Echo Point

by Virginia Hale

  “Why don’t you two go and grab a table, and I’ll get in line?” Ally offered.

  After giving Ally detailed instruction on exactly what cone and type of ice cream she wanted, Annie crossed the ice creamery into the adjoining café and sat down next to Bron.

  “It’s nice and cool in here, isn’t it?” Bron asked.

  Annie nodded, reaching for the end of her plait. “When we get home, can you do a fishtail in my hair just like yours?”

  Bron pushed a golden ringlet behind Annie’s ear. “Sure. Hey, Ann…” she said softly.

  “Yeah?” She reached for a napkin and began to fold it into a paper plane.

  “I found your mum’s ring in your room last night when I was looking for your uniform.”

  “Oh.”

  Bron hesitated, her fingers stilling in Annie’s hair. “I’m a little bit worried that Nanna might go and vacuum it up. So how about I keep it safe until you’re older?”

  “Okay,” Annie said, discarding the half-finished plane and looking across the café for Ally.

  “Anytime you want to see it, anytime at all, you just come and ask me, okay? Annie, are you listening?”

  Annie refocused her attention on Bron. “I’m real sorry that I took it from your jewellery box,” she said simply.

  She smiled. “That’s okay, sweetheart.” She picked up Annie’s delicate hand and lightly shook her middle finger. “When you’re a big girl, that ring is going to go right here on this little finger.”

  Annie looked sceptical. “You really think it will fit me one day?”

  “I’m absolutely sure of it.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Can I borrow something?”

  Bron dropped the school socks she was folding into the top drawer of Annie’s dresser and raised an eyebrow at Ally.

  Hovering in the doorway of Annie’s room, Ally clicked her tongue. “I need something to cover this.” She ran a hand over her tattooed bicep, left bare in just a singlet.

  Bron grinned, pushing the heavy drawer closed. “Well, I must say, I never thought the day would come…”

  “Yeah, okay, Bron. Rub it in. So have you got something I can wear or not?”

  It was difficult to overlook how tense Ally seemed at the prospect of visiting her own mother. It had been Jackie’s suggestion to schedule the visit to the nursing home before lunchtime that Saturday morning. Typically, Jackie said, people with dementia were more coherent earlier in the day. And while the morning hours may have been better for Kerrie, it was evidently at Ally’s expense. The dark circles beneath her eyes revealed she’d either had a restless sleep or hadn’t slept at all. Bron couldn’t help but wonder why Ally was so anxious. Kerrie Shepherd had always been nothing more than a caricature of the ignorant Australian redneck. Of course, to Ally, her only child, Kerrie Shepherd was multifaceted.

  Ally followed Bron into her bedroom. She opened her wardrobe doors, scanning over the hanging shirts for one that would fit Ally’s taller frame. She could feel the warmth of Ally’s body right behind her.

  “Geez, Bron, for someone who lives in another country, and for a lesbian, you’ve got a lot of clothes.”

  Bron rolled her eyes playfully, pulling out a grey plaid print and handing it to Ally. “This might work. You’ll have to roll up the sleeves since the arms will be too short.” She shut the cupboard doors. “Will you be too hot in this?”

  Ally winked. She shrugged the shirt on over her loose black singlet top. “I don’t know, will I?” she teased.

  Bron chuckled and Ally looked at herself in the full-length mirror. “Good,” she muttered. Bron took it upon herself to translate her approval into a ‘thank you.’

  “Knew you’d have something dykey.”

  Bron fought back a grin.

  “Are you sure you want to come?” Ally asked. “I can just go with Jacks.”

  “What would I do here? Daniel and Annie won’t be back from the footy for another few hours, and I don’t have any immediate work to do. Besides we’re still going to lunch afterward, right?”

  Ally nodded tensely. “Right. Well…thanks.”

  She smiled softly. “You’re welcome.”

  Jackie sat in the front seat for the drive to give Bron directions to the nursing home. Bron spared a quick glance up at the rear vision mirror as she turned out of their driveway and saw that Ally was already lost in a daze.

  They were lucky enough to find street parking just a few blocks up from the nursing home. As the three women began the walk down the hill, Ally asked, “Which wing is she in again?”

