by Joy Dettman
Jenny stood behind the screen door, watching Bernie help his mother down from the ute then walk her to the veranda, one arm around her. Watched him support her up the steps. Maisy would celebrate her century in ’96, and her legs were beginning to let her down. Jenny pushed the door wide for her, held it wide. Half a dozen pups accepted the invitation to enter – and they hadn’t learnt that from Lorna.
‘Sorry,’ Bernie said.
Jenny ignored him and his apology, and once Maisy was in the hall, she closed the front door.
Pups skittered everywhere, sliding on the polished kitchen floor while she got Maisy seated on her favourite chair. She called to Lila to help round up the pups.
‘Boo,’ Lila said as she entered, a pup beneath her arm.
‘Your face is enough to scare the tripe out of me without your boo,’ Maisy said. And when she was gone: ‘What’s she still doing here?’
‘She’s incapable of surviving on a single pension,’ Jenny said.
‘Sissy’s been struggling since Reg died, and now the Housing Commission want to move her out of her two-bedroom flat. They’ve given her a choice of Richmond and some place way to blazes out past Lilydale.’
Jenny moved Maisy’s handbag and a small brown paper wrapped box she’d brought with her, then went about the making of afternoon tea, her Tuesday ritual, her mind with Georgie’s letter, not Maisy’s news of the week. Maisy didn’t require lengthy replies, a nod and an ‘Mmmm’ usually sufficing.
‘She’d be better off dead,’ Maisy said, and Jenny dragged her mind away from the folded pages pricking her collarbone.
‘Three years now she’s been in that home. I was warned not to visit her, but Bernie took me down to see Patricia’s new grandson, so I popped in to see poor old Dottie. I didn’t recognise her. She’s like a shrivelled-up little parcel of bones . . .’
Maisy’s monologue of the dead and the dying continuing, Jenny placed two mugs down, then sat.
‘He was two weeks early and weighed eight pound nine ounces. If he’d gone full term he could have been a ten pounder. That blonde-headed Duffy girl had a nine and a half pound son. How old would she be?’
‘I don’t keep track of them,’ Jenny said.
‘You know her. She rents the old Roberts’ place in King Street with her sister,’ Maisy said.
‘Her!’ Jenny said. ‘She’s already got umpteen – and a new two-door refrigerator. I saw it being wheeled in while I was walking the dogs.’
‘We paid for it – and her kids,’ Maisy said. ‘God help them.’
‘Granny used to say that Duffy babies did well in the womb but God help them when they hit the ground.’
‘Nothing much has changed,’ Maisy said. ‘God help this town too. They’re running wild.’
She spoke then of the bloke who owned the bush mill, spoke of log quotas and culls. Jenny was relieved when her monologue moved on to the new house going up on the last portion of John’s land.
‘That house is going to leave nothing over for a garden. It’s huge, Bernie was telling me.’
Ten long minutes of Bernie followed, Jenny silently smoking and sipping tea, hoping Maisy would move on from Bernie this and Bernie that. Like his father before him, Bernie had become a fixture on the town council. He kept Maisy up to date with council permits, council decisions. He was a good son to her. Even Jenny had to admit that. If not for him, she would have been shuttled around between her daughters, half of whom weren’t capable of looking after her. Maureen, her eldest, was eighty, and the rest weren’t far behind.
‘. . . he was saying last Sunday night when I phoned Sissy that I ought to tell her that Macka’s widow needs a place to live and, you know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. The Housing Commission isn’t going to put two widows out of their unit.’
‘I wouldn’t know which one to feel sorrier for, Maisy,’ Jenny said. ‘Did I tell you that Trudy got married?’
‘She didn’t! When?’
‘On Saturday, in Greece. She phoned us on Sunday morning.’
‘Who did she marry?’
‘That Nick she’s been travelling with.’ Nick, an Australian-born Greek with a name Jenny couldn’t spell. ‘They’re in Africa by now.’
‘I can think of better places to go for a honeymoon.’
‘They’re volunteering for twelve months with some medical group.’
‘She’s already done that,’ Maisy said. ‘For most of my life we’ve been pouring food and medicine into that country. Has it done any good?’
