at the reception desk of his office in the high tower and answer the phone. Behind me, on the wall above my head, was a nude lady in watercolour. Mr Foosheng liked to stare at her. Later, under swinging paper lanterns, beside fortune-telling birds, Mr Foosheng walked me and Tony to a cluttered, dark restaurant. It swirled with Hong Kong heat and bitter smells. He waved his hands in the thick air and told us in his whispers that he was Buddhist.
‘In my life, I have had good fortune. Now I wish to pass on my good fortune, as is the law of Buddha, and I have chosen you.’ Mr Foosheng looked into my eyes and put his hand on mine.
Tony looked at his plate. Beneath the table he rubbed at his ring finger. Under the band of gold, in the tiny crevices of pale skin, bacteria thrived in wet heat. The red rash made him frown, so Tony slipped his ring into his pocket. Mr Foosheng frowned too and held Tony’s hand to look closely at the rash. From his pocket he pulled out an ointment and instructed Tony to rub it on ‘to give relief’. He’s very kind that way, Mr Foosheng.
Mum and Dad back in Castlemaine call Mr Foosheng my ‘benefactor’. Their friends would ask with nasally sarcasm, ‘But what does he really want?’, and Mum and Dad would say, ‘Oh, he’s a Buddhist, you know. He just wants to hand the good fortune on to her.’ Mum and Dad have never met Mr Foosheng, but they like him. He sent me a Pajero once, all the way from Hong Kong, and I gave it to them. There’s more use for a Pajero in Castlemaine than here. Besides, there was nowhere to park it at the apartments. Mr Foosheng likes me to drive him with the top down in the BMW, although he always holds onto his hair and combs it down with ointment after we’ve arrived. There is a pool and a gym here and we, as residents, can use them when we like. Tony has never used them though, the pool or the gym. At the auction, when the bidding on the apartment went over $560 000, Mr Foosheng whispered to me, ‘The gym and pool, as extra, make it worth it. Our bodies are our temples in which Buddha dwells. You must use these things to keep your temple clean and in health.’
Tony hates gym exercise. He prefers to climb mountains with a sherpa at his heels. But I have plenty of time for the gym. When my friends come to my apartment and say, ‘Don’t you get bored?’ I say, ‘Why should I work? Not me. I’m not going to work like everybody else does.’
Today is Tuesday and I normally go rollerblading along the path beside the bay. I go in the lunch hour when the Grollo construction workers sit at the kiosk in plastic yellow chairs. From behind dark glasses, they watch me roll by. They seem to like my long limbs and dark tan and my blonde hair flying behind. They worship my temple with their eyes. Today, though, I won’t go to the beachside. Mr Foosheng’s stretch limo from the airport will be here soon. I will make him his drink from the juicing machine he gave me. Mr Foosheng says carrot juice is good for my skin. Alcohol is very bad. Mr Foosheng never drinks, but sometimes he smokes those fat cigars and says, ‘Like John Wayne.’ He smiles with tiny gold and black teeth.
Soon I hear the lift doors slide open and a key in the door. Mr Foosheng has his own key. And there he is, standing on the clouds in the living room looking at me. Here is my Buddha, here is my benefactor, in an uncrushable Armani suit.
‘You must be tired from your long flight, Mr Foosheng,’ I say. He smiles at me and I say, ‘You have new glasses, Mr Foosheng. I love the gold frames. They make you look so smart.’
I see he has new teeth too. New American teeth. But I think it may be impolite to mention them, so I offer him a seat on the white Moran leather couch. He sits, like Monkey on a cloud, and pats the cushion next to him. His lips are a strange mottled brown, like two thin slugs lying side by side. When his mouth opens to whisper I can see the insides of the slugs. Rich purple, each connected by white strings like wet glue, which stretch and break as he whispers to me about the electronic blinds. He presses the button and Port Phillip Bay slides behind the white stretch of canvas. The room is cool and dark, but still so white. Mr Foosheng is cool and dark on the white-cloud couch. I feel his hands on my skin. They are small brown hands with purple palms. His fingers inside me feel like bigger slugs than his small lip-slugs.