  Bron took out her wallet. In the tightest insert of her wallet was the tiny, folded piece of paper she’d found in Libby’s wallet. In Libby’s handwriting was the name of the nursing home and, presumably, Ally’s mother’s room number in the Oleander Wing.

  As they walked, Ally leaned over Bron’s shoulder. She read the note and nodded. Bron tucked the slip of paper back inside her wallet. Earlier that week, she’d copied the details in her own messy scrawl and given it to Ally. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that she could have given Libby’s note to Ally, but she couldn’t part with any scrap of paper inked in Libby’s gorgeous handwriting—not to-do lists, or to-read lists, and especially not shopping lists. In Libby’s script, milk, onions, zucchini and tomato sauce were more poetic than Wordsworth.

  Ally broke through her thoughts. “Isn’t oleander poisonous?” she asked, and then, after a moment, whispered, “Figures.”

  Bron faintly remembered Kerrie Shepherd. On one of her early visits home, months after Ally’s father died, Bron had been driving from somewhere and passed the motel. Kerrie had been out on the balcony of the second floor of the motel, puffing away on a cigarette. Bron had slowed, almost to a stop, and waved. There was no way Kerrie couldn’t have seen her. Still, she hadn’t waved back, and the handful of times Bron had met her in person back in the nineties, she’d never been particularly outgoing.

  “Ally’s mum’s not the full quid,” Libby had said each time she came home from a sleepover at the motel Kerrie Shepherd owned and managed.

  “Well, she’s had a lot of crap handed to her, Libby,” Jackie had always excused, not wanting to speak ill of Ally’s mother in front of pre-teen Libby.

  Much older than Libby, Bron knew back then that Jackie thought the same. Kerrie had known Jackie well enough to acknowledge her in the street, but a curt, passing hello to Jackie, who virtually raised Ally every other weekend, made Kerrie not just a stranger to their family, but strange.

  Jackie signed them in at the front desk and got directions to the Oleander Wing. When they passed through the second set of glass doors, Ally exhaled nervously. Something inside of Bron urged her to reach for Ally’s hand or to run a hand over her back, or to at least gently squeeze Ally’s upper arm. Bron knew it was what Libby would have done for Ally, how she would have reassured her best friend. But Bron wasn’t touchy-feely like Libby had been. That kind of friendly affection just didn’t come naturally to her, so she crossed her arms and turned right at the rec room after Jackie and Ally.

  The Oleander Wing smelled distinctly of disinfectant, but it was kind to the senses, like the nursing home staff were cleaning in preparation for dinner guests rather than disinfecting bed pans and mopping up juice spills. The door to Room 43 was wide open. Jackie stepped in first and Bron followed, Ally falling behind her.

  A woman who was unmistakably Kerrie Shepherd sat in a padded chair in the corner, her eyes trained on a morning television program. Bron glanced around the room. The only suggestion that it was a nursing home suite and not a regular bedroom were the heavy white hospital curtains and the duress buttons on the walls. The bed was draped with a crocheted blanket of pastel squares. The small television sat upon a glass cabinet filled with ornaments. On a low table beneath the window sat a vase of imitation roses, framed by two photos—one of Ally’s father and the other of three children, Ally’s cousin’s children, Bron assumed.

 
When Kerrie finally drew her eyes away from the TV and looked up at the three women standing in the doorway, her struggle to match memory to faces was blatantly unapologetic. “Good morning,” she said. When she forced a smile, her face seemed gaunter.

  Jackie was the first to move forward. “Hello, I’m Jackie.” She grinned and pointed out the window. “Beautiful day today, isn’t it?”

  Kerrie looked away from the television and outside the sliding glass door to a small rotunda in the sunshine. “It is at the moment,” she murmured. “It’s going to rain later.”

  Jackie hummed her disagreement. “I don’t know about that, but we could do with some rain, couldn’t we?”

  Disinterested in Jackie, Kerrie looked to Bron, who smiled warmly and moved closer. “I’m Bron.” After placing a kiss into the hollow of Kerrie’s wrinkled cheek, Bron turned, inviting Ally to do the same. But Ally stood back, her hands still encased in her pockets.

