House for All Seasons

by Jenn J. McLeod

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said go.’

  ‘Okay. Night.’

  As Amber closed the door to her bedroom that night she’d heard a loud noise, like something being hit …

  Bang.

  *

  ‘Wow! Check out that shot, Amber,’ Christopher gloated.

  ‘Hmm? What? Oh yes, very good.’ Amber let go of her memories and gave the boy her undivided attention. ‘That’s some aim you’ve got, mister.’

  ‘I get lotsa practice back home, only not with snow, of course.’ He hurled another one.

  ‘With what then?’

  ‘Whatever. Stones. Cow pats. Hey, watch this.’

  Cow pats?

  Christopher rolled another ball of hail the size of a squash ball, and another. When he’d perfected a third one, he collected all three and set his feet firmly, an intense look of concentration on his freckled, moon-like face, and started juggling.

  Amber grimaced. ‘Please don’t tell me you taught yourself to do that with cow pats.’

  ‘Naaaaah!’ Christopher giggled, even though it was hardly a laughing matter.

  Neither were they a laughing matter, both soaking wet and shivering cold. She couldn’t send him back to Calingarry Crossing like that.

  What would Cheryl think?

  To Amber’s surprise, what her mother thought suddenly mattered.

  Christopher mattered.

  Doing this—whatever this … this house thing was—mattered.

  *

  The punt groaned and kicked into gear, dragging itself back across the river to the waiting vehicle Amber recognised from her old house.

  Cheryl!

  ‘Okay, inside and dry yourself.’ Amber kept the panic from her voice. ‘There are towels in the bathroom. And be quick, don’t keep Cheryl waiting.’

  Amber hovered uncomfortably on the porch, hoping the boy wouldn’t take too long and leave her alone with her mother. Struggling through one conversation was enough for today.

  The car door opened and Cheryl stepped out. She’d changed from her earlier gardening gear and now wore a waterproof nylon parka with a red skivvy and beige corduroy jeans.

  Who in God’s name still wore beige corduroy anything? Amber thought, while checking her own dishevelled appearance.

  ‘I didn’t want Christopher riding home in the storm,’ Cheryl called out as she approached.

  ‘Of course,’ Amber agreed. ‘I would have driven him back myself.’

  I’m not totally useless. I may have given the kid pneumonia, but apart from that!

  ‘I didn’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  ‘Would you like to come inside? Christopher is … He’s cleaning up.’

  After the terse end to her earlier visit, she expected—hoped—Cheryl would refuse the invitation. Instead, her mother took something from the car, slammed the driver’s door closed and beamed—a sight Amber was getting used to at the mention of Christopher’s name.

  ‘The boy has a habit of getting mucky. I have clean clothes.’ She joined her daughter on the veranda and looked out over the property before taking in the building. ‘The place could do with a lick of paint.’

  ‘To say the least.’

  Amber had little interest in renovating the place. As far as she was concerned, the house would be on the market six months from now, after the four of them worked out the logistics of the sale. A developer would no doubt subdivide the land and knock down all the buildings in the process.

  ‘You’re wet,’ Cheryl said. ‘And I like your hair that way.’

  The muscles in Amber’s arms twitched, wanting to move, to reach out, to connect, but it seemed the memories of her childhood provided ample antidote against such impulses.

  ‘Wind’s cold,’ she finally said, one hand fiddling with the chaos of curls. ‘Come inside. I can make a hot drink.’

  Christopher must have used pine needles to start the fire earlier; the scent of warm pine wafted along the hallway as the two women hesitated at the kitchen table.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Nothing for me, thank you. I didn’t realise how late it was when I told Christopher he could come over. I should be getting his dinner soon.’

  Amber looked at her watch, then outside at the rain that had started again. ‘You can stay here for dinner. I can cook.’

  I can cook! Well done, Amber! Where did those words come from, and why had they sounded more like an admission than an invitation? Was she trying to convince herself? When left to her own devices, even with the benefit of a fully stocked pantry and chef-designed kitchen, Amber generally opted for cheese, crackers and wine. Now she was offering to cook for a couple of strangers. What would she feed a teetotaller and a teenager in Gypsy’s old kitchen and out of the sparse selection of groceries she’d picked up at Harvey’s?