‘About as much as our handouts have done for our blacks – and the Duffys.’
‘How does Jim feel about her going back there?’
‘Startled.’ ‘Startled’ was good. It was a response from a man who for too long hadn’t been responding. Jim wasn’t greatly improved, but was improving.
The two pages tucked beneath her bra strap prickling, Jenny stood and opened the firebox. The stove needing wood, she excused herself and went out to the wood box to scan Georgie’s page.
Dear Jen,
Don’t come out firing. Make yourself a cup of tea and at least think about it . . .
. . . there’s stuff on those discs that deserves to be read and with a few changes, could be . . .
. . . here comes the emotional blackmail bit. If you decide to go along with it, we’ll come up for a week in June and I’ll work on it with you . . .
Love G. X X X Kisses from Katie.
Work on what? She hadn’t seen the Boomerang file. Jenny glanced at the final paragraph. She wanted that week. She needed it. Jim didn’t, not right now, but June was still three weeks away. She glanced at the typewritten page, the Dear Juliana page – and it was an offer of a contract for three books.
Three? Where the hell did they think she was going to get three from?
She stoked the stove, Georgie’s and the publishers letters beneath her bra strap again, where they irritated her even more now.
At three she added more tea to the pot, more water, and was placing the full mugs down when Maisy, back on the topic of Sissy’s unit, knocked her mug flying. Tea went everywhere. Jenny snatched up the parcel as she tossed a tea towel over the spill, hoping to catch the tea before it ran down to Lila’s polished floor. She gave the box into Maisy’s hands and grabbed a second tea towel, then went out to the laundry for a mop and bucket.
‘I can never wait to open parcels,’ Jenny said when the table was dry and the floor almost dry. ‘They bring back memories of Sissy’s catalogue orders from Melbourne. I used to love watching her rip her way into them.’
‘I know what’s in it,’ Maisy said.
‘What?’
‘Your mother,’ she said, and Jenny dropped the mop. ‘She wanted to be buried with her babies, and Sissy went and had her cremated.’
She’d died three months ago. Maisy had been down to say goodbye. A forgiving soul, Maisy Macdonald. She had sat in this kitchen one Tuesday and attempted to talk Jenny into going with her. The shell of who she’d been or not, Amber would have risen up from her hospital bed to kill the stray.
Your mother? Maisy always referred to Amber as ‘your mother’. She’d never been Jenny’s mother. Her only infant memory of Amber was of a white-clad monster, then for six years she’d gone away. Good years, the best of Jenny’s childhood, just her and Daddy and Sissy and Maisy always in that house full of light across the road. Sissy must have remembered those good years. Since Norman’s death, she’d kept in touch with Maisy.
‘Sissy refused to say goodbye to her. I think she was pleased to see the last of her.’
As was I, Jenny thought, and I don’t want her ashes in my kitchen.
‘Every week, I’d ask Sissy to pick up the ashes, and every week she’d tell me that one of the Duckworths was going to pick them up. Sammy got them for me last weekend,’ Maisy said and she placed the box back on the table. The child in Jenny still wanting to run, she returned the mop and bucket to the laundry and lit a smoke.
‘As I sa
id to Bernie when he picked them up at the post office, if you can’t get what you want at your own funeral then it wasn’t much use living, was it? I’ve told all of my kids not to put me in with their father when I go or I’ll spend my life pregnant in paradise.’
Jenny sat until three thirty, and when no ute beeped in the drive, her ears strained to hear it. If nothing else, Bernie was punctual. At three forty-five she walked to the front door, willing him to come.
‘He said he could be a bit late picking me up today,’ Maisy said. ‘I told him I’d ask you if you’d like to come out to the cemetery with me.’
‘No,’ Jenny said, then tempered her statement. ‘No thanks.’
‘I could be stuck here for another hour or more, love. He had some council thing in Willama today, and when those blokes get talking they’re worse than old women.’
Jenny wanted to phone Georgie, and she didn’t want that box of Amber in her house, and the weather was deteriorating.
‘Lila,’ she called. ‘I need you to keep an eye on the pups while I get the car out.’