  It didn’t matter. Kerrie’s attention was focused on Bron and only Bron. She looked up at Jackie. “Isn’t she pretty?” she whispered to Jackie.

  Jackie smiled, but looked to Ally, urging her forward.

  Ally shifted closer. “Hi Kerrie.”

  Finally realising there were three guests in the room rather than two, Kerrie looked Ally over. She smiled at her for a moment, but her gaze shifted, lost and unsure. When she looked back to Jackie, sudden recognition washed over Kerrie’s features. “You’re Libby’s mother.”

  “Yes.” Jackie’s eyes widened. “I am.”

  “Where’s Libby?” Kerrie wondered.

  Without sparing a glance at Bron and Ally, Jackie explained, “Libby’s at home.”

  “I wish she’d come with you,” Kerrie whined. She looked to the fabric roses on the table. “Last week she bought me those flowers.”

  Jackie sat down on the edge of the bed. She smoothed a hand over the blanket. “That’s lovely.”

  Bron met Ally’s troubled stare. She tried to imagine the thoughts racing through Ally’s mind. It would be devastating to see Jackie like this, so ambivalent and vacant. However cruel and distant Kerrie had been in the past, she was still Ally’s mother.

  An elderly resident passed the doorway with a nurse, the two chatting away as the patient clicked her walker across the linoleum. They didn’t spare a glance inside Kerrie’s room, but Kerrie looked past Ally, scrutinizing the patient and nurse. She nodded in the direction of the open doorway. A scowl crossed her face. “She won’t leave me alone. I don’t know what she’s up to!”

  Her vision fell to the forefront, realizing Ally was blocking her view of the corridor. “What did you say your name was?”

  Ally introduced herself, but Kerrie only squinted, perplexed. “What a lovely blouse,” she said.

  Ally’s voice was gravelly when she replied. “Thanks.”

  Kerrie looked back at the TV, suddenly deeply invested in an infomercial for a vacuum.

  “We can just go,” Ally said softly.

  Bron was about to argue that they’d barely been there three minutes when the nurse from the corridor knocked on the open door.

  “Looks like you have some visitors, Kez,” she said, her hands finding her hips. Bron guessed the nurse was wondering who they were in relation to Kerrie, but Bron didn’t think it was her place to identify Ally. The nurse offered a smile to them, but Kerrie didn’t look up from the TV.

  “Well,” the nurse said, “just letting you know that you’re all welcome to join us in the rec room for morning tea.”

  “Thanks,” Jackie and Bron said in unison.

  The nurse leaned against the doorframe. “Your niece should be here soon, Kerrie.”

  Immediately, Kerrie reached for the television remote. As she stood, Jackie and Bron stepped back to make way for her. “There aren’t many seats in the rec room, so I don’t think you should come to morning tea,” she said pointedly.

  The nurse made a disgruntled sound of objection. “There are plenty of seats, Kerrie.”

  But Kerrie had already picked up her reading glasses and a Mills and Boon novel and was on her way out the door without so much as a good-bye.

  “Kez,” the nurse berated, clicking her tongue as she watched Kerrie walk away. “Maybe you could wait until her niece gets here,” she suggested. “She’s a lot better when the kids are here. It’s a healthy distraction for her on her bad days.”

  Bron looked to Ally, already knowing what her answer would be.

  “I think we’ll go,” Ally told the nurse. “Thanks anyway.”

  Resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to convince Ally to wait for her cousin to arrive, Jackie excused herself to use the restroom before they left to go to lunch. Bron found herself oddly relieved to have a moment alone with Ally outside the nursing home while they waited for Jackie.

  “Are you okay?” Bron asked.

  Ally shrugged. She looked down at Bron. “It could have been much worse.”

  Bron shifted her handbag on her shoulder, the leather already sticking to her skin in the heat.

  “I’m sorry that we came all this way for only a short time.”

  “You can’t help it. It’s just one of those things,” Bron assured her.