‘But you are a Buddhist, Mr Foohsheng,’ I breathe, the leather couch squelching under my thighs as we slide to the carpet, but he says nothing. He just makes small noises in his throat as he moves and I can see his gold glasses and his gold rings shine in the white dark. Now Mr Foosheng is sliding his penis into me. Mr Foosheng’s penis is small and brown, like a cigar, and I think of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Not John Wayne. The plush carpet feels so soft on my back. I think of Tony looking out the window of the plane. An oval of clouds is his view. And there I am, sprawled out on those clouds with Mr Foosheng pumping his fortune into me. Me, the temple. Above the plane, above me and Mr Foosheng, above the clouds, is Buddha. Buddha sits cross-legged and watches us. His arms move graciously around in the swirling air. A perfect green jewel sits on his pale white forehead, above his dark slanted eyes. Far below him in the clouds, he watches the Benefactor humping the Beneficiary and the Fool flies on through the clouds.
When I get up from lying on the clouds, Mr Foosheng instructs me to shower in the white-tiled bathroom. Then, he takes me to Tiffany, near the casino, and buys me a perfect green jewel set in gold.
The Evolution of Sadie Smith
‘I pod!’ said Sadie Smith scathingly, as she snapped another pod in half and let the pale-green broad beans rattle into the chipped enamel bowl. She snatched up another bean and scowled at the recently opened parcel that sat before her on the coffee table.
‘I pod? Of course I pod,’ she said, looking down at her man-sized hands, their creases stained with the green flesh of bean pods. There were rows and rows of the buggers still to pick in the veggie garden. They had been Bryan’s favourite, but she loathed them. She snorted a little so her belly wobbled beneath her floral house frock.
The bloody post office! Couldn’t they get anything right? It was enough to deal with the farm, let alone the daily inf
lux of mail that had followed Bryan’s death. She had too much on her plate already without receiving a parcel that was meant for someone else. It was just another bugger-up designed to plague her. Sadie scratched angrily at her short brown curly hair and scrunched up her nose. She’d have to beg a lift to town again with bloody Beverly to sort it out. That meant an hour in the car listening to Bev’s lecture on how best to face widowhood. Or her sermon about how she’d like to put the rest of the church ladies back in their boxes come Sunday. Sadie looked down at Michael, who lay at her feet twitching in his Jack Russell dream-space.
‘I dunno,’ she said to the dog. ‘Help me out on this one, Michael.’ But the dog only whimpered and galloped his little legs as if chasing a phantom rabbit.
Sadie looked again at the neatly printed address label. S Smith, Forestdale Road, Edenville, Tasmania. It was her address, all right, but they had the wrong Smith!
Sadie lifted up the white box that had been tucked inside the package and rattled it, but it gave her no clues. It had a neat Apple logo sticker on it. Sadie wondered why on earth anyone would need one of these iPod dooverlackies. It sounded like something from outer space.
If only she had children, they would know. They’d be teenagers by now and they’d be able to tell her all about iPods. But Bryan didn’t like children. Said he was too old to have them. Same as he didn’t like women who drove.
Sadie sat the box down next to the larger package and returned to shelling the pale-green broad beans. There’d be bags and bags to freeze. What was the point anyway now that there was no Bryan to eat the leathery, bitter beans?
No Bryan. Sadie twisted her mouth to the side. She thought back to last summer, when she’d found him lying on his belly in the yard, his face ghostly white, cheek pressed into the soft mound of a fresh sheep turd, his eyes staring at nothing. He clutched a lump of wood in his fist and the sheepdog was still cowering under the stock-loading ramp. The sheep had remained huddled in a corner, sniffing cautiously at the hillock of man in front of them, relieved his hulking yelling form was now silent. His ticker no longer ticking.
Girl & the Ghost-Grey Mare Page 11