The easiest way to keep an eye on nine pups was to get them together in the laundry with food in their bowls. Lila came. The rattle of food bowls brought pups running from every direction. She left Lila tormenting them with a bag of Puppy Chow, then went inside to get Maisy. The easiest way to get her out was via the back door. There was only one step down from the back veranda. It was a longer walk to the car, but once on her feet, Maisy walked well enough on flat ground. There was only flat ground in Woody Creek.
Jenny got her out of the car and onto her feet at the cemetery gates, but as she walked off alone, Jenny changed her mind about waiting in the car. She locked it and in a few strides caught up to Maisy. They walked together then.
So close to town, that cemetery had been an extension of little Jenny Morrison’s playground. She, Dora and Nelly had spent hours playing there, reading the stories told by old tombstones. Both childhood friends were out here, Nelly only ten when she died, Dora barely into her forties. Too many of those she’d known had moved out to this place to print their own stories in stone, a few she’d loved – Norman, Granny, Amy, and John now, back with his Amy.
Maisy was familiar with each gravelled path, each stone. ‘That’s old Nelly Watson,’ she said, pointing to a fancy stone.
Raelene had no stone. Jenny hadn’t been at her early morning graveside service and was uncertain of where she lay. She knew where Margot was buried, had heard much about her tombstone but hadn’t seen it, had made a point of looking the other way when forced to come out to this place. Bernie Macdonald had chosen it, paid for it.
Maisy continued on slowly until they reached the aged stone guarding Amber’s lost babies. CLARENCE. SIMON. LEONORA APRIL. REGINALD.
‘Was the last one Cousin Reg’s?’ Jenny asked.
‘It wasn’t your father’s, I can tell you that much,’ Maisy said.
‘When I was a kid I used to believe they were my lost brothers and sister. Who might they have been had they lived, Maisy?’
‘Who might Amber have been had they lived, love?’ Maisy said, ripping her way into the box.
‘You’ll forgive the devil when he throws another log on the fire,’ Jenny said.
‘I like a warm house,’ Maisy said, and she laughed and dumped Amber Morrison back onto the earth from whence she’d come. Jenny stepped back, one pace, two, then four more, not wanting one speck of Amber to stick to her. The wind was blowing stronger now, but blowing the wrong way. She was safe.
The letter prickling, she adjusted it.
Heard the box tapped, heard: ‘Rest in peace, Amb.’
‘All set?’ Jenny asked.
‘I might visit George and the kids while I’m out here, love. Bernie hates following me around this place.’
And well he might, Jenny thought. This was the place where he and his twin had sacrificed a fourteen year old kid to their drunken pleasure, where they’d held her down while, one after the other, they’d ripped and gouged every dream out of her – on old Cecelia Morrison’s tombstone, three chubby angels smiling down on the scene.
Macka was out here, lying beside his father. Dawn was out here, the only one of Maisy’s daughters who hadn’t married. Cancer stole her life. A scary word, cancer, a death sentence. Doctors could transplant the heart of the dead into a living person and that heart would beat on, but they couldn’t kill cancer. They couldn’t cure AIDS either. Back when it first hit the headlines, it was believed to be a disease of homosexual habits, then it started turning up in those who’d had blood transfusions. It was rife in Africa. Nurses spent their lives up to their elbows in blood and body fluids. And what if Trudy’s Nick was like Itchy-foot?
Granny had been a nineteen year old kid when she’d tied herself to trouble. Trudy was well into her thirties, and she’d been travelling with Nick since a few months after Lorna’s house was sold. Wondered why they’d decided to get married in such a hurry. Initially Jenny had thought ‘baby’. Then Trudy said ‘Africa’ and ‘volunteering’, and Jenny had cancelled her second grandchild.
‘Be careful,’ she called after Maisy.
‘Everyone keeps telling me to be careful and I keep telling everyone that I don’t intend moving out here until after my century party.’
Jenny wandered back to the area where they’d buried Margot, knowing today she’d run out of excuses as to why she’d never seen her tombstone. Didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t easy to miss. He’d bought her a near life-sized angel with spread wings to stand guard over a large white slab of stone.