  “I suppose. I’d stay but…It’s just that my cousin really has it in for me. She’s pretty bitter, acts like she’s the one putting Mum through aged care and I haven’t sent a penny. Thing is, I know the money Mum made when she sold the motel is what’s paying for all of this, not my cousin. The profits are probably paying for Uncle Rob’s rent for this place too.”

  “Your uncle lives here too?”

  Ally nodded. “He never liked me. None of them do.” She scuffed the toe of her work boot against the garden path. “Anyway, I don’t care. They can have the money, and they can think what they want about me.”

  Bron sighed. “I’m sorry that your family situation is shitty, Al.”

  Ally’s smile was tight-lipped. “It is what it is. Mum and I were never close. But it does make me feel good when I think that Libby came to see her. Even if it was just once or twice.”

  Bron nodded. “She was a good girl, our Libby.”

  Ally looked down at Bron.

  “What?” Bron arched an eyebrow.

  “Sometimes,” Ally started with a quiet chuckle, “you and Annie sound just like her.”

  The computer Jackie kept in the small office downstairs was hardly ever touched since Bron and Daniel each owned laptops. Annie used the outdated desktop computer once a week—under sufferance—to access her online ‘Mathletics’ homework, but for the most part, it remained relatively unused until Ally came along.

  When she’d first arrived home from Oberon, Ally regularly used the computer to email her parole officer, and although she never mentioned it, Bron figured she must have been logging on to access her Centrelink records and payments too.

  A week before, searching for an accidentally deleted file for Annie in the recycle bin folder, Bron had stumbled upon a Centrelink icon. She guessed that, not completely Internet-savvy after having been in prison without Internet access for so many years, Ally had inadvertently downloaded the Centrelink shortcut and then deleted it, too embarrassed to leave it up on the desktop for everybody to see. But what other option did Ally have but to take government handouts for the next few months until she got back on her feet? Ally had nothing to be ashamed of, but clearly she was.

  “There won’t be any more letters—or handouts—from Centrelink,” Ally had declared at breakfast the day after Bron found the icon in the recycle bin. “So don’t worry if you don’t see any arrive in the mail,” she added, as though they had all been eagerly awaiting the letters.

  Daniel and Bron had looked at each other across the table. Jackie had been the one to speak up. “Did you go and cut them off?” she’d asked pointedly.

  “Yep,” Ally had said smugly. “No more handouts for Ally Shepherd.”

  So when Bron found Ally on the computer in the office
after everybody had gone to bed, she wondered what Ally was doing.

  “Sorry,” Bron said. “Annie’s getting her chicken pox vaccine at school tomorrow and I just need to fill out her immunization history.” She waved the form in her hand. “Mum said that Libby kept Annie’s baby book somewhere in here.”

  “No, you’re all right.” Ally clicked at the computer mouse a few times, obviously closing whatever she had been researching. “I’m done anyway.”

  Bron opened one of the desk drawers, flicking through paperwork and files in search of the baby book. “Internet working?”

  “I guess,” Ally murmured distractedly, standing. “I wasn’t using the net.”

  “Oh?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if you could read over something for me,” Ally asked timidly. “I’ve written an application letter.”

  Ah, there you are! Bron pulled the blue baby book from the second drawer. “What are you applying for?”

  Ally leaned against the bookcase full of photo albums. “There’s this business course at the University of New South Wales…”

  “New South…” Bron trailed off. “That’s far. Is training it into the city every day something that you would be okay with?”

  “It’s pretty much completely online,” Ally explained. Looking to her bare feet against the floorboard, she licked her lips. “My tutor at Oberon said I’d be really good for it. She reckons I could get in if I wrote a real good application letter. Plus, I can defer the cost to Study Assist until I can pay it off,” she added.

  Bron smiled. “I didn’t know you were interested in business.”

  “I am,” Ally said, confidence returning to her tone. “I’ve got a few ideas, just stuff I’ve been mucking around with. You know, How to Make Friends and Get Your Shit Together.”

  Bron laughed softly.

  “So could you read over the letter?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” Bron said, hoping her smile would alleviate some of Ally’s newfound nervousness.

  “No rush. The closing date isn’t for a few weeks. I know you’re busy with real work,” she rambled. “Anyway, it’s on the computer…”