  Her mother was still surveying the rain beyond the kitchen window. ‘I don’t think we have a choice at the moment from the look of that.’

  Was that the same as ‘Thank you, honey, we’d love to’?

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll …’ pour myself several glasses of wine ‘. . . get something going.’

  Amber cursed her stupidity while contemplating the kitchen cupboards, moving back and forth between the refrigerator and the pantry, trying to appear totally at ease and in control.

  Spaghetti. Yes. Easy. Quick. Impossible to burn. Every kid loves pasta, don’t they? A little bacon, some chopped tomato, avocado, a drizzle of olive oil.

  ‘How about pasta?’ she asked Cheryl.

  As she pictured each ingredient, she grabbed it, spreading them out on the kitchen bench almost in order, her own cooking-by-numbers method that she’d made up on the spot.

  ‘If you pass me an onion, I’ll dice it for you,’ her mother offered.

  ‘Onion? Oh, ah, yes.’ Amber took a brown onion from the crisper, delivering it with a chopping board and knife to the kitchen table. ‘Why don’t you sit here? Better than standing at the counter.’

  ‘I told you at the house, Amber. I’m tougher than I look.’

  *

  Even without a yum—the age-old seal of approval—Christopher’s meticulous bowl mopping with a chunk of fresh bread told Amber the pasta had hit the mark. There’d been little dinner conversation between mother and daughter, Amber lost for what to say and Cheryl too amused by the sight and the sound of Christopher sucking spaghetti strings through his teeth. In between bites, he’d entertained them both with stories of life on an outback cattle station miles from anywhere. Amber thought his days sounded long and the work too physically demanding for someone his age.

  He told her he’d been born on the property called No Go Creek Station—’cause there was nowhere to go much beyond its boundaries—and he’d ventured as far as the neighbouring station; not a quick trip when living on a property of more than eight thousand square kilometres. Help came to the station, mostly seasonal and related to whatever treatment or processing the 25,000 head of cattle required. They had sheep as well, although nowhere near as many, so shearers came and set up temporary lodgings with a shearer’s cook and noisy, all-night sessions around a fire. With the shearing done, they’d all leave the way they came—together—and things would be quiet again until next time.

  ‘I wanted to be a shearer, but me dad said naaaah.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Amber asked.

  ‘He says to be a shearer you gotta be strong in the back and weak in the head. He says I’m neither and to get a good education.’ Christopher drank down the last of his orange juice in noisy gulps, swiping the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘He reckons comin’ out here with Mum-Two is good for me.’

  ‘You like school?’

  ‘I like it best when I can go to real school. Heaps more fun.’

  ‘Fun? Not sure I ever used that word to describe school.’ Amber chuckled, pleased when Cheryl did too, although the laugh seemed too restrained, possibly only a glimpse of the real one she kept locked away.
>
  Cheryl’s smile faded first and she seemed to drift, her eyes dulling, the magic broken. ‘Well, Christopher,’ she said. ‘I think we should help Amber with the dishes and go home.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t worry about the dishes.’

  ‘If you insist. Perhaps then we should go while there’s a break in the rain.’

  They were back to being polite, and what surprised Amber was how she felt about the prospect of being alone. She’d enjoyed dinner more than she’d thought possible. The pasta was a success, the after-dinner conversation mostly lively, and they’d laughed. She would have liked to start some dialogue of a more personal nature with her mother, but Christopher’s presence made that impossible. Unfortunately, having her mother so close with half a lifetime of questions building up, the dam walls were feeling the strain.

  Amber followed her guests to the door, where Cheryl passed a jumper over Christopher’s head. The boy finished the job by dragging his arms into each sleeve while her mother’s hand smoothed his jumble of hair. A sense of melancholy seized Amber by the throat as she watched, wanting to be part of the ritual, feel the warmth of that jumper and the gentleness of that hand patting her curls back in place.