MARGOT MACDONALD MORRISON 11.4.39 – 20.12.77
LOVED DAUGHTER OF JENNIFER AND BERNARD
GRANDDAUGHTER OF MAISY. R.I.P.
She stood staring at the words linking her name to that of her rapist. How dare he?
But what did it really matter? Since Jim’s decline over the last few years, nothing much mattered, or not as much as it had. A hundred years from now, when Woody Creek had forgotten Margot, forgotten Jenny Morrison and Bernie Macdonald, that stone would suggest that Margot Macdonald Morrison, a woman of prominence, had been the beloved child of a happy couple.
‘You’ll stump future historians,’ Jenny told the angel, then walked on and down to Granny’s grave.
And what would future generations think of her unconventional stone? The day of Ray’s accident, Jenny had been in Willama, describing the stone she wanted, a large and wise old owl perched on a fencepost, GERTRUDE MARIA FOOTE cut deep down the front of that post and the date of her birth and death hidden at the rear, as Granny had hidden her age until the day she died. She reached out a hand to rest it awhile on the owl’s head. Aged now, green/grey moss covered, the owl looked timeless and very wise.
‘Miss you still, me old darlin’,’ she whispered, then turned to look for Maisy. She was on her feet, no doubt passing on the latest gossip to her dead cronies, so Jenny took a seat on Granny’s cement blanket, removed the prickle from her bra strap and, free to read, she read every word.
You could sing, and you wasted it in that town, Jen. You can write, and now you’re wasting that too . . . and if you do, I swear I’ll put ‘Jennifer Morrison Hooper, who could have been . . .’ on your tombstone.
‘You bugger of a kid, Georgie. You prize bugger.’ Who could have been . . . Jenny thought, and took her cigarettes from her cardigan pocket, a small disposable lighter squeezed into the packet. She sighed out smoke, looked for Maisy, then sucked hard on nicotine. Since Jim had fallen into his hole she’d been smoking like a chimney, and even more so since Lila. Had to get rid of her. Had to get rid of the pups. Had to remember to pay the rates too.
Or just keep everything stable, just for a week or two more, just until . . .
Until she’d lost a couple more years? ‘Who could have been,’ she said aloud, then drew in more smoke then flicked ash to the earth.
You may as well light up a ten-shilling note, Granny, or the owl or the wind, whispered.
‘A ten-shilling note wouldn’t buy much these days, Granny. The dollar note that replaced it has been replaced by a coin and it takes six of them to buy one packet – if you buy them in cartons,’ Jenny said, looking again at the publisher’s letter.
Most of it would be banned reading, all-knowing Granny, or the wise old owl, or the wind, whispered.
‘You were reading over my shoulder!’ Jenny accused. ‘You taught me that that was bad manners, Granny – and you’re wrong anyway. Nothing is banned these days. They show naked women on the television screen, in full living colour. They advertise condoms and safe sex. Brothels are legal and homosexuals have become gay.’
That’s not the sort of thing to talk about to your grandmother.
‘No,’ Jenny said, ‘but it gives a whole new meaning to the words of that old song I used to sing. When I pretend I’m gay, I never feel that way, I’m only painting the clouds with sunshine. All of the old boundaries have fallen. Itchy-foot could have bought his drugs on a street corner in the middle of Melbourne – or up here. Per capita, Woody Creek has got as many addicts as Melbourne – and if anyone ever wonders why, they only need to look at their televisions. They run a permanent fear campaign. Everything kills us. We’ve been brainwashed into spreading birdseed paste on our toast. And remember that little olive oil bottle you used to keep with your medicines? We buy it by the litre now and fry our fish and chips in it. They don’t taste as good as the chips we fried in lard but we might live a few years longer.
‘Doctors have become so clever, they can give you a new heart when you wear out your own. They can keep the dead breathing. Remember Dottie Martin, who once called my kids a trio of little bastards? She’s a shrivelled-up Egyptian mummy with a brain the size of a walnut, but she’s still breathing, thanks be to the grace of God – and modern medicine.’
Jenny sucked on the cigarette, her eyes searching again for a splash of maroon amid the grey, the white, the black tombstones.
‘Cigarettes kill too. Smokers are quitting by the thousand. We’ve got a pandemic of depression and diabetes—’