  She didn’t want them to go, but she had no idea what to say to make them stay. Every muscle in her body tensed with the urge to reach out and hug both visitors goodbye. Instead, her arms remained leaden by her side.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t stay?’ she said, wondering if her eagerness sounded more like desperation. ‘I have tea and chocolates!’

  ‘Chocolates? Cool.’ Christopher had no sooner said the word than a sharp look from Cheryl banished the boy’s smile.

  The look on Cheryl’s face, much like her father’s You can’t do that, Amber expression, only provoked Amber. She dashed up the hall to the kitchen while her mother zipped Christopher’s parka, grabbed the box of Roses chocolates Phillip had sent, and ripped the cellophane wrap on her way back to the front door.

  ‘One before you go can’t hurt,’ she said, deliberately avoiding Cheryl’s censorious stare.

  ‘Awesome!’ Christopher’s wide eyes devoured the entire contents, his finger hovering eagerly over the selection chart in the lid as he tried to decide.

  ‘How about you take the whole box for later. I really don’t need them.’

  ‘Are you serious? Cool.’ He hugged the chocolate box to his body. ‘No one’s ever just given me something for doin’ nothin’. You know what I mean?’

  No, Amber Bailey admitted to herself. No, I don’t.

  ‘That’s very generous of you, Amber. One only tonight, hon.’ Cheryl ruffled the boy’s head.

  ‘At least he’ll burn off the kilojoules.’ Amber tried a conversation. ‘Kids tend to do that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I guess they do.’

  Cheryl’s hands continued to fuss: his collar, his hair, her wristwatch.

  What about me? Amber wanted to cry. The woman who couldn’t tear herself away from her own miserable world to love her as a child was now bursting with tenderness for Christopher.

  ‘Can I show you something?’ Amber said in desperation.

  ‘We really should be going.’

  ‘Just here.’ Amber moved from the entry foyer into the hallway. ‘The picture on your sideboard, the drawing of stick figures in the frame.’

  ‘What about it?’ her mother asked with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Did I do it? It’s almost the same as the one on the bedroom door there.’ She pointed to the handmade name plaque. ‘I don’t remember ever doing anything like this as a child, but since you have it in a frame and all …’ While her mother’s face gave nothing away, her silence spoke reams. Amber had hit a nerve. ‘Whose drawing is it? Is it mine?’ she asked, her voice ending on an optimistic high note.

  For a moment her mother’s stare verged on cold, and the way she brushed her hands together, as if brushing away unwanted crumbs, made Amber wonder if she was going to brush both her and her questions away with the same indifference.

  ‘Why is this so important to you?’

  Amber braced, her own voice now matching the unexpected steeliness in her mother’s. ‘I didn’t say it was important. Can a daughter not ask whose drawing takes pride of place on her mother’s sideboard?’

  ‘Willow drew it,’ Cheryl said casually and turned to the boy still digging through the chocolates, matching wrappers with the descriptions on the inside of the box. ‘Christopher, I want you to wait in the car.’

  ‘But—’ the boy protested.

  ‘Willow drew it?’ Amber repeated, not bothering to keep the indignation out of her query.

  A finger pointed Christopher to the door, an air of urgency tainting the next order as Cheryl shuffled him into the cold. ‘In the car. Now, please, Christopher. Take the keys and turn on the heater. I’ll be out in a minute.’

  Amber’s gaze stayed fixed as she struggled to comprehend Cheryl’s answer, oblivious to the dialogue between the boy and her mother.

  ‘You have Willow’s drawing on your sideboard?’ Amber persisted. ‘Why? Why Willow? I’m your daughter. Where are my pictures?’ Frustration curled Amber’s fingers into such tight fists she imagined her nails gouging holes in her palms. ‘Why is it you love everything and everyone more than you love me?’

  Amber saw her mother’s body edge away as the unexpected surge of emotions ballooned into hysterics.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Cheryl snapped, the frosty flick of a dismissive hand igniting a flame under Amber’s skin. ‘That’s not true. You have no idea what I gave up for you.’

  ‘What? What did you give up for me? Not the drink,’ she exploded. ‘You didn’t give up the bloody drink.’

  Amber refused to cry. She didn’t want this tonight. It was neither the time nor the place, but something snapped at the thought of this woman loving and mothering everyone else.

  ‘Please, Amber …’

  ‘What? Please what?’ Amber tried unravelling the tangle of thoughts tugging at her brain. ‘Do you know I used to blame myself? Most kids counted sheep. I cried myself to sleep asking the same question over and over: Why does Mummy love drink more than she loves me? Do you even care to know what my therapist said about that? Well, I’ll tell you.’ She hardly stopped to breathe. ‘Children of alcoholics inherit the blame for their parents’ drinking. That means I thought it was my fault you didn’t love me. My fault you drank. I blamed myself.’

  Not even the shock on her mother’s face could stop Amber mid-rant. She looked around for something to hit, something to throw; a snowball would come in handy right now. Her hands balled tighter at her sides, her chest pounding so hard that each heartbeat reverberated in her head. ‘You were my mother.’ Amber’s voice finally gave out, her anger turning to tears. ‘You were supposed to love me, be there for me, hang my pictures on the wall. Instead, your most precious pictures are an old drawing of Willow’s and a photo of a boy called Christopher who you’ve known for, what, three years? Do I mean nothing?’

  The house shuddered and a decorative ceramic plate fell off its hook as Amber-the-brat slammed the wall behind her hard. No match for the wooden floor, the plate broke on contact, sending fragments in every direction, while a shattered, broken Amber gave in to her wavering legs, sliding her body down the wall until she was crouching. With her face buried in both hands, she let out a half-sob, half-scream as twenty years of tears fell.

  ‘Life is not about supposed to, Amber,’ Cheryl said without moving, her voice thin. ‘I don’t expect you to understand me or my life, just as I don’t understand yours.’

  Neither woman moved, Cheryl seemingly unperturbed, Amber a blubbering wreck.

  Amber didn’t look up for fear of seeing rejection, her gaze fixed on a knot in the old wooden floorboards. ‘We should try. Let me try. For God’s sake, I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve left my husband, my home, my life.’

  ‘Yes, you are here, and you’ve had time to plan and to think about all this. You need to g
ive me time, rather than landing on my doorstep and expecting me to jump. You and your father were always so demanding and … Amber, there’s so much you don’t know.’

  ‘Then tell me, for God’s sake.’ When Amber looked up, her mother had one hand on the doorknob. ‘Tell me and make me understand.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Go? But you’re my mother. Mothers don’t walk away. They don’t just leave.’

  Cheryl stopped long enough to glance back, the wistful look in her eyes like a lightning strike of truth. ‘No, Amber, daughters do.’

  Paralysed by disbelief, Amber stayed crouched in the hallway until the rain drowned out the sound of her mother’s car driving away.

  *

  There’s so much you don’t know.

  Her mother’s words remained a splinter in Amber’s mind and the more she played with it the more it festered. She poured the glass of shiraz she’d longed for over dinner and put another small log in the fire. Folding her body into the old-fashioned armchair closest to the fireplace, she hooked her heels on the edge of the seat and hugged her knees tight to stare at the embers. Jack had once described Amber as burning bright like a flame. Beautiful to watch, but get too close and she could be dangerous.

  Amber knew about danger. She’d been careering down a self-destructive path since giving up hope of providing Phillip with a son, and it had threatened both her sanity and her marriage. She drank too much, too often, and for all the wrong reasons—to numb the pain of her latest procedure, to bolster her ever-diminishing confidence, to endure another long day waiting for her husband to finish work. Booze had been a staple in the Bailey household. Her father’s answer to his wife’s addiction had been to stop supply, but Cheryl somehow always managed to secrete bottles and casks in different places around the house—like the oven. Amber knew where to look. She’d taken gin to the muck-up day festivities back in ’89, and someone—they never knew who—spiked the punch bowl.

  On that muck-up day, Amber had taken more care than normal to ensure she looked just right and she liked what she saw in the mirror. Her boobs looked amazing in the figure-hugging top; the wad of tissues in her bra